Dial-A-Wreck
August 29, 2008 Remember how we all loved the game "Telephone" in kindergarten? Well, add in a cake, and the fun never stops!
This order was for a "black high heel":
(It's a hill, people. Get it?)
Specifying punctuation is always tricky:
Although I suppose if Aunt flashed Mom that would liven up the party, and it's certainly preferable to Aunt slashing Mom.
(Ok, this one is tricky, I know: the order was for Aunt/Mom - a slash, in other words.)
Here we have a beautifully done blue horse. Unfortunately, it was supposed to be a blue house.
If your message is "Philip...Woohoo!", and you actually have to say the words "dot dot dot", be prepared for just about anything.
And of course these never get old:
Although interestingly enough, I think that icing IS light pink. I guess the decorator was covering all her bases.
Which brings me to our new category: "Literal LOLs". These are some of my favorite kinds of Wrecks, so keep an eye out, Wreckporters!
Thanks to Danielle M., Stefanie D., Rachel S., Michael T., and Chandra.
Reader Comments (130)
that that that...BWUHAHAHAHAHA!!!! that's the best thing i've heard all week! i'm definitely spreading that one around ;)
Grammar Nazi needs to find another job; perhaps cake decorating...? :)
Use the apostrophe to indicate the possessive case (except for personal pronouns), to mark omissions, and to form certain plurals.
If the ending [of the word] (either singular or plural) is not an s or z sound, add the apostrophe and s. (ex. man's hat, boy's shoes [singular] or men's hats, women's dresses [plural])
If the plural ends in an s or z sound, add only the apostrophe. (ex. ladies' hats, boys' shoes)
A tip o' the hat to the 6th Edition of Harbrace College Handbook.
Funny stuff! I read this blog regularly. Keep up the good work!
blog by tsunami that is
Who writes "Aunt/Mom" on a cake? Wouldn't you think it would be something like, "Mom/Aunt Judy" or "Mom/Auntie Judy" or even "Judy" and let her role in the family go unspoken?
This is why we make our cakes in my family. No one to blame but ourselves!
Living in North Carolina, I got a big laugh out of the hill/heel thing. My Southern friends pronounce them both the same.
Oh and the blue horse? I can't imagine the look on Joe's face when he saw that! I just picture him as a man in his 50s who finally built his dream home (in blue)...and now he has a pony on his birthday cake!
What a fun site. It must be a blast seeing all these cake bloopers.
Absolutey LOVE this blog...I am a new blogger and came across it. As an avid cake decorator myself, I can appreciate the horror.
Thanks for the laughs!
At least the "black high hill" one makes a little sense, since the expression "over the hill" and the color black are often jokingly used to celebrate people's 40th (and sometimes 30th) birthdays.
Is it wrong that I sort of want a wreck now?
Grammar Nazi:
You're right, of course. (Wow. I wouldn't have noticed, as I don't read the tags.) How the tagger managed to get LOLs right in the post but not the tags... XD
Are they nuclear missile sin the background of that horse cake?
Scary.
Your site is absolutely wonderful!!! I am ridiculously impressed by it!!! It's funny and super cool!!! The expression "super cool" suggests that i think it is really.....lol.....
wow... i don't even know how these could happen!
Hehehe - if you ever want to learn everything there is to know about grammar the hard way, start a blog criticizing grammar errors.
My hubby went in and corrected the LOLs error in the post this morning, which is why it was correct there but still incorrect in the tags. I just fixed the tag, too, though. Thanks for the correction, grammar nazi, and for not calling me any names. (No joke!)
Aunt/Mom? Are we going to a West Virginia birthday party?
LMAO @ Lisa: "happy birthday to you Candace" but the decorator put "Happy birthday too, You Can Dance"
What a delightful affirmation.
Oh, and I'm another who thought the candles on the horse cake were some sort of missile or hypodermic needle flying toward the horse.
does anyone think that "baby in pink" is the child of "lady in red"?
I have had so much hilarious fun with your blog, and have directed many to you. SO funny. I don't know where you get your cake pics, or if you have a Facebook, but I did find a Facebook group where people post photos that would be great fodder for your blog. "Ace of Cakes--Let's Give Duff a Run for His Money." There are over 1,000 pics posted.
Trust me, after ordering a cake for a baby shower from one of the most awesome Tres Leches-making restaurants in town. Over the phone, I asked for them to spell "Welcome Baby Jean Karlo!". I spelled it out so that they didn't think it was "Giancarlo", etc... They got OFFENDED when I asked them to read it back and also offered to fax it over JUST TO BE SURE! They turned down the fax said they "had it!" and hung up! The day of the event, I go to pick it up and sure enough - I opened the lid and saw "Welcome Baby Johncarlo!"?!?!?! I was FIT to be tied and waited impatiently for them to take it back and fix it. Sometimes, it's just going to happen, which is a good thing in the way that it will keep us coming back happily to CakeWrecks!!!
As a hobbyist cake artist (for now) and being raised by a then-Secretary...these "literals" send me over the edge. :) I know from the experience above let alone "Welcome Baby in Pink" and the incomparable "that that that" to get a sign-off on the written bits and design concept BEFORE puting cornet of icing to cake! :)
Peace out!
Wendy
My sides hurt.
haha...
in pink!!!
...how can people be this dumb??
Kind of off topic here, but I've thought this with so many posts (that, that, that) can we just talk about penmanship for a moment?
And these people are professional decorators?
Is it just me or does the "in pink" part almost look like someone added from a program such as photoshop or something? I mean, it's kinda blurry looking. Just a thought.
Am I the only one who is questioning the genetic integrity of the family responsible for that second cake? I mean, everyone I know would understand that "Happy Birthday Mom" means the aunt of someone else. "It's from all of us" would cover the explanation.
So it leads me to imagine that this is one of those situations where the familial relations are a bit tough to explain, and that "Aunt/Mom" is the only accurate way to describe the branches of the family tree that separate the cake buyer from the cake receiver.
Wait. I know! That cake was ordered in the same part of the country that allowed for the first cake's mistake to happen!
(I'll sit here and wait for the tomatoes to start flying toward me.)
I love the literal ones too. It's one thing to make fugly and/or disturbing and/or inappropriate cakes, but mistakes like that require a special kind of stupidity. Keep 'em coming! :D
Hill-heel...I know enough folks from the SE corner of the US that I saw/heard what happened instantly.
The "ellipsis" boo-boo, wow, did somebody have a bit of an accent? Hungarian? Greek? When "dot" sounds like "that", there's a serious foreign or regional accent in play. However...the decorator was obviously a shining product of our public school system. Literally (ha). Critical thinking, anyone?
I've always decorated my own cakes, so I've never had the agony of dealing a faux pas like any of these. My mom decorated all the cakes when I was a kid. She taught me how to do lettering, use the different tips, etc. Wow, these people are paid for this stuff?! I feel as though I've missed out on a broad cultural experience.
way too funny.
So when I order a cake, make sure to ask for it this way, "Use pink frosting to write 'It's a girl.'"
Yes I was waiting for someone to do this! very funny thank you :)
Morgan, You'd have to live in the south and hear someone pronounce the word "HILL" to get it.
If you told the supermarket cake lady "add a pitcher of a black high heel" and she thought you were sportin' a Southern accent, why, she'd shore as snuff setchoo right up with a black high hill .
re: Aunt/Mom. I keep having flashbacks to the movie Chinatown...
"She's my Sister - I'm her Mother!!"
only now it's "She's my Mother! She's my Aunt!" keep up the great work! Stephanie
And Lynn, you are wrong in correcting Grammar Nazi as you did. The ONLY time that the apostrophe is used in posessives is if they are PLURAL posessives. So her correction was correct. Apostrophes are not used for plurals, unless they are making an ALREADY PLURAL word possessive.
This is an important disctinction.
Signed, Grammar Nazi's Secret Admirer
OOOOoooopsy....
Just went back and read Lynn's ENTIRE comment. And (oooooooooh I hate admitting I'm wrong) but of course, your examples are right, and you are right.
It's just that people SO OFTEN misuse apostrophes ("its" and" it's," anyone?) that there are those of us who love to go around correting....and believe me, it could be a full time job.
Sorry for my snarky correction to you.
(But I'm still Grammar Nazi's admirer)
OK, so everyone is commenting on the missiles heading right for Blue Horse, but what about the "Welcome Baby in pink" who is being feted with a couple of hatchets?
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I got the high heel vs. high hill right away - it is a regional accent here!
Seriously, this blog is the absolute best. I used to be a cake decorator and some of the things people order!! It always drove me crazy with other cake decorators too though because they wouldn't call the person who ordered it if it didn't make sense! Even with Costco and the like, you still tend to pay a decent amount for a custom cake. I've never had a customer complain that I called to clarify whether they want a "black high hill" or a "black high heel" common sense people!
We also had a lot of blank cakes, which were frosted but had no inscription, so people could come and grab one on the fly. We had a bunch of girls working there who couldn't spell and were poor cake decorators to begin with (it was an ice cream shop to be fair) and OH some of the things they let walk out the door.
Everytime one of the girls decided she wanted our boss to send her to cake decorating class, she'd start decorating random cakes without instruction (which never worked, the boss just got frustrated that we'd have to slavage all these cakes, but they never figured that part out). Every year we'd have to grab all of the spontaneous Graduation cakes that snuck into the cake display fridge because either Congratulations or Graduate/Graduation would be spelled wrong in the same way on EVERY cake. Our boss even left a dictionary next to the cake decorating manual!
_Steph
These are some of the best, ever (that, that, that)
91st comment. Woo-Hoo.
Found your blog to be AMAZINGLY LOL
Pop over to my blog anytime!
I loved the Baby in Pink one :)
u made me laugh.Thanx
Love this site, absolutely love it. It's so reassuring to know that I'm not the only one out there who realizes that the English language has been butchered to death in the past couple of decades! While the visuals are great (mohawk babies, etc), the literal goofs are just perfect. You have to wonder what is (or isn't, apparently) going through the minds of these "professionals" as they're crafting these masterpieces!
Oh man, funny stuff - I told the local bakery owner about your site - he was laughing so hard at my descriptions!!! I think that there are some seriously either overworked, overtired, or underambitious cake docrators out there...LOL!
To Grammar Nazi et al.,
There is a certain school of thought that using apostrophes when pluralizing an acronym (e.g., LOL) is proper. In particular, the New York Times considers this the correct method. While it is now generally regarded as incorrect (except when the acronym contains internal punctuation or is a single letter), many of us were still taught to do it that way.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=499296
Hi! I luv this blog! It's ace! I think if i attempted a cake mine would look like one of these!! lol.
love it!
x
These killed me.
Still laughing.
I love this blog, it definitely provides comic relief to my day! My favorite was black high heel. I am still laughing about that one!
Sorry, but "Philip . . . Woo-hoo!" is a ridiculous thing to put on a cake in the first place, and I'd say they deserve what they got.
I love this post! It definitely just brightened up my sucky night...Are these true stories? That's pretty funny