Monday, December 3, 2007

The Evel "Head"

No, that's not a Typo, I mean Evel, as in K(e)nievel.
The All-american Daredevil Has been often impersonated, but never duplicated.

Mr Knievel met the end of his life a few days ago. (considering his career, he died about 20-30 years later than expected)

I am a little too young to have fully appreciated his career (Although I remember appreciating his parody, SuperDave Osborn), so I will leave the eulogizing to others, but I have a rather odd connection with the now-deceased stuntman through my workplace.

The Pizza Restaurant where I work, called simply "Crust" is owned by some guys who are just the right age to have been deeply in awe of Evel Knievel growing up. As an indication of the generation these guys are from, the decor in the restaurant features not only Evel Knievel, but Electra-Woman and Dynagirl, Sigmund and the Seamonsters, and pretty much the entire line of Sid and Marty Croft TV classics. The Crust menu features specialty pizzas named The "Sigmund", the "Mighty Isis", the "Sleestak" and "Gigantor", and sandwiches called the"Dick Dastardly" and the "Enik".

Of course these are nonsense words to most of our clientèle, who are either too young, too old, or possibly just too classy to know these references, but I think that is what makes the references special. If you got out of bed on Saturday in 1975 just to watch these shows, then you get it. Heck, they were still either re-running or re-making "The Land of the Lost" when I was a kid! (a little of both, I think. They tried another remake in 2001, after seeing how the Power rangers were stealing their "Cheapo-TV" format, but it didn't do so hot.)

One of the coolest bits of decor is also one of the most hidden. Inside the Mens' room. Click the picture of Evel to be taken inside.

2 comments:

Art said...

I'm so glad you didn't mis-spell Evel's first name. So many bloggers mis-spelled it in commenting on his passing. Snarky touch there puposely mis-spelling Knievel ;)

Frank Gibson said...

Actually it wasn't an intentional misspelling at all. I spelled his last name "Knievel" throughout the post, thinking to myself the whole time, "Gosh, I hope I am spelling it right!", but heartened by the fact that Firefox's internal spell-check was letting it stand.

Then, when I uploaded the pictures at the end, I saw the poster had spelled it differently, and went back and corrected(!) the spelling to comport with the poster. The poster also misspelled "humerus" and "nothing", so I should have red flagged that. I am correcting it right this second.