American things

36. $$$

37. Road Trips
38. Self Help
39. Seminars on how to flip properties with no money down

40. Hawaii

41. Grand slams

42. Brian Wilson

43. drive-in cinemas

44. john cena

(19)45. the atomic bomb

(19)46. Donald John Trump

Just sayin some of these things aren't exclusively American. They're everybody's!

47. Superhero movies for "grownups"

48. jack kirby

49. jack ruby

27 mayonnaise

27 "ranch"

ranch-style houses

Ranch might be the most american word there is. The sound of it, the meaning, the house style, the dressing. It's 100% American.

https://i.imgur.com/IOlj6Lw.jpg

51. Saturday Night Live and dozens of comedy series and comedians no-one's ever heard of.

... no-one else, that is.

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

I mean there are all these british comedians called "Jimmy Pram" or "Tolliver Whelk" or whatever that the britishers on the board seem to reference a lot.

52. happy endings
53. late night shows
54. hyper-capitalism
55. "football"
56. "soccer"

Italians
Irish

57. Barack Hussein Obama
58. Velveeta

Misuse of the collective clause when referring to sports teams

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

Saturday Night Live is b-list?

'Math'

American comedy is painfully unfunny. There's no real bite, no real cynicism, it always has to be nicey nicey in the end. A or B list, SNL fits that bill surely.

today, sure. I think SNL at its best (maybe 80s-early 90s) was good exactly because it captured and spoofed that wide-eyed lack of cynicism. Kevin Nealon comes to mind, and all of the fake commercials. Since at least Will Ferrell and maybe going back to Chris Farley and Adam Sandler though the style of comedy has been very "I AM BEING FUNNY RIGHT NOW! DO YOU SEE ME BEING FUNNY!"

(kind of a dumb comment I guess since Nealon overlapped with Farley and Sandler)

snl national lampoon and mad magazine none funny none ever funny

A or B list, SNL fits that bill surely.

I wouldn't know, I've never seen it.

Clips I've seen look dire though.

'Mr. President'

59. gunz

60. Patriotism

61. "GET IN THE HOLE!"

'Math'

perfect

62. sports
63. the hospital
64. vacation

The hospital?

65. institutional racism perfected
66. bumper stickers
67. trailer parks

Italians
Irish

-darraghmac

68. 'erbs

69. Missing out u's from words and -er endings instead of -re.

70. hispanics

The hospital?

― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Sunday, February 4, 2018 6:51 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well if we're contrasting U.S. and UK usage, only we (always) use the definite article

71. Mexico, central america, south america

72. Porches & yards.

73. Bros
74. Dudes
75. Broads

76, Fraternities, sororities.

one can only hope

everyone knows what a handkerchief is in theory, like they know the word, but no one actually has one or uses one

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand)

of course i know what a handkerchief is, i'm never without my grey handkerchief in my right back jeans pocket

my grandfathers carried them and I think my dad did, briefly. and me, when I was doing old man affectations for several months in elementary/middle school. I think I owned a pocket watch

While we are on hotels, do hotels just not have bathroom exhaust fans anymore? Or have I just had bad luck my last several hotel stays?

Most hotels I've stayed at lately still have them, although one had only a standard forced air duct. I know some hotels don't like people leaving the exhaust fans on to create pleasant white noise to help fall asleep or so you can't hear your neighbors since that taxes the A/C or heat; some hotels even provide fancy white-noise generators to discourage use of the exhaust fan or HVAC for this purpose.

What I don't see much anymore in hotel bathrooms are those eerie infrared heat lamps

oh yeah, the sun lamp! I think those were very briefly a fad in houses in the 70s, too. I think the first time encountered one in a cheap motel as a kid I was amazed and asked my parents if we could have one at home. and then any time we stayed somewhere with one, they’d tell me I could only use it for a little bit. I don’t know if they thought it was actively bad for me, or if it was some Immortan Joe “do not get used to water” deal

I do remember once chancing a flush on a possibly clogged toilet (no substance in it) and flooding the bathroom in my hotel room in Manila. I went downstairs to ask if they had a mop I could use to clean and they said don't worry about it and cleaned it up for me.

I imagine if I did that in a Days Inn in Ocala, FL, I'd be kissing cinderblock by the overworked housekeepers

xp - I had one installed in my home bathroom when it was renovated 10 years ago. I prefer them to the more common hot-air blowers as even heated air blowing on me feels a bit chilly at first when my body is wet fresh out of the shower. Hotels often put either of these on those ticking timer switches; not sure if it's because overuse is bad for you or they just don't want a 250-watt heat lamp or heater fan left on for a long time.

i had to learn about toilet brushes through roommates. we didn't have one growing up. i was the person who cleaned the toilet and i used a washcloth bc i didn't know what else to use. :(

we did have a little bank of heat lamps tho. it stopped working at some point bc the bulbs were huge and my parents never replaced them.

non-stainless hickory handled paring knives

Wait huh?

these type of dudes

https://www.moonrakerknives.co.uk/paring-knife-4

i've never seen them anywhere outside the US but they were mainstays in my parents' house growing up. the blade seemingly stays sharp forever which in my parents' case was a good thing because they had apparently never heard of sharpening knives

My mom is bizarrely against sharpening knives. Perhaps we were once a nation of knife sharpening scammers and some generational wisdom was misinterpreted

I finally broke down and told my sister look, I'll pay for it, just take their knives to this place - I gave her the name and address - and they'll do it in 24 hours. She always found a way to avoid doing it. So the last time I was there I rummaged through all their stuff and eventually found some weird old sharpening hoonjadoonja that had been sitting in its cardboard box with a rubber band around it for likely decades, from the look of the packaging. Miraculously the instructions were written on the side of the box and I sharpened every last one of their knives and you know what that old sharpener fuckin worked. Did I get any thanks? Reader, I emailed like three weeks later, and was like so? How are the knives? My sister's like yes, very sharp thank you. ffs

lmao

I kept telling my my that they would work much better, and if she were to accidentally cut herself it wouldn’t be as painful because dull knives hurt a lot more than sharp knives. She made some excuse about how she might cut herself and not notice if the knives were too sharp

my mom, rather

Damn Tracer now that I think about it, I definitely grew up (in America) with a couple of those knives floating around!

Traveling knife/scissor sharpeners were totally a thing. Especially for folks in remote rural areas so they could make their knives last longer. You'd generally get your knives sharpened when he came around because you didn't know when the next opportunity might be.

I can vaguely remember my mother or grandmother circa 1975 lamenting that there weren't as many traveling knife sharpeners about; you had to specifically request someone to come out and do it.

But see now in 2025 we don't need traveling knife sharpeners because.. because.. wait we still totally need traveling knife sharpeners

Wait, you have to sharpen knives?

one traveling knife sharpener went to my maternal grandparents’ and also Tracer’s, but he was the one scammer who just pretended to sharpen them, creating a generation of mistrust

i think that's it

the only Americans who actually sharpen knives are professional chefs and food bloggers

Ginsu commercials broke us, as a people.

Like, it could cut through a tin can! And then a tomato. Sorcery.

I'm always finding knives like that in the woods.

pplains, do you live in an Appalachian horror movie y/n

Lol

You're only slightly off.