I could hear the blank stares buzzing through my phone line.

“You know it’s one of those sayings. Like, ‘you don’t sell the sizzle, you sell the steak,’” she explained.

In a way, “sell the hole, not the nail” is like “you don’t sell the sizzle, you sell the steak.” In that they both don’t make any sense.

But the real saying, as folks pointed out, was: “You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.” But what the saying should be, I think, is that the sizzle sells the steak. Or else the steak salesman does.

I think the really real saying, getting back to nails and holes, and what my coworker may have picked up somewhere and meant to say, must be: “You don’t sell the shovel, you sell the hole.”

This would mean, you don’t sell the product, you sell what you can do with it. Like, hey aren’t holes great? I mean wouldn’t you like to have a hole? Well, buy my shovel and dig your own hole!

But it doesn’t work with the nail/hole metaphor. Hey, wouldn’t you really like a small hole in your wall? Doesn’t your wall need a series of small, deep holes? Well, poke your own holes with my patented nail!

Isn’t it just like marketing to teach people marketing with semi-catchy phrases that have no real meaning? In that spirit, let’s have a marketing-aphorism contest.

It goes like this: “Sell the _____, not the _____. Because/Unless _____.”

Like, “Sell the steak, not the cow. Unless it’s a farmer buying.”

Like that. But funny. Or else just play Mad Libs with the blanks.

Here’s an example:

A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender asks, “why are you so sad?”

(See, the REAL line is, the bartender asks, “why the long face?” Get how the joke is ruined?)

Now you try one. It’s best to use jokes that most people might have heard, but, if you think it’s unfamiliar, start with the real punchline and then give us the spoiled version.

When Kris and I were in college, our friend Jatt Mohnson (that’s not his real name, so don’t try and google him) and some other folk came up with the idea of the literary cafe. Another friend Shlevi Shwilliams was back then an aspring chef, and we thought we should open a restaurant, where, get this, all the names would be literary references! The recent comments on this blog mentioned, for instance, “Williams Carlos Waffles” and “Sound and the Curry.”

 It’s me, so you know what’s coming up… Yep, exactly right, a contribution competition! Name a dish, and, if you’d like, append an explanation. My example, stealing one we thought up all those years ago:

Ezra Pound Cake (there’s already a food blog by that name, by the way): A pound cake with ingredients balanced so precisely, you want to call it fascist, a slice of the Ezra, more than just tasting fantastic, evokes the image of a perfect pound cake. Home made and decorated, we make only one cake a month. $25 a slice, reserved for friends only.

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

Pulao and I listened to a podcast of This American Life from three weeks ago, an episode called “Mistakes Were Made.” In it, among other things, are a few riffs on “This Is Just to Say” — which is, according to This American Life, one of the most spoofed poems around.

I want to do that, I said. I bet you do, too.

They key to spoofing “This Is Just to Say,” This American Life pointed out, is to not be sorry.

Come up with one and post it in the comments. I’ll go first:

I’m Just Saying . . .
by Kris

If you didn’t
want me
to eat all
the cupcakes

why would
you leave them in the fridge?
Don’t tell me
you were
saving them for breakfast.

Nobody
would eat cupcakes for breakfast –
too sweet
and I ate them already.

At the end of this post is a pop vocabulary quiz. But first, a little history of Triple Rock Trivia Nights so far:

The first time out, the winners were “The Winners” — a team who, full of optimism, named themselves that, then spent all the goodwill they may have garnered with their winsome name by actually winning.

When “The Winners” kept their name, somewhat mawkishly the second time, and won again, they were reviled by all. When “The Winners” won for the third time, foul play was suspected and blows threatened, until it was revealed by the hosts that there had been a simple “mathematical error,” and “The Winners” hadn’t really won. Conspiracies were propounded, but the riotous crowd was quelled.

The fourth time around, my team, “Ample Recompense,” won. Some say this had a lot to do with Team “The Winners” not being there. Some say it had everything to do with it. Who knows?

As a little practice for tonight’s trivia, let’s do a vocabulary quiz. Vocabulary may not have appeared at Triple Rock Trivia so far, but that only makes it exceedingly unlikely rather than impossible to appear this evening.

For another vote in the vocabulary quiz column, I’ve visited Free Rice.com a lot recently, a site where you’re tested on your vocabulary knowledge, and when you answer correctly, they give rice to hungry people around the world. (This is for real.) Which can lead you to really really think about you guess, what with the starving children’s lives in the balance and all.

We don’t have any rice. But if you get these wrong we will stop in for dinner at the residences of several destitute families, which comes to the same thing.

Click “Read the rest of this entry” to take the quiz, and to read an answer, click your mouse and roll over the grayed text.

1. Crapulent:

Disliked
Excessively indulgent
Bulky
Bloody

Answer:

Excessively indulgent

2. Wonkish:

Fashionable
Unfit
Off kilter
Overly studious

Answer:

Overly studious

3. Obviate:

Anticipate
Conceal
To mold into a sphere
Profess

Answer:

Anticipate

4. Kris:

Hatred
A cocoon of a moth
Vigor
A curved knife

Answer:

A curved knife

5. Mawkish:

Sickeningly sentimental
Precocious
Bold
Cruel

Answer:

Sickeningly sentimental

6. Winsome:

Victorious
Fickle
Charming
Clever

Answer:

Charming

7. Moll:

Erudite politician
Scullery maid
Female sparrow
Gangster’s girlfriend

Answer:

Gangster’s girlfriend

8. Rood:

Funeral march
Stew
Party
Crucifix

Answer:

Crucifix

9. Etui:

Foppishness
Gossip
Small case
Disbelief

Answer:

Small case

10. Miscegenation:

Slander
Trickery
Exaggeration
Racial intermixing

Answer:

Racial intermixing

Becoming Jane, Being There, Boxing Helena, Chasing Amy, Driving Miss Daisy, Drowning Mona, Eating Raoul, Educating rita, Feeling Minnesota, Finding Forrester, Finding Nemo, Inventing the Abbots, Killing Zoe, Kissing Jessica Stein, Leaving Las Vegas, Losing Isaiah, Pushing Tin, Raising Arizona, Regarding Henry, Saving Private Ryan, Saving Silverman, Stealing Harvard, Waking Ned Devine.

If you’d like, you can branch out to TV shows and songs for half the points. Here’s something to start you off:

TV Shows– Crossing Jordan, Judging Amy, Pushing Daisies, and Watching Ellie.

Songs– Losing My Religion. (We didn’t spend much time on songs.)

Here are the rules:

1. No adjectives plus nouns. Eg., Raging Bull, Sliding Doors– not allowed.

2. No verbs plus prepositions. Eg., Waiting for Guffman– nope, sorry.

3. Nothing longer that the verb plus object formula. So, Killing Me Softly does not work.