Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack created a company using the logo of an apple with a byte taken out of it which isn’t so appealing even if we are just talking about computers and not food. Apple took it one step further by focusing on one specific apple with the Macintosh computers but Steve should have used the spell check on one of his computers before he named them.
The apple is considered the forbidden fruit and I forbade myself from eating them when I was a kid even though the dentist down the block would give me one every Halloween. This was after I didn’t find a worm in my apple but I found half a worm which made me puke up half of my bodyweight.
There was a doctor who lived next to the dentist and the doctor would always tell me that ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ This eventually did work because I began carrying one in my pocket and I threw the apple at him when he approached me.
When someone is liked they are the ‘apple of my eye’ which is the way Shakespeare used it in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and even the Bible made reference to it. Apple pie is one of the symbols of the United States along with the American flag, George Washington and The Real Housewives of New Jersey who probably drink lots of appletinis; why do you think they act like that.
The apple pie was first an English tradition before it was an American one. This was in the 1300s during the time of Chaucer, but before the discovery of America which is like saying you discovered you friend’s car by getting in the passenger seat. America's Apple Pie publicist has it created by Betsy Ross in collaboration with Ben Franklin on the banks of the Potomac while signing The Declaration of Independence.
In the Bible, God told William Tell to shoot an apple off his son Isaac’s head but God stopped Mr. Tell when he realized William had forgotten his glasses. New York City is called The Big Apple but the last time I visited, I found more pits and bruises than anything else.
When one says ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’, it’s usually deemed an insult even though a falling apple woke Isaac Newton and made him realize he was late in picking up his wife’s mother from the airport. There was no report on how far from the tree the apple ended up after striking Isaac. This incident spawned the Law of Gravity which states that one who leaves his mother-in-law waiting in the terminal will understand the gravity of sleeping on the couch and taking cold showers for a month.
The apple was so significant to The Beatles that they named a record label after the vitreous fruit. Legend has it that Ringo pulled for the pomegranate but that same rumor had Ringo as the inspiration for Gilligan after Paul suggested that Ringo be sent to an uncharted desert island where there were reportedly no apples or pomegranates.
Apples are so popular that they come in many varieties and at last count there were 7,500 which just happens to be the number of sexual partners Charlie Sheen had at his last party along with how much he paid each of them and three of the ladies were named Apple and another was called Malinda.
Some of the more popular kinds of apples are Granny Smith, McIntosh, Empire, Fuji, and Cortland. There are many apple varieties with red in the name: Red Gold and Red Rome and Red June and Redfield and Red Spy and Redmac McIntosh which seems quite redundant since they’re all red. There is a Juliet apple but no Romeo but there is a Rome and a Cameo and a Cleopatra. The Milo Gibson apple is native to Germany and was popular in the 1940s. Horneburger Pancake is a kind of apple as is Spur Winter Banana; there are so many apples, they ran out of names and had to steal them from other foods. There is a Twenty Ounce apple also known as a Venti and a Senator apple that lies to some apples and sleeps with others. The Sweet Sixteen apple has blemished and bumpy flesh and when you bite, it tends to bite back.
There are apple sauce and apple tarts and apple pie and apple butter and apple cider and apple jam and apple fritters and apple juice and appletinis and the good people at Colgate now have an apple toothpaste which oddly tastes like Reece’s Pieces; even McDonalds joined the fray by offering an apple pie as their only fruit filled dessert. You don’t go to Mickey D’s to get an orange tart with your burger or a blueberry scone with your Happy Meal. Parents don’t give their kids banana juice in a sippy cup. No one goes pineapple picking in the fall. Los Angeles isn’t called The Big Tomato and no computer company has the strawberry as its logo.
In Latin, the apple means evil but that hasn’t hurt the popularity of the unblemished fruit. In Disney’s version, Snow White ate a poisoned apple and it put her into a Rumpelstiltskin type coma. The author William Buroughs killed his wife when trying to play William Tell with a bazooka. Between Eve, Ms. White, and Mrs. Broughs, it’s a wonder apples aren’t on the Popes List of Forbidden Fruits.
Fruit of the Loom uses four fruits in its logo and commercials; in these ads, the apple is always prominently displayed in the center. I can’t even get dressed in the morning without crossing paths with the apple.
Every state seems to have a town named Apple Valley and every town has an Apple Valley shopping center with apple orchards lining many of our highways. Apples float, which makes them ideal for rafting trips. Parents in the northeast are known to toss apples in the pool so kids have a healthy snack when they swim. After the apples are eaten, they are tossed out of the pool onto the grass where they grow into apple trees for more apples.
The apple has had way too much attention for more years than I can remember. Johnny Appleseed did his work well much to the dismay of his cousin Jeffrey Orangebottom. Maybe we can pull focus from the apple by finding another fruit. The grape is an obvious choice as it seems to be taking over the jam/jelly/raisins/juice/wine. But grape juice is pretty far down on the list of desirable fruits juices.
iCarly and Nickelodeon started a movement with the Pear Computers and maybe the pear is closing the gap. But have you ever tried pear juice or a candy coated pear? The orange is great but it never really took off as a hand fruit; you can squeeze them and make juice, they go in salads in fancy restaurants and in sliced form, bars put them on top of fancy beers. But oranges are messy and once you get to the orange itself, there are plenty pieces of peel to deal with. They always leave you stickier than a night at the rib joint.
The apple is so entrenched in our society that it might never be unseated even though it is the low hanging fruit of the food community. They seem to be the easiest fruit to pick. For grapes, you have to get on your hands and knees. Oranges seem to be a little higher up and melons are heavier than a bowling ball.
Apples to apples, I really don’t care if the apple succeeds or not. It seems to be doing quite well but Britney Spears was on top of the world before her downfall. But pitting pop stars against fruit is like comparing apples and oranges.
