In her latest post for Strong Language, “Feelthy Brand Names,” Nancy Friedman shared some “naughty-sounding brand names,” as she nicely summed it up on her blog. No sooner had I enjoyed her post than I came across this gem on the road while stopped on my way home from work:
Naive or knowing? I couldn’t track down a lot of information about this curiously named company, so I can’t be sure. If you’re not familiar with the phenomenon called “morning wood,” let’s just you should move out of the way of pubescent schoolboys who, on their way to class in the morning, are carrying their textbooks in a manner so conveniently positioned at waist level. Here’s a scientific explanation from–I couldn’t resist–Upworthy. It won’t put you to sleep, even if that’s what’s behind nocturnal penile tumescence. (I wonder why the term “morning wood” proved so sticky?)
This Morning Wood Construction is not alone in its namesake. Not far from the road where I snapped this photo in south Orange County, Calif., is The Morning Wood Company in Los Angeles. Now, this operation is in on the joke, and delightfully so. An actual woodworking and carpentry enterprise specializing in trimwork, The Morning Wood Company eschews a stiff collar, if you will, with its tagline: “You’ve Gotta Get Up Early To Beat Us!” Heavy-handed? Perhaps the copy on their website is bit subtler. Describing their services, the company promises: “From demo to the final knob or pull, we do it all!”
But no matter how good of a ‘job’ they do, it seems grownup schoolboys-cum-man-children aren’t interested in their woodwork, but in their word-work. The Morning Wood Company’s commentary of its profile image on Facebook features this to-the-point exchange:
That about sums it up. I’ll leave it to Nancy, and the rest of our (morning) glorious readers here at Strong Language, for more examples of these filthy name fails–or wins? I, for one, have to give a hand to any business with a good sense of humor.
Strong Language 
Did you get the “trimwork” reference?
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Indeed! No pun opportunity left un-seized.
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More examples, you say? Well, stay tuned for my big-ass post on naughty wine-brand names.
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Just off the Island of Montreal, there is a restaurant called Smoke Meat Pete. I love hearing their tag line trumpeted on Montreal’s fusty, conservative AM radio station: “You Can’t Beat Pete’s Meat!” It’s on their website too: http://www.smokemeatpete.com/Home.htm
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Complete with a “novelty items” section on their webpage. The devil’s phallic trident really gets the message across.
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I travel by car across much of the US annually, and “gentlemen’s” clubs, aka strip clubs, as well as casinos, often have oh-so-clever puns for business names and slogans on enormous, you-couldn’t-miss-them-if-you-tried sized billboards. One near the airport in Hartford Connecticut was called The Landing Strip. The billboard was strategically designed with graphics which merged a woman’s lower half with an airplane “landing” and the entire sign positioned so that drivers on the interstate momentarily had a view that looked as though their car was following directly behind the plane. Ewwwww.
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The Land Strip has set up quite the elaborate operation in service of its lewd pun.
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And then there’s the now-defunct band Morningwood, which issued the weirdly catchy single “Nth Degree,” much of which consisted of lead singer Chantal Claret spelling out “Morningwood.”
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I just revisited the song and video–and wow. A weirdly catchy song, indeed, though M-O-M-O-R-M-O-R-N-I-N-G-W-O-OD made for quite the difficult spelling lesson.
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A little off-topic, but conceptually related to morning wood and bumper stickers…
A number of years ago, one of my neighbors (a woman) had a vanity plate on her car. It read:
PNS NV.
Not sure how that one, um, slipped through the DMV.
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Are you sure it wasn’t PMS NV? No, I guess not.
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