O-rama or A-rama is fine with me, I'm not a purist. Who said Jazz is America's only original art form? Where else but in this fine land of ours could the use of something as just plain silly as the wordlette "O-rama" be raised to an art form? And almost everywhere I've gone in the US (and even Europe) I have found some version of O-rama.

As best as I can figure it, O-rama became part of our pop culture lexicography when Norman Belle Geddes lifted part of the word "panorama" and named the 1939 GE World's Fair Pavilion "Futurama". Thus setting in motion a peculiar, utterly American linguistic twist that is still very much with us today. For a more academic history of the whole "orama" thing check out the Straight Dope.com online article.

I owe a major thanks to Robin Worth, the toast of Madison WI, who inspired this project and got me started collecting this goofy pile of stuff that makes me laugh.

Keep in mind that these are all real-honest-to-goodness O-ramas -- we didn't make any of these up. We have decided to NOT include online Oramas logos from Web sites because they come and go so freqently and they are too easy to fake. We only collect real-life O-ramas. These were either found by us or sent to us by our friends and contributors. So if you'd like to join in our silly quest and complete waste of time send us your O-ramas to howie_green@hotmail.com. We will add your name to our list of mad collaborators.

Keep laughing - it keeps them guessing!

Howie Green

Special thanks to these nice folks for sending along their contributions to the madness:
Drake Bell, Jacob White, Aidan Dempsey, Bob Lieberman, Arthur Penta, Victor Kogle, Lola Fields, Warren, Ingeborg Schroder, Kent McKay, James O'Neal, Tomas Espino Barrera, Dana Zipperer, Hans Bolt, Frank Speiser, Jayne Fox, Rich Laniewski, Mike Lowery, ... and, as always, the inspiration and the ultimate Ms. O-Rama, Robin Worth!

And see rednickel.com's fun article on New England Neon O-rama