Just one week after a hilarious, sweet video of Hermon couple John and Sonja Palmer messing up their appearance in a Dysart’s Restaurant commercial went up online on the Bangor Daily News website, the YouTube clip is nearing the one million mark. Though the “buttery, flaky crust” in question is now easy for a lot of people to say, the fact that this couple had a hard time getting the words right has brought a lot of chuckles to the nation as a whole – and has helped to put Dysart’s on the map.
Sutherland and Weston Marketing and Dysart’s have had some seriously good press surrounding the bit of Internet humor – last Friday, the clip was shown on “The Today Show,” and next week, at some point between Monday and Friday, John and Sonja Palmer will actually make an appearance on “The Today Show,” in an interview to be broadcast during the morning program, which airs from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday on NBC. An exact date and time has not yet been named for their segment.
“There’s a ‘Meet the Palmers’ page now on the Dysart’s website,” said Cary Weston, one of the co-owners of the Bangor marketing firm that filmed the commercial for Dysart’s. “We’ve seen a lot of comments questioning if they were real or not.”
According to the Dysart’s website, John and Sonja Palmer have been married for 53 years, and now live in Hermon. John Palmer worked for the Bangor Daily News for a number of years, and the couple now eat at Dysart’s every week. In a quote on the website, he states that he thinks the newfound attention paid to him and his wife is a real hoot.
“Oh I just think it’s great! It’s nice that people are getting a laugh out of it,” said Palmer. “A lot of those bloopers out there are staged, you know. I kept thinking they were gonna fire me!”
Palmer said of his multiple attempts to say “buttery, flaky crust” that he has a rather limited vocabulary – don’t blame him for his humorous mess up.
“Well, I was concentrating so hard! I’m a little hard of hearing. I mean, I’m 74 years old!” said Palmer. “It’s like I told Ric [Tyler, who directed the commercial], I really only know how to say two words and that’s ‘yes dear’.”