Why "tremendo?"

Tremendo, adj., Italian: used, with hyperbolic value, in order to express one quality to the maximum degree possible: frightful, most intense, unbearable, appalling.

That's pretty much us.

Okay, I'll bite. Who's "Doctor Emile?"

In the vast expanse of American mythology, certain men have taken on Olympian proportions. We think of Paul Bunyan... Davy Crockett... John Henry... Gene Shalit... Doctor Emile... What? You've never heard of Doctor Emile?

Long about the turn of the previous century, a young Doctor Emile dreamed of traveling the country with a medicine show, peddling dubious cure-alls and getting out of town in the small space of time after collecting his money and before the townfolk boiled up some tar and emptied their pillows.

Having no small amount of showmanship in his blood (his mother was a pianola girl for Andrew Jackson, his father a character actor in the Yiddish theater), our hero bought a wagon, attached "Doctor" to his name, filled up five hundred bottles with his mother's best oxtail broth, and set out on the road.

He heard people call him a charlatan and a snake-oil salesman, but unlike his contemporarites, he never denied the charges. He knew that no matter how restorative his mother's broth was, it was no replacement for the simple joy that came from being humbugged. He knew that the curative part of a Medicine Show wasn't the Medicine but the Show.

And that's why you've heard of Doctor Pepper, Doctor Brown, the Smith Brothers and Colonel Sanders, but never Doctor Emile. Their products could be held in the hand, eaten, drunk. But Doctor Emile's product was evanescent, not effervescent... and the best snake oils, the ones that really work, aren't the ones you drink.

It is to the spirit of Dr. Emile — that irrepressible, innovative impresario — that we dedicate this company.

Where's that animation that used to open the site?

Here.

What does the showbill on the left say?

Oh, just a lot of silliness. The acts playing tonight are:
"The Four Flying Shrimptons"
"The Sisters Crunt featuring Baby Ophelia"
"Kitt & Kaboodles, the Amazing Pink Poodles"
"Egbert Noggin, Famous Mentalist"
"Mrs. Hortense Belfry gives her Clytemnestra"
"Bert Terdly and his Rhythmagicians"