That greasy-spoon diner’s the pits:
Mel’s E. coli slop gives the shits,
Vera, the ignoramus,
Hopes Alice becomes famous,
And Flo’s all obsessed with her grits.
Alice was a half-hour comedy show that ran for nine seasons between 1976 and 1985. It follows the lives of three waitresses (Linda Lavin as Alice Hyatt, Beth Howland as Vera Gorman, and Polly Holliday as Flo Castleberry) working at Mel’s Diner, a greasy-spoon in Phoenix, Arizona. Their boss, Mel (Vic Tayback), rounds out the main cast. The series, produced by Warner Bros. and distributed by CBS, was based on the 1974 Scorsese film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. When the character Flo (the redhead on the left in the above image) would tell someone off who had irritated her, her signature retort was “Kiss my grits!”