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Three from the New Yorker

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Two from the 2/29/16 issue, one from the 3/7/16 issue, all having to do with language, but in different ways. Michael Maslin (who’s appeared here twice before) on the 29th, with the opposite of giddyup:

(#1)

(A horse in a tree! How can that be?)

David Thompson (new on this blog) on the 29th:

(#2)

— a cartoon you very much need to be tuned into popular culture to understand.

And Harry Bliss (who already has a Page here) on the 7th:

(#3)

— not a question at all, but a loud complaint (in a sushi restaurant) by a customer who seems to have expected guacamole.

Each of these has a serious bit of absurdity in it, the Maslin most of all.

The Maslin. The brief story on giddy-up, from NOAD2:

giddy-up (also giddap) exclam. used to get a horse to start moving or go faster. ORIGIN 1920s ( as giddap): reproducing a pronunciation of get up.

One surprise here is the recency of the expression. More details in OED2, from 1972:

giddap, int. and v. Also giddy-ap, giddy-up. (Chiefly in imp.) colloq. (orig. U.S.).

int. first cite 1925 (Dreiser, American Tragedy)

v. first cite 1938: D. Runyon Furthermore xiv. 293   Princess O’Hara..tells Gallant Godfrey to giddap, and Gallant Godfrey is giddapping very nicely.

These entries hardly do justice to the extent of spelling variation, which you can sample on the net. First, the spellings are sometimes separated (giddy up), sometimes hyphenated (giddy-up), sometimes solid (giddyup). The first element is variously spelled giddy, giddi, gitty, gitti (note the alternative spellings for the intervocalic voiced tap in American English); the second element is spelled up, ap. (The spelling I recall from my childhood, in which our play involved lots of urging imaginary or toy horses, is gittiap, so it took me a little while to find the dictionary entries.)

Then I go back to the horse in the tree, and I giggle.

A bonus: a Giddy Up t-shirt design, with a unicorn instead of a mere horse, from FluffyCo (www.fluffyco.com):

(#4)

The Thompson. To make any headway at all with this cartoon, you need to recognize an allusion to the line in which Agent 007, James Bond, introduces himself (first in Casino Royale, I believe): the original and the formula (taken over by many others):

Bond…  James Bond. (that is:  LN…  FN + LN.)

(The ellipsis dots represent a pause.)

In the Thompson we’ve got:

bonds… municipal bonds.

The Bliss. Here we go into the world of twisted speech acts. You believe that someone has represented something as an X, but it seems clear to you that it’s not an X. So you take a declarative sentence conveying your understanding of the claim:

You call this an X.

and you query the accuracy of this claim with a question intonation spread over the declarative (similar to situation in reclamatory questions):

You call this an X?

And then, as in so many situations, pointedly questioning the accuracy of a claim implicates that you believe the claim is false. (“You think you’re so smart?”, conveying that you’re not smart at all.) So the diner in #3 conveys his belief that what he has in front of him is not in fact guacamole (as it most surely is not). What’s so goofy about the whole business is that he seems to have expected guacamole in what is transparently a sushi restaurant, when what he’s picking up with his chopsticks (who supplies chopsticks for customers to eat guacamole?) is hosomaki.

To be fair, you could easily make guacamole hosomaki (Id imagine Harry Bliss didn’t know this), and indeed there’s a recipe for spicy cucumber guacamole sushi rolls here. Some rolls:

(#5)

(Note for American sports fans: when the Superbowl is over, this is something you can do with that leftover guacamole dip.)



Where is he now?

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(Mostly about tiki stuff, but with some initial talk of hot-hot man-man sex, which you should skip over if you’re modest about such things.)

A week ago, in “Sex comics: Brad Parker / Ace Moorcock”, I wrote about gay cartoonist Brad Parker (who also worked under the jokey name Ace Moorcock), especially in his 1988 book Oh Boy! — but without posting any X-rated images, an omission I’ve now remedied with a posting (about three strips from his series “Bigdicked Cocksucking Surfers”) on AZBlogX (more on this below).

But then readers of my earlier posting wondered what had happened to Brad Parker. Where was he now? The answer is: on the Big Island of Hawaii, creating Tiki Art — a genre of pop art, though Parker prefers the label Low Brow Art (for works that might be categorized as folk or outsider art, except that it’s created knowingly) — under the professional name Tiki Shark. More on the Tiki phenomenon and Tiki Shark below, but for a taste, here’s Parker’s Red Tiki Lounge:

(#1)

Parker’s surfer dudes are in fact hugely endowed and randy as hell. All three encounters could be described as Bigger Dick Gets Sucked, and two are framed as contests (that’s a gaysex trope). Meanwhile, we get an outburst of entertaining porntalk, of the sort actual men are unlikely to exchange in a sexual encounter (except as playful mockery of porntalk). (Note: to read the the text in the ‘toons, you’re going to have to enlarge the images.)

Box scores:

#1: for penis: big studdoggie (your big studdoggie: could refer to the fellatee), juicy 12″ foot long, squirting milkhose

#2 for penis: big bullhero, trouser trout, spurtin’ sex salmon

#2 for semen: torpedo juice

#3 for penis: meat monkey

#3 for semen: dick juice

Tiki time. Now to the artist biography for Brad “Tiki Shark” Parker on the Sargent’s Fine Art & Jewelry site:

Brad Parker paints “Low Brow Art” about Modern Tiki Culture. He does so from the most remote land mass in the world: the Big Island of Hawaii. “When you live on an active volcano, you learn to make sacrifices.” The artist doesn’t mean throwing virgins into the volcano, but rather his move from the fast lane of Hollywood to the slower pace of the small seaside town of Kailua-Kona.

Brad has worked in several types of media: writing, penciling, inking, coloring, and editing comic books from small publishers right up to the industry’s leaders: Marvel and DC Comics.

Brad did production illustration for several movies, but his most memorable contribution is the design of the infamous Creeper for the Jeepers Creepers films. “Finally, I reached a point where I wanted to realize my own vision instead of helping others realize theirs.”

Brad stopped accepting film work and moved to Hawaii where he began directing the art side of his company – Tiki Shark Hawaii Inc – and painting his interpretations of the Modern Tiki sub culture. [You can think of this move as a shift from one genre of popular art to another.]

Tiki Art is referred to as “Low Brow Art” as opposed to “High Brow” or “Fine” Art, only because it references modern or pop culture. Low Brow Art has seen tremendous popularity in the [mainland] West Coast art scene since the 1990’s.

Brad Parker’s style is reminiscent of the old Flemish masters, but with counter culture subject matter from a childhood of adoring comic books, cartoons, and Universal monster movies. A unique American culture of television, comics, the Hawaiian craze of the 50’s and 60’s (plus its re-emergence as hipster-retro-kitsch), all go into the Polynesian pop-art of this new work.

It’s unique. It’s strange. But it’s familiar. It’s Hawaii seen through a pair of cartoonland glasses.

“I love the work coming out of the Low Brow Art scene in LA. But, there just wasn’t enough being said about Tikis for my taste. Tiki art is a whole new and old art form at the same time. It’s the first abstraction of the human form and the birth of modern art, and it’s the re-creation of wooden idols into the 20th century idols of recreation!” — Brad Parker, Tiki Shark

(Digression: searching for information on Brad Parker can be tedious, because of the enormous number of men (from all walks of life) with the name Brad or Bradley Parker. You can cut things down some by using the fact that (so far as I know) our target Brad Parker has never used the name Bradley, and some Bradley Parkers seem never to have used the name Brad. Plus the fact that there’s a connection for our target Brad to art and design, illustration, animation, and the like. That still nets a Bradley/Brad Parker with a serious career in visual effects for the movies (and some film direction), — who’s clearly not our target, since he’s still in the business in Hollywood, while Tiki Shark left the place some years ago.)

Now to the original tiki. From Wikipedia:

In Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man, created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne. He found the first woman, Marikoriko, in a pond; she seduced him and he became the father of Hine-kau-ataata. By extension, a tiki is a large or small wooden or stone carving in humanoid form, although this is a somewhat archaic usage in the Māori language. Carvings similar to tikis and coming to represent deified ancestors are found in most Polynesian cultures. They often serve to mark the boundaries of sacred or significant sites.

But religious figures and practices are quickly put to popular or folk uses, often coalescing with figures and practices from other traditions entirely; think what’s happened to the Christian figures and rites associated with Christmas, Mardi Gras, Easter, and Halloween. So it was with tikis. From Wikipedia again:

Tiki culture is a 20th-century theme used in Polynesian-style restaurants and clubs originally in the United States and then, to a lesser degree, around the world. Although inspired in part by Tiki carvings and mythology, the connection is loose and stylistic, being an American form and not a Polynesian fine art form.

Tiki culture in the United States began in 1934 with the opening of Don the Beachcomber, a Polynesian-themed bar and restaurant in Hollywood. The proprietor was Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, a young man from Louisiana who had sailed throughout the South Pacific; later he legally changed his name to Donn Beach. His restaurant featured Cantonese cuisine and exotic rum punches, with a decor of flaming torches, rattan furniture, flower leis, and brightly colored fabrics. Three years later, Victor Bergeron, better known as Trader Vic, adopted a Tiki theme for his restaurant in Oakland, which eventually grew to become a worldwide chain. The theme took on a life of its own during the restaurant’s growth in the Bay Area. The Trader Vic’s in Palo Alto [now gone] even spawned architectural choices, such as the concept behind the odd-looking Tiki Inn Motel, which still exists as the Stanford Terrace Inn.

… The Mai tai is considered to be the quintessential tiki cocktail. A protracted feud between Beach and Bergeron erupted when both claimed to have invented the mai tai.

(#2)

#1 and similar paintings are where Tiki Shark makes most of his money, but in 2010 he ventured onto works that imitate (the covers of) comic books, in Tales From the Tiki Lounge #1 (the fake comic book is made to resemble the EC Comics publication Tales From the Crypt (some discussion on this blog here):

(#3)

Parker’s comment:

Super ultra-rare item I can guarantee you cannot find anywhere else! Why? Cause it doesn’t exist anywhere else!!!

This is the “COVER” only of a pulp-comic that solely exists in the Mai-Tai-light zone of Brad “Tiki Shark” Parker’s imagination. Beautiful high quality giclee on heavy “alure” paper, archival inks that resist fading. Perfect for framing, and fooling gawking-cocktail-party-guests into thinking you own a, as yet unheard of, extremely unusual treasure of vintage Hawaiiana Memorabilia.

Signed by Brad Parker [$25.00]

Later, #2:

(#4)

And on from there.


More tiki!

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By fortunate coincidence, today’s Zippy, with its tiki figure transformed into a salt shaker, comes on the heels of my posting of the 2nd, on Brad “Tiki Shark” Parker and the pop culture phenomenon of Tiki Art:

Above, tikis turned into household objects (like salt shakers); in my Brad Parker posting, tikis turned into design elements — notably, as decorative elements in tiki lounges (where you can get killer cocktails and Polynesian/Chinese food), but also in Parker’s Lowbrow Art (as he calls it).


Kookie Zippy

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Today’s Zippy goes back to 1962 and Kookie comic book #1:

(#1)

— meanwhile, engaging in a battle of beatnik poetry with the character Bongo from Kookie.

(Another in a long line of Zippy strips on beatnik customs, including invented beatnik poetry.)

Background on Little Lulu from Wikipedia:

“Little Lulu” is the nickname for Lulu Moppett, a comic strip character created in the mid-1930s by Marjorie Henderson Buell. The character debuted in The Saturday Evening Post on February 23, 1935 in a single panel, appearing as a flower girl at a wedding and strewing the aisle with banana peels. [Continued as a newspaper comic for many years.]

… Comic-book stories of the character scripted by John Stanley appeared in ten issues of Dell’s Four Color before a Marge’s Little Lulu series appeared in 1948 with scripts and layouts by Stanley and finished art by Irving Tripp and others. Stanley greatly expanded the cast of characters and changed the name of Lulu’s portly pal from “Joe” to “Tubby”, a character that was popular enough himself to warrant a Marge’s Tubby series that ran from 1952 to 1961.

The Kookie comic, mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the artist:

John Stanley (March 22, 1914 – November 11, 1993) was an American cartoonist and comic book writer, best known for writing Little Lulu comic book stories from 1945 to 1959. While mostly known for scripting, Stanley also drew many of his stories, including the earliest issues of Little Lulu and its Tubby spinoff series. His specialty was humorous stories, both with licensed characters and those of his own creation. His writing style has been described as employing “colorful, S. J. Perelman-ish language and a decidedly bizarre, macabre wit (reminiscent of writer Roald Dahl)”, with storylines that “were cohesive and tightly constructed, with nary a loose thread in the plot”.

… In the 1960s [after Little Lulu, Tubby, and Nancy and Sluggo] Stanley created a number of humorous titles for Dell Comics. These include: Kookie #1-2 1961-1962, drawn by Bill Williams. Kookie is a 20-something single girl living in a Greenwich Village-like environment with roommate Clara and working in a hip coffee shop. Supporting characters include Momma Poppa, the brash, overweight owner of the coffee shop, and Bongo and Bop and other beatniks. The subjects of their own back-of-the-book story, Bongo and Bop never interacted directly with Kookie.

 

(#2)

(#3)

Bongo and Bop:

(#4)

Background: vocabulary and stereotypes. The NOAD2 entry for beatnik / Beatnik is cautious on the origins:

ORIGIN 1950s: from beat [as in the Beat Generation, with beat as popularized by Jack Kerouac] + –nik on the pattern of sputnik, perhaps influenced by US use of Yiddish –nik, denoting someone or something who acts in a particular way

Michael Quinion’s affixes site notes:.

The ending had been known in English before the mid 1950s, notably in the Yiddish nudnik for a person who pesters or bores, kibbutznik for a member of a kibbutz, and in proper names such as Chetnik, a member of a guerrilla force in the Balkans. However, it was sputnik (literally ‘fellow-traveller’ in Russian), a satellite launched in October 1957, that introduced the ending to a wider English audience.

That brings us to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. From a 11/26/95 story in the paper “How Herb Caen named a generation” by Jesse Hamlin:

Chronicle columnist Herb Caen coined the word “beatnik” on April 2, 1958, six months after the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite into space. “Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.’s beat generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!),” read an item in Caen’s April 2 column, “hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles’ free booze. They’re only beat, y’know, when it comes to work.”

No one dounts that Herb Caen did have this moment of inspiration in 1958 — Jack Kerouc just hated the invention, by the way, and told Caen so — or that his invention was the spark for the (very rapid) spread of the term, but it’s entirely possible that other people put the beat of Beat Generation together with -nik independently of Caen.

In any case, the beatnik stereotype was around before Caen. From Wikipedia:

At the time the term Beatnik was coined, a trend existed among young college students to adopt the stereotype, with men adopting the trademark look of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie by wearing goatees, horn-rimmed glasses, and berets, and rolling their own cigarettes and playing bongos. Fashions for women included black leotards and wearing their hair long, straight and unadorned in a rebellion against the middle class culture of beauty salons. Marijuana use was associated with the subculture

The fashion included an assortment of linguistic usages: heavy use of the discourse marker like, vocative man, hip, square, cool (which sturdily survived), pig ‘policeman’, for instance.

The stereotype was widely manifested in popular culture, especially in two tv shows: 77 Sunset Strip (via the character Kookie) and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (via the character Maynard G. Krebs). Illustrations, with Wikipedia notes:

(#5)

77 Sunset Strip is an American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith and Edd Byrnes. Each episode was one hour long. … The show ran from 1958 to 1964.

… The series revolves around two Los Angeles private detectives, both former government secret agents: Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. played Stuart (“Stu”) Bailey … Roger Smith played Jeff Spencer, also a former government agent, and a nonpracticing attorney. The duo worked out of a stylish office at 77 Sunset Boulevard (colloquially known as “Sunset Strip”), between La Cienega Boulevard and Alta Loma Road on the south side of the Strip next door to Dean Martin’s real-life lounge, Dino’s Lodge. Suzanne, the beautiful French switchboard operator played by Jacqueline Beer, handled the phones.

Comic relief was provided by Roscoe the racetrack tout (played by Louis Quinn), and Gerald Lloyd “Kookie” Kookson III (played by Edd Byrnes), the rock and roll-loving, wisecracking, hair-combing, hipster and aspiring P.I. who worked as the valet parking attendant at Dino’s, the club next door to the detectives’ office. (link)

(#6)

Maynard G. Krebs is the “beatnik” sidekick of the title character [Dobie Gillis, played by Dwayne Hickman] in the U.S. television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis [1959-63].

The Krebs character, portrayed by actor Bob Denver, begins as a stereotypical beatnik, with a goatee, “hip” (slang) language, and a generally unkempt, bohemian appearance. (link)

 

Kookie is something of a combination of beatnik and greaser, Maynard Krebs of beatnik and nerd. Different social territory.

So we get to kooky / kookie. From Green’s Dictionary of Slang:

kook (also cook, klookhead, kuke) (? cuckoo … but popularized followng the late 1950s US TV show 77 Sunset Strip in which the supposedly (by 1958 standards) ‘eccentric’ character Gerald Lloyd Kookson III (‘Kookie’), played by actor Edd Byrnes (b. 1933), became a teenage idol) … (US) a crazy person, an eccentric, albeit an acceptable one. [first cite 1956 from Nelson Algren’s Walk on the Wild Side]

kooky (also kookie) (orig.US) odd, eccentric (often with overtones of charm) [first cite 1959 in Motion Pictures, with reference to Edd Byrnes]

The beatnik poetry slam. Back to the Zippy cartoon, which is framed as a beatnik poetry slam between Bongo and Zippy. Zippy’s contributions are complex riffs on sources I can’t quickly identify, but Bongo’s references are to The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and Dobie Gillis, plus an initial effusion that could just be inspired nonsense, with the purple octopus and its tentative tentacles (though I note that there have been reports of an actual purple octopus, at great ocean depths, and that someone has used Urban Dictionary to post a preposterous invention that, I suppose, tickled him and his friends: purple octopus: ‘when 8 gay men lose their virginity together’: purple for ‘gay’, octopus for ‘eight’).

Oh yes, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit:

(#7)

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a 1956 American drama film based on the 1955 novel of the same name by Sloan Wilson. The film focuses on Tom Rath, a young WWII veteran trying to balance his marriage and family life with the demands of his work for a New York television network, while dealing with the aftereffects of his war service.  (link)

But he came to be seen as the stereotypical Organization Man, the polar opposite of the Beatnik: on the train to Nowheresville.


Most unusual ties

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Juan Gomez, surveying some of the penguiniana at Ramona St. (there is even more at Staunton Ct., where I’m trying to clear things out), noticed this very handsome silver and black tie on display in my living room:

(#1)

(The label says: “MUSEO Hand Made” — made in Korea, as it turns out.)

The tie was a gift from my friend Steven Levine, who has an enormous collection — hundreds — of ties, found in used clothing outlets, estate sales, flea markets, and the like. Funny, gorgeous, bizarre, all shedding some light on odd corners of popular culture and changes in artistic fashions over the years.

So Juan asked what the most unusual tie in Steven’s collection was. I asked Steven, he reflected for some time, and nominated six items. For your thoughtful pleasure, these ties, with Steven’s comments…

1 This one has a theme of “curling”.  For that curling fan to wear to work or church?  To wear to a game in the days when you wore suits and ties to the ballpark?

(t#1)

2 This is unusual because the front part of the tie is a fisherman in winter, but the back unseen part of the tie is a bathing beauty with palm trees.

(t#2a)

(in a close-up:)

(t#2b)

3 Here’s a shiny tie to celebrate the centenary of Mankato, Minnesota.

(t#3)

4 This tie has a label from Madrid, and it reproduces the “All Is Vanity” painting by Charles Allan Gilbert that looks like a skull or a woman in front of her mirror, depending.

(t#4a)

(in a close-up:)

(t#4b)

5 Strange colorful handpainted tie of grasshoppers fishing in a glass. Is this what the “grasshopper” cocktail looks like?

(t#5)

6 I have no idea who Rest and Zest the turtles are, and Oakton Manor is a park in Illinois at this point. But this may be my most unusual tie, which is not the same thing as my favorite.

(t#6a)

[AMZ: I find nothing about turtles named Rest & Zest, but I do find some sites where the nouns rest and zest are paired, partly to savor the rhyme, but mostly to suggest that you need rest in order to have zest for living. A life lesson in a necktie.]

(in a close-up:)

(t#6b)

(the label:)

(t#6c)

Earlier in this blog: a 11/17/15 posting “Novelty ties”, with two abstract-design ties from SL’s collection.


Crate labels

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Continuing the story of commercial art forms in popular culture that started with tie art this morning (“Most unusual ties”, here): the art of crate labels, for shipping fruit, vegetables, and other foodstuffs in wooden crates, on the railroad, from where they were produced to where they are consumed. Along with the long-distance distribution system (with its major hub in Chicago) made possible by the railroads came schemes of brand-naming and long-distance advertising for the products. most notably in the colorful labels (designed largely by unknown artists) on the crates (the labels are now collectors’ items); the heyday of the labels was in the early 20th century.

Two satisfying products from Louisiana (in #2, you should focus on the left side, with the Tabasco sauce bottle and its flanking shrimp):

(#1)

(#2)

Both labels show the products, artfully displayed (the eggplants in #1 are especially luscious), and #2 has a scenic shot as well. Both show the products in a three-part arrangement that seems to me to be subliminally sexual: penis and flanking testicles. (Sexual texts and subtexts are very common in crate labels.)

Three themes so far: the actual products (which, surprisingly, turn out not to be essential to the labels); sexual texts and subtexts; and scenery (not always directly relevant: fruits and vegetables from California were routinely shown with San Francisco scenes (the Golden Gate Bridge was especially popular), despite the fact that the food was grown in the Central Valley or Southern Califiornia.

But wait, there’s more!

To start with, there are the brand names, many of which are slangy. In an earlier posting (“Suggestive”, from 2/14/12) I looked at two suggestive brand names: Hustler brand California Bartletts [pears] and Gay Johnny brand Texas vegetables. Hustler was before ‘prostitute’ time, but well within the ‘con man, grifter’ zone, so although the label showed a kid hustling newspapers energetically, the name was not entirely innocent. Similarly with Gay Johnny (another kid), from a time when the ‘happy’ sense coexisted fairly easily with the ‘homosexual’ sense.

Cute kids — often sexualized, as they have been since Victorian times — are a recurrent theme. Here’s a fairly crudely drawn label for Apple Kids brand apples from Washington State, with scenery, a big apple, and two grinning boys, verging on soft kiddy porn — the boy on the right presenting his crotch, the boy on the left flagrantly displaying his butt (with a slingshot in his back pocket):

(#3)

Women are routinely sexualized; they’re pinups, offering their wares for the delectation of watching men. Usually restrained, but sometimes brazen, as in this ad for Buxom brand melons (melons! give me a break!):

(#4)

Another theme is living things: birds (Blue Bird, Flamingo, Kentucky Cardinal, Swan, Blue Goose (especially nice silhouette)),

(#5)

animals (Bunny, Deer Valley, Camel, Bulldog, Jaguar, Whippet), flowers (Daisy, Sunflower, Poppy, Crocus, Thistle). These appeal to people on the basis of their positive associations — beauty, strength, cuteness, comforting familiarity, intriguing exoticness — without, for the most part, veering into sexual territory or touching on the actual properties of the fruits and vegetables in question: Blue Goose is a brand of pears, for example.

Tucked into this category is my favorite so far, King Pelican brand iceberg lettuce:

(#6)

A pelican, yes, but not just any pelican: one whose body is a head of iceberg lettuce. Wonderfully done. (By the way, iceberg lettuce here in California is a totally different food from iceberg lettuce that’s been shipped across the country. There are down sides to long-distance shipping.)

Finally, there’s the race thing, from a time when casual racism just floated in the air, so that black folks could be depicted as grinning and servile. The brand names tell the story: Ole Black Joe, Oh!Mama, Black Boy, Banjo, Louisiana Lou, Smoky Jim’s, Aunty, Topsy. Mostly for Louisiana products, in particular yams:

(#7)

Yams for Mister Charlie.


Two tests in cartoon understanding

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From the July 2016 issue of Funny Times, two cartoons that are real tests of understanding, the second more so than the first. From Bob Eckstein, a cartoon that is funny on the grounds of sheer silliness:

(#1)

And from J.C. Duffy, a cartoon that is just incomprehensible unless you have two pieces of (pop-)cultural information:

(#2)

Big men in funny hats and little cars. Even if you have no handle on the cultural reference in cartoon #1, it’s still funny that grown men should take such pleasure in wearing funny hats and driving around in little cars.

But then you might recognize that those funny hats are in fact fezzes. An iconic feature of Major Hoople in the old Our Boarding House comics (see note on this blog on 9/10/24) and of Matt Groening’s Akbar and Jeff  in the Life in Hell comics (note on this blog on 8/20/14, with a bit on the fez as clothing). And a characteristic item of dress of Shriners on certain ceremonial occasions. Not everybody knows about Shriners.

From Wikipedia:

Shriners International, also commonly known as The Shriners, is a society established in 1870 and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, USA. It is an appendant body to Freemasonry.

Shriners International describes itself as a fraternity based on fun, fellowship, and the Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief, and truth. There are approximately 350,000 members from 195 temples (chapters) in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, the Republic of Panama, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Europe, and Australia. The organization is best known for the Shriners Hospitals for Children that it administers, and the red fezzes that members wear.

[Sexism note: Shriners are men only, though there are “ladies’ auxiliaries”. The ladies, bless ’em.]

[Parade Unit:] Most Shrine Temples support several parade units. These units are responsible for promoting a positive Shriner image to the public by participating in local parades. The parade units often include miniature cars powered by lawn mower engines.

… Shriners in St. Louis have several parade motor units, including miniature cars styled after 1932 Ford coupes and 1970s-era Jeep CJ models, and a unit of miniature Indianapolis-styled race cars. Some of these are outfitted with high-performance, alcohol-fueled engines. The drivers’ skills are demonstrated during parades with high-speed spinouts.

A Pittsburgh Shriner in an iconic miniature car participating in a Memorial Day parade:

(#3)

Just as in the cartoon.

Previously from this cartoonist, Bob Eckstein (signing himself bob), on 5/30/15 (“Earworms, snowmen, and parodies”).

The mythical monster as secret agent. If you lack the two items of (pop-)cultural background for understanding cartoon #2, you’re baffled; what you see is a feral-canine creature introducing himself to a woman at a bar as “James Chupacabra”. What’s funny about that? (Beyond a bar pickup line from a creepy-eyed man with a head resembling a wild wolf or fox.)

The two crucial ingredients. One, the James Bond introductory formula

The name’s Bond. [pause] James Bond.

(classically said over a (gin) martini, shaken not stirred).

Two, the figure of the chupacabra. From Wikipedia:

The chupacabra or chupacabras (… literally “goat-sucker”; from “chupar”, “to suck”, and “cabra”, “goat”) is a legendary creature in the folklore of parts of the Americas, with its first purported sightings reported in Puerto Rico. The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.

Physical descriptions of the creature vary. It is purportedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail.

Eyewitness sightings have been claimed as early as 1995 in Puerto Rico, and have since been reported as far north as Maine, and as far south as Chile, and even being spotted outside the Americas

The figure in #2 is considerably less fearsome than the chupacabra of legend. But there are those glowing eyes.

The James Bond formula has been used in many cartoons.  For instance, this one:

(#4)

From English Blog on 4/25/13:

Today’s cartoon by Paul Thomas from The Daily Express is inspired by the revelation that AA Milne, the man who created Winnie-the-Pooh, was a First World War spy.

… The cartoon is drawn in the style of E.H. Shepard’s illustrations for the Winnie-the-Pooh books, and depicts Pooh as a James Bond figure dressed in a tuxedo and bow tie. His introduction ‘The name’s Pooh—Winnie the Pooh’ is a clear reference to James Bond’s iconic catchphrase, “The name’s Bond, James Bond”.

Earlier appearances of the artist of #2, J.C. Duffy:

ML on 7/8/07, “Argumentative dogs”: Fusco Brothers

on 4/3/13, “Eggs over easily”

 


The fallen V

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In today’s Zippy, Bill Griffith continues his long exploration of American pop culture, especially roadside culture — diners, motels, and (very often) big fiberglass advertising figures:

  (#1)

(Note outrageous pun in the title, playing on Norse/nurse.)

Of course, the fiberglass Viking is a real thing. From the Delmarva Now site, Carol Vaughn on 4/7/15, “Iconic Viking statue no longer standing on Chincoteague”:

The huge Viking statue that stood sentinel over Chincoteague’s Pony Swim Lane for more than three decades is no longer there, after the land on which it stood was put up for sale.

Its removal came 1 1/2 years after the big man was restored and re-installed, after Hurricane Sandy toppled it in 2012.

The 23-foot-tall fiberglass icon, owned by Star Mondragon of Payne’s Sea Treasures, is currently lying next to the shop, across the street from the field where it once stood.

The Viking up:

(#2)

And down, across the street:

(#3)



Word play for 7-11

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Three cartoons today (July 7th, or 7/11 in American usage; this will be important): a perfect pun (from Rhymes With Orange), using an ambiguity in local; a more distant pun (from Mother Goose and Grimm), linguistically and visually combining Bonnie and Clyde with Blondie ad Dagwood; and a Scott Hilburn (from The Argyle Sweater today) using the 50th anniversary of the Slurpee to float an almost-perfect pun
perches / purchase
(/z/ vs. /s/).

The cartoons:

(#1)

(#2)

(#3)

Local anesthesia. Start with two senses of the adjective local. From NOAD2:

[1] belonging or relating to a particular area or neighborhood, typically exclusively so: researching local history | the local post office.

[2] (in technical use) relating to a particular region or part, or to each of any number of these: a local infection [a specialization of sense [1]]

Local is sense 1 is relative to a setting specified in the discourse (In New Orleans, we ate only local food, meaning food from New Orleasn); if not otherwise specified, this is the setting of the discourse itself (The stores sell very little food, meaning food from the area around here, that is, near the place where the speaker is).

In food-talk, sense [1] is often used in a kind of specialized food-jargon, in expressions of the form local X, where X is the name of a foodstuff: local beef, local carrots, local candy, etc., referring to beef, carrots, candy, or whatever grown, produced, or manufactured locally.

This is the sense the patient in #1 has in mind. The dentist, on the other hand (yes, you have to recognize this as a dentist-patient scene), is using a further specialization of sense [2], in the expression local anesthesia. From NOAD2:

anesthesia that affects a restricted area of the body. Compare with general anesthesia.

Blondie and Clyde. In #2, a zany cross between two pop-cultural pairs, the legendary bank robbers and murderers Bonnie and Clyde and the comic-strip married couple Blondie and Dagwood. The pun is on Blondie / Bonnie.

Slurpee Day. This one I owe to Nancy Friedman, who put me onto a USA Today story, “Monday is 7-Eleven’s nameday, and it’s celebrating in fine frozen fashion: with free Slurpees”, and the Scott Hilburn cartoon, which introduces Slurpee-drinking parrots to get its perches / purchase pun in.

From the story:

America’s largest convenience store chain has celebrated Free Slurpee Day on July 11 (you know, 7/11) since 2002. This year, though, marks the 50th anniversary of the Slurpee, and 7-Eleven has a birthday cake flavor to mark the occasion.

Slurpees from a machine:

(#4)

A Slurpee is a slushy frozen carbonated beverage sold at 7-Eleven stores.

Machines to make frozen beverages were invented by Omar Knedlik in the late 1950s. The idea for a slushed ice drink came when Knedlik’s soda fountain broke down, forcing him to put his sodas in a freezer to stay cool, which caused them to become slushy. The result was popular with customers, which gave him the idea to make a machine to help make a “slushy” from carbonated beverages. When it became popular, Knedlik hired artist Ruth E. Taylor to create a name and logo for his invention. She created the ICEE name and designed the original logo, which is used today. Early prototypes for the machine made use of an automobile air conditioning unit.

After a successful trial of ICEE machines in 100 stores, 7-Eleven in 1965 made a licensing deal with The ICEE Company to sell the product under certain conditions. Two of these were that 7-Eleven must use a different name for the product, and that the company was only allowed to sell the product in 7-Eleven locations in the US, a non-compete clause ensuring the two drinks never went head to head for distribution rights. 7-Eleven then sold the product that in 1966 became known as the “Slurpee” (for the sound made when drinking them). The term was coined by Bob Stanford, a 7-Eleven agency director.

Earlier on this blog, a 9/27/14 piece on the Slurpee competitor the Slush Puppie. (By the way, these concoctions are not only tooth-achingly sweet but also brain-freezingly cold.)


The giant lava lamp of Soap Lake

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(Not much about language here, just weirdness.)

Today’s Zippy, with a bow to a novelty item of the 1960s and a modern piece of visionary Americana:

(#1)

This being a Zippy strip, of course there is a giant lava lamp (roughly 60 ft. high), complete with observation deck, in the middle of the little town of Soap Lake WA — but it’s still a vision (of local resident Brent Blake), a prospect not yet realized. It’s a spectral lamp, a companion to Zippy the heartburned spectral rutabaga and the overripe parsnip he longs for:

(#2)

On the lava lamp, from Wikipedia:

A lava lamp (or Astro lamp) is a decorative novelty item, invented in 1963 by British accountant Edward Craven Walker, the founder of the British lighting company Mathmos. The lamp consists of a wad of a special coloured wax mixture inside a glass vessel the remainder of which contains clear or translucent liquid; the vessel is then placed on a box containing an incandescent light bulb whose heat causes temporary reductions in the density and viscosity of the wax. The warmed wax rises through the surrounding liquid, cools, loses its buoyancy, and falls back to the bottom of the vessel in a cycle that is visually suggestive of pāhoehoe lava, hence the name. The lamps are designed in a variety of styles and colours.

 


Arthur Godfrey and friends

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Today’s Zippy appears to be just a surrealist melange of pop-cultural absurdity (and can be enjoyed at that level), but in fact many of those absurdities are knit together in a web of allusions to elements of pop culture — probably even more densely than I appreciate.

(#1)

It all starts with Arthur Godfrey, who appears transformed as the central character of the strip, Siddartha Godfrey, with Arthur replaced by the phonologically very similar name SiddarthaSiddharth or Siddhartha is the birth name of the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha.

Meanwhile, the title “Jerry Van Dyke Lives” introduces a secondary, parallel, theme having to do with Jerry Van Dyke.

Wikipedia on Godfrey:

Arthur Morton Godfrey (August 31, 1903 – March 16, 1983) was an American radio and television broadcaster and entertainer who was sometimes introduced by his nickname, The Old Redhead… At the peak of his success, Godfrey helmed two CBS-TV weekly series and a daily 90-minute television mid-morning show… One of the medium’s early master commercial pitchmen, he was strongly identified with many of his sponsors, especially Chesterfield cigarettes and Lipton Tea.

… Godfrey was also known for sparking impromptu jam sessions on the air with the band, all of them first-rate musicians who could create an arrangement as they went. He would sometimes begin singing with his ukulele, the band falling in behind him.

Significant elements in this telling: Godfrey’s red hair (a feature shared by Jerry Van Dyke); the long-standing routine of his mid-morning tv show (echoed in Siddharta Godfrey’s invariant routine); Lipton Tea (Constant Comment tea in the strip) and Chesterfield cigarettes (“cancer sticks” — Godfrey was afflicted with lung cancer and died of emphysema — which appear in the strip transformed into Dunkin’ Donuts Old-Fashioned Sticks, that is, donut sticks); the ukulele that Godfrey played and sang to on his show (parallel to the banjo that Jerry Van Dyke played on television).

Wikipedia on Jerry Van Dyke:

Jerry Van Dyke (born July 27, 1931) is an American comedian and actor, the younger brother of Dick Van Dyke.

He made his TV acting debut on The Dick Van Dyke Show with several guest appearances as Rob Petrie’s brother, Stacey. Later in his career from 1989 to 1997, he portrayed Luther Van Dam on Craig T. Nelson’s ABC sitcom Coach.

Van Dyke is an avid poker player and announced a number of poker tournaments for ESPN in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He is also a 4-string banjo player with several performances on the Dick Van Dyke Show to his credit.

The hair.  Arthur Godfrey:

(#2)

And Jerry with his brother Dick:

(#3)

Old-fashioned donut sticks. With your morning coffee (or tea), you could have a classic ring doughnut / donut, or a filled one, or a cruller, or a donut stick, that is, a stick donut (often characterized as old-fashioned or old fashion). Some donut sticks in preparation (with sugar glaze):

(#4)

Stringed instruments. Stringed instruments come in several categories according to the way they’re played: struck, bowed, plucked, or strummed (bowed and strummed instruments can also be plucked). The most widespread strummed instrument in the modern world is the guitar, but there are a great many other types (balalaika, bouzouki, lute, mandolin, etc.), including two rather similar “plinky” folk instruments, the ukulele (Hawaiian in origin), Godfrey’s instrument,  and the banjo (American in origin), Van Dyke’s instrument (there is even a hybrid instrument, the banjo ukulele).

Elsewhere in the strip. So there’s considerable allusional density in the strip already. Two items that I haven’t worked into the fabric are the references to the tv show My Mother the Car and to the Led Zeppelin rock classic “Stairway to Heaven”; but Bill Griffith is perfectly capable of throwing in stuff from left field on occasion (Judge Judy, taco sauce, Valvoline, Lithuanians, etc.).

Then there are the food references in the last panel: peach Melba, artichokes, and zucchini. All very sexual, though not easily connected to the other material in the strip: peaches and artichokes are both standard vaginal symbols (luscious inside, protective fuzz or coarse leaves, like pubic hair, on the outside), and artichokes are famously supposed to be aphrodisiac. And zucchini, like egglants, are standard phallic symbols (especially if you’re a man running naked on Main Street waving one).

Possibly this genital symbolism (which might not have been consciously intended by Griffith to serve this purpose) is connected to My Mother the Car and “Stairway to Heaven”. Sexual readings of the Led Zeppelin song are pretty obvious, My Mother the Car not so much, beyond the maternal reference.

[Added a bit later, supplying a fact that I did not know. From Ned Deily:

Jerry Van Dyke starred in My Mother The Car, with the voice of Ann Sothern as his mother’s spirit trapped in the car. One of the high points of NBC comedy in the ’60’s.]


“What you done, sunshine, is criminal damage”

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The 1975 quotation (in Green’s Dictionary of Slang) is from a (British working-class) policeman, who “levelled a finger at” a man and made this accusation. My interest here is in the address term sunshine, which has become familiar to me though British (occasionally Canadian) police procedural tv shows, where the cops (or private detectives) often use this form of address, aggressively, to male suspects. From the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (ed. Tom Dalzell & Terry Victor, 2015), p. 2192:

used as a form of address, often patronizing with an underlying note of disapproval or threat UK, 1972

A (very natural) extension of literal sunshine to ‘cheerfulness, happiness’ has been around for some time, as has the extension to someone who exhibits or elicits cheerfulness or happiness, in both referential and vocative uses. Then, the address term sunshine (like any other) can be used sarcastically, aggressively, or truculently, but the conventionalization of such uses specifically in British (and not American) English, for use to men by men, especially by official authorities, is yet a further development, one that I hadn’t experienced until I got into modern police procedurals, in books and on tv.

Green’s has sunshine (also sunbeam, sundown) ‘a general form of address’, e.g. Oi! sunshine!, with cites from 1953 and 1961, both apparently simple address uses, then a truculent 1965 cite. Then we get the quote in the title above, followed by cites from 1983, 1984, 1999, and 2005, all of which seem to be truculent, including several sarcastic ones from police; all the cites seem to be British.

The New Partridge has two cites (1984 and 2000), both from British tv shows or books based on them (Minder and Lock, Stock …).

And from recent tv, on the Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries S5 E8 (2012), after a baseball game:

You’re under arrest, You won’t  be hitting many hits from behind bars, sunshine.

Just a few older, more straightforward uses — not sarcastic, aggressive, or truculent. First, the referential Poss + sunshine, especially my sunshine (roughly ‘the light of my life’), made famous in the song “You Are My Sunshine”. From Wikipedia:

“You Are My Sunshine” is a popular song recorded by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell and first recorded in 1939. It has been declared one of the state songs of Louisiana because of its association with Davis, a country music singer and former governor of the state.

The song has been covered numerous times — so often, in fact, that it is “one of the most commercially programmed numbers in American popular music.” The song, originally country music, has “virtually lost” its original country music identity, and “represent[s] both the national flowering of country music and its eventual absorption into the mainstream of American popular culture.” In 1941, it was covered by Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, Mississippi John Hurt and Lawrence Welk. In subsequent years, it was covered by Nat King Cole (1955), The Marcels, (1961), Ray Charles, Ike and Tina Turner, The Rivingtons (1962), Frank Turner, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson, Mouse and the Traps, Jamey Johnson, Low, Andy Williams, and Johnny and the Hurricanes, amongst many others.

(When I was a child, it was my mother’s favorite song.)

You can watch Johnny Cash and June Carter perform the song here.

And then there’s the metaphorical vocative sunshine, as in the goofy Europop love song “Good Morning Sunshine” (some writers are sparing with commas), which you can watch here. By Danish-Norwegian band Aqua, from their debut album, Aquarium (1997).

Quite some distance from these sweet examples to British coppers trying to sweat the truth out of male malefactors with the aid of vocative sunshine.


Return of the Sam Gross balloon dog

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In the latest New Yorker (September 12th), Sam Gross’s clown and his balloon dog return to the magazine:

(#1)

Oh no! Not the chair!

Another wordless cartoon, like the earlier one posted here on 1/28/12:

(#2)

Balloon dogs are a piece of popular culture, so of course they’ve been exploited. From Wikipedia:

Jeffrey “Jeff” Koons (born January 21, 1955) is an American artist known for working with popular culture subjects and his reproductions of banal objects — such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces.

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Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Blue), 1994–2000, mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent coating

Koons counts as high art. But his balloon dogs have now been replicated as objects of popular culture themselves, sold as items of home decor. Here’s a resin dog with metallic finish, available on Amazon.com in a variety of colors:

(#4)


Beefcake on screen

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(Little of academic or social significance, but mostly about shameless displays of the male body. Not, however, X-rated, either visually or verbally.)

A while back, links on Facebook to Hollywood Beefcake, a public group on Facebook featuring movie and tv actors dsplaying their bodies. Shots of, among others, Guy Madison, Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Hugh O’Brian, Robert Conrad, Johnny Weissmuller, Clint Eastwood, Tab Hunter, Marc Singer, Burt Reynolds, Lee Majors, Jeff Goldblum, Alexander Skarsgard, Matt Bomer, Ryan Phillipe, Shia LaBeouf, Danny Pino, and Chris Meloni. And Charlie Hunnam, who’s appeared on this blog before because he revels in sexy shirtless displays.

Then an appendix on three of the notable shirtless hunks on the television series Glee, who I don’t think had made it onto the Hollywood Beefcake site when I last checked it.

Oh, the Hunnamity! Charlie Hunnam has appeared twice on this blog:

on 4/3/13, in “scruffilicious”, with a shot of a shirtless and scruffy Hunnam

on 9/24/13, in “to clean up nicely”, with three shots of Hunnam, in three very different presentations

And now on Hollywood Beefcake, this remarkable shot of a lean, muscled Hunnam, near-ecstatic and barely keeping his jeans on:

(#1)

Note on the punning title of this section. From Wikipedia, with the crucial bit boldfaced:

Herbert O. “Herb” Morrison (May 14, 1905 – January 10, 1989) was an American radio journalist best known for his dramatic report of the Hindenburg disaster, a catastrophic fire that destroyed the LZ 129 Hindenburg zeppelin on May 6, 1937, killing 36 people.

[from the broadcast] … it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It’s smoke, and it’s flames now … and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh, the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here. I told you, I can’t even talk to people whose friends are on there.

Gleeful shirtlessness. I have now remedied a serious gap in my pop culture experience by watching the series Glee from beginning to end. From Wikipedia:

Glee is an American [fantasy] musical comedy-drama television series that aired on the Fox network in the United States from May 19, 2009, to March 20, 2015. It focuses on the fictitious William McKinley High School [in Lima OH] glee club, New Directions, which competes on the show choir competition circuit while its disparate members deal with social issues, especially regarding sexuality and race, relationships, and learning to become an effective team.

Tons and tons of wonderful singing and dancing by very attractive people, elaborately staged, with significant lbgt characters and themes as well, so of special interest to me.

Several of the male characters regularly appear shirtless on the show, thanks especially to scenes in the men’s locker room. Two of the actors, already noted on this blog, are given to sexy displays of their bodies outside of the show: Darren Criss (a straight man playing one of the two major gay characters, partnered with the gay actor Chris Colfer, playing a flamboyantly gay character) and Chord Overstreet (a straight man playing the straight character Sam Evans, who, however, puts in a stint as a male stripper at one point in the show).

Darren Criss came up in passing in my 6/30/15 posting “That goes without”, and here he is in a beach shoot:

(#2)

Very fit and lean and always happy to show off his body. From Wikipedia:

Darren Everett Criss (born February 5, 1987) is an American actor, singer and songwriter. One of the founding members and co-owners of StarKid Productions, a musical theater company based in Chicago, Criss first garnered attention playing the lead role of Harry Potter in StarKid’s musical production of A Very Potter Musical… Criss is best known for his portrayal of Blaine Anderson on the Fox musical comedy-drama series Glee.

Chord Overstreet appeared in my 9/9/16 posting “Name time”, with some details about his life and a sexy photo. Here’s a shot of Overstreet as Evans, barely clothed and looking decidedly anxious about that, in a production of Rocky Horror:

(#3)

Mark Salling. But the champion displays of the male body on the show come from actor Mark Salling, portraying character Puck Puckerman (straight playing straight again). From the character’s wiki page:

Noah “Puck” Puckerman is a major character on Glee. Puck is an alumnus of William McKinley High School as of [the episode] Goodbye. He is now a former member of both the Glee Club and the Football Team. He is currently enlisted in the Air Force.

Puckerman runs a pool cleaning business in Lima, in which capacity he appears shirtless, displaying himself to the older women he seduces:

(#4)

Beefier than the other two, but not a body-builder type.  (Singer-dancers rarely are.)

Saller’s Wikipedia page tells us that “Mark Wayne Salling (born August 17, 1982) is an American actor, singer-songwriter, composer, and musician.”


A conundrum

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From Kim Darnell, this puzzle, which she found on Tumblr (no one seems to know the ultimate source, as is usual in such things):

(#1)

You can see this as a puzzle, or you can see it as a wordless cartoon. In either case, it draws on a piece of popular culture, and if you don’t have that, you’re lost.

For Kim, the big point was phonological, but the cultural reference is crucial.

To get over the hump, try reading out the first two items in the sequence, slowly and rhythmically, and let your associative memory listen to what you’re saying:

One fifth. Two fifths.

If this works, you can supply the other two items without even looking at #1 (though the colors of the last two items will now support your guess:

One fifth. Two fifth(s). Red fifth(s). Blue fifth(s).

Calling Dr. Seuss (Thedor Seuss Geisel)!

(#2)

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish is a 1960 children’s book by Dr. Seuss. It is a simple rhyming book for beginning readers, with a freewheeling plot about a boy and a girl named Jay and Kay and the many amazing creatures they have for friends and pets. Interspersed are some rather surreal and unrelated skits, such as a man named Ned whose feet stick out from his bed, and a creature who has a bird in his ear. (Wikipedia link)

The phonological relationship between fish and fifth is in fact very close indeed, since fifth in casual speech is [fIθ], so the difference is just between a palatal and a dental voiceless fricative.

The Dr. Seuss title has given rise to at least one further piece of language play, this time in a Pinterest item (again, with no known source):


(#3)

(Sith and fish differ in their initial consonant — alveolar vs. labiodental — as well as their final, so that they’re more distant than fi(f)th and fish, but still pretty easily relatable.)

Of course, for this bit of play to work, you need to know about another piece of popular culture, namely the Star Wars movies. From Wikipedia:

The Sith is an organization of preternaturally-gifted warriors in the fictional Star Wars universe. It is an ancient interstellar quasi-religious kraterocratic institution with an agenda of galactic domination, led by members who seize power through physical force, social maneuvering or political cunning.



Barebackula

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(About gay porn, but without explicit images — these are in an AZBlogX posting — or even detailed discussion of man-man sex, but men’s bodies and sex between men are certainly topics of this posting, so it’s not for children or the sexually modest.)

Yes, a racy portmanteau, of bareback (referring to condomless sex) and Dracula (the legendary vampire), naming a gay porn flick from the Michael Lucas studio in which the legend of Count Dracula is re-worked with cum instead of blood as the life essence. (On the name, compare the 1972 American blaxploitation horror film Blacula.) Front and back covers of the DVD (featuring man-man sex and heavy eye shadow) on AZBlogX.

Truvada. The ad copy for the Lucas flick begins:

In the land of Truvadia lives the Count of Castle Bare.

Truvadia is, of course, the land of the PrEP drug Truvada, a prophylactic against HIV infection that allows for (relatively) safe barebacking. From Wikipedia:

Tenofovir disoproxil/emtricitabine (trade name Truvada) is a fixed-dose combination of two antiretroviral drugs used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. It was developed by Gilead Sciences and consists of 300 milligrams of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate … and 200 milligrams of emtricitabine.

The drug has been approved in the USA for pre-exposure prophylaxis [PrEP] against HIV infection. The Food and Drug Administration approved it for prophylactic use on July 16, 2012.

For a long tine, Lucas was also a passionate critic of bareback sex in gay porn (as spreading HIV throughout the industry), but with the availability of PrEP, he’s become an exponent of Truvada (takes it himself) and a major producer of bareback porn, of which Barebackula is just the most recent.

Vampires. The Lucas film manages to combine the legend of Count Dracula with the belief in the magical powers of cum, evidenced in the gay male fantasy of absorbing masculinity by taking cum (on the skin, orally, or anally) and with in male rites of passage in a number of cultures.

Then, to refresh your member of things vampirical, from Wikipedia:

A vampire is a being from folklore who subsists by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires were undead beings that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today’s gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century. Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term vampire was not popularized in the West until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe

Apparently, in Barebackula, the Count feeds on the cum (rather than the blood) of handsome young men, reducing them to pale enslaved servants, while simultaneous infusing them with his life force by fucking them. A complex carnal economy, which I don’t entirely fathom.

Meanwhile, the young men wear extraordinary clothes (Lucas is willing to put out for costumes and sets; for porn, his productions are lavish), and of course their hair is perfect.

Michael Lucas. From Wikipedia:

Michael Lucas (born Andrei Lvovich Treivas …, March 10, 1972, Moscow, Russian SFSR) is a Russian–Israeli-American, gay pornographic film actor, director, activist, writer and the founder/CEO of Lucas Entertainment, New York City’s largest gay-adult-film company. He is a columnist for The Advocate, Huffington Post and Pink News.

The New Republic dubbed Lucas “Gay Porn’s Neocon Kingpin”, and FrontPage Magazine cited him as “the most mainstreamed, provocative, and controversial figure in gay adult entertainment today.” He contends that his film Michael Lucas’ La Dolce Vita is the most expensive gay porn film ever made, with a budget of $250,000 and multiple celebrity cameos.

… Lucas began his career in a German heterosexual pornographic film. While in France, he worked under the influential French director Jean-Daniel Cadinot, appearing as “Ramzes Kairoff” in two gay pornographic films, both released in 1996. Using the name “Michel Lucas,” he worked as a Falcon Exclusive, performing as a top in five films released in 1997 and 1998. He directed his first project, Back in the Saddle, in 1998, and also performed in the film.

Photo of Lucas the porn actor in #2 on the AZBlogX posting, along with this text (mostly to get in my little Don Giovanni joke):

Intense, dominant, big-dicked, and in fabulous shape (though after 20 years acting in gay porn — 20 years in which he fucked probably thousands of guys (ma in America son già mille e tre) — you can feel pretty sure that his fantastic appearance is just that, having been cosmetically and medically enhanced in various ways). Meanwhile, he’s produced elaborate, expensive films on ambitious themes, like Barebackula (as well as quick and cheap films, like his Auditions series). And speaks strongly on any number of controversial topics. He is, for example, a firm proponent of Israel (and has taken Israeli citizenship), opponent of Muslim causes, and critic of the ultra-Orthodox.

La Dolce Vita (2006) is certainly his most elaborate production but Dangerous Liaisons (2005) isn’t very far behind,and other productions — Vengeance (2001), Gigolos (2008), Kings of New York (2010) — are also ambitious. Lucas featured in Gigolos:

(#1)

and some of the Kings cast:

(#2)

(Yes, a number of people have pointed out the resemblance between Lucas’s porn face and Ben Stiller’s pouty face in Zoolander.)


Two cartoons for month’s end

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.. and Halloween, though, pleasingly, neither has anything to do with All Hallows’ / All Souls’ / All Saints’. A One Big Happy that’s a study in American (and Antipodal) phonology; and a Zippy with a fallen roadside fiberglass hero, the Green Giant of Pahrump NV:

(#1)

(#2)

Hurters and herders. Ruthie is endlessly understanding words at the periphery of her experience as words she knows well, in this case herd understood as hurt, specifically in the word herder — which for a great many North American English speakers is pronounced very close to, or identical to, hurter. From a Wikipedia article that deftly avoids a host of details and complexities in the phenomenon:

Flapping or tapping, also known as alveolar flapping or intervocalic flapping, is a phonological process found in many dialects of English, especially North American English, Australian English and New Zealand English, by which the consonants /t/ and /d/ may be pronounced as a flap (tap) in certain positions, particularly between vowels (intervocalic position). In some cases, the effect is perceived by some listeners as the replacement of a /t/ sound with a /d/ sound; for example, the word butter pronounced with flapping may be heard as “budder”. In fact, both /t/ and /d/ are replaced in such positions by an alveolar flap (or tap; IPA symbol [ɾ]), a sound produced by briefly tapping the alveolar ridge with the tongue. Also, in similar positions, the combination /nt/ may be pronounced with a nasalized flap or just [n] so winter may sound similar or identical to winner.

Don’t think that there’s some special connection between North American and Antipodal English. Flapping is just a natural lenition process (serving ease of articulation), one occurring in languages other than English. It could happen to anybody.

The Green Giant of Pahrump NV. From the site Living Las Vegas on the 17th, “The Green Giant of Pahrump Finds a New Home” by Osie Turner:

If you have driven through Pahrump recently, you may have noticed something missing form their skyline. The “Home Giant,” or “The Green Giant” as locals knew him, used to stand alongside Nevada State Route 160 greeting visitors as they entered town from Las Vegas.

(#3)

However, a few years ago he abruptly vanished without a trace. What happened to this smiling giant?

The story actually begins in 1965 when Texaco came up with a new marketing campaign of adding a company mascot to their service stations. The “Big Friend” was a larger than life fiberglass repairman who was going to greet all patrons of Texaco stations with a friendly wave and smile. The Big Friend was designed by sculptor Sasha Schnittman, and International Fiberglass was contracted to begin mass producing them.

(#4)

Big Friendly in Morrilton AR

For reasons unknown, Texaco abruptly changed its mind on the Big Friend campaign and ceased production of them and ordered all of the 300 already installed at gas stations to be destroyed. By 1967, all but four of them were. Our own Pahrump Green Giant was one of those four that survived the pogrom.

He originally stood at a Texaco station in Las Vegas somewhere along Boulder Highway, according to usagiants.com. Somehow or other, he avoided destruction until he was purchased by Jack Stanton in 1981 for the substantial sum of $18,000 and was moved out to Pahrump. The original hat was replaced with the Robin Hood styled one and he was repainted a brighter green, orange, and white to complete his transformation into the Green Giant we have come to know and love.

The Green Giant was erected on the then edge of town at 1400 S. Highway 160, with a new sign and new look. For the next thirty years, that is where he remained, until 2012 when the mobile home business he advertised went out of business. The land went into foreclosure and fell into disrepair over the next year.

Eventually the Giant was torn down and relocated to the Pahrump landfill, where he was to be salvaged for scrap metal. While his exterior is sculpted fiberglass, he had a heavy metal spine and other metallic support beams inside making him quite heavy. He had to be gutted and dismembered in the process of being taken down and transported to the landfill. There was enough of an outcry from the community for the salvage yard to change their plans. No one wanted to see a beloved town landmark scrapped, so he was temporarily stored in a container at the landfill while other arrangements were worked out.

Thankfully, something was worked out with the Pahrump Valley Museum, and his mutilated but recognizable remains were deposited in the open air lot behind the museum in December 2013. The Green Giant bided his time there over the next two and a half years in a state of disrepair until the museum sold him to a restoration company that specializes in repairing and collecting fiberglass statues.

(#5)

The Giant on the ground, in pieces

As of last Monday, The Green Giant was hauled away to Illinois to be restored to his original, pre-green state. American Giants, the new owners of The Green Giant, began as a hobby based around finding old “Muffler Men” and repairing them and learning about their unique histories along the way. It grew into a website in 2013 and now a YouTube show in its second season. Undoubtedly, our Green Giant will be the feature of a future episode once his restoration is complete. They posted a few photos of the Green Giant being loaded up on Instagram.

It is a wonderful turn of events for a local icon whose fate did not look promising. To the nostalgic types like myself, it should be comforting to know that our Green Giant will go on to experience a new life and be treated with the respect he deserves, hopefully ending up alongside some of his long lost siblings. The Green Giant will not be returning to Pahrump, unfortunately, but he will live on!

So endeth the Tale of the Green Giant’s Redemption.


Giantess Jackie

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Today’s Zippy takes us back to Kennedy Camelot times (January 1961 – November 1963), through the medium of a gigantesque Jackie:

(#1)

This is Bill Griffith’s work, so there is of course an actual giant statue of a Jackie Kennedy look-alike, a fiberglass Uniroyal Gal in Bolton NC (based on an original in Rocky Mount NC):

(#2)

(The hair color and bikini color on these roadside figures are easily adjustable, as is the thing on the giantess’s hand; and in fact the bikini can be replaced by more decorous clothing. But the basic figure and its stance are fixed in fiberglass.)

It took me quite some time to get from #1 to #2. I will now pretty much track this search in reverse order. Start with #2. From the Roadside America site:

Bolton NC: Private residence shelters three Uniroyal Gals on the property, created using molds from an original near Rocky Mount. Also many fiberglass animals on site. [Graham and Dolce Fiberglass, 24605 Andrew Jackson Hwy]

Uniroyal Gals? From another Roadside America posting:

The Uniroyal gal is another fiberglass fixture of the highway, far more rare than the Muffler Men. The sculptor at International Fiberglass who created the original molds for the large lady had a thing for Jackie Kennedy. She was issued with a dress, ready for shedding or donning depending on the community climate.

(#3)

Uniroyal Gals in Rocky Mount, NC; Gloucester Township, NJ; Blackfoot, ID

A list on the site:

Blackfoot, Idaho: Now stands in front of Martha’s Cafe, with new blond hairdo, hoisting a sandwich platter. A few blocks from the Idaho Potato Museum.

Mt. Vernon, Illinois: Can be seen at Stan The Tire Man, just off 1-64 in Mt. Vernon.

Peoria, Illinois: Rumored to have appeared in a Richard Pryor movie. On 1800 SW Washington Street, south of the downtown area near the Cedar Street Bridge. Near an ethanol plant, which emits a noxious, but oddly comforting odor. In a bikini until a car rammed her; now she wears a more conservative outfit.

Gloucester Township, New Jersey: AKA “Nitro Girl,” stands in front of a Uniroyal Tire dealership, Werbany Tire Town. Formerly known as “The Doll,” now wears superhero duds, same flip hairdo. This humongous honey taunts men with her tire. 1337 Black Horse Pike.

Chincoteague, Virginia: At a miniature golf course.

Rocky Mount, North Carolina: The Uniroyal Gal stood for many years at Mosley’s Shady Lake Motel along US route 30. She was moved when the motel closed in 2000. A local resident provided a new home — the Men’s Night Out club, a semiprivate park along NC 97. [Jackie Kennedy takes up sex work!] She still balances a ball in her left hand, but her bikini bottom has become a pair of cutoffs. She proudly displays a gold belly ring.

Byram, Mississippi: There is one placed seasonally at a fireworks stand (Exit 85 off of I-55 just south of Jackson). She has a yellow sweater and a blue mini skirt. [Lane Smith]

Gainesville, Texas: The Gainesville gal stands with a Muffler Man to her left, and a Big John to her right, at Glenn Goode’s Fiberglass and Sandblasting shop (Glenn passed away March 2015). Glenn fabricated a number of fiberglass giants to advertise his business in three north Texas locations. He told us the shortened right arm on his Uniroyal gal was a result of a cut and paste job to replace missing parts. And his Uniroyal gal has the most well-defined posterior we have seen (which faces the garage bay doors).

Lamesa, Texas: This West Texas titan is dressed in the uniform of a cheerleader for the local high school teams: the Tornados. She stands in front of the Bethel Tire Company on Business 87.

Unger, West Virginia: Joining George Farnham’s cluster of fiberglass figures that include a Muffler Man, Santa, and Beach Dude, this Gal (from Byram, MS) was modified into a Biker Chick in 2008.

Taber, Alberta: Steve Ming reported: “The lady on the right was spotted in Canada on Hwy. #3 at Kirks tire shop on the east end of town. Its mounted on a steel rack with casters so it can be positioned anywhere on their lot.”

The Taber Gal was reported earlier by David Ynaciw. Tipster Russell Janzen notes it stood in Lethbridge for many years before moving 30 miles east to Taber.

I got to this site from an American Giants – Muffler Men blog posting specifically about the Peoria figure (show #49, Peoria IL Uniroyal Gal, 8/20/13), with more of the story:

(#4)

These days the female version of the muffler man is a rare find and many muffler man hunters will drive out of their way to see her. Our case was no different when the American Giants crew deviated to Peoria, IL after visiting the Atlanta, IL Bunyan and before seeing the Gemini Giant in Wilmington. With only about 12 left across the country a uniroyal gal sighting is always a must if your in the area. I had heard about the one in Peoria before planning our road trip (currently being shown in American Giants Episodes) and found her unique in that she gets an outfit change every year. Turns out she is no stranger to Peoria and arrived there 45 years ago in 1968. She was part of a grand opening promotion for the Plaza Tire Co. and she was made by International Fiberglass for the Uniroyal Tire Company.

Uniroyal had dozens of these giant women made in the mid 60’s to promote their tires and the girls were set up for promotions at participating dealers of Uniroyal Tires. Around the same time she arrived in Peoria another uniroyal gal was shipped to Salem, IL about 210 miles to the south. After the promotion the giantess in Peoria was moved around the area to different businesses to help promote tires and other grand openings. After 4 years on the road she was retired in 1971 and given back to the Plaza Tire Co. Uniroyal was moving in new directions and discontinued the Uniroyal Gal program across the country. At this time the giants were either trashed or fell to private businesses or collections. At 17ft 6 inches tall and 450 lb she became a landmark in Peoria and has stood all these years in almost the same spot. Because people kept backing into her legs on occasion she was moved recently to stand on top of a wooden planter to keep her safe from cars. Interestingly if you look at her steel platform it is the same one that she was shipped with from International Fiberglass. All muffler men shipped on these platforms so the area reps could move them around to different promotions locally. She was recently restored and given a new paint job and renamed Vanna Whitewall! Uniroyal Gals came in a fiberglass skirt and shirt and had the option for these to be removed to reveal a bikini underneath. She is the only uniroyal gal I know of that still transitions between the two every year. During the winter she has on her skirt and shirt and when it gets warm off come the clothes to “announce pool season” as the guys there told me. They also took me in the shop and showed me the giant “clothes hanger” they use to hang her clothes on during the summer months. We got an interview and some great go pro shots while we were there and she was well worth the diversion!

Many of the muffler men and related fiberglass figures became features of local pleasure and pride: commercial icons, yes, but also a kind of public folk art, whose loss (like the loss of fancifully or strikingly designed diners, fast food places, motels, and the like) was often keenly felt.

I got to Peoria during searches for giantess statues, which took me first to public art in Chicago:

(#5)

(From Jackie Kennedy to Marilyn Monroe, both in the JFK theme.)

From Chris Miller’s Mountshang website on 7/17/11:

Seward Johnson’s 26-foot “Forever Marilyn” has been provoking some controversy upon its installation last week in Pioneer Court, just northeast of the Michigan Avenue bridge in Chicago.

Apparently another version of this Marilyn statue was installed in China, but it came to a bad end. From the American Digest website:

(#6)

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, on June 18, 2014. The eight-meter-tall stainless steel statue, which weighs about eight tons, was made by several Chinese artists for over two years, based on the famous scene from her movie “The Seven Year Itch”. The statue was transported to the garbage collecting company early this week for unknown reasons after being showed outside a business center in the city for only 6 months, local media reported.

A poetic note (from the American Digest site): “La Géante” (“The Giantess”) by Charles Baudelaire, translation by Karl Shapiro, Person Place and Thing (1942):

When Nature once in lustful hot undress
Conceived gargantuan offspring, then would I
Have loved to live near a young giantess,

Like a voluptuous cat at a queen’s feet.
To see her body flower with her desire
And freely spread out in its dreadful play,
Guess if her heart concealed some heavy fire
Whose humid smokes would swim upon her eye.

To feel at leisure her stupendous shapes,
Crawl on the cliffs of her enormous knees,
And, when in summer the unhealthy suns
Have stretched her out across the plains, fatigued,

Sleep in the shadows of her breasts at ease
Like a small hamlet at a mountain’s base.

From America’s Camelot back to Baudelaire, with Giantess Jackie and Monstrous Marilyn, fiberglass and steel, in between.


Seward Johnson

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It looks like the bots at Pinterest are doing a pretty good job. Thanks to my having posted, in “Giantess Jackie” on the 2nd, a bit about Seward Johnson’s “Forever Marilyn” statue in Chicago, this morning Pinterest offered me a page of “New ideas for you in Sculpture”, entirely devoted to Johnson’s bronze oeuvre, for example this visual parody of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”, entitled “God Bless America” (now in Florida):

(#1)

(The Marilyn statue, which excited some public outcry in Chicago, was moved to downtown Palm Springs CA in 2012 and is now visiting at the Johnson art enclave in New Jersey.)

On Johnson, from Wikipedia (I’ve boldfaced one bit that’s a gem of goofiness):

John Seward Johnson II (born 16 April 1930 in New Jersey), also known as J. Seward Johnson Jr. and Seward Johnson, is an American artist known for his trompe l’oeil painted bronze statues. He is a grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, the co-founder of Johnson & Johnson, and Colonel Thomas Melville Dill of Bermuda.

He creates life-size bronze statues, which are castings of living people, depicting them engaged in day-to-day activities. A large staff of technicians perform the fabrication.

Johnson attended Forman School for dyslexics and University of Maine, where he majored in poultry husbandry, but did not graduate. Johnson also served four years in the Navy during the Korean War.

Johnson worked for Johnson & Johnson until he was fired by his uncle Robert Wood Johnson II, in 1962.

His early artistic efforts focused on painting, after which he turned to sculpture in 1968.

(There’s also a large dysfunctional family history that has some entertainment value on its own, but isn’t relevant here.)

His work, though popular, has often been panned as kitschy and Norman Rockwellesque, worthless as serious art.

Consider now (from Pinterest) this collection of Johnson’s bronze figures outside the train station in Hamilton NJ:

(#2)

(I suppose this is Johnson’s correspondent to Rodin’s Burghers of Calais.) For an explanation of the figures and some understanding of Johnson’s popular reception, read this gee-whiz appreciation of the statues (“Hamilton NJ, sculpture capital of the world” of  6/18/12) by a blogger. (Close-up photos on the site.)

I don’t know if Hamilton Township in NJ is the sculpture capital of the world, but it’s probably pretty dang close. I didn’t even know about Hamilton’s Grounds for Sculpture. I didn’t even know Hamilton, NJ existed. So, it was quite a wonderful, little surprise to see these sculptures as we drove to the NJ transit station where we picked up the train into the city.

There are three dancing pairs based on three different Renoir paintings, and two mariachis. The whole scene is a bit surreal mainly because they’re in front of a train station and that struck me a being kind of odd, but in a cool ‘wow, look at the huge Renoir people’ amazement way.

This is Johnson’s audience, which gives him the kind of appreciation denied him by critics who refuse to take his artistic intentions seriously. These critics lump his work with creations like the roadside fiberglass muffler man figures I’ve written about several times, while Johnson wants to be seen as an artist like Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons, exhibiting works in public places, including museum shows. (For this, he has, in effect, created his own exhibition space in New Jersey, home of Johnson & Johnson.)


The shop of many things

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Today’s Zippy, set in a place that’s hard to trace:

(#1)

Steeped in popular culture. It’s a launderette (possibly with some connection to a bus terminal or an airport terminal or computer terminals), or at least it says it is; a gas station (selling kerosene); a convenience store for food (like, maybe, Stewart’s Shops, in upstate New York, but anyway, some place named Stewart’s where you used to be able to get legendary salami subs, at least back in 1971); and (last panel) a diner (where the figure of Death seems to be having a soda).

I haven’t tracked down any part of this definitively. For me, an exceptional failure. But intriguing.

[News flash! Fresh information! (From Jim Martin.) Turns out the problem was likely due to my advancing cataracts. The building in the cartoon is the Terminal Luncheonette (now Restaurant, apparently), not Launderette. In Willow Grove PA (north of Philadelphia):

(#2)

Note the kerosene, even.]


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