Today’s Bizarro, combining ice fishing for walleye with an annoying Christmas song (plus the Christmas / Fishmas pun):

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(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbol in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there’s just one in this strip — see this Page. The object by the fisherman’s left boot is an auger, for drilling holes in the ice, not a Bizarro symbol.)

Dan Piraro has packed a lot into a single panel here. First, some background: you need to know about ice fishing (in winter-cold places, like around the Great Lakes and in New England and adjacent parts of Canada), and you need to know at least a bit about walleyes. From Wikipedia:

Walleye (Sander vitreus, formerly Stizostedion vitreum) [aka walleye(d) pike] is a freshwater perciform fish native to most of Canada and to the Northern United States. It is a North American close relative of the European Zander, also known as the pikeperch.

… The common name, “walleye”, comes from the fact that the fish’s eyes point outward, as if looking at the walls.

… Walleyes are largely olive and gold in color (hence the French common name: doré —golden). The dorsal side of a walleye is olive, grading into a golden hue on the flanks. The olive/gold pattern is broken up by five darker saddles that extend to the upper sides.

… Walleyes grow to about 80 cm (31 in) in length, and weigh up to about 9 kg (20 lb).

… The walleye is considered to be a quite palatable freshwater fish, and, consequently, is fished recreationally and commercially for food.

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A mounted walleye. Note the serious teeth.

The official walleye season in WI, MN, and MI (areas where the fish is a regional food, and celebrated as such) is roughly May through March, so it extends through deep winter, and walleye are in fact ice-fished.

You also need to know about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and how he saved Christmas. Since his first appearance in 1939, Rudolph has worked his way into the fabric of American popular culture as one of the icons of cultural (rather than religious) Christmas.

Then there’s Fishmas, the pun on Christmas. This little joke has been enshrined in a term for the opening of the trout season in many places (usually some time in April). One Urban Dictionary entry tells us that

Fishmas was est. on the first day of trout season in Pennsylvania in April 1985.

— a claim I haven’t been able to verify. But it seems that the term was in use in this sense before the writers of the Simpsons picked it up in a somewhat different sense and spread it in popular culture:

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From the Simpsons wiki:

“Homer vs. Dignity” is the fifth episode of Season 12 and aired on November 26, 2000.

Short on funds, Homer approaches the ever-wealthy Mr. Burns for a token raise, but when Burns grants his request on the condition that Homer act as his personal jester, the Simpson family finds itself the subject of degrading and embarrassing activities.

… Homer goes to Costington’s [department store] and donates … money to buy toys for poor children. The store owner is moved by this gesture and makes Homer the Santa Claus for the Thanksgiving Day parade. Homer’s job in the parade is to wave from his float, yell “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”, and throw presents to the crowd.

Burns sees this as the perfect opportunity to pull a prank on the whole town. He pulls up beside Homer in another float (a pirate ship with the words “HAPPY PRANKSGIVING” on the side) and makes Homer an offer: one million dollars if he’ll throw fish guts onto the crowd instead of presents. Homer is torn between the money and the fact that “Santa can’t be evil!”

Moments later, Lisa sees “Santa” tossing fish guts at the crowd and is heartbroken, until she realizes that Homer is in the crowd with her. The Santa on the float is Burns: “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Fish-mas!” As seagulls invade the town, attacking all those with fish guts on them, Homer says that Lisa gave him an early Christmas present — the gift of dignity.

Fish guts for Fishmas!

Today’s Zippy, about a figure from American pop culture (and also about masculinity and male friendship):

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From Wikipedia:

Wallace Maynard “Wally” Cox (December 6, 1924 – February 15, 1973) was an American comedian and actor, particularly associated with the early years of television in the United States. He appeared in the U.S. television series Mister Peepers from 1952 to 1955 [as high-school science teacher Robinson Peepers], plus several other popular shows, and as a character actor in over 20 films [and a panelist on Hollywood Squares]. Cox was the voice of the popular animated canine superhero Underdog. Although often cast as a meek milquetoast, he was actually quite athletic, as well as a military veteran. He married three times.

Cox in a screen shot from Mister Peepers:

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Cox was mightily unhappy about being typecast as meek and prim, by being unmanned by the role he ended up playing for most of his life.

More from Wikipedia:

His close friendship with Marlon Brando was the subject of rumors. Brando told a journalist: “If Wally had been a woman, I would have married him and we would have lived happily ever after”, and writer/editor Beauregard Houston-Montgomery has stated that while high on marijuana Brando confessed to him that Cox had been the love of his life. However, two of Cox’s wives dismissed the suggestion that the love was more than platonic.

A classic bromance, which went back to before Brando became famous (and famous as an intensely physical, strongly masculine actor). The men were almost exactly the same age (though Cox died young, about 30 years before Brando). Their close friendship included a far amount of horseplay and close physical contact, as many bromances do; it’s a guy thing. Here’s a young Cox carrying a young Brando on a beach:

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Behavior like this — in combination with Cox’s rather prissy Mister Peepers character, a widespread belief that nerdiness correlates with queerness, and a widespread belief  that close friendships necessarily have a component of sexual attraction (an idea that surely has its roots in beliefs about close friendships between men and women) — no doubt gave rise to the silly rumors about Cox’s (and Brando’s) sexuality.

I watched Mister Peepers in high school, with some annoyance at the wimpiness of the science teacher character (since I saw teaching science or mathematics as a likely future for myself). As for Underdog, I just adored it, and then had the pleasure of enjoying it afresh with my grand-daughter (posting here).

A Benjamin Schwartz cartoon in the latest (February 13th/20th) New Yorker:

The German folk tale of Snow White provides the basis for this name play, though the published version of the story by the Brothers Grimm didn’t name the dwarfs who help Snow White. The modern names entered pop culture with the 1937 Disney animated film. At which point they provided an inventory of names to play with (supplementing another source of pop culture names, the names of Santa’s eight reindeer from “A Visit From St. Nicholas”).

The first five of Schwartz’s dwarfs continue the tradition of naming them for physical, personality, or behavioral characteristics, but with more modern vocabulary (I’m especially fond of Crunchy, as in crunchy granola, and Skeezy). The last two, Jayzy and Emojy, bring us firmly up to date.

Jayzy is the image of the rapper Jay Z (complete with his NY Yankees cap. From Wikipedia:

Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), known professionally as Jay Z, is an American rapper, businessman, and investor. Formerly known as Jay-Z, he is one of the best-selling musicians of all time, having sold more than 100 million records, while receiving 21 Grammy Awards for his music.

And then Emojy, with an emoji-colored face.

Today’s Zippy:

On Henny Youngman and his famous one-liner “Take my wife … please”, see the Youngman section of this 9/8/12 posting.

(Note: Youngman’s name is pronounced with an unaccented second syllable, as opposed to the youngman of the Village People’s song “YMCA”, which has secondary accent on this syllable.)

Then in sequence: Elmer Fudd, Disco Duck, Liberace, and Wayne Fontana (as is so often the case, a Zippy strip is a big grab-bag of popular culture). Plus a note on the various verbs die.

There’s a section on Elmer Fudd in my 6/2/16 posting “Cartoony days”.

And there’s a 1/16/12 posting on Disco Duck.

On Liberace in Wikipedia:

Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987), mononymously known as Liberace, was an American pianist, singer, and actor. A child prodigy and the son of working-class immigrants, Liberace enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world, with established residencies in Las Vegas, and an international touring schedule. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess [flamboyant hardly does credit to the man] both on and off stage, acquiring the sobriquet “Mr. Showmanship”.

… Liberace’s fame in the United States was matched for a time in the United Kingdom. In 1956, an article in the Daily Mirror by columnist Cassandra (William Connor) described Liberace as “…the summit of sex — the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want… a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love”, a description which strongly implied that he was homosexual.

The ensuing libel suit, which Liberace won, turned in part on whether the writer knew that fruit was an American derogatory slang term for ‘homosexual’. (Liberace never admitted that he was homosexual.)

Liberace sort of haunted my childhood, since I was an un-flamboyant classical pianist.

Finally, Wayne Fontana. The brief description from Wikipedia:

Wayne Fontana (born Glyn Geoffrey Ellis, 28 October 1945) is an English rock/pop singer, best known for the 1965 hit “Game of Love” with the Mindbenders.

Then dying. The last panel of the strip has a pun involving die ‘stop living’ and a slang sense of die that GDoS glosses as ‘to fail utterly, to have a difficult time’, with a first cite in 1828 and a fine show-biz quote from 1920:

George Ade, Hand-Made Fables 8: Small-town Comedy will not get across unless the audience is sufficiently Sprung to be in a Receptive Mood. Billy died.

Bonus, in connection with le petit mort ‘ejaculation, orgasm’, as noted in yesterday’s posting on Feliz d’Eon: NOAD2 provides the following sense of die, labeled “archaic”: ‘have an orgasm’.

Still going back in my blog queue, now to a 12/15/16 NYT piece by Sam Roberts, (in print) “Increasingly, Surnames Are Latino, Census Says” and (on-line) “Hispanic Surnames on the Rise in U.S. as Immigration Surges”:

Taylor and Thomas are out. Lopez and Gonzalez are in. Six of the 15 most common surnames in the United States were of Hispanic origin in 2010, compared with four of 15 in 2000 and none as recently as 1990.

Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown and Jones still remain the most common of 6.3 million last names reported in 2010, according to a Census Bureau analysis released on Thursday, but Garcia had edged up from eighth to sixth, closing in on Jones and Brown. (Rounding out the Top 10 were Miller and Davis.)

The ascendancy of the Hispanic names reflects both the surge of immigrants from Latin America over the last several decades and the fact that Hispanic surnames tend to be less diverse (a disproportionate 16 percent of Hispanic people have one of the top 10 Hispanic names).

Garcia and Rodriguez were joined in the Top 10 in 2010 by Martinez (the 15 most popular also include Hernandez).

“I hope it means that more people named Gonzalez and Garcia and Hernandez become civic leaders and teachers and become the future of America,” said Eric Gonzalez, the acting Brooklyn district attorney.

Most of the surnames increasing fastest among the highest-ranking 1,000 are Asian (Zhang was up 111 percent, followed by Li, Ali, Liu and Khan) and three of the 15 fastest growing were Hispanic (led by Vazquez, which was up 63 percent, followed by Bautista and Velazquez).

Among those 15, Patel proliferated by 58 percent, and also by the most numerically, nearly 250,000.[The name Patel is primarily from Gujarat, but there are also Patels from surrounding areas.]

Summary of the data:

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To welcome the name Lopez to the #12 slot (in 2010, remember), here are two Lopezes from pop culture: Jennifer and George:

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Jennifer Lynn Lopez (born July 24, 1969), also known as JLo, is an American singer, actress, dancer, fashion designer, author, and producer. (link)

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George Lopez (born April 23, 1961) is an American comedian and actor. He is known for starring in his self-produced ABC sitcom George Lopez. His stand-up comedy examines race and ethnic relations, including Mexican American culture. (link)

(Frank talk about the male body, but no sex in this particular posting. Use your judgment.)

Four body items that have come my way recently: bouncing penises and testicles (and other intimate views of the body) in a new computer game; mussels as vaginal symbols; axillary delights; and anal art.

This is Part I: Dangly Bits.

(Hat tip to Kim Darnell.)

Not the danglers of dangling modifiers, though that’s a topic close to my heart (revisited just yesterday), but another set of danglers that I fancy.

From the PC Gamer site on January 31st, “Conan Exiles has an ‘endowment’ slider and genital physics” by Christopher Livingston:

Note: this [PC Gamer] post contains several animated gifs of dongs and testicles from Conan Exiles [set in the world of Conan the Barbarian], and those dongs and testicles are bouncing around all over the place, and changing sizes. There’s some pretty extreme taint and buttcrack on display as well. Okay? Okay.

We got an early look today at Conan Exiles, Funcom’s open world survival game, soon to arrive in Early Access. And with Conan comes a delivery of fresh meat. In the character creation menu, players can choose the level of nudity they want: none, partia— downstairs is covered but tops are topless — or full. You’re also treated to an ‘endowment’ slider.

For players who choose a female body, the endowment slider predictably adjusts breast size. For the male body, it adjusts dong size. If you’ve opted for the Full Monty, sliding it back and forth quickly is more than a bit mesmerizing, and I find it nearly impossible to do so without hearing a slide-whistle in my head. [AMZ: Enormously funny.]

Feeling comfortable with the video game nudity you just looked at? Then there’s good news: there’s a lot of it in Conan Exiles. Seeing as how you begin your adventure naked in a desert, you’ll have plenty of time to admire your character’s nude-as-hell bod as you attempt to make your way to safety.

What’s more, Conan Exiles has a ‘Vanity Camera’, toggled by pressing V, which lets you examine your character from all angles. This is about the point in the game where you’ll notice the dong-and-sack physics, provided by the Unreal 4 engine. Have a look. [Serious point here. Achieving realistic package motion in a moving figure is a serious AI challenge, which requires study of the way these things work with real bodies.]

If you’re asking, the answer is yes. Yes, I did very nearly die of dehydration (in the game) while making gifs of my character’s flopping pouch and jiggling wang. I can’t help it! Physics [is]  fun, cocks and balls are utterly ridiculous, and you just don’t see them together in games that often. So I jumped, and squatted, and lurched, and ran, and turned, and hunched, all while taking in the majesty of a physics-enabled package.

The animations are silly, and hypnotic.

The topic of this posting lies somewhere in the intersection of technology, movies, and the comics, with some art (and of course pop culture) thrown in — in the place where animation lives.

Yesterday’s Bizarro is yet another Ascent of Man evolution cartoon, but this time a guy intervenes at the ape stage to offer a stupid outfit to wear and a pipe to pretend to smoke:

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This is an allusion to the (venerable) meme of monkeys or apes (usually chimpanzees) dressed as people — akin to popular art showing dogs playing cards, or folk museums with stuffed frogs engaged in folksy activities. But with the extra kick that monkeys and apes are uncannily similar to people — in a very common view, especially similar to black Africans and those of black African descent in other parts of the world. The pipe isn’t a necessary component of the dressed-ip primate figure, but it’s a very common one.

For the record, I find these figures deeply creepy and distressing, and have since I was a child.

Two examples, with pipes — one vintage, one recent:

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There are a number of Pinterest boards devoted to such images. People think they’re cute.

Then there’s J. Fred Muggs. From Wikipedia:

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Today show mascot J. Fred Muggs sets off on his air tour around the world in 1954

J. Fred Muggs (born March 14, 1952) is a chimpanzee that was the mascot for NBC’s Today Show from 1953 to 1957.

Muggs sat in [Dave] Garroway’s lap, mastered more than 500 words [in comprehension], and had a wardrobe of 450 outfits. He “read” the day’s newspapers, imitated Popeye and played the piano with Steve Allen. Merchandise featuring him included books, comics, and games; as a star, he was called on to open supermarkets and commission US Navy ships.

However, he was apparently never shown mock-smoking, whether pipe, cigar, or cigarette.

Today’s Bizarro:

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(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

Appropriately for May Day, this strip is ephemeral: this month, if you keep up with popular culture, it’s wryly funny, but a year from now, almost no one will understand it. (Yes, I’m going to explain it.)

But first, from NOAD2:

noun ephemeron: an insect that lives only for a day or a few days. ORIGIN from Greek, neuter of ephēmeros  ‘lasting only a day.’

noun ephemera: things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time;items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed ones, that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity: Mickey Mouse ephemera. ORIGIN late 16th century: plural of ephemeron. Current use has been influenced by plurals such as trivia and memorabilia.

adj. ephemeral: lasting for a very short time: fashions are ephemeral.

Then, on the mayfly, from Wikipedia:

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Mayflies (also known as shadflies or fishflies in Canada) are aquatic insects belonging to the order Ephemeroptera. This order is part of an ancient group of insects termed the Palaeoptera, which also contains dragonflies and damselflies. Over 3,000 species of mayfly are known worldwide, grouped into over 400 genera in 42 families.

Mayflies are relatively primitive insects and exhibit a number of ancestral traits that were probably present in the first flying insects, such as long tails and wings that do not fold flat over the abdomen. Their immature stages are aquatic fresh water forms (called “naiads” or “nymphs”), whose presence indicates a clean, unpolluted environment.

… Mayflies “hatch” (emerge as adults) from spring to autumn, not necessarily in May, in enormous numbers. Some hatches attract tourists. Fly fishermen make use of mayfly hatches by choosing artificial fishing flies that resemble the species in question.

… The brief lives of mayfly adults have been noted by naturalists and encyclopaedists since Aristotle and Pliny the Elder in classical times. The German engraver Albrecht Dürer included a mayfly in his 1495 engraving The Holy Family with the Mayfly to suggest a link between heaven and earth. The English poet George Crabbe compared the brief life of a daily newspaper with that of a mayfly in the satirical poem “The Newspaper” (1785), both being known as “ephemera”.

And, finally, on Pepsi. From the NPR site, “After Uproar, Pepsi Halts Rollout Of Controversial Protest-Themed Ad”, on Morning Edition on April 5th, by Laurel Wamsley:

It was about unity, Pepsi explained. But the company’s new ad, set at a protest march, was quickly called out for being tone-deaf, offensive, and perhaps worst of all for the brand: not “woke.”

The ad, which stars model and Kardashian sister Kendall Jenner, had been slated for a worldwide release. But Pepsi announced today that it would halt any further rollout of the ad. “Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding,” the company said in a statement received by the Associated Press. “Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize.”

The company removed the ad from its YouTube channel on Wednesday afternoon, where it had garnered at least 1.3 million views in two days.

[You can view the ad here, on the Slate site. The Slate posting also has a snarky critique of the ad.]

The ad features a diverse cadre of young, happy protesters holding signs splashed with calls for peace, love, and in one odd instance, to “Join the conversation.”

In the ad’s key scene, Jenner hands a can of ice-cold Pepsi to a police officer, who accepts it and takes a sip, to raucous cheers from protesters.

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But on the Internet, the reaction was fierce. Many saw the ad’s climactic hand-a-cop-a-Pepsi moment as referencing – and exploiting – an important image from the Black Lives Matter movement — when a woman calmly, summer dress fluttering, stood before heavily equipped police in Baton Rouge, La.

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In general, Pepsi was accused of trying to sell soda using the setting and symbolism of recent protests, such as those against police brutality.

AdAge reports that the spot was created by Pepsi’s in-house creative team, Creators League.

The company initially stood behind the ad. Earlier, Pepsi told Adweek in a statement: “This is a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony, and we think that’s an important message to convey.”

The soda company may not be the last brand to try to invoke the protests and “resistance” ethos that are hallmarks of this political moment. But this ad may be one textbook example of what not to do.

… which brings us back to the Bizarro strip, in which the protest seems to be profoundly trivial, and you need a permit to protest without Pepsis for the cops. A fairly gentle swipe at the Pepsi ad.

But the ad’s been withdrawn, and the furor over it will almost surely be ephemeral. So the strip is funny at the moment (if you know about the ad) but will soon become incomprehensible.

Yesterday’s Mother Goose and Grimm:

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Ok, a simple ambiguity. The relevant subsenses of the transitive verb miss, from NOAD2, with my sense id codes:

— in the set of 12 failure-miss senses:
[1f] fail to attend, participate in, or watch (something one is expected to do or habitually does): teachers were supposed to report those students who missed class that day. [Mother Goose’s sense]

— in the set of 3 absence-miss senses:
[2c] feel regret or sadness at no longer being able to go to, do, or have: I still miss France and I wish I could go back. [Grimm’s sense, a willful misunderstanding of Mother Goose]

The verb miss has been around in English forever (that is, since OE), and it has accumulated an enormous number of senses (some of which should be treated as separate lexical items). The OED3 (June 2002) entry is huge and complex; the NOAD2 entry is a distillation of this material into 15 subentries — which misses (sorry about that) at least one important sense from the failure set, which I’ll code as [1m] ‘fail to have; lack’. The OED3 entry:

18. trans. a. To be without, not to have, lack; to cease to have, lose. Now usually in progressive tenses. [with cites back to ME; a representative recent cite:]
1988 G. Naylor Mama Day 46   Dr. Buzzard’s pickup truck is missing both fenders.

From NOAD2’s entry, with the MGG senses asterisked (the a senses are assumed, by the lexicographers,  to be the basic or most general ones in a set):

[1a] fail to hit, reach, or come into contact with (something aimed at): a laser-guided bomb had missed its target | [no object]:  he was given two free throws, but missed both times.

*[1f] fail to attend, participate in, or watch (something one is expected to do or habitually does):teachers were supposed to report those students who missed class that day.

[1j] fail to include (someone or something); omit: if we miss a few things in the first draft, we can add them later.

[not in NOAD2: [1m] fail to have; lack]

[2a] notice the loss or absence of: he’s rich — he won’t miss the money | she slipped away when she thought she wouldn’t be missed.

[2b] feel regret or sadness at no longer being able to enjoy the presence of: she misses all her old friends.

*[2c] feel regret or sadness at no longer being able to go to, do, or have: I still miss France and I wish I could go back.

Senses [1j] and [1m] are the path to the senses in (2), with ‘fail to have’ (in [1j] and [1m]) leading to absence senses: noticing absence, feeling regret about an absence or inability. The details of this progression deserve a careful exploration of texts in their sociocultural contexts.

Here I’ll focus on [1j] ‘omit’ and [1m] ‘lack’.

Yearning. But first a note on [2b], which is (I think) a high-frequency item, and is certainly quite visible in popular culture, in “I miss you” or “I am missing you” between friends or lovers. As in a number oif songs about yearning for an absent person — or not, as the case may be. Two examples:

From 1974:

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“I Am Missing You” is a song by Indian musician Ravi Shankar, sung by his sister-in-law Lakshmi Shankar and released as the lead single from his 1974 album Shankar Family & Friends. The song is a rare Shankar composition in the Western pop genre, with English lyrics, and was written as a love song to the Hindu god Krishna. The recording was produced and arranged by George Harrison, in a style similar to Phil Spector’s signature sound, and it was the first single issued on Harrison’s Dark Horse record label. Other contributing musicians include Tom Scott, Nicky Hopkins, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner. (Wikipedia link)

The chorus:

I am missing you, Oh Krishna,
Where are you? [x2]

Though I can’t see you
I hear your flute all the while. [x2]

Please come wipe my tears
And make me smile. [x2]

You can listen to the song here.

And from 1984:

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“Missing You [I ain’t missing you at all]” is a song co-written and recorded by English musician John Waite. It was released in June 1984 as the lead single from his second album No Brakes.

John Waite re-recorded the song with country/bluegrass artist Alison Krauss which appeared on her album A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection, and released it to country music radio in 2007. (Wikipedia link)

The relevant lyrics:

I ain’t missing you at all
Since you’ve been gone, away
I ain’t missing you
No matter, what I might say

You can listen to the 1984 version here.

Omitting / lacking. Omitting is an act, lacking a state — a difference in what’s sometimes called the lexical aspect (or Aksionsart) of the verbs omit and lack, having to do with the internal structure of the situation a verb refers to (very crudely, omitting unfolds in time and has an end-point, lacking is homogeneous through time). (There’s also morphosyntactic aspect, expressed in morphology or in syntactic constructions.)

From a 7/22/11 posting “Saul Steinberg on activity and stativity”:

about activity and stativity in verbs — semantic distinctions with reflexes in syntactic behavior. There’s a huge literature on these topics just in English alone. As a first approximation, it’s usually said … that some lexical items are activity verbs and some are stative verbs: imitate is [a transitive] activity verb, denoting an activity, resemble a [transitive] stative verb, denoting a state, and their different semantics is reflected in a number of syntactic differences

— among them:

[progressive] Kim is imitating/*resembling Sandy.

[do-cleft] What Kim did was imitate/*resemble Sandy.

[passive] Sandy was imitated/*resembled by Kim.

These matters are almost ridiculously complex: each of the diagnostic constructions has its own conditions on occurrence, and at least one of them, the progressive, is in fact a family of constructions, with a variety of meanings and uses. To start with, we need to distinguish the inflectional form PRP (the “-ing form”) from the progressive construction, which uses that form.

Now turn to verbs (and verbal idioms) of not having. The list from the NOAD2 thesaurus, which lacks (again, apologies) be missing, though it has both lack and be lacking:

lack, be without, be in need of, need, be lacking, require, want, be short of, be deficient in, be bereft of, be low on, be pressed for, have insufficient; informal be strapped for

These items are all stative in their semantics (not having is a state, not an activity); all occur with either direct or oblique objects; unsurprisingly, none are passivizable (be is never passivizable, and neither is have ‘possess’, and then there’s *One leg is lacked by the statue alongside ✓The statue lacks one leg), and none occur in the do-cleft construction; but the progressive facts are something of a surprise.

Compare lack and miss. The stative verb lack, surprisingly, occurs freely in the progressive:

(1) ✓The statue lacked one leg / ✓The statue was lacking one leg ‘The statue didn’t have one leg’

In addition, the plain and progressive constructions are near-paraphrases; compare The statue toppled over / The statue was toppling over, where there is a clear semantic distinction. It would seem that these are just brute facts: English has both a stative verb lack and a stative verbal idiom be lacking (using the PRP form of lack), both with the semantics roughly ‘not have’.

Even more surprisingly, the stative verb miss ‘not have, fail to have, lack’ (sense [1m] of miss above) appears to occur only in the progressive, as the OED3 entry notes:

(2) *The statue missed one leg / ✓The statue was missing one leg ‘The statue lacked one leg’

Apparently, these are more brute facts: English has in fact no stative verb miss ‘lack’, but it does have a verbal idiom be missing (using the PRP form of failure-miss) with this meaning.

Compare the ‘lack’ sense of miss to the ‘omit’ sense, [1j], which is an activity verb. Context: we thought we’d catalogued all the parts of the statue, but…

(3) ✓We missed one leg ‘We omitted one leg’/ ✓We were missing one leg ‘We were omitting one leg’

This is just what we expect of an activity verb: it occurs in both the plain and the progressive constructions, with a semantic distinction (of aspect) between them.

(There is, of course, a lot more to be said here. In particular, I haven’t explored the role of agency (as well as aspect) in (at least) the do-cleft and passive facts: there is a close relationship between activity verbs and agentive subjects.)

In writing yesterday’s posting on MLB Pride logos, I intended to type the name Aric Olnes, but anticipated the S at the end of Olnes in typing Aric, and so typed

Aris Olnes

A very common sort of typo, in this case creating the name of a hermaphoditic deity of war,

Aris = Ares (Greek god of war) + Eris (Greek goddess of discord)

Let me say here that Aric Olnes is not at all warlike, though he’s fierce in defense of his principles; instead, he’s generally irenic and thoughtful (in several senses). The Olympian deity he most resembles is Athena. From Wikipedia:

Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war in ancient Greek religion and mythology. In later times, Athena was syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was portrayed as having a calm temperament, and moving slowly to anger. She was believed to only fight for just causes and never fight without a purpose.

In ancient Greek literature, Athena is portrayed as the astute companion of heroes and as the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

Aric is neither female (like Athena and Eris) nor hermaphroditic (like Aris), but he is gay and sometimes does drag — in case you’re inclined to think that those facts bring him closer to Athena or Aris.

Enough of Aric. Now into myth, via two modern uses of classical mythology for pop cultural purposes: in comics, animations of those comics, and live-action realizations of the comics in film or video; and in direct tv and movie adaptations of the myths.

In the comics. Ares as an action figure from his DC Comics incarnation:

(#1)

From Wikipedia:

Ares (also known as Mars or War) is a fictional supervillain appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. Based on the Greek mythological figure of the same name, he is the Greek god of war and serves as an archenemy of the superhero Wonder Woman within the DC Universe.

The character has appeared in various forms of media. Alfred Molina voiced him in the 2009 direct-to-video animated movie Wonder Woman. Ares later made his live-action debut in the 2017 film Wonder Woman, where he is portrayed by English actor David Thewlis.

Meanwhile, There’s Eris (as Bellona) in the Marvel comics:

(#2)

with a brief account from the Marvel wiki:

Bellona is the daughter of Hera and Zeus, she was often referred to as Eris or Discord, Goddess of strife and discord by the ancient Romans. Bellona was the usual accomplice of her brother Ares in his schemes to sow dissension among the Olympians. These schemes usually led to violent confrontations, including the Trojan War [Eris was the source of the golden Apple of Discord]. At some point Bellona and Ares became husband and wife.

Ares and Eris: brother and sister, husband and wife, whatever.

The number of cartoon realizations of Ares and Eris, together and separately, is just enormous.

Direct to movies or tv. Classical mythology, of course, can serve directly as an inspiration for fictions of all kinds other than comics. For instance, in the tv series Hercules (The Lengendary Journeys) and its spinoff series Xena (Warrior Princess). Kevin Smith as the studly Ares:

(#3)

and Morgan Reese Fairhead as Eris:

(#4)

Now we need tales about and depictions of Aris. And Aris’s mirror-image twin Eres (Gk. eres ‘couch, bedstead’).

I’ll just leave Iris and Eros out of it.

Yesterday, from Chris Hansen, this cartoon by Daniel Beyer:

(#1)

Chris’s comment:

It took me a minute to “get” it (I’ve been in England for a looooong time)

(Chris is an American long resident in England.)

Another exercise in understanding comics. In this case, requiring a crucial piece of knowledge about American popular culture.

Also requiring that you recognize that the waitress is a cow. And that the woman is proposing that they should tip her because her service was very bad — contrary to the ‘reward’ sense of this verb tip (from NOAD2):

(1) give (someone) a sum of money as a way of rewarding them for their services: [with two objects]: I tipped her five dollars | [no object]: that sort of person never tips.

based on this noun tip:

(2) a sum of money given to someone as a reward for their services.

Instead, we are to understand a different verb tip:

(3) overbalance or cause to overbalance so as to fall or turn over: [no object]: the hay caught fire when the candle tipped over | [with object]: a youth sprinted past, tipping over her glass.

Overbalancing cows so as to make them fall over? Who does that?

Well, according to (recent) American folk belief, young hayseeds as a prank.

(#2)

From Wikipedia:

Cow tipping is the purported activity of sneaking up on any unsuspecting or sleeping upright cow and pushing it over for entertainment. The practice of cow tipping is generally considered an urban legend, and stories of such feats viewed as tall tales. The implication that rural citizens seek such entertainment due to lack of other alternatives is viewed as a stereotype. The concept of cow tipping apparently developed in the 1970s, though tales of animals that cannot rise if they fall has historical antecedents dating to the Roman Empire.

Cows routinely lie down and can easily regain their footing unless sick or injured. Scientific studies have been conducted to determine if cow tipping is theoretically possible, with varying conclusions. All agree that cows are large animals that are difficult to surprise and will generally resist attempts to be tipped. Estimates suggest a force of between 3,000 and 4,000 newtons (670 and 900 lbf) is needed, and that at least four and possibly as many as fourteen people would be required to achieve this. In real-life situations where cattle have to be laid on the ground, or “cast”, such as for branding, hoof care or veterinary treatment, either rope restraints are required or specialized mechanical equipment is used that confines the cow and then tips it over. On rare occasions, cattle can lie down or fall down in proximity to a ditch or hill that restricts their normal ability to rise without help. Cow tipping has many references in popular culture and is also used as a figure of speech.

… Journalist Jake Steelhammer believes the American urban myth of cow tipping originated in the 1970s. It “stampeded into the ’80s”, he says, “when movies like Tommy Boy and Heathers featured cow tipping expeditions.” Stories about cow tipping tend to be second-hand, he says, told by someone who does not claim to have tipped a cow but who knows someone else who says he or she did.

Assorted individuals have claimed to have performed cow tipping, often while under the influence of alcohol. These claims, to date, cannot be reliably verified, with Jake Swearingen of Modern Farmer noting in 2013 that YouTube, a popular source of videos of challenges and stunts, “fails to deliver one single actual cow-tipping video” [genuine farm people are understandably insulted by their stereotype image].

Pranksters have sometimes pushed over artificial cows. Along Chicago’s Michigan Avenue in 1999, two “apparently drunk” men felled six fiberglass cows that were part of a Cows on Parade public art exhibit. Four other vandals removed a “Wow cow” sculpture from its lifeguard chair at Oak Street Beach and abandoned it in a pedestrian underpass. A year later, New York City anchored its CowParade art cows, including “A Streetcow Named Desire”, to concrete bases “to prevent the udder disrespect of cow-tippers and thieves.”

Cow jokes, udder jokes, and (as we’ll see shortly) cud jokes too.

In any case, the cow-tipping thing is peculiarly American, so that the cartoon in #1 will be mystifying to those with little experience of American popular culture. But for Americans, cow-tipping is the source of much (broad) humor. From many choices, two more cow-tipping cartoons, and then some notes on cartoonist Daniel Beyer (who’s new to this blog).

Texas longhorns. From Leigh Rubin:

(#3)

Here you need to know about Texas longhorns as well as cow-tipping.

Tips for cows. And from the Thingsesque site, a cartoon with yet another verb tip, based on yet another noun tip:

(#4)

This one needs the title. And that supplies us with the verbing tip ‘give practical advice to’ of this noun tip (from NOAD2):

(4) a small but useful piece of practical advice; a very reliable prediction or piece of inside information: are those tips you’re getting legal?

Quite different from the noun in (2). In this case, the advice is about chewing one’s cud — definitely useful advice for a cow.

Daniel Beyer. Three more cartoons from Beyer, the first requiring a whole assortment of knowledge, including something else from American popular culture:

(#5)

Three components here: French onion dip (American popular culture, food division); the dip in dancing; and the beret stereotypically associated with Frenchmen (and beatniks, but that’s not relevant here). So: language play on French (‘relating to France, its people, or its language’) vs. French in French onion dip, and on dip in a food context vs. in a dance context.

On French onion dip, from Wikipedia:

French onion dip or California dip is an American dip typically made with a base of sour cream and flavored with minced onion, and usually served with potato chips as chips and dip.

(#6)

French onion dip made of sour cream and instant onion soup was created by [an unidentified French cook] in Los Angeles in 1954… The recipe spread quickly and was printed in a local newspaper. The Lipton company promoted this mixture on the television show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts in 1955, and early on, it was known as “Lipton California Dip”, but soon simply as “California Dip”. A Lipton advertising campaign promoted it on television and in supermarkets. The recipe was added to the Lipton instant onion soup package in 1958. The name “French onion dip” began to be used in the 1960s, and became more popular than “California dip” in the 1990s.

The origin story, with its unknown Frenchman, is suspect; the adjective French might just have been used for its cachet in the world of cuisine. The actual dip, made with onion soup mix, is solidly American.

That’s the first noun dip. From NOAD2:

noun dip:a thick sauce in which pieces of food are dunked before eating: tasty garlic dip.

(See earlier postings here on dipspreads.)

The second noun dip is a nouning, in a specialized context, of the verb dip:

[no object] sink, drop, or slope downward:swallows dipped and soared | the sun had dipped below the horizon. (NOAD2)

By nouning of this verb, we get a term for a dance move, common to many dance forms (tango, lindy hop, salsa, ballroom dances), in which one partner (the flyer) dips while supported by the other partner (the base); alternatively, the base may be said to dip the flyer. As here:

(#7)

Next, a Beyer with a urinal theme:

(#8)

There are conventions limiting men’s speaking to other men at urinals, and a ventriloquist’s dummy doing the talking would be way over the line.

Finally, more pop culture tropes, this time from the 1970s:

(#9)

From Beyer’s creators.com site:

I grew up between two small towns, Woodstock, Illinois and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Turns out, they were both home to some rather famous cartoonists: Woodstock (Chester Gould) and Lake Geneva (Joe Martin and Sydney Smith). The more I learned about these cartoonists and their amazing work, as well as meeting the great Bill Sanders (former editorial cartoonist/Milwaukee Journal), the more I wanted to be a cartoonist.

Eventually, he launched his Long Story Short strip (from which #9 comes), which won an amateur cartoonist competition that got him a place in The Cartoonist Studio.

In today’s Zippy, Bert and Bob talk movies at the Charcoal Pit:

(#1)

The topic is the new movie Wonder Woman, the candy Milk Duds comes up in passing, and the locale is the Charcoal Pit in Wilmington DE.

The movie. From Wikipedia:

(#2)

Wonder Woman is a 2017 American superhero film based on the DC Comics character of the same name, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the fourth installment in the DC Extended Universe. The film is directed by Patty Jenkins, with a screenplay by Allan Heinberg, from a story by Heinberg, Zack Snyder, and Jason Fuchs, and stars Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Connie Nielsen, and Elena Anaya. Wonder Woman is the second live action theatrical film featuring the titular character, following her debut in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. … The film tells the story of Princess Diana, who grows up on the Amazon island of Themyscira. After American pilot Steve Trevor crashes offshore of the island and is rescued by her, he tells the Amazons about the ongoing World War. Diana then leaves her home in order to end the conflict, becoming Wonder Woman in the process.

… Diana is an immortal Amazon princess, demigoddess, the daughter of Queen Hippolyta and Zeus, and the half-sister of Ares.

Yes, there’s a lot of (moviefied) Greek mythology, and it does end with a monster fight, Wonder Woman vs. Ares.

The candy. Slang background, from GDoS:

noun dud-1: [ety. unknown] an article of clothing, esp. a cloak, made from rough, coarse cloth [first cite c.1440]

pl. noun duds: [< dud-1] clothing [first cite 1542]

noun dud-2: [? dud-1, thence rags and thus one who dresses in them, esp. a dudman, a scarecrow] 1 of a person, a failure, an incompetent, a weakling, a bore [first cite 1825] 2 anything that lit. or fig. ‘does not work’ [first cite 1901] 3 of a thing or event, a failure, a disappointment, a ‘flop’ [first cite 1905]

Yes, this is relevant. Now from Wikipedia:

(#3) Recent packaging of Milk Duds; note chocolatety, which makes no claims about chocolate content

Milk Duds are a caramel candy, enrobed with a confectionery coating made from cocoa and vegetable oil. They are manufactured by The Hershey Company, and sold in a yellow box.

According to the manufacturer, the word “Milk” in the name refers to the large amount of milk in the product; the use of “dud” came about because the original aim of having a perfectly round piece was found to be impossible. Milk Duds were first created in 1926 by Sean le Noble.

… The Hershey Company, in 2008, changed the ingredients of some of its products, in order to replace the relatively expensive cocoa butter with cheaper oil substitutes. This was done to retain a current product price, rather than having to raise prices in the marketplace for products containing cocoa butter.

Commerce marches on.

I grew up not far from Hershey PA, in major chocolate country. Also firmly in the midst of pretzel country So I am indeed familiar with chocolate-covered pretzels, though I can’t say that I’m fond of them. Milk Duds, however, were prime movie-going food.

The burger and malt place. The sign outside the original Charcoal Pit in north Wilmington DE:

(#4)

The entire place has a 50s feel to it.

From the Charcoal Pit’s own accounting of the place (reproduced here without editing):

The Charcoal Pit Tradition dates back to September 1956 when it first opened its doors. The “Pit” – referred to by loyal customers, became such an instant success that only after three months from the grand opening, it was decided to build more room for its long line of hungry customers. The “Pit” went from a small four table and a counter burger joint to a 115 customer-seating establishment.

(#5)

Our award-winning burgers have been a tradition in Delaware ever since. The recipe is secret and has kept Delawareans craving the “Pit” for generations. Those who first patronized the “Pit”, are today bringing their children and grandchildren to enjoy the same tasty experience.

Our famous Ice Cream Creations celebrates our local high school teams and make delicious memories. It is worth a trip to the “Pit”

And Jane and Michael Stern’s review on their Roadfood website:

We were tipped off to the Charcoal Pit by a roadfooder named Amy, originally from Delaware, who accused us of missing what she called “the most Roadfood-esque place in the state”: the Charcoal Pit. Amy told us that she took friends from all over the country to the Pit and they loved it … and we would too! After Amy’s note, we got another strong suggestion from Steven Green that we needed to try this place. Steven said, “Everything has all the cholesterol (and taste) from the old days”; he recommended the burgers, French fries, and malts.

Sure enough, a Charcoal Pit burger exudes mid-century Americana: a modest patty with a charcoal taste served on a spongy bun either plain or in the deluxe configuration, which adds lettuce, tomato and pickle. For those who crave extra meat, there is also a double-size eight-ounce hamburger. French fries are normal-size twigs with a tough skin and soft potato flavor. Milk shakes come in silver beakers that hold at least two glasses full. (The shakes are so thick that a long-handled spoon is provided to help you get it from the beaker into your glass.) We even enjoyed the crab cakes, which were a couple of hardball-shaped spheres with crusty outsides and a fair measure of crab filling the interior.

It’s an old-fashioned kind of place with comfy maroon booths and vintage menus decorating the wall. Waitresses go about their job with aplomb and attitude that make customers feel part of a cheap-eats ritual that has gone on forever.

Just the sort of joint that Zippy and Griffy like to hang out in.

Today’s Zippy brings on scary clowns in Laff in the Dark tunnels:

(#1)

— and, worse, threatens to unleash Tom Cruise (and his Outsider Art).

The specter of Outsider Cruise. In the flesh:

(#2) Scary as a clown

With the whole pack:

(#3) Left to right: Estevez, Swayze, Macchio, Dillon. Howell, Lowe, Cruise

From Wikipedia:

The Outsiders is a 1983 American coming-of-age drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. The film was released on March 25, 1983.

… The film is noted for its cast of up-and-coming stars, including C. Thomas Howell…, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and Diane Lane.

Fun houses and dark rides. In the simple funhouse, you walk through startling or scary experiences, while in a dark ride you’re carried through them on a vehicle. (Funhouse is in NOAD2 and other one-volume dictionaries; the semi-technical term dark ride is not even in the OED.)

From Wikipedia:

A funhouse or fun house is an amusement facility found on amusement park and funfair midways in which patrons encounter and actively interact with various devices designed to surprise, challenge, and amuse the visitor. Unlike thrill rides, funhouses are participatory attractions, where visitors enter and move around under their own power. Incorporating aspects of a playful obstacle course, funhouses seek to distort conventional perceptions and startle people with unstable and unpredictable physical circumstances within an atmosphere of wacky whimsicality.

Appearing originally in the early 1900s at Coney Island, the funhouse is so called because in its initial form it was just that: a house or larger building containing a number of amusement devices.

And dark rides in Wikipedia:

A dark ride or ghost train is an indoor amusement ride on which passengers aboard guided vehicles travel through specially lit scenes that typically contain animation, sound, music, and special effects.

… The first dark rides appeared in the late 19th century and were called “scenic railways” and “pleasure railways”. A popular type of dark ride, commonly referred to as an old mill or tunnel of love, used small boats to carry riders through water-filled canals. A Trip to the Moon began operation at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Leon Cassidy of the Pretzel Amusement Ride Company patented the first single-rail electric dark ride in 1928. Historically notable dark rides include Futurama at the 1939 New York World’s Fair and Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland.

Modern attractions in this genre vary widely in their use of technology. Smaller-scale rides often feature the same sorts of simple animation and sounds that have been used since the genre’s early days, while more ambitious projects can feature complex animatronics, special effects, and ride vehicles.

To improve the effect and give a sense of journey, passages in dark rides frequently change direction. Sudden curves give a sense of surprise and allow new scenes to surprise the rider. The rides may also feature sudden ascents or descents to further the excitement.

A classic dark ride:

(#4) The Dark Ride of Suomen Tivoli (‘Finland’s Tivoli’, a traveling amusement park) in the center of Kerava, Finland, during Circus Festival 2009

There are sites devoted to dark rides and fun houses — notably the Laff in the Dark fun house site managed by Bill Luca and George LaCross, who write:

As you navigate your way around our site, you’ll take many nostalgic trips into a fondly-remembered past, some of which is happily still alive today. Our goal is to keep those memories alive, and to help keep the existing dark rides and funhouses operating so that they can be enjoyed by succeeding generations for many more years to come.

Laff in the Dark was the first website dedicated to dark rides and funhouses. We have developed a huge international network of fans and feature the greatest collection of dark ride and funhouse information ever assembled. The site was founded because we realized that while there are many websites devoted to roller coasters, carousels, and amusement parks in general, information on our favorite spooky rides was very scarce. So, through our own research and the generous sharing of information and photos from our many visitors, Laff In The Dark has become “World Headquarters for Dark Ride Fans”!

Here at Laff in the Dark, we’ve not only documented many rides, builders and artists from the past and present, we’ve also guided a huge number of our visitors to rides that exist today, thereby helping to ensure that those rides continue to operate and stay healthy and scary!

Fun houses and dark rides are prominent themes in popular culture, for instance in this movie:

(#5)

Dark Ride is a 2006 American horror-thriller film directed by Craig Singer and written by Singer and Robert Dean Klein. … The film revolves around a group of friends who are terrorized by a crazy masked murderer at a dark ride in an amusement park.

I spent much of Tuesday putting together material for my posting on Mikey Bustos and his parody “I Wear Speedos” of the hit song “Despacito”, by Puerto Rican pop stars Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee. That led me of course to the great Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin, who’s been steadily on public view ever since he joined the boy band Menudo back in the 1980s.

So I had a day experiencing several versions of “Despacito”, many times over, and also returning to the pleasures of Ricky Martin’s performances, starting with “Livin’ La Vida Loca” and going on from there through his oeuvre (with digressions to Enrique Iglesias and Shakira).

Then yesterday to lunch at the Mexican restaurant Reposado, where they play pop music in Spanish as background. As I sat down, I recognized RM’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca”. Which was followed immediately by Fonsi & DY’s “Despacito”. How unlikely was that?

Synchronicity at work.

Synchronicity, then a lot of Ricky Martin (sometimes shirtless, once in a Speedo), with a digression on Mexican tripe stew.

Synchronicity. From Wikipedia:

Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.

Jung seems to have intended something here more substantial than the human inclination to seek (and find) meaning in everything, plus the fact that coincidences are much more common than people imagine.

But I’m content to believe that the La Vida Loca / Despacito recurrence was in fact nothing but coincidence, involving as it did the appearance on a Latino music service of possibly the most famous piece of Spanish-language pop music ever together with the currently most-listened-to piece of Spanish-language pop music. It was just an accident that I’d been listening to and thinking about these two songs the day before.

(I note in passing that if you’re going to suffer from earworms, “Livin’ La Vida Loca” and “Despacito” aren’t at all bad as aural irritants, especially if you can visualize the canonical videos, which are full of life and energy.)

Ricky Martin. From Wikipedia:

(#1) RM in a concert performance of “Livin’ La Vida Loca”

Enrique Martín Morales (born December 24, 1971), commonly known as Ricky Martin, is a Grammy Award winning Puerto Rican singer, actor, and author. Martin began his career at age 12 with the all-boy pop group Menudo. After five years with the group, he released several Spanish-language solo albums throughout the 1990s. He also acted on stage and on TV in Mexico, where he achieved modest stardom. In 1994, he appeared on the US TV soap opera General Hospital, playing a Puerto Rican singer [with long, wild rock-star hair].

In early 1999, after releasing several albums in Spanish, Martin performed “The Cup of Life” at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards show [you can watch the official video of “La Copa de la Vida” here], which became a catalyst in bringing Latin pop to the forefront of the U.S. music scene. Following its success, Martin released “Livin’ la Vida Loca”, which helped him attain enormous success worldwide [you can watch the official video here]; it is generally seen as the song that began the Latin pop explosion of 1999 and made the transition easier for other Spanish-speaking artists to move into the English-speaking market. Since its release, the song has sold over 8 million copies, making it one of the best selling singles of all time. His first English-language album (also titled Ricky Martin), has sold 22 million copies and is one of the best selling albums of all time.

A bit more detail on “La Vida Loca” (from Wikipedia):

“Livin’ la Vida Loca” is generally seen as the song that began the Latin pop explosion of 1999 and made the transition of other Spanish-speaking artists (first Enrique Iglesias, then later Shakira, Thalía, and Paulina Rubio) into the English-speaking market easier. Before this time, most non-Latino Americans had never heard of Martin until what CNN reported was a show-stopping performance of “La Copa de la Vida” at the 41st Grammy Awards show, which became a catalyst in bringing Latin pop to the forefront of the U.S. music scene.

Menudo moments. The boy band and the tripe and hominy stew. From Wikipedia:

Menudo was a Puerto Rican boy band that was formed in the 1970s by producer Edgardo Díaz. Menudo was also one of the biggest Latin boy bands in history, releasing their first album in 1977. The band achieved much success, especially during the 1980s, becoming the most popular Latin American teen musical group of the era. The group disbanded in 2009.

The band had several radio hits during its course. Their success led them to also release two feature films: Una Aventura Llamada Menudo and Menudo: La Película.

The band was a starting point for both Ricky Martin and Draco Rosa, who were members around the mid-1980s during their youth.

Menudo’s original line-up consisted of two sets of brothers: Fernando and Nefty Sallaberry from Ponce, Puerto Rico (Fernando was born in Spain) and the Melendez brothers, Carlos, Oscar and Ricky Melendez; the latter three are Diaz’s cousins.

Specifically (also from Wikipedia):

(#2) RM in the middle

Can’t Get Enough (1986) is the 23rd album by Menudo. This is their third album in English and features Charlie Massó, Robi Rosa, Ricky Martin, Raymond Acevedo and Sergio Blass.

By all accounts, Menudo was a tough life for a teenager, with a heavy schedule of performances and very strict control by the managers.

Then there is culinary menudo (for which the group is named). From Wikipedia:

(#3)

Menudo, or pancita ([little] gut or [little] stomach, from Spanish panza “gut/stomach”) is a traditional Mexican soup, made with beef stomach (tripe) in broth with a red chili pepper base. Usually, hominy, lime, chopped onions, and chopped cilantro are added, as well as crushed oregano and crushed red chili peppers. [That makes menudo essentially tripe posole.]

Menudo is usually eaten with corn tortillas or other breads, such as bolillo. It is often chilled and reheated, which results in a more melded flavor.

… Menudo is traditionally a family food prepared by the entire family, and even serves as an occasion for social interactions such as after wedding receptions where the families of the groom and bride go to either family’s house to enjoy an early morning bowl of menudo. In popular Mexican culture, menudo is believed to be a remedy for hangover.

Since menudo is time and labor-intensive to prepare as the tripe takes hours to cook (or else it is extremely tough), and includes many ingredients and side dishes (such as salsa), the dish is often prepared communally and eaten at a feast.

Back to RM. RM projects immense energy and sexiness, with big smiles and first-class pop-star hip action. And a body he enjoys showing off, in performances and in posed shots. Shirtless here:

(#4) RM channeling George Michael

(#5) RM rocking a Speedo; cf. Bustos’s “I Wear Speedos”

RM has always had a big gay following. Eventually, he came out as gay himself. While he’s sexually attracted to both women and men, and has had extended relationships with both, he says that his affectional attachments are to men, and he’s now engaged to be married to a man, artist Jwan Yosef. (His position here is much like his position on nationality. He now holds dual citizenship, in the US and Spain (no doubt he could get Mexican citizenship if he wanted to), and he has a home in Madrid, but says that his emotional attachments are to Puerto Rico.)

In 2008, he became the father of twin boys, through a surrogate mother, and entered what amounts to a second career as a publicly visible sweet daddy. Recent photo here:

(#6)

Just as there’s a trove of shirtless photos of RM, there’s a trove of photos of RM with his sons (and often with Jwan Yosef as well); in fact, there are sites entirely devoted to these two themes.

Status report: RM is 45, Yosef 32, and the kids 8. The men are currently failing to get their wedding plans together, largely (it seems) because of their multi-national attachments: you could make a case on RM’s side for a wedding in (in descending likelihood) Puerto Rico, Madrid, Miami, or Mexico, and Yosef’s side is no less complex; from Wikipedia:

Jwan Yosef (born 1984) is a Syrian-born Swedish painter and artist of Kurdish and Armenian ancestry. He specializes in plastic arts and is based in London, England.

So: Sweden, London, or someplace in the Syrian, Kurdish, or Armenian diaspora. (Syria, Kurdistan, or Armenia would probably not be a good idea.)

They could just pick some other place entirely: Hawaii, Tuscany, Paris, the Iguazú Falls, Rio de Janeiro, Bali, Cape Town, Santorini, wherever.

You can find lots of photos of RM and Yosef together, in formal wear, in casual clothes, or on the beach. But Yosef is, like RM, a hot guy in great shape and perfectly willing to display himself, as here:

(#7)

Welcome to the world of highly talented multilingual multicultural gay hunks.

Today’s One Big Happy has James reciting a piece of American childlore, the taunt “X is a friend of mine” (where X is a name, preferably a trochaic one, like Ruthie, to fit the trochaic tetrameter pattern of the verse):

  (#1)

A cornucopia of pop culture references.

The playfully demeaning taunt — conveying ‘X is ugly (like Frankenstein’s monster) and fat (like Porky Pig)’ — is typically delivered directly to X, or at least performed in X’s presence. It can be recited, especially in sing-song fashion, or sung to the tune of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. The pattern:

X is a friend of mine.
(s)he resembles Frankenstein.
When (s)he does the Irish jig,
(s)he resembles Porky Pig!

“Mary Had a Little Lamb” would put the taunt back in 19th-century America, but the reference to Porky Pig, and probably the reference to Frankenstein as well, make the verse no older than the 1930s. The first line is probably an allusion to an American gospel song with the culminating line “Jesus is a friend of mine” (written in 1910). (The Irish jig is presumably there only to make the rhyming reference to Porky Pig possible.)

From Wikipedia on Porky Pig:

  (#2)

The character was introduced in the short I Haven’t Got a Hat (first released on March 9, 1935), directed by Friz Freleng. Studio head Leon Schlesinger suggested that Freleng do a cartoon version of the popular Our Gang films. Porky only has a minor role in the film, but the fat little stuttering pig quickly became popular.

On Frankenstein in popular culture, from Wikipedia:

  (#3) Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, and the famous character of Frankenstein’s monster, have influenced popular culture for at least a century. The work has inspired numerous films, television programs, video games and derivative works. The character of the monster remains one of the most recognized icons in horror fiction.

… The first sound adaptation of the story, Frankenstein (1931), was produced by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale, and starred Boris Karloff as the monster.

The Whale-Karloff version of the monster quickly became a prominent figure in popular culture.

And the 1910 hymn that spread “Jesus is a friend of mine”: “Why Should I Charge My Soul with Care?”, words by John Henry Sammis (tune by D. B. Towner, 1850-1919), with the chorus:

Yes, He’s a Friend of mine,
And He with me doth all things share;
Since all is Christ’s, and Christ is mine,
Why should I have a care?
For Jesus is a Friend of mine.

The hymn found its way into many American hymnals in the early 20th century. The line “Jesus is a friend of mine” became a kind of Christian catchphrase and was eventually used in other hymn texts, set to other tunes.

Summing up the evidence on the age of the taunt, it would seem to be no earlier than the late 1930s, probably later. (It wasn’t part of my childhood; I didn’t hear it until sometime in the 60s or 70s.)

More elaborated versions have been reported, like this one from an anonymous contributor to The Data Lounge on “silly song lyrics from childhood”:

___ is a friend of mine
He resembles Frankenstein
When he walks around the house
He resembles Mickey Mouse
When he does the Irish jig
He resembles Porky Pig
When he walks across the street
You can smell his stinky feet
When ___ comes out to play
All the children run away
(you then run away from the person)

Bonus: a dirty version of the taunt. Reported from memory by a Straight Dope commenter on the taunt:

X is a friend of mine
(s)he will do you anytime,
For a nickel or a dime
Twenty cents for overtime

Instead of charging that X is ugly and fat, this version charges X with being a prostitute. (A cent in the verse obviously stands for some larger amount in the real world: a dollar perhaps — so $5, $10, $20, which would have been going rates for various services from a street prostitute many decades ago — or nowadays ten dollars (so $50, $100, $200).

(I don’t recall having heard this version until today. Certainly not during my boy dirty talk period, roughly 1945-55, even though that included something like five summers at a boys’ camp, where I got an intensive informal education in dirty rhymes and dirty jokes.)

This too has more elaborated versions. From The Data Lounge collection, noted as being from a rough Chicago neighborhood in the 1970s:

___ is a friend of mine
He will blow you anytime
For a nickel or a dime
Fifty cents overtime
If you have a union pass,
He will even lick your ass
If you have a credit card,
He will blow you extra hard…
(goes on…forgot the rest)

Instead of the vague (and inoffensive) verb do, this version goes right down on the fellatial verb blow.

A recent Pinterest mailing included a board devoted to the Aberrant Art collages of Barry Kite — this because I posted on them a while back (on 11/30/16 in “Poet in Search of His Moose”). Six of them in that earlier posting, now four more I’ve chosen from those in the Pinterest mailing. They range from relatively simple compositions to an enormously complex one. But like the collages I posted about last year, they’re zany educations in art and popular culture, packed with astonishing juxtapositions of images.

The four collages:

(#1) Artists Frida Kaho, Diego Rivera, and Andrew Wyeth; discussion below

(#2) Abraham Lincoln parks his bicycle among Union dead at Gettysburg (background photo by Gibson Gardner)

(#3) A therapy group assembled from diverse sources

(#4) An enormous wave of images of girls and women

Kite freely mixes clippings from ads, magazine stories, and other such sources in which figures from capital-A Art. Even he can’t always say where particular images came from.

In any case, back to #1. The background image is Andrew Wyeth’s famous 1948 painting “Christina’s World”. Superimposed on that is a stunning blue Aston-Martin convertible [note 8/14: probably Austin Healey; see the comments below] from (roughly) the 1960s — presumably from a clipping — holding a barking Doberman Pinscher (image source uncertain) and an image of Frida Kahlo. Superimposed on that are images of Diego Rivera and the central figure in one of Wyeth’s Helga portraits. And superimposed on that, in the foreground, is an image of road maps (probably from a clipping).

Seven component parts (“Christina’s World”, the car, the dog, Frida, Diego, Helga, and the roadmaps), really very simple. Collage #2 is even simpler, with only four components (the Gardner photo, Lincoln, the bicycle, and the sign).

Collage #3 is more complex, and #4 is ridiculously more complex.

Simple or complex, they’re about absurd juxtapositions.

[Added 8/14: One more Kite collage, another wave of female figures:

(#5)]

Restrain the impulse to reply “Gilroy was here” (I’ll get to that below); the title is an echo of my 7/7/15 posting “Where is Ojai?”, which was about whether the city of Ojai, in Ventura County CA, is in California’s Central Coast region or in in the South Coast region (along with Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties).

Just so for Gilroy, a city in (far southern) Santa Clara county: is it in the Central Coast region, or in the Bay Area region on the northern California coast?

Ojai and the rest of Ventura County are in a cultural liminal zone, between central and south; and Gilroy and neighboring Santa Cruz county are in a cultural liminal zone, between central (with small cities, picturesque open spaces, and extensive rural or semi-rural areas) and Bay Area (mostly dense urban and surburban settlement).

I stumbled onto the Gilroy question through food, specifically through Original California Style Hot Pepper Sauce, made in Gilroy (but encountered on a table at the Peninsula Fountain Grill, here in Palo Alto), whose makers advertise:

Pepper Plant Pepper Sauce was developed by a lover of spicy peppers who wanted to enjoy their unique taste year round. Pepper Plant quickly became a favorite of the California Central Coast.

The Pepper Plant folks seem pretty clear that they’re on the Central Coast (along with Watsonville, Salinas, Monterey, and Carmel) — at the northern tip of the region, granted, but in it.

The product.

(#1) Original California Style Hot Pepper Sauce, Chunky Garlic Hot Pepper Sauce, Chipotle Sauce, Habaneros – Extra Hot! Pepper Sauce; also available: BBQ Sauce, Chunky Style Salsa, Dry Rub Seasoning

Amazon.com description:

The original California hot sauce! Blend of jalapeno and red peppers. This sauce is a mainstay in most restaurants in Monterey and Carmel. Adds some zing to taco’s, eggs, fish, steaks, bloody marys, or whatever you wish to top.

(Quick review of the original: very flavorful, not too hot or too vinegary, but salty.)

On the parent company (verbatim from their website):

Established in 1933, Blossom Valley Foods [20 Casey Ln, Gilroy CA 95020] started as a distributor of fresh fruits. Over the years, the company expanded to manufacture sauces, condiments, syrup and juices.

Well established companies such as, Williams-Sonoma and Trader Joe’s, have entrusted us to produce some of their most popular products. Thousands of products available in grocery stores worldwide are produced daily in our modern manufacturing plant.

Blossom Valley Foods also produces its own line of unique products such as: The Pepper Plant family of hot sauces, condiments, BBQ sauce and salsa; Old Recipe Brand of non-alcoholic cocktail mixes; Treasure Island vinegars.

The location. Start with a map of the California coast, going from the center of the Central Coast (San Luis Obispo) north to Gilroy and beyond:

(#2)

Then focusing specifically on Santa Clara County (in pink):

(#3)

Gilroy is well south of San Jose (which is certainly part of the Bay Area), out in the country and rurally oriented. From Wikipedia:

Gilroy is a city located in Northern California’s Santa Clara County. The city’s population was 48,821 at the 2010 United States Census.

Gilroy is well known for its garlic crop and for the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, featuring various garlicky foods such as garlic ice cream, leading to the city’s nickname as the “Garlic Capital of the World”. Gilroy also produces mushrooms in considerable quantity. Boutique wine production is a large part of Gilroy’s western portion, mostly consisting of family estates around the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west.

Gilroy is Garlic City; nearby Watsonville is Artichoke City. Avocados are everywhere.

Then there’s Santa Cruz. Now with close ties to San Jose (32 miles “over the mountain” from Santa Cruz via CA 17), so often treated as part of the Bay Area, but it’s also the quintessential California beach town (with UCSC in a redwood forest on the mountainside above the town), along the coast with agricultural land and scenic landscape both north and south, so that it feels in many ways like part of the Central Coast, and is often so treated. It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping.

Treatments of geographic regions for cultural, geological, and biological purposes are often shoehorned into areas defined by political boundaries, just because the political boundaries are (relatively) crisp and easily available, even though they’re often not what you want for scientific purposes. The maps in DARE (The Dictionary of American Regional English) use state boundaries, rather than true dialect boundaries (which don’t align well with state boundaries), because dialect boundaries aren’t particularly crisp and are likely to be unfamiliar to readers.

Consider this map of the Central Coast (from my earlier Ojai posting), which uses county boundaries.

(#4)

Santa Cruz and its county are liminal areas, but Gilroy doesn’t even get a chance at being located in the Central Coast region, because it’s in Santa Clara county (ok, out in the boonies 33 miles south of San Jose, but in Santa Clara county nevertheless).

At the other end of the map in #4, Ojai is culturally a Central Coast place, while further south in Ventura county, Ventura and Oxnard are part of Greater Los Angeles and should probably be treated as part of the South Coast.

Bonus: Gilroy and Kilroy. Whatever. From Wikipedia:

(#5)

Kilroy was here is an American popular culture and a meme expression that became popular during World War II; it is typically seen in graffiti. Its origins are debated, but the phrase and the distinctive accompanying doodle became associated with GIs in the 1940s – a bald-headed man (sometimes depicted as having a few hairs) with a prominent nose peeking over a wall with the fingers of each hand clutching the wall.

“Kilroy” was the American equivalent of the Australian Foo was here which originated during World War I and later became popular among school children.

“Mr Chad” or just “Chad” was the version that became popular in the United Kingdom. The character of Chad may have been derived from a British cartoonist in 1938, possibly pre-dating “Kilroy was here”.

Hurricane Irma works its way through the Caribbean, now aiming at Florida. There’s nothing useful I can do at this distance, so I’ve been frittering away my time recalling the famous Irmas of my world — your list might well be different — namely Irma S. Rombauer, the Irma of Irma la Douce, and, top of the list, the Irma of My Friend Irma, the apotheosis, oh alas, of the Dumb Blonde stereotype in American popular culture.

In the kitchen. Irma S. Rombauer is the Irma of The Joy of Cooking.  From Wikipedia:

(#1) ISR with The Book

Irma Starkloff Rombauer (October 30, 1877 – October 14, 1962) was an American cookbook author, best known for The Joy of Cooking (1931), one of the world’s most widely read cookbooks. Following Irma Rombauer’s death, periodic revisions of the book were carried out by her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, and subsequently by Marion’s son Ethan Becker. The Joy of Cooking remains in print, edited by members of the Rombauer–Becker family, and more than 18 million copies have been sold.

(My own copy is a well-worn and falling-apart 1946 edition, originally Libby Walcutt Daingerfield’s, passed on to her daughter Ann Walcutt Daingerfield (later Ann Daingerfield Zwicky).)

In the bedroom. From Wikipedia:

(#2)

Irma la Douce is a 1963 romantic comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, directed by Billy Wilder. It is based on the 1956 French stage musical Irma La Douce by Marguerite Monnot and Alexandre Breffort.

Irma la Douce [“Irma the Sweet”] tells the story of Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon), an honest cop, who after being transferred from the park Bois de Boulogne to a more urban neighborhood in Paris, finds a street full of prostitutes working at the Hotel Casanova and proceeds to raid the place. The police inspector, who is Nestor’s superior, and the other policemen, have been aware of the prostitution, but tolerate it in exchange for bribes. The inspector, a client of the prostitutes himself, fires Nestor, who is accidentally framed for bribery.

Kicked off the force and humiliated, Nestor finds himself drawn to the very neighborhood that ended his career with the Paris police – returning to Chez Moustache, a popular hangout tavern for prostitutes and their pimps. Down on his luck, Nestor befriends Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine), a popular prostitute. He also reluctantly accepts, as a confidant, the proprietor of Chez Moustache, a man known only as “Moustache.” In a running joke, Moustache (Lou Jacobi), a seemingly ordinary barkeeper, tells of a storied prior life – claiming to have been, among other things, an attorney, a colonel, and a doctor, ending with the repeated line, “But that’s another story.” After Nestor defends Irma against her abusive pimp boyfriend, Hippolyte, Nestor moves in with her, and he soon finds himself as Irma’s new pimp.

And then things get complicated.

My Friend Irma I’ll take up in a while. First, some stereotype-talk.

Female stereotypes. From Wednesday’s birthday posting, signaling the content of this posting:

the catastrophic hurricane, Irma S. Rombauer, Irma la Douce, My Friend Irma. Stereotype time [respectively]: the Femme Fatale, the Good Wife, the Prostitute With a Heart of Gold, the Dumb Blonde (and the Dumb Blonde’s best female friend the Smart Dame)

Several of these have already been mentioned on this blog, in a 10/2/14 posting “Female archetypes in the movies”, about Sunwoo Jeong’s Stanford qualifying paper on “Iconicity in Suprasegmental Variables:
The Case of Archetypal Hollywood Characters of the 1940s-50s”, covering:

several distinctive film genres, featuring highly stylized female characters, emerged as important cultural phenomena: femme fatales in film noir, independent brunettes in screwball comedies, and dumb blondes in musical comedies.

The Femme Fatale, the Smart Dame, and the Dumb Blonde.

From NOAD2:

noun femme fatale: an attractive and seductive woman, especially one who will ultimately bring disaster to a man who becomes involved with her. ORIGIN early 20th century: French, literally ‘disastrous woman.’

Hurricane Irma is the Femme Fatale in this posting. My Friend Irma is the Dumb Blonde, and her best female friend Jane Stacy is the Smart Dame. The Smart Dame is on the whole a positive stereotype, though she is typically in competition with a man (think Katharine Hepburn vcontending with Spencer Tracy).

Irma la Douce is the Prostitute With a Heart of Gold, and Irma S. Rombauer is The Good Wife, a complex stereotype with some positive content, though it confines women to the spheres of domestic life and moral enforcement (Kinder, Küche, Kirche) and to obedient submission to male authority (St. Paul, in Ephesians 5:22 (KJV): “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord”). As the moral enforcer (monitoring her children’s behavior, speech, and hygiene), the Good Wife also represents the mother figure that American boys are supposed to rebel against to achieve true masculinity.

At the office. Then there’s the Dumb Blonde, a scatterbrained female ditz in a stereotypically female social role (housewife, mistress, secretary, waitress), not necessarily blonde, sometimes given to physical as well as verbal comedy: Gracie Allen as foil to George Burns, Lucille Ball in her various Lucy incarnations, the Joan Davis of I Married Joan, Judy Holiday as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday, Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker in All in the Family, Beth Howland as Vera in Alice. But the great manifestation of the stereotype was by Marie Wilson as stenographer Irma Peterson in My Friend Irma. From Wikipedia:

(#3) Dumb Blonde and Smart Dame: Marie Wilson and Cathy Lewis in the radio studio

My Friend Irma, created by writer-director-producer Cy Howard, is a top-rated, long-run radio situation comedy that spawned a media franchise. It was so popular in the late 1940s that its success escalated to films, television, a comic strip, and a comic book. Marie Wilson portrayed the title character, Irma Peterson, on radio, in two films and the television series. The radio series was broadcast on the Columbia network from April 11, 1947 to August 23, 1954.

Dependable, level-headed Jane Stacy (Cathy Lewis — and Joan Banks during Lewis’ illness in early 1949) began each weekly radio program by narrating a misadventure of her innocent, bewildered roommate, Irma, a scatterbrained stenographer from Minnesota. The two central characters were in their mid-twenties. Irma had her 25th birthday in one episode; she was born on May 5. After the two met in the first episode, they lived together in an apartment rented from their Irish landlady, Mrs. O’Reilly (Jane Morgan, Gloria Gordon).

Irma’s boyfriend Al (John Brown) was a deadbeat, barely on the right side of the law, who had not held a job in years. Only someone like Irma could love Al, whose nickname for Irma was “Chicken”. Al had many crazy get-rich-quick schemes, which never worked. Al planned to marry Irma at some future date so she could support him. Professor Kropotkin (Hans Conried), the Russian violinist at the Princess Burlesque theater, lived upstairs. He greeted Jane and Irma with remarks like, “My two little bunnies with one being an Easter bunny and the other being Bugs Bunny.” The Professor insulted Mrs. O’Reilly, complained about his room, and reluctantly became O’Reilly’s love interest in an effort to make her forget his back rent. In 1953, Conried dropped from the cast and was replaced by Kenny Delmar as his cousin, Maestro Wanderkin.

Irma worked for the lawyer, Mr. Clyde (Alan Reed). She had such an odd filing system that once when Clyde fired her, he had to hire her back again because he couldn’t find anything. Useless at dictation, Irma mangled whatever Clyde dictated. Asked how long she had been with Clyde, Irma said, “When I first went to work with him he had curly black hair, then it got grey, and now it’s snow white. I guess I’ve been with him about six months.”

Irma became less bright and more scatterbrained as the program evolved. She also developed a tendency to whine or cry whenever something went wrong, which was at least once every show. Jane had a romantic inclination for her boss, millionaire Richard Rhinelander III (Leif Erickson). Another actor in the show was Bea Benaderet [who later achieved fame in a series of tv situation comedies].

Irma in a comic book:

(#4)

And in the first of her two movies, in which a pair of comics — Martin and Lewis — were introduced on screen:

(#5) The 1949 movie

Yesterday’s Zippy:

(#1)

Steak bomb as the name of a type of steak sandwich was new to me. Steak sandwiches in general are torpedo-shaped, hence bomboid, but the point of the name is probably to assert that it is in fact the/da bomb, the best: the best of all possible steak sandwiches, because it has everything.

The play of steak bomb vs. stink bomb then just makes the name more memorable.

From the Wikipedia steak sandwich entry:

(#2) Steak bomb from Jitto’s Super Steak, Portsmouth NH

A steak bomb is a hot grinder sandwich [grinder is an item in the submarine sandwich lexical set, which also includes sub, hoagie, and Italian sandwich; see my 8/22/11 posting on the names] consisting of shaved steak [some New Englanders insist this must be steak tips, not steak shavings] and melted provolone or mozzarella cheese with grilled onions, sautéed red and green bell peppers, mushrooms, and peppered shaved steak all on a grinder sandwich roll. It is a variation on the steak submarine sandwich, as is the cheese steak. It is most closely associated with the New England region of the United States, where steak sandwiches are made by quickly grilling shaved steak on a griddle and then adding either cheese, or grilling the steak together with peppers and onions or mushrooms. If all three are combined together it becomes a steak bomb. The addition of salami or other preserved meats or pickles is optional and exact recipes and proportions vary widely. Nearly every pizzeria and sub shop in New England has their own version of the various steak sandwiches and the steak bomb.

The SUB category embraces a number of subcategories (sorry about that), including the STEAK SANDWICH category, which itself embraces a number of finer types, including those named by the expressions Philly cheesesteak / Philly steak sandwich and steak bomb / steakbomb (some discussion of subtypes in a 12/19/15 posting).

More cultural background from a 8/28/17 posting “You Have to Try These 8 Amazing New Hampshire Steakbombs”:

The steakbomb is a New Hampshire tradition stuffed with steak, cheese, salami or pepperoni, peppers, onions, and mushrooms (sometimes pickles too!). There’s something uniquely hearty, savory, and delightful about these sandwiches, and if you haven’t tried one yet these 8 spots are great places to start.

On Jitto’s:

You know a place that calls itself “Home of the Steak Bomb” has to make a good one – and Jitto’s delivers. This isn’t just a sub shop either – you can hang out in their bar and stay a while. Try it at 3131 Layfayette Rd Portsmouth, NH.

But there’s been some bomb-throwing in NH. From the SoGood Blog back in 2007, “Who Owns the Steak Bomb?”:

What is a steak bomb? As a New England boy I know the answer to this question: It’s a sandwich that is overstuffed with steak, cheese, salami (or pepperoni), peppers, onions and mushrooms. You travel around New England and you come across this sandwich somewhat frequently, at many different delis.

So what did USA Subs in Derry, NH do? They went to the U.S. patent office and had the term “steak bomb” trademarked. Then they promptly fired off a letter to their nearest competitor asking them to take the steak bomb off their menu.

But their competitor, Great America Subs (are all New Hampshire sub shops so uber-patriotic?) is crying foul. Timothy Faris, the owner of the store remarks:

“I think whoever let this trademark go through in Washington, D.C., probably had never been to New England and didn’t realize that every sub shop has a steak bomb”

As far as I can tell, the USA Subs campaign came to naught. Steak bombs continue to sizzle all over New England.

Note on the/da bomb.This expressive bit of slang has found its way into many places in pop culture — including other parts of food culture. From the word of hot sauces, this entertaining commercial product:

(#3)

Da’ Bomb Hot Sauce Bundle has three of the hottest bad boys on the market. By buying all three, you can take your pick of the Ground Zero, Ghost Pepper or Beyond Insanity, or mix all three together for a culinary explosion. Great gift for the hot sauce fan in your life or the perfect addition to your hot sauce collection.

From GDoS, subentry 11 for the noun bomb:

(US black/campus) constr. with the [or da] the best [first cite 1960]

Stink bomb. The idiomatic compound explained in Wikipedia:

A stink bomb is a device designed to create an unpleasant smell. They range in effectiveness from simple pranks to military grade malodorants or riot control chemical agents.

The Guinness Book of Records lists two smelliest substances. One is “US Government Standard Bathroom Malodor”; a mixture of eight chemicals with a stench resembling human feces, only much stronger, designed to test the efficacy of deodorizers and air fresheners. Another one, “Who me?”, is a mixture of five sulfur-containing chemicals and smells like rotting food and carcasses.

Much, much less savory than a steak bomb.

Today’s Zippy reflects on a bit of culture — a fascination with deformed and otherwise outrageous human beings — name-checks Lady Gaga, Anderson Cooper, and (indirectly) the current residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington — and exploits the ambiguity of the compound freak show:

(#1) At the menagerie / side show

From NOAD2 on the noun freak show:

a sideshow at a fair, featuring abnormally developed people or animals; an unusual or grotesque event viewed for pleasure, especially when in bad taste.

In the literal freak show in the cartoon, the exhibits include two with pinheads (the real-world freaks who were the models for the cartoon character Zippy; see previous postings here on the microcephalic Schlitzie), plus Sealo — another real-world freak. From Wikipedia:

(#2)

Stanislaus Berent (November 24, 1901 – 1980) was an American freak who performed at many freak shows, including the World Circus Sideshow in 1941 under the stage name of Sealo the Seal Boy (often stylized to just Sealo). He was known for his seal-like arms, which were caused by a congenital medical condition known as phocomelia.

… He had no arms; his hands grew from his shoulders.

Sealo started off his career as a newspaper seller, then was discovered by freak scouters. He was a regular feature at Coney Island’s freak show from circa 1920 to 1970 and was exaggerated as a human with a seal body on some promotional sideshow posters.

On Berent’s condition (and its name), from Wikipedia:

Phocomelia is a condition that involves malformations of the arms and legs [Berent’s legs were very weak]. Although many factors can cause phocomelia, the prominent roots come from the use of the drug thalidomide and from genetic inheritance. Occurrence in an individual results in various abnormalities to the face, limbs, ears, nose, vessels and many other underdevelopments. Although operations may improve some abnormalities, many are not surgically treatable due to the lack of nerves and other related structures.

The term is from Ancient Greek φώκη phōkē, “seal (animal)” + -o– interfix + μέλος melos, “limb” + English suffix –ia) is an extremely rare congenital disorder involving malformation of the limbs (dysmelia). Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire coined the term in 1836.

On the Greek ‘seal’ stem, note Phoca, the genus of earless seals (the Pacific harbor seal, the official seal of the state of California, is in this genus), and the French phoque ‘seal’ (as in the idiom pédé comme une phoque ‘gay as a goose’ (lit. ‘gay as a seal’); see this posting ).