Today’s Zippy, with several points of linguistic interest:
There’s Lasko, the Dingburg version of Lascaux. And the reversal in Burgdingus. And the rhyming name Ale, Quail & Email Society (what an unlikely assortment of interests!). And the art critics talking entirely in teenspeak (the truncated “I was, like, totally!” is especially nice). And the name Calvert Astroboy, which might be entirely made up or might be a play on a name I don’t recognize (I do have a friend who uses the handle Astroboy; he’s an astronomer). And, finally, the slang punked ‘ripped off’ (in this context; ‘tricked’ or ‘humiliated by being tricked’ in other contexts).
June 18, 2011 at 8:14 pm |
[…] To prank. [AMZ note: extended senses 'trick, humiliate by tricking, rip off'; see my recent Zippy posting] I got expelled when I punked the […]
June 19, 2011 at 5:45 am |
Calvert: twist of “Calvin” [and Hobbes]?
Astroboy: major manga character Astro Boy.
*From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Boy:
Astro Boy is the first, most popular Japanese television series that embodied the aesthetic that later became familiar worldwide as anime.[4] It originated as a manga in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka, revered in Japan as the “God of Manga.”[5] After enjoying success abroad, Astro Boy was remade in the 1980s as Shin Tetsuwan Atomu, known as Astroboy in other countries, and again in 2003. In November 2007, he was named Japan’s envoy for overseas safety.[6] An American computer-animated 3-D film based on the original manga series by Tezuka was released on October 23, 2009.
* From http://astroboy.manga.com/ (meta tag description):
Astro Boy is a sci-fi series set in a futuristic world where androids co-exist with humans. Its focus is on the adventures of the titular Astro Boy (or simply Astro), a powerful robot created by the head of the Ministry of Science Doctor Tenma to replace his son Tobio. After Tobio died in a car accident, Dr. Tenma built Astro in Tobio’s image and treated him as lovingly as if he were the real Tobio, but soon realized that the little android could not fill the void of his lost son, especially since Astro couldn’t grow or express human aesthetics (in one set of panels, Astro is shown preferring the mechanical shapes of cubes over the organic shapes of flowers).
June 19, 2011 at 3:14 pm |
Thanks for the Astro Boy material — surely something Griffith had in mind.
June 19, 2011 at 5:25 pm |
It occurred to me later that Calvert Reserve is a brand of whiskey.
June 19, 2011 at 7:38 pm |
Calvert goes in so many directions. For instance, Calvert Vaux, landscape architect (with Frederick Law Olmstead, a designer of Central Park in NYC). And there’s a lot more.
June 25, 2011 at 3:47 pm |
[…] (Earlier Zippy on cave painting here.) […]