Just watched a re-run of a Psych episode — I’m a fan of this silly show — on the USA network, where the program was repeatedly interrupted by an ad for the film Little Fockers, which will soon play on that network. The ad revels in repetitions of the family name, mostly to suggest fucker. Hugely unsubtle double entendres, which become wearing in even just one playing of a short ad.
Archive for April, 2013
Double entendres
April 10, 2013being like
April 10, 2013Today’s Zits:
Something like a newspaper is the issue. Like in what way? Jeremy’s dad meant physically like a newspaper; Jeremy understood it as functionally like a newspaper. This is not an ambiguity, but an underspecification in the meaning of be like. It’s still problematic for communication.
Man Ray
April 9, 2013(About art rather than language.)
A set of notecards from Pomegranate Press I’ve been sending to friends has images of Man Ray gelatin silver prints from the 1920s. Fascinating stuff. Two samples. First, the famous Le Violon d’Ingres (1925) —
and then Noire et blanche of 1926, with Kiki de Montparnasse (as above) with an African artifact —
A very old joke
April 9, 2013A Cyanide & Happiness cartoon collected in the 2010 book Ice Cream & Sadness:
An old joke, turning on an ambiguity in some double-object verbs: V NP1 NP2 interpretable either as benefactive (‘V NP2 for NP1’ — e.g. ‘make a woman for me’) or with some other argument structure (in this case, ‘make NP1 into NP2’, here ‘make me into a woman’). Another classic version: call me a taxi ‘call a taxi for me’ (benefactive) or ‘say that I’m a taxi’ (other: ‘say that NP1 is a NP2′)’.
[Added 4/10/13: There’s a gay version of the Cyanide joke, with the readings reversed. Someone tells a gay man that they can make him a man, meaning make him into a *real* (i.e. straight) man, but he takes them to be saying that they can make a man for him. There are several variants.]
An unfortunate mishearing
April 9, 2013
pinnies
April 9, 2013In my e-mail a little while ago, a Princeton University Store ad offering Princeton pinnies — one illustrated here:
The weather is finally starting to warm up and we have the perfect lightweight summer staple for Tigers everywhere – the Princeton pinnie! With a nice loose fit and 2-ply mesh these are sure to keep you cool in all senses of the word! Did we mention, they’re all REVERSIBLE and available in several different styles?!
The term pinnie for such a garment was new to me. But it’s been around for a while, though primarily in British usage.
sugar daddy
April 9, 2013From the Castro Biscuit site on 4/3/13:
Only in the Castro Moment of the Day: Straight Dude Seeks Mentor Daddy (by Walyde Palmer)
Making my way home through the Gayborhood I chanced upon a sight not likely seen in to many other places in the world other than SF’s Castro: a married, straight dude holding a sign announcing he seeks a succesful(sic) Sugar Daddy for help and advice.
I’ll talk about the compound sugar daddy in a while, but first more of the story, which focuses on the matter of sexuality. (Hat tip to Ned Deily.)
On the pun watch
April 9, 2013Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
Groan. Ate for hate, sounding Cockney.
As always, understanding the cartoon requires all sorts of cultural and factual knowledge, in this case about the practice of marriage therapy and about the habits of the praying mantis.
And in a teaser head on the front page of the NYT on3/27/13:
Off the Eaten Track
Red Hook, Brooklyn, offers a wild array of tastes and food trends.
A play on the idiom off the beaten track, here referring to eating off the beaten track.
Ralf König
April 8, 2013I was pointed to a classic gay comic by the bibliography in the entertaining and informative The Dick Book: Tuning Your Favorite Body Part (Micha Schulze & Christian Scheuss, Bruno Gmünder 2013, translation of Das Schwanzbuch. Tuning für dein bestes Stück 2008): Ralf König’s The Killer Condom (2009 Ignite! Entertainment (rev. ed.); 1992 The Killer Condom Catalan Communications, translation from German by Jim Steakley of 1988 Kondom des Grauens [‘Condom of Horror’] Edition Kunst der Comics/Ralf König). Aside from the pleasures of the story, there’s some snowclonish interest.
fag bag
April 8, 2013From various people on Facebook, this WPA poster with the compound fag bag:
The fag here is the fag of cigarette smoking, though it turns out that there are now two notable uses of fag bag involving the sexual slur fag: for reference to a fanny pack and as a personal slur.