Arnold Zwicky's Blog

No, not that Alamo, the Alamo Court Motel in Ocean City MD:

(#1)

Meanwhile, Griffy confronts the paranoid conspiracist Claude (who serves as the loony foil to Bill Griffith’s voice of reason).

The Alamo Court in an old photo posted by Retro, who says, “This picture is from the 1960’s. I think this motel is long gone.” The photo:

(#2)

Ocean City MD is a long way from San Antonio TX, but the Alamo has become one of those Symbols of America: heroic but doomed last stand (as the cartoon title has it), followed soon thereafter by a bold victory.  From Wikipedia:

The Battle of the Alamo (February 23 – March 6, 1836) was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas, United States), killing all of the Texian defenders. Santa Anna’s cruelty during the battle inspired many Texians — both Texas settlers and adventurers from the United States — to join the Texian Army. Buoyed by a desire for revenge, the Texians defeated the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, ending the revolution.

Back at the cartoon: “take away our guns and our cheesy fries” is a nice bathetic drop from fierce seriousness to silliness. And then there’s Brian Williams, of the NBC Nightly News, as a Marxist threat.

This entry was posted on September 12, 2014 at 9:33 am and is filed under Linguistics in the comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.