… and a dirty joke. A ¡Toma Guasa! cartoon from October 2015:
(#1)
No one’s misspelled HALLOWEEN; the O is right there, it’s just that it’s an asshole.
Mira mi culo in panel 1 is ‘look at my ass’, with the same ambiguity in Spanish culo as in English ass — ‘butt(ocks)’ vs. ‘anus’.
And I got to the cartoon by looking for puns with mira and culo, together suggesting ‘miracle’: Latin miraculum, Italian miracolo, Spanish milagro. My asshole, it’s a miracle!
Here’s the English version, Cyanide and Happiness (a strip I’ve posted about before) from 10/19/15:
(#2)
The asshole joke is still there, but I think it’s better in Spanish.
I’m struggling with the Spanish title ¡Toma Guasa!, which has nothing to do with cyanide and not much to do with happiness, and lacks a conjunction corresponding to English and. Just two nouns: toma ‘taking, capture’ and guasa ‘joke, banter’. I don’t get a snappy English translation out of that, but then translating titles is never easy.
Unavoidably, I guess, once I got to “It’s a miracle”, I was taken to pop music: to Barry Manilow and (oh yes) to Culture Club.
“It’s a Miracle” is a 1975 single by Barry Manilow and was the second release from his album, Barry Manilow II. (link)
You can listen to the audio here.
Gay interest here: “Manilow’s well-known association with Bette Midler began at the Continental Baths in New York City in 1971” (link). Yes, the gay baths, celebrating sex between men. (On a personal note, the Continental Baths provided my first bathhouse experience, and a satisfying experience it was.) Despite all that, I’ve never warmed to Barry Manilow.
But then there’s this:
“It’s a Miracle”, was the fifth and final single from new wave band Culture Club’s 1983 Colour by Numbers album. (link)
You can watch the video here. This is Culture Club, wildly queer, and (to get back to the culo theme) it has a dancer swinging her butt for the camera.
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