Today’s Zippy takes us through three commercial establishments with (variants) of –orama names, while fretting ambivalently about American patriotism:
(#1)
Wein-O-Rama (Cranston RI), Billy’s Burg-O-Rama (Oxford MA), and Liquorama (stores with that name in many locations), plus Zippy’s own coining, Shrink-O-Rama. As it happens, Bill Griffith has used the imagery in #1 for at least one other strip, which I posted on Language Log on 1/20/07:
(#2)
(That time, Zippy added Life-O-Rama in the third panel.)
The title of #1. A reference to Samuel Johnson’s assertion to James Boswell:
Patriotism [meaning: false or feigned patriotism, wielded as a weapon] is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
No doubt intended as by Bill Griffith as referring to current events in the United States.
The commercial establishments in #1. In the first panel:
(#3)
(#4)
(Photos from the Dinerville site.)
Wein-O-Rama not only has the libfix -orama, but it’s also a portmanteau of weiner (the Rhode Island spelling of wiener ‘hot dog’) and -orama, with an overlap in /ǝr/, yielding -ama as an apparent variant of -orama..
The competition among places offering Rhode Island weiners is substantial. Wein-O-Rama gets good reviews, but then so does the Olneyville N.Y. System chain; on Olneyville and the type of hot dogs it provides, see my 12/3/15 posting “Olneyville New York System” and the link in it.
In the second panel, Billy’s Burg-O-Rama in Oxford MA, the locale of a Zippy strip I looked at in a 4/9/16 posting “Zip-O-Rama”, on the playful libfix -((o/a)r)ama ‘display, spectacle, something really major’, with more examples.
In the third panel, a Liquorama store, which one I haven’t been able to determine.
Postings on -orama.
the 1/20/07 Language Log posting (above)
a 9/10/09 posting “To the next level” (link)
a 2/15/10 posting “orama-orama” (link)
a 11/18/10 posting “Data points: Playful libfixes 1/18/10” (link)
the 12/3/15 posting on Olneyville (above)
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