Today’s Zippy reminisces affectionately about the character actor Arnold Stang:
Of special interest to me, since Stang and I are are both citizens of the great Land of Arnoldia.
From Wikipedia:
Arnold Stang (September 28, 1918 – December 20, 2009) was an American comic actor and voice actor, whose comic persona was a small and bespectacled, yet brash and knowing big-city type.
… Stang once described himself as “a frightened chipmunk who’s been out in the rain too long.” As for his distinctive squawky, nasal Brooklyn voice, he said “I’m kind of attached to it…[it’s] a personal logo. It’s like your Jell-O or Xerox.
You can watch him here in a Chunky candy bar commercial from the late 50s.
Arnolds on this blog:
on 8/1/10, “Zippylicious names”:
I am the bearer of a name that strikes many people as intrinsically funny, or stupid, or unpleasant, or just weird, with its stereotypically Jewish or German first name (and the association with the nebbishy Arnold Stang) and its hard-to-pronounce Eastern-European-sounding last name. I’ve had a guy laugh in my face when I told him my name — “Nobody’s name is Arnold Zwicky!” — and, though that was probably the liquor talking, it was pretty clearly the expression of his heartfelt feelings. Things are much better in Switzerland, of course. (The nuts come, like Charley’s aunt, from Brazil, the Zwickys come from Switzerland.)
Curse you, Bill Griffith, with your whitebread American name!
on 10/7/15, “Adventures in Arnoldia”:
Wikipedia … has a list about Arnold as a given name. Real people: Arnold Stang, Arnold Palmer, Arnold Scharzenegger. And fictional Arnolds: Arnold Rimmer (a hologram character in Red Dwarf, Arnold Ziffel (Fred Ziffel’s pig on Green Acres), Arnold Zeck (the villainous character in the Nero Wolfe books). Imagine them together as the Three Arnolds — a singing group, or a comedy team, or a gang, or whatever. Arnold Stang, Palmer, and Schwarzenegger, together for your listening enjoyment. Arnold Rimmer, Ziffel, and Zeck, the dreaded Enforcers for the Mob.
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