Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro takes us to the Men’s Department, where a salesman of extraordinary style purveys clothing, shoes, accessories, and men’s fragrances:
(#1) The striped shirt is a marinière, and the two scents are jokey takeoffs on men’s fragrances (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
From my 2/16/21 posting “Hello, sailor”, this description of
la marinière, the cotton long-sleeved shirt with horizontal blue and white stripes; characteristically worn by seamen in the French Navy, it has become a common part of the stereotypical image of a French person
More on the shirt below. Meanwhile, the cologne Horse Soccer (from Barf Lauren) is a play on Polo (from Ralph Lauren); the source of the name Royal Whiff for the other cologne is still a mystery to me, but no doubt an enlightened reader will explain the joke to me (though Royal Whiff would be an entertaining name even if it has no direct model).
Previous postings. The “Hello, sailor” posting is about the conventional sexual proposition “Hello, sailor”, sodomy, seamen / semen, Tom of Finland, Pierre et Gilles, Jean Paul Gaultier, the marinière, the slogan “Uncle Sam Wants YOU”, and the Village People’s “In the Navy”; and includes this Gaultier ad combining several of these themes:
(#2) Note the striped shirt, plus a pile of French-American homoeroticism
And then an earlier posting, from 9/7/20, “Le Male, the men’s fragrance”, about the fragrance, Jean Paul Gaultier, the marinière shirt, sailors, pirates, sodomy, Jean Genet, and Fassbinder’s Querelle. The magic of Gaultier takes us from the shirt to sailors (and pirates) and right on to sodomy. But the uncertain customer in #1 is unaware that she stands at the edge of the precipice to pedication.
A mistaken moment. In fact, the customer in effect came for an argument and got abuse instead. She’d explained to the nice young man at the bottom of the escalators that she was looking for a sole meunière (hoping to be directed to the store’s celebrated Tea Room, where she could have a light lunch of this subtle and tasty fish dish), but because of her awkward French and the young man’s poor hearing was pointed instead to the store’s seul marinière, the only striped French shirt remaining in stock, in the Men’s Department.
In #1 we see the dubious customer and the gushing clerk about to descend into complaint and recrimination, such an unpleasant scene. Let us draw the veil on this unfortunate incident, to dwell instead on the excellence of sole meunière, the culinary delight that is to be celebrated for having drawn Julia Child into French cooking.
Well, dredge me in flour and sauté me in butter! From Wikipedia:
Sole meunière (or sole à la meunière) is a classic French fish dish consisting of sole, preferably whole (gray skin removed) or filet, that is dredged in flour, pan fried in butter and served with the resulting brown butter sauce, parsley and lemon. When cooked, sole meunière has a light but moist texture and a mild flavor.
And on the sauce:
Meunière is both a French sauce and a method of preparation, primarily for fish. The word itself means “miller’s wife” in French [le meunier ‘miller’]. Thus to cook something à la meunière was to cook it by first dredging it in flour. A meunière sauce is a simple preparation — brown butter, chopped parsley, and lemon — and the name refers to its simple rustic nature.
The sauce is also used on trout (as is, or with creole spices for a New Orleans speciality, or with roasted almonds for truite amondine); on abalone steaks (where I experienced it, memorably, over 50 years ago at a restaurant specializing in abalone, at the ocean end of Sunset Blvd. — yes, that Sunset Blvd.); and, at Osteria Toscana Palo Alto — a block and a half from my house! — on calamari steaks (using squid as a replacement for the now-endangered mollusk abalone). A photo of the Osteria specialty (the restaurant is justifiably proud of it):
(#3) Yes, those are capers in the sauce, and very nice they are
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