Archive for November, 2021

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Annals of commerce and advertising

November 19, 2021

An hour or so ago I ordered a copy of the book version of the 1619 Project. To update the 8/18/19 issue* of The New York Times Magazine that I’d been saving since it came out. From (my copy of) the cover of that issue:


(#1) Setting the scene for the project

*Note: 8/18 in print; 8/14 on-line, so the earlier date is the one now given as the date of publication.

Then, Amazon being what it is, I immediately got offers of products related to my purchase: an assemblage of salt and pepper grinders. I am baffled, utterly baffled.

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Posted in Books, Race and ethnicity | 1 Comment »

Pop culture projections

November 18, 2021

In yesterday’s Zippy strip, Rorschach inkblots act as springs releasing elaborate pop culture fantasies from our Pinhead’s imagination:


(1) Dolly Parton appears in the second panel and pretty much takes over; the reference in panel 3 is to Parton’s song “Jolene”

The Rorschach inkblot projective tests have appeared on this blog twice before, both times in Bizarro cartoons. (I sense a theme here.)

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Music | Leave a Comment »

Helgi Narcissus (again)

November 18, 2021

(Attractive men modeling underwear, some of them contemplating their genital packages. But nothing raunchy.)

Yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad with the model I’ve called Helgi in Helsinki Athletica Kasper long johns, contemplating his own handsome body:


(#1) Helgi4, following three previous DJ photos of this model set in a trendy bathing room; like Helgi2 and 3, modeling long johns, this time in an off-white with just the slightest touch of pink (a shade DJ calls Dusty Pink); like Helgi1, casting his gaze downward to admire, Narcissus-like, the weighty excellence of his own genital package, but now sliding his right hand down his firm belly under the waistband of his underwear (man’s got a hand in his pants)

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Posted in Gaze, Gesture, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Comes a pause in the day’s occupations

November 18, 2021

… that is known as Miller Time … when you deserve a beer break today.

None of this makes sense unless you know the advertising slogans: It’s Miller Time (for Miller High Life beer, not for novelist Henry Miller, playwright Arthur Miller, or bandleader Glenn Miller), You Deserve a Break Today (for McDonald’s, hawking hamburgers, not beer). But Calvin knows:


(#1) The Calvin and Hobbes strip distributed today, originally published 10/9/86, alluding to “Miller Time” slogans in Miller High Life beer commercials from the period

Calvin is supposed to be 6 years old — admittedly, with the sensibilities of a boy of roughly 10, but, still, not expected to be familiar with the ways of beer-drinking, so his father is alarmed that Calvin seems to be looking forward to a brew after the occupations of his day. (Whatever happened to the Children’s Hour? Television happened.)

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Posted in Language and food, Language in advertising, Linguistics in the comics, Slogans, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »

Line 1, doctor, that crazy coconut again

November 17, 2021

And the doctor said to her — everybody join in! — “Put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up”.

Yesterday’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro Desert Island cartoon, with Wayno’s title “Coco Loco”:


(#1) The terrible toll of isolation (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)

The extraordinarily versatile coconut — the fruit of the coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) — pressed into service as a telephone receiver for a desperate and deranged castaway.

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Posted in Comic conventions, Etymological Fallacy, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Music | Leave a Comment »

Cruising in his long johns, take 2

November 16, 2021

(Men in various states of undress, visibly tumescent while minimally clothed, looking for sex with other men — so not for everyone.)

Yesterday’s mail ad from Daily Jocks, a carefully composed, even elegant, presentation of a muscular young man posing in fashionable form-fitting long johns that highlight his weighty package, while he fixes us with an intense gaze that gay men use in cruising for sex with other men (in another context, it’s the intense, fixed smoulder that straight men use in trolling for sex with women):


(#1) Call him Helgi (it’s Scandinavian and heroic); he’s posing in the trendy bathing room from two other recent appearances of his — on 11/12 in a much cruder pose but still in Helsinki Athletica long johns; and then on 11/3 in very brief white DJX Signature briefs, apparently contemplating the excellent penis contained within

I’ll revisit those two appearances (with notes on the sociosexual worlds of gay men) and then turn to the English garment lexicon, focusing on long johns, tights, leggings, and the union suit.

But first, a bit more about the presentation of Helgi in #1.

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Posted in Art, Books, Clothing, Etymology, Facial expression, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Male art, Photography, Underwear | 1 Comment »

Grease is the word, but Z is the way

November 16, 2021

From Facebook posters, this 1934 painting by Paul Klee (Swiss artist alert!):


(#1) The Path Into the Blue — is, evidently, through a Z

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Posted in Art, Movies and tv | Leave a Comment »

Memic dummies at home

November 14, 2021

Today’s Bizarro shows a domestic scene with car crash dummies:


(#1) Yes! An instance of the Car Crash Dummy meme, one of many instances (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are, wow, 10 in this strip — see this Page.)

Yet another meme turning on a specific pop culture character: Potato Head, King Kong, Waldo, Godzilla, Batman (to mention some that have already appeared on this blog). Well, the crash test dummies are pop culture characters, but they’re also significant technological figures.

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Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Technology | 5 Comments »

Fiberglass football

November 14, 2021

The Zippy strip of 11/8, in which our Pinhead confronts the hulking fiberglass figure of Football Man (looming in front of the Moreland Tire Co., whose products Football Man is presumably exalting:


(#1) Whatever Moreland products Football Man is hawking, he’s also exalting football as quintessentially American — so if Zippy is no fan of the game, he’s no American either — and as a (dark) metaphor for life (next up in the game of life: brain damage)

Having spent 29 years as a college professor in Columbus OH, I have a lot to say about football, very little of it pleasant, but this is probably not the time to air my grievances.

So put that aside, and ask the questions that almost every Zippy strip provokes: who are these guys? what is this place?

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Posted in Derivation, Inflection, Linguistics in the comics, Mistakes, Morphology | 5 Comments »

A double desert cartoon

November 13, 2021

It arrived this week, just published: Send Help! A Collection of Marooned Cartoons, edited by Jon Adams and Ellis Rosen: a compendium of Desert Island (DI) cartoons that has given me much pleasure. More on the book and its contents to come below, but here I note cartoons that combine the DI cartoon meme with another cartoon meme: in the book, DI + Psychiatrist and DI + Grim Reaper. And then, stunningly, Desert Island + Desert Crawl.

A Desert Crawl cartoon has a man (or, more generally, people) crawling, parched and hallucinatory, across a seemingly endless desert — without escape, something the DC meme shares with DI. (The most recent DC cartoon on this blog is by David Sipress in my 11/10/21 posting “Four cartoons on familiar themes”.) The wonderful DC + DI combo in Send Help! is by Mort Gerberg. A terrible scan of it, but the best I could do:


(#1) The original is a bit bigger than this, and even wispier, almost ethereal, like an indistinct vision; as a result, it takes a bit of time for you to realize the deep absurdity of the scene

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Posted in Books, Comic conventions, Geography, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »

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