For reasons that don’t need to concern you, the full set of cartoons in The New Yorker‘s cartoon bank that have MEOW in their text. Only five of them, and they give me something to post on a day otherwise consumed by medical appointments, planning for medical appointments, and suffering from my afflictions. I post them here in roughly chronological order — three actually published in the magazine, two from material distributed in other ways by the magazine.
Archive for November, 2022
MEOW
November 8, 2022Centennial moments in NYC
November 7, 2022(On the brief, skeletal side; I continue to lose most of my days in irresistible exhausted sleep, so this is something of a Mary, Queen of Scots Not Dead Yet posting. My apologies.)
Two events of 1924. First, the Linguistic Society of America (hereafter, the LSA) was founded at a gathering in New York City (hereafter, NYC) on 12/28/1924 — at the very end of the year, but in 1924, so 1924 counts as the founding year of the LSA. Second, also in NYC, Harold Ross and Jane Grant (with the financial support of entrepreneur Raoul Fleischmann) embarked on the creation of a sophisticated humor magazine, with Ross as its editor. Their plans for this magazine, named simply The New Yorker (hereafter, the NYer), were realized in its first issue, of 2/21/1925. So 1925 counts as the founding year of the NYer.
A forthcoming event of 2024. The 2024 annual meeting of the LSA will be held at the Sheraton New York Times Square on 4-7 January. Meeting in NYC is of course no accident, and several centennial events have already been scheduled.
Now, since Ross and Grant (and their associates) were cooking up the NYer in NYC at the very same time the LSA’s founders were gathering there to formally establish that organization, and since the NYer’s one-panel gag cartoons — very often turning on linguistic points — were a central feature of the magazine, it’s natural to think about celebrating the LSA and the NYer together in some way. So there are modest plans for a display project at the 2024 annual meeting looking at cartoons in the NYer over the past 100 years that have to do with language. Cool. As an eminence grise versed in the ways of NYer cartoons, I’ve agreed to provide a bit of help to the young scholar who will be doing the actual work of preparing this display.
This posting is a rumble about things that are just now getting underway. More information to come, with an invitation to make suggestions about stuff for the display. Meanwhile, play with the idea.
A kiss before dying
November 6, 2022My interpretation of Susie Bright’s complex feelings before Election Tuesday, as she reported them on Facebook yesterday by re-posting her FB image from 11/5/14 (cropped here to focus on the crucial bits):
(#1) From a theatrical poster for the 1969 cowboy dinosaur movie The Valley of Gwangi: on the one hand, exhilaration (above, on being kissed by, omigod, the young James Franciscus in cowboy gear; in the election, on exercising the power of the vote, which has been a big thing for me since 1961); on the other hand, fear of looming devastation (above, in that rapacious death-dealing giant reptile, a vicious allosaurus; in the election, on what could happen if (delusional and malevolent) brutes and bullies take over the government) — is this a kiss before dying?
Crash blossoming: Doctor Who as abortionist
November 5, 2022A headline sighting reported on Facebook yesterday
— Wendy Thrash:
(#1)
— AZ > WT: A lovely garden-path example (as they are known in the trade) — made worse by the line break in your posting (Doctor Who / Performed Abortion …)
Newspaper headlines, with their compressed, trimmed-down format, make a rich ground for garden pathing; garden-path headlines are then some of the most remarkable specimens of the type — so remarkable that they’ve gotten their own label: crash blossoms (after an exemplary species).
I will explain.
Booth, and two great-grand-Booths
November 4, 2022
(#1) Mrs. Ritterhouse, and her cat, mourn with us
The mythological John Singer Sargent
November 4, 2022A very brief note set off by Pinterest postings of artwork (some paintings, some sketches) on mythological themes by John Singer Sargent (who appears every so often on this blog). In particular, two remarkable paintings from a hundred years ago (both in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston):
(#1) The Judgement of Paris (1920)
(#2) Perseus on Pegasus Slaying Medusa (1921)
Remarkable formal compositions, with subtle use of color. With muscular bodies — male, female, equine — as a focus.
I haven’t been able to find anything on-line about the history of these two paintings. The great age of painting on themes from classical mythology was from the 14th through the 19th centuries, so Sargent’s 20th-century gods-and-heroes works are something of a surprise, even in such a stylistically conservative artist; surely they were commissioned, but by whom, for what purpose?
Zwicky logos
November 3, 2022Return with me now to the middle of June, when I was impelled into the world of Zwicky logos, including not only ones for prominent Swiss commercial enterprises in grain, sewing thread, and real estate (the grain company is where it all started on 6/14), but also for beer (in Colorado), hair styling (also in Colorado), car repair (in Canton Aargau in Switzerland), and astronomical surveys (in California).
The original impulse came from Kyle Wohlmut, posting on Facebook on 6/14 “at Zwicky Areal”, with this photo taken from his commuter train:
(#1) KW > AZ (about the gnome in the logo): I don’t think that’s a very good likeness…
The logo in question:
(#2) The gnome is indeed not a good likeness of me
There ensued a confusion that turned out to have to do with the word Areal, but eventually it was established that the gnomic logo in #1 and #2 is for the Zwicky grain company (Schweizerische Schälmühle E. Zwicky AG), headquartered in a corner of Canton Thurgau; while the Zwicky sewing-thread company (now merged into the German company A&E Gütermann) and the real-estate company (Zwicky & Co AG, headquartered in the Zürich suburb of Wallisellen) base their logos on the Donald Brun silk-cat poster of the 1950s (which I’ve posted about repeatedly).
But Kyle’s note sent me on a search for Zwicky logos, which took me immediately to the 4 Noses Brewing Company in Broomfield CO, makers of Zwicky P (a Pilsner-style lager) and on to all the rest.
Prof. Dr. Monica Elisabeth Zwicky
November 2, 2022In academia, she’s noted for her research on sex determination in insects and her more recent career in training biology teachers; meanwhile, through her Zwicky father, she’s in the line of the sewing-thread Zwickys (going back to 1840 — made memorable through Donald Brun’s Zwicky-silk cat poster, Soie à coudre) and is now the CEO of the real-estate development firm that evolved from that enterprise.
Prof. Dr. Monica Elisabeth Zwicky (Professor of Developmental Biology, Department of Molecular Life Sciences, Univ. of Zurich [so listed on the English versions of its pages; it’s Zürich on the German pages]); photo from the Molecular Life Sciences website
The thumbnail sketch from this website:
Monica Zwicky was born to a Swedish mother and Swiss father in Zurich and grew up in Lausanne. She has two grown-up children, is in charge of training aspiring biology teachers and is an Adjunct Professor of MNF [die Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, the Faculty of Science, the larger division to which Molecular Life Sciences belongs]
This is then followed by an interview with her about her interest in natural science, her life as a woman in biology, her drive for independence and authority, and her recognition that the role of mentor and nurturer of students comes easily to her as an extension of her maternal role. It’s a complex and self-reflective piece, also something of a surprise on a Molecular Life Sciences site.
The Tale of Raunchy Appetizers
November 1, 2022A gripping adventure, begun yesterday in my posting “Invitation to the groaning phallic board”, which was temporarily abandoned due to illness. The final chapter in the story of this raunchy appetizer board:
(#1) From a Facebook ad for a wooden appetizer board in the outline shape of the male genitals (head with frenulum and urethral cleft, gently bent shaft, and testicles) — highly stylized, highly schematic, but with these quite specific details; shown here with the compartments filled with appetizers of various sorts, and with accompanying bowls of other appetizers
The photo appears to be a scam come-on, created either by photographic manipulation or by the crafting of a single wooden model for advertising purposes.
My interest was in both the appetizer board (so called) and in the foodstuffs — the appetizers (though they sometimes go by other names) — that fill such boards. On appetizer boards in general, and then
some reflection on the modes of phallicity, extending my thoughts in two earlier postings, “Enhanced phallicity” of 12/10/21 (about things that are not merely phallic by nature, but (also) deliberately designed to resemble penises in some detail) and “Plush life” of 9/11/22 (about four modes of phallicity). What, in this world, are we to make of the raunchy appetizer board?
Every meme is better with a pumpkin in it
November 1, 2022🐇 🐇 🐇 (NOVEM! NOVEM! N-O-V spells VON! Von who? No, No, that’s Doctor Von Who! Doctor Von Who’s on first? Doctor Von Who’s on first of November, oh god this is where we came in)
Bob Eckstein’s charming cartoon-trope cartoon (a new cartoon for Halloween this year @AltaJournal, also posted yesterday on Facebook along with a trick-or-treating story; and note that National Pumpkin Day went by on 10/26):
(#1) Three cartoon memes (I will no longer attempt to distinguish memes from tropes, given the extraordinary variation in the usage of the two terms): Sisyphus, Desert Island, Seeker and Seer
