Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(The very last section of this posting, on the name Monty Crisco, gets right down to man-on-man sex in street language, so is out of bounds for kids and the sexually modest; the rest of the posting is quirky but not indecent)

The 1/4 Zippy the Pinhead strip takes us back to Zippy’s imagined perverse version of the (now-defunct) Miss Albany Diner in Albany NY — call it the Zipperverse Diner — and its blackboard menu above the counter:

(#1) The messages on the board are about the day’s offerings, but neither sandwiches nor pies are mentioned; meanwhile, Monte Cristo sandwiches are a not-uncommon diner offering, but Zippy maintains, perversely, that the sandwich name is correctly spelled Monty Crisco (and you don’t want to think about the ingredients or how you eat the thing); and Nesselrode pie is a bit of elegance far from any ordinary diner’s pie offerings, but Zippy supposes, perversely, that it’s on the board at the comic-strip diner, with a typo in it

Three things here: about the (actual) diner and its appearance in an earlier Zippy strip, with the same drawing but different text in Zippy’s speech balloons; about (actual) Monte Cristo sandwiches and Nesselrode pie; and about the name Monty Crisco.

The Miss Albany Diner. From a recent version of the Wikipedia entry:

Tanpopo Ramen and Sake Bar (formerly known as Miss Albany Diner and Lil’s Diner) is a historic diner in Albany, New York, built in 1941 and located at 893 Broadway, one of the oldest streets in Albany

… The Miss Albany served its last meal as a diner on February 10, 2012.

And then from my 10/29/19 posting “News at the Miss Albany”, with the earlier Zippy strip and information about the diner:

(#2) In this strip, as in #1, what Zippy talks about as on the blackboard menu has nothing to do with what’s actually there (though French fries are at least a shared topic in #2, while sandwiches and pies are sheer Zippyesque invention in #1)

From that posting, the actual diner’s interior:

(#3) The counter (and menu board) at the diner before it was repurposed and redesigned

And the diner’s exterior in 2010:

(#4) The old Miss Albany

Monte Cristo sandwiches and Nesselrode pie. On the sandwich, from my 11/15/18 posting “Bite me, Count Bendix!”:  a Zippy, set in the Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights NJ (in Bergen County, in the NJ suburbs of NYC, near Passaic), celebrates grilled or fried ham and cheese sandwiches:

(#5)

From Wikipedia:

(#6) A double-decker pan-fried version from the Macheesmo site

A Monte Cristo is a fried ham and cheese sandwich, a variation of the French croque-monsieur. In the 1930s–1960s, American cookbooks had recipes for this sandwich under such names as “French Sandwich”, “Toasted Ham Sandwich”, and “French Toasted Cheese Sandwich”. Swiss cheese is typically used.

In most regions, the sandwich is savory rather than sweet. Traditionally, it is dipped in its entirety in egg batter and pan fried, though it may also be deep fried. Regional variations may include sliced turkey. In some areas of the contiguous U.S. it is served grilled; in others, it is an open sandwich with only the bread battered and the assembled sandwich heated slightly under a grill or broiler.

The history of the name is unclear; it might not have appeared on menus until the 1950s in southern California. And the name might have been chosen for its ornamental value as an allusion to romantic adventure. The sandwich name is not yet in the OED, though OED3 (Dec. 2002) does have this Monte Cristo entry:

A person, event, etc., reminiscent of those portrayed in The Count of Monte Cristo [Alexandre Dumas’ novel Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1844–5; earliest in English translation in 1846)], esp. with allusion to the great wealth, imprisonment, or daring escapades of the protagonist

Then, we approach Nesselrode pie through the Wikipedia entry on Karl Nesselrode:

Karl Robert Reichsgraf[ von Nesselrode-Ehreshoven, also known as Charles de Nesselrode (14 December 1780 – 23 March 1862), was a Russian diplomat of German descent. For 40 years (1816–1856), Nesselrode guided Russian policy as foreign minister. He was also a leading European conservative statesman of the Holy Alliance.

… [fun fact:] Nesselrode’s education in a Berlin gymnasium reinforced his Germanic roots. Even though Nesselrode would work for the Russians for the next few decades of his life, he could neither read nor write Russian and spoke it only brokenly.

… Foods named in his honour but devised by his [French] chef Jean Mouy using chestnut puree are

— Nesselrode Pudding (Pouding à la Nesselrode), a thick custard cream with sweet puree of chestnut, raisins, candied fruit, currants, cherry liquor and whipped cream molded and served chilled as a bombe with maraschino custard sauce.

— Nesselrode Pie, a chestnut custard cream pie [or, more expansively: a chestnut and candied-fruit rum-flavored custard cream pie garnished with chocolate]

Mouy’s Nesselrode pie was just a chestnut custard cream pie; more recent (and more complex) recipes reproduce something of the effect of Nesselrode pudding in a pie shell.

Now, a note on diner pies. Your standard American diner pies are: apple, blueberry, cherry, chocolate, and lemon meringue. Some diners will also offer one or more of: banana cream, pecan, and key lime. There might be very upscale diners that offer some version of Nesselrode pie, but I have found none, or even any diner offering a chestnut cream pie. Nesselrode pie at the Miss Albany Diner is a figment of Zippy’s (extraordinarily active) imagination.

Monty Crisco. (Not for kids or the sexually modest; if that’s you, you should leave now.) Zippy’s imagination also brings us this alarming-sounding sandwich. Its name comes in two parts: the proper name Monty; and the brand name Crisco, for a vegetable-oil shortening with an off-label use as a sexlube, especially for anal intercourse and fisting. The image of a sandwich capturing Monty Hall, Field Marshal Montgomery, and the cast of Monty Python engaged in an orgy of fisting — up to their elbows in Crisco, so to speak — is hard to shake.

Part 1. Wikipedia has a page on the name Monty. The summary:

Monty is a masculine given name, often a short form of Montgomery, Montague and other similar names. It is also a surname.

The Wikipedia page gives lists of notable people with the given name (like tv game show host Monty Hall), with the nickname (like British field marshal Bernard Montgomery), and with the surname; and a list of fictional characters (like Monty Python).

Part 2. From the Wikipedia page on Crisco:

Crisco is an American brand of shortening that is produced by B&G Foods. Introduced in June 1911 by Procter & Gamble, it was the first shortening to be made entirely of vegetable oil, originally cottonseed oil.

From the Columbia Univ. website, an article by (lowercase fan) drew sawyer “crisco: or how to do queer theory with things”:

Crisco was also regularly used by queer subcultures, joining Vaseline as one of the most popular forms of lubricants for anal sex.  In fact, during the first decades of the 20th century, Vaseline was so popular that a quarter-mile long section of Central Park, known as a cruising ground, was aptly nicknamed “Vaseline Alley.”  By the 1970s, however, Crisco and other vegetable shortening had become the most widely used lubricants.  The first-edition of The Joy of Gay Sex, published in 1977, declared, “Vegetable shortening may be the best lubricant, since it is not only greasy but also digestible” Such a statement perhaps gives new meaning to the companies boastful declarations that “Its digestible” and “Crisco has been making life in the kitchen more delicious for years.”  Similarly, in the 1978 sex manual The Advocate Guide to Gay Health, Crisco even earned an entry in the book’s index.  Discussions of the shortening’s use as an anal lubricant indicate its popularity, with statements such as: “The lubricant, typically the cultic Crisco, must be copious.” In fact, Crisco was so synonymous with gay sex that discos and bars around the world took on the name, such as Crisco Disco in New York City, which was one of the premiere clubs during the 1970s and early 1980s.  Other clubs or bathhouses, such as Club Z in Seattle, even featured murals with Crisco.  Thus, Crisco was conversely also one of many things that led to the formation of gay identities during the 20th century.

Crisco was, and is, especially favored as the lubricant for fisting (though there are now specially designed lubes better suited for this purpose). From Wikipedia:

Fisting — also known as fist fucking (FF), handballing, and brachiovaginal or brachioproctic insertion — is a sexual activity that involves inserting one or more hands into the vagina (vaginal fisting) or rectum (anal fisting).

… Fisting’s emergence as a popular sexual practice is commonly attributed to gay male culture and it may not have existed until the twentieth century.

Meanwhile, there are also lubes better suited for anal intercourse — slicker and less greasy — than Crisco. (Crisco is hell to get out of sheets.) And anal-intercourse lubes that aren’t oil-based, so that they can be used with latex condoms. (Back in the last century, when I often had the pleasure of getting fucked, Wet was my lube of choice, but other men will have their own favorites.) So Crisco for anal intercourse is pretty much a thing of the fairly distant past, which means that for gay men, Crisco nowadays signals fisting — which is why I find Zippy’s idea of a Monty Crisco sandwich so alarming.

 

This entry was posted on January 12, 2024 at 9:31 am and is filed under Books, Diners, Language and food, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.