(all about an artist who celebrates male genitals and men sharing theirs with one another for fun and pleasure, whose work I will be discussing in street language, so this posting is totally not for kids or the sexually modest — though to satisfy WordPress’s strictures, there are, alas, no genitals displayed for open view)
The artist is the beefcakemeister Kent Neffendorf, who came to me this morning in this painting on Pinterest:
There was this paper of mine (“Jottings on Adpositions, Case Inflections, Government, and Agreement”), originally from 1988 but not properly published until 1992 (in The Joy of Grammar: A festschrift in Honor of James D. McCawley), that I wanted to quote from in an on-line discussion a week ago, only to discover that after the great dispersal of almost all my books and files some years back, I had no trace left of the thing, no copy of any kind (this sort of thing keeps happening to me). I couldn’t find a way to get a copy on-line, but in a stroke of luck it turned that Benjamins was selling off its remaining stock of the paperback edition of Joy at a price I could actually afford, so I bought their last copy and had it mailed to me next day delivery. This morning I created jpegs of all 15 pages (369 through 384); the quotation I need is on the first page, but now I can add this posting of all 15 pages to the little set of publications of mine available on-line.
In today’s Zippy strip, our zany, happy-go-lucky Pinhead finds himself drawn to dark imagery in art: in the wartime horrors of Picasso’s Guernica, in the monster within Albright’s Dorian Gray:
(#1) The Albright is especially unsettling for Zippy; what if his goofy exterior is only a mask for such a monstrous being within him? (Am I a monster?)
These musings on dark art follow immediately on Zippy’s anxiety yesterday, in my posting “Tell a joke, go to jail”, in which
Z confronts a pair of clay wraiths, lifeless in body and dead in soul, and tries desperately to interject fun … into the conversation; to counterpose silliness, play, and sheer joy against the dead weight of the world’s pain, suffering, and injustice; to plead for humanity over humorlessness; to advocate for delight, even in the smallest everyday things
A few notes on the two paintings, then a quick view of the ideas that made the Albright so disturbing to Zippy.
For yesterday, 1/18, in Bizarro, the 6th and I suppose last Waynoratu Nosferamanteau:
The male nosferatu (holding a wineglass of what is presumably blood, and chatting with his young female companion at some sort of vampiric meet-and-greet) seems to be wearing a Canadian toque (= tuque), with pom-pom, to warm his head during the cold dark nights in his coffin (yes, it’s very silly) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)
The nosferamanteau is Nosferatoque = Nosferatu + toque. As for the hat, from NOAD:
noun toque: [a] a woman’s small hat, typically having a narrow, closely turned-up brim. [b] historical a small cap or bonnet having a narrow brim or no brim. [c] Canadian a close-fitting knitted hat, often with a tassel or pom-pom on the crown. [variant of tuque] [d] a tall white hat with a full pouched crown, worn by chefs.
(The heart tattoo with A B O in it, for the blood types A B AB and O, is a nice touch.)
In the 1/17 Zippy strip, Z confronts a pair of clay wraiths, lifeless in body and dead in soul, and tries desperately to interject fun — levity — into the conversation; to counterpose silliness, play, and sheer joy against the dead weight of the world’s pain, suffering, and injustice; to plead for humanity over humorlessness; to advocate for delight, even in the smallest everyday things:
In English, Belgium is a funny word, odd, darkly edgy, and absurd all at once; Lewis Carroll picked the name boojum for his ridiculously dangerous creature in The Hunting of the Snark to capture this strange blend of resonances.
Very briefly: in entry 5 in the Waynoratu Nosferamanteau marathon, today, two anti-establishment vampires greet one another:
A 1960s-style hippie on the right (peace symbol, long hair, headband, etc.), a 1970s-style Johnny Rotten punk rocker on the left (anarchist symbol, spiky hair, studded collar. etc.)
Meanwhile, the punmanteau is a complex one: Johnny Rotten wrapped around nosfer– (representing Nosferatu)
From Will Leben in Zuckie’s Playroom on 1/15, this image from the Weird Wheels group:
(#1) Comment by Todd Ivler in the group: Due to lagging Cybertruck sales Tesla branches out…
Now: a bit of background on the Tesla Cybertruck, whose style inspired the mensroom accessory in #1; and my reaction to this accessory.
From Tim Evanson on Zuckie’s Playroom this morning, this snapshot from the superhero archives:
It’s a come-on, promising surprises, offering to show the boy delightful things; homoeroticism shimmers beneath his words
The lexical background, from NOAD:
noun come-on: informal a gesture or remark that is intended to attract someone sexually: she was giving me the come-on.
And then the great homoerotic come-on to a boy in film:
Continuing Bizarro‘s theme from Monday through Wednesday, today’s Waynoratu Nosferamanteau — a Wayno punmanteau based on the film title Nosferatu — examines Transylvanian dentitions:
(#1) In the tradition of Nosferattoo, Nosferachoo, and Nosferatoon, a Nosferatooth X-ray; I must say that that’s a truly splendid vampiric X-ray (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page)
(I was going to wait to see what Friday and Saturday would bring us on Bizarro before posting this strip, but it brings up an issue in visual symbolism, manifested in Wayno’s adaptation of the two-serpent caduceus (surmounting a tooth) to serve as a symbol of dentistry.)
It’s not only the worst week of the year (as I detailed in a posting yesterday), but in the Bizarro cartoon world, Wayno has made it Nosferatu Punmanteau Week (Nosferamanteau Week, for short), exploiting the success of the 2024 movie to commit a series of punmanteaus (puns based on a portmanteau, presented visually as well as linguistically — these are, after all, cartoons) of a special, self-incorporating, type: puns on the model Nosferatu that are portmanteaus of Nosferatu + W, where W is, so far this week : tattoo (in Nosferattoo), achoo (in Nosferachoo), and cartoon (in Nosferatoon). The Waynoratu Nosferamanteaus might well continue through the week. Wayno could even specialize in creature Nosferamanteaus, like the crested parrot Nosferacatoo and the bare-bottomed monkey Nosferaboon; we might even get a whole zoo.
While we wait: about the movie; about the three strips so far; and earlier punmanteau postings of mine.
