Yesterday’s Wayno/ Piraro Bizarro:
(#1) The coupled life, with cook and diner; cooks — I was the diner and helper in Ann’s and my life, the cook in Jacques’s and my life, and I can say that the cook is often anxious about pleasing their audience, the diner (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
Now, highlights of an exchange between Wayno and me that starts out being about this cartoon.
A: Query for Wayno: Is this the first Bizarro with a male couple? With an interracial couple? (Well, the first of your Bizarros; you don’t necessarily have a record of Dan Piraro’s strips.)
W: Ugh. I had forgotten that my Instagram post of the 11/5/18 cartoon [reproduced below] received hateful comments from someone I know … I have included interracial couples and same-sex couples in the past.
A: I’m so sorry — that’s the rough side of being a good guy. … I don’t need to encourage you to go on doing what you do, because you’re self-running; but I can thank you for being who you are, ’cause that is no small thing.
W: And I appreciate and thank you for being who you are. I always learn something from reading your posts.
[I was going edit out this moment of friendly bonding, but decided that it was worth publishing as a way of showing that people who would appear to have almost nothing in common can in fact form a bond on the sharing of values, mutual trust, and appreciation of each other’s admirable qualities. And, as an old man, I understand that I should be commending good people while we both still live.]
W: I’m not certain, but the 11/05/18 may have been the first of mine to feature a male couple. I’d have to scroll through the earlier panels to be sure.
(#2) It just happens to be boys in bed (5 symbols); but it’s about an absurd play on two senses of fall asleep (of a bodypart, going numb; or as entering into sleep as a state of consciousness — the pun sense is a metaphor based on the model sense)A: Wonderfully matter-of-fact answer. The fact that you don’t know off the top of your head is significant; it’s no big thing for you — a cartoon with a male couple doesn’t have to be about homosexuality, any more than a cartoon with an old couple has to be about aging or a cartoon with a Jewish couple has to be about Yiddishkeit etc. Sometimes an anteater is just an anteater.
W: Exactly!
A: Since the audience is mostly Wayno’s readers, I guess I should point out something relevant about me: I am not only a distinguished professor of linguistics, but also famous in a small way as an outspoken faggot (I actually have an award named after me in this latter role, but without that label). I also analyze cartoons and comic strips a lot, which is how Wayno and I got to be net friends. Not all cartoonists enjoy, or even tolerate, such analysis, but Wayno finds it thought-provoking, and then I learn some things too.
Leave a Reply