The names for yesterday: Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden. The Urkantonen, or original cantons, of Switzerland:
(#1)
Yesterday, August 1st, was Swiss National Day.
Author Archive
Three names
August 2, 2017Slangy Spanish hot dogs
August 1, 2017In a Pinterest mailing on the 25th, a board entitled Cachorros — a word unfamiliar to me — that turned out to be yet another assemblage of hot dog recipes (a topic that comes up on this blog frequently, because it combines food and phallicity).
The Spanish word cachorro means ‘puppy’ (also usable for the young of some other species, even, for some speakers, children — but the basic use is for young dogs), but as far as I can tell, it has no widespread currency as culinary slang.
(more…)
Capitulum in corpore magno
August 1, 2017(Men’s underwear and bodies, taking off from a recent Daily Jocks ad for the Marcuse company. With a caption of mine. Somewhat racy, but not crude. And there will be cartoons.)
(#1)
Capitulum in corpore magno
A hard man —
An erection lasting more than four hours –
But fair —
Requires immediate medical attention –
A pinhead with
Broad shoulders
Zippy and Griffy on the Hanna-Barbera diner tour
August 1, 2017In two recent Zippy strips, Zippy and Griffy, raging over limited animation, visit a diner in Delaware and an abandoned diner in Kentucky:
(#1)
(#2)
Three things: Hanna-Barbera; The Hollywood diner in Dover DE; and the Happy Days Diner in Cave City KY.
Today’s comic comprehension test
July 31, 2017A recent cartoon by Wayno, passed on to me by Chris Hansen:
To understand this cartoon, you need to recognize that the setting — one or two people on a small, otherwise uninhabited, island with a lone palm tree — is a cartoon meme, and that such a setting is referred to in English by the idiom desert island. (You also, of course, need to recognize the items on the island as desserts; and to know how to spell desert and dessert.)
Annals of phallicity, annals of design
July 30, 2017A little while back, my household had need of a drill to use in repairing a damaged storage closet door, so from the tool closet came (as the company styles it) the Fiskars Manual Rotary Craft Hand Drill, a very pleasing tool that is light in weight, cheap, up to small jobs around the house, nicely fitted to the hands, and beautiful to look at — really a wonderful example of design — and also, of course, being a drill, really phallic. A model in white:
(#1)
The queer quilt
July 30, 2017Saturday’s gift: a 12-panel queer quilt (roughly 6 x 3 ft), made mostly of old queer t-shirts of mine (some political, some playful, some artistic), assembled into a quilt by Janet Salsman, with the collaboration of Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky and Kim Darnell:
(#1) Eleven t-shirts, plus a homoerotic shirtless cowboy panel
Christian Sauce
July 29, 2017As on this advertisement, recently noticed in New Orleans by John Dorrance, who posted it in Facebook with only the comment “Seriously?”:
(#1) Available at the French Market, next to the Voodoo Sauce?
Well, yes, seriously. It’s a Hispanic man’s name Christian Sauce /krístian sáwse/, not an English compound noun Christian sauce, though commenters on John’s page (including the one who provided the basis for the caption of #1) preferred to have sport with the English compound noun, which affords a number of entertaining understandings.
Then there’s Christian Sauce, un abogado bilingüe practicing in Gretna LA, especially providing services to the Hispanic community (though not restricted to that). Of some linguistic interest with regard to both parts of his name.
Cover me, slowly
July 28, 2017If you think you can escape the Summer Song of 2017 — Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” (pop crossed with rap) — you’re probably mistaken. Yes, you can do the obvious: avoid Puerto Rico and Latino-heavy sections of the US, stay away from Mexican, Salvadoran, Cuban, etc. restaurants, all that sort of thing. But you could flee far away, to the Balkans, to Ireland, to Southeast Asia, to Hungary, and it will be in vain: the song will haunt you, in instrumental versions on piano, cello, violin, bamboo flute, oud, you name it; with words in French, Chinese, Gaelic, Croatian, Malay, whatever; performed by one man, one woman, two men, a man and a woman, on up to crowd-sized choruses; as heavy metal, as Romantic-style classical music, as jazz, and so on; as a sweet and softly romantic song, as hard-driving bump-and-grind music, as an enthusiastic anthem, or as flat-out parody; with fresh choreography in almost any dance style imaginable.
I didn’t appreciate the scope of the phenomenon until Kim Darnell sent me a video of Peter Bence (a 25-year-old Hungarian pianist and composer) doing a jazz-inflected piano version (channeling Keith Jarrett), and watching that led me to all this other stuff.
Musical synchronicity
July 27, 2017I spent much of Tuesday putting together material for my posting on Mikey Bustos and his parody “I Wear Speedos” of the hit song “Despacito”, by Puerto Rican pop stars Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee. That led me of course to the great Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin, who’s been steadily on public view ever since he joined the boy band Menudo back in the 1980s.
So I had a day experiencing several versions of “Despacito”, many times over, and also returning to the pleasures of Ricky Martin’s performances, starting with “Livin’ La Vida Loca” and going on from there through his oeuvre (with digressions to Enrique Iglesias and Shakira).
Then yesterday to lunch at the Mexican restaurant Reposado, where they play pop music in Spanish as background. As I sat down, I recognized RM’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca”. Which was followed immediately by Fonsi & DY’s “Despacito”. How unlikely was that?
Synchronicity at work.
(more…)