Pat Byrnes’s New Yorker daily cartoon yesterday:
Another chapter in the great book of what you have to know to understand what’s going on in a cartoon and what you have to know to see why it might be funny.
Author Archive
Boris and Natasha advise POTUS
March 30, 2017Billy Zane
March 30, 2017I first noticed him in some episodes of the tv series Charmed, playing a personable (and hunky) ex-demon named Drake. And now he’s coming past me again, in the second season of Twin Peaks, once again charming, boyish, playful, and sexy (his perennial actorial persona). In between Twin Peaks (1991) and Charmed (2005) came, among other things, the movie version of The Phantom (1996), with Zane in the title role.
So this will be about actors, the comics, tv and movies, and some of Zane’s masculine attributes: that persona, a strong physical presence, a sensuous masculine face, and (of course) an attractive body. Not a lot about language here.
Three
March 29, 2017Yesterday, a posting on Michael Ontkean, who I’ve been re-watching in Twin Peaks, but who also played the central role in the 1982 movie Making Love — which led me to an earlier film with a similar plot device (a love triangle with a gay twist), 1971’s Sunday Bloody Sunday, and to reflect on three-person relationships — a subject of great interest to me, since I spent about eight years in a married triple.
Another phenomenally bad idea
March 29, 2017(Mostly about food, but there’s a mansex interlude, so be warned.)
A couple days ago it was (thanks to Margalit Fox) the hologram-bunny (a hollusion) that comes to life to decorate homes and parties. I’m not quite sure why the idea struck so many people (including Margalit and me) as disturbing, but it was. Now comes an edible counterpart, but this time I think I understand the source of the unease that it arouses.
Reported by Kim Darnell, this is Delighted By (sometimes: delighted by) dessert hummus. On the grocery shelf:
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It comes in four flavors: Brownie Batter, Snickerdoodle, Orange Dreamsickle, Vanilla Bean.
Thing is, hummus is a savory food, and these flavors are all sweet (apparently, achingly so).
Ruthie copes
March 28, 2017Two recent One Big Happy strips, featuring Ruthie: the sign strip and the ladder strip
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Pride of Madeira
March 28, 2017On our last visit to the Gamble Garden in Palo Alto, we came across an impressive cluster of thick stems (clearly some years old) standing about 3 feet tall, with conical clusters of buds at the top of the stems. The only label we could find was for an obviously irrelevant plant (a daisy-like composite).
But then this morning we went back, and it was in gorgeous purple-blue bloom. Back home, I thought to try a strategy that almost never works in Google searches: describing the plant (“tall spires of purple flowers”), but this time I hit paydirt right away, with a page devoted to plants with tall stalks of purple/blue flowers. Echium candicans aka fastuosum:
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Michael Ontkean
March 28, 2017(About actors, movies, and tv, with very little language stuff in it.)
Watching Twin Peaks (the original tv series) on Netflix, and delighted to see Michael Ontkean (cute, amiable, and hunky) in it again. I’m a great fan of smiles, so here’s the young Ontkean smiling:
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Bizarro compounds
March 28, 2017The Bizarro from the 22nd:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
Interpreting N + N compounds can be the very devil, as I point out on this blog every so often, sometimes in connection with cartoons (where the possibilities for ambiguity are easily exploited). What to make of Girl Scout cookies (Girl Scout + cookies)?
Members Only: two moments
March 27, 2017(Well, it’s about gay porn, so not to everybody’s taste.)
Following my look at Pacific Coast Highway, I’ve been revisiting more William Higgins gay porn — just up, Members Only (1982), in which three L.A. buddies hang out in a hot tub, telling steamy stories about their sexual encounters (with, of course, a finale three-way indoors). The front cover of the DVD, much cropped (because it’s dense in dick):
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Cast (several of them already established pornstars in 1982): Jon King, Derrick Stanton, Greg Hanson, Rick Vega, Giorgio Canali, Bill Curry, Danny Scott, Marc Silver, Rick Peters. One scene has Scott and Silver flip-fucking, quite satisfactorily. Two things: I went to check on which guy was Scott and which Silver and what their careers were like, only to discover that Members Only seems to be the only porn flick that actors with those names ever appeared in, and there are no images of or information about either of them that I could find. They are apparently porn ghosts.
One of them, playing the owner of a house that the other is doing landscape work on, struck me as immediately, recognizably, gay, even just in repose. And now I’m wondering what I’m picking up on.
The demented rabbit p.r. pitch
March 27, 2017More remarkable p.r. pitched to the NYT obituarist (among other things) Margalit Fox (reported by her on Facebook today):
Hello Margalit
I wanted to make sure you had the story about ‘Hoppy The Easter Bunny,’ the first-ever hologram-bunny who comes to life to decorate homes and parties.
The full story is below. You are welcome to review Hoppy and other _____ products, share the story, etc, so long as _____ is cited as the source and when possible, linked to. If you would like to interview the _____ founders and leadership about the new trend in digital decorating, please let me know.
- What Does Hoppy the Easter Bunny Do?
He hops, paints eggs, grows flowers, and even preforms magic tricks. …
- How Does Hoppy Come To Life?
Hoppy’s animated loop-able scenes can be projected onto walls, screens, and special hollusion material that makes it look like Hoppy is standing anywhere in your home…