Archive for the ‘Hats’ Category
August 23, 2025
In the 8/22 Bizarro strip, Wayno presents us with Johnny Peso, an intricately constructed Mexican-Spanish and Mexican-culture counterpart to Johnny Paycheck as a performer on the Grand Ole Opry stage. If you don’t know about Johnny Paycheck and the Grand Ole Opry, you’re doomed; the cartoon will be incomprehensible. If you know who they are, you’ll get the joke; and the more you know about them, the more you’ll see in Wayno’s cartoon (I suspect there are still more things that I’ve missed). And then there’s a lot to say about the way Johnny Peso introduces himself. The cartoon:
(#1) The joke in the cartoon comes the two bilingual puns: Spanish peso punning on English paycheck, Spanish olé punning on English vernacular ole; the puns are, in addition, what I’ve called (semiotically) satisfying puns (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)
And then there’s a lot more.
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Posted in Bilingualism, Clothing, Hats, Interjections, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Names, Puns, Spanish, Understanding comics | 7 Comments »
January 31, 2025
🐅 🐅 🐅 three tigers for ultimate January, and a day continuing the theme of late-January early-death birthdays: Robert Burns, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Edward Sapir in an earlier posting of mine (“Luminous birthdays” from 1/26); now, Anton Chekhov two days ago and Franz Schubert today
Meanwhile, tigers savage rabbits, but the rabbits of February are clamoring at the door, growing in size and ferocity, and are now prepared to chew up the tigers like mere blades of grass. A monument in bread to the coming triumph of these adorable but gigantic bunnies:
(#1) Today: from Benita Bendon Campbell, who got it from Jacqueline Martinez Wells
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Posted in Clothing, Events and occasions, Hats, Language and animals, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Variation | 2 Comments »
January 19, 2025
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.)
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Posted in Clothing, Events and occasions, Hats, Holidays, Linguistics in the comics, My life, People, Portmanteaus, Puns | 3 Comments »
August 7, 2024
Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, in which a prince grouses, over a tipple, about his amatory career, to a nobleman, one of his courtiers:
It seems the prince was once a frog and could rake in the chicks with nothing more than a few commanding ribbits; those were the days of easy scores (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
What do women want?, the princel wonders with a whine, recalling that once upon a time a short squat body, moist smooth skin, and long hind legs for leaping used to drive them into an osculatory frenzy. It’s all so damn unfair. (Wayno’s title for the cartoon: “Unhappy Ending”.)
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Posted in Clothing, Comic conventions, Costumes, Folklore, Hats, Language and animals, Portmanteaus, Stories | Leave a Comment »
March 17, 2024
(Part of this posting will dive right into gay porn for the day, with street-talk musings on man-on-man sex that’s totally off-limits for kids and the sexually modest; I’ll hold this part off until the end, so if you need to you can bail out then)
☘️ ☘️ ☘️ It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and in my e-mail: two Bob Eckstein cartoons for the day (on turning and wearing green for the day); and a Falcon Studios sale on gay porn, made holiday-appropriate by the mere addition of a shamrock, but which opens the topic of gay porn with actual St. Patrick’s day themes.
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Posted in Clothing, Color, Costumes, Facial expressions, Flags, Gay porn, Hats, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language and food, Language and plants, Language and religion, Language and the body, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Point of view, Signs and symbols | 2 Comments »
December 26, 2023
(The randy elves of 12/22/23 are engaged in 3-way man-on-man sex, described here by its makers in street language, so this part of the program is unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest (IF THAT’S YOU: DO NOT READ); the rest of it is about a variety of seasonal customs, some of them off-beat but none requiring policing (PLEASE READ AND ENJOY))
In my title: highlights of the first day of the three-day run-up to Christmas 2023.
Each day provides two occasions to celebrate:
— 12/22/23: CAYF (the gay porn movie Cum All Ye Faithful) climax day, with that Christmas-elf 3-way sex as the centerpiece of the final scene in the movie and the title of the movie distantly connected to the Christmas carol in Latin, Adeste Fideles; and Festoonus (celebrated at my house with that Korean feast)
— 12/23/23: Last day of Saturnalia; and Festivus
— 12/24/23: Fourth Sunday of Advent; and Christmas Eve (finally, two well-known holidays — though how Christmas Eve is celebrated varies enormously)
Notes on the first two days, on which fall four occasions of minor rank (at least in the modern world).
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Posted in Clothing, Costumes, Gay porn, Hats, Holidays, Italian, Korean, Language and food, Latin, Lexical semantics, Music, Myths, Puns, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
December 4, 2023
(Rampant nakedness, juicy description of man-on-man sex, definitely not for kids or the sexually modest)
A piece of sheer raunchy frivolity. Two naked lads, a hunky bottom and a twink top, both wearing Santa caps, meet in a 12/1 mailer ad for a scene from Falcon’s gay porn flick Cum All Ye Faithful. Bottom Beau Butler has a package, a box, to offer top Trevor Brooks, who has pulled his briefs down to show what he’s got available to put into Butler’s package:
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Posted in Clothing, Costumes, Euphemism, Gay porn, Hats, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Language of sex, Male art, Metaphor, Puns, Slang, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
October 5, 2022
In today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, the (somewhat idealized, but real) world of male athletes intersects with the (fictive) world of stereotypical Frenchmen via an imperfect pun:
(#1) In both worlds at once: the object that is a (symbolic) baseball bat in the sports world and also a (real) baguette in the French world (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
The elements of my titular phrase Zhock jock (admittedly, a play on shock jock, though the cartoon isn’t about disc jockeys — jocks — or provocative, offensive humor — shock — or provocative, offensive talk radio — shock jocks): Jacques [žak] (with initial fricative, in both French and English, though with different phonetic details in the two languages) vs. jock [ǰak] (with initial affricate, in English). So we get these three hybrid guys, flashing signifiers from both the French Zhock world — details below — and the (American) jock world (football, soccer, baseball) — cleated shoes, football jersey, padded pants, sports shorts, baseball cap.
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Posted in Clothing, French, Hats, Language and food, Language and sports, My life, Names, Pop culture | 4 Comments »
August 30, 2021
Caught in passing on tv, a reference to heinous crimes in which the /h/ of /hénəs/ was so brief that the pronunciation came very close to /énəs krájmz/ anus crimes. I reflected for a moment on what those might be, passing over the obvious and distressing possibility ‘anal rapes’ to consider merely improper alternatives, like farting in public, or crimes that were only figurative, like anal bleaching, that crime against fashion.
But then my attention was caught by the rhyming phrase heinous anus, and I fell into musings about meanings for the expression — see below — until Famous Amos hit me (notes on Wally and his celebrated cookies further below). Oh my, now I had
the Famous Amos heinous anus
and my day was complete.
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Posted in Faces, Hats, Language and food, Language and the body, Language play, Rhyme, Silliness | 2 Comments »
