… in today’s Zippy:
(#1)
This visit framed in the Walk Into Bar joke format.
Archive for the ‘Diners’ Category
Return to the Amherst Diner in Winchester VA
June 23, 2018Return to Austin TX
April 29, 2018… in today’s Zippy, which features the old Fran’s Hamburgers in Austin TX — it closed in 2013 — and its notable fiberglass mascot:
(#1)
In Zippy’s world, fiberglass figures are often given to intense self-reflection, especially about their place in the world.
Cold Comfort Brooklyn
April 27, 2018
A war of initialism
April 23, 2018Today’s Zippy takes us to 449 S. Winchester Blvd. in San Jose CA (more or less next door to the Winchester Mystery House and across the street from Santana Row):
(#1) The title is an allusion to McDonald’s Happy Meal for kids
Two things: the location; and the goofy dispute over the meaning of the initialism B.L.T.
Return to Dover DE
March 18, 2018Yesterday’s Zippy has Zippy and Griffy riffing, as they so often do, on some aspect of popular culture — in this case, on clothing these days:
(#1)
In general, the diners in these strips have no special relationship — via their names, themes, or locations — to the topic of discussion: they’re just places for Zippy and Griffy to exchange opinions.
This particular place is The Hollywood in Dover DE, and Zippy and Griffy have been there at least twice before.
Retro chic
February 27, 2018Today’s Zippy, set in Hyde Park NY:
(#1) At the Eveready Diner in Hyde Park
(This strip has been cropped to remove political content.)
The building is a huge 1995 Paramount diner, a symphony in stainless steel and neon, designed to evoke classic diners of the 1950s.
Attack of the custardy torus
January 15, 2018… in Palo Alto, in yesterday’s Zippy:
(#1)
Happy Donuts at 3916 El Camino Real, in the Barron Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, just south of the Stanford Industrial Park, itself just south of the College Terrace neighborhood (on the west) and the California Avenue shopping district (on the east), these being just south of the university (on the west) and downtown Palo Alto and the Professorville and Old Palo Alto neighborhoods (on the east). My neighborhoods.
The clowns of death and the frogs of Wellsboro
January 9, 2018Two recent Zippy strips: the clowns of death on the 6th and the frogs of Wellsboro PA today:
(#1)
(#2)
Two strips on sad themes of abuse and loss: the clown as death’s head, the commercial folk-art figure as exploited, untended, and decaying. In both: humor as an ultimately failing warding-off of decline and death. But on the way we laugh.
No vacancy
January 1, 2018In today’s Zippy, our Pinhead seeks signs … in signs, specifically at the West Motel, on Historic Lincoln Highway, 4040 Columbia Avenue, Columbia PA:
(#1)
Lord, give me a sign! he cries. And as Zippy watches the West Motel sign, searching for something to believe in, there comes a sign: the NO of NO VACANCY blinks on; Zippy is no longer vacant.
Plays on the ambiguity of sign and on the ambiguity of vacant.
Memory and the power of diner food
December 22, 2017Yesterday’s Zippy (“The flying bucket on Sepulveda”) took us to Dinah’s Fried Chicken on Sepulveda Blvd. in LA. Today, Zippy continues the narrative with remembrances of diner foods past — rice pudding, creamed spinach, corned beef hash — and their ability to evoke specific moments from times gone by:
(#1)
The day when Zippy spilled ketchup on his styrofoam shoes at Dinah’s; the day when Dinah’s ran out of rice pudding and substituted creamed spinach; Marcel Marceau’s recollection of May 14th, 1894 in Fresno CA, a memory triggered by just a whiff of corned beef hash.
All of this is just absurd if you don’t know about Marcel Proust, the madeleines, Remembrance of Things Past, and involuntary memory; in case you’ve forgotten, the title, “Remembrance of Flings Past” is there to nudge your memory. All this Proustian stuff comes from high culture, but like other Great Books, Great Art, and Great Music, it’s worked its way into a pop-culture meme that anyone can use for jokes and that everybody’s supposed to recognize.