Illustrators go to war:
(#1) Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion, Stanford, 4/5/17 – 9/2/17
Visited on July 19th, with Juan Gomez. Extensive report follows.
Archive for the ‘Language of advertising’ Category
Words as weapons, images as ideas
August 6, 2017Annals of sweetness
August 2, 2017Now showing on tv, a brief ad spot “Tea Party with Dad & Mr. Bentley” for Minute Maid Premium Fruit Punch, with the — um — punch line:
Minute Maid is born from the goodness of fruit.
The company darling
July 16, 2017(Another underwear ad, with my caption. Steamy topic, but not, I think, over the line.)
(#1) The company darling
Eddie found the company’s
Dress code peculiar, but he
Loved wearing the silky blue
Hooded lounge robe and
Scanty briefs at his desk.
pretzel dog
July 13, 2017It’s about the N + N compound pretzel dog, and its many possible understandings: a dog that delivers pretzels, a dog that likes pretzels, a dog twisted into the shape of a pretzel (or merely contorted), a dog-like object made of pretzels, and so on.
If I tell you that the dog in pretzel dog is to be understood as short for hot dog ‘frankfurter’, you’ll come up with another set of possible understandings: a contorted hot dog, a hot dog with pretzel bits on it, a frankfurter-like object made of pretzels, and so on. But unless you’ve actually experienced something marketed as a pretzel dog (at a Sonic Drive-In or from the Auntie Anne’s company, say), you probably woudn’t think of interpreting pretzel as a reference to pretzel dough. But that’s where we’re going.
The running of the bulldogs
July 13, 2017In the latest series (“It’s Not Surprising”) of GEICO tv ads, “Running of the Bulldogs”, with its silly play on the running of the bulls. A screen shot:
(#1)
Description from iSpot.tv:
Men in white run for their lives through the streets of Spain. As one of them falls and begs for his life, the menace chasing them comes running around the corner — a herd of slobbering bulldogs. The fallen man braces for impact and gets a good licking.
That’s what bulldogs do: faced with people down on the street, they rush to lavish affection on them by licking their faces.
More Magrittean disavowals
June 28, 2017Today’s Zippy:
(#1)
One in a long series of Zippy strips about Tod Browning’s film Freaks, the characters in it, and the actors who played them (only some of them posted about here). Also one in a long series of strips referring to the Magrittean disavowal, a contradiction between text and image: in this case, the title of this comic strip, This is not a comic strip.
Briefly: a demented p.r. pitch, an off-the-rails headline
June 18, 2017In the past few days, some tidbits from Facebook friends: from Margalit Fox, another demented p.r. pitch in her mail; from Jean Berko Gleason, an unfortunately ambiguous headline.
The word came down on Pentecost
June 7, 2017Four language-related strips in my comics feed on Sunday the 4th, which this year was Pentecost,
the Christian festival celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus after his Ascension, held on the seventh Sunday after Easter. (NOAD2)
KJV Acts 2:3: And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them
The word came down. In One Big Happy, Rhymes Wth Orange, Zits, and xkcd.
The eve of Pride Month
May 31, 2017… brings gay porn sales for the occasion. (Warning: this will be about gay porn, with frank discussion of men’s bodies and mansex, so it’s not for kids or the sexually modest.) The cover photo (technically not X-rated) for the C1R sale:
(#1)
#1 focuses on one theme of the sale offerings: daddy-boy relationships. Then there’s a trio of Cocky Boys videos (featuring young, impertinent, highly sexed characters) depicted in an AZBlogX posting, “Cocky Boys for Pride”. And finally, an ad section offering Brawn sex toys in the O-M-GLOW line: soft touch silicone that glows blue or orange in the dark.
Names in the comics
May 15, 2017The One Big Happy in today’s comics feed:
(#1)
Ouch: Creighton Barrel / Crate & Barrel.
There’s quite a path in the history of Creighton as a first name. This will take us to probably the most famous person with first name Creighton, US Army General Creighton W. Abrams — and his son Creighton W. Abrams, a classmate of mine at Princeton.