Scott Hilburn’s Argyle Sweater cartoon from the 20th:
A parody set off by a pun.
Archive for the ‘Language play’ Category
Stuck in Folsom Prison
September 24, 2017Two from 9/8
September 23, 2017… in the September 8th issue of the New Yorker. Both presenting the usual challenges to understanding — there’s a lot you have to know to make sense of them — and both playing on language.
(#1) by Jeremy Nguyen
(#2) by John McNamee
Bear chairs
September 23, 2017Today’s Zippy lumbers through some plays on bear, in a bear chair:
(#1) The bear figure as both comforting and threatening
Bear chairs, gay bears, flags, and more.
Three rocks
September 22, 2017Yesterday’s Zippy:
(#1)
Great wisdom comes from the 3 Rocks. But not necessarily an understanding of what’s going on in the cartoon, which appears to be no more than playful surrealism, with a trio of talking rocks. Entertaining at that level, but as is usual with Bill Griffith, there’s a subtext: the 3 Rocks are an established thing in Zippy.
The many and the one
September 15, 2017(Men and their underwear, plus suggestive mansexiness, so not for everybody.)
Today’s Daily Jocks sale ad for Marco Marco (in this case, the company’s Light Tetra Brief), with a caption of mine wrapped around it:
Tetras maricones,
Showy fish,
Flash their stuff at
Sandbars.
(#1)
Marco
Maricone
Tiled his crotch in
Triangle pastels,
Not only a
Shield, also an
Enticement.
The fan, the spathiphyllum, and the impressionist garden
September 10, 2017Juan came by on Friday to replace the left fan in my laptop (it had reached airplane takeoff mode) and bring me small birthday presents: some mini-cheesecakes from Whole Foods (one berry, one espresso), an excellent but hard to pronounce houseplant, and a visit to the Gamble Garden to view ranks of gauzy late summer and autumn plants in bloom.
The computer repair took only a few minutes — I am now enjoying the silence of the fans — so I’ll focus here on the vegetative side of things: the birthday plant, a spathipyllum (say that three times fast!); and those seasonal flowers, which are gauzy only to a cataractive guy like me (but the Monet impressionist-garden effect is actually quite pleasing, one of the very few positive consequences of gradual vision loss).
The cop and the gunner’s mate
August 28, 2017Another underwear ad, with a somewhat raunchy (but indirect) caption, with references to mansex, so not to everyone’s taste. This will lead us to Swiss comedians on ice skates, the Backstreet Boys, and much more.
(#1)
Flic and Flak
Share a moment of
Post-wallow bliss, after
Connecting in the
Backroom of a
Backstreet bar,
While seeking dirty
Backdoor action
Flic is the blond one, and he’s French (Fr. slang flic ‘cop’). Flak is a gunner’s mate in the U.S. Navy (flak ‘antiaircraft fire’). They both know how to handle guns. They become BBFs, best buddies forever, but also backdoor buddies forever — who first connected tricking in a backroom bar (a gay backroom bar, one with a secluded space for sex in situ). They’re backboys.
Turkey Perky Jerky
August 27, 2017Yesterday morning, foraging in the Whole Foods around the corner for something to take as a food contribution for the annual Palo Alto all-day shapenote singing (we eventually settled on some truly fine smoked trout — see below), Kim Darnell and I happened to walk past the jerky section of the store — who knew there was such a thing? — where I admired some lamb jerky, and then we discovered, groan, turkey Perky Jerky:
(#1)
Revisiting 2: Despacito
August 25, 2017Earlier on this blog: a 7/26 posting on the song “Despacito” and the Mikey Bustos parody of it; a 7/27 posting following up on that; and a 7/28 posting on covers of the song. Now from Norma Mendoza-Denton, a link to a Sesame Street parody of it: “Patito” (patito ‘duckie’, the diminutive of pato ‘duck’):
Ernie, El Patito, Bert
Make America grate again
August 18, 2017Protests against pre-shredded cheese in today’s Bizarro:
(#1)
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
A punning play on the political slogan Make America Great Again.
Note red baseball caps on several of the protesters.
