About the gay erotic artist and cartoonist John Klamik, so there wil be references to men’s bodies and mansex, though the hardcore images are off in a posting on AZBlogX. But the topic will obviously not suit every reader.
(This is also a posting from way back in my posting queue, drawing mostly on material collected in 2016.)
The impetus comes from my 4/28/16 posting on this blog, “Gay comics in the 21st century”, with a comment from Billy Britt mentioning Klamik and Tom of Finland.
A Zippy sequence that began back on 8/3 in this strip (reported on in a section of my 8/3 posting “The art of everyday objects”):
(#1) The premise is that this little house just appeared one day in Bill Griffith’s Connecticut neighborhood, provoking some bafflement as to its origin and function (note: in Bill Griffith’s neighborhood, not in the Dingburg area where the cartoon character Griffy is to be found)
That posting argued that the sliding door with a Z on it is just a standard Z-series barn door.
There followed three strips in which the door slowly opens, revealing someone inside — in fact, Zippy, presenting himself as a real person (like BG (Bill Griffith) rather than Griffy). Then a sequence of 8 increasingly surrealistic strips turning on issues of fiction and reality. Finally, two strips in which it turns out that Zippy is running a farm stand of the mind from that little shed.
(Racy talk and joking about men’s bodies, so probably not to everyone’s taste.)
The background story is an error committed by the Imperator Grabpussy in reading from his text recently, with /θaj/ for /taj/ ‘Thai’, thereby introducing us all to the wonders of Thighland. (Details below.) Wags seized on the error for jokes, and on Facebook Tim Evanson offered photos of the King of Thighland, showing his massive muscular thighs and focusing our attention on the crotch they surround:
(#1) Thigh Guy: Kevin Cesar Portillo, who is all-around massive (he’s 6′5″), a former college basketball player at Miami-Dade CC, Mississippi Valley State, and Ave Maria Univ., now working as a male model (projecting smouldering sexiness) and fitness consultamt
Today’s Zippy takes us to a perished donut shop (in Niceville FL), which gives him play for his well-known fascination with the sheer sounds of words:
(#1)
In panel 1, it’s alliteration with /d/: defunct donut dispensary with dismay. In the other two panels, with /ɛks/ (or with a more reduced vowel): examined the extent of extinguished excretions … not exasperated but exuberant. (In the latter case, the choice of vocabuary items is seriously strained, to get alliterative words.)
Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro strip (Wayno’s title: “Farm to Slab”):
(#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 combination of two cartoon memes: the familiar Caveman meme, plus a Remarkable Restaurant meme that’s a specialty of the Bizarro strips.
Plus the portmanteau word play in filet magnon (filet mignon + cro-magnon). And a subtle play on a systematic ambiguity between raw and cooked understandings in certain food names, in particular for cuts of meat. You ask for a filet at the Paleo Cafe, you get a hunk of raw meat.
(Rudely suggestive song taking off on the names of toys for infants, so sure to be offensive to some.)
Sighted by Ann Burlingham at a toy store in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont (and posted on Facebook on 10/30/19), these “natural rubber teethers”, in a “fruits and vegetables series”:
(#1) Kendall the Kale, Ana Banana, and Arnold the Avocado: teethers from Oli&Carol natural rubber toys
Playing with ambiguity:
— a One Big Happy cartoon with: I feel like a tuna fish sandwich
— a domestic exchange about: I will make a dessert of my youth
— a Pearls Before Swine cartoon with: Tell me roughly
— a photograph, labeled Schrödinger’s Dumpster, of a dumpster with the signage: EMPTY WHEN FULL
Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro collabo, with a groaner pun on the name F. Scott Fitzgerald (the American writer) plus an instance of the Pavlov cartoon meme:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
The pun is straightforward (it does depend on your recognizing Spot as a conventional name for dogs in English); but though Pavlov isn’t mentioned in the cartoon, it’s all about classical, or Pavlovian, conditioning, and the cartoon makes no sense unless you recognize the allusion to Pavlov, and also recall that Pavlov conditioned his dogs to salivate (and expect food) on hearing a bell ringing (here, the carriage return bell on a typewriter, which younger readers will be unfamiliar with, typewriters being an obsolete technology — but the cartoon helpfully fills in this bit of typewriter arcana).
Today’s morning name: South Cackalacky, mildly derogatory slang for South Carolina (suggesting crudeness, rusticity, and remoteness: the boondocks). And Cackalacky, for the Carolinas taken together, with the same associations. (Sorry, Charleston, Charlotte, and Research Triangle.)
Then, of course, such associations can be inverted, to connote local pride, down-hominess, and the like. As has happened in this case.
The 6/1 Wayno/Piraro Bizarro collabo, a medical cartoon:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
The crucial thing here is a pop-cultural reference, involving that huge hand (in the drawing) and the reference to being a fan at sporting events (in the text); if you don’t know that connection, the cartoon is just baffling.
