Archive for the ‘Parodies’ Category
January 22, 2020
Today’s Wayno/Piraro collabo, another little exercise in cartoon understanding:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.) Wayno’s title: “Number, Please”
No doubt you recognize the speaker as Satan / the Devil / Beelzebub, but the cartoon will still be incomprehensible unless you know that there’s a particular three-digit number that’s sometimes said to belong to Satan.
Pursuing this topic on my man Jacques’s birthday, today, will lead us, through a favorite verse of his, on a circuitous route passing through a mysterious British village, Chicago, and Santa Monica, on its way to the Big Gay Village, where men hug, spoon, and screw. (There will eventually be a content warning. I’ll warn you when the screwing is imminent.)
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Humor, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Parodies, Poetry, Pop culture, Understanding comics | 3 Comments »
January 19, 2020
That’s the head:
Rent Spikes
Stoke Dread
By the Sea
The subhead:
Coney Island Businesses
Fear Being Priced Out
The story is that increases in rents have promoted anxiety on the part of seaside business owners on Coney Island.
This from the national print edition of the NYT on the 15th (p. A19), story by Aaron Randle.
A story I have then playfully travestied:
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Posted in Headlines, Music, Parodies, Poetry, Rhyme, Style and register | Leave a Comment »
February 19, 2019
That, at least, is where it started, with this bit of playfulness on Facebook:
(#1)
One among a great many available versions of Wading for Godot (like this one, hardly any have an identifiable origin, but just get passed around on the web, along with jokes, funny pictures, and the like: the folk culture of the net). I’m particularly taken with #1, as a well-made image and as a close reworking of lines from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot:
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Posted in Formulaic language, Language and medicine, Language and religion, Language and the body, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Parodies, Phonetics, Phonology, Puns, Snowclones | 1 Comment »
December 12, 2018
It’s time for that moving, rousing carol that makes this time of the year so special. I refer of course to the great seasonal song of Okefenokee County, the Pogolicious, Kellytastic “Deck us all with Boston Charlie”:
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Posted in Catchphrases, Clichés, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Nonsense, Parodies | Leave a Comment »
August 1, 2018
A Scott Hilburn cartoon from some years back, a smileworthy garage-mechanic burlesque of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” text:
Puns on grace / grease, wretch / wrench, and all(eluia) / oil. Visually, there’s the choirstall that’s a tool box and the sacred oilcan in the stained glass window. And of course the various sorts of wrenches.
[Added on 8/2: as with many other cartoons I’ve analyzed here, this one involves a translation from one (usually everyday) world into a metaphorical world — here, between the world of church services and the world of mechanic’s shops. See my 5/22/18 posting “I (just) can’t stop (it)”.]
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Parodies | Leave a Comment »
July 26, 2017
(Men’s underwear, sexy song lyrics, nicknames, half-rhymes, and more. Some of it raunchy enough to have been banned in Malaysia, but then we’re not in Malaysia, are we?)
(#1)
His name is Mikey Bustos, he’s (self-described) Canadian Filipino, and he rap-sings of skimpy Speedos —
My goods are protected like an armadillo
When I’m in the ocean I feel good emotion
Because all the sand causes some real exfoliation.
and prances in them like a pro.
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Posted in Ethnonyms and demonyms, Gender and sexuality, Music, Names, Nicknames, Parodies, Rhyme | Leave a Comment »
November 5, 2015
In the NYT Book Review on Sunday (November 1st), a review by James Parker of The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (edited by Otto Penzler) and Mycroft Holmes (by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse). Here I’m focused on the Sherlockian pastiches in the Penzler anthology.
Parker begins:
Shadrach Voles, Upchuck Gnomes, Rockhard Scones and Blowback Foams: None of these great made-up detectives appear in Otto Penzler’s giant compendium of fake Sherlock Holmes stories, or Sherlock-Holmes-stories-written-by-persons-other-than-Sir-Arthur-Conan-Doyle. You will, however, be able to find stories about Sherlaw Kombs, and Solar Pons, and Picklock Holes, and Shamrock Jolnes, and Warlock Bones and (my own pick of the pseudo-Holmeses) Hemlock Jones, who in Bret Harte’s “The Stolen Cigar-Case” almost destroys the ardently worshipful Watson-like narrator with the sheer puissance of his intellect.
Mikel Jaso’s delightful illustration for the review, paying homage to Holmes’s pipe, René Magritte, and the creations of the Sherlockians:
(#1)
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Posted in Art, Books, Parodies | Leave a Comment »
October 4, 2015
In my posting on Batman vs. the Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, I touched on the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has an important role in the film:
(#1)
Now more about the actor, who at the age of 34 has already had a long and impressive career, in a wide range of roles, many challenging.
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Posted in Actors, Gender and sexuality, Movies and tv, Parodies, Shirtlessness | Leave a Comment »
