I’m barely getting through my days, but now suddenly there are five new things on my plate (and dozens of other postings I’ve failed to follow up on). I’ve picked the thing of most immediate interest, since it follows up on my posting yesterday “Yo soy Johnny Peso”, where I wrote about this cartoon:
(#1)
In the 8/22 Bizarro strip, Wayno presents us with Johnny Peso, an intricately constructed Mexican-Spanish and Mexican-culture counterpart to Johnny Paycheck as a performer on the Grand Ole Opry stage. If you don’t know about Johnny Paycheck and the Grand Ole Opry, you’re doomed; the cartoon will be incomprehensible. If you know who they are, you’ll get the joke; and the more you know about them, the more you’ll see in Wayno’s cartoon (I suspect there are still more things that I’ve missed). And then there’s a lot to say about the way Johnny Peso introduces himself [with the stiff and Englishy yo soy Johnny Peso].
Then came the objections. In a Facebook comment from David Preston and this blog comment from Geoff Nathan:
— GN: Are you sure it isn’t a reference to Johnny Cash?
— AZ > GN: A point also made on Facebook by David Preston. Yes, surely peso is a rough (metonymic) translation of cash, so Johnny Peso would be a Mexican Johnny Cash. But I made a case in this posting that Johnny Peso is a Mexican Johnny Paycheck. The answer is that in the world of cultural allusion, both things can be true. I’ll expand on this idea in a separate posting [the one you’re reading right now].
Shimmer is both a floor wax AND a dessert topping.
