Paul Noth in the April 30th New Yorker:
(#1) “Et tu, Little Caesar?”
Two contributing factors that intersect in the name Caesar.
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
Another quick cartoon comprehension quiz
April 27, 2018World Penguin Day
April 26, 2018An alert from Chris Ambidge for this holiday, with a Sandra Boynton cartoon:
Already on my calendar: Penguin Awareness Day: January 20th, in the middle of summer in Penguinland.
Now, also World Penguin Day, April 25th, in Penguinland autumn.
I wonder: is there a penguin holiday for every season?
No shoes, take 2
April 24, 2018From Billy Green on Facebook on the 17th, a re-do of NO SHOES / NO SHIRT / NO SERVICE by Dan Piraro in Bizarro: a first version from the late 1980s (found in the collection Too Bizarro, published in 1988), and then the Bizarro strip from the 15th:
POP POP
April 24, 2018Yesterday’s Zippy had a nutjob in a diner ranting:
Are you trying to lure me into a lexicographical, self-contradicting black hole of word play so heinous it defies logic?
And today, embedded within a thick matrix of allusions pointing in many directions:
a lexicographical, self-contradicting vortex so heinous, it defies Robert Mueller
(#1)
Samuel Beckett’s sitcoms
April 23, 2018A literary cartoon by Tom Gauld that came to me (unsourced, but I recognized the style) on Facebook today:
Hybrids between the plays of Samuel Beckett and American tv sitcoms.
A war of initialism
April 23, 2018Today’s Zippy takes us to 449 S. Winchester Blvd. in San Jose CA (more or less next door to the Winchester Mystery House and across the street from Santana Row):
(#1) The title is an allusion to McDonald’s Happy Meal for kids
Two things: the location; and the goofy dispute over the meaning of the initialism B.L.T.
The novelist in the fortune cookie
April 22, 2018In the March 12th New Yorker, a Talk of the Town piece by Ian Parker on novelist Jay McInerney and his career writing fortune cookie fortunes: in print, “Pithy”; on-line, “When Jay McInerney writes your fortune: The novelist’s new line of fortune cookies are fit for a cynic: “If at first you don’t succeed, try Botox.””:
Caricature by Tom Bachtell
The Shadow knows
April 22, 2018… or if Lamont Cranston isn’t available, Facebook will know. In this Maddie Dai cartoon from the April 23rd New Yorker, Facebook knows, immediately:
(#1) “And, just like that, Facebook is giving us ads for used cars, optometrists, and couples counselling.”
Smash the car, you’ll need a replacement; trouble seeing what’s in the road, you’ll need an optometrist; forthcoming disagreement over who was responsible, you’ll need couples counselling.
And magically, invisibly, Facebook is aware of all this.
FoosChicken
April 20, 2018… or RotisserFoosball, depending on how you look at it. In the April 23rd New Yorker, this clever visual and conceptual hybrid of foosball and rotisserie chicken: a game played maniacally by chefs in their kitchen:
(#1) Cartoon by John O’Brien, who often ventures into this hybrid territory
Earlier on this blog, a 6/4/16 posting on the cartoonist Jeff Hobbs, with this FoosKebab cartoon as #4 there:
(#2) Kebabs on a grill, with the skewers treated like the bars in foosball (aka table football)
(#3) A foosball table
In #1, rather than kebabs on skewers, we have chickens on spits in a rotisserie. From NOAD:
noun rotisserie: 1 a cooking appliance with a rotating spit for roasting and barbecuing meat. 2 a restaurant specializing in roasted or barbecued meat.
(#4) Costco rotisserie
Rotisserie chicken is a chicken dish that is cooked on a rotisserie, using direct heat in which the chicken is placed next to the heat source. Electric- or gas-powered heating elements may be used, [supplying] adjustable infrared heat. … Leftover rotisserie chicken may be used in a variety of dishes, such as soup, chicken salad and sandwiches.
… In 2014, Costco sold approximately 76 million rotisserie chickens in the United States. (Wikipedia link)
About the artist John O’Brien, from his website:
(#5)
John O’Brien was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1953 and graduated from The Philadelphia College of Art in 1975.
In the course of his career, he has worked with many notable publishers, illustrating 83 children’s books, 8 of which he also wrote. He has done illustrations for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Global Finance and Worth, and contributed to many other collections, anthologies and textbooks. He has also had a long relationship with Highlights for Kids Magazine for which he has contributed numerous covers and interior illustrations.
John has also had a long career as a cartoonist for many magazines, most notably The New Yorker, for which he created 17 covers and over 200 interior pieces. His cartoons have also been featured in the New York Times, Esquire, Fast Company and Omni, among others.
John resides in Delran, New Jersey in the spring and fall. In the summer he moves to North Wildwood, NJ, where he has been a lifeguard on the North Wildwood Beach Patrol since 1970 and is currently Senior Lifeguard. John spends the winter months in Miami, Florida.
He plays music both professionally and for entertainment, primarily Dixieland and Celtic. He most enjoys banjo and concertina but also plays piano, bass and guitar.
Two of his “hybrid” covers for the New Yorker:
(#6) 7/16/90: a Venetian gondola and an ice cream sundae
(#7) 2/4/91: a ski slope and a pinball machine
Sein Dopelgänger
April 19, 2018Not a typo. The man in question is the elusive David Dennison, a pseudonym of the notorious American sociopath Helmet Grabpussy (who is generally referred to on this blog as [REDACTED]). And his Dopelgänger is the distinguished David Denison, Professor Emeritus of English Linguistics at the University of Manchester (on the other side of the Atlantic).
There’s the 2-n DD and the 1-n DD, and they are laughably, horribly, distinct. The 2-n DD is a creature, the 1-n DD is a teacher. (Apologies to Ogden Nash, llamas, and lamas.)