A Frank Cotham cartoon from the New Yorker on 3/2/20:
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In my unfortunately frail old age, I’m not exactly doing research, and I’m certainly not going to get it in a book. But I collect stuff — ideas, images, experiences — and turn them into daily essays on my blog, much quirkier even than the stuff I used to publish. It’s a new kind of life.
In a time of great distress (the sadness of so many deaths, punctuated by flashes of extraordinary hope), two delightful Wayno/Piraro Bizarro strips to divert my attention: from yesterday (8/11), a sweet strip in which the Pied Piper takes his son into the family business; and from today (8/12), an outrageous pun on the geographical name the Greater Antilles:
The Wayno/Piraro Bizarro from 8/7 features a housefly couple telling the story of how they met:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
Where to begin? Well, it’s a decidedly meta cartoon, in which the characters know they are cartoon characters and comment on that fact. And it’s a cartoon in which parallel worlds are aligned and translated from one to the other: a world of conventional American domesticity (in which couples meet and form relationships, and entertain friends in their home); and a world of fly jokes, turning on the appearance of houseflies in soup at restaurants.
All this held together by a story type in film-making: the meet cute form, in which unlikely accidents of meeting lead to romantic involvements.
Yesterday’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, with songs you just can’t get out of your head:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)
A wonderful collision of worlds, set off by the idiomatic (and colorfully metaphorical) N + N compound earworm: the world of DJs — the ear world (disc jockeys providing sonic pleasures for the ear) — and the world of caterpillars — the worm world (caterpillars being one type of worm in colloquial English).
A theme connecting two otherwise very disparate cartoons in my comics feed for today: in a Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, an absurdist strip about Claes Oldenburg in the (mythical) American Old West; and in a Zippy, musings by Bill Griffith on a mystery Z structure in his part of rural Connecticut.
For we will sit together as happy as can be
For I’ll tickle Nancy, and Nancy’ll tickle me— Uncle Dave Macon’s “I’ll Tickle Nancy” (apparently first recorded in 1935)
Yesterday’s (7/31) Wayno/Piraro Bizarro strip, in which Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy character takes up textual analysis (Wayno’s title:”Beating Around the Bushmiller”), explaining the intricacies of cartoon characters to her buddy Sluggo (and of course the three rocks):
(#1) On the Bushmiller rocks, see my 9/2/17 posting “Three rocks”, with a Zippy strip in which the rocks talk (and if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
Pretty much the purest form of cartoon self-reference: a cartoon character expounding on the nature of cartoon characters. (Also note Sluggo’s body language, with his hands in his pockets, often conveying disaffection or suspicion.)
What follows is about Nancys and, especially, nancies.
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:
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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.)
In the 9/24/19 One Big Happy, both Ruthie and her mother name fingers, but in different ways:
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Ruthie gives them (descriptive) nicknames — the proper names Hitchy, Pointy, Big Girl, Wiggles, Wee One — while her mother Ellen provides the common nouns referring to the five fingers: the thumb, the index finger, the middle finger, the ring finger, and the pinkie / pinky (aka the little finger).
