Themes in the cartoons of Mike Twohy: woolly mammoths as gigantic sources of meat, the edgy relationships between dog and cat. Starting with a cartoon in the latest (4/15/19) New Yorker:
(#1) “You tend to overuse the exclamation point.”
The editor strikes. Eager-to-please, enthusiastic dog faces aloof cat.
Small but entertaining little gifts for my Christmas, from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, Opal Armstrong Zwicky, Kim Darnell, and Maggie Ainsworth-Darnell — plus an excellent dim sum lunch at Tai Pan in Palo Alto for all of us, from Paul Armstrong.
Then: an out@in rainbow t-shirt from LinkedIn (where Kim works); a little plush wooly (spelling by the Douglas Cuddle Toy Co.) mammoth; a tote bag with an otter drawing by the artist rubyetc; and a bit of nearly indescribable Japanese kawaii that involves a little self-watering ceramic penguin that grows wild strawberry plants (Fragaria vesca) on its back, as here:
(#1) Chuppon self-watering animals and their plants: the Sea Friends dolphin/clover, penguin/wild strawberry, seal/basil, polar bear/mint
Two recent items about men trying to look attractive (to other men): on the Kitsch Bitsch Facebook page today, 1950s physique model Mel Fortune festooned for Christmas (the image is entertaining but just barely not X-rated, so if such images trouble you, leave this posting); and a William Haefeli cartoon from the latest (12/17/18) New Yorker, featuring a pair of his upscale urban gay men negotiating a date / trick.
Two bits of recent pumpkin news: the pumpkin as an artistic platform; and the evolutionary history of pumpkins.
Every year we rise up and stream through the streets in exultation, mammoth penguins swearing in tongues. Tomorrow is the 78th Waddling of the Totems. And crying: Not dead yet!
Some documents of the day. Some reflections on the 78 cohort. And on living longer than the generation before you.
Saturday night was Midsummer’s Eve (St. John’s Eve), yesterday Midsummer Day (St. John’s Day) — so that last night was Midsummer Night, when the fairies frolic. (As they did indeed, at SF Pride events.) Meanwhile there are cartoons: a Bill Whitehead Free Range cartoon from 9/6/17, in the July 2018 issue of Funny Times; a John Atkinson Wrong Hands cartoon that came to me from Eleanor Houck; and a Scott and Borgman Zits cartoon in today’s King Features feed.
First come the cartoons, then come the holidays. (Apologies to Brecht and his Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral — pleasure first, then the serious stuff.)
Previously on this blog — in #9 in a 12/16 posting “A tale of a bed: from removal to revival” — we met the stuffed woolly mammoths I called Mammuthus Major and Mammuthus Minor on the headboard of my new bed. Elsewhere in my bedroom there are two more toy mammoths, much bigger than these: a once-“animaltronic” hulk with a dark brown rubber-like plastic skin; and a somewhat smaller and more fanciful stuffed toy with a purple, blue, and yellow cloth skin — creatures I call Fey and Butch, shown here (in their native teak and blue habitat) in a somewhat impressionistic photo:
(#1) Fey and Butch, bathed in yellow light
(About my life, and home furnishings. A bit of gay interest, a bit about language.)
On Wednesday, a couple of guys came for my bed, a low teak number with a very wide — like, 9-foot — headboard and a thin futon mattress. On Friday, yesterday, some other guys brought me a new one, a high dark-stained number with an ordinary queen-sized headboard and a thick firm conventional mattress.
Details follow, mostly about the new bed. (Local photos by Kim Darnell, who supervised the bed replacement activities.)
She asked herself, “Where can you go and get an old gay fellow a stirring picture of a decent woolly mammoth and a nice bit of shirtless cowboy?” And answer came there none. And so she had this idea of commissioning this art work:
Shirtless Cowboy Mounted on Woolly Mammoth”, by Magda Guichard (2017)
And she had it made into a big fleece blanket, to warm and entertain the old guy. And he rejoiced.
