Archive for the ‘Mammoths’ Category

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Four presents

December 26, 2018

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

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Posted in Art, Flags, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and animals, Language and plants, Linguistics in the comics, Logos, Mammoths, Penguins, Rainbow clothing, Signs and symbols, Toys | Leave a Comment »

Appearances

December 14, 2018

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.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Male art, Mammoths, Pop culture, Word attraction | 1 Comment »

News for pumpkins: art and science

November 3, 2018

Two bits of recent pumpkin news: the pumpkin as an artistic platform; and the evolutionary history of pumpkins.

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Posted in Art, Evolution, Language and animals, Language and food, Language and plants, Mammoths | Leave a Comment »

Attack of the mammoth penguins

September 5, 2018

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.

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Posted in Holidays, Mammoths, My life, Penguins | Leave a Comment »

Midsummer cartoons

June 25, 2018

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.)

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Posted in Comic conventions, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language of teenagers, Linguistics in the comics, Male art, Mammoths, Parody, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus | Leave a Comment »

The news for mammoths: toy stories

December 18, 2017

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

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Posted in Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Mammoths, Names, Poetry, Portmanteaus, Semantics, Subsectivity, Toys and games | 1 Comment »

A tale of a bed: from removal to revival

December 16, 2017

(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.)

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Posted in Art, Mammoths, My life, Shirtlessness | 3 Comments »

A decent woolly mammoth and a nice bit of shirtless cowboy

December 13, 2017

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.

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Posted in Art, Clothing, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Mammoths, Shirtlessness | Leave a Comment »

Naked came the mammoth

September 25, 2017

Because mammoths, today’s Rhymes With Orange:

(#1) Advances in Mammoth Science: early scientists encountering Mammuthus primigenius var. nudus

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Posted in Books, Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Mammoths, Names, Play | 1 Comment »

Woolly Mammoth flips us the bird

June 16, 2017

A few days ago, Michael Palmer posted this logo, commenting “I was unaware that Arnold Zwicky was in the theatah”. It’s the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, with its logo in rainbow for Pride Month, and the woolly mammoth is my totem animal. Oh yes, and I’m gay, so it all fits.

(#1)

Then I recalled having written about the theatre company and one of its productions, with fuck in the title, so that it presented an issue for publicity and for publications reviewing the production — notably, the ostentatiously modest (no fuck for us, please, we’re a family newspaper) New York Times.

But apparently I never actually wrote the story up; memory is a fickle, fickle thing. In any case, the play is Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird, which had its world premiere at the Woolly Mammoth in 2013, and I’ll write about it now. Even better, the Times‘s handling of the situation when the show came to NYC last year is truly wonderful.

Now: some bits on the Woolly Mammoth, on experimental theatre companies, and on Posner’s play. Then on the play in the media, with the the NYT as the capper.

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Posted in Mammoths, Plays, Taboo language and slurs | 2 Comments »

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