Today’s Bizarro/Wayno collab:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
Not one, but two portmanteaus: for the ailment, overemotion sickness = overemotional + motion sickness; and for the treatment, Melodramamine = melodrama + Dramamine. Plus the (melo)dramatic gesture.
From the Pun Based Humor Facebook page (ultimate source not identified):
(#1)
A photograph (composed and posed for humorous effect), but if you drew this scene, it would straightforwardly be a (captionless) cartoon, so why shouldn’t this count as a cartoon too? Not your prototypical cartoon, but a cartoon nevertheless.
An analogy would be to the art work of Pierre et Gilles: photographs elaborately composed and posed for artistic effect (often humorous effect as well), and meant as a photographic equivalent of a fantasy painting or drawing.
Meanwhile, there’s the matter of cartoon understanding: the young man, the box of breakfast cereal (Kix brand), and the highway route sign (for US Route 66) are the three elements focused on in the photograph, but what’s funny about that? Is it relevant that the route is historic, or that it’s a loop, or that the young man’s belt end is dangling (something to do with loops, maybe)? Or maybe stuff in the background is subtly significant. Or the setting, on a town street, at an intersection with a crosswalk.
First, rainbow: from Andrew Winnard on Facebook, a photo of a rainbow-lit Metro escalator in Stockholm.
Then, sharks: in my posting earlier today “Central Shark”, about Sharknado Week on the SyFy channel (Trailer Park Shark (2017) is just about to begin!).
Which led me to the Italian clothing company Paul & Shark, with its sharky logo — and its line of rainbow shark t-shirts. And to a slew of artworks depicting rainbow sharks. And to a popular aquarium fish, the rainbow shark.
We’re in the middle of the SyFy Channel’s Sharknado Week (the 12th through the 19th), an event that continues to fly the banner of life-threatening sharp-toothed monster-fish even after the Discovery Channel has largely turned over its own SHARK WEEK offerings (July 22nd through 29th this year) to putatively informative feature stories. None of that wimpy speculative journalism for the staff at SyFy, who steadfastly maintain the tradition that has brought us SyFy-original gems like their 2010 Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda (which I watched again yesteday).
Each year some new movies (plus, of course, the classics of past years). Fresh meat this year:
Deep Blue Sea 2, Megalodon, Santa Jaws, Frenzy, Nightmare Shark, 6-Headed Shark Attack, with, as an extra attraction on Sunday, The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time!
Three recent cartoons in my feed that depend on their readers supplying crucial bits of background cultural information: a Rhymes With Orange from the 1st (the eating habits of Japanese movie monsters); a Mother Goose and Grimm from the 1st (the His Master’s Voice dog); and today’s Bizarro/Wayno collab (clergy visiting parishioners).
In each case, the cartoon shows some situation from everyday life (which you have to know about) juxtaposed with, or translated into, another more remarkable world (which you also need to know details of).
The title of a Humans of Tumblr video on June 21st:
(#1) From Sleepaway Camp (1983), Frank Trent Saladino Jr. (b. 1953), playing camp counselor Gene at a baseball game (in full costume: sleeveless crop top, short shorts, and tube socks)
What happened to the male crop top? Male crop tops were all the rage in the ’80s and ’90s [and a rhyming name was especially attractive]. Here are some of the quintessential male crop top moments worth remembering. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Johnny Depp’s cropped jersey in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Here’s Bruce Jenner rockin’ the crop in Can’t Stop the Music. And Apollo Creed from the Rocky films just had to show off his goods. Cropped tank tops were popular as well. But as we all know, no male crop top was complete without short shorts and tube socks. As seen in this classic scene [a baseball game] from Sleepaway Camp [see the screen capture above]. Should we bring this trend back?
(Friendly warning: this posting will end up with some ads for gay porn, with some mildly raunchy text.)
… in today’s Bizarro/Wayno collaboration:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
I’ve been inundated with hi-g (high groan-producing) puns this week, but this one plugs into other e-mail I’ve been getting this week, for Christmas in July events of various kinds — though not, in my experience, marathon re-playings of the melancholy-saccharine holiday song “White Christmas” made famous by Bing Crosby in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn:
This week’s Drunk Cartoon from Bob Eckstein:
(#1)
It is in fact Discovery Channel’s 30th SHARK WEEK — they always use all-caps — running from Sunday July 22nd through Sunday July 29th. (I’ve avoided it so far, but I’m sure to be sucked in again soon.)
And then there’s the Death by Staircase mystery trope in the movies and (especially) on tv. Were they pushed, did they commit step-suicide, or was it an accident? If pushed, by human hands or by supernatural forces?
On the NPR word game quiz show Says You! broadcast by KQED-FM on Sunday afternoon (the 22nd): a “bluff round” over the word flumpet. One team of panelists is offered three definitions for the word from the other team, in this case (paraphrasing, since I can’t find the podcast of the original):
1: a lard-based dumpling (no doubt suggested by the /ʌmp/ and the /l/ in flumpet and dumpling)
2: a frowsy (or frowzy), loose woman, and by extension flowers that are wilted, no longer fresh (no doubt suggested by a rhyming association of flumpet with strumpet)
3: a musical instrument combining a flugelhorn and a trumpet (a portmanteau of the words flugelhorn and trumpet, which share the letter U in their spelling: FL – U – MPET)
The three panelists on the other team were each given a card; one card had a definition for flumpet from some reputable source, and the other two said BLUFF. These panelists were given some time, during a musical interlude, to make up plausible definitions. Then the first panel had to decide which definition was the right one.