Archive for the ‘Pop culture’ Category
October 6, 2025
Say the secret word, and a prop duck made in the image of Groucho Marx drops down, to riotous applause and blaring horns — and you get prize money. That was American tv’s You Bet Your Life from 1950 to 1961 (roughly, my teenage years). And then in a Pearls Before Swine comic strip from 2006:
(#1) Another self-referential strip by Stephan Pastis (it’s one of his specialties) — the secret word is the idiomatic (originally biblical) phrase (cast) pearls before swine — turning on shtick that disappeared from live tv about 65 years ago (but apparently lives on in pop-cultural consciousness, or at least in Pastis’s)
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Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Pop culture, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
September 23, 2025
(entertaining, but totally not for kids or the sexually modest)
The seminar was called to order on 9/21 on Facebook by Michael Thomas, who introduced the key background element, the internet fridge. The participants were three gay men, long-time friends (our shared backgrounds and the relaxed, playful atmosphere are important here): speakers Michael Thomas and me, with Michael’s husband Aric Olnes in a non-speaking role. From the transcript (somewhat edited):
— MT: We [MT and AO] hooked our fridge up to the internet the other day. Here’s a question for the ages: do fridges watch porn while the doors are shut?
— AZ: But of course. And then they fall asleep and dream of abusing electric sheep. And you thought that was condensation on the fridge walls, didn’t you?
— MT > AZ: fridge spunk. just scrape it off for your coffee in the morning.
— AZ > MT: Absolutely. The best jizz there is.
There’s an enormous amount of stuff packed into this — some from the widespread sexual culture of modern America or from popular culture but also some from gay male sexual culture. I will now do some unpacking.
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Posted in Books, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Language and the body, Language of sex, Movies and tv, Pop culture, Porn, Rhyme, Signs and symbols, Slang, Taboo language and slurs | 3 Comments »
September 1, 2025
🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit to bring September in (also to bring in the first fall month in the northern hemisphere) and, this year, to celebrate (US) Labor Day (recognizing the union movement and honoring workers) — so that I bring you (cartoon) rabbits in hard hats:
(#1) Lola and Bugs Bunny, in an HBO Max series from 2023, Bugs Bunny Builders: Hard Hat Time
Which takes me to September cartoons from the New Yorker, beginning with a scene-setting item from 2022:
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Posted in Comic conventions, Events and occasions, Holidays, Language and animals, Language and the body, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Pop culture, Understanding comics, Work | Leave a Comment »
August 18, 2025
I’ve lost faith in these offers reaching an audience. But just in case, I have a variety of framed / mounted comic collages, free for the taking (at my downtown Palo Alto condo). In three sets.
First set: eleven pieces of Barry Kite’s Aberrant Art (roughly 10.5 x 15 in. images, with generous framing white space), described in my 11/30/16 posting “Poet in Search of His Moose”; in general,
The collages are parodic or surreal, and quite funny, combinations of elements from art history and from popular culture, with wry titles. Like Bill Griffiths on art in Zippy the Pinhead, Kite shows great affection for the culture that he ransacks to create absurdist, countercultural works.
Second set: two similar works by a collagist De la Nuez (bought at a long-ago Palo Alto art fair; I’ve lost all information about him)
Third set: a large collection of smaller collages, by my hand: comic homoerotic (mostly XXX-rated) collages
Come by and browse; set up a time by e-mail to: arnold dot zwicky at-sign gmail dot com
Posted in Art, Collages, Offers, Pop culture | Leave a Comment »
August 1, 2025
🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit for August — and 🇨🇭 Swiss National Day 🇨🇭 (I am of course wearing my Swiss flag gym shorts — with a bright red FAGGOT tank top, to be sure, but I am sporting the flag of my forefathers)
Today’s (Piccolo & Price) Rhymes With Orange strip depends on the viewer identifying the main character, the one who says he wants to go someplace busy and crowded, as a pop-cultural figure known for losing himself in crowds:
British Wally / American Waldo, uncomfortable out in the open, with only one other person close to him
My 8/3/13 posting “The Weinerfest rolls on” has a section on the Where’s Wally / Waldo? books, with this Wikipedia note:
The books consist of a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations depicting dozens or more people doing a variety of amusing things at a given location. Readers are challenged to find a character named Wally hidden in the group. Wally’s distinctive red-and-white-striped shirt, bobble hat, and glasses make him slightly easier to recognise, but many illustrations contain “red herrings” involving deceptive use of red-and-white striped objects.
So of course he’s uneasy, sitting in such an exposed spot.
Thanks to his distinctive garb, Waldo is a frequent subject of cartoons. My 2/17/18 posting “Tell them you haven’t seen him” has a sampling of 4 of them.
Posted in Books, Events and occasions, Linguistics in the comics, Pop culture, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
July 19, 2025
In my 7/14 posting “Making a mango crazy in bed”, a surprising mishearing on my part. The speaker said:
What’s a bedroom move that makes a man go crazy?
But what I heard was:
What’s a bedroom move that makes a mango crazy?
The (sex-infused) mangos just dropped in from the sky, bafflingly, with no justification I could see. (Intended [mæn.go] and perceived [mæŋgo] are very close acoustically, but mango makes no sense in the context. )
Then on the 17th it was kapok. Maybe it’s a plant thing.
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Posted in Korean, Language and plants, Language play, Misreadings, Movies and tv, Music, Phonetics, Poetic form, Pop culture, Rhyme | Leave a Comment »
April 1, 2025
🐇 🐇 🐇 three rabbits to inaugurate the cruelest month; today is not only April Fools Day, but also noted linguist Leonard Bloomfield’s birthday (in 1897), to be celebrated by a look at his work on Menomini / Menominee, an Algonquian / Algonkian language of Wisconsin
Revived on Facebook recently, this 3/31/22 Pearls Before Swine comic strip:
(#1) A Stephan Pastis specialty, the formula pun — or setup / payoff pun — joke
Two things here: the joke form, and the popular-culture knowledge needed to appreciate this specific strip.
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Posted in Events and occasions, Jokes, Linguistics in the comics, Linguists, Movies and tv, Pop culture, Puns, Quotations | 1 Comment »
March 13, 2025
The title of today’s Bizarro cartoon — a Psychiatrist cartoon, which will be incomprehensible to anyone who’s not up on American punk music, with a bare-chested, long-haired patient being asked by the therapist, “Can you tell me. Iggy, why you want to be a dog?”, a question that makes no sense unless you’re up on the lyrics of particular punk-rock songs; Wayno’s title for the cartoon is “Bark Therapy”, which is entertaining but not actually informative:
(#1) You really have to know about Iggy Pop (pictured on the couch) and his 1969 recording of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 7 in this strip — see this Page)
Iggy Pop has put in a brief appearance on this blog — in my 1/24/16 posting “Morning name: John Varvatos”, in a section on the proto-punk band Iggy and the Stooges (with a reference to “I Wanna Be Your Dog”), But now it’s time to say more.
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Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Pop culture, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
December 30, 2024
… and they’ll use the old cartoon artwork for another strip, with fresh text: a new, improved donut. Case in point: today’s (12/30, New Year’s Eve Eve) Zippy strip:
(#1) The big donut by the side of the road in York PA, advertising Maple Donuts, its store, and its coffee shop
But, but: we’ve been here before; #1 is a reworking of the Zippy strip in my 12/1/17 posting “Maple Donuts, coffee shops, and unapologetic identities”, with the old artwork merely re-colored but with fresh speech balloons:
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Posted in Cartoon conventions, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Pop culture | Leave a Comment »
December 18, 2024
For today’s Bizarro, a portmanteau title — Doctor Who + The Who = Doctor The Who [with the overlapping material underlined] — for a hybrid cartoon character, who is simultaneously Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor Who and also the leaping, jumping Pete Townshend of the rock band The Who:
(#1) Wayno’s character is, in appearance and dress, Baker’s Doctor Who; but this character is also, in action, Townshend’s hyperactive guitarist in The Who (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
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Posted in Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Pop culture, Portmanteaus, Puns | 3 Comments »
