Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Maple Donuts, coffee shops, and unapologetic identities

December 1, 2017

It starts with a Zippy strip from July 1st, featuring the Maple Donuts shop on Historic Lincoln Highway in York PA (and, incredibly, it will end with singings of the Negro National Anthem; in between, there will be firearms):

(#1) Maple Donuts, featured a number of times in Zippy strips

It might not be an accident that the strip appeared a few days before America’s great patriotic holiday, Independence Day / the Fourth of July. To see why, we need to look at the actual Maple Donuts store.

That will take us, on the one hand, to the adjoining coffee shop; and, on the other hand, to proud, unapologetic assertions of identities.

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Posted in Apologies, Categorization and Labeling, Diners, Flags, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and food, Music, Names, Race and ethnicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

Male scale

December 1, 2017

Twice recently, I’ve been struck by a scale difference between male actors on tv shows (seen in reruns) — in each case, a difference between a hunky regular on the show and a very noticeably bigger guest star. I found the effect odd: at one moment, the guest seemed unnaturally large; at the next, the regular seemed to have shrunk. It all depended on which one I was taking as the standard.

First, regular Woody Harrelson with guest Robert Urich on Cheers. Then, regular Donnie Wahlberg with guest Marc Blucas on Blue Bloods. (And then a footnote about Tom Selleck on Blue Bloods.)

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Posted in Language and the body, Shirtlessness | Leave a Comment »

A golden moment

December 1, 2017

On Wednesday, a visit to the Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park, just a bit north of where I live, to appreciate its gardens in early winter but not in the rain. An Allied Arts trip always includes a walk through an elaborate formal garden in a courtyard and then on to an allée of classic hybrid tea roses, among them my man Jacques’s special favorite, ‘Mister Lincoln’ (bright red, sturdy, and highly scented; a Mister Lincoln stands over the spot where J’s ashes are buried in Maine).

Since my last visit, the courtyard had been re-worked into a golden garden, a riot of plants with yellow and orange flowers, mostly yellow. Sometimes subtle, often bold, but overall an astonishing sunny effect for the end of November, when a weak sun hangs low in the sky and deciduous trees are almost entirely bare. A garden featuring lots of yellow composites (plants in the aster, or daisy, family, formerly the Compositae, now the Asteraceae); trying to look them up brought me to the wonderful notion of DYCs: Damned Yellow Composites, pretty yellow flowers that are maddeningly difficult to distinguish. So hard to tell one DYC from another.

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Posted in Language and plants, My life, Names | Leave a Comment »

Two memic moments

November 30, 2017

In today’s cartoon feed, a penguin Zits and a maze-rat Rhymes With Orange:

(#1) There’s cold, and then there’s penguin cold

(#2) Rats in a Japanese bento maze

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Posted in Comic conventions, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Modification, Penguins, Understanding comics | 2 Comments »

The Pun of the Month® for November 2017

November 29, 2017

This month’s winner — meriting the November trophy, the Silver Fook of St. Andrew’s Day — was committed by Stephanie Shih:

(#1) Steph in her tuturo, singing “I love it when I get to live out a pun. 🎶tutu-ro tu tu ro“

A punmanteau, tutu + Totoro. Steph is in a tutu, wearing a Totoro jersey. If you know about Totoro as well as tutus, it’s a massive, satisfying November groan.

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Posted in Language play, Portmanteaus, Puns | 1 Comment »

The Unusual Two

November 29, 2017

In the tradition of Judi Dench and Vin Diesel (in a posting of 3/29/15 here), an unlikely pairing of actors in an episode of The Twilight Zone: Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson. Two gender icons of pop culture, early in their careers — a few years before Montgomery started her role as Samantha Stevens on the fantasy tv sitcom Bewitched, about the same time as Bronson broke through as Bernardo O’Reilly in the movie Western The Magnificent Seven.

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Posted in Actors, Language and gender, Movies and tv, Pop culture | Leave a Comment »

Talking to the hand

November 29, 2017

From Dennis Lewis on Facebook recently:

(#1)

The evolution of English: when this episode of “Match Game” was filmed 40 odd years ago, these were the top three responses to complete the phrase “talk to…” Today, of course, the $500 response would be “the hand.”

The idiom talk to the hand seems to have become current only in the 1990s, so in the 1970s nobody would have been likely to suggest the hand as the blank-filler on the Match Game.

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Posted in Idioms, Insults, Movies and tv, Truncation | 2 Comments »

Revisiting: Good Night, Salome

November 28, 2017

Yesterday, the posting “The two Salome Zwickys of Zürich”, about the musical and medical careers of Salome Zwicky. I didn’t touch on the complex resonances associated with the name Salome there — so now some onomastic (and musical) musings.

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Posted in Music, Names | Leave a Comment »

The post-Thanksgiving news from 52 years ago

November 27, 2017

News you can sing!

Passed on by Virginia Transue, this story from the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield MA:

52 years ago (Nov. 29, 1965) the Berkshire Eagle printed a little article about two young men being fined 25 bucks for dumping trash. Little did we know at the time that the incident, which ran on page 25, would become the basis for Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant. Here’s our original story from 1965:

(#1) The genesis of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”