A Joe Dator cartoon in the June 19th New Yorker:

(#1)

which will lead us to today’s Mother Goose and Grimm:

(#2)

Along the way we’ll visit the naugas and their hides.

Daddy, where does bubble wrap come from?

Honey, a sheet of bubble wrap is the pelt of the bubble sheep. Sort of like naugas and their hides.

The conceit of the Dator is that bubble wrap is in fact the pelts of those endearing creatures, bubble sheep — pelts barbarically stripped from them on factory farms.

Two things here: the actual source of bubble wrap; and the compound nouns bubble wrap and bubble sheep.

Bubble wrap. From Wikipedia:

(#3)

Bubble wrap is a pliable transparent plastic material used for packing fragile items. Regularly spaced, protruding air-filled hemispheres (bubbles) provide cushioning for fragile items.

“Bubble wrap” is a generic trademark owned by Sealed Air Corporation. In 1957 two inventors named Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes were attempting to create a three-dimensional plastic wallpaper. Although the idea was a failure, they found that what they did make could be used as packing material. Sealed Air Corp. was co-founded by Alfred Fielding in 1960.

The term is used generically for similar products, such as bubble pack, bubble paper, air bubble packing, bubble wrapping or aeroplast; Sealed Air denotes its product as a brand of “cushioning material”.

… The bubbles can be as small as 6 millimeters (1/4 inch) in diameter, to as large as 26 millimeters (1 inch) or more, to provide added levels of shock absorption during transit. The most common bubble size is 1 centimeter.

… Because bubble wrap makes a satisfying popping sound when compressed and ruptured, it is often used as a source of amusement. Acknowledging this alternative use, some websites provide a virtual bubble wrap program which displays a sheet of bubble wrap that users may pop by clicking on the bubbles, while the Mugen Puchipuchi is a compact electronic toy simulating bubble wrap popping.

Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day is celebrated on the last Monday of January. The last Monday of January was designated as Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day after a radio station in Bloomington, Indiana received a shipment of microphones wrapped in bubble wrap, which, after being unwrapped and installed, inadvertently broadcast the sound of their wrappings being popped.

Digression on Mugen Puchipuchi. Billed as “the world’s first electronic bubble wrap”. From Wikipedia:

(#4)

Mugen Puchipuchi is a Japanese bubble wrap keychain toy by Bandai (Asovision). Mugen means infinite in Japanese while puchipuchi means bubble wrap and also refers to the sound of the bubbles being popped. The toy is designed to mimic the sensation of popping bubble wrap for infinite number of times. It is made of a double layer structure of silicone rubber to create a similar feeling to the real bubble wrap. The square shaped toy has eight “bubbles” that would make a popping sound when pressed. It would also make a sound effect for every 100 pops, which includes “door chime”, “barking dog”, “fart”, and “sexy voice”. Bandai worked with the Puchipuchi bubble wrap company to create a design that is most realistic to the real bubble wrap. Bandai also created other Mugen keychain toys based on Mugen Puchipuchi, such as Puchi Moe, Mugen Edamame, and Mugen Periperi. The original Mugen Puchipuchi has also been marketed in North America as “Mugen Pop-Pop”.

Digression on Naugahyde. As bubble wrap comes from bubble sheep, so Naugahyde comes from naugas (though the manufacturer has tried to deny the sordid truth, in an elaborate campaign of fanciful disinformation).

From Wikipedia:

Naugahyde is an American brand of artificial leather (or “pleather” from plastic leather). Naugahyde is a composite of a knit fabric backing and expanded polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic coating. It was developed by Byron A. Hunter, senior chemist at the United States Rubber Company, and is now manufactured and sold by Uniroyal Engineered Products, LLC, a publicly held company under Invisa, Inc. Invisa also owns Wardle Storeys in the UK.

Its name, first used as a trademark in 1936, comes from the Borough of Naugatuck, Connecticut, where it was first produced. It is now manufactured in Stoughton, Wisconsin.

… A marketing campaign of the 1960s and 1970s asserted humorously that Naugahyde was obtained from the skin of an animal called a “Nauga”. The claim became an urban myth. The campaign emphasized that, unlike other animals, which must typically be slaughtered to obtain their hides, Naugas can shed their skin without harm to themselves. The Nauga doll, a squat, horned monster with a wide toothy grin, became popular in the 1960s and is still sold today.

(#5)

A clever attempt to conceal the terrible truth. From a 11/13/16 posting, in a discussion of faux-leather fetishwear: “Tell me, Eric, just how many innocent naugas had to be sacrificed to make you those sexy chaps, jockstrap, and big bulldog harness?”

Some people just have no concern for animals.

Compound nouns. Start with bubble wrap, subsective but with a non-standard semantic relationship between the two nouns.

Subsective, because bubble wrap is a wrap, in this sense (from NOAD2):

noun wrap: paper or soft material used for wrapping: plastic food wrap.

But the connection to bubbles is complex: something like ‘wrap made of bubble-like plastic material’.

Bubble sheep (as illustrated in #1) is also subsective: the fanciful bubble sheep are sheep. The relationship between sheep and bubbles in this case is very complex: something like ‘sheep that are the source of bubble wrap’.

There are other bubble sheep, in other senses of bubble sheep. For instance, sheep-simulacra made of bubble wrap:

(#6)

And a sheep-simulacrum composed of pointillist bubbles, as in this poster by Andy Westface:

(#7)

And, most inventively, a sheep that is the source of a cartoon bubble:

(#8)

Which is what brings us to the cartoon in #2, in which (as in #8) cartoon bubbles are objects on their own, which can be attached to someone held in police custody as a way of making them talk (playing on an ambiguity in make s.o. talk).

Not a bit shy,
Their desire
Writes its name
In the sky.

Batman and Superman, locking together, man to man:

(#1)

Madrid wall art by Ze Carrión

Image from my superhero-sex posting, which also has an erotic BatRobin slash image. Batman of the Gayverse is one randy superqueero, with a jones for any hunk in a cape. But Superman is his great antagonist, his great ally, and his great love.

The two heroes bring their names to their encounters. Superman, beyond human, beyond ordinary masculinity; Batman, the wielder of a heroic bat, also devotee of bats. From GDoS:

noun bat [metaphor based on bat ‘club’] (US/Aus) the penis [first cite 1930]

noun bat-boy (US gay) a hitchhiker who allows a homosexual driver to fellate him in exchange for a ride [1972 Rodgers, Queens’ Vernacular]

noun batman 1 (Aus.) a man with a large penis [1983] 2 (Aus. prison) an onanist [1990]

noun batsucker (Aus.) a fellator or fellatrix [2002]

Then the subtitle of this posting, SuperBat of Pink Steel Forever, which combines the slash name SuperBat with one film name for each of the heroes — Man of Steel and Batman Forever — and tops it off with pink steel, which GDoS offers as a harder, stiffer alternative to wood and woody as slang for the erect penis (first cite 1997).

Briefly on the films:

(#2)
Batman Forever is a 1995 American superhero film directed by Joel Schumacher and produced by Tim Burton, based on the DC Comics character Batman. It is the third installment of the initial Batman film series, with Val Kilmer replacing Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne / Batman. The film stars Chris O’Donnell, Nicole Kidman, Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey. (Wikipedia link)

(#3)

Man of Steel is a 2013 superhero film featuring the DC Comics character Superman. It is a British-American venture … The film is directed by Zack Snyder, written by David S. Goyer, and stars Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Antje Traue, Ayelet Zurer, Christopher Meloni, and Russell Crowe. Man of Steel is a reboot of the Superman film series that retells the character’s origin story. (Wikipedia link)

SuperBat imagery has been around for quite some time, and the genre is truly enormous — no surprise, given that it unites two figures who are separately prime objects of homoerotic desire. But in the last few years, as plans for a SuperBat movie were announced, and then when the movie itself appeared last year, SuperBat wall art flourished.

On the movie:

(#4)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a 2016 American superhero film featuring the DC Comics characters Batman and Superman. Directed by Zack Snyder and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, the film is the second installment in the DC Extended Universe following 2013’s Man of Steel.

… [The film] is the first live-action film to feature Batman and Superman together, as well as the first live-action cinematic portrayal of Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg. In the film, criminal mastermind Lex Luthor manipulates Batman into a preemptive battle with Superman, whom Luthor is obsessed with defeating.

(The film has not been well received by critics. I haven’t seen it, but the official trailer comvinced me that I don’t want to.)

And now more SuperBat wall art:

Reported by frequent correspondent RPG, this pairing at the southern end of Canal Street, Manchester, England, in February (the artist has not been identified):

(#5)

The piece has a Pop Art feel to it, thanks in part to “superhero bubbles” (or “explosion bubbles”) with KISS in them. An assortment of these bubbles:

(#6)

And in New York and London, from a Huffington Post piece on 4/4/16, “Superman And Batman Are Kissing For Equality In New York City: ‘I wanted to create a dialogue about equality by taking the two most alpha male superheroes and placing them in this embrace.'” by Chiara Piotto:

(#7)

On street walls in London and New York, Superman grabs Batman’s sky blue mask, and they share a passionate kiss between their capes. The London-based contemporary urban pop artist behind the street art, Rich Simmons, tells HuffPost Italy that he has conceived of this composition because he wanted to spark a conversation about equality “by taking the two most alpha male superheroes and placing them in this embrace.”

Simmons, who has exhibited artwork in London, Geneva, Tampa, New York and Los Angeles, says that his artworks also intend to challenge the notion of heroism. “It is sometimes more heroic to simply stand up for your beliefs, stand up for equality,” he says.

“If you were in need of being saved from something, would it matter if the person who could be your hero was gay or not?” Simmons asks.

He exhibited his first “Superman Kissing Batman” work on canvas during his solo show at the Imitate Modern gallery in London in 2014. Over the past few weeks, in the run-up to the “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” film debut, he created the life-size paste-ups in Croydon and Soho in London and Lower Manhattan in New York City.

Then there are a great many SuperBat works that are either conventional paintings or digital art. For instance, this SuperBat kiss, one of a number of SuperBat compositions on the 9GAG site (a platform headquartered in Hong Kong):

(#8)

Frustratingly, neither the artist not even the person who posted the image to the site is identified. There is an artist’s signature, but I haven’t been able to match it to an artist. (If you can, please let me know.)

Then, on the DeviantArt site there are a number of homoerotic digital art pieces by Huang Dian, using the handle vitnaa, among them these two swoony SuperBat compositions:

(#9)

(#10)

From the static image to the moving image, in a live-action SuperBat music video. From a piece in Out magazine on 3/10/16, “Watch: Batman and Superman Share a Kiss” by Nicholas Richard Rees:

Coheed and Cambria have made superhero fans around the world infinitely happier. The progressive rock band’s latest music video, “Island,” features Time Square’s posse of costume characters. We won’t spoil the entire video, but Batman rescues a very cute Superman from a couple of unsavory animal characters before going in for an epic smooch.

You can link to the video from the Out piece.

Yesterday’s Zippy:

(#1)

Themes here: cooking, masculinity, cartoonishness / cartooniness, the Disney cartoon character Goofy, funny laughs, office supplies.

Background: cartoonish Goofiosity. From a 7/30/14 posting, this earlier Zippy, in which Zippy becomes cartoonish, and takes on Goofy’s signature laugh, represented by Griffith in the spelling uh-hyuk, hyuk, hyuk (by others often as ah-hyuck):

(#2)

Cartoonishness / Cartooniness is explained in a 2/6/16 posting as

indicated by various physical characteristics — noses, eyes, eyebrows, ears, jawlines, and mouths. In Zippyland, of course, everyone’s a cartoon character and they’re all dressed like one, but some of them are “realistic”, normal, regular folks,, while others are flagrantly cartoony.

In #2, the characters become cartoony, while in #1 the character is cartoony throughout. Along with cartoonishness in form comes a cartoony laugh, specifically Goofy’s laugh.

Background: goof, goofy. From NOAD2:

noun goof: 1 a mistake: he made one of the most embarrassing goofs of his tenure. 2 a foolish or stupid person. ORIGIN early 20th century: of unknown origin.

adj. goofy: chiefly North American  foolish; harmlessly eccentric.

Background: Goofy. From Wikipedia:

(#3) Goofy laughing

Goofy is a funny-animal cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog with a Southern drawl, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and is one of Disney’s most recognizable characters. He is normally characterized as extremely clumsy and dimwitted [that is, as a goof; Disney played on the stereotype of the amiable but simpleminded hillbilly], yet this interpretation is not always definitive; occasionally Goofy is shown as intuitive, and clever, albeit in his own unique, eccentric way. [Goofy sometimes plays the role of the Wise Fool.]

… Goofy’s catchphrases are “gawrsh!” (which is his usual exclamation of surprise and his way of pronouncing “gosh”), along with “ah-hyuck!” (a distinctive chuckle) that is sometimes followed by a “hoo hoo hoo hoo!”, and especially the Goofy holler…. [Voice actor] Pinto Colvig, who was a man of primarily one voice, would incorporate the unique laugh and speech pattern into otherwise unrelated cartoon characters that he voiced.

You can listen to a series of goofy Goofy noises, starting with the chuckle, in this brief YouTube clip.

Masculinity, cooking, and supplies. Overlaid on the cartoony Goofy theme in #1 is the theme of men cooking up supplies — in this case, office supplies, from the American big-box retailer Staples, though it could have been hardware, auto supplies, or sporting goods, all of which sometimes figure in Zippy strips. (The American motor oil Valvoline figures prominently as a foodstuff in many strips.)

So the Pinhead in #1 fries, scrambles, sautes, and grills gummed reinforcements, White-Out, paper clips, push pins, acetate overlays, Post-Its, Elmer’s glue, and toner cartridges.

He’s from the cartoony district of Dingburg — the analogue of a gayborhood, where the Pinheads are flagrantly cartoonish rather than “normal”, and gender roles are to some extent reversed: men take on the stereotypically feminine role of cook, but do so with masculine materials rather than customary foodstuffs.

Note that Dingburg, the world of Pinheads, is itself a kind of ghetto of freaks, set off from the wide world of “normal” Roundheads that surrounds it. But even ghettos can have their ghettos: in this case, a neighborhood for the most freakish of freaks, the cartoony ones.

So it’s natural that cartoony Pinheads take on the mannerisms of Goofy, the least “normal” of the main Disney characters, the prime fool among fools (all classic cartoon characters are foolish). Also the most isolated socially: Donald Duck has a girlfriend, Daisy Duck; Mickey Mouse has a girlfriend, Minnie Mouse; and both Donald and Mickey have elaborate extended families; but Goofy has only occasionally been paired with a female counterpart (Clarabelle Cow), not of his own species, and he’s not surrounded by a rich array of blood family. Instead, Goofy’s social life is as the amiable sidekick to his friends, especially Donald and Mickey. Goofy’s the odd one out.

Yesterday a Zippy posting took us to the cartoony district of Dingburg, where the Pinheads are flagrantly cartoonish rather than “normal”. Now two more strips have followed, showing us more about toonies, as the bulbous-nosed denizens of the district are called. Turns out they’re avid fans of superhero action comics.

(#1)

(#2)

In #1, toonies are reading issues of Krull-Thing comics. From Wikipedia:

Krull is a 1983 British-American science fantasy film directed by Peter Yates and starring Ken Marshall, Lysette Anthony, David Battley and Freddie Jones. It was produced by Ron Silverman and released by Columbia Pictures.

Krull‘s distinctive features include an unlikely union between the science fiction and fantasy genres, a robust score by James Horner, early screen roles for actors Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane, and its surrealistic set design within the castle presented as the “Black Fortress”. Although it was a commercial failure when released, it has since achieved status of a cult film.

… A novelization was written by Alan Dean Foster. A comic book adaptation by writer David Michelinie and artists Bret Blevins and Vince Colletta was published by Marvel Comics, both as Marvel Super Special No. 28 with behind-the-scenes material from the film, and as a two-issue limited series.

The DVD cover art for the film, also used as as cover art for one of the comic books:

(#3)

Another comic book cover:

(#4)

But these were Krull comics, while in #1 the toonies are reading Krull-Thing comics — presumably an invention of Griffith’s, possibly based on the slogan on this t-shirt:

(#5)

(The slogan is available on many shirts, from many sources.)

In #2, the toonies are forced to read a sensitive, artsy, autobiographical graphic novel — think Marjane Satrapi, Chester Brown, Alison Bechdel, Justin Green — and are baffled by the many ways in which this work diverges from superhero action comics, so that they don’t “get it”. (I especially like the charge that the work is “too orienting” — rather than too disorienting.)

Then there’s the matter of the toonies’ names: Hercules Esperanto, Tidal Mindbender, Tombow Sharpie, Pentel Quicklock. Allusions to figures of myth and fantasy, brand names (especially the pen and pencil theme in Tombow, Sharpie, and Pentel), and more.

A Jason Chatfield cartoon in the July 10&17 New Yorker:

(#1)

The cartoon is amusing as the working out of the absurd pun in Employer vs. Impaler. But it also manages to allude simultaneously to the current Presidents of both Russia and the United States.

Background: Vlad the Impaler. From Wikipedia:

(#2) Ambras Castle portrait of Vlad III (c. 1560), source of the depiction of Vlad in #1

Vlad III, known as Vlad the Impaler … or Vlad Dracula (1428/31 – 1476/77), was voivode (or prince) of Wallachia [a region of what is now Romania] three times between 1448 and his death. He was the second son of Vlad Dracul, who became the ruler of Wallachia in 1436.

… Vlad’s reputation for cruelty and his patronymic gave rise to the name of the vampire Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.

Background: the President of Russia. Currently Vladimir Putin, often depicted in the West as devious and cruel, and sometimes referred to as Vlad so as to connect him to Vlad the Impaler.

Background: the President of the United States. From Wikipedia:

The Apprentice is an American game show that judges the business skills of a group of contestants. It has run in various formats across fourteen seasons since January 2004 on NBC.

…  Episodes ended with the host eliminating the poorest contributor from the competition, with the words “You’re fired!”

… Real estate tycoon and now U.S. President [REDACTED] was the show’s host for the first fourteen seasons.

Instead of “You’re fired!”, Vlad in #1 exclaims, in effect, “You’re hired!”

Jason Chatfield. The artist is new to this blog. From Wikipedia:

(#3) Chatfield in a self-portrait

Jason Chatfield (born Perth, 1984) is an Australian cartoonist and stand-up comedian, based in New York City. At 23 he became Australia’s most widely-syndicated cartoonist, appearing daily in over 120 newspapers in 34 countries. His art spans the disciplines of comic strip, gag cartoon, editorial cartoon, book illustration, caricature and commercial art.

… Chatfield took over writing and drawing the iconic internationally syndicated comic strip Ginger Meggs in 2007, becoming the strip’s fifth artist, succeeding James Kemsley. Kemsley wrote to the Bancks family to secure approval for Chatfield to succeed him. Ginger Meggs is currently syndicated by Andrews McMeel Universal to 34 countries. Chatfield is the youngest cartoonist to take on the iconic comic strip in its 96-year history.

A Ginger Meggs meta-comic:

(#4)

(which depends on a character’s explicit recognition that he is in fact a character in a cartoon).

Note from Michael Maslin on his Inkspill blog (“New Yorker Cartoonists News and Events”), appearing as a comment on a recent posting of mine here:

As you see, Mr. Zwicky’s blog is “mostly about language”; when it’s about the language of New Yorker cartoons it will be mentioned here

This could get burdensome. I’ve posted here over a hundred times about New Yorker cartoons and covers; these are indexed in a Page on this blog, with subpages for (so far) 25 specific artists — including one for Maslin himself!

[revised version]

From David Preston, yesterday’s Brewster Rockit comic strip, in a male character attempts to mansplain mansplaining to Pamela Mae Snap (aka Irritable Belle):

(#1) (Note strategic use of speech bubbles in the third panel.)

Today’s follow-up:

(#2)

[Notes from David Preston on Facebook:

[Rockit’s alias is] Short Attention Span Avenger. He’s blond. I’m not sure if Mansplainer is a previously introduced character, or if he’s just a random member of the crew. Usually it’s Ensign Kenny who gets injured. He’s the equivalent of Ricky Redshirt in Star Trek.

Brewster Rockit appears in #4 below.]

On the comic, from Wikipedia:

Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! is a satirical retro-futuristic comic strip created by Tim Rickard. It chronicles the misadventures of the dim-witted Brewster Rockit, captain of the space station R.U. Sirius, and his crew. Many of the comic’s characters and elements are derived from the Star Trek franchise, American science fiction films of the 1950s, and science fiction comics of the 1940s and 1950s. It debuted on July 5, 2004, and is nationally syndicated by Gracenote.

The weekday strips usually feature extended serial storylines, often running several weeks at a time. The Sunday strips are stand-alone, self-contained gags which are often more elaborately illustrated and action-oriented than the dailies, and are sometimes presented in medias res style. The comic’s humor includes satire, metahumor, slapstick, dark humor, running gags, word play, and puns.

Two central characters:

Captain Brewster Rockit: The lantern-jawed and squinty-eyed captain of the R.U. Sirius. He is brave, optimistic… and dumb as a rock. His strong leadership skills are complemented by a boyish sense of humor (and childlike mindset). He graduated from the Air Force Academy and then served in NASA as a space shuttle pilot. However, he failed his intelligence exam because he kept eating the pencils. He originally had the intelligence of an average person, but excessive memory wipes from alien abductions caused him to lose it. According to Pam, he has an obsession with ham.

Lieutenant Pamela Mae Snap [aka Irritable Belle]: The tough and pragmatic second-in-command aboard the R.U. Sirius, Pam is usually the one responsible for keeping things running, despite the collective idiocy of her shipmates. She sometimes has a hot temper and an attitude that gets her into trouble. She is also the mother of two young kids from a bad marriage that she doesn’t talk about. She has shown to have a “thing” for bad boys, having dated Dirk Raider, Brewster’s nemesis, as well as Karnor [a visiting alien given to eating people; he’s tall, green, and has a crush on Pam].  She enjoys killing things.

On mansplaining (and straightsplaining) on this blog, see this 9/20/14 posting. On the condescension in such explanations, see this Minnesota Public Radio site, with this illustration:

(#3)

Men mansplaining mainsplaining has become something of a trope on its own.

Back in the Brewster Rockit world, Capt. Rockit and his guys are also given to manfixing — “I’ll fix that for you, ma’am” — as in this 8/4/14 strip:

   (#4)

The two other characters in this strip:

Cliff Clewless: The station’s engineer – a position for which he is completely unqualified. He got his position through his computer-hacking abilities by hacking into NASA’s computer and upgrading himself from “programmer” to “engineer”. He believes himself to be popular with the ladies. He is fat and is invariably shown sporting a cap and sunglasses.

Dr. Mel Practice: The station’s conniving science officer (and mad scientist, though he prefers the term, “sanity-challenged scientist”). He often creates monsters and machines (killbots), but inevitably fails in his plans to conquer the universe. One of his craziest inventions was a “Procrastination Ray”, which sent troublesome objects into the future, so one would have no choice but to deal with them later. He is bald and wears a white lab coat, black gloves, and spectacles.

Irritable Belle. Out of the great pile of jokey names in the strip, I’ll comment on just this one, a play on irritable bowel, as in irritable bowel syndrome. On IBS (and the pun irritable vowel syndrome) on this blog, see this 4/11/17 posting.

The play in Irritable Belle can be taken one step further, to give the portmanteau name Irritabelle. And it has been. From an Adweek article of 4/14/16, “Ad of the Day: Meet Irritabelle, Your Irritable Bowel Sidekick, in Campy Ads for Viberzi: Actress Ilana Becker tells us why she loves the character” by David Gianatasio:

   (#5)

Take a bowel, Ilana Becker! [The puns just keep coming.]

The actress and comedian tells Adweek that portraying “Irritabelle,” the personification of a stomach ache with diarrhea, in campy ads for IBS-D (Irritable Bowel Syndrome With Diarrhea) medication Viberzi, has been a dream come true.

“I wanted this job from the moment I laid eyes on the copy,” she says. Originally hired to provide voiceovers when the work was in its animatic/storyboard phase, “I remember thinking how much fun it would be to be able to bring Irritabelle to life.”

Fashioned by Arnold Worldwide for pharma giant Allergan, the campaign broke nationwide last week, starring Becker as a kooky colon who makes life difficult for her owner. Clad in a jumpsuit decorated with a goofy digestive-tract illustration, her hair and lips painted atomic red, Becker makes a distinct impression in “Home,” the 60-second launch spot.

The site has several ads featuring Irritabelle.

… in the New Yorker. By Tom Toro (cartoon meme and self-referential as well) and Sara Lautman (pun!):

(#1)

(#2)

Tom Toro now has a Page of his own on this blog., with links to other cartoons and information about him. In #1, he gives us an instance of the Desert Island cartoon meme, along with a reference to making up jokes about being marooned on a desert island — jokes like this one.

Sara Lautman is new to this blog. Her first New Yorker cartoon was last year, but she’s published a lot in other places. On her Twitter page, she says she lives in Baltimore MD and is a “cartoonist & illustrator. contributing cartoon editor @electricliterature”. Her signature is SLAUT or SLAUTMAN, sometimes concealed in the underbrush, as above.

In #2, a gag cartoon (many of her strips are multi-panel stories about relationships and coping with life), she takes the myth of King Midas, whose touch turns everything to gold, and alters the character to King Madras, whose touch turns everything to madras cloth.

Two more of her single-panel cartoons, on moments in the history of literacy, from the Paris Review in July (the 18th and the 21st):

(#3)

(#4)

The Mother Goose and Grimm for the 23rd:

When Grimm speaks in a cartoon bubble, what he says appears in printed English — because, after all, a cartoon bubble (aka speech bubble) is piece of visual representation. Consequently, his speech is spelled, and is therefore subject to misspelling. Yes, this is all a bit dizzying.

Then there’s the bit of ironic silliness in Grimm’s misspelling misspelling.

Yesterday’s Bizarro:

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

The old cartoon meme of the clown and his balloon animals, but now seen from the viewpoint of one of the animals, who experiences the clown’s manipulations of balloons as really creepy chiropractice.

In an old New Yorker (from 7/6/15), two cartoons that especially struck me: a Mick Stevens meta-cartoon, and a Liana Finck with a playful word transposition. The second led me to a Finck from this spring that presents a real challenge in understanding.

The raw material:

(#1) Mick Stevens, going meta

(#2) Liana Finck: two Use compounds playfully transposed/Spoonerized

(#3) Liana Finck in the 5/8/17 magazine: two worlds intersect on the street

The meta-cartoon. Stevens’s couple in #1 are suddenly confronted with a gigantic pen intruding from above into their living room — and then they understand that they’re characters in a cartoon being drawn by an artist wielding that pen, which provides an explanation for the signature (of the artist) on the floorboard of the room.

From my 7/11/13 posting “More meta-cartoons”, which is about:

meta-cartooning, in which characters in a cartoon recognize in some way that they are, in fact, in a cartoon

illustrated with an Arlo and Janis and an Adam@Home. I wrote that:

Zippy has been going meta for many years, and Doonesbury dips into the genre every so often. Not long ago, I posted about a sequence of Pearls Before Swine strips in which the characters (including the cartoonist) commented on their cartoonness, and also posted a meta-Bizarro and then a meta-Mother Goose and Grimm.

Compound switches. The two Use N + N compounds — dish soap ‘soap for (washing) dishes’ and soap dish ‘dish for (holding) soap’ — are a transposition, or Spoonerism, pair, and so should enjoy one another’s company. As they do, with delight, in Finck’s cartoon.

Christian evangelism meets recycling. To understand Finck’s cartoon in #3, you need to recognize the formula “Have you heard the good news?” as part of a routine of public evangelism, especially by Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, going door to door or appealing to people in public places, including on the street. In an expanded form:

Have you heard the good news (about (our Lord) Jesus Christ)? (He is/has risen (from the grave).)

You also need to recognize the two characters in the cartoon as plastic water bottles — not at all difficult — and — more difficult — also recognize the symbol

(#4)

as a symbol of recycling, and in addition understand that “recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects” (Wikipedia). That is, in recycling, material metaphorically dies (when it is discarded) and then, if recycled, is reborn — metaphorically rises from the dead.

If you’ve got all that, you can appreciate the cleverness in having evangelical water bottles spreading the good news about how water bottles have been resurrected (via the miracle of recycling).

Note on the universal recycling symbol in #4, from Wikipedia:

Worldwide attention to environmental issues led to the first Earth Day in 1970. Container Corporation of America, a large producer of recycled paperboard, sponsored a contest for art and design students at high schools and colleges across the country to raise awareness of environmental issues. It was won by Gary Anderson, then a 23-year-old college student at the University of Southern California, whose entry was the image now known as the universal recycling symbol. The symbol is not trademarked and is in the public domain.

… and more, starting with Moby Chick in today’s Bizarro:

(#1)

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 8 in this strip — see this Page.)

Watch out for the big white one — you could lose your leg!

Yes, the Ahab and the whale cartoon meme, combined with the Dick / chick pun. Especially satisfying because it reproduces the structure of the story of peg-legged Captain Ahab and the white whale Moby Dick in the barnyard situation of peg-legged Farmer Ahab and the white Moby Chick. Then there’s the ridiculous disjuncture between a monstrous whale and a tiny chick.

The Dick part of Moby-Dick in the Melville novel is just a generic man’s name — but see below for playing with dick ‘penis’ — while the Moby part is of unclear or disputed origin. From a piece “The Origin of the Name “Moby Dick”” on the Melville.org site:

The name of Melville’s most famous creation was suggested by an article by Jeremiah Reynolds, published in the New York Knickerbocker Magazine in May 1839. Mocha Dick: or The White Whale of the Pacific recounted the capture of a giant white sperm whale that had become infamous among whalers for its violent attacks on ships and their crews. The meaning of the name itself is quite simple: the whale was often sighted in the vicinity of the [small Chilean] island of Mocha, and “Dick” was merely a generic name like “Jack” or “Tom” — names of other deadly whales cited by Melville in Chapter 45 of Moby-Dick:

“But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual celebrity — nay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death, but he was admitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name; had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was it not so, O Timor Jack! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long did’st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Tom! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky? Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain prose, here are four whales as well known to the students of Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to the classic scholar.”

The transformation of “Mocha” to “Moby”, however, presents a greater mystery. Melville himself never explained the origin of the latter word. Did he invent it on a whim and like the way it sounded? Or is it some strange piece of hermetic Melvillean arcana? The answer will probably never be known, but a number of scholars have amused themselves by taking shots at it. Following as an example is a conjecture put forth by Harold Beaver in his “Commentary” on the Penguin Classics edition of Moby-Dick (1972):

“By July 1846 even the Knickerbocker Magazine had forgotten its earlier version [of Reynold’s article], reminding its readers of ‘the sketch of “Mocha Dick, of the Pacific”, published in the Knickerbocker many years ago…’. That account may well have led Melville to look up the earlier issue, in the very month he rediscovered his lost buddy of the Acushnet and fellow deserter on the Marquesas, Richard Tobias Greene, and began ‘The Story of Toby’ [the sequel to Typee]. May not ‘Toby Dick’ then have elided with ‘Mocha Dick’ to form that one euphonious compound, ‘Moby Dick’?”

So, very speculatively, a portmanteau Mocha + Toby.

Playing with Moby and with Dick. On 3/31/17, in “The Ahab-Moby affair”, there’s an earlier Bizarro that plays on the musician Moby and Captain Ahab. And then on 3/13/17, in  “Risible faux-commercial name”:

Meanwhile, there’s the sperm whale Moby-Dick of Melville’s novel. The novel was written well before dick ‘penis’ became current, but sperm whales do have huge (retractable) penises, about 2m (6.5ft) long, and whale penises do get some coverage in the book, so Moby-Dick and his penis have become subjects for cartoonists. Two items (whose sources I haven’t tracked down): [#3 and #4 in that posting]

There are, of course, more. For instance, this dart flight:

(#2) dart flight in NOAD: ‘the tail of a dart’

Some whole darts, showing the (red) dart flights:

(#3)

Given examples of Moby Dick with a play on dick ‘penis’, I suppose that Moby Prick was inevitable. From the Deviant Art website:

(#4) “Moby Dick’s evil brother Moby Prick” by shittmanthebarbarian

From NOAD:

noun prick: vulgar slang [a] a penis; [b] a man regarded as stupid, unpleasant, or contemptible.

The drawing hints at sense [a], but relies for its humor on conveying sense [b].

Then non-phallic plays on Dick. First, three more rhyming puns (like Chick and Prick), two of them with fishing associations:

Moby Nick fishing charters in Port Credit ON (on Lake Ontario)

Moby Rick’s Seafood, a restaurant in Saratoga Springs NY

the clown Mick Holsbeke, sometimes performing as Moby Mick

Then with a play involving the vowel: Moby-Duck, with /ʌ/ rather than /ɪ/, and with ocean-going associations:

(#5)

Moby-Duck: The True Story… is a book by Donovan Hohn concerning 28,800 plastic ducks and other toys, known as the Friendly Floatees, which were washed overboard from a container ship in the Pacific Ocean on 10 January 1992 and have subsequently been found on beaches around the world and used by oceanographers including Curtis Ebbesmeyer to trace ocean currents.

And finally a play involving the final consonant: Moby Dip, with /p/ rather than /k/, with whale associations:

(#6) on the Better Homes & Gardens site: a set of 3 Moby Dip and Chips ceramic whale-shaped dishes

xx

Yesterday’s Zippy (“The flying bucket on Sepulveda”) took us to Dinah’s Fried Chicken on Sepulveda Blvd. in LA. Today, Zippy continues the narrative with remembrances of diner foods past — rice pudding, creamed spinach, corned beef hash — and their ability to evoke specific moments from times gone by:

(#1)

The day when Zippy spilled ketchup on his styrofoam shoes at Dinah’s; the day when Dinah’s ran out of rice pudding and substituted creamed spinach; Marcel Marceau’s recollection of May 14th, 1894 in Fresno CA, a memory triggered by just a whiff of corned beef hash.

All of this is just absurd if you don’t know about Marcel Proust, the madeleines, Remembrance of Things Past, and involuntary memory; in case you’ve forgotten, the title, “Remembrance of Flings Past” is there to nudge your memory. All this Proustian stuff comes from high culture, but like other Great Books, Great Art, and Great Music, it’s worked its way into a pop-culture meme that anyone can use for jokes and that everybody’s supposed to recognize.

I’ll get to real Proust in a moment — this is a text that’s worth coming back to every so often — but first a bit on Bill Griffith’s goofing on the side: the styrofoam shoes and Marcel Marceau as a surreal transformation of Marcel Proust.

(Fresno CA is one of Zippy-Griffith’s favorite silly places / placenames, like Ashtabula OH and Lithuania. Zippy-Griffith also has favorite silly foods (taco sauce) and silly commercial products (Valvoline motor oil, which the strip treats as a foodstuff).)

(The date May 14th, 1894 might well have been picked out of a hat, as a date within Proust’s lifetime and the lifetime of the main character of his gigantic novel.)

Styrofoam shoes. Well, not real ones, exactly. There are shoes with styrofoam layers in them, in particular, Adidas Boost Running Shoes:

(#2)

And there are shoe models or mock-ups made of styrofoam:

(#3)

But not actual shoes made of styrofoam. That’s Zippy-Griffith silliness.

Marcel Marceau speaks. I don’t think so. From Wikipedia:

Marcel Marceau (born Marcel Mangel, 22 March 1923 – 22 September 2007) was a French actor and mime most famous for his stage persona as “Bip the Clown”. He referred to mime as the “art of silence”, and he performed professionally worldwide for over 60 years.

Proust, Marceau, so long as it’s Marcel, who cares?

Remembrance of Things Past. À la recherche du temps perdu, also known as In Search of Lost Time. Volume 1: Swann’s Way: Within a Budding Grove.

(#4) From a cartoon version of Proust, called “Remembrance of Things Past: Combray (Graphic Novel)” (1998) by Stephane Heuet

From the Pleiade edition as translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin:

Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory — this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

… And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, all from my cup of tea.

Proust postings on this blog. Central in some of these is the fact that Proust’s narrator and his madeleines have become a meme, illustrating phenomena of memory and forming the basis for humor, including quite a few cartoons. An inventory:

on 1/16/12, “Things she did”:

[Ann Daingerfield Zwicky’s] scholarly interests in French embraced Old and Middle French, Proust (she worked for a while with the great Proust scholar Philip Kolb), and the 18th-century diarist the duc du Saint-Simon, whose ornate and often remarkable writing style fascinated Ann (Saint-Simon’s language became her dissertation topic).

It occurred to me recently that Proust and Saint-Simon were naturals for Ann: both are spinners of stories, in effect family stories, like the ones the Daingerfields told and in fact like the short stories Ann wrote.

on 6/23/12, “A Proustian moment”: the past evoked by pads of paper

on 7/13/12, “In the comics”: Jack Ziegler cartoon on a Proust theme

on 4/22/13, “Brief mention: the probably unintentional pun”: Morgan Library exhibition on Proust

on 8/17/13, “Lee Lorenz, Matthew Barney, and more”: Lee Lorenz cartoon “Proust orders from the cart”

on 1/13/16, “Fractured Proust”: Zippy strip

on 9/5/16, “A Minneapolis fling”: Zippy title “Remembrance of Flings Past”

on 3/10/17, “Friday cartoon 2: Remembrance of mustard past”: Mother Goose and Grimm with Dijon vu portmanteau

The 1/1/18 New Yorker cover, by George Booth:

(#1)

To come: about this cover; Booth covers for the holidays; the metaphorical idiom elephant in the room and its exploitation by artists and cartoonists.

Booth’s elephant. From the magazine’s site: “George Booth’s “Cramped”” by Françoise Mouly on 12/25/17:

“I’ll tell you a quick one about art school in Chicago, back around 1948, when I attended the Academy of Fine Arts,” George Booth, who turned ninety last June, said, when asked about how he learned to draw elephants. He continued:

There was a kid in cartoon class, gag cartoon class — he couldn’t do very well. He was from Texas. Mr. Garrity was the teacher. And Mr. Garrity confided in me that he didn’t have much hope for this Texas kid. He was trying to get all the country kids like me started on gag cartoons. I was born in Cainsville, Missouri (population: four hundred), and then we moved to Martinsville, Missouri (population: seventy-five). One morning in class, he tried to encourage the Texas boy and bragged on what the kid was doing, drawing elephants and donkeys. Mr. Garrity made up a compliment and told the boy he was doing all right, just keep going. The kid liked being complimented, and he turned his head –– this kid had a big mouth, full of Texas teeth — and he looked straight up at Mr. Garrity and said, “I tries, Mr Garrity, I tries.” I’ll never forget that, because that’s what I do with cartooning — I tries.

On this blog on 11/1/12, a posting about the cartoon “Ip Gissa Gul”, with information about Booth and two other cartoons of his.

Holiday Booth. In recent years, with material from the magazine’s website:

(#2) “Cover Story: George Booth Celebrates the Holidays” by Françoise Mouly and Mina Kaneko 12/15/14

“My favorite thing about the holidays is the people I love,” George Booth says of “Doggone, It’s That Time of Year Again!,” the cover of this week’s issue. He continues:

We celebrate Christmas with Dionne, my wife, and my daughter, Sarah, and we got a couple of pussycats — Schrodinger and Max. (We don’t have any dogs at the moment.) I grew up in northwest Missouri, about thirty miles from the border with Nebraska, twenty-five from Kansas, and twenty from Iowa, tucked up in the corner — corn country, snow country. It was a wonderful little town called Fairfax. My dad was superintendent of the schools and I had two brothers (I still got one). My mother, Mawmaw Booth, passed away some years ago. I feel her presence all the time. When I was three and half, I drew a race car stuck in the mud. I laughed at it and laughed at it, and she started encouraging me to be a cartoonist — and it went on from there. But, you know, when you publish that cover, she may come back.

(#3) “Cover Story: George Booth’s “Holiday Spirit”” by Mina Kaneko and Françoise Mouly 12/14/15

“Christmas has always been a high point for me, ever since I was three and a half and started cartooning,” the artist behind this week’s cover, George Booth, who will turn ninety in 2016, says. “I love holidays, and I can’t think of many I don’t cherish. The first town that I lived in as a kid had a population of seventy-five; we celebrated just Thanksgiving and Christmas. But I’ve been influenced by living in New York, I guess. Now I celebrate the whole shmegegge. Still, one of my favorites is the time when Santa Claus comes over the horizon and he and his elves start running all over the place.”

And three earlier ones:

(#4) “A Laugh on Santa” 12/15/03

(#5) “Holiday Howls” 12/13/04

(#6) “Ho-ho-ho” 12/13/10

Always with the dogs.

The idiom in #1. From a 7/5/16 posting on elephant in the room, quoting from Wikipedia:

“Elephant in the room” or ” Elephant in the living room ‘ is an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is going unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss. It is based on the idea/thought that an elephant in a room would be impossible to overlook.

The ubiquity of the situation described by the idiom and the vividness of the idiom have together made it a natural theme for playful artists, for example:

(#7) The Elephant in the Room as seen at one of Banksy’s exhibitions. Here a real live elephant was used painted with children’s face paint.

and a meme for cartoonists, here (from a great many possibilities) two Bizarros (one an instance of the psychoanalyst meme, the other of the witness stand meme) and a Shannon Wheeler:

(#8) No one acknowledges the elephant

(#9) No one even notices the elephant

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in these two cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in the first and 2 in the second — see this Page.)

(#10) We prefer not to talk about the elephant

Elephant? What elephant?

Wednesday’s Zippy takes us back to a delightful animated meta-comic of almost a century ago:

(#1)

Check out the Koko Cartoon Factory animated short here. The character Koko comes out of an inkwell, drawn by a cartoonist, then himself creates other characters, erases some, confronts human antagonists, eventually returns to the inkwell. Dreamlike in the manner of Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo.

From Wikipedia:

(#2) Assemblage of Fleischer characters featuring Koko, Betty Boop, and the dog Bimbo

Koko the Clown is an animated character created by animation pioneer Max Fleischer.

The character originated when Max Fleischer invented the Rotoscope, a device that allowed for animation to be more lifelike by tracing motion picture footage of human movement. The use of the clown character came after two previous tests and a search for an original character. Fleischer filmed his brother Dave in a clown costume. After tracing the film footage amounting to some 2,500 drawings and a year’s work, the character that would eventually become Koko the Clown was born, although he did not have a name until 1924. “The Clown”‘s appearance owes much to The Yama Yama Man. Dave’s clown costume was clearly inspired by one worn by Bessie McCoy, with the additions of a black ruffled collar replacing the big white bow, three pom-pom front buttons, and a prominent cone-shaped cap also with three pom-poms. The white face with slit eyes was a design common among German circus clowns. Both costumes have white gloves with long fingers, white foot coverings, and a hat with the same white pom-pom as in front. A 1922 sheet music drawing makes the connection more explicit, saying “Out of the Inkwell, the New Yama Yama Clown”, with a picture of Koko.

Because of the realistic effects displayed in his sample films, the result of Fleischer’s Rotoscope, and a past relationship with John R. Bray, he was hired as production manager for John R. Bray Studios, and in 1918 they began Out of the Inkwell as an entry in the Bray Pictograph Screen Magazine released through Paramount (1919–1920), and later Goldwyn (1921). Aside from the novelty of the Rotoscoped animation, this series combined live-action and animation centered on Max Fleischer as the creative cartoonist and “Master” of “The Clown.” “The Clown” would often slip from Max’s eye and go on an adventure, pull a prank on his creator. Fleischer wrote, and animated the early shorts along with Roland Crandall, with Dave directing the live action filming, performing on camera as “The Clown” for Rotoscoping, and assisted with the animation and Roto tracings.

My 10/9/14 posting “Plato – or Woody Woodpecker?” has a section on the Fleischer studio. And Betty Boop got her own posting on 9/19/15. As for Bimbo, from the Wikipedia article:

Bimbo is a tubby, black and white cartoon dog created by Fleischer Studios. He is most well known for his role in the Betty Boop cartoon series, where he featured as Betty’s main love interest. A precursor design of Bimbo, originally named Fitz, first appeared in the Out of the Inkwell series.

… The name Bimbo was chosen because in the 1920s the word was mostly associated with men who liked to fight. [see discussion below]

He starred in several famous cartoon shorts of the 1930s, most notably Swing You Sinners!, Minnie the Moocher (film) and Bimbo’s Initiation.

The complex sense developments of bimbo are detailed at some length in my 5/9/12 posting “bimbos and himbos”; early uses mix generic reference to a man (‘fellow, chap’) with various affective tones: affectionate (compare Italian bambino and English babe), strongly masculine tending to the thuggish (the prizefighter connection), contemptuous (compare bozo). From GDoS as quoted in my earlier posting:

the earliest use of bimbo is synon. with ‘bozo’ to mean a man, prob. unintelligent; overtones of thuggery appear c. 1920. A parallel use was that to mean ‘baby’, abbr. from the Italian bambino. By the 1920s the word also meant young woman, often a prostitute; simultaneously it meant a tramp’s companion, poss. gay. The writer Jack Conway (of Variety magazine) used it spec. to mean a ‘dumb girl’. Bimbo gained a new currency during the 1980s when it came to describe a young woman, usu. something of a gold-digger and indulged as such by rich and/or powerful older men and the media to whom they tell or sell their tales. The original 1980s bimbo was a ‘model’, Fiona Wright, who delighted the press with revelations of her relationship with Sir Ralph Halpern, a millionaire businessman

And then of course the baseball connection. On the baseball player Babe Ruth, from Wikipedia:

George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed “The Bambino” and “The Sultan of Swat”, he began his MLB career as a stellar left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but achieved his greatest fame as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees.

To modern ears the dog’s name Bimbo sounds ridiculous; but Bambino or Babe would work today (although a pig named Babe is the protagonist of the 1995 comedy-drama film Babe — but then Babe wants to be a sheepdog).

A follow-up to my 12/29/17 posting “George Booth at 90: elephants and holidays”: five of my favorite Booth cartoons.

(#1) A Dog In Bar meme cartoon

(#2) Married life, and the writer’s life

(#3) One of many Booth community-group cartoons, with cat

(#4) A New Year’s cover from 1981, with tons of cats

(#5) The writer’s life, with tons of dogs

#3-5 are set in a special Boothian universe of pet-filled domestic squalor, with precarious light fixtures.

Four cartoons yesterday that present interesting challenges in understanding. Now a mixed set of four more — a Zits, a Zippy, a One Big Happy, and a Dilbert — that have accumulated in my posting queue.

Digression on my life, giving some explanation for my slight net-presence these past two weeks. Skip ahead to the Cartoons section if this doesn’t interest you.

Some contributions:

I had a long monster cold. Not the flu, but a cold bad enough to have me sleeping 10 or 11 hours a day for a while.

I continued suffering from shortness of breath on exertion. Wore a Holter heart monitor for two weeks. Results back this morning: nothing of concern. But my shortness of breath persists and limits my mobility — especially in the cold mid-winter weather we’ve been having. (Cold enough to freeze to death all my coleus plants.)

Then it’s been the emotionally tricky mid-winter time between January 17th (the day Ann Daingerfield Zwicky died, in 1985) and January 22nd (the birthday of my man Jacques Transue, who died in 2003).

This year this emotional abyss was softened by the joy of taking part in the first day (Saturday the 20th) of this event:

(#1) In Alameda CA, drawing singers from all parts of California and, in fact, all parts of the country

That pretty much consumed the day, getting to Alameda and back, singing from 9:30 to 3:30, with “dinner on the grounds” (immense amounts of food supplied by the locals) in the midde.

But the big event was the arrival of my new iMac (at 5 p.m. on Friday the 19th, unannounced, when it was supposed to be delivered on the 23rd; fortunately I was home). And its installation over many long hours in the days between then and yesterday morning at 7. For several days I was unable to post images on this blog, and for other days I was deranged by the installation process. But now most things work ok, though there are plenty of wrinkles to iron out, probably over months.

Four people were engaged in the installation process, but all the heavy lifting was done by Ned Deily, directing things over the phone from Bethlehem PA. All praise to Ned.

On to:

The four cartoons.

(#2) Zits and speech bubbles/balloons

(#3) Zippy and Harvey the Giant Rabbit

(#4) One Big Happy and palm-greasing

(#5) Dilbert, with a vivid analogy from Alice

Zits and the detachable speech balloon. In a meta-move, #2 treats speech balloons as physical objects that can be moved around, propped up next to someone as a representation of their speech, and then carried away when their purpose has been served — all without the consent, or even knowledge, of the person the balloon is temporarily attached to.

Zippy and the Giant Rabbit of Aloha OR. Bill Griffith is fond of roadside fiberglass figures, but the one in #3 is especially grotesque. The actual figure:

(#6) Harvey the Giant Rabbit, 21250 SW Tualatin Valley Hwy, Aloha OR

From Roadside America on 1/25/18:

It takes a somewhat warped creative mind to envision a 20-foot-tall man as a 26-foot-tall mutant rabbit man. That mind was Ed Harvey’s (1928-2017), and he ran a boat business named Harvey Marine in landlocked Aloha, Oregon.

The story began in October 1962, when a big storm blew through the Pacific Northwest and damaged a fiberglass Texaco Big Friend statue (an obscure kin to the more famous Muffler Man). The owner brought the statue to Harvey Marine and to Ed, who was skilled at fiberglass repair. Ed fixed it, but the owner never returned. The statue lay abandoned at Harvey Marine for years (Ed once hauled it to Lake Oswego and used it as a boat).

Then Ed had a brainstorm. One of his favorite films featured Jimmy Stewart and a giant, invisible rabbit named Harvey. And rabbits supposedly brought good luck. “At boat shows we’d have a guy walk around in a rabbit suit,” Ed told us in the 1990s. “Then we got the idea to put a rabbit head on the big man.”

That was in 1974, and Harvey has been attracting attention ever since. Ed estimated that 50,000 cars drove past his business daily, and about 1 out of 20 either honked or yelled greetings to the bunny-head behemoth. “We don’t encourage honking,” said Victoria McCurry, manager, vice-president, and self-described “rabbit master” at Harvey Marine. “If we did, we couldn’t hear ourselves think.”

Still, by Ed’s figuring, that’s 2,500 people a day who regard Harvey as something more than fiberglass. And that’s not counting those who write letters to Harvey when they’re sad, or to tell him how happy he’s made their drive along the Tualatin Valley Highway. Victoria keeps a binder filled with the notes and cards that she’s found stuck in the front door over the years.

Ed rebuilt Harvey’s head several times, modifying his features or repairing damage, according to Victoria. Once, when the head was in the shop over Halloween, Ed playfully put a giant pumpkin in Harvey’s upturned palm. Local motorists didn’t recognize his reference to Washington Irving and besieged the store with anxious phone calls. “We had all the TV stations out here,” Ed said. “People calling, ‘Will you explain to my kids why this rabbit has no head?'” Children in the local elementary school reported having nightmares.

Ed’s son Mark told us that FBI agents once used Harvey as a rendezvous location. Victoria confirmed the story (“When they want to meet an informant, they need a very specific spot so that there’s no misunderstanding”). Harvey has also drawn his share of unwelcome attention. Vandals once broke off his fingers. Another time, Mark recalled, “they stuck a big penis on him.” And someone once managed to steal one of Harvey’s ears, but the police found it a couple of miles down the road. Harvey Marine was soon awash in get-well cards and flowers. “It’s unreal,” said Victoria. “I don’t know what would happen if he was to go away.”

Harvey probably isn’t going anywhere. Unlike his namesake, he is too visible to become invisible. “He’s grandfathered in,” said Mark. “He’s a national landmark.”

On the film, from Wikipedia:

(#7) A poster for the movie

Harvey is a 1950 comedy-drama film based on Mary Chase’s play of the same name, directed by Henry Koster, and starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull. The story is about a man [Elwood P. Dowd] whose best friend is a pooka named Harvey – in the form of a six-foot, three-and-a-half-inch tall invisible rabbit.

The Harvey in #6 is only too visible.

Palm-greasing in One Big Happy. Ruthie and Joe in OBH are often notable for their ignorance of relatively rare or specialized expressions in English, an ignorance that typically goes along with their lack of experience with the referents of these expressions (art works, for instance). In #4, they exhibit a surprising acquaintance with a cultural practice, the use of money to smooth service (“cash talks”). In plain terms, (small-scale) bribery to facilitate service, a practice sometimes referred to as palm-greasing. From NOAD:

idiom grease the palm of: informal bribe (someone). [grease expressing the sense ‘cause to run smoothly’ and palm, by association with the taking of money.]

The kid’s dad uses the combination of idioms slip s.o. a fiver. From GDoS:

slip v2 1. to give, to hand over [first cite:] 1868 Reade & Boucicoult. Foul Play I 68: She is as beautiful as an angel, and rich enough to slip a fiver into Dick Hexham’s hands.

The entry doesn’t capture the suggestion of furtiveness that often accompanies such transactions, and it doesn’t make it clear that this use of slip has most of the syntax of give (slip/give RECIPIENT TRANSFERRED-OBJECT / slip/give TRANSFERRED-OBJECT to RECIPIENT etc.).

And from NOAD:

noun fiver: informal: North American a five-dollar bill. British a five-pound note.

Alice’s description of bad writing. In the Dilbert in #5, Alice hits on a wonderfully vivid way of telling her boss that the writing in his plan is appalling. In the context, too vivid a way.

We’re not given a sample of the boss’s writing, but we might suspect him of thesaurisizing and of reaching for unnecessary jargon. That would produce an effect like a monkey’s vomiting on a dictionary.

Today’s Bizarro (another Piraro/Wayno collaboration):

(#1)

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)

To understand the strip, you need to recognize the customer at the bar and know that finding him is a difficult enterprise; and to fully enjoy the strip, you should probably also recognize the cultural trope of the drinker at a bar who has the bartender tell people looking for him — most characteristically, his wife — that he’s not there and they haven’t seen him. (Call it the Toper in Hiding trope. The toper in hiding is a stock figure in jokes, situation comedies, and cartoons.)

The young man in cap, glasses, and striped shirt is the central figure in the Where’s Wally / Waldo? children’s books, where the reader’s task is to find the figure in a crowded drawing. If you don’t recognize Wally (British) / Waldo (American), you can’t understand the cartoon. Discussion in a 8/3/13 posting of mine with a section on the character: illustrations in #5-#7, these two Paul Noth cartoons in #3 and #4:

(#2) Drinker at the bar

(#3) The betrayed spouse

And then in an earlier Bizarro, of 2/22/15, on the ambiguity of lost:

(#4)

Mick Stevens in the February 26th New Yorker:

(#1) The Grim Reaper reaped

I was immediately reminded of the 5th verse of the Isaac Watts 1707 hymn text “Lo! what a glorious sight appears”, which is set as the 3rd verse of the Sacred Harp song Promised Day (#409 in the 1991 Denson Revision of the book):

(#2)

His own soft hand shall wipe the tears
From every weeping eye,
And pains and groans and griefs and fears,
And death itself shall die.

That is, through the sacrifice of his death and the miracle of his resurrection, Jesus Christ redeems the world and affords life eternal; death in this world leads to the splendor of life in the hereafter.

The Watts text, with its orginal punctuation (altered in the SH):

1 Lo! what a glorious sight appears
To our believing eyes!
The earth and sea are passed away,
And the old rolling skies.

2 From the third heav’n, where God resides,
That holy, happy place,
The new Jerusalem comes down,
Adorned with shining grace.

3 Attending angels shout for joy,
And the bright armies sing-
“Mortals, behold the sacred seat
Of your descending King.

4 “The God of glory down to men
Removes his blest abode;
Men, the dear objects of his grace,
And he the loving God.

5 “His own soft hand shall wipe the tears
From every weeping eye,
And pains, and groans, and griefs, and fears,
And death itself, shall die.”

6 How long, dear Savior! O how long
Shall this bright hour delay?
Fly swifter round, ye wheels of time,
And bring the welcome day.

Promised Day uses Watts’s verses 6, 4, and 5, in that order. Two other SH songs extract text from Watts’s hymn:

SH299 New Jerusalem (music in my 11/29/11 posting “Borrowing texts”) uses verses 1  and 2

SH155 Northfeld (music in my 11/29/11 posting “Rudolph in Northfield”) uses verses 6 and 2; in Palo Alto we round these out with verse 5, the “death itself shall die” verse (written in by hand in our books)

In still another sense of death dying, several tv shows — Torchwood and Supernatural, in particular — have played with the fantasy of a world in which no one dies, so people just accumulate. Be careful what you wish for.

In today’s cartoon feeds, a new Bizarro/Wayno collaboration, with another Waldo strip, and a Calvin and Hobbes replay (from 3/5/88), with another in a series of sugar bomb cereal strips:

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

(#2)

Waldo and the psychiatrist. It’s two, two, two memes in one: the Waldo meme and the Psychiatrist meme.

On the first, see my 2/17/18 posting “Tell them you haven’t seen him”, with another Piraro/Wayno collaboration on a Waldo theme and links to earlier Waldo cartoons.

Sugar bombs. On this blog, in a 6/4/16 posting “More sugar bombs”:

Continuing a Calvin and Hobbes theme from March (3/19/16, “Sugar bombs”, with links to earlier postings on sugary cereals in real life)

… In the earlier posting, Calvin was eating Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. In today’s re-play of an old C&H, the brand name is Crunchy Sugar Bombs (it’s on the box). Presumably they’re sister Sugar Bomb varieties from the same manufacturer

And in today‘s re-play, it’s the even more extravagant Chocolate Frosted Crunchy Sugar Bombs. The cereals are packed with sugar and caffeine, to which Calvin regularly adds more sugar (and would add marshmallow bits too, if his mother would let him).

Wired?  Wired?  I can hear your heart racing from here.

The cartoon caption contest in the latest (March 12th) New Yorker:

The Grim Reaper laid to rest.

The Grim Reaper is a well-worn cartoon meme, amply illustrated in postings on this blog. Startlingly, a cartoon in which the Grim Reaper is himself reaped appeared just two weeks ago in the New Yorker, from artist Mick Stevens; see my 2/23/18 posting “Death’s end”. In that posting, I associated the cartoon with a line from an Isaac Watts text in a Sacred Harp song: “And death itself shall die” (holding out the promise of eternal life after earthly death).

Now to come: in next week’s magazine, three finalist captions for the Weyant drawing, for readers to vote on; and then a week later, the winner. Watch this space.