For the Winter Solstice, a snowy parody starring Zippy:

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Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, taken into many strange places: Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, Skeeball, Fleer’s Dubble Bubble gum, a gondolier, William Blake’s poetry, a strip mall, Joe Biden (Vice President of the U.S.), and a laundromat.

The original:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The poetic form of Frost’s poem is reproduced exactly in the Zippy parody: four stanzas of four lines each, each line in trochaic tetrameter. The first three stanzas have the rhyme scheme AABA, with the B of one stanza serving as the A of the next, and the last stanza has four lines with the B rhyme of the third stanza:

AABA  BBCB  CCDC  DDDD

where A is /o/, B is /ir/, C is /ek/, D is /ip/

Of course, the Frost actually makes sense, while the Zippy is surreal, and also has a lot of pop culture references. Three notes:

Moe. This is Moe Howard of the Three Stooges:

The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy act of the mid–20th century (1930–1975) best known for their numerous short subject films, still syndicated to television. Their hallmark was physical farce and slapstick. (Wikipedia link)

Skeeball. From Wikipedia:

Skee ball (also spelled skeeball or skee-ball; sometimes called skee roll) is a common arcade game and one of the first redemption games. It is similar to bowling except it is played on an inclined lane with fist-sized balls and the player aims to get the ball to fall into a hole rather than knock down pins. The object of the game is to collect as many points as possible by rolling balls up an incline and into the designated point value holes.

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(As a child, I was an enthusiastic Skeeball player.)

Fleer pink bubblegum. On this blog, a posting “Dingburg bubbles” of 4/29/14 about the Fleer company’s Dubble Bubble gum, the first commercially successful bubblegum.

Parodies of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” are all over the place this time of the year. Here’s the Dingburg version:

From chard in fur on a sled to Vindaloo curry. And more.

A crop of three comics for today, on three very different topics: a One Big Happy with an inventive reinterpretation of an expression; a Zits on the evolution of writing systems; and a Zippy with another Xmas parody:

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One by one:

One Big Happy. Busy Doctor Ruthie and her grandfather. Her grandfather suggests that she’s on call, and Ruthie invents the medical specialty on-callogist, suggesting (to readers of the comic) oncologist. Two possible scenarios here, neither very likely if the Ruthie of the strip is seen as a real child. In one, Ruthie has heard the medical term oncologist, without understanding what it refers to (the unlikelihood here is that she’d have heard the term and understood that it was the name of a medical specialty), and then her grandfather provides her the basis for an interpretation by giving her on call as a medical term. In the other, learning on call as a medical term leads Ruthie to invent on-callogist as the name of a specialty, without realizing that oncologist is in fact an existing specialty (here, the unlikelihood is her creating this fortuitous pun). But I suppose it could have happened.

Zits. Jeremy summarizes to Pierce the history of writing, with pictographs succeeded by alphabetic writing systems and the flourishing of written communication. But now it appears that icons are taking us back to pictographs. (The message is presumably from Jeremy’s girlfriend, Sara.)

Zippy. Our Pinhead tackles holiday music, this time producing a burlesque of “Jingle Bells” (yesterday he gave us a non-musical parody, of “A Visit from St. Nicholas”). (Because it is over-learned and repeated many times, Christmas music tends to invite burlesque; see, for example, the Pogo versions of “Deck the Halls” and “Good King Wenceslas” in this 7/21/12 posting.)

Then there’s the Gustave Courbet connection. On Courbet, from Wikipedia:

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (… 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.

… Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, painted in 1856, provoked a scandal. Art critics accustomed to conventional, “timeless” nude women in landscapes were shocked by Courbet’s depiction of modern women casually displaying their undergarments.

By exhibiting sensational works alongside hunting scenes, of the sort that had brought popular success to the English painter Edwin Landseer, Courbet guaranteed himself “both notoriety and sales”. During the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasingly erotic works such as Femme nue couchée.

This culminated in The Origin of the World (L’Origine du monde) (1866), which depicts female genitalia and was not publicly exhibited until 1988, and Sleep (1866), featuring two women in bed. The latter painting became the subject of a police report when it was exhibited by a picture dealer in 1872.

Specifically on L’Origine, again from Wikipedia:

L’Origine du monde (“The Origin of the World”) is an oil-on-canvas painted by French artist Gustave Courbet in 1866. It is a close-up view of the genitals and abdomen of a naked woman, lying on a bed with legs spread. The framing of the nude body, with head, arms and lower legs outside of view, emphasizes the eroticism of the work.

… In 1989, French artist Orlan created the cibachrome L’origine de la guerre (The Origin of War), a male version of L’origine du monde showing a penile erection.

The two artworks can be viewed (away from the sexual strictures of WordPress and Facebook) on AZBlogX, as #1 and #2, here.

On Orlan, from Wikipedia:

Orlan (born Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte) is a French artist, born May 30, 1947 in Saint-Étienne, Loire. She adopted the name Orlan in 1971, which she always writes in capital letters: “ORLAN”. She lives and works in Los Angeles, New York, and Paris.

On her L’Origine, from a notice of an exihibition from last year:

As part of the exhibition Masculin / Masculin at the Musée d’Orsay through January 2, 2014, is Orlan’s work “L’origine de la Guerre.” An interpretation of the famous 1866 painting by Gustave Courbet, “L’origine du monde,” Orlan’s 1989 version shows a man with his legs spread and an erection, reversing the iconographic roles found in the Courbet.

The function of Courbet in the Zippy strip is merely to provide a rhyme for all the way. But then Bill Griffith is often artistically mischievous.

On Princess Sparkle Pony’s Photo Blog, a parody of Family Circus:

Measles has been much in the news recently, about objections to the vaccine for it and the spread of measles to unvaccinated children.

The standard MMR vaccine covers three diseases: measles, mumps, and rubella (“German measles”). In the parody, Dolly maliciously proposes moving on from measles to rubella.

Previous parodies of Family Circus on this blog: on 2/2/14, parodies from Nietzsche Family Circus and Dysfunctional Family Circus; and on 4/15/14, from Time is a Flat Circus.

Today’s Zippy, with a candy-bar parody of Schiller’s Ode to Joy (An der Freude), used by Beethoven in the last movement of his Ninth Symphony:

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Almond Joy, Mounds, Mars bars! Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.

The relevant part of Schiller’s 1785 original text, with an English translation, from this site:

1 Freude, schoener Goetterfunken,
… 1 Joy, beautiful spark of Gods,
2 Tochter aus Elysium,
… 2 Daughter of Elysium,
3 Wir betreten feuertrunken,
… 3 We enter, fire-imbibed,
4 Himmlische, dein Heiligtum.
… 4 Heavenly, thy sanctuary.
5 Deine Zauber binden wieder
… 5 Thy magic powers re-unite
6 Was der Mode Schwert geteilt
… 6 What custom’s sword has divided

Now, the candy. This is something of a morass, since the names of the candies, the names of their makers, and the make-up of the candies have all varied over time and place. From the Wikipedia page on Almond Joy:

An Almond Joy is a candy bar manufactured by Hershey’s. It consists of a coconut-based center topped with one or two almonds, the combination enrobed in a layer of milk chocolate. Almond Joy is the sister product of Mounds, which is a similar confection but without the almond and coated instead with dark chocolate; it also features similar packaging and logo design, but in a red color scheme instead of Almond Joy’s blue.

History: Peter Paul Halajian was a candy retailer in the New Haven, Connecticut area in the early 20th century. Along with some other Armenian investors, including Dutch candy manufacturer Winjamy, he formed the Winjamy Candy Manufacturing Company in 1919. The company at first sold various brands of candies, but following sugar and coconut shortages in World War II, they dropped most brands and concentrated their efforts on the Mounds bar. The Almond Joy bar was introduced in 1946 as a replacement for the Dream Bar (created in 1936) that contained diced almonds with the coconut. In 1978, Peter Paul merged with the Cadbury company. Hershey’s then purchased the United States portion of the combined company in 1988.

… Although Peter Paul as a company no longer exists, the name still appears on the wrapper as part of the bars’ brand names.

… Bounty (produced by Mars, Incorporated) is a popular European version of Almond Joy, similar in shape and make-up, although without the almond (so more like Mounds). Bounty comes in milk and dark chocolate varieties.

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Then on Mars, again from Wikipedia:

Mars (also Mars bar) is a chocolate bar manufactured by American chocolate company Mars, Incorporated. It was first manufactured in Slough, Berkshire in the United Kingdom in 1932 and was advertised to the trade as being made with Cadbury’s chocolate as “couverture”.

In the United States, a different confection bore the Mars bar name. Featuring nougat, soft caramel, almonds, and a milk chocolate coating, the American Mars bar was discontinued in 2002. A similar bar featuring the Mars name was relaunched in the US in 2010.

… The worldwide Mars bar differs from what is sold in the US. The American version was discontinued in 2002 and was replaced with the slightly different Snickers Almond. The US version of the Mars bar was relaunched in January 2010 and is initially being sold on an exclusive basis through Walmart stores. The European version of the Mars bar is also sold in some United States grocery stores. It was once again discontinued at the end of 2011.

The British Mars is very similar to the United States Milky Way bar, which Mars, Inc. produced (not to be confused with the European version of Milky Way, which is similar to the United States’ 3 Musketeers).

There! I hope it’s all clear now.

Back to Almond Joy and Mounds, from the Wikipedia Almond Joy article:

During the 1970s, the Peter Paul company used the jingle, “Sometimes you feel like a nut / Sometimes you don’t / Almond Joy’s got nuts / Mounds don’t,” to advertise Almond Joy and Mounds in tandem. In a play on words, the “feel like a nut” portion of the jingle was typically played over a clip of someone acting like a “nut”, i.e., engaged in an unconventional activity, such as riding on a horse backward.

One of the ads can be viewed here.

The ads turn on the ambiguity of feel + like. First, as feel with a PP complement, parallel to feel ridiculous; from NOAD2:

[with obj.] experience (an emotion or sensation): I felt a sense of excitement | [no obj.]:  I felt angry and humiliated | we feel very strongly about freedom of expression.

Then as an idiom feel like; from the American Heritage Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (2005):

To desire to do something: We all got bored and felt like leaving. I feel like ordering a cup of coffee.

To desire to have something: I feel like a cup of coffee.

In the March-April 2015 issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review, the piece “Ryan Landry of the ‘Make ’Em Laugh’ School”, in which Jim Farley interviews Landry. From Farley’s intro:

A comic playwright and impresario of drag theater, his parody productions of classic movies, fairy tales, TV shows, and plays have long been a staple of Provincetown and Boston entertainment. More recently, along with his company, the Gold Dust Orphans, Landry has expanded his satiric reach to New York and beyond.

… While he acts and often sings in most of his shows, Landry’s major gift is the ability to turn out hilarious camp burlesques with a punk attitude, sort of like Charles Ludlum crossed with Courtney Love. The titles of his bawdy pop culture mash-ups — of everything from classic films to classic rock — perhaps say it best: Phantom of the Oprah, Silent Night of the Lambs, Mary Poppers, Pornochio, Snow White and the Seven Bottoms, and on and on.

Wonderful titles, reminiscent of the language-play titles that are so popular with makers of porn flicks — on (some of) which, see my posting “Porn titles” of 3/21/11, where you can find, among others:

Catcher in the Fly, Fist and Shout, Terms of Endowment, Field of Creams, Blond Leading the Blond

Landry out of drag:

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And fabulously in drag, as Bette Davis in All About Christmas Eve:

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In the June 1st New Yorker, this cartoon by Bob Eckstein:

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Not the first posting on this blog about earworms.

Previously:

“Sticky expressions” of 3/31/13, about material, including earworms, that sticks in the mind

“Earworm therapy” of 4/2/13, about research on driving out earworms

“Earworm therapy” of 9/10/14, with a Leigh Rubin cartoon on earworms

Eckstein. The cartoonist, who signs his work bob, is described on his Amazon site as:

a snowman expert, New Yorker cartoonist, renowned illustrator and author of the popular book, The History of the Snowman. He spent seven years traveling the world researching and attempting to answer the age-old question, who made the first snowman?

The 2007 book:

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One more bob cartoon. With a parody, and a jab at fancy flavored coffees:

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Yet another takeoff on Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks; on the original, with an assortment of parodies, see this 9/9/12 posting.

Today’s, groan, Bizarro:

An elaborate play on the title of E. L. James’s 2011 erotic romance novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, with a rhyme substitute for each of the content words — shifty for fifty, grades for shades, Fey for grey — with the whole business worked into a fresh scenario.

The James title has been endlessly re-worked by simple word substitution:

Fifty Shades of X, for X = Snail, Greek, Manipulation, Kale, Beauty, …

Fifty Xs of Grey, for X = Dates, Skills, Shirts, Squares, States, Accents, Waves, Frames, Scales, …

(but granting that a lot of these substitutes have the vowel /e/ of shades and grey).

Some of the substitutes for grey are rhymes: Bey, Whey, They, Wray, J.

One of the substitutes for shades is phonologically very close to it — sheds, with /ɛ/ instead of /e/ — and in fact the Fifty Sheds books are broad parodies of the Fifty Shades books.

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Don Piraro says there’s 1 in this strip — see this Page.)

On the front page of the July 2015 Funny Times, this cartoon by Mary Lawton:

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The visuals: a parody of Munch’s The Scream, in and around an ice cream truck. The text: the song/chant “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream” (a pun on ice cream / I scream, depending on word division).

The ice cream truck. Of course, there’s a Wikipedia page:

An ice cream van (British) or ice cream truck (American) is a commercial vehicle that serves as a mobile retail outlet for ice cream, usually during the summer. Ice cream vans are often seen parked at public events, or near parks, beaches, or other areas where people congregate. Ice cream vans often travel near where children play — outside schools, in residential areas, or in other locations. They usually stop briefly before moving on to the next street.

Ice cream vans are often brightly decorated and carry images of ice cream, or some other adornment, such as cartoon characters.

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… Along the sides, a large sliding window acts as a serving hatch, and this is often covered with small pictures of the available products, with their associated prices. A distinctive feature of ice cream vans is their melodic chimes, and often these take the form of a famous and recognizable tune, usually in the USA “The Mister Softee Jingle”, “Turkey in the Straw”, “Do Your Ears Hang Low?, “Pop Goes The Weasel”, “The Entertainer”, “Music Box Dancer”, “Home on the Range”, “It’s a Small World”, “Musunde Hiraite” (a Japanese children’s song usually played with a recording of a woman saying ‘hello’ at the end of the song on ice cream trucks), or “Camptown Races”; or, in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, “Greensleeves”, “Whistle While You Work” in Crewe and Nantwich, “You Are My Sunshine” in Vale Royal, “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” in Sheffield, and “Match of the Day” in other places.

… Most ice cream vans tend to sell both pre-manufactured ice pops in wrappers, and soft serve ice cream from a machine, served in a cone, and often with a chocolate flake (in Britain) or a sugary syrup flavoured with, for example, strawberry. Soft serve ice cream is served topped with sprinkles for a slight extra charge.

Digression: Cazwell’s “Ice Cream Truck”. From an 8/20/10 posting:

After I posted a link to Gay Pimp’s (Jonny McGovern‘s) “Soccer Practice” video on my X blog (here; note that this is X-rated territory), an appreciative friend sent along a link to Cazwell’s video “Ice Cream Truck” (Luke Cazwell, né Lucas Cazuela). Two outrageous fags doing white rap in a street-black style to a gay-disco beat. Tremendously unsubtle, campy, and also gay-affirming and often joyous.

Cazwell is heavy on the phallicity. (Oh yes, his dancers are Hispanic, black, and white. Unity in queerness.)

“The Scream”. The Munch painting is often parodied. Two of them (a Bizarro and a Homer Simpson) are reproduced in my 8/20/11 posting “Munch up to date”.

And the song. From Wikipedia:

“Ice Cream” or “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream” is a popular song, first published in 1927, with words & music by Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, and Robert King. After initial success as a late 1920s novelty song, the tune became a traditional jazz standard, while the lyrics refrain “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream” has remained a part of popular culture even without the rest of the song.

A 1925 recording by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians:

Mary Lawton. This is Lawton’s first appearance on this blog, and I haven’t been able to find out much about her. On her Etsy site, she identifies herself as a cartoonist and painter who lives in Houston TX. Here are two more of her cartoons, from the New Yorker‘s Cartoon Bank:

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Today’s Zippy, with a parody of (part of) Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, from the (mostly political) dreaming mind of Claude Funston:

The parody reproduces the recurring /ɪŋz/ rhyme of the original, once as /ɪŋz/ (the things of the original), three times as /ɪŋ/.

The original, which is even more nonsensical than Claude’s version:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

As for satanic plans, google on satanic plan to unearth an extraordinary range of weirdness, including paranoid fantasies about globalism and the New World Order, conspiracy theories (the Jade Helm military drill — martial law, FEMA camps, and so on), and, yes, Harry Potter.

In the October Funny Times, a cartoon by Cara and Andy Singer, parodying the Beach Boys song “California Girls”. I haven’t been able to find an image anywhere, so I’ll talk you through the thing.

The cartoon is signed by

Cara+Andy “Squirrels Just Wanna Have Fun” Singer

(an inventory of Andy Singer cartoons on this blog is here); there will be a note on the slogan below. It shows four squirrels singing the following song:

Well the East Coast squirrels are hip.
I really dig their tails of gray,
And the Southern squirrels eat lotsa nuts.
They love to run and jump and play!
I’ve been all around this great big world,
And I’ve seen all kinds of squirrels,
But I can’t wait to get back to the states,
Back to the cutest squirrels in the world.

I wish they all could be
Cal-i-fornia squirrels

Yes, it’s the Beach Boys doing “California Girls”, with a play on girls / squirrels. Wikipedia on the song:

“California Girls” is a song written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love for the American rock band The Beach Boys, featured on their 1965 album Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). Wilson conceived the song during his first acid trip, later arranging and producing the song’s recording, and incorporating an orchestral prelude plus contrasting verse-chorus form.

A performance:

The lyrics:

Well East coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the Southern girls with the way they talk
They knock me out when I’m down there

The Mid-West farmer’s daughters really make you feel alright
And the Northern girls with the way they kiss
They keep their boyfriends warm at night

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

The West coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned
I dig a french bikini on Hawaii island
Dolls by a palm tree in the sand

I been all around this great big world
And I seen all kinds of girls
Yeah, but I couldn’t wait to get back in the states
Back to the cutest girls in the world

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

So much for the text. Then there’s the Singer signature, with more girls / squirrels play, taking off from the song “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. From Wikipedia:

“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” is a song written by and first recorded in 1979 by American musician Robert Hazard. However, it is much better known as a single by American singer Cyndi Lauper, whose version was released in 1983. It was the first major single released by Lauper as a solo artist and the lead-off single from her debut album She’s So Unusual. Lauper’s version gained recognition as a feminist anthem and was promoted by an award-winning video.

xx

In my posting on Batman vs. the Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, I touched on the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has an important role in the film:

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Now more about the actor, who at the age of 34 has already had a long and impressive career, in a wide range of roles, many challenging.

From Wikipedia:

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (… born February 17, 1981) is an American actor and filmmaker. As a child star, he appeared in the films A River Runs Through It, Angels in the Outfield and 10 Things I Hate About You, and as Tommy Solomon in the TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun. He took a break from acting to study at Columbia University, but dropped out in 2004 to pursue acting again. He has since starred in 500 Days of Summer, Inception, Hesher, 50/50, Premium Rush, The Dark Knight Rises, Brick, Looper, The Lookout, Manic, Lincoln, Mysterious Skin and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

… The San Francisco Chronicle noted that [in 3rd Rock] Gordon-Levitt was a “Jewish kid playing an extraterrestrial pretending to be a Jewish kid”

… His [more recent] films include 2001’s drama Manic, which was set in a mental institution, Mysterious Skin (2004), in which he played a gay prostitute and child sexual abuse victim, and Brick (2005), a modern-day film noir set at a high school

On 3rd Rock, from Wikipedia:

3rd Rock from the Sun (sometimes referred to as simply 3rd Rock) is an American sitcom that aired from 1996 to 2001 on NBC. The show is about four extraterrestrials who are on an expedition to Earth, which they consider to be a very insignificant planet. The extraterrestrials pose as a human family to observe the behavior of human beings.

… Dick Solomon (John Lithgow), the High Commander and leader of the expedition, is the family provider as a physics professor at Pendelton (with Ian Lithgow, John Lithgow’s oldest son, playing one of his less successful students). Information officer and oldest member of the crew Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has been given the body of a teenager and is forced to enroll in high school (later college), leaving security officer Sally (Kristen Johnston) and “the one with the transmitter in his head,” Harry (French Stewart) to spend their lives as twenty-somethings hanging out at home and bouncing through short-term jobs.

… Dr. Mary Albright (Jane Curtin) is a professor of anthropology at (fictional) Pendelton State University, and many of the issues with which the four aliens struggle appear in her conversation and work.

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Left to right: Johnston, Curtin, Lithgow, Stewart (in back), Gordon-Levitt

Then in 2003, Gordon-Levitt had a major role in the gay-themed drama Latter Days (which I posted about here). Though his character was a straight Mormon (and he is himself straight), the film was intensely sympathetic to gay men, and it was courageous of the 22-year-old Gordon-Levitt to take a role in the film.

The next year, he took one of the two starring roles in another gay-themed drama, Mysterious Skin, but now playing a male prostitute. From Wikipedia:

Mysterious Skin is a 2004 Dutch-American drama film directed by American filmmaker Gregg Araki, who also wrote the screenplay based on Scott Heim’s 1995 novel of the same name.

… Mysterious Skin tells the story of two pre-adolescent boys who are sexually abused by their baseball coach, and how it affects their lives in different ways into their young adulthood. One boy becomes a reckless, sexually adventurous male prostitute, while the other retreats into a reclusive fantasy of alien abduction.

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An impressive performance in an impressive movie.

And now his playful side, as a guest host of Saturday Night Live on 9/22/12, where he led a sketch “Magic Joe”, taking off on the movie Magic Mike about male strippers, with Gordon-Levitt doing Channing Tatum. A still showing off his body, which is well-developed, but lean rather than extraordinarily muscular (and so pleasing to me):

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A video of the performance:

Yesterday I posted about (among other things) the song “That’s Amore”, as made famous by Dean Martin. Immediately friends began providing plays on the title: That’s a Moray”. Eels! It turns out that there is a small industry in this bit of linguistic playfulness. On to the parodies, and then some words about morays.

But first a phonological note on amore / a moray. The two take-offs in comments on yesterday’s posting depend on the fact that in ordinary connected speech, the indefinite article forms a phonological word with the immediately following word, so that amore and a moray are normally identical in pronunciation. (They can be made distinct, but ordinarily they’re homophonous.)

Now the parodies, beyond the two in yesterday’s posting. Here are two from meme generators:

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But there are more extensive parodies. Here, from the amlrite site, devoted to “making fun of music”:

Parody Song Title: “That’s A Moray”
Parody Written by: Malcolm Higgins

when you’re diving at night, and your feet feel the bite,
that’s a moray
when your hand’s in the cave, suddenly you’ll need saved,
that’s a moray
when you blubber and scream, but you have a bad dream
that’s amore
when he hits all your fingers, with teeth that are stingers,
a moray…

that’s a moray that’s a moray
little fella

when he bites on your thumb, takes a chunk of your bum,
that’s a moray
when you reach in his cave, he’s all bravo and brave
he’s a moray

and it’s not how it feels, and you know you have eels,
that’s a moray….
scuzza me, but you see, let them be, or you’ll see
lotsa morays…….

And a link from Rod Williams, a link to jokes from the rec.comics.funny archives, this one from Terry Morris:

(Italian accordion music and the sound of SCUBA in background.)

(Verse) If you see a big eel,
and his teeth are like steel,
That’s a Moray. (A Moray!)

If he’s big and he’s mean
and he’s slimy and green,
That’s a Moray. (A Moray)

(Chorus) If he slices the hose,
and then leaves you to doze,
That’s a Moray!
A Moraaaaaaaaaaaayyyy!
A Moray.

(Verse) When he’s fanning his gills,
Better head for the hills,
That’s a Moray. (A Moray!)

From a hole in the reef,
He will bring you much grief,
That’s a Moray. (A Moray!)

(Chorus) If he slices the hose,
and then leaves you to doze,
That’s a Moray!
A Moraaaaaaaaaaaayyyy!
A Moray.

No doubt there are many many more, with rhyming couplets on a moray theme, copying the pattern of “That’s Amore” — each pair together making a line of anapestic tetrameter (WWS WWS / WWS WWS), each followed by “That’s a moray”.

Morays. First the (essentially boring) etymology of the name, which came into English in the 17th century from Portuguese, where it descended from Latin, which got it from Greek, where it referred to a sea creature, possibly a type of moray.

Then from Wikipedia:

Moray eels [or morays] or Muraenidae are a family of cosmopolitan eels. The approximately 200 species in 15 genera are almost exclusively marine …

The smallest moray is likely Snyder’s moray (Anarchias leucurus), which attains a maximum length of 11.5 cm (4.5 in), while the longest species, the slender giant moray (Strophidon sathete) reaches up to 4 m (13 ft). The largest in terms of total mass is the giant moray (Gymnothorax javanicus), which reaches 3 m (9.8 ft) in length and 30 kg (66 lb) in weight.

Morays live in burrows, have patterned bodies, and sport rear-hooked teeth. Here’s a whitemouth moray at the entrance to its burrow; you can appreciate the patterned body (different patterns in different species) and those fearsome teeth:

(#3)

Morays have a reputation for being vicious, but in fact they are reclusive and not at all aggressive. Unless, of course, you threaten its burrow, in which case it will attack. Also,

Morays have poor vision and rely mostly on their acute sense of smell, making distinguishing between fingers and held food difficult; numerous divers have lost fingers while attempting hand feedings, so the hand feeding of moray eels has been banned in some locations, including the Great Barrier Reef [off Australia]. The moray’s rear-hooked teeth and primitive but strong bite mechanism also makes bites on humans more severe, as the eel cannot release its grip, even in death, and must be manually pried off. (more from Wikipedia)

Moral: don’t mess with the moray. Except in song.

In the NYT Book Review on Sunday (November 1st), a review by James Parker of The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (edited by Otto Penzler) and Mycroft Holmes (by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse). Here I’m focused on the Sherlockian pastiches in the Penzler anthology.

Parker begins:

Shadrach Voles, Upchuck Gnomes, Rockhard Scones and Blowback Foams: None of these great made-up detectives appear in Otto Penzler’s giant compendium of fake Sherlock Holmes stories, or Sherlock-Holmes-stories-written-by-persons-other-than-Sir-Arthur-Conan-Doyle. You will, however, be able to find stories about Sherlaw Kombs, and Solar Pons, and Picklock Holes, and Shamrock Jolnes, and Warlock Bones and (my own pick of the pseudo-Holmeses) Hemlock Jones, who in Bret Harte’s “The Stolen Cigar-Case” almost destroys the ardently worshipful Watson-like narrator with the sheer puissance of his intellect.

Mikel Jaso’s delightful illustration for the review, paying homage to Holmes’s pipe, René Magritte, and the creations of the Sherlockians:

(#1)

Parker continues on Bret Harte’s creation:

On Hemlock Jones’s shelves are glass jars containing “pavement and road sweepings” and “fluff from omnibus and road-car seats.” When he thinks, his head shrinks, “so much reduced in size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally hung on his massive ears.” Jones’s diamond-­encrusted cigar case, a present from the Turkish ambassador, has gone missing. There can be only one culprit: the narrator himself! Jones lays out the case, deduction by damning deduction. “So overpowering was his penetration,” declares the narrator in a fit of purest proto-Kafka, “that although I knew myself innocent, I licked my lips with avidity to hear the further details of this lucid exposition of my crime.”

We in 2015, we the entertained, who live in a fun house of Sherlocks — Cumberbatch Sherlock, Downey Jr. Sherlock, Jonny Lee Miller Sherlock, etc. — need no convincing of the imaginative vitality of Sherlock Holmes. But the fact that Bret Harte, revered and shaggy forebear, of whose stories Conan Doyle felt his own early efforts to be but “feeble echoes,” could come out in 1900 with such a spot-on and beautifully modern satire of a Sherlock Holmes story tells us something of the immediacy with which Holmes franchised himself into popular consciousness.

Then to pastiche (which in its purest form celebrates its target) and parody (which in its purest form mocks its target), and to the hard fact that the line between the two is not as clear as many would like to think — especially because most such works are “parodiche”, taking both an affectionate and a critical view of their targets. Parker:

A pastiche is a form of literary criticism, as a tribute band is a form of rock criticism. There were things I didn’t understand about Bon Jovi, for example, until I saw, in a bar in Boston, a band called Jovi. (I just Googled them, incidentally. Now they’re called Bon Jersey.) So in Penzler’s Big Book we find the various parodists and imitators zooming in on key elements: Stephen Leacock, in 1916, lampooning the “inexorable chain of logic” that leads Holmes to an absurd conclusion, and John Lutz, in 1987, describing a Holmes who in the absence of a good case “becomes zombielike in his withdrawal into boredom.” It’s all, properly defined, fan fiction, some of the fans (Stephen King, H.R.F. Keating) being quite distinguished, others less so — long-forgotten bookmen lowering themselves into the Holmesian atmosphere as into a hot bath, with many a grunt and sigh of luxury. Kingsley Amis puts on a good performance in “The Darkwater Hall Mystery” — although because he’s writing for Playboy he has Watson go to bed with a servant called Dolores, “raven hair, creamy skin and deep brown eyes.” I loved Neil Gaiman’s elegiac and dreamlike “The Case of Death and Honey,” which really breaks up the mood. Anthony Burgess’s contribution to the genre, “Murder to Music,” is rather too elaborate in its formalities, but it does give us a Holmes of thrilling and merciless aestheticism: “If Sarasate, before my eyes and in this very room, strangled you to death, Watson, for your musical insensitivity, . . . I should be constrained to close my eyes to the act, . . . deposit your body in the gutter of Baker Street and remain silent while the police pursued their investigations. So much is the great artist above the moral principles that oppress lesser men.”

Lovely.

Now to the illustration in #1 and its artist. The illustration is a take-off on Magritte’s celebrated Surrealist painting of 1928 La Trahison des Images (The Betrayal / Treachery of Images), with its inscription Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

(I’ve posted here on parodies of Magritte, including Trahison. And then on Zippy cartoons on Magritte, specifically on Trahison in a posting of 3/11/15, where a Zippy carries the self-referentiality of the painting to new heights.)

On the artist Jaso. He has a website here (Mikel Jaso: Graphic Artist), where he supplies this minimal biographical information:

Mikel Jaso is an artist, graphic designer and illustrator based in Barcelona. He teaches at IDEP Barcelona’s illustration postgraduate program. His work has appeared in both individual and group exhibitions in Barcelona, New York City and Mexico City

and a large collection of his illustrations, which are a pleasure to view — clean lines, great sense of humor. Two examples:

(#2)

Sert + Miró I: Bookmark inspired by the work of the architect Josep Lluis Sert and the artist Joan Miró. Client: Fundació Miró.

(#3)

The Fish Pepper: Cover illustration. Client: The Art of Eating magazine.

(Men’s underwear, sexy song lyrics, nicknames, half-rhymes, and more. Some of it raunchy enough to have been banned in Malaysia, but then we’re not in Malaysia, are we?)

(#1)

His name is Mikey Bustos, he’s (self-described) Canadian Filipino, and he rap-sings of skimpy Speedos —

My goods are protected like an armadillo
When I’m in the ocean I feel good emotion
Because all the sand causes some real exfoliation.

and prances in them like a pro.

(Big hat tip to correspondent RJP.)

A wonderfully silly parody of the smash Spanish-language hit of the summer, the steamy “Despacito” (“Slowly”). The original is a product of scenic Puerto Rico:

(#2) You can watch the video here

On the artists:

Luis Alfonso Rodríguez López-Cepero (born April 15, 1978), known by his stage name Luis Fonsi, is a Puerto Rican singer, songwriter and actor, best known for the hit song “Despacito” (Wikipedia link)

Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez (born February 3, 1977), known by his stage name Daddy Yankee, is a Puerto Rican singer, songwriter, rapper, actor and record producer. Ayala was born in Río Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and was raised in the neighborhood of Villa Kennedy Housing Projects. According to the New York Times, he is known as the “King of Reggaetón” by music critics and fans alike. (Wikipedia link)

The song is full of intense sexual imagery and wild joy. There are many remixes, including two Justin Bieber efforts: one with  Fonsi and DY (video here), one with Ariana Grande (video here). (Just to note here that, in agreement with Zippy the Pinhead, I find Justin Bieber’s attractions inexplicable. Ariana Grande is something else.)

Meanwhile, the original has been banned in Malaysia. From Bloomberg on the 19th, “Malaysia Bans ‘Despacito’ on State Radio, TV Due to Lyrics”:

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia has banned “Despacito” on state radio and television, though it might be hard to slow the song’s record-breaking popularity. The ban applies only to government-run radio and TV outlets, not to private stations or YouTube or the music streaming services fueling the song’s success.

Communications Minister Salleh Said Keruak said Thursday the song was reviewed and banned because of public complains that the lyrics are obscene. Salleh told The Associated Press that a remix of the song featuring Justin Bieber isn’t affected.

Salleh was also quoted by local media as saying private radio stations should censor the song themselves out of sensitivity to local culture.

An Islamic party, Amanah, earlier denounced the song and called for it to be kept off Malaysia’s airwaves because many young children were singing it without understanding the words.

… The original and the remix featuring Bieber together are the most streamed track of all time with more than 4.6 billion plays across streaming platforms.

A bit of the song translated pretty literally into English:

Slowly
I want to breathe your neck slowly
Let me tell you things in your ears
So that you remember when you’re not with me
Slowly
I want to strip you off with kisses slowly
Sign the walls of your labyrinth
And make your whole body a manuscript
Turn it up turn it up….. turn it up, turn it up

Mikey Bustos fixed on the /sito/ of Sp. despacito and heard an echo of Speedo /spido/, and he was off and running (on the beach in the Philippines, in a Speedo). You can watch the video here.

On MB, from Wikipedia:

(#3)

Mikey Bustos (born June 23, 1981 [as Michael John Tumanguil Pestano Bustos]) is a Filipino Canadian singer and comedian who has appeared on the reality television show Canadian Idol. He is also the owner of AntsCanada, an online shop that specialises in ant-keeping.

Bustos was born to Filipino parents in the Weston neighbourhood of Toronto. Before Canadian Idol, he worked as a temp at the Bank of Montreal. He attended St. Michael’s College School in Toronto.

… Bustos is very open about his Filipinophilia, his popular videos cover a wide range of topics including “Filipinism”, Philippine English phonology and Filipino culture tutorials such as eating Balut (duck embryo), Filipino dining, Filipino courting, and the Filipino CR [comfort room ‘public toilet’]. He also made a parody of “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga entitled “Pinoy This Way” and has many more based on various trending pop songs.

From one of his sites:

I’m a Youtuber + Recording Artist/Performer + Actor + Comedian + Entrepreneur + Nature Lover + Foodie + Traveler + Filipino Canadian

Huge number of covers, parodies, and cultural commentary. Sometimes two of these at once, as in his “Circumsizing Me”, a parody of Sam Smith’s “Stay with Me”, about the long-standing Filipino custom of circumsizing boys at the age of 8-10, as a rite of passage into adulthood. Among its memorable lines:

To turn my duck into penguin
They’ll cut off my loose skin.

(#4) Engorged snood, anxious Mikey, bare beak

In fact the bird depicted on the left is a male turkey, not a duck. From Wikipedia:

In anatomical terms, the snood is an erectile, fleshy protuberance on the forehead of turkeys. Most of the time when the turkey is in a relaxed state, the snood is pale and 2-3 cm long. However, when the male begins strutting (the courtship display), the snood engorges with blood, becomes redder and elongates several centimetres, hanging well below the beak.

You can watch the MB video here. And you can watch the Sam Smith original here. On Smith and the song, from Wikipedia:

Samuel Frederick Smith (born 19 May 1992)[2] is an English singer-songwriter. He rose to fame in October 2012 when he was featured on Disclosure’s breakthrough single “Latch”

… He released his debut studio album, In the Lonely Hour, in May 2014 on Capitol Records UK. … The album’s third single, “Stay with Me”, was an international success, reaching number one in the UK and number two on the US Billboard Hot 100

Pinoy Boy. As in #3 (and in MB’s Lady Gaga parody, “Pinoy This Way”). From Wikipedia:

Pinoy is an informal demonym referring to the Filipino people in the Philippines and their culture as well as to overseas Filipinos in the Filipino diaspora. A Pinoy with mix of foreign ancestry is called Tisoy, a shortened word for Mestizo.

An unspecified number of Filipinos refer to themselves as Pinoy or sometimes the feminine Pinay. The word is formed by taking the last four letters of Filipino and adding the diminutive suffix -y in the Tagalog language (the suffix is commonly used in Filipino nicknames: e.g. “Ninoy” or “Noynoy” for Benigno [Aquino] Jr. and III respectively, “Totoy” for Augusto, etc.). Pinoy was used for self-identification by the first wave of Filipinos going to the continental United States before World War II and has been used both in a pejorative sense and as a term of endearment, similar to Chicano. Although Pinoy and Pinay are regarded as derogatory by some younger Filipino-Americans, the terms have been widely used and have recently gained mainstream usage particularly among members of the Filipino masses and the Filipino-American sector.

Pinoy was created to differentiate the experiences of those immigrating to the United States but is now a slang term used to refer to all people of Filipino descent. “Pinoy music” impacted the socio-political climate of the 1970s and was employed by both Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and the People Power Revolution that overthrew his regime. Recent mainstream usages tend to center on entertainment (Pinoy Big Brother) and music (Pinoy Idol), which have played a significant role in developing national and cultural identity. As of 2016, the term has been extensively used by the government of the Philippines itself with apparently no derogatory connotations. It is now more positive than the slang term “flip”.

Speedos. Background in my 10/6/16 posting on Speedo-style swimsuits and Speedos themselves (with photos). Then the sandcastle illustration from MB’s Facebook site:

(#5)

On the beach town, from Wikipedia:

Puerto Galera is the north-westernmost municipality in the province of Oriental Mindoro, Philippines. It is located at the south-western end of the Isla Verde Passage, about 130 kilometers (81 mi) south of Manila. It is mainly accessible from the Southern Luzon port of Batangas, which is acting as a gateway to the city.

Now the lyrics to the song (from the lybio site), notable for its many half-rhymes — for example, the run speedos, Mykonos, nachos, titos, mojitos, casino (tito: uncle; male friend of parents); the matching of recommend it with chick magnet; and the matching of kudos with Bustos. And in the middle, the noun exfoliation, which happens to have been my morning name a couple of weeks ago.

I’m Mikey
Oh This is a song Speedo
About freedom
Hey yeah! Go!

Me, I prefer to be free moving when I swim
No extra clothing to wear me down, so good
Beach is where I like to work on my sun-kissed skin
But I make sure I am evenly brown.

Oh, you see me passing by wearing my small swimsuit
You cannot believe your eyes I’m almost nude
As I’m walking by I’m shaking it like jello!
Oh yeah, I’m confident in the skin that I’m in and I will wear what I want this summer
Because I have been dieting like crazy, I’m on Paleo.

I wear speedos, when I’m at the beach you see me wear my speedos
Cover your kids’ eyes ’cause I am wearing speedos.
I am feeling fresh like I’m an ad for Mentos
I wear speedos when I’m at the store you know I’m wearin’ my speedos
When I’m doing cardio I’m wearing speedos

It feels super breezy like I ride tornados swimmin’ swimmin’ swimmin’ in my speedos
Why do people look at me, when I’m wearin’ my speedos
Boarding shorts, man I hate those ’cause the tan lines look so gross
I love my speedos, I love my speedos.

Why can girls wear floss, but I cannot wear these, they’re macho
If you need socks, hey I got you I will just wear it commando
When I’m in my speedo I feel fabulous, some might say I dress scandalous
You cannot make me cover it, just build a bridge, get over it

I make sure to always do my squats so I have bum bum
Everyone is gawking because they can see my bum bum
I don’t have to worry ’cause I don’t have tan lines on my legs
Only, only, the lucky ones will see it but in private

I am Asian and I cannot grow hair on my body
I walk around with my big butt that I got from my Mommy
‘Cause I love my speedo, don’t hate, give me kudos
Manila, Toronto They call me Mikey Bustos

When you see me passin’ I don’t like harrassin’
Look but don’t touch, unless you’re family or my cousin
‘Cause I wear my speedo control your libido
My goods are protected like an armadillo
When I’m in the ocean I feel good emotion
Because all the sand causes some real exfoliation.

Yeah, I wear speedos Get up out my way ’cause I be wearin’ my speedos
I have more grease on my body than Mykonos I be extra hot like I’m a dip for nachos
I wear speedos I’ll be on a beach in Philippines with titos
Oiling up my body while I drink mojitos and I always win like I’m a darn casino
Swimmin’ swimmin’ swimmin’ in my speedos

Wherever I go, you know I’ll be wearing my speedos
It even acts like a pocket I hide my money inside it
I love my speedos, I love my speedos.

If you are a boy and want to walk around in speedos
I obviously recommend it, it is even a chick magnet
I wear speedos, my OOTD [Outfit Of The Day] on Instagram is speedos
When I Facebook Live you know I’m wearing speedos
I will make this article of clothing viral

‘Cause I wear my speedo
Control your libido
My goods are protected, like an armadillo
I obviously recommend it, it is even a chick magnet
I love my speedos, I love my speedos.

‘Cause I love my speedo don’t hate, give me kudos
Manila, Toronto they call me Mikey Bustos
If your a fan of the speedo LIKE & SHARE this with your amigos
I wear speedos
It’s like a mankini!

The noun exfoliation. Of interest because of the semantic development of the verb exfoliate that the noun is derived from. From NOAD2:

verb exfoliate: [no object] (of a material) come apart or be shed from a surface in scales or layers: the bark exfoliates in papery flakes; [with object] cause to do this: salt solutions exfoliate rocks on evaporating; [with object] wash or rub (a part of the body) with a granular substance to remove dead cells from the surface of the skin: exfoliate your legs to get rid of dead skin; [with object] shed (material) in scales or layers. ORIGIN mid 17th century: from late Latin exfoliat– ‘stripped of leaves,’ from the verb exfoliare, from ex– ‘out, from’ + folium ‘leaf.’

(#6) When I’m in the ocean I feel good emotion / Because all the sand causes some real exfoliation.

A Scott Hilburn cartoon from some years back, a smileworthy garage-mechanic burlesque of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” text:

Puns on grace / grease, wretch / wrench, and all(eluia) / oil. Visually, there’s the choirstall that’s a tool box and the sacred oilcan in the stained glass window. And of course the various sorts of wrenches.

[Added on 8/2: as with many other cartoons I’ve analyzed here, this one involves a translation from one (usually everyday) world into a metaphorical world — here, between the world of church services and the world of mechanic’s shops. See my 5/22/18 posting “I (just) can’t stop (it)”.]

It’s time for that moving, rousing carol that makes this time of the year so special. I refer of course to the great seasonal song of Okefenokee County, the Pogolicious, Kellytastic “Deck us all with Boston Charlie”:

On Walt Kelly’s inspired nonsense parody of the winter carol in my blogging: a 8/1/07 LLog posting “Cousin of eggcorn”; and a 7/21/12 posting on this blog, “The Pogo files”.

The original lyrics (“Deck the hall(s) with boughs of holly … ‘Tis the season to be jolly”) are notable for their archaic language and broad jolliness, but in fact the Pogo version is the one that’s gotten stuck in my memory, so it always takes me a few moments to recover the 19th-century original. On the carol, from Wikipedia:

“Deck the Halls” or “Deck the Hall” (which is the original version of the lyrics) is a traditional Christmas, yuletide, and New Years’ carol. The melody is Welsh dating back to the sixteenth century, and belongs to a winter carol, “Nos Galan”, while the English lyrics, written by the Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant, date to 1862.

… The phrase “‘Tis the season”, from the lyrics, has become synonymous with the Christmas and holiday season.

“‘Tis the season”, indeed — a cliché or catchphrase that annually rouses Baltimore Sun copyeditor John McIntyre to howls of pain and rage. You can watch the YouTube video of John’s annual holiday proscriptions here. Excerpts from the text:

in journalism the resort to trite language appears to be understood as an honorable ritual rather than as a failure to recognize the hopelessly hackneyed. So, for you who have ears to hear, the Holiday Cautions. Chestnuts roasting by an open fire are fine, but they can be kept out of copy and headlines by the vigilant.

“ ’Tis the season”: Not in copy, not in headlines, not at all. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. You cannot make this fresh. Do not attempt it.

“ ’Twas the night before” anything: ‘Twasing is no more defensible than ’tising. And if you must refer to the Rev. Mr. Moore’s poem, if indeed he wrote it, its title is “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

And on from there.

… Some readers (and, sadly, some writers) lap up this swill. It is familiar, and the complete lack of originality comforts them. It is for such people that advertising copy is written. There you will find ’tis the seasons in abundance, and you will now understand them to be a mark of intellectual and imaginative impoverishment.

But “Bark us all bow-wows of folly” and “Duck us all in bowls of barley”, now those are fresh lines that will truly catch readers’ attention. Only last week I stir-fried an assortment of sliced vegetables with strips of beef, to serve over mounds of cooked barley, for the traditional Advent Bowls of Barley.

(And for tomorrow, St. Lucy’s Day, rather than setting some young girls’ hair on fire, I’ve sautéed sliced vegetables in butter and will serve them on pasta hair — capellini or capelli d’angelo.)

That, at least, is where it started, with this bit of playfulness on Facebook:

(#1)

One among a great many available versions of Wading for Godot (like this one, hardly any have an identifiable origin, but just get passed around on the web, along with jokes, funny pictures, and the like: the folk culture of the net). I’m particularly taken with #1, as a well-made image and as a close reworking of lines from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot:

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let’s go.
(They do not move.)

The Big Picture. The name of the play has three words in it, and each has served as the basis for playful variations; such variations are common for well-known titles (and other formulaic expressions — a few go on to become snowclones, but most are one-offs and do not).

That’s playing with the title of the play. But there’s also playing with the work as a whole: mimicking the setting, characters, story, and even the text in detail. This posting will end with a magnificent parody of this sort, in which Waiting for Godot is realized as a comic strip featuring (the simulacra of) the animated-sitcom characters Beavis and Butt-Head.

Title play: word 1. As above, with the pun waiting / wading. The two words are phonetically similar for all speakers of English, but for most American speakers, the words are phonetically identical, or at least close enough to strike people’s perceptions as identical (the actual phonetics are more complex, and often involve small but statistically significant differences in pronunciation).

The phenomenon of AmE at issue here is the “flapping” of the alveolar consonants t and d — realizing both as a voiced alveolar tap or “flap” [ɾ] between an accented vowel and an unaccented one (as in atom / Adam, patty / paddy, rater / raider, etc.).

Otherwise, you can find apparent examples of

Waking / Wailing / Mating / Waving / Wasting for Godot

but so far they’ve all turned out to be errors in character recognition software that generates text or in software that searches text (or both).

I would love to see Waltzing for Godot developed, but would prefer to avoid Maiming for Godot.

Title play: word 2. At least one instance, the title of an academic paper:

Paul E. Corcoran, Historical endings: Waiting with Godot. History of European Ideas 11.331-49 (1989).

Title play: word 3. From  my 10/14/16 posting “Pun days”, image #2, a cartoon by Walsh:

(#2) Involving the Waldot of Where’s Waldo

This posting also has a section on Beckett’s play, on Vladimir and Estragon and the landscape they find themselves in, including that tree.

Much more slyly, from a Slate piece by Alex Ross on 9/10/96, “Island of Lost Auteurs: What the hell happened to John Frankenheimer?”, about director Frankheimer’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, “a succès de désastre starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer”. Ross’s piece is perceptive and wickedly, achingly, funny; then in the middle of it:

 Waiting for Moreau, I’ve been captivated by three of Frankenheimer’s movies with his favorite actor, Burt Lancaster.

My own take, in my 3/21/12 posting “Horror movies”, on

two Dr. Moreau movies: the 1933 Island of Lost Souls and the 1977 Island of Dr. Moreau. Both based on H. G. Wells’s 1896 novel.

Playful allusion. From my 2/1/19 posting “The natural history of snowclones”, about the playful exploitation of formulaic expressions, building on:

an idiom, cliché, striking quotation, proverb, saying, catchphrase, slogan, or [as in this case] memorable name or title

… this model [expression] may quickly extend by developing open slots, or by playful allusion. Sometimes, every part of the model that can be varied for effect is:

Eye Guy: Queer Eyes for the Spanish Guys, Straight guys for gay eyes, Homosapien eye for the Neanderthal guy

Brokeback: Backdoor Mounting, Breakdance Mountain, Brokeback Mounties

(Compare the plays on Waiting for Godot above.)

Title play: as a whole. There are many occasions and ways to wait. Waiting for Godot at the airport, in a Bizarro from 2/20/14:

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

Wholesale parody. Now to the Open Culture site (“The best free cultural & educational media on the web”) on 5/18/15, with “Comics Inspired by Waiting For Godot, Featuring Tintin, Roz Chast, and Beavis & Butthead”. On the last:

I reserve my highest praise for the inspired casting of Beavis and Butthead in R. Sikoryak’s “Waiting to Go.” … Here we find a Vladimir and Estragon who truly embody the final lines of Norman Mailer’s notorious “A Public Notice on Waiting for Godot”:

Man’s nature, man’s dignity, is that he acts, lives, loves, and finally destroys himself seeking to penetrate the mystery of existence, and unless we partake in some way, as some part of this human exploration… then we are no more than the pimps of society and the betrayers of our Self.

The extraordinarily elaborate parody, with Beavis as Estragon and Butt-Head as Vladimir, and others to be introduced below:

(#4) B&B wait

Background on B&B, from Wikipedia:

(#5)

Beavis and Butt-Head is an American adult animated sitcom created by Mike Judge. The series originated from Frog Baseball, a 1992 short film by Judge originally aired on Liquid Television. After seeing the short, MTV signed Judge to develop the short into a full series. The series originally ran for seven seasons from March 8, 1993 to November 28, 1997. Fourteen years following the end of the series, the series was revived for an eighth season which aired from October 27 to December 29, 2011. A theatrical feature-length film based on the series titled Beavis and Butt-Head Do America was released in 1996 by Paramount Pictures.

The series centers on two socially incompetent teenage delinquents and couch potatoes named Beavis and Butt-Head (both voiced by Judge), who go to school at Highland High in Highland, Texas. They lack evident adult supervision at home and are dimwitted, undereducated and barely literate. Both lack any empathy or moral scruples, even regarding each other. They will usually deem things they encounter as “cool” if they are associated with heavy metal, violence, sex, destruction, or the macabre. While inexperienced with females, they both share an obsession with sex and tend to chuckle whenever they hear words or phrases that could even be interpreted as sexual or scatological.

Highlights from the Sikoryak. Panels 4 and 5 allude directly to the play:

Estragon: Charming spot. (He turns, advances to front, halts facing auditorium.) Inspiring prospects. (He turns to Vladimir.) Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.

Then there’s the reference to death erection, again keeping close to the play (but enriched by the fact that in #4 this is an exchange between Beavis and Butt-Head, who revel in raunch):

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It’d give us an erection.
Estragon: (highly excited) An erection!
… Estragon: Let’s hang ourselves immediately!

[Digression on death erection. From Wikipedia:

A death erection, angel lust, or terminal erection is a post-mortem erection, technically a priapism, observed in the corpses of men who have been executed, particularly by hanging.

… Death by hanging, whether an execution or a suicide, has been observed to affect the genitals of both men and women. In women, the labia and clitoris may become engorged and there may be a discharge of blood from the vagina. In men, “a more or less complete state of erection of the penis, with discharge of urine, mucus or prostatic fluid is a frequent occurrence … present in one case in three.” Other causes of death may also result in these effects, including fatal gunshots to the head, damage to major blood vessels, and violent death by poisoning. A postmortem priapism is an indicator that death was likely swift and violent.

… In The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, art historian and critic Leo Steinberg notes that a number of Renaissance era artists depicted Jesus Christ after the crucifixion with a post-mortem erection. The artwork was suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church for several centuries. ]

At this point, two more characters — Pozzo and Lucky — appear. From Wikipedia:

Lucky is a character from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. He is a slave to the character Pozzo.

Lucky is unique in a play where most of the characters talk incessantly: he only utters two sentences, one of which is more than seven hundred words long (the monologue). Lucky suffers at the hands of Pozzo willingly and without hesitation. He is “tied” (a favourite theme in Godot) to Pozzo by a ridiculously long rope in the first act, and then a similarly ridiculous short rope in the second act. Both tie around his neck. When he is not serving Pozzo, he usually stands in one spot drooling, or sleeping if he stands there long enough. His props include a picnic basket, a coat, and a suitcase full of sand.

Finally, we get the “Shall we go?” dialogue (in a variant beginning “Should we go?”), as quoted from the play following #1 above.

Note from this morning, when I showed #4 to Kim Darnell, leading to this exchange:

KD: Well? Should you post?
AZ: Yes, I should post.
(He fails to post.)

That was 10 hours ago. Now I’m posting. I’m no longer willing — call me impatient, call me impetuous — to wait for Godot, Corot, Moreau (Dr. Moreau, or even Jeanne Moreau), Malraux, Perrault, or Poirot — or, of course, Waldo, Marlowe (the playwright or the private eye), Marlo (Thomas), Marlot (Kidder), Gordo, or any of that mofo lot.

That’s the head:

Rent Spikes
Stoke Dread
By the Sea

The subhead:

Coney Island Businesses
Fear Being Priced Out

The story is that increases in rents have promoted anxiety on the part of seaside business owners on Coney Island.

This from the national print edition of the NYT on the 15th (p. A19), story by Aaron Randle.

A story I have then playfully travestied:

By the sea, by the sea,
By the freakish, raffish sea

At Stoke-on-Rent,
On the playground of dread

(tossing in the song “By the Beautiful Sea”, plus a garbled allusion to Stoke-on-Trent, which has a picturesque river but is, in British terms, far from the sea).

The original headline. From the print edition, where you need to compress stuff into a small space — just a few, short words, as vivid as possible — so you get, beyond rent, which is pretty much inevitable, given the content of the story:

spikes, rather than the longer, less specific increases

stoke, rather the longer, less vivid promote; feed or fuel would have been other reasonable vivid choices

and dread, rather than the longer anxiety or alarm or the less vivid fear

And then, beyond these considerations of length and imagery, the four words make a striking little poem, phonologically very satisfying: the near-identical pair:

rent … dread : / r ɛ nt – dr ɛ d /

wrapped around the near-identical pair:

spikes stoke : / sp aj ks – st o k /

(with phonemic transcriptions of the syllables divided into onset nucleus coda, so that you can appreciate the close phonological relationships of these parts — in particular, /r/ with /dr/, /nt/ with /d/, /sp/ with /st/, /ks/ with /k/).

This remarkably distilled little poem was almost surely created without reflection; the headline writer just chose monosyllables that sounded good together. And so they do.

(This is then the Coney Island found poetry that I promised in my 1/17 posting “Amado Spears and his husband, fulfilled by Peter”.)

Meanwhile, in the on-line edition, where the constraints on space are  relaxed, the headline was the much less dense and much more informative:

Is a 4000% Rent Increase
the Future of Coney Island?

with the sprawling subhead:

Gentrification looms over the “freakishness and fun-loving
spirit” of the boardwalk

The story. A tale of eccentric, playful places — freakish and raffish in my parody — always under threat of being straightened up, dressed in better clothes, and ground into commercial gentility (try to imagine the Grateful Dead in Palo Alto — but see my 10/23/15 posting “Depilation Row” — or, indeed, anything louche, rakish, folksy, or cheaply fun-loving here these days). Nice coverage by Randle, which I’ll quote here at some length:

(#1) Dianna Carlin of Lola Star on the boardwalk at Coney Island

Dianna Carlin should be finishing the book she is writing about the joys of owning the Lola Star boutique, a “really tiny, magical little shop” on the Coney Island boardwalk, for the past 19 years.

Instead, Ms. Carlin has been anxious and fearful since her landlord weeks ago offered her a new lease — with a 400 percent rent increase. “I’m wondering if I should start ordering ‘going out of business’ signs,” she said.

In the summer, Brooklyn’s Coney Island swells with sunbathers and amusement seekers, but it tends to be much quieter in the winter.

Over a decade ago, New York City promised a year-round destination with a water park, an arena, an ice-skating rink, and millions of dollars in residential and commercial investment.

At the same time, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, the cheap eats and mom-and-pop shops would be protected. The then-Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, said in 2005 that the plan would preserve “Coney’s famed freakishness and fun-loving spirit.”

But like many grand plans for New York, the full vision has not materialized. Coney Island stood ceremoniously desolate on a recent January afternoon, a far cry from the year-round bustling attraction it was promised to be. Roaring winds gusted by famed roller coasters like the Cyclone and Luna Park’s Steeplechase, but not by an ice-skating rink or a water park. Those wonders were never built.

And now, facing the steamroller of gentrification, even Coney Island’s quirky circus sideshow could be forced to confront an uncertain future.

“They’re trying to turn the People’s Playground into the playground for the wealthy,” Ms. Carlin said.

Ms. Carlin and the owners of five other small businesses in Coney Island — Nathan’s Famous, Ruby’s Bar & Grill, Paul’s Daughter, Tom’s Restaurant and the Coney Island Beach Shop — have been negotiating new 10-year lease agreements with Zamperla, the Italian amusement park manufacturer that was contracted by the city a decade ago to build and manage Coney Island’s Luna Park amusement zone, of which the businesses are a part.

Zamperla’s new terms: a 50 to 400 percent increase in rent for each of the businesses.

The parody: “By the Beautiful Sea”. From Wikipedia:

(#2) Sheet music cover

“By the Beautiful Sea” is a popular song published in 1914, with music written by Harry Carroll and lyrics written by Harold R. Atteridge. The sheet music was published by Shapiro, Bernstein & Co.

The song was originally recorded by the Heidelberg Quintet, topping the early American music charts for six weeks in the summer of 1914, during the outbreak of World War I. Other popular recordings in 1914 were by Ada Jones & Billy Watkins, and by Prince’s Orchestra.

The full song:

[Verse 1]
Joe and Jane were always together.
Said Joe to Jane “I love Summer weather.
So let’s go to that beautiful sea,
Follow along,
Just say you’re with me!”
Any thing that Joe would suggest to her,
Jane would always think it was best for her.
So he’d get his Ford.
Holler “All aboard–
Gee I want to be.”

[Chorus]
By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea,
You and I, you and I, oh! how happy we’ll be,
When each wave comes a-rolling in.
We will duck or swim,
And we’ll float and fool around the water.

Over and under, and then up for air.
Pa is rich, Ma is rich, so now what do we care?
I love to be beside your side,
Beside the sea, beside the seaside,
By the beautiful sea.

[Verse 2]
Joe was quite a sport on a Sunday.
Then he would eat gray lox on a Monday.
And Jane would lose her millionaire air.
And go to work,
Marcelling hair,
Ev’ry Sunday he’d leave his wife at home,
And say “It’s bus’ness, honey, I’ve got to roam,”
Then he’d miss his train,
Get his Ford and Jane,
And say “Come with me.”

[Chorus]
By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea,
You and I, you and I, oh! how happy we’ll be,
When each wave comes a-rolling in.
We will duck or swim,
And we’ll float and fool around the water.

Over and under, and then up for air.
Pa is rich, Ma is rich, so now what do we care?
I love to be beside your side,
Beside the sea, beside the seaside,
By the beautiful sea.

You can listen here (#3) to the full song in the 1914 recording by Billy Murray and the Heidelberg Quintet. On Murray, from Wikipedia:

William Thomas “Billy” Murray (May 25, 1877 – August 17, 1954) was one of the most popular singers in the United States in the early 20th century. While he received star billing in vaudeville, he was best known for his prolific work in the recording studio, making records for almost every record label of the era.

… Nicknamed “The Denver Nightingale” [he grew up in Denver], Murray had a strong tenor voice with excellent enunciation and a conversational delivery compared with bel canto singers of the era.

Then there’s a Mitch Miller & The Gang’s “old-timey” arrangement (from the 2005 album 50 All-American Favorites, a compilation from earlier recordings), which sets my teeth on edge (and omits the racy verses), but comes with a wonderful set of Coney Island photos from the period. You can listen to it here (#4).

The parody: Stoke-on-Trent. From Wikipedia:

(#5) Inner courtyard of the Gladstone Pottery Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire (from the Britannica site) – with bottle kilns (used to fire pottery)

Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city and unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England … In 2016, the city had a population of 261,302.

Stoke is polycentric, having been formed by the federation of six towns in 1910. It took its name from Stoke-upon-Trent where the main centre of government and the principal railway station in the district were located.

… Stoke-on-Trent is the home of the pottery industry in England and is commonly known as the Potteries, with the local residents known as Potters. Formerly a primarily industrial conurbation, it is now a centre for service industries and distribution centres.

In my parody, the place has become Stoke-on-Rent, a playground of dread. I know, a terrible thing to do to a perfectly nice Midlands town.

Today’s Wayno/Piraro collabo, another little exercise in cartoon understanding:

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.) Wayno’s title: “Number, Please”

No doubt you recognize the speaker as Satan / the Devil / Beelzebub, but the cartoon will still be incomprehensible unless you know that there’s a particular three-digit number that’s sometimes said to belong to Satan.

Pursuing this topic on my man Jacques’s birthday, today, will lead us, through a favorite verse of his, on a circuitous route passing through a mysterious British village, Chicago, and Santa Monica, on its way to the Big Gay Village, where men hug, spoon, and screw. (There will eventually be a content warning. I’ll warn you when the screwing is imminent.)

Satan’s three-digit number. From my 11/7/13 posting “The word for the day”, quoting from Wikipedia:

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia (derived from Ancient Greek roots ἑξακόσιοι [hexakósioi, “six hundred”], ἑξήκοντα [hexékonta, “sixty”], and ἕξ [héx, “six”]; literally meaning “fear of [the number] six hundred sixty-six”) is the fear that originated from the Biblical verse Revelation 13:18, which indicates that the number 666 is the Number of the Beast, linked to Satan or the Anti-Christ.

The link between Satan and the Beast of Revelation seems to be spurious, but it’s caught on in the popular imagination, so that 666, the Number of the Beast (a matter of biblical numerology) has come to be associated with Satan. And is now available for play, as in this Bizarro from a 10/12/13 posting of mine:

(#2)

So the three-6 number is the Beast. A fact that led me ineluctably to one of Jacques’s favorite bits of humorous verse, Ogden Nash’s “The Lama”:

The one-l lama,
He’s a priest.
The two-l llama,
He’s a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn’t any
Three-l lllama.*

*The author’s attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.

(Over the years, J had memorized, mostly inadvertently, a gigantic catalogue of humorous verse, children’s books, quotations long and short, and song lyrics, including an amazing array of show tunes. I’m not particularly good at verbatim recall, and I came to rely on him as my auxiliary memory bank. Which then shriveled up and died with him, so I was left not only alone in life but also minus some of my mental faculties.)

My parody version of the Nash, in which the Beast is the payoff:

The one-6 number is no priest.
The two-6 number goes to the beach from the east.
And the three-6 number is the Beast.

Number 6 from The Prisoner. US Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica; plus sixty-six with affectionate (hugging, spooning) and sexual (screwing) meanings. And of course 666, the Mark of the Beast.

Number 6. From Wikipedia:

(#3)

The Prisoner is a 1967 British science fiction-allegorical television series about an unidentified British intelligence agent who is abducted and imprisoned in a mysterious coastal village, where his captors try to find out why he abruptly resigned from his job. It was created by Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein with McGoohan playing the main role of Number Six. Episodes covered various plots from spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory and psychological drama.

Route 66. From Wikipedia:

(#4) On our commute between Columbus OH and Palo Alto CA every winter (roughly from 1985 through 1997), Jacques and I followed fairly close to historic Route 66 between St. Louis MO and Barstow CA (on I-44 and I-40)

U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66), also known as the Will Rogers Highway, the Main Street of America or the Mother Road, was one of the original highways in the U.S. Highway System. US 66 was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. The highway, which became one of the most famous roads in the United States, originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before ending in Santa Monica in Los Angeles County, California, covering a total of 2,448 miles (3,940 km).

The highway plays a substantial role in American popular culture. For some discussion of the highway, the 1946 song, and the 1960-64 American tv show, see my 8/25/18 posting “But is it a cartoon?” — with the crucial lyrics from the song:

Travel my way, take the highway that’s the best
Get your kicks on Route 66

and, in #1 there a wry photoon:

(#5)

The gay footnote. The original stars of the tv show were the dark, steamy George Maharis and the sunny, solid Martin Milner:

(#6) Maharis on the left, Milner on the right, their Corvette in between

Maharis left the show in part because too many people in the industry became aware of his closeted gay life; later, he was twice arrested for mensroom sex (this was well before George Michael’s t-room adventures) but still managed to have a long and unflashy career; details in many sources, for example on the GayCultureLand site for 11/12/16 .

66 as a bodily icon. We are now moving steadily into mansexual territory; this would be the time for kids and the sexually modest to leave.

Urban Dictionary has some cites for 66 as bodily iconic, for reference to spooning, as with these two men in their underwear:

(#7) From menphotos.tumblr.com

66 would also be a natural label for hugging from behind, as this act seems to be known:

(#8) An affectionate muscular hug from behind, with a nipple pinch thrown in (photo in my files from 2006, source not identified)

What (7) and (8) share is the back to belly positioning of the two men (both facing in the some direction): iconically, 6 + 6. The same arrangement as in all the positions for anal intercourse in which the receptive partner is facing away from the insertive one. From GDoS:

noun sixty-six: … anal intercourse … [1966 cite] … 1972 Bruce Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular … ninety-nine or sixty-six (the numerals 99 and 66 serve as ideographs in showing the whole story of two men going at it …

In my 2/12/16 posting “Sex positions for gay men”, there’s a catalogue of positions for fucking, from the bottom’s point of view — including

(1) bottom lying on his side (a lateral fuck), common called a spoon-fuck or Spooning

and moving through other 66-style (or “rear-entry”) positions, including prone (bottom lying on his belly) and doggie-style (bottom on all fours), plus more complex alternatives, like this one (doggie for the bottom, a standing fuck for the top):

(#9) Jay Roberts fucks Steven Daigle on a mensroom sink (AZBlogX, “T-room action” from 2/5/11); a bit tricky for the pros, not recommended for amateurs

66-style fucking contrasts with positions in which the two men face one another, as in various forms of “missionary” fucking — iconically, 6 + mirror-6, or b + d (or, since the receptive partner has to spread his legs to accommodate the insertive partner, 6 + V, or 6 + Ʌ).

Then, as an excellent bonus: if two can do 66, three can do 666 (the Fuck of the Beast). From my 3/31/13 AZBlogX posting “Threesomes and more”:

The spitroast is one type of threesome. On to the three-man fuck chain, or fuck sandwich, also known as Lucky Pierre, from the slang term for the man in the middle.

(#10) From TitanMen’s Swelter: David Anthony fucks Bryan Slater fucks Gio Forte (all standing, but with Forte bracing himself on a support)

(Just to note that it took some considerable doing to find good images of fucking in which no dicks are visible. It’s my understanding that these are allowable in WordPress — but not, of course, in Facebook, so don’t reproduce these images there.)

On a personal note, I find the fitting together of bodies in 66-style hugging, spooning, and screwing (in its more pedestrian forms — #9 and #10 are mostly stunts) to be immensely satisying (just to view; I’m decades away from the actual acts, but I have both memories — oh, my man Jacques — and a powerful imagination).