Tag: comics

Just comics today –

Published on by Grace3 Comments

I’ve often said “Agnes” was my alter ego – for example –

And of course there is “Pickles”. Old married folks all relate to Pickles, they are us. In Sunday’s paper this little bit of truth and reality appeared. I didn’t initially react to it but my husband insists it is JUST LIKE us…And thinking about it, these kinds of conversations occur on every subject. (” Oh, for God’s sake just pick something!”)

Again with the comics

Published on by Grace8 Comments

 

I’m pretty sure I’ve told this story before – 

In 6th grade there was a girl named Marguerite, an Italian-American girl like me (and like our teacher, Mrs. Forlano). Marguerite talked with her hands. So much so that, and I’m projecting here, it annoyed Mrs. Forlano. One day Mrs. Forlano held Marguerite’s hands down on her desk, asked her a question, and that poor girl could not utter a comprehensible word! She stuttered and err’ed and um’ed until her hands were released and the words came tumbling out in a rush.

In college I took Italian and most of the students were Italian-American. The professor was British and had been in British Intelligence during World War II. One of his assignments had been interrogating Italian POW’s. 

First day of class he had each of us stand, introduce ourselves and say why we were taking Italian. He then, correctly, identified which part of Italy our families came from.

According to the professor, he didn’t really need to know Italian to understand what the captive soldiers were saying – the hand gestures were enough. And, it seems, different parts of Italy generated different gestures. He allowed as Southern Italians were more ‘fluent’ in hand gestures than Northern Italians. I guess dialects applied to non-spoken Italian as well as spoken. 

Writing this made me wonder if mime differed from country to country. Turns out mime goes back to ancient Greece but became an art form in, wait for it, Italy in the 16th century, known as Commedia dell’arte. It was co-opted by the French in 1816 and now is thought of as being distinctly French. 

Mime aside, we Italians do talk with our hands, which is why I am way more funny and expressive in real life than I am writing or doing an audio-only. It’s why my blog Today’s Conversation went into decline. After so many years together the conversations between my husband and I were conducted in a sort of shorthand – he used words I used gestures – hard to write them down.

(A LINK to the history of mime, if you are interested, subtitled ‘…the most oh-so-French-of-art forms.)

And the rains came…

Published on by Grace6 Comments

or perhaps never left. Today and for the rest of the week –

But there is always fun to be had –

This mornings comics – 

Let’s face it – we’ve all stood in front of a bit of ‘art’ and thought to ourselves – “This is a joke, right? Guy is putting us on.” 

More than once I’ve meandered through an art museum and heard some pretentious twat prattle on about the meaning of some meaningless piece of ‘art’ work. 
On several occasions, I’ve done this – mockingly – usually as entertainment for the person I was with. On one occasion it was a guy and he was all “Shush, people will hear you, we’ll get thrown out. You’re insulting the artist and the museum..” Seriously? 
Needless to say that was the first and last date with that guy. 
Also – while I was scrolling through instagram this morning I came across this – 

I exchanged comments with the poster and thought to myself “Damn Skippy”.

And then I laughed because the term “Damn Skippy” always makes me laugh. Then of course I had to research it – Interesting reading.
The Urban Dictionary says its possible origin is from South Australia’s ‘damn straight”. But further down the rabbit hole I came across this wonderful blog post about Emphatic Affirmatives (you really want to go read this!) that attributes its origins to Black American English and  also a derivative of “Damn straight”.
What I like most about that particular blog post is that it covers ALL my favorite emphatic affirmatives! Absolutely all of them! 
Reading that just made my day!