We did not know this, but it turns out smetana as a common noun means cream!
Related
23 Comments
Well, okay, that was fine and fun and all but… there wasn’t any rationale or payoff for why he was making all those musician puns …. and what the heck are the first two panels that don’t have any puns? What does peaches, raspberries, and vanilla fudge have to do with classical music?
Yeah, they’re rock musicians.
But yes, there are problems. “Verdi I put it?” doesn’t have the right number of words or syllables.
“Yeah, they’re rock bands.” …. oh…. blush … I never was as up on popular music as the average person. …
But then, shouldn’t she have done a rock pun in the last panel? That’d actually be really funny as a steady dichotomy.
Do you ever see Samantha Bee / Full Frontal? Her theme song (“Girls wanna be her / Boys wanna be her” ) is by Peaches.
““Verdi I put it?” doesn’t have the right number of words or syllables.”
????
“Where’d I put it” seems perfectly okay to me. [1]
It’s “Bach of course I can” that seems to be a stretch for me.
….
[1] Oh, dyslexic auto-editting. He (probably inadvertently) added a redundant “I” (Verdi I put it— It should just be “Verdi put it”.
For what its worth I wasn’t familiar with either Smetana the cream or the composer. Both sound yummy though.
In the first panel, I was expecting cranberries.
For the sake* of completion, Marmalade, Bread, Cake, Sugar and Cream are all bands too, a couple of them particularly successful and/or famous. Also prog-rock titans Yes. Pushing a bit, Can (German) and Them (Irish, with Van Morrison in) and No (a 1980s Australian outfit) are also bands.
Googling, there is even an organisation called Gee Band, though I don’t think it is as famous. Also, like The Who (which isn’t used) it has an extra word that wouldn’t easily fit in, so maybe – despite being bolded – it is not intended. The The might plausibly have been inserted with a bit of hesitation (“The… The… Chopin Liszt, where is it?”).
Madness!**
*Sake is a Japanese rice wine, obviously.
**Madness is a 7-piece UK ska band. I read today why Madness played on the roof of Buckingham Palace in 2012 for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee – on the main stage in front Paul McCartney and Elton John were due to perform, each using a grand piano but wanting to use their own. To cover the period of swapping around grand pianos someone came up with the idea of Madness being slotted between them, but usefully and distractingly up on the roof.
“Gee, there you are Hayden” scans wrong for me, but I wasn’t going to comment as I’ve a history of protesting too much with this strip’s English, and also, I can’t for the life of me figure out right now how I would say it…
(… but then I saw other people quibbling, so I thought I’d pile on.)
In general American English, among those who speak of composer Haydn, the name sounds pretty much like hidin’ (casual pronunciation of verb form hiding). Maybe not in every prosodic context, so larK’s point may hold. But I didn’t see much wrong with that one. I would agree with those seeing something wrong with how Verdi played out.
@woozy Do you think “Bach of course I can”, should be scanned as “bah… of course I can” or “but of course I can”? I have honestly flip-flopped on it a few times.
I think the seemingly random putting words in bold hurts this comic just a little. At first I thought this was a pattern, but only approximately half the punned words are in bold, with “gee” being in bold despite being a non-pun.
He continues today with an oldie but goodie . . .
When you hear Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song” start up, and something feels terribly wrong, there may be no need to call the drug hotline, it’s probably just the cover by Vanilla Fudge.
@larK I think that If Horse had said “There ye’ be hidin’.”, most of us could have “scanned” it comfortably given the popularity of that phrase in movies and sit-coms. It’s not enough help for me though, to make Horse’s comment sound right without at least a comma added. It seems that “be” and “are” may not be interchangeable.
That’s where you’ve been Haydn!
@Mitch Sweet! [,The]
A young Arnold Schwarzenegger, while role playing, said “I’ll be Bach”.
Mark M, at first glance I thought you were writing about Arnold Schoenberg, and it was sooo close to making sense!
Didn’t realize how much Arnold was an Austrian name!
Smetana and Dvorak were on the run, being pursued by the music police. They rushed into a bank intending to hide in the vault. They asked the teller, “Quick! Do you cache Czechs?”
LOL!
Joseph Haydn did give young Beethoven a few composition lessons, so there is a grain of truth in the old joke: Why couldn’t Beethoven find his teacher? Because he was Haydn.
Too bad Horace didn’t say he’d be Bach in a minuet.
Similar puns can be found on apparel and accessories:
Comics I Don't Understand 
Well, okay, that was fine and fun and all but… there wasn’t any rationale or payoff for why he was making all those musician puns …. and what the heck are the first two panels that don’t have any puns? What does peaches, raspberries, and vanilla fudge have to do with classical music?
Yeah, they’re rock musicians.
But yes, there are problems. “Verdi I put it?” doesn’t have the right number of words or syllables.
“Yeah, they’re rock bands.” …. oh…. blush … I never was as up on popular music as the average person. …
But then, shouldn’t she have done a rock pun in the last panel? That’d actually be really funny as a steady dichotomy.
Do you ever see Samantha Bee / Full Frontal? Her theme song (“Girls wanna be her / Boys wanna be her” ) is by Peaches.
““Verdi I put it?” doesn’t have the right number of words or syllables.”
????
“Where’d I put it” seems perfectly okay to me. [1]
It’s “Bach of course I can” that seems to be a stretch for me.
….
[1] Oh, dyslexic auto-editting. He (probably inadvertently) added a redundant “I” (Verdi I put it— It should just be “Verdi put it”.
For what its worth I wasn’t familiar with either Smetana the cream or the composer. Both sound yummy though.
In the first panel, I was expecting cranberries.
For the sake* of completion, Marmalade, Bread, Cake, Sugar and Cream are all bands too, a couple of them particularly successful and/or famous. Also prog-rock titans Yes. Pushing a bit, Can (German) and Them (Irish, with Van Morrison in) and No (a 1980s Australian outfit) are also bands.
Googling, there is even an organisation called Gee Band, though I don’t think it is as famous. Also, like The Who (which isn’t used) it has an extra word that wouldn’t easily fit in, so maybe – despite being bolded – it is not intended. The The might plausibly have been inserted with a bit of hesitation (“The… The… Chopin Liszt, where is it?”).
Madness!**
*Sake is a Japanese rice wine, obviously.
**Madness is a 7-piece UK ska band. I read today why Madness played on the roof of Buckingham Palace in 2012 for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee – on the main stage in front Paul McCartney and Elton John were due to perform, each using a grand piano but wanting to use their own. To cover the period of swapping around grand pianos someone came up with the idea of Madness being slotted between them, but usefully and distractingly up on the roof.
“Gee, there you are Hayden” scans wrong for me, but I wasn’t going to comment as I’ve a history of protesting too much with this strip’s English, and also, I can’t for the life of me figure out right now how I would say it…
(… but then I saw other people quibbling, so I thought I’d pile on.)
In general American English, among those who speak of composer Haydn, the name sounds pretty much like hidin’ (casual pronunciation of verb form hiding). Maybe not in every prosodic context, so larK’s point may hold. But I didn’t see much wrong with that one. I would agree with those seeing something wrong with how Verdi played out.
@woozy Do you think “Bach of course I can”, should be scanned as “bah… of course I can” or “but of course I can”? I have honestly flip-flopped on it a few times.
I think the seemingly random putting words in bold hurts this comic just a little. At first I thought this was a pattern, but only approximately half the punned words are in bold, with “gee” being in bold despite being a non-pun.
He continues today with an oldie but goodie . . .
When you hear Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song” start up, and something feels terribly wrong, there may be no need to call the drug hotline, it’s probably just the cover by Vanilla Fudge.
@larK I think that If Horse had said “There ye’ be hidin’.”, most of us could have “scanned” it comfortably given the popularity of that phrase in movies and sit-coms. It’s not enough help for me though, to make Horse’s comment sound right without at least a comma added. It seems that “be” and “are” may not be interchangeable.
That’s where you’ve been Haydn!
@Mitch Sweet! [,The]
A young Arnold Schwarzenegger, while role playing, said “I’ll be Bach”.
Mark M, at first glance I thought you were writing about Arnold Schoenberg, and it was sooo close to making sense!
Didn’t realize how much Arnold was an Austrian name!
Smetana and Dvorak were on the run, being pursued by the music police. They rushed into a bank intending to hide in the vault. They asked the teller, “Quick! Do you cache Czechs?”
LOL!
Joseph Haydn did give young Beethoven a few composition lessons, so there is a grain of truth in the old joke: Why couldn’t Beethoven find his teacher? Because he was Haydn.
Too bad Horace didn’t say he’d be Bach in a minuet.
Similar puns can be found on apparel and accessories:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/100020555/gone-chopin-bach-in-a-minuet-funny-music