They just don’t quit with the puns over at Mannequin on the Moon!
Is it a Geezer factoid to remember the term for this particular form of standing arm-wrestling?
(Far Side handled as link only, not copied nor embedded.)
Is a Spoonerism necessarily a pun? Maybe not, but it can still be an Oy!
Comics I Don't Understand 
I discovered the “chai tea”/”tai chi” reversal independently a few years ago.
Chai tea with tai chi is the best thing on a Saturday morning. As long as the lid is on tightly.
It’s good to see people accepting, maybe embracing, the phrase “chai tea” — which you might know gets objected to on the grounds of redundancy*, like “pin number” [not exactly] , or Rio Grande River, since chai when it entered English was just the word for tea, and later (19700s) came to mean the spice combination with which tea was typically prepared in India.
*I was going to say “redundant in the American, not British sense” but I don’t think it actually divides that way. Both dialects use the meaning “not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous” or in technical uses with an idea of repetition or duplication [as in definitions 1.2 and 1.3 at https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/redundant ]. But the sense “laid off from a job” is marked British.
Good job talking around the missing term in the “Far Side”; but I’ll go ahead and write it out to discuss the cartoon and pun: It was known as “Indian wrestling” and yes that meant indigenous Americans (as pictured) and not South Asians.
I don’t think that is “problematic”, at least not on the scale that “Indian giver” would have been.
The joke is fairly good but not a hilarious Oy.
I don’t see a Far Side?
I can’t tell if the first “Mannequin on the Moon” is aware of the human-body-type meaning of otter (as at Urban Dictionary for instance).
And for the second “Moon”, the caption presumably is mostly intended to be heard as three syllables, just like the Gazebo it derives from, and blending that structure with the Bros we see. But I wonder if they also intended the subsidiary reading, in two syllables, where we understand them as gaze bros because the bros are hanging out exercising the male gaze.
In the 1960 mystery-comedy “The Gazebo,” a running gag is the John McGiver character constantly pronouncing it “GAZE-bo” instead of “guh-ZEE-bo.” Just sayin’.
I recall as a self-deflationary anecdote the time in the middle/late 1960s when my parents were going out for the evening and I was left in charge of my younger siblings. We checked the TV listings and decided we would be watching that movie “The Gazebo” on the TV. My sister asked, What is a gazebo anyway? I took several minutes to give her a thorough explanation of the medical practice of giving a patient some inactive ingredients but telling them it is a potent medication, and the mental / psychological effects of their belief in the fake medicine can actually produce improvements in the condition. That’s known as the gazebo effect, no?
Very nice collection today, and the comments very insightful. Thanks!
Danny Boy, it’s the one that is just a link.
Danny Boy, it’s the one that is just a link.Thanks for answering that, Lost. I might add that the link doesn’t look quite like an inline text link, but is on the large weird text-graphic (which says it is the link). !
There used to be lots of riddles like the “Chai Tea / Tai Chi” one. For instance:
What’s the difference between a cardboard tube and a foolish Dutchman? One is a hollow cylinder and the other is a silly Hollander.
What’s the difference between your granny and your granary? One is your born kin and the other is your corn bin.
I remember this well. Lisa Simpson and her father talking:
Homer: Well, what gets you through the day?
Lisa Simpson: Oh, many things, tai chi, chai tea.
Episode 1209 in 2001. Hadda look up the script and year, though.
I have to say, “gazebros” made me laugh.
Also I enjoyed Falco’s drawing for the Chai tea / Tai Chi one. And glad there was support for this one — I think we were a little rough on a different one of his recently.
Could you please tell me the name of the artist who did “do unto otters”? It’s not on the picture. Thanks.
Monique, this panel, and the one below it with the Gazebros, are both from a comic called Mannequin on the Moon credited to Ian Boothby and Pia Guerra. We might later need to dig further to see which one is the artist, but it seems likely from their other credits that he would be the writer and she the artist. The GoComics about panel at https://www.gocomics.com/mannequin-on-the-moon/about has this to say:
Mannequin on the Moon is a one panel comic about everything from the moon to mice. Ian Boothby and Pia Guerra enjoy space, relationships, television, clichés, tropes, comic books, time travel, saunas, fairy tales and obscure facts about otters (their fur is so dense that their skin never gets wet). If it makes them laugh it’s probably going to end up here.Their personal pages on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pia_Guerra and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Boothby , mentions the strip once and also says that the couple collaborate on New Yorker cartoons as well — which makes sense as these do have that New Yorker feel, don’t you think?
Daniel J. Drazen – And to this day when Robert and I talk about a Gazebo we call it a Gaze bow.
As in this true conversation we had one day some years ago in an AC Moore craft store –
Me – I need this. (Meryl talk for I want this odd object.)
Robert – What do you need a bird feeder for?
Me – Look again. It is a “gaze bow” for the Teddy Village. The same bears which play music for the Christmas Carolers in winter can play music in the summer at the “gaze bow” in the park.
Yes, we bought it, removed the rope for hanging from the top and every Christmas Santa bear sits inside in it for cubs to visit him, in addition to its use for summer concerts.
(Next bird feeder I found became the “Silver Bears” booth to sell cold beverages in hot weather and hot beverages in cold weather and to “rent” sleds and skis for use on the “ski mountain’ (white box) next to them. Silver bears being the grandparent bears seniors club.) Looked just like a booth at a fair.
Amazing how silly people with no children/grandchildren can get – and this was long before the pandemic.
@Mitch4 Thank you for that. I wanted to share it but not without giving proper credit.
Ps—yes, New Yorker feel! I actually thought that’s where they were from!