Ah, the legacy of “Who’s on first?” never runs dry!
Lost in Translation?
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I have an Exactlywatt here on a chain.
Not only does the “Baldo” pair clearly prove that this strip was written in English, it also shows that the authors are willing to accept that some puns just can’t be translated.
P.S. I think the “typhoon” should have come from Bangkok rather than Taipei.
P.P.S. “Lost in Translation” is very high on my list of “worst movies I have ever wasted time on”:
I don’t quite get the Bizarro…
Maggie, it’s a play off another sense of “moving”, as in “it was such a moving experience, it left me all choked up”. And we see all the neighbors/customers reacting exactly that way.
@Kilby We’d likely all have nominees. I liked “Lost in Translation”, myself, but tastes vary. My nominee for wasted time would be “Somewhere in Time”, despite the eye candy of Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Mackinac Island. I kept wanting to go back in time before we’d bought tickets. But it’s got a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 88%, so I’m obviously in the minority.
@Kilby I liked “Lost in Translation” as well – but I’m a fan of Japanese culture. The movie that took two wasted hours out of my life was “Sideways”.
Oh, and “Ishtar”. I actually went to see it in the theater.
I liked Lost in Translation too; I guess that was when I realized that twins Giovanni and Marissa Ribisi were not going to have the same path of indie careers.
I sort of liked Sideways too (and much else of Alexander Payne’s work), but couldn’t suspend my disbelief in the importance of which kind of grape you have to worship. But it had a scene with a special meaning for me — which I promptly entered at IMDb’s “Trivia” section, later to be disappointed that they got some three or four entries on the same item, and eventually edited them together. It now reads “The picture that Miles (Paul Giamatti) looks at when at his mother’s home is actually a picture of Paul Giamatti and his father (former Yale University president and Commissioner of Major League Baseball) Bart Giamatti.” That’s a little awkwardly written, don’t you agree? It almost loses the point — the character is supposed to be looking at a picture of his father, and what they used was a picture of the actor’s own father (recently deceased I think). When I first saw that scene, I wanted to elbow a companion and exclaim “Look at who’s in that picture! It’s his real-life father!” I had known A. Bartlett Giamatti from when I studied with him in a small double-time class.
Moving Sale?
Someone owes Hugh Syme, Rush’s graphic artist, a dollar!
I like to go into a hardware store just to do this:
Clerk: Can I help you?
Me: I need a … wait, do you prefer metric or English units here?
Clerk: English units of course, not that foreign stuff.
Me: OK, I need a point one three horsepower light bulb.
On misconstruing what has been said, no doubt you all know the Two Ronnies sketch from the 70s concerning the hardware store and four candles.
CORBETT: Well there you are, four candles!
BARKER: No, fork ‘andles! ‘Andles for forks!
Well, I’ll step in to say Lost in Translation was lost on me. Can’t say I hated it, but I sure was glad I didn’t pay to see it. What I really don’t understand is all the hate for Ishtar. I enjoyed watching it in a theater when it first came out, and was wondering what movie all the critics had watched, because it certainly seemed like we had seen different movies. If you have ever tried collaborating with someone to write a song, they captured that beautifully, and Anne Meara’s lyrics were hilarious. Sure, it’s not a great movie, but being voted worst movie of the year? In the same year Police Academy IIIII and Porky’s IIIII came out? Come on.
RE: Baldo – if someone said to me, “My name is Joe Rozco, but people call me King” my thought would be “King Rozco” or possibly “King Joe,” but certainly not “Joe King.” It’s a bit of an awkward stretch to make that play on words.
I’ve had this joke kicking around my head for years:
I saw a moving van the other day. It really brought me to tears.
As far as the Baldo strip goes, if you are a wiseguy, you’re going to go with “Joe King.” The other choices mentioned in #13 won’t yield a pun. :-)
MiB (10): I love it!
We thought Sideways was outstanding, but I still love a good Merlot. We even made a special trip to Solvang (about an hour away) to have dinner in The Hitching Post. And somehow, I never connected Paul Giamatti with Bart G.
I also failed to connect the dots on “Joe King” when I read Baldo the other day.
But I love the “For what?” gag.
zbicyclist – Recently (yesterday or day before) Robert and I were having a discussion about something or other and it turned to a discussion on where Mackinac Island is located in terms of US, Canada, as well as more east or west than the other thought.
I tend not to like time travel movies, but that happens to be one of two which I do like. But I tend to like things others do not and not like things other do. (Example – my favorite movie is “They All Laughed” not a time travel movie, but a good NYC movie.)
(Okay now that you, the reader is thinking what the heck movie is that? It is a Peter Bogdanovich movie rarely shown due to the death of one the stars of the movie – Patti Hansen – who died either soon after it came out or before same. It also starred Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara and John Ritter among others. It is also one of the movies that I consider also stars NYC. There was a poster of it in a “WKRP in Cincinnati” episode.
Mark in Boston – “big smile”
Okay – I have twice tried to post a (written out) smile emogi for #10 Mark in Boston but neither has posted. Presuming this posts – is there a minimum size for a post? Or did I throw myself into moderation?
Hopefully this will post – I will check back tomorrow night as time to do the dishes from snack to go to bed at 3:11 am.
@ Meryl – If you type colon-hyphen-close parenthesis, WordPress will convert it to a :-)
Oh, thanks!
Meryl — Yes, one of your comments did get marked Spam! (Not moderation — though when I “unspammed” it, it did go into the Pending list (that is, moderation). I don’t think we need to pull it out, as the content has already been covered.
Kilby – that was what I wrote and it stayed as what I had written and was not made into the smile face. (Maybe I “spelled” it wrong.) Thank you and MItch 4
Here’s another instance of the “moving sale” pun, this one from Wondermark
Comics I Don't Understand 
I have an Exactlywatt here on a chain.
Not only does the “Baldo” pair clearly prove that this strip was written in English, it also shows that the authors are willing to accept that some puns just can’t be translated.
P.S. I think the “typhoon” should have come from Bangkok rather than Taipei.
P.P.S. “Lost in Translation” is very high on my list of “worst movies I have ever wasted time on”:
I don’t quite get the Bizarro…
Maggie, it’s a play off another sense of “moving”, as in “it was such a moving experience, it left me all choked up”. And we see all the neighbors/customers reacting exactly that way.
@Kilby We’d likely all have nominees. I liked “Lost in Translation”, myself, but tastes vary. My nominee for wasted time would be “Somewhere in Time”, despite the eye candy of Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Mackinac Island. I kept wanting to go back in time before we’d bought tickets. But it’s got a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 88%, so I’m obviously in the minority.
@Kilby I liked “Lost in Translation” as well – but I’m a fan of Japanese culture. The movie that took two wasted hours out of my life was “Sideways”.
Oh, and “Ishtar”. I actually went to see it in the theater.
I liked Lost in Translation too; I guess that was when I realized that twins Giovanni and Marissa Ribisi were not going to have the same path of indie careers.
I sort of liked Sideways too (and much else of Alexander Payne’s work), but couldn’t suspend my disbelief in the importance of which kind of grape you have to worship. But it had a scene with a special meaning for me — which I promptly entered at IMDb’s “Trivia” section, later to be disappointed that they got some three or four entries on the same item, and eventually edited them together. It now reads “The picture that Miles (Paul Giamatti) looks at when at his mother’s home is actually a picture of Paul Giamatti and his father (former Yale University president and Commissioner of Major League Baseball) Bart Giamatti.” That’s a little awkwardly written, don’t you agree? It almost loses the point — the character is supposed to be looking at a picture of his father, and what they used was a picture of the actor’s own father (recently deceased I think). When I first saw that scene, I wanted to elbow a companion and exclaim “Look at who’s in that picture! It’s his real-life father!” I had known A. Bartlett Giamatti from when I studied with him in a small double-time class.
Moving Sale?
Someone owes Hugh Syme, Rush’s graphic artist, a dollar!
I like to go into a hardware store just to do this:
Clerk: Can I help you?
Me: I need a … wait, do you prefer metric or English units here?
Clerk: English units of course, not that foreign stuff.
Me: OK, I need a point one three horsepower light bulb.
On misconstruing what has been said, no doubt you all know the Two Ronnies sketch from the 70s concerning the hardware store and four candles.
CORBETT: Well there you are, four candles!
BARKER: No, fork ‘andles! ‘Andles for forks!
Well, I’ll step in to say Lost in Translation was lost on me. Can’t say I hated it, but I sure was glad I didn’t pay to see it. What I really don’t understand is all the hate for Ishtar. I enjoyed watching it in a theater when it first came out, and was wondering what movie all the critics had watched, because it certainly seemed like we had seen different movies. If you have ever tried collaborating with someone to write a song, they captured that beautifully, and Anne Meara’s lyrics were hilarious. Sure, it’s not a great movie, but being voted worst movie of the year? In the same year Police Academy IIIII and Porky’s IIIII came out? Come on.
RE: Baldo – if someone said to me, “My name is Joe Rozco, but people call me King” my thought would be “King Rozco” or possibly “King Joe,” but certainly not “Joe King.” It’s a bit of an awkward stretch to make that play on words.
I’ve had this joke kicking around my head for years:
I saw a moving van the other day. It really brought me to tears.
As far as the Baldo strip goes, if you are a wiseguy, you’re going to go with “Joe King.” The other choices mentioned in #13 won’t yield a pun. :-)
MiB (10): I love it!
We thought Sideways was outstanding, but I still love a good Merlot. We even made a special trip to Solvang (about an hour away) to have dinner in The Hitching Post. And somehow, I never connected Paul Giamatti with Bart G.
I also failed to connect the dots on “Joe King” when I read Baldo the other day.
But I love the “For what?” gag.
zbicyclist – Recently (yesterday or day before) Robert and I were having a discussion about something or other and it turned to a discussion on where Mackinac Island is located in terms of US, Canada, as well as more east or west than the other thought.
I tend not to like time travel movies, but that happens to be one of two which I do like. But I tend to like things others do not and not like things other do. (Example – my favorite movie is “They All Laughed” not a time travel movie, but a good NYC movie.)
(Okay now that you, the reader is thinking what the heck movie is that? It is a Peter Bogdanovich movie rarely shown due to the death of one the stars of the movie – Patti Hansen – who died either soon after it came out or before same. It also starred Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara and John Ritter among others. It is also one of the movies that I consider also stars NYC. There was a poster of it in a “WKRP in Cincinnati” episode.
Mark in Boston – “big smile”
Okay – I have twice tried to post a (written out) smile emogi for #10 Mark in Boston but neither has posted. Presuming this posts – is there a minimum size for a post? Or did I throw myself into moderation?
Hopefully this will post – I will check back tomorrow night as time to do the dishes from snack to go to bed at 3:11 am.
@ Meryl – If you type colon-hyphen-close parenthesis, WordPress will convert it to a :-)
Oh, thanks!
Meryl — Yes, one of your comments did get marked Spam! (Not moderation — though when I “unspammed” it, it did go into the Pending list (that is, moderation). I don’t think we need to pull it out, as the content has already been covered.
Kilby – that was what I wrote and it stayed as what I had written and was not made into the smile face. (Maybe I “spelled” it wrong.) Thank you and MItch 4
Here’s another instance of the “moving sale” pun, this one from Wondermark