More playful alluding
In my
posting
on the Eye Guy figure, I observed some places where playful
allusions to formulas, idioms, titles, quotations, etc. were especially
dense -- among them titles of porn flicks and in headlines on feature
stories, especially those about science. Now, in mail from Don
Porges, a link to a transcript of
a Saturday Night
Live sketch about a team from "Velvet Productions" searching for
titles for gay porn films. And, from today's
NYT "Science Times" section and
from the front matter of the 10/14/05 issue of
Science, some playful heads
(science with a light touch!).
The SNL sketch has a team faced with naming porn versions of recent
popular movies. In order, they come up with:
The X-Men >> The Sex-Men
Lord of the Rings >> Lord of the Rims
Sweet Home Alabama >> Sweet Home Alan's Butthole
Bend It Like Beckham >> Bend Over Like Beckham
At this point they are baffled, just baffled, as to how to rework "The
Pianist" or "Holes".
Meanwhile, in the
NYT
"Science Time" section there's a feature ("Observatory", by Henry
Fountain) that presents brief research notes, almost all with playful
heads. On 10/26/05, we get "Judging Craters" (Judge Crater, who
of course has nothing to do with craters on Jupiter's moon Europa),
"The Bird Next Door" (the boy next door), "Antifreeze: Fleas Do It"
(Cole Porter's line "Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do
it" from "Let's Fall in Love" -- a line that, I see from Googling, has
been widely used by writers on science, sex, and many other topics),
and "Lambchop Genome" (which has me puzzled; it's like the porn flick
titles, I often just don't get it). Just above Fountain's column
is a piece on arachnid taxonomist Norman Platnick, titled "The Exciting
Adventures of Spider Man: From the Vial to the Tree of Life".
There's more, but let's turn to
Science,
most of which is forbiddingly technical (as befits the journal of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science).
However, the front section of each issue has brief pieces, about
research and about the political and social setting of science, and
these often have punchy heads. On page 207, we get "Doing the
Splits", about a database on cell division processes, and on page 227
"Brane Teaser", about a puzzle for string theorists concerning surfaces
called "branes". Thigh-slappers both. (Page 227 also has "A
Lying Matter", about the white matter in the prefrontal cortex of
compulsive liars. Once again, I feel so stupid at not getting the
reference.)
Even the
Atlantic Monthly
gets into the act when it reports on research. In the October
2005 issue, a brief article on a study of investing and gender (p. 46)
is juiced up by the title "Stocks and Blondes".
I'm waiting for the cross-fertilization of the genres. What would
you title a gay porn flick about the craters of Europa (no points for
switching the setting from Jupiter to Uranus), or about cell
division (meiosis? mitosis?), or about investing and gender?
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at October 26, 2005 07:24 PM