Tag: Allan Sherman

I’m still having trouble telling whether the guy who draws _Graffiti_ lives in this century


I know I’m being hypocritical if I complain about how niche a topic is that someone decides to joke about. I once built an essay around this time in 1857 the Treasury Secretary estimated how many Jersey City municipal bonds were held by foreigners. And goodness knows I’m as up for type jokes as anyone who used to host a web site with information about Linotype operation would be. But here. This was Monday’s Graffiti comic strip.

Written on a cinder block wall: 'Some typesetters don't know their ascenders from their descenders'.
Gene Mora’s Graffiti for the 21st of January, 2019. When I was a kid and the world was at most thirty years old, I had this book of ‘children’s letters from camp’. It was a bunch of handwritten notes all of them kind of going on along the lines of Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”. I can’t swear it wasn’t written by Gene Mora. I have forgotten everything that might guide me to its title or author or why I have the impression there was a second volume too. But. This is just the sort of joke that sounds risque but doesn’t actually parse that would have been perfect for inclusion in that book, if there were ever any reason for a kid to be writing someone about some typesetters.

I have no explanation for this phenomenon.

What I Know About Kurt Cobain Or Vitamin B-12


Since people are curious, here are the things I know about Kurt Cobain or Vitamin B-12:

  1. Intentionally struck out so as to not have to play little league.
  2. Was discovered by Mary Shaw Shorb, in the University of Maryland’s Poultry Science Department, who was investigating a concentrated liver juice product on a $400 grant.
  3. Had a great-uncle, Delbert, a tenor who appeared in the 1930 film King of Jazz.
  4. Can treat both pernicious anemia and cyanide poisoning.
  5. As a child, could, and did, accurately draw Aquaman.
  6. Developed the game show I’ve Got A Secret for Mark Goodson and Bill Todman in 1952, who instead of paying him for it made him one of the show’s producers.
  7. Is commonly known as riboflavin by people who’ve mistaken it for Vitamin B-2.

Kurt Cobain? All right, Kurt Cobain.


OK, dream mind, I don’t know why it was so extremely urgent last night that you had me explain at length Kurt Cobain and his meaning to Nirvana — who you’d think would have some idea about him and his legacy, although maybe they’d just forgot the true meaning of Kurt Cobain — and the cast of The Big Bang Theory — who, I don’t know, am pretty sure existed in the early 90s so what are they doing missing it — at an amusement park but I hope you’re glad I did. Especially since I’ve never really been that up with current news about music so I had to fill in things I didn’t know with information about Allan Sherman or vitamin B-12. They seemed satisfied and so they should.