puns that you had missed

And only Southerners and perhaps Britishes would refer to Chicago as "Yankee".

otm

It's Y,H,F in the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet.

The album was given the title Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, referencing a series of letters in the phonetic alphabet that Tweedy had heard on the Irdial box set The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Hotel_Foxtrot

I think the cover photo is meant to convey a sense of loneliness, bleakness maybe.

beigeness

Or blueness if you got the alternate cover.

I also always made the connection between the cover and the refs in "Jesus, Etc" to tall buildings and "skyscrapers scraping together"

Regardless of whether it was intended (really, people, let's separate the art from the artist here), I love the idea that what we're actually looking at is a coupla Yankee Hotels doing the Foxtrot. Great retroactive pun!

Pplains is correct: no one from Illinois or Missouri or Chicago or St. Louis identifies culturally as a Yankee. To midwesterners that term refers to New England / New York. The only context in which an Illinoisan could plausibly be called a Yankee is during the actual Civil War, when it meant Unionist (as opposed to Confederate). Tweedy et al. were not referring to that time and place so it's a red herring.

Wilco's reference is to the phonetic alphabet and to 20th century radio communication culture.

yeah I knew that, the sample breaks through in "Poor Places" and I also have the CONET project CD it was lifted from (which is weirdly compelling background work music), I just thought the cover might have been a pun on that.

The only yankee hotel I care about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieb3qkMHhaw

I love the idea that what we're actually looking at is a coupla Yankee Hotels doing the Foxtrot

Until this thread, that idea never occurred to me.

I wonder why that is

Not a pun, exactly, but I missed the joke in the Brad Paisley title Kentucky Jelly.

Don’t know if it is, but it occurred to me that Labradford’s album title Prazision could be a play on the medication prazosin. I always assumed it was “precision” in Czech or something.

The titles "An Affair to Remember" and "A Night to Remember" are small jokes on common party invitation phrases.

Nick Cash, singer of Brit-punk never-was losers 999. Amusingly the Fad Gadget/Members drummer had the same name, but for real.

I remember reading when The Smiths began that Johnny Marr was a play on "j'en ai marre", but in retrospect in doesn't seem likely.

^I wanted to believe as well

Hugh Manzou - the artist behind an obscure one-off Lover's Rock reggae 12" release in 1981.

The penny eventually dropped when searching for more information online (none readily available - so still a mystery).

Stage name of Desmond Morris

not particularly clever but worth noting, i think...

"Food, we get it" the catchphrase of one of those delivery companies. "get it" as in "understand" and as in "fetch"

I haven't heard it, but I just realized Peter Blegvad's King Strut must be a pun on King Tut.

Missed that one too.

I love when Frank Drebbond rubs the head and asks if a bald guy is from "Baldymore" in police squad

I had to have explained to me that the name of DALL-E is a play on a robot (WALL-E) Dalí.

Was the name of 80s UK singer Vaughn Toulouse a play on Johnny Thunders' "Born to Lose"?

Ha, probably.

That reminds me I've always thought a good name for a singer would be Barnaby Wylde, I can imagine a sort of foppish late 60s pop crooner with that name.

I never, ever get puns at the time. It only occurred to me a few weeks ago that Legally Blonde is, in fact, a pun.

Hah. I knew it was a pun but don't think I quite parsed it 100% until you just mentioned it.

Its absolute gibberish without the pun aspect

Doesn't it work on a stereotypical level, synechdocal like. As in the butt of all jokes etc.
Presupposing a level of intelligence which she belies. Spoilers etc.
Which is partially covered by pun but also needs a cultural association for what certain hair colouration denotes.

Mansplaining in the middle of the night.

Think I mainly missed that pun mostly by not thinking about it! It's not a movie I've seen or am interested in, it's just a film title that pops up every now and then, I guess I half thought it was a play on the idea of a girl being 'legal' ie over the age of consent, but "legally blind" never occurred to me. Not sure it's an expression much used in British English but I could be wrong

I'm wondering if it is a slang term used anywhere. Sounds akin to some of the acronyms used by hospital staff denoting culpability etc. Or a thing like Florida Man.

but basic breakdown is term pun is based on = sight impaired,
Term as used indicates intellectual status based on a physical attribute. A hypothetical where the connotation is taken as given enough that it gives fixed status
& film turns that expectation on its head by making it a person that partially fits the stereotype or is a least label obsessed but is taking a legal degree.

I think the film was a bit better than i feared.

finding it ironic that one of the recognisable physical points of being aryan is also one taken to denote vacuity. Wondering how o0ld the stupid blonde trope is, if it is actually older than the race science BS that came up with the idea of the aryan. Obviously its a prejudice in itself and thought to be punching down. Does it tie in with the Slavic origins of slaves and hence the name slavery?

& what colour are the people who use the trope folicularly?

Er, what? I'd would think that it's a lot more modern than that. As in 20th century. Also it's pretty much exclusively aimed at women of course. This wiki page mentions the origin as a 1775 French play:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde_stereotype

I think it's more of a misogynistic trope about attractive women relying on their looks rather than their brains.

But then when did blonde=attractive become a thing?

"Fair hair was much esteemed by both the Greeks and Romans, and so they not only dyed and gold-dusted theirs ..., but also went so far as to gild the hair of their statues, as notably those of Venus de Medici and Apollo. In the time of Ovid (A.U.C. 711) much fair hair was imported from Germany, by the Romans, as it was considered quite the fashionable color. Those Roman ladies who did not choose to wear wigs of this hue, were accustomed to powder theirs freely with gold dust, so as to give it the fashionable yellow tint." [C. Henry Leonard, "The Hair," 1879]

^^^c/p-ed from the etymonline entry on "blond" (actual real etymology? disputed!)

I love that my random admission that I didn't get the legally blonde pun has led to a discussion on the attractiveness of blondes and the dumb blonde stereotype! I've just gone down a google rabbit hole on this and there are people out there that say men finding blondes more attractive is an evolutionary sexual selection thing, although colour me sceptical.

So, apparently Buckcherry is a play on Chuck Berry. This I did not know!

I learned that ITT a few years ago

I had to explain the "Blonde Ambition Tour" to someone way back when.

At this point is there any blind/blonde pun that hasn’t already been made?

maybe a German power metal act featuring all performers in blonde wigs, called Blonde Guardian

An all blond(e) Blondie tribute act called The Blonde leading the Blond.

an all-blind group called Concrete Blind

ok i'll stop

Debbie Hairy

That is actually how King Charles pronounces it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_PXvjM3WtQ

when I was a kid I thought the Grammys were music awards for really old ppl

I was correct