photo-cartoon contest under construction

January 3rd, 2008 | Uncategorized

sydney

Remember how I was going to make a cartoon from the photos you submitted? This isn’t the real cartoon, it’s just one I started playing around with because I received such a surfeit of Moes. But this Sydney (Stacie Hanes) and the Italian Mo (Marzia Mascelli) both won a t-shirt. The British Mo (our old friend June) deserves a t-shirt but you know how in contests they say “employees and family members are ineligible?” June is practically a family member, so no t-shirt for her. (I’ll send her some socks or underwear.)

I’m still working on another fumetti, which will feature even more Moes plus a few other characters.

60 Responses to “photo-cartoon contest under construction”

  1. Alex the Bold says:

    I’m first. Go me!

  2. Dr. Empirical says:

    What fun!

    Now I’m sorry I never got around to contributing.

  3. June says:

    Know what’s spooky? The Italian Mo’s cat is astonishingly like the “British” Mo’s cat. (I’m an Ammurican now, gosh darn it.)

  4. I’m sorry June. You can be Amurrican if you want. I was just trying to give the whole enterprise a little international flair.

    I’ll send your cat some socks.

  5. Dave says:

    From that long lost wonder of television that was “Blossom”:

    Blossom: That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have a doppelganger running around.

    Dad: Why do the Germans have a special word for it? Is that a big problem over there?

  6. Megan says:

    Fun!

    I think the third and fifth panel photos should be reversed.

  7. ksbel6 says:

    Very fun!

  8. c. e. loveless says:

    Re Doppelgänger on “Blossom”: Germans invent special words by stringing ordinary words together. If yu can translate “double-goer” into meaningful English you’re doing better than I can.

  9. Stacie Hanes says:

    I could do another pose, but I sort of need a haircut at the moment.

    You’ve made my mother a happy woman.

  10. towheedork says:

    Ahhh, thanks, that’s better. It’s not like we want you to get any real work done, Alison. 😀 (one snip of a recent dream, otherwise on the subject of fighting with my family, was an announcement that you’d finished your next book. Talk about waking up to cruel reality. And then making it worse by doing exactly this. Wasting the author’s time, I mean.)

    June, my condolences. On becoming a Yank, that is. Though you might also welcome condolences once you try to put the socks on your cat.

    Dave, HA!

  11. April says:

    Oh so very funny, thankyou AB. Great look Stacie!

  12. DeLandDeLakes says:

    Yikes! I almost peed when I saw ersatz Sydney, which might have to do with the fact that I find her to be the sexiest women in the strip, for a bevy of reasons. (Whisper “hermeneutical” into my ear, baby!)

  13. Stacie Hanes says:

    The only thing I don’t do, DeLandDeLakes, is teach Women’s Studies.

    I teach British Lit instead.

    My girlfriend even looks like Mo and wears striped jumpers.

  14. Jessica says:

    Damn! Now I wish I had submitted a Clarice pose!! Although I guess I could do Janice’s mom better since I don’t have the same hairstyle as Clarice…..Can’t wait to see the Ginger pics!

  15. Duncan says:

    “omen of death”? Shouldn’t that be … “augury of death”?

  16. DeLandDeLakes says:

    Stacie-

    Yow! A dead ringer in profession as well as looks! You truly deserve your fumetti immortality!

  17. Jessie N ('Sydney's girl) says:

    Great comic!

    Isn’t she just the cutest doppelganger you ever saw? Loving Mo’s cat as well.

    Please dress like this for my visit Stacie!

    And Yes, I do even look like Mo and have a collection of striped jumpers to die for. What a sad, but hilarious, collection of cliche’s we are…

  18. Aunt Soozie says:

    Jessie
    would love to see a photo of you and Stacie together!
    Stacie, no other pose necessary…that’s wonderfully Sydney!

  19. Jessie N ('Sydney's girl) says:

    I’ll be seeing her in about ten days and I’m sure she’ll be up for that!

  20. salvo says:

    May I be a pedant for just a moment?

    FUMETTI is plural.
    FUMETTO is singular.

    This connects squarely with my mission to educate people about the PANINO/PANINI and BISCOTTO/BISCOTTI distinction. I, and all other Italian-speakers, thank you for learning this teensy bit of Italian grammar. I hope you all will understand.

    *grin*

  21. BrooklynPhil says:

    I like June aka “Amurrican Moe’s” expression in the final frame– very cartoon like. And I can’t wait to see Stacie and Jessie N’s photo of Sydney and Moe together.

    I wish I could submit a photo, but as a bald man with a beard, the only character I could approach is Stuart, but as a gay man, I never let my beard nor my hair get that unkempt. Don’t get me wrong, Stuart’s adorable!

    And Salvo, I appreciate the Italian lesson. Have we already covered the brava/bravo issue?

  22. slade1050 says:

    I am a fan of Dykes to watch out for and now that my daughter Stacie has been picked as Sydney I am even more delited with the cartoon. Way to go Stacie.

  23. Tone says:

    How fun! I both love and resent the idea of the universally applicable cast of Dykes to watch out for. The doppelganger-motive made me want to see the great doppelganger-movie “La double vie de Véronique” (The Double Life of Véronique) again. There it was a doppelganger in France and Poland.

  24. K.B. says:

    I feel kinda dense today. Can someone help me out?

    I’m pretty sure the 3rd and 5th panel show the same person, namely Italian Mo (although, why would Italian Mo be wondering about a Doppelgänger in Italy?). What about the first and the last panel? I could swear it’s the same person, but the glasses look different…

  25. Alex the Bold says:

    K.B.,

    The glasses are different in the first and last panels (they’re more oval in the first, have corners in the last).

    And it certainly looks like the same person (and the same cat!) in the thoid and fifth panels.

  26. NLC says:

    > re: Alex the Bold and the different glasses:

    I think the more important question concerning eyeglasses is whether or not, in the final version, –in order to maintain faithfulness to the actual strip– the frames of the glasses will be photoshopped so as not to obscure the eyes of the characters (cf. Mo in the first panel of Episode #518 and Sydney and Paul in the panel just below.)

    N
    (Who’s a bit sad he didn’t get to play J.R….)

  27. van says:

    Oooh! Fun!!!

    The resemblance between Sydney and Stacie is fantastic! American Mo is spot on. And don’t you just love the pictorial of Italian Mo? Hah! Love it!

    We want more! 😀
    (It is fun how the mob is easily amused by this, no? hehe)

    Happy New Year to everyone btw. Cheers!

  28. Dale says:

    Hey Salvo, cheers for the Italian grammar lesson. I will have to look a couple of those words up later…
    The third and fifth panel Moes are perfect! Excellent expression and the cat adds an extra touch. And Stacie makes a superb Sydney! Well done!
    Damn…now I wish I’d entered…

  29. marzia says:

    Evviva! Ho vinto! Well, I never won a contest in my life! That means a lot to me and I’m inclined to think that if this is the first one, there must be a sense.I would like to thank everyone who made it possible, my enlightened Government, its Church …but especially my loved producer, Virginia, who believed in me and in my pussycat from the beginning..
    To you, Alison, my gratitude for getting started my 2008 in such a sweet funny way. Like Amélie Poulain’s dwarf, I hope my new T-shirt will have world-wide attitude, destiny and pictures..

  30. iara says:

    Surfeit of Mo’s? I say, the more the merrier! How about we get some more from the “now I wish I had entered” crowd and we have a Parade of Mo’s? I volunteer to photoshop them into a single picture – suggestions for setting/backdrops welcome! Our winners, who are indeed superb, can lead the way – in all their splendor and varied eyeglass frames. The lone Sydney can be introducing them (or seeing them as in a dream or vision?).

  31. a different Emma says:

    You mean the Mo the merrier.

  32. Feminista says:

    And as Mo would say,”nyuk.” i agree with iara. And Spike Lee’s movie Mo’Better Blues could take on a new meaning.

  33. Feminista says:

    For the record,there’s another S.H.: Stacie Haines,the author of Sexual Healing,who lives in San Francisco.

  34. Jeffster83 says:

    Salvo, I teach my daughters the correct Italian singular forms all the time. Now when I am cooking pasta, and they want to eat one of the uncooked strands before dinner, they know to ask for a spaghetto. At a restaurant, we encourage the older one to share a raviolo with her sister. And we know how to make darling little Christmas angel decorations by gluing a farfalla to a penna and spray painting the result white. It’s fun!

  35. Susanne says:

    c.e.loveless: ‘double-goer’: someone who goes (around) as a double (of someone). Just a try. Maybe someone can do better – with the German or the English.

  36. Stacie Hanes says:

    Feminista: There is also a Stacie Hanes who is a meteorologist somewhere in the American midwest.

    I like that, because if anyone brings up any sort of incident from my checkered past, not that there are any, I can blame the meteorologist.

  37. iara says:

    Although I feel for the wrongly singulared Italian or Latin nouns, and admit to having made a fuss when my students use such words as “matrice,” I think it is fair to point out that once a word makes it into another language, it should be subject to that language’s rules. (Now, one might argue, the word did not voluntarily stray into foreign lands, but still, it did something to attract notice, right?) Anyway, although English has received a huge influx of Latin and Greek in the past, I would venture that this has now slowed down to a trickle, mainly of the edible variety, with the bulk of the movement going in the opposite direction. So, for the guilt-ridden English speakers I would like to offer an update on some peripatetic English words (or brand names)from the Greek front:

    Singular: Coka Cola – Plural: Coka Coless (pronounced almost like ‘Koalas’)
    Singular: Single-bill – Plural: Singlee-billia
    Singular: Barbie – Plural: Barbess
    In Greek there is also a ‘gender pressure’ to which some words are mercilessly subjected. Adjectives are especially vulnerable, given their enslavement to the gender of the noun they modify. For example, a word such as “modern” wandering into Greek, must be prepared to turn into “moderno” “moderna” “modernos” depending on whether it refers to, say, a dress (“forema” – neutral), a chair (“karekla” – feminine), or lapel (“giakas” -male), respectively.

    Wierd, I started out trying to write a note about how maybe we should not be so pedantic, but now I think I sound even more pedantic.

  38. salvo says:

    Jeffster: You are my new hero! Even if Italians very rarely use the words ‘spaghetto’ or ‘raviolo’, it’s still a fantastic grammar lesson for your very lucky daughters. 🙂

    iara: I thoroughly enjoyed your post! I say pedantry and geekery are generally underrated (grin). I agree with you on borrowed words becoming subject to the new language’s rules, and I also realize the biscotto/biscotti and panino/panini battle is largely lost. I must confess, though, that if those words were imported in the singular, and modified with English plurals (biscotto/biscottos?) it would all feel much more logical to me. Ah, language.

    Also, to everyone else: SO SO sorry to have spawned this linguistic digression here. As an aspiring librarian, though, I’d like to think that Mo would approve. 🙂

  39. Pam I says:

    Word of the Year 2007, i just heard on the steam wireless, is – not surprisingly – sub-prime. This is from some US Society of Lexicographers or thereabouts. Second on their list of favourite neologisms is googleganger – finding someone else on Google with your name. My googleganger is a continence training nurse in Blackpool, so not a lot of overlap there.

  40. Pam I says:

    And then i found this site http://wordie.org/ “like Flickr without the photos”.

  41. Silvio Soprani says:

    Pam I: “googleganger” !!! You hit the jackpot!

    Salvo, You’re apologizing for “starting a linguistic digression?” Why else would we all be here?

  42. Ian says:

    Whoa! Stacie is pretty much spot on how I imagine Sydney to look like in real life. Not that I spend vast amounts of time wondering what my favourite cartoon characters would look like if they were real, I hasten to add.

    I wonder if I grow my beard and put on a utilikilt, whether I could pass for Stuart? Mind you, my male-pattern is more Sydney’s Dad (what IS his name?) than Stuart’s Richard Dreyfus …

  43. Jana C.H. says:

    Googleganger! Great word! I did a self-search back in 2002 and found a woman with my name. I also found an e-mail address for her, and sent her the following letter, and received the following reply. (In this version I’ve replaced my last name with my initial.)

    Dear Jana H.,

    Jana H., in a fit of idle curiosity, recently did a Google search on Jana H., and who should she find cluttering up her list but Jana H., writer for Bulletin Today, official publication of University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

    Not only does Jana H. have the impudence to be using Jana H.’s name, she is using it in a profession (journalism) to which Jana H. herself once aspired but was too lazy and chicken-hearted to pursue.

    Jana H. is justly proud to follow the noble profession of geographer and cartographer, but as she approaches her half-century she suffers occasional twinges of regret for not following her earlier dream. She therefore trusts that Jana H. is doing the profession proud, thus upholding the honor of her most excellent name.

    I remain,
    your humble servant
    and namesake,
    Jana H.

    P.S. Your middle name had better not be Claire!

    Jana’s reply: Hello Jana! My middle name is Lynn, so you’re safe! I actually wrote for the Aquin, the student newspaper, but I graduated this May and now work for the Duluth News Tribune. I had no idea another Jana H. existed, my name is not very common to begin with. We must be the only two in the nation at least. Nice to hear from you!

    Jana H. of Duluth, MN

    In fact, we are not the only two in the nation. On a subsequent search I found a Jana H. who wrote a book about Tarot cards. During my 25 years as a Neo-pagan I amassed a collection of Tarot cards, and also compiled a list of ideas for an English History Tarot deck. Weird world!

    Anyone who wants to find my web writings can find most of them by searching Jana C.H. I use it everywhere.

    JcH
    Seattle
    Saith Floss Forbes: If you don’t know the tune, sing tenor.

  44. marzia says:

    Philology mon amour: Mo or Mo’ is a current roman dialect word. It means now, for the moment, just now. According to my old teacher at old old school it comes from Latin “modo” or, more likely, from Latin “mox” (..and “mox” comes from Sanskrit “maksu”….and….)

  45. Violetta B. says:

    Oh no!! My googleganger died!!! I’ve just found her necrology on google.
    Is this like the writing on the wall? well… should be true what Sydney says in this cartoon: “[…]seeing your doppelgaenger is an omen of death”, the fact that mine is dead could be a long-life omen…for me at least, not for the poor old Violetta B. from Elizabeth City. Rest in peace Violetta!

  46. Juliet says:

    I have no Googleganger. I’m the only Juliet R on the entire web…maybe the entire world. Although I do get 12 mentions, which is kinda satisfying…even if they are geeky academic articles.

    And yes, I do teach Women’s Studies on occasion.

  47. Louise says:

    Grazie, Salvo for the fumetto/fumetti, panino/panini, biscotto/biscotti lesson! I speak Italian as well, and although I know “paninis” will never be entirely eradicated from the US vocabulary, I think people are glad to know the distinction between the singular and plural.

    Here’s a funny story about translating between US English and Italian: I was in Italy with a US friend who does not speak Italian. We were at a café, and she told the waiter she’d like a latte. I asked her if she wanted milk, and she said yes. I asked again, “a latte is just milk, is that what you want?” She said yes again. So the waiter returned with a glass of milk, prompting a puzzled look from my friend.

    She said “I thought I ordered coffee.” I said “That’s what I was trying to tell you, latte means milk,” to which she responded “Oh, I thought you meant I’d get coffee with milk, but no sugar!”

    We still get a laugh out of it. Ah, language is fun!

  48. bcgal says:

    Salvo (and all the other linguistic digressors here), do you know the joke about the Latin teacher who goes into a bar and orders a martinus? Bartender says, don’t you mean martini? Latin teacher says, If I want two, I’ll ask for them.

  49. Stasa says:

    Wow. Y’all are awesome. Thank you!

  50. Str8 but not Narrow says:

    (dying laughing)

  51. tHe LaTeNt LeNs says:

    I always learn something new on here. I wonder if I can get away with looking like Toni…I have an ever present curl that falls into my face all of the time….hmmmmm……

  52. Jaibe says:

    I really like the last frame. She totally got an DTWOF facial expression down!

  53. andrewo says:

    It’s a little scary how life imitates art so closely.

  54. Suzanonymous says:

    At some point since the contest was announced, I thought of this idea and finally got around to doing it: a parallel between DTWOF and Krazy Kat. I have mixed feelings about Krazy Kat, and others may, too, but here goes:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/22560606@N03/2174732284/

  55. Smooches says:

    ding dang-it!!!! somehow i missed the call for photos…and i am a most EXCELLENT jezanna [i even once wrote alison and told her that locs grow out and jezanna’s started to grow!!!!!]…*sigh*…this is my life…i guess that’s what i get for being a lurker…and not coming to the site daily…and not praying often enough…**SIGH** any my dtwof tee is almost threadbare so i could have really used a new one…oh well…happy new year, y’all…
    ***SIIIIIIGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH***
    did i mention that i need a new dtwof teeshirt???

  56. notpeanut says:

    hee hee, great photo-strip.

    love the linguistic digression too. i love how words get adapted when they’re borrowed into other languages… my favorite is english borrowings into arabic. in arabic, word roots are usually three consonants and you change the vowels to make related words. for example, ‘ktb’ is the root relating to writing, with ‘kataba’ meaning ‘he wrote’, ‘kitaab’ meaning ‘book’, etc. so when english words with three consonants get borrowed into arabic they can be treated like real arabic words, with funny results: ‘bank’ and ‘film’ have both been borrowed into arabic, and their plurals are ‘bunuuk’ and ‘aflam’, respectively.

  57. 8balled says:

    >I’m still working on another fumetti, which will feature even more Moes plus a few other characters.

    i recollect that the singular form is ‘fumetto.’

    your persnickety [or ‘pernickety,’ depending on your dictionary] pal,

    ed

  58. Ms. Jojo says:

    RE: “Oh no!! My googleganger died!!! I’ve just found her necrology on google. Is this like the writing on the wall?”

    You mean graffito, eh?

  59. booksezez says:

    ???? ??????????? ??? ???? ?????????? ?????????????? ????????????????

  60. Christine says:

    I went to the health center at my college because of a sore throat, and the nurse thought I was someone else. When she realized I wasn’t that person she said, “Did you know you have a twin at this school?!” I had to stop myself from saying, “Huh. Did you know that seeing your own doppelganger is an omen of death?” I thought it was pretty funny though.