Robert and I were just brainstorming about his cartoon for tomorrow, and we were looking for parallel phrases, different ways of describing the same thing — specifically, the pandering proposal by John McCain (and now Hillary Clinton) to lift the federal gasoline tax for the summer.
One way of saying it was "Cheap tricks," and we were looking for another, and for some reason my brain kept going "Cheap tricks and other delights." I knew this wasn’t right, but it seemed like it was close to some phrase I half-remembered from the ’60s, and I was having a hard time coming up with the precise wording, which is unusual for me. I kept thinking, "Big Brother and the Holding Company," but I knew I didn’t have it right. So I went to Google to try to figure out the correct wording for what I was thinking of.
Turns out I not only had the "cheap tricks" part wrong, I was confusing it with another, very different, album.
Of course, the Big Brother et al. album was "Cheap Thrills," with the classic R. Crumb cover. But I kept searching the illustration for the other part, the "cheap thrills and…" But there was no "and."
So I searched again, for "and other delights." Of course. Herb Alpert. Since I was in junior high at the time, this cover was burned pretty deeply into my subconscious. In fact, now that I realize it’s that cover, I realize that the image is all tied up in my mind with the image of the "Take it off; take it all off" Noxzema girl (see video below).
But it’s kind of weird that I couldn’t conjure it up correctly without looking it up.
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Brad –
You wrote: But it’s kind of weird that I couldn’t conjure it up correctly without looking it up.
That’s not weird at all: you wuz tryin’ to subvert nature and failed. It’s common knowledge and even a scientific fact that, aside from the heart, men can direct blood flow to only one major organ at a time. Yer brain wuz not able to do no conjurin’ because the image of the whipped-cream-covered lass overpowered its processing capacity; that happened because it was under-fed because blood flow was being directed, er, elsewhere.
My brain! It’s my second favorite organ!
— Woody Allen, in "Sleeper"
By the way, you can now see Robert’s cartoon, up on his new site.
The part that led to this post was up on the gas station marquee, with the prices. He had "Cheap Tricks" in place of one grade of gas, and we ended up with "Gimmicks" as the other.
It seems with every presidential election cycle since we’ve been in our house, we need to have the septic tank pumped out; it has happened with this cycle and the last 3 elections.