Buck Farrel -- Comic Book Spoonerism?

Crown Comics, published from 1945-49, was a comic book mostly featuring hackneyed adventure stories. One recurring character, rugged boat captain Buck Farrel, was drawn by various artists, including Paul Parker, who drew the Buck Farrel splash panel pictured here, from Crown Comics #11, November 1947.

Transposing the initial letters of the captain’s name results in fuck barrel, which means a messed-up situation, according to an entry in the Urban Dictionary. (No matter what one thinks of the quality of the Urban Dictionary, the entry – posted on 8 January 2007 – establishes a definite date for its existence.) I haven’t found the term in the handful of slang dictionaries I own, so perhaps it’s of recent coinage, postdating the run of Crown Comics.

But there was a joke current in the late 1930s about a fuck barrel, although it was not called as such.

G. Legman, No Laughing Matter: Rationale of the Dirty Joke, Second Series (New York: Bell Publishing, 1975), 165-6.

The hard-up miner or western cowboy […] is told by the bartender that there are no women in town, but that (in this case) he can “use the barrel.” He is shown a large barrel in the stable, with a fur-lined bunghole at one end, and is left alone with it. After some hesitation, worrying about possible disease, he fucks the barrel and finds it wonderfully lifelike in feeling. He rushes back to the bartender and asks, “Say, can I use that anytime I want?” “Sure,” says the bartender, flipping over the pages of a well-thumbed ledger, “any day except Wednesday. Wednesday is your day in the barrel.” (N.Y. 1938).

If Buck Farrel was a deliberate Spoonerism, perhaps based on a contemporaneous dirty joke, did the comic book writers expect their (adult) readers to snicker at the skipper’s name while imagining his first mate, Corny, squatting inside a barrel and dutifully servicing the rest of the crew?

Of course, it’s quite possible that the captain’s name had no intended obscene meaning – and shame on those who think it did.

Finding twentieth-century examples of fuck barrel in print wouldn’t resolve this question, but it would make the case for a deliberate Spoonerism more compelling.

 

Sewergators (Barney Miller episode) – Cigarette Brand Slogan on Test – Soviet Mincing Machine

“The Mole.” Barney Miller, season 2, episode 22, 18 March 1976.

A thief (Ron Carey) is chased by cops through the New York sewers, captured, then brought back to their precinct house. Later on, one of the cops (Max Gail) is irritated when the thief starts to limp.

“Now what’s the matter?”

“I banged my knee when I tripped over that alligator.”

“What alligator?”

“Didn’t you see it? It was about two feet long! Sewers are full of them. You know, Jewish kids bring them back from Miami and then they flush them down the toilet.” He sits in a chair, rolls up his pant leg, and points to his calf. “Here, look. Teeth marks!” He adds, “It’s a jungle down there.”

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https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/smiley_anders/article_aa9d6218-53b6-11eb-a5d7-23096b98c85f.html

The Advocate [Baton Rouge, LA], 11 January 2021

Smiley: Is there ever too much chocolate?

BY SMILEY ANDERS

Initial reaction

Mike says, "My late father-in-law, Warren Weilbaecher, was a Jesuit High graduate.

"He told about one of his quick-witted fellow students. Instead of putting the abbreviation 'A.M.D.G.' (Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, the Jesuits' Latin motto, meaning 'For the greater glory of God') required at the top of all tests, this student put L.S.M.F.T. (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco), the advertising slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes.

"When called for an explanation by the teacher, who did pay attention to such things, the student quickly blurted out that it meant 'Lord and Savior My First Thought.'

"Though the teacher knew better, he had no response.

"Warren said that student went on to a distinguished career as a trial lawyer — which made good use of his ability to think quickly."

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Florian Huber, “Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself.” The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945, tr. Imogen Taylor (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2020), 98-9.

The tanks of the 65th Soviet Army rolled down the main street [of Alt Teterin] early on the morning of 29 April, on their way to Demmin. Some families hid in the woods or in a ditch just outside the village; others stayed in their houses. That night, groups of soldiers went on the prowl, raping women and rounding up men. They took the men to the neighbouring village of Stretense.

As the people of Alt Teterin waited, tense and frightened, they heard a strange, menacing noise coming from the direction of Stretense – a hideous, nerve-shattering drone, like nothing they had ever heard before. It was to become the soundtrack to the horrors of that night; in the minds of some, the grinding, pounding sound became linked to the propaganda they had heard about the Soviet steamroller. Among the women, the rumour soon spread that the Red Army soldiers in Stretense had started up a ‘hell machine’ – a gigantic mincer, like a huge motorised human press, which they were feeding with the men they’d rounded up and led away.

[Source: Günter Jacobi, in: Nils Köhler, ‘Das Drama von Alt Teterin 1945 – ein Projektbericht’, in: Zeitgeschichte regional. Mitteilungen aus Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 14:1, July 2010, p. 93.]

"Brown Note" Experiments by John Giorno & Bob Moog

The “brown note” is a rumored infrasonic frequency that causes people to shit themselves. According to poet John Giorno’s recent memoir, he and synthesizer pioneer Bob Moog conducted brown note experiments sometime in the late 1960s.

John Giorno, Great Demon Kings: A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), 156-7.

 

Fool’s Errand (Fallopian tube) – Suppressed Invention – Microwaved Poodle (1979 movie reference)

 “Humor in Uniform,” Reader’s Digest, Dec. 2020/Jan 2021, p. 83. Fool’s errand: Fallopian tube.

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“Power Wheel,” Unusual Tales #24, Oct. 1960. “I’ll bet really great revolutionary sources of power aren’t used because the big oil and coal men wouldn’t allow it!”

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Early on in The Driller Killer (Abel Ferrara, 1979), before all the bloodshed starts, a New Yorker, played by Carolyn Marz, reads from an unidentified newspaper. “Oh, God. Listen to this. ‘Mrs. Patricia Adams of Queens Village gave her poodle a bath and, being late for a beauty parlor appointment, placed the dog in a microwave oven to dry it off. When she turned the oven on, the poodle exploded. The woman died of a heart attack.’”