[Ads-l] cosplay; meet-cute; my tiny violin

[Jonathan Lighter]

I
Colin Stokes, in New Yorker (Feb. 11, 2019), p. 27:
"When you look out the window, you see a lot of people doing excellent
'Walking Dead' cosplay."

Huh?

II
E. Black, in Ibid., p. 35 [cartoon]: [Panel shows boy & girl grave robbers
with shovels; both think, "Our shovels touched..." Caption is] "Grave
Robber Meet-Cute."

Huh?

III
Decades ago, perhaps in the late '50s, people might react unsympathetically
to someone else's recital of misfortune by "playing" what today might be
called "air violin," raising the left arm as if holding a violin and
pretending to bow it with the right hand. (The stereotypical tear-jerking
tune was elsewhen said to be "Hearts and Flowers," by Theodore Moses-Tobani
[1893].)

Though it once seems to have been well known,  I haven't seen this gesture
in decades. Once or twice in very recent years, however, I've seen a
variation in which the thumb and forefinger of the left hand are held
slightly apart while those of the right hand pretend to bow with a tiny
bow. The following exchange occurred on CNN this morning:

JOHN BERMAN: Why can't we [Boston fans] ever get a win?

ERICA HILL: Awwwwwwww! Can you hear my tiny violin here? [Gestures.]

When did the violin get tiny?  (ISTR "the world's smallest playable violin"
from a source like Ripley's Believe It or Not!! at some point long ago. It
*was* tiny!)

JL




-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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