That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for May 16, 2024

My original post in 2019:

Two artist models who wish they had asked for royalties.

/// Here’s “American Gothic” by Wood;

it’s world-famous, but misunderstood.

Thought to lampoon the life

of a farmer and wife,

that’s a daughter who next to Pa stood.

/// Grant had posed his own sister, named Nan,

by the side of a much older man—

Byron, (dentist by trade),

with a pitchfork displayed.

Their expressions the deadest of pan.

/// Viewers saw these as figures of mirth,

poking fun at “the salt of the earth.”

But Grant Wood always claimed

that he hadn’t defamed

rural folk of his Iowa birth.

“Mr Wood, are we supposed to be serious or satirical? What’s my motivation?”

bea·ver·board (bē’’vər-bôrd′)

n. A light, semirigid building material of compressed wood pulp, used for walls and partitions. [Originally a trademark.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

[I probably looked it up in 2019 too.]

They’re bums, if you ask me, so don’t.

A good insurance pitch……fork.

Since Maude caught her husband in the barn with the milk maid, he started carrying that pitchfork everywhere for self defense.

Amelia, seeing the fork, made a mental note to call the audiologist, but first she needed to find Seth the farmhand.

…I can hear the music!

El Greco stoic Americanos.

The very portrait of smoldering passion.

.

…okay, maybe “lukewarm”….

Few couples are half as much fun/

as this wacky old son of a gun/

with his favorite chick/

who is stiff as a stick/

And as “hot” as a frigid nun..///

He knew that she was “the one”/

When she stood in the bright Kansas sun/

Looking so blithe and gay/

In her apron of gray

And her hair pulled back in a bun.

Thats the best laugh I had all week!!!

Where, oh where, are you tonight…..

They left the farm the day the John Deere tractor was delivered and the team of oxen were “put out to pasture”.

He: I’m biting my cheeks trying to keep a straight face while doing my very best imitation of Poseidon. She: We are not amused.

I think she suspects where that odor came from.

“I’ve got Millie calmed down now, and you’ve cleaned the blood off the pitchfork. Yes, they shouldn’t have been in the haystack, but, still, you have to go to Billy and his parents and apologize for what you did.”

I was thinking more along the lines of Green Acres where Oliver tosses the hay and the pitchfork with it.

DAD JOKE!

She’s giving him the stink eye!

He’s got that look like she’s told him she’s pregnant…again.

Mr. Wood, on his way to the voting place. If the poll worker asked for his ID one more time, he was going to stab that young whippersnapper!

Oliver and Lisa Douglas.

You know Sarah, I wish you’d hold my pole on occasion?

Farmer Dan thought his wife would be collecting down for the comforter she was making, when she said she was going “goosing”!

I’m not paying a half of a million for every big piece of machinery in my shed. Me and my pitchfork are doing just fine like my daddy and grandpa did, thank you.

American Gothic: 

Paste (including the quote marks) 

"Category:Paintings by Grant Wood" Wikimedia 

(syntax supported by the Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and Yandex search engines) in the browser address bar (or search for it using one of those search engines) and choose the first Category: found, and once there find the text string DeVolson, and click its link for info and links that point to more info about this roughly jumbo envelope size painting. 

Again, a larger strip image is also shown by merely clicking the image in Mr. Melcher’s THROWBACK THURSDAY: MASTERPIECE #2312 (10/22/19) (May 15, 2024) blog entry, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment. I have added a comment there pointing to info about this artist I used to point to here. So far, only work by him used here (2 times total, including this Throwback Thursday repeat), the October 22, 2019, strip being its first use.

I’m sure there were others in this vein in Mad magazine, but this one, captioned classic art, I do remember in which the caption was: “That Ed McMahon just cracks me up”

Come to think of it, the Old man does look a lot like J.K. Simmons

Once, Twice, Three Tines a Lady….

we can’t have sex if you don’t put that pitchfork down.

Great moments in sexual symbolism? Naaah..

Some (most) comments from 10/22/2019 (1):

….

Say What Now‽: Painter: “Okay, let’s lighten up a bit and relax. So how’s your sex life?”

Strob: “This is our toy. You be the judge.”

Strob: “She was told when she was young

That pain would lead to pleasure

Did she understand it when they said

That a man must break his back

To earn his day of leisure?

Will she still believe it when he’s dead?”

Call me Ishmael: Not THAT end,you fool !!!

….

Strob: “What a babe, right? How did I luck out?”

….

PatsyL.Paul: Grant Wood taught art at my husband’s high school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

….

Papared25: Looks like a couple of folks could use a bit more fiber in their diets, or at the very least a lot less starch.

gcarlson: I actually do remember them in ads for a high-fiber cereal in the mid-late 60s.

….

Kind&Kinder: The demon acupuncturists of Fleet Street, Farmington, Iowa. She makes a mean pie!

….

gopher gofer: they forced me to do this portrait with my wife instead of my favorite ewe …

Call me Ishmael: “Wood ewe?”

gopher gofer: Yes, my thought process was a bit woolly…

….

Some (most) comments from 10/22/2019 (2):

….

jel354: Back when “Gothic” meant class, not darkness.

Bookworm: Of course, it depends on which definition of Gothic you’re going with: A) relating to the Goths or their extinct East Germanic language, which provides the earliest manuscript evidence of any Germanic language (4th–6th centuries AD), B) of or in the style of architecture prevalent in western Europe in the 12th–16th centuries, characterized by pointed arches, rib vaults, and flying buttresses, together with large windows and elaborate tracery, or C) people who are darkly inclined. People who like spooky stuff. They generally wear black and read horror stories, listen to dark or emotional music, and wish it were always Halloween. The subculture originated in the eighties with a post-punk genre of music, eventually called “gothic rock”.

Hippogriff: Through much of the 20th century, Gothic was cliché for church architecture. However, the first use of the gothic arch was in Rome’s cloaca maxima.

gcarlson: “Gothic” has periodically been used to describe something new as barbaric, such as that newfangled arched architecture in the 12th C. and macabre novels like “Frankenstein” in the 19th. I believe modern “Goths” take their inspiration from the latter. In Wood’s case, my understanding is that he was referring to the architecture of the farmhouse and its reflection in its residents, seeing them as (ironically) old-fashioned.

….

Reader: This Week’s Hometown Hero – he led the charge against Frankenstein’s monster.

….

MS72: What is “beaver board”?

Rev Phnk Ey: What beaver gets when looking at this painting.

gcarlson: What Dad always called beaver board was wood made from wood chips with glue, heat, and pressure.

….

Some (most) comments from 10/22/2019 (3):

….

aerotica69: You should leave now, Dr. Scott, while it is still possible. We are about to beam the entire house to the planet Transsexual, in the galaxy of Transylvania. Go … Now! Our noble mission is completed, my most beautiful sister, and soon we shall return to the moon-drenched shores of our beloved planet.

….

Call me Ishmael: In Kansas it had been said / that daughter and Dad daren’t wed / but she was a “hotsy” / and he was a Nazi / so they moved to Arkansas, instead.

Linguist: Arkansas? Isn’t that where people go to a family reunion to find a date … and you compliment a gal by telling her she’s got a nice tooth?

Honorable Mention In The Banjo Toss: And foreplay consists of “Sis, you awake?”

Call me Ishmael: Gentlemen, gentlemen! Let us not be unkind … LOL!

….

Linguist: Wilber’s attempt to cut an unnoticed silent but deadly failed.

….

anomaly: So they put on their sexiest clothes, got plastered and prepared to raise hell.

….

MissScarlet: … and we’ve seen a thing or two. That’s why we look like this.

….

This painting has of course been satirized a great many times. My favourite one was a response to the comment by then-Weatherperson Bernadine Dohrn about the Manson murders: “Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!” (Dohrn later said that this comment was ironic.)

A cartoonist friend drew a “portrait” of Dorhn and a fellow-Weatherperson (I think Mark Rudd) in this pose, holding a giant fork.

Good neighbors working on their state farm?