I can be cool sometimes

I learned the phrase "Italian rarebit" from a documentary about 60s mods. It's not just another of my so-called "Jally japes".


25 comments on “I can be cool sometimes

  1. Nice little tidbit on pizza. In the States, I don’t recall there being any name other than pizza, even in the early 60s. Apparently, there was a shift from it being known only to Italian immigrants before 1940 to being known by most Americans by the mid-1950s.

    1. I read somewhere that in the northeastern states pizza was sometimes called “tomato pie”.

  2. Poor Freddie. He seems to have only good intentions.

  3. I only learned about Welsh rarebit, and I learned it from an old Uncle Scrooge comic book, one of the ones where the Beagle Boys have tricked him into signing a deed of gift giving away his trillions.

    I do believe at the end Scrooge wins by becoming their servant, then serving them so much rich food that he gives them *gout*.

    1. And then what, they died from gout??

      1. It’s a Disney comic, I’m sure no one was allowed to die.

        I think they got so tired of having gout that they just signed Scrooge’s fortune back over to him? It made sense to my ten-year-old brain at the time.

  4. So strange being in this Watchmen-esque alternate timeline where Freddie is the budding global pop-star. Didn’t know about Pizza referred to as “Italian Rarebit” either. I do know though what we in the states call “Hawaiian Style” pizza is referred to as “German” pizza elsewhere.

    1. We generally use “Hawaiian” in the UK to mean “with ham and pineapple”. The ability of pizzerias to spell “Hawaiian” is… variable.

    2. Wait, if they call a pizza with pineapples “German pizza”, what do they call pizza with bockwurst and sauerkraut?

      1. Bavarian pizza.

        1. This is similar to the phrase ‘Maryland Fried Chicken’ (which is never used in Maryland.)

    3. Pineapple on pizza is an abomination. That is all.

    4. It’s an extended riff on Welsh rarebit. “Rarebit” is a corruption of “rabbit” in this case, referring to a dish which contains no actual rabbit but is a traditional Welsh dish (occasionally seen in other parts of the UK as well) made by pouring melted cheese on bread.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rarebit

      Hence the joke – “italian rarebit” is obviously just pizza.

  5. Nobody ever says “pizza pie” any more. It used to be standard, or maybe just because it was easier to rhyme in songs (“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie” vs. “In Pizza Hut we’ll greetya with a large cheese pizza” ).

    Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDw17ql5qmo

    1. Nobody ever says “pizza pie” in the UK anyway, apart from the beta band. At least I don’t think so.

      Whenever I hear “pizza pie” I think of the beta band song eclipse, which has some of my favourite lyrics, despite the regrettable passing endorsement of moon hoax theories:

      The people with the pizza pie made me very high
      The people with the questions smile
      And the people with the answers lie

      They lie

      {beat}

      So no pizza for them

      {fin}

  6. Well that rarebit there is just the kind of thing to use as an analogy to help smooth things over with Mr. Lennon. Teach them about the false narrative of there being “only so much pie.”
    People have this false mentality that success is like a pie: there is only so much of it to go around. If someone else has a bigger slice than you, it means that they took away from pie that you could have had.
    But it’s a false notion. Someone else being popular doesn’t impede your success.
    If you could get John to understand that, he would be more open to the idea of Freddie inviting them on his Caravan gig.

  7. I’m not sure what I find weirder : The fact that you linked to an article at Everything2, or the fact that it’s from 2017, which is about 15 years later than I would have figured was the last time anyone used Everything2.

    1. In the world in which Freddie Garrity is the global pop star, in our day, Everything2 (2.13.034) is the go-to for all intelligently sourced information, true to the original intentions of the creators of the internet (Al Gore’s clones.)

  8. 2002? That was around the time of Raising The Bar, no? Still went on strong for a fair few years after that. I mean, the writer of that node was in this very house here at a nodermeet once and we didn’t even move here until 2003. People met on E2 later than that, got married and got divorced again while it was still a site whose members checked in daily.

  9. I feel like some people would have their minds blown by chicken-fried steak. (Hint: It’s steak fried like chicken, not chicken fried like steak).

    1. My favorite is chicken-fried chicken.

  10. Soooo… what do you call fried dough in the UK?

  11. In the last panel Nemulons eyes have arrows pointing at the pizza. Does he reflect what Janelly has on her mind or is he pointing at a course of action that might lead to the success of this mission ?

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