Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, January 1921 · page 8 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #16 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* contains satirical commentary on 1920s American life and a brief joke. The first section mocks modern technological acceleration and consumer culture through exaggerated predictions: shrinking clothing, heads shaped like fish bowls, geographic disorientation. References include **Mary Pickford** (silent film star known for lavish spending), **Theda Bara** (actress known for glamorous roles), and the **Henry Ford assembly line** (representing mass production). The satire targets anxiety about modern life moving too fast and becoming unsustainable. The "You Win Rubber Pajamas" section is a simple joke punchline: a lecturer boasts no one in the audience has helped preserve forests; a timid man claims he has—by shooting woodpeckers, which destroy trees. The absurdist humor works because woodpeckers are small and insignificant compared to industrial deforestation, making the claim ridiculous. Both pieces exemplify *Whiz Bang*'s style: satirizing contemporary anxieties while employing crude humor.
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6 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang pets, could live on what Mary Pickford spends for silk stockings, but that is the reason we go to the movies, says the henpecked man as his wife drags him home to their little boiler factory where rolling pins are used as sledgehammers. If prices keep increasing and clothes decreasing, we will be restricted as to the number of leaves we can wear, and they will be fastened to our shivering yet magnanamous anatomy with paper fasteners of the Henry Ford type. Shimmying will then be automat- ically abandoned, while courting will only take place over the telephone. When we think of Theda Bara it will be as a heavily clad woman. Just one thing further, and that is, if this world keeps increasing its speed as it has in the past, our heads will be going so fast that they will look like fish bowls. Everything will just work backwards, our nose will run and our feet smell. Just now we're traveling so fast that our hip pockets dip sand as we go around corners, and our feet come up so often that people will think we are laying down. Put on your brakes, dear old United Statesers, and let's slow down to 100 per, or we'll skid into Mexico. * * * You Win Rubber Pajamas Lecturer (in a loud voice)—I venture to assert there isn't a man in this audience who has ever done anything to prevent the destruction of our vast forests. Man in the audience (timidly)—I've shot wood- peckers.