Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, July 1921 · page 50 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #22 — page 50: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from the satirical magazine contains several short jokes and a mock prayer, with no visible political cartoons. The humor relies on wordplay and irreverent takes on conventional topics: a joke about swimwear (implying women wear less clothing in water), a reference to armless Venus de Milo, a vaudeville performer's self-deprecating quip, and a risqué Adam-and-Eve pun where "A dam" sounds like "a damn." The centerpiece is "Our Monthly Prayer"—a parody religious invocation using exaggerated African American dialect ("de," "'possum oil") and absurdist imagery (connecting one's soul to a "gospel telephone," "turpentine his imagination"). It mixes spiritual language with crude, mechanical metaphors, satirizing both evangelical fervor and sermonic grandiosity through irreverent juxtaposition rather than targeting specific figures or events.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
48 Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang this year we think he’d say they wear more in the sea than they do on the sidewalk. * * * Miss Venus, as perhaps you know, Had lost her pair of arms; It didn’t matter to her beau, The gal had other charms. * * * As the refined woman single in vaudeville said: “I may be no riot—but thank God, I’m satisfied.” * * * Our friends in the song-writing game will be inter-ested to learn that we are now at work on a snappy little one-step entitled: “‘When Adam Said ‘Eve, You’re a Naughty Little Girl.’ She said: ‘Well, I don’t care A dam.’” * * * Our Monthly Prayer “O Fadder, give thy servant this mornin’ de eye of de eagle and de wisdom of de owl; connect his soul with de gospel telephone in de central skies; ’luminate his brow with de sun of heaben; pizen his mind with love for de people; turpentine his ’magination; grease his lips with ’possum oil; power; ’lectrify his brain with de lightnin’ of de loosen his tongue with de sledge hammer of thy word; put ’petual motion in his ahms; fill him plum’ full of de dynamite of thy glory; ’noint him all over with de kerosene oil of thy salvation, and sot him on the fire. Amen!”