for Shep fans

[kip_w]

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"Excelsior, you fathead!"

One of radio god Jean Shepherd's verbal tchotchkes was the "brass figligee with oak-leaf clusters" (spelling taken from a book about him). I've never heard anyone say where that came from. And now I don't have to, because I saw. This Smokey Stover Sunday page not only has, in the last panel, the words "phippled figliggies," but has an arrow going from those words to some small, enigmatic objects that must just be figliggies. Phippled, no less.

This ought to get me that Pulitzer.

edited for metallurgic reasons
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Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Bronze (or silver) star is an army medal, and additional awards add oak-leaf clusters, so that's part of the source as well (maybe that's already obvious to everybody paying attention).

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Well, it never hurts to point stuff out*. Okay, maybe it does sometimes, but it didn't this time. Sometimes they had clusters, and sometimes they had other things.

ACK! I said bronze? They're brass. BRASS. Must edit.

ed: [*Okay, maybe on Usenet.]