(Not about language.)
The third in the recent shirtless series — previously: Kellan Lutz here, Josh Duhamel here — brings us to Mr. Abs (Junior Division), Taylor Lautner, seen here in a characteristic pose:
(#1)
Lautner is young, cute, and decidedly hunky. He projects athletic masculinity, usually accentuated by some facial scruff (ranging from very light to substantial), as well as (most often) sweetness.
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Movies, Not about language, Shirtlessness | 5 Comments »
(Not about language.)
Tim Evanson reminds me that actor/model Josh Duhamel was, like Kellan Lutz, born in North Dakota, and notes that Duhamel has posed in a full-frontal shot; Duhamel nude, rear and front, in excellent photos by Greg Gorman from his 2000 book As I See It, can be viewed on AZBlogX, here. Now two shots of him merely shirtless (and not so artfully posed):
(#1)
(#2)
Merely shirtless in the first, with his package visible in the second.
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Not about language, Shirtlessness | 2 Comments »
A note on the pronunciation of actor/model Kellan Lutz’s family name. This is so uncontroversial that sources seem never to comment on it: it’s /lʌts/, with the vowel /ʌ/ of luck. But where I grew up, in Pennsylvania Dutch (i.e., Pennsylvania German) country, where there were a great many people with the family name Lutz, it was uniformly pronounced /lʊts/, with the vowel/ʊ/ of look — following German pronunciation rather than the English spelling.
Posted in Dialects, Phonology, Variation | 1 Comment »
(Penis imagery alert!)
Stumbled across yesterday afternoon, someone reporting having repeatedly misread Pennies from Heaven as Penis from Heaven — something I’ve done myself on occasion (but then I can fairly be said to have penises on my mind more than most people).
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Misreadings | Leave a Comment »
Today’s Zippy, another installment in the Barbara Stanwyck retrospective (Stella Dallas (1937) here, Double Indemnity (1944) here):
Zippy and Zerbina are coping with the plot of the alliterative The Mad Miss Manton of 1938.
Posted in Alliteration, Conversion, Humor, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Pop culture, Verbing | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday’s Dilbert:
The relevant sense of context here, from NOAD2:
the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed: the decision was taken within the context of planned cuts in spending.
Posted in Context, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday’s Pearls Before Swine, yet another meta-strip that builds up to an elaborate outrageous pun of the “immortal porpoises” type — for which the cartoonist merits death:
There are many variants of the “immortal porpoises” joke; the one I heard first built to “transporting young gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises”. The joke type depends on a piece of formulaic language that is then punningly varied at multiple points.
Posted in Formulaic language, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 1 Comment »
(Not much about language.)
Tim Evanson reported on Google+ yesterday that he was driving to North Dakota. And posted this scenic photo:
(#1)
[Tim writes:] Denizens of North Dakota look like this. Yes, it’s Kellan Lust — I mean, Lutz. He’s from Dickinson.
Lutz is famous for taking off his shirt and showing off his body. In this case, as much of his body as he can show without crossing the line into X; #1 is a cock tease shot as well as an abs shot.
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Pop culture, Shirtlessness, Underwear | 3 Comments »
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