(Warning: This posting discusses gay sex in very plain terms and has images that are right on the X line — between X-rated and nominally for general consumption — but in recompense, there is some actual lexical discussion. Use your judgment.)
On AZBlogX, a piece “Blowout and sleaze” on two pieces of e-mail:
In my mailbox in recent days, a sale bulletin (“Labor Day Inventory Blowout”) for Falcon / Raging Stallion (today is Labor Day in the US) and an ad for a recent Channel 1 Releasing feature Sucked Off in Weird Places featuring Jason Phoenix and a very sleazy Johnny Hazzard. The images and the texts are both intensely oral.
Cropped versions of the images, right on the X line:
(#1)
(#2)
Ok, no question about what’s going on in these images, but here you see no acual naughty bits. Note blowout in the title of #1, and in #2, the normally well-groomed Johnny Hazzard (though presenting himself as working class) with sweaty face and greasy hair — definite sleaze. So some words about these two lexical items, then a few about the over-the-top rhetoric of the (advertising) sex for #2.
(The full images are in my XBlog posting, along with some discussion of Hazzard and Phoenix’s porn careers.)
Blowout. From NOAD2:
blowout noun
1 a sudden rupture or malfunction of a part or an apparatus due to pressure, in particular the bursting of an automobile tire. [apparently the historical original, a nouning of V + Prt blow out]
• an outburst of anger; an argument: that exchange led to a big blowout five years ago. [a development from this]
2 informal an easy victory in a sporting contest or an election: they had lost seven games—four by blowouts and three by slim margins. [presumably from the implicated ‘going all out’]
3 informal a large or lavish meal or social gathering. [ditto]
More recently we get the sense in Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, 2010:
Also called blowout sale. a quick sale of retail merchandise at very low prices.
and in AHD5, 2013:
informal A sale in which the discounts are unusually large.
and the porn ad. You can find blowout sales for, among (many) other things: makeup, t-shirts, weight loss and dieting supplies, craft supplies, books, and school supplies.
On this most recent sense development, see Evan Morris on his Word Detective site:
The logic behind this use [‘large or lavish meal’] of “blow-out” is that of excess without limits, as if a richly-stocked pantry had been completely (and, metaphorically, explosively) emptied for one feast. This “blow-out” is very much still in use today, and appears to be the sense behind “blow-out sale,” an “event” offering a wealth of goodies at insanely low prices. … In a sports-obsessed nation like the US, I suspect that [the] “stunning victory” sense also lurks behind “blow-out sale.”
Of course, in the porn ad there’s also the fellatial sense of blow at play.
Sleaze. Back to NOAD2:
sleaze noun immoral, sordid, and corrupt behavior or material, esp. in business or politics: political campaigns that are long on sleaze and short on substance.
• informal a sordid, corrupt, or immoral person.
ORIGIN 1960s: [simple] back-formation from sleazy.
On to the adjective:
sleazy adjective (of a person or situation) sordid, corrupt, or immoral.
• (of a place) squalid and seedy: a sleazy all-night cafe.
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: of unknown origin.
Sigh. We get driven back to “of obscure origin”.
The rhetoric of porn ads. The characteristically frenzied text that goes along with #2:
Talk about instant chemistry, you must see the way that these 2 Superstars gobble each other’s cocks and assholes to believe it. Johnny can’t get enough of Jason and his huge uncut piece and thick juicy load. Fans of Johnny Hazzard will eat this one up, every drop.
Fellatio in the title (Sucked Off in Weird Places) and then in gobble and eat, and of course in the image. Plus the almost formulaic huge uncut piece (uncut is informative, piece is an ostentatious ad variant of the vernacular dick or cock, and of course all pornstars by convention have huge cocks, so huge is not informative but merely reinforcing) and thick juicy load (the cumload reappearing in every drop).
I’ve never figured out whether such fevered descriptions actually move gay men to buy or rent the videos.
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