Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Archive for 2020

Breakfast with Francesco Tonelli

September 28, 2020

Having posted recently several times on still lifes involving foodstuffs, I’ve been getting lots of suggestions from Pinterest of food photography in general (and when I post this, I’ll get even more). Striking among these suggestions: Francesco Tonelli’s album of breakfast photos (on his website, here).

These turn out to have an informal snapshot quality, as if we’re just catching these foods in the act, combined with an extraordinarily sensuous presentation. For example, breakfast PJ&B (peanut butter and jelly — or in this case, jam, which is much more intense than mere jelly):

(#1) Peanut butter and jam, aroused and about to hook up

Now, more from his breakfast album (and then the About page from his website, about who Tonelli is and what he does).

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Posted in Art, Language and food, Photography | Leave a Comment »

The No Tell Motel

September 27, 2020

(References to sex between men, with an image that’s right on the line, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

It’s out of the way, buddy
And you’ll soon get to know it well
The afternoon trick shift
At the No Tell Motel

— with apologies to Ned Sublette and his “Cheaters’ Motel”

The occasion for this posting is the 9/4 release of the Raging Stallion gay porn video No Tell Motel.

A small unassuming motel sits just off the interstate from Los Angeles to Vegas, the ‘No Tell Motel’. Twenty miles from a town in either direction, this quiet roadside motel is frequented by weary travelers and by hot guys who want to hook-up where nobody will know their business: a place where no one is watching.

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Posted in Gay porn, Language of sex | Leave a Comment »

Giovanna Garzoni

September 27, 2020

In a Facebook posting on Animals in Art through History this morning, a charming still life from about 400 years ago by Giovanna Garzoni, with food, flowers, and an insect:

(#1) Plate of Asparagus with Carnations and a Grasshopper, undated, gouache on vellum (in a private collection in Italy)

On the artist, from Wikipedia:

Giovanna Garzoni (1600–1670) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. She began her career painting religious, mythological, and allegorical subjects but gained fame for her botanical subjects painted in tempera and watercolour. Her works were praised for their precision and balance and for the exactitude of the objects depicted.

New to me, and a delightful find. Three more examples from a large body of work:

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Posted in Art, Language and food | Leave a Comment »

Film blanc

September 27, 2020

From my posting backlog, this Wayno/Piraro Bizarro from 1/17/20:

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

If there’s a film noir, there must be a film blanc, right? If there’s black comedy, there must be white comedy, right? If there’s an X, there must be a ~X, the opposite of X.

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Opposition | Leave a Comment »

Yoan Capote

September 26, 2020

On Facebook on 9/26 (posted by Dani Andrade), this sculpture by Cuban artist Yoan Capote:

(#1) Racional (Engl. Rational), in a plaster and plexiglass version; Andrade refers to it as Male Mind, since it conveys that men think with their penises, literally that their brains are in their genitals

The sculpture exists in several versions, created in 2004-07. On the artist’s website, he says of the cast bronze version:

The sculpture embodies the dichotomy between pleasure and fear, thought and desire, reason and instinct.

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Posted in Art, Language and the body | 1 Comment »

Avocado Chronicles: 8: avocado salad

September 26, 2020

My 7/27/19 posting “Avocado Chronicles: 7 “eatable only as a salad”” explored guacamole as a salad version of the avocado (which one early informant viewed as inedible in any other form).

From that posting:

(#1) Guacamole as a dip; but you can see how it could work as a salad

The dish is sometimes described as a salad, but its standard use these days is as a dipspread. In my 10/13/13 posting “More dipspreads”, see the section on guacamole.

To recap: on the notion of a dipspread, and on uses of dipspreads as salads. Then: on a class of dishes — bound salads, with egg salad as an example — that are akin to dipspreads used as salads. And then on to avocado salads that are salad salads.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Language and food | 5 Comments »