Today’s Zippy:
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From NOAD:
noun dodecahedron: a three-dimensional shape having twelve plane faces, in particular a regular solid figure with twelve equal pentagonal faces.
Archive for 2020
More onomatomania
October 14, 2020Boris Kodjoe
October 3, 2020In the tv series Crossing Jordan, S6 E13 (“Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc”, from 4/18/07), Det. Elliot Chandler (played by Boris Kodjoe) appears on a case and startles the medical examiner’s staff by being extraordinarily handsome — not what you expect in a police detective. And so he is.
He’s 6′ 4″, with broad shoulders and a face of great masculine beauty — see my 3/10/16 posting “Male beauty” — and a lovely smile, so he comes across as a charming hunk. Something to stir straight women and gay men and to strike straight men as either a serious competitor or a fantasy model to identify with.
goon squad goon squad goon squad
October 2, 2020Somewhere in the first Presidential “debate”, or its immediate surrounding net discussion, the phrase goon squad appeared and seized my attention, so that I repeated it like a mantra. I was in the grip of onomatomania
Logo of the League of Legends South African esports team Goon Squad
The Acting Corps: Chris Mulkey
September 30, 2020Watching Charlie’s Angels S4 E10 “Angels on Skates” (from 11/21/79) this morning — there’s only so much news and commentary I can cope with in a day, so I retreat to lightweight stuff to keep my sanity — I caught a very familiar actor face, looking impossibly young. This turned out to be Chris Mulkey, whose name you might not know, but (if you’re American) whose face wil be extraordinarily familiar, because he’s appeared in an unbelievable number of tv series, and at the age of 72 is still at it.
A premier member of what I’ve called the Acting Corps, reliable, versatile, and hard-working actors who make the whole business work (there’s a Page on this blog on the Acting Corps).
Mulkey as Hank Jennings — Henry “Hank” Jennings, the criminal husband of Norma Jennings, a man who often acted as a henchman for several of Twin Peaks’ more shady citizens, such as Ben Horne and Josie Packard; photo from the Twin Peaks Wiki, from 1990-91
An offer of the body
September 30, 2020(References to sex between men in plain language, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
The image from a steamy Daily Jocks ad on 9/28, with (under the fold) my caption.
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Warren Zwicky, pianist
September 30, 2020Thanks again to Google Alerts, I learned of the pianist Warren Zwicky, half of the team of Harlie Sponaugle (soprano) and Warren Z (piano), on their album Longing: American Art Songs (released 1/1/08):
(#1) From the Musicstax site
The program of art songs looks intriguing, but I haven’t been able to sample it (without buying the album, and I don’t have a budget that allows me just to buy things to check them out).
Vexingly, I’ve been unable to find out anything about Warren Zwicky. He’s clearly American, but I can’t find out what age he is (except that he was alive in 2008) or anything at all about his life history. So he’s a Mystery Zwicky.
Sliced bread
September 29, 2020Today’s Zippy is an exercise in food history:
(#1) A hymn to sliced bread — from Chilicothe
Here, Bill Griffth makes an uncharacteristic mistake. If you say “Chillicothe” to most Americans, they will probably think of Chillicothe OH, as Griffith did (or they’ll just be baffled). But in fact the famed home of sliced bread is Chillicothe MO. The Ohio town is fairly small, but it was the first capital of Ohio, and it’s twice the size of the Missouri town.
wazoo
September 29, 2020Today’s morning name. Briefly, from NOAD:
noun wazoo: US informal the anus. PHRASES up (or out) the wazoo US informal very much; in great quantity; to a great degree: he’s insured out the wazoo | Jack and I have got work up the wazoo already. ORIGIN 1960s: of unknown origin.
The phrases are straightforwardly idioms — the fact that they are degree adverbials is unpredictable from the meanings of the parts — though they can be varied a bit: by extension with the modifying adjective old (up/out the old/ol’ wazoo), or the with the noun ass ‘asshole’ instead of wazoo (to have problems up/out the ass); it’s likely that wazoo in these phrases is, historically, an ornamental replacement for ass in them (see below).
But wazoo, on its own, has no parts, so it can’t literally be an idiom. However, it’s restricted in its collocations — formally non-compositional, if not semantically non-compositional.
Deconstructed hamburgers, exploding in layers
September 28, 2020Another spinoff from my recent postings on still lifes, leading to photographs of food, in particular an earlier posting today, “Breakfast with Francesco Tonelli” (the food photographer). And that led me to a genre of food photography I hadn’t known about: the exploded view, deconstructed, flying, or food-layer hamburger. (Any sort of sandwich or layered food could be treated this way, but hamburgers tend to have more parts than most, and they’ve spread as everyday food through much of the world, so they’re especially well suited to this photographic treatment.)
An introductory example: a photo by David Fedulov (Дэвид Федулов) in Moscow:
(#1) Managing to get the dressing separated like that is the real trick here
Here I guess I should remind you that the stuff in lots of wonderful food photography isn’t food at all, but some simulacrum that will stand up under hot lights and long exposure times. Tricks of the trade. Making actual food gorgeous in still shots (as Tonelli does) is quite an accomplishment.
Five more examples, from all over the world.(We’ve already got Russia.)
straight men’s jeans
September 28, 2020From Steven Levine on Facebook yesterday, some astonishment at getting a targeted ad for
Levi’s® Premium 501® ’93 STRAIGHT MEN’S JEANS
Well, yes, it’s just a familiar sort of structural ambiguity: X Y Z as
[X + Y] + Z ( [straight men’s] [jeans] ‘jeans for straight men’) (A)
or X + [Y + Z] ( [straight] [men’s jeans] ‘men’s jeans that are straight’ (B)
(where the Adj straight in (B) is a truncation of straight-fit / straight-leg ‘straight-legged’, while the Adj straight in (A) is a rough synonym of heterosexual)
The Levis people had (B) in mind, But Steven and I, as gay men, immediately perceived (A), straight vs.gay being especialy salient for us, so we found the ad hilarious, wondering just what sort of purity test would be applied before guys were allowed ro buy the jeans.