Imported from my XBlog on Livejournal, to find a home here on my regular blog:
A short story, a piece of fictobiography, about kids and gyms and shower rooms. Nothing of linguistic interest. Nothing XXX-rated. Not even any jockstraps. Full text below the line. (Original version from 1991, posted to Livejournal on 8/17/2010.)
On my posting earlier today, “The Bulldog Café, a lost monument of mimetic architecture”, this comment by Robert Southwick Richmond:
Mimetic vehicle design. Chicken Dinner candy bars were on the market 1923-62 – I don’t remember ever seeing one – but the delivery trucks were a laugh and a half. I remember seeing one in St. Louis in 1960.
Bob’s graphic didn’t post, but here’s a whole piece on the delivery trucks on the Issuu site, under the section “The Gentleman Racer: A Guide to Cars, Adventure, Style, and Culture” by Michael Satterfield:
“Chicken Dinner” was the name of a candy bar that was produced in the early ’20s by Sperry Candy, a company based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The name came from the concept of “a chicken in every pot” a slogan repopularized for the 1928 Republican Presidential campaign. At some point, the company started building Chicken-Trucks that would be used to promote the candy and it seems also sold the candy like a modern-day ice-cream truck. Each was one unique and had its own version of a stylized chicken integrated into the bodywork.
(#1) A array of Chicken Dinner Candy Bar trucks
(#2) A very early truckThe flavor of the candy thankfully didn’t taste like a Chicken Dinner, instead, it was filled with nuts and covered in chocolate. It was described in ads as “An expensive, high-grade candy.”
(#3) An ad for the candy, showing the nuts and chocolaeIt stayed in production for nearly 40 years before being discontinued in the 1960’s. It is also rumored to be a source of the phrase “Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner” from when a Chicken Dinner Candy Bar would be a prize at fair or carnival.
The candy made it until 1962 when the company was purchased by a competitor and the brand was discontinued.
It begins with yesterday’s posting “Charlie’s Dog House Diner” — not actually in the form of a doghouse, but with a doghouse image on its facade; in a comment on my posting, Tim Evanson now suggests a little place in old L.A. in the form of a bulldog — a genuine piece of mimetic architecture:
There is also the Bulldog Cafe, once located at 1153 West Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. A takeout restaurant, it was torn down in 1955. A re-creation was built for the 1991 Disney movie The Rocketeer.
The link Tim provided is unusable for me, but here’s a fine one, to Martin Turnbull’s website (of 3/10/15) on the Bulldog Café, opened in 1928:
I’m a fan of mimetic architecture – buildings intentionally made to look like something, often in the shape of what it sells, like an ice cream store in the shape of a waffle cone. Yes, they’re kitsch, and but they’re fun and memorable. This one was called the Bulldog Café, and opened at 1153 West Washington Blvd in 1928 and lasted until 1955 or 1966 (sources differ.) Not unsurprisingly, it’s no longer there, but a replica of it can now be found at the Idle Hour in North Hollywood. (The replica was built by the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Blvd, but was removed during their 2017 remodel.)
Featuring ham, barbecue, chili, tamales, and ice cream; if it offered hot dogs, that wasn’t trumpeted.
(Hot underwear model with his ample junk flagrantly displayed, discussion of male bodies and stud hustling — not for kids or the sexually modest.)
The previous, way flagrant, flash offer e-mail from Daily Jocks (on 7/28):
(A male model in nothing but totally revealing cotton briefs, mention of penises and stud hustling, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
A Daily Jocks sale ad that came in my e-mail yesterday:
From the great book of diners of fanciful design (compare, more generally: restaurants of fanciful design and motels of fanciful design), from Tim Evanson: Charlie’s Dog House Diner, 2102 Brookpark Rd, Cleveland OH:
(#1) The facade, representing a doghouse, with dogs; but this is just one face of the diner, which is otherwise of more ordinary form
Now: on the compound noun dog house; on Charlie’s Dog House Diner; on what is no doubt the most famous dog house in pop culture, Snoopy’s from the Peanuts comic strip; and on diners that have taken dog house entirely for its name value, without any attempt to mimic or represent a dog house — taking the Dog House Diner in Encinitas CA as one exemplar of these. Hot dogs! Getcher hot dogs here!
From Tim Evanson (in Cleveland OH) on Facebook this morning:
Whew, it’s muggy out here….
I’ll get to the weather in Cleveland in a little while, but first, about the word muggy.
A 2019 photography show, featured in AnOther magazine in “Eight New York Couples, Photographed by Ethan James Green” by Jack Moss on 11/6/19:
Tomorrow a beautiful new series from the American photographer goes on display at the National Portrait Gallery, as part of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition
American photographer Ethan James Green rose to prominence with his black-and-white portraiture of young people in New York City: a first monograph, Young New York, published by Aperture earlier this year, collected these images, the majority of which were photographed among the parks and housing projects of the city’s Lower East Side. The subjects, who connected to Green in various ways – from the city’s fashion and art scenes to social media – primarily came from New York’s youthful LGBTQ community, united by a rejection of conformity, in its various guises. “It is about me having fun with friends and allowing them to be seen as they want to be seen,” Green said at the time.
Now, a new untitled series by Green goes on show as part of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2019 exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery, which opens to the public tomorrow. It marks Green’s return to the personal subject matter and style of Young New York, having spent the past year capturing increasingly high-profile figures – among them Joaquin Phoenix, Rihanna and RuPaul – for publications including American Vogue, Vanity Fair and W (Green has also contributed to both AnOther and Another Man, recently photographing Ashton Sanders for the cover of the latter). This new series, made up of eight monochrome portraits, each of a New York-based couple, is this year’s ‘In Focus’ display, a part of the Taylor Wessing exhibition which celebrates the work of an internationally renowned contemporary photographer.
Now: six of the eight couples. And then a note on the magazine from which this story comes.
(Innocent posting until I get to Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, a section that is absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest. I’ll issue a warning when it’s coming up.)
Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, a Psychiatrist cartoon with, on the couch, a Marquis de Sade who no longer can no longer find pleasure in blasphemy and cruelty:
(#1) Yes, a terrible pun, with sad for the model Sade (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page)
Note that the therapist matches the Marquis in period costume, including a wig and the use of a quill pen for taking his notes.
Now, the backstory (about the actual Marquis de Sade and his writings) and the afterstory (the movie Pasolini made out of 120 Days of Sodom.
(Naked men, most with visible penises — but this is fine art and also fantasy, so it falls under the Fine Art exemption for public display of the male body. But if you find such things objectionable, this posting is not for you.)
One sample on Pinterest caught my eye yesterday, and that took me to the Singulart site on David Jester. The text:
« There in the painting was the pool I felt I belonged to: the pool of gay men, portrayed and honored, out in the open, not hidden or something to be ashamed of. »
David Jester is an exciting American painter who has exhibited his work in the US and Netherlands. His work centers around snapshots of the gay community as he has experienced it; themes include masculinity, discrimination, submission, love and joy. The distinctive painted pools act as metaphors for the pool of humanity, particularly within the community, and the characters that appear in the water represent lived and recognizable behaviors. Particularly focusing on the impact of online interactions between gay men, Jester ultimately asks questions about identity and belonging within the family he has chosen as his own.
The underwater setting allows the men — all totally naked and matter-of-factly drawn from a wide spectrum of physical types and racioethnic identities (their being gay is what unites them, the only thing that is truly important) — to float free of gravity and interact without the constraints their bodies might otherwise impose on them. They engage each other in an enormous number of ways: in a full range of acts of affection, dominance and submission, play, displays of support, exploration of one another, and self-discovery, and, yes. in frank sexual acts (fellatio and anal intercourse). Throughout, they are presented as persons, not as objects of sexual desire.
One huge painting depicts the advancement of AIDS in a series of men going deeper and deeper in the pool. Even with the fantasy context and the abstraction that Jester uses in presenting their otherwise beautiful bodies, it’s very hard to take, and I won’t reproduce it here.
Now four examples. And then a bit about Jester, who is open, articulate, and passionate about what he’s doing in his paintings.
