(Yes, about male bodies and sex between men, often in plain terms, so not for kids or the sexually modest)
It begins with an e-mail ad for some recent Raging Stallion gay porn; the DVD cover photo has as its central figure the pornstar Cole Connor as a hypersexual race driver, who stares intently into our eyes while holding his workshirt open to display his attractively muscled, lightly furred left pec and the erect nipple at its center: his nipple and pec as objects of our sexual desire.
(References to sex between men in several places, so not to everyone’s taste.)
The centerpiece is this 1900 painting Italian Man with a Rope by John Singer Sargent:
(#1) Though reproductions are on sale all over the place, as items of attractive decor, I haven’t been able to find any information about the occasion for the painting or the model Sargent used (call him Tugger, since he’s tugging on that rope); even the 1900 date comes from an art auction site and might not be reliable
… in the cartoons. Two — a Joseph Dottino and a William Haefeli — from the latest (1/24/22) New Yorker, plus a Wayno/Piraro Bizarro from 1/19. Recognizable penguins, upscale gay-male couples, and crash test dummies, oh my!
(About the display of the male body and sex between men, in very plain language, so etirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest.)
Well, a pseudonym — Cristiano Lorenzi, Chris for short — that he chose himself, as opposed to Aradesque, the name I gave an underwear model because he resembled bodybuilder, gay pornstar, and underwear model Arad Winwin, but wasn’t him. He was notable in the underwear ads because of his strong physical presence, projecting steamy desire and desirability in equal measures, and because of a collection of tats that make him easily recognizable, at least when he’s shirtless. The first of three shots of him in my 6/1/20 posting “Aradesque?”:
(#1) [from that posting:] Aradesque is definitely hot, and the DJ ads present him so intensely that you can almost smell his crotch (an effect the PUMP! staff were surely aiming for), but he appears not to be Arad
It’s the eyebrows, the eyes, and the hands. And of course the cock tease, just barely concealing his crotch from the camera.
(Well, men’s homo-underwear ads, featuring what are intended to be alluring male bodies, and skirting the line of outrageous lewdness. Clearly not to everyone’s taste.)
Following up on yesterday’s Twelfth Night posting (“Three days of commercial Christmas”), about the Daily Jocks treatment of the second quarter of the 12 days of commercial Christmas — Days 4 (12/16, calling birds), 5 (12/17, golden rings), and 6 (12/18, geese) — for Epiphany itself today, the DJ treatment of the third quarter: Days 7 (12/19, swans), with fetishwear; 8 (12/20, maids), with traditional jockstraps; and 9 (12/21, ladies), with — hiss, boo — a mystery jock offer, nothing to see here.
Nothing says Christmas like harnesses and old-school jockstraps.
In any case: a quick tour of DJ’s Days 7 and 8, then a survey of Epiphany on this blog.
(Some reflections on my life as an old man, disabled, living alone — resolutely and defiantly — in the midst of this endless, constantly morphing, pandemic. Trying to be clear-eyed about all of this, but a certain amount of unpleasant self-pity will no doubt creep into my account, so this posting isn’t for everyone.)
Two occasions on December 19th, together making my social life for the Christmas season: from 10 to 1 (Pacific time), a Zoom gathering of soc.motss folk (a community going back to the Usenet social newsgroup for lgbt-folk and their friends — members of the same sex — a community I joined in 1985); then at 2, an hour’s visit from my entire immediate family: my daughter, Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky (who lives here in Palo Alto), and my grandchild, Opal Eleanor Armstrong Zwicky (visiting for a few weeks from their first year at college, at the University of Pittsburgh).
These two occasions unified by little more than my costume: my in-your-face FAGGOT t-shirt above, and my Swiss-flag gym shorts below.
(Another Xmas-related posting. These will go on for some time, since the backlog of material is huge, and I’ve only been able to manage one posting a day: back in isolation, with plenty of time in my days, but enmired in the tar of dismay, so I work even more slowly than usual.)
It’s about an “It’s a Fairy” ad of the season — for Christmas ornaments from the Stars Gemstone company — on my Facebook page, the ad and the ornnaments fashioned for a gay male audience:
(#1) (Note that a (sprite) fairy in French is masculine gender, un fée; a (faggot) fairy is, less surprisingly, masculine gender too, un pédé) The ornaments are marketed merely as adorable fairies for the Xmas tree — who doesn’t love fairies? — with little notice that they all happen to be male fairies posing as sexy underwear models, in fact as models in beefcake mode (#2 doing a cock tease; the whole bottom row wearing black armbands, on their right biceps to indicate that they’re bottoms)
(Well, yes, men’s bodies and man-on-man sex, discussed analytically but in very plain language, with photos, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
Extracted from the Titan e-mail ad for the gay porn studio’s Christmas sale for this year, a pair of naked naughty boys making (two very different) sex faces for their audience:
Yet another cartoon meme, the Eye Chart, with an instance in today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, set in the fictive city of Metropolis:
(#1) It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s Superman (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
Yes, it’s also an instance of the “It’s a bird” meme. Memes tend to travel together, like elephants, or municipal buses.
