(Symbolic allusions to men’s raunchy bits, so not to everyone’s taste.)
Poolside image in a Daily Jocks sale ad in this morning’s mail, in which three men hawk Elia beachwear in gayboy-themed patterns:
(#1) Paros swim briefs, left to right: Rainbow Cloud, Ice Cream Pop (symbolic penises), Donut Sky (symbolic anal rings)
Zippy’s guide to food-buying in today’s strip: packaging, monosyllabicity (hereafter 1-icity), and collectibility, in that order:
(#1) As ever, thoroughly steeped in pop / mass culture: in the 3rd panel, not just the orange-flavored drink mix Tang, but also the astronaut allusion (“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”); it then turns out that the panel also takes us to orangutans (which are neither orange in color — ok, some reddish tones, but not orange, see #3 below — nor have a tang in their name, but but …)
Today’s Zippy strip is a triple riff on masspop culture — on bowling as recreation, on the Googie style of architecture, and on Polynesian-stye “Tiki” culture (architecture, food and drink, and entertainment) — enlivened by our Pinhead’s fascination with words (and the images they call up), here with: bowl, Java, lane, cocktail, alley, ball. Cocktail, with its combination of sexual associations (plus penumbral associations with mai tais and other Polynesian-associated drinks), gets a panel all to itself, so setting the tone for interpreting the rest:
(#1) As usual, the setting is taken from real life; those are drawings of Java Lanes in Long Beach CA (3800 E. Pacific Coast Highway) — but a Java Lanes from the past, since the place was demolished in 2004, almost 20 years ago, to be turned into condos
The historical setting, first from the bowling point of view, then from the architectural and Tiki-culture point of view:
On Facebook yesterday, Stewart Kramer reported from Grandma’s Restaurant in Oceanside CA (way down south, between L.A. and San Diego):
(#1) [SK:] Thing sliced ham? Thing as in Addams family, Fantastic Four, or Cat in the Hat? None of those seem likely ham slicers, except Green Eggs and Ham. The food was good, anyway.
For entertainment, SK jumps right in with a few fictional characters named Thing, knowing full well that they’re entirely, preposterously, irrelevant. Then, commenters chose to lump thing sliced together with “spelling mistakes” that are misapprehensions about how some words are conventionally spelled, surely not what’s going on when a writer is aiming for thin sliced. Instead, thing sliced looks like a nice example of a pure typo, an error in hitting the right keys on a keyboard.
(This is obviously going to go where no kids or sexually modest people should go, and it’s going to get there fast.)
The commercial names Doggie Diner and Mr. Whippy, both surely conceived in all innocence, but, to the prepared mind, easily evoking sexual images (as it happens, my mind is prepared for man-on-man sexual images, so that’s where I’m inclined to go): the doggie / doggy position for anal intercourse; and a leatherman master whipping a leatherman slave.
(Warning: some discussion of sexual slang in a serious but straightforward tone.)
From the annals of masculine meat holidays in my country, a Blackstone tv spot “Father’s Day: Griddle Envy” (first aired 6/1/22), in which the announcer projects macho good-buddy enthusiasm for a Blackstone griddle as a Father’s Day gift (6/19 this year, just two days away! And the next American MascMeatHol, Independence Day, aka the Fourth of July, is only two weeks away):
(#1) The envy-inciting appliance: a Blackstone 4-burner 36″-griddle propane-fired cooking station with side shelves (about $300); you can view the ad at this site
From the alliterative text:
Give him what he really wants … Your Dad can be the master of the meat, the king of the cookout, the sultan of steak
(Please, no watersports jokes. Even though the posting is about beer.)
Come across by fortunate accident, this product of the 4 Noses Brewing Company, a family-run independent brewery in Broomfield CO (owned and operated by the Bibliowicz family):
(#1) [AMZ:] Like that logo!Zwicky P is an ultra fluffy, thirst-quenching 5% ABV Pilsner-style lager with flavor characteristics reminiscent of honey and white grape. “Zwickel”, the term for a port to sample beer, stylistically refers to the German process of serving bier young, unfiltered, unpasteurized and with a pronounced yeast profile often lost during the multiple-month cold maturation process characteristic for modern lagers. Like brewers sampling directly from the fermenter, Zwicky P is meant to be consumed by the litre! (company link)
Here are the four noses (Tommy and David refer jokingly to their noses on occasion):
(#2) The 4 Noses Brewing Co. family, headed by Tommy Bibliowicz, third from left. here; he’s at the brewery with his father, Natan; mother, Jessica; and brother David (2015 photo by 4 Noses Brewing)
The usual genealogical sources seem to have nothing to say about the Bibliowicz family name, but the noses and the spelling of the name say to me: Jews from Poland. So where does the (deeply Germanophone Swiss) name Zwicky come from? Just a play on Zwickel?
(Warning: this posting starts out being about food, but quickly shifts into man-on-man sex, in very plain anatomical and interactional language, so it’s not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
The morning name from 6/7: spatchcock. From NOAD on spatchcock:
noun: a chicken or game bird split open and grilled. verb [with object] [a] split open (a poultry or game bird) to prepare it for grilling: these small spring chickens can be bought already spatchcocked. [b] informal, mainly British add (a phrase, sentence, clause, etc.) in a context where it is inappropriate: a new clause has been spatchcocked into the Bill. ORIGIN late 18th century (originally an Irish usage). [but in any case, the cock in question refers to poultry and not to penises]
Illustrated on the Fifteen Spatulas site, in “Spatchcock Chicken” by Joanne Ozug on 12/7/18:
(#1) [from the site:] Spatchcock Chicken roasts in half the time of a whole trussed chicken, and also cooks more evenly. … Once you spatchcock, you don’t go back to roasting whole chickens.
I had two visceral responses to the photo: one, as an umami-loving carnivore, my mouth watered in pleasurable anticipation of consuming that spatchcocked chicken; and two, as a hookup-loving pedicant, my sexual parts all tingled in pleasurable recollection of past encounters in which I was that spatchcocked chicken. On my belly, legs apart, buttocks in the air. Or, more briskly: prone, splayed, humped up. (You have to make some allowances for the anatomical differences between your typical roasted chicken and me in heat, so that drumsticks ≈ buttocks.)
In the bon appétit e-mail yesterday (6/10), Taiwanese noodles for Gay Pride Month. From the e-mail:
Big Queer Cold Noodles: These noodles have a special place in the heart and stomach of BA contributor Jessie YuChen, who styled the recipe after a beloved late-night dish from a hole-in-the-wall neighbor to Taipei’s only lesbian bar. It’s perfect for Pride parties all summer long.
A cold salad of (mostly) vegetables in rainbow flag colors, plus of course the cold noodles. Missing the color blue, which is not available in any common vegetable. Instead of yellow bell peppers or squash for yellow: beaten eggs cooked in sheets and then cut into strips. And with the six colors not quite in their canonical order red – orange – yellow – green – (blue) – purple; going clockwise from the red bell peppers, the orange carrots are out of order. But then why should a celebration of the gay and queer have to adhere to a normative ordering?
