Archive for the ‘Language of advertising’ Category

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Boxing

March 17, 2016

A Daily Jocks ad (for their underwear club, but featuring Pump! wear) from the 14th, with the man we know as Lukas (sometimes as Joe) in the Pump! Cruise Boxer (with pockets), in Pump!’s home town of Montréal:

(#1)

And Lukas’s boyfriend Ken, doing a cock tease in his Pump! Touchdown Cruise Boxer (with a fly):

(#2)

My caption for #1:

He boasted he was
Monosexual – “Only guys,
All the time” – not any kind of
Multisexual, but he was
Aggressively multicultural,
Multilingual, working in
Gay porn in several languages,
Hustling guys in many countries,
Lukas in Czech in his
Native land, Joe in English with his
Boyfriend Ken in San Francisco.
Eventually, proudly, Lukas everywhere:
Finland (for Helsinki Athletica),
Montréal (for Pump!), and he’s a damn good
Papi.

(more…)

Posted in Bilingualism, Captions, Gender and sexuality, Language of advertising, Underwear | 1 Comment »

Sweet nothings: candy, cereal, advertising

March 12, 2016

A One Big Happy strip from 1/4/16:

(#1)

Ruthie gets this information from tv advertising, no doubt.

That’s candy. Then there’s cereal, marketed to both kids and adults. From “Selling Sweet Nothings: Science Shows Food Marketing’s Effects on Children’s Minds — and Appetites” by Mariko Hewer, in Observer (Association for Psychological Science) 27.10.14-18 (December 2014), beginning:

In the 1960s and ’70s, the prime time to advertise food to children was on Saturday mornings, when they perched themselves in front of the TV to watch cartoons. Today, with kids’ programming available almost continuously, children are bombarded with daily doses of food-related advertising. According to a 2013 study by Lisa M. Powell, as cited by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “In 2011, children ages 2 to 11 saw about a dozen television ads each day for products typically high in saturated fat, sugar, or sodium.”

(more…)

Posted in Language and food, Language of advertising, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

The news for testicles

March 10, 2016

Passed on by Mike McKinley, information about the NutSac company. They make man-bags, and this is their logo:

(#1)

(more…)

Posted in Language and the body, Language of advertising | 1 Comment »

Another entry in the monstrous food sweepstakes

February 15, 2016

It’s been six months since I reported on fast-food excess (monstrous burgers and sandwiches) — in a 8/3/15 posting on two entries to the field (from Wendy’s and Arby’s), with links to four earlier postings. Now (thanks to Terry Tenette) I report on a spectacular entry in the competition, which I have unaccountably missed — a lot of popular and commercial culture seems to pass me by — while The Counter, with its burgers, has been spreading from Southern California to around the U.S. (and, indeed, the globe), including to a location in Palo Alto (also San Mateo, Mountain View, and San Jose). From the company’s website, this ad sampling (in vertical strips) five of the Counter’s named signature burgers:

  (#1)

If those burgers look gigantic to you, probably too big to get in your mouth, that’s because they are (and even if you can manage to stretch your jaw and open up your throat — yes, I’m aware of the sexual subtext here — you’ll surely make a huge mess); Terry tells me that you’re advised to eat them with knife and fork.

(more…)

Posted in Language and food, Language of advertising | Leave a Comment »

More on the Bundy Bunch

January 9, 2016

Passed on by Gregory Ward yesterday, this clever mash-up (ultimate source not identified), representing the confluence of two very silly themes issuing from an utterly serious news story, about the armed occupation and ensuing standoff in Oregon led by rancher Ammon Bundy:

(#1)

The first theme, Occupy Me, is the homoerotic fanfic development I posted about two days ago. The second theme, Send Snacks, is the outgrowth of a Facebook posting by a Bundy Bunch member asking for, among other things, snacks for the group.

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language of advertising, Movies and tv, Parody, Signs and symbols | 1 Comment »

Extreme underwear, some in rainbow

December 28, 2015

(Mostly about underwear, but a bit about language.)

Stumbled onto the StevenEven premium underwear site, with tons of astonishing stuff on sale, in particular things in the company’s Pikante collection. Two items from that collection: a double rainbow band thong brief, and a piece of extraordinary pouchwear, the Castro bikini brief.

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language of advertising, Phallicity, Rainbow, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

The revolution in men’s underwear

November 28, 2015

I start with yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad, with a Black Friday sale:

(#1)

Knocked Down

They put him on a Black Friday
Half-off sale, he felt
Devalued

(The briefs in the photo are apparently 2(X)IST Sweats Briefs, which are in the Daily Jocks sale in Earl Grey and Very Blue — normally $28 each, $14 on sale — but not in the vivid red shown above.)

Daily Jocks offers a number of lines of what have come to be called premium brands, emphasizing not just comfort but also style and sexiness, and in cost a step up from basic brands like Fruit of the Loom and Jockey. In fact, the world of men’s underwear has undergone a kind of revolution, from the days when 75% of men’s underwear purchases were made by women to the current scene, where only 25% are; men have become fashion-conscious and are shopping for themselves these days. Meanwhile, underwear modeling has gone from just a routine specialty in male modeling to a high-fashion specialty; men with good looks and hot bodies vie with one another for modeling jobs, and celebrities in sports and entertainment are courted by premium brands (for big bucks) to represent them in advertising.

Now the next stage: from premium brands to luxury brands. On to a wonderful piece by Guy Trebay in the NYT‘s Styles section on the 26th:  “As Personal as Luxury Gets: Men’s underwear goes premium, entering triple-figure territory” (head in print), “A Pair of Boxers for $400? Men’s Underwear Goes High-End “ (head on-line).

(more…)

Posted in Captions, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of advertising, Language of clothing, Underwear | 1 Comment »

Novelty ties

November 17, 2015

On the penguin watch.

On the front page of yesterday’s NYT, a color-splash of an ad for Salvatore Ferragamo ties, one of which clearly had litte penguins on it. Ferragamo novelty ties, 100% silk, selling for $190 each (fashion doesn’t come cheap) from Ferragamo, somewhat less at fine men’s clothing stores. The fish and penguin tie, in a thumbnail:

(#1)

(more…)

Posted in Clothing, Language of advertising, Penguins, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The Foster Farms Bowl

December 8, 2014

A sports feuilleton.

In yesterday’s football news from the GoStanford site:

Stanford will take on the Maryland Terrapins in the Foster Farms Bowl at 7 p.m. (PT) Dec. 30 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

The “Foster Farms Bowl” struck me as a very silly name, mostly because of the company’s funny ad campaigns: chicken puppets and, last year, chickens singing from musicals. (The alliteration helps, especially since it involves /f/. Compare Firesign Theatre’s “Freezing Mr. Foster” from Dear Friends.)

(more…)

Posted in Language of advertising, Silliness | Leave a Comment »

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