Archive for the ‘Movies and tv’ Category

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Film watch: men kissing men

February 18, 2019

As furors break out here and there over same-sex kisses in the media (especially in ads) and also in real life (in public places) — disgusting! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! get that out of my sight! — I move to celebrate them. Especially men kissing men, an act that enrages a fair number of people, apparently because they have been conditioned to view it as the functional equivalent of two sweaty naked men fucking. I view it as the functional equivalent of a man and woman kissing: an act of romantic connection with a spicy tang of sexual attraction (but no more)

And so I come to two recent British films viewed on Netflix: The Pass (Russell Tovey and Arinzé Kene as footballers) and God’s Own Country (Josh O’Connor and Alec Secăreanu as Yorkshire sheep farmers). Both are fraught love stories set in intensely masculine working-class social worlds. With wonderful performances. And man-on-man kissing, both touching and moving.

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Posted in Actors, Gender and sexuality, Language and race, Language of sex, Movies and tv, Race and ethnicity | 1 Comment »

Be more Michael B. Jordan

February 15, 2019

So a Coach ad today exhorts us:


(#1) “Be more Michael B. Jordan. Start with the look.”

Oh, honey, I wish I could, but there’s just no chance. Put aside the race thing, I’m never going to be an icon of masculinity, with that face, that body, and that manner.

And I couldn’t pull off the

Colorblock Shearling Jacket in Burnt Sienna

that Coach is selling (for a cool, or possibly very hot, $2200). MBJ can easily rise above its magnificent fagginess — the purple block is a nice finishing touch — and there are gay men who could flaunt that fagginess defiantly, but I’m not up to either of these presentations.

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Posted in Clothing, Fashion, Homosexuality, Masculinity, Movies and tv | Leave a Comment »

Captain of our fairy band

February 13, 2019

(Hot guys in very skimpy underwear, suggestive verse, but generally playful and not actually X-rated. Use your judgment.)

Today’s  Daily Jocks sale ad, for Marco Marco Valentine’s Day homowear, with a caption in two parts, one raunchy doggerel, one Puckish:

(#1)

Lincoln Darwin Valentine
Is a cutup friend of mine
Loves the boys with all his heart
Loves them hard in every part

And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover’s fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

(more…)

Posted in Captions, Double entendres, Facial expression, Holidays, Language in advertising, Language play, Movies and tv, Poetic form, Poetry, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Gin and glassware

February 10, 2019

Back on the 7th, at Dan Gordon’s restaurant in Palo Alto: server explains they are out of Tanqueray gin, apologizes, offers me a taste of Junipero gin (not familiar to me, though it’s a San Francisco thing), which arrives in a glass of interesting shape, also not familiar to me. Being a linguist of inquisitive bent, I ask what that kind of glass is called. Server thinks it’s a Nick and Nora (unfamiliar to me as a glassware label, though I got the allusion and understood why the name would be used for drinkware). Bartender shouts out that, no, it’s a Glenn Caron (well, that’s what I thought he said, but I was puzzled about what the connection was between glassware and the tv writer / director / producer Glenn Gordon Caron or his most famous show, Moonlighting). Much later I discovered it was a Glencairn glass, designed for (Scotch) whisky.

Now, the replay, with more detail.

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Posted in Language and food, Movies and tv, Names, Trade names | 1 Comment »

Pythonic curtain line in the Economist

January 25, 2019

In the 1/19/19 issue of The Economist, the story (on-line) “Vaccine researchers are preparing for Disease X”, (in print) “The X factor: Vaccine researchers are preparing for the unexpected”, which begins:

Last year the World Health Organisation published a plan to accelerate research into pathogens that could cause public-health emergencies. One priority was the bafflingly named “Disease x”. The x stands for unexpected, and represents concern that the next big epidemic might be caused by something currently unknown.

and concludes:

Success by either group promises to reduce the interval between identifying a virus and running the first clinical trial to a mere 16 weeks. Moreover, because both approaches synthesise the vaccines chemically rather than involving live viruses in the process, a vaccine that did emerge from one of them could then be manufactured rapidly. All this may then eliminate the fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency of unexpected viruses.

Ah, the curtain line (spoken as the curtain falls on the performance): fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency.

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Posted in Language play, Movies and tv, Quotations | 2 Comments »

The dog who would be penguin

January 23, 2019

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts strip from 12/31/57, in which Snoopy takes on a penguin persona:

(#1)

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Posted in Books, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Penguins | Leave a Comment »

Uri and Avi

January 22, 2019

Uri and Avi
Sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

The US/UK children’s chant — meant to embarrass the kids named in it –realized in this photo of an Israeli Jew I’ve called Uri and a Palestinian Muslim I’ve called Avi (not sitting in a tree, but standing flagrantly in public):

(#1)

The photo came to me from Michael Nieuwenhuizen, who found it (unsourced) on Facebook and was moved by it (as was I), as a depiction of men kissing openly and as a depiction of romantic attachment across the boundaries of race and religion — doubly transgressive, and for gay men like Mikkie and me, doubly satisfying.

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Posted in Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Language and religion, Male art, Movies and tv, Signs and symbols | 2 Comments »

Squirrely

January 22, 2019

On the serious side, yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, while on the silly side, it was Squirrel Appreciation Day.


(#1) Get Squirrely (also distributed as A.C.O.R.N.S.: Operation Crack Down and Voll Auf Die Nuss) is an American animated film produced by John H. Williams (through Vanguard Animation) and Dan Krech and directed by Ross Venokur. Released on November 4, 2016 [voices by Jason Jones, Will Forte, John Leguizamo, Samantha Bee, Victoria Justice, John Cleese, Jim Cummings] (Wikipedia link)

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Posted in Holidays, Language and animals, Movies and tv | 1 Comment »

Annals of indirection

January 1, 2019

Chip Dunham’s Overboard strip from December 28th:


(#1) Captain Crow and his dog Louie

An exercise in both syntax/semantics and semantics/pragmatics: on syntactic constructions and their semantics, and on the indirect conveying of meaning in context.

Above, what will become example (c) in the syntactic discussion:

(c) I don’t think I’ve told you today what a wonderful dog you are

which will lead to a related example, Sir Van Morrison’s song line in (d):

(d) Have I told you lately that I love you?

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Politeness, Pragmatics, Relevance, Speech acts | Leave a Comment »

News for penises: Bourdain’s Bhutan

December 28, 2018

(The title should be warning enough.)

Earlier today, I reported on Anthony Bourdain in Armenia on Parts Unknown, on this blog in “Yet another Switzerland”. Later in the series Bourdain and film director Darren Aronofsky moved on to Bhutan, in S11 E8 (first aired 6/24/18), where they encountered phalluses as a design element, almost everywhere. They also did a lot of eating and drinking, as here:

(#1)

And, being in a mostly Buddhist country, reflected on their places in the universe. But this is AZBlog, where the News for Penises is a regular feature, so that’s where we’re going. Fire up those phalluses.

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Posted in Art, Figurative language, Language and the body, Movies and tv, Phallicity | 1 Comment »

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