The Zippy strip of 7/27/22:
(#1) At the Pig ‘N Whistle Diner in Brighton MA, immersed in the Team X snowclonelet
Two things here: the Team X snowclonelet; and Pig ‘N Whistle as the name of an eating establishment. Let’s dive right in with Team X, and look at Pig ‘N Whistle afterwards.
Yesterday, the posting “Watch this space”. I’m still away meeting a writing deadline, and I have a medical appointment too. So this posting is another Mary, Queen of Scots notice that I am Not Dead Yet. Meanwhile, I offer you, as entertainment and for Gay History Month, a recent Daily Jocks ad featuring a rainbow bandana worn as a sexual-advertisement hanky (on the right, or receptive / subordinate, side):
(#1) Take me, I’m yours
(OED3 (June 2022) takes bandana to be the primary spelling; OED2 had bandanna, and for a long time that was my orthographic practice. But it’s clear that bandana is now far and away the most common spelling.)
Plus its use as an actual bandana (here in a unusual, but pectorally satisfying, barechested deployment):
(#2) I pulled my harpoon from my sparkling rainbow bandana…
In related developments (not illustrated here): rainbow bandanas as headbands and as dog bandanas.
Meanwhile, none of my sources on the meaning of colors for gay hankies says a thing about rainbow bandanas. Of the six colors in the Pride rainbow (R O Y G B P), only three seem to have been used with any frequency as hanky colors:
R for fisting; Y for watersports, light B for oral sex, dark B for anal sex
(Some sources on the other three say: O for anything (on left) / nothing (on right), G for hustling, P for piercing. Completely out of my experience, though I have seen black for S&M, and heard of brown for scat. You would have thought that one of the characteristically gay-signaling colors, like pink, lavender, or purple, would have been pressed into service to convey (generally) servicing a penis — wanting mine serviced (on left) / wanting to service one (on right) — but no. The elaborated hanky code is, or was, more an exercise of imagination than a practical scheme of communication.)
So announced Gwendolyn Alden Dean on Facebook yesterday, as she modeled her astonishing new Teva Rainbow Pride platform sandals (black straps, rainbow soles):
(#1) The platforms are 2.5ʺ in the back, and those stripes are separate laminated layers, not just dye jobs; these particular sandals are “all-gender”; meanwhile, I note that Gwendolyn has definitely shapely feet (something I notice because no one would ever say such a thing about my feet; I’ll spare you the details)
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.
Yesterday was actual Stonewall Day, honoring the riots at the Stonewall Inn on that date in 1969 and serving as a flashpoint for Gay Pride events and political organizations — and, increasingly over the years, providing a hook for all manner of LGBT-oriented commerce (products for sale, advertising for those products) and feel-good publicity for companies and organizations of all sorts. On darker days, I get the feeling that queerfolk are just being used: rainbow everything, whether or not it has some plausible connection to gender or sexuality. I am myself far from immune to the allure of random rainbow objects.
Some items of apparel, however, are naturals for the rainbow treatment — for gay men, items worn in male athletic activities or associated with male sexual bodyparts (or in the case of jockstraps, both).
As it happens, athletic / running / fitness / exercise / gym shorts are a long-standing item in my clothes drawers: worn for doing exercises at the Y (when I could still manage that), as everyday indoor wear at home, and during the summer as comfortable outdoor wear as well. I’ve been accustomed to using gray cotton shorts (comfortable and cheap, also unremarkable), like these from ROMWE.com:
(#1)
But there are more interesting options.
On Facebook yesterday, from Aric Olnes, following up on my “Sacrilegious puns for Pride Month” posting that day:
Below your [“Sacrilegious puns”] post on my newsfeed: rainbows 🌈 & penguins 🐧!!
(#1) ORIGINAL PENGUIN: A FULL LIFESTYLE CLOTHING BRAND (from Munsingwear, featuring the Munsingwear penguin mascot, Pete)
A cute, jokey, très gay guy in his simple rainbow stripes tank top (from the Original Penguin line of clothing), deliriously savoring a slice of rainbow cake (sold separately); still more little rainbow penguins on his shorts.
… on t-shirts from the Hear Our Voice on-line store (“empowering feminist clothing” — also clothing on Black, LGBTQ+, kindness, and disability rights themes), in a Facebook ad today (I believe the shirts are available from other sources as well). In the ad, a complex pun (both verbal and visual) on the song title “Proud Mary”; and then, elsewhere on the site, a pun on the religious exclamation amen.
(Plain-talk references to men’s bodies and sex between men, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
Just 10 more days till Memorial Day, one of the two secular holidays bracketing the summer holiday season in the US (Labor Day is at the other end). This year Memorial Day is on the latest possible day, May 31st, so that we’ll move immediately from Spring into Pride, from May into Gay.
For Pride Month, the Daily Jocks DJX Trough line — as in piggies at the trough — now offers an annual ensemble of rainbow-themed homowear: a harness, a bottom garment of some sort, and some big butch socks.
This year’s ensemble, which came in my e-mail on 5/3. Then last year’s. And then some other rainbow harnesses, to go along with the rainbow underwear I’ve posted about over the years (there’s an inventory of these in a Page on this blog).
A delightful Christmas present (from Kim Darnell), only recently arrived: this t-shirt (which I am wearing as I type this):
Gay Penguin Rainbow Pride Flag, from the teeherivar site
A week before Stonewall Day (1969), this celebratory hedgehog:
(#1) Gay Hedgehog design by JP House from Threadless, available in a great many colors
The hedgehog army
We are the hedgehog army!
Rainbow flags are the weapons we wave
In the fight against prejudice, fear, and rejection.
Ready, aim, be brave!
