Posted recently on Facebook, this visual mashup of Gustav Klimt (Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907) and Clint Eastwood (as the Man With No Name):
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Note the name, a kind of portmanteau of Klimt and Clint Eastwood.
lvcyd is a handle for the creator’s artist name, “Lucyd Yeah”; see her comment
Following on my posting earlier today on “Dubious commercial names” (about Hand Job Nails & Spa on Castro St. in San Fracisco, whose name might be dubious but was transparently intended as a winking double entendre), two Facebook comments with other commercial names that are sexually suggestive:
from Mike McKinley: I have a niece who does “Brazilans.” I told her she should open a salon and call it “The Muff Dive.”
from Christopher Walker: Years ago I clipped a brief item from the newspaper that the Secretary of State in Illinois had refused incorporation papers to a prospective business to be called the Eat It Raw Discotheque
And then back to three earlier postings on this blog with dubious commercial names, ranging from the flagrantly transgressive to the winkingly suggestive to the possibly innocent in intent.
Found yesterday, in a search for something quite different, a notice for a spa named Hand Job, 565 Castro St. (between 19th & 18th), SF. Yes, provocatively named, right there in the Castro:
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This is primarily a mani/pedi (or mani pedi or mani-pedi) place, offering manicures and pedicures, but with other services as well — including massage, but only therapeutic massages, not the sexual massage that might be suggested by the use of hand job ‘manual masturbation’.
Today’s Zippy wanders across a surreal landscape, with at least two items of linguistic interest: the name of the character Premium Cruiseline (with its modifying noun premium) and the form poodle-napping (with the libfix -nap):
These ingredients, in order:
Today’s One Big Happy turns on two interpretations of the same gesture, intended by Avis as an air quote (two fingers on each hand) pointedly framing the word mature as euphemistic, but seen by Ruthie as a threat to tickle her with those same four fingers:
Air quotes I’m long familiar with, but tickle sign (as used here; there is an ASL sign for TICKLE, of course) or tickle gesture I’m not, though they seem clear enough.
From Tim Stewart on ADS-L, a posting linking to a 1/25/13 report on a project on his Dictionary of Christianese site (“The casual slang of the Christian church… authoritatively defined”), on “blended denominations”:
The church that the Simpsons attend is “The Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism.” Presbylutherans are a product of Matt Groenig’s imagination, as far as I know. But fundagelicals, evangecostals, and presbycostals are totally not make-believe.
(Little about language, mostly about one actor and his body. Shirtless photos, but nothing racier than that.)
It started with a Facebook posting about the new comedy film Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, with this very brief plot line, from Wikipedia:
After meeting Joe Manganiello, Pee-wee Herman leaves his hometown of Fairville and goes on the first vacation of his life to reach New York to celebrate Joe’s birthday party, before getting caught up in wacky hijinks and trouble across the country.
The movie pairs the big (6′ 5″ tall), famously muscular, and intensely masculine actor Joe Manganiello, as himself, with Paul Reubens (at 5′ 10″, and slim, even weedy) in his flamboyantly childlike character Pee-wee Herman, who becomes infatuated with the electrically attractive Manganiello at their first meeting:
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Los Angeles Times reviewer Rebecca Keegan, in a mixed notice, nevertheless praised “an adorably self-aware Joe Manganiello as the object of Pee-wee’s man-crush”.
JM has been through a series of roles in which he enthusiastically displays his body for the admiration of some of his audience (especially straight men, who would like to look like him and project his strength and easy assurance) and for objectification by much of his audience (women and gay men). He’s immensely proud of his body (achieved through considerable hard work) and revels in his viewers’ attentions — but all with self-aware good humor. A very entertaining presentation of himself.
It’s the Vernal Equinox today (and as sometimes happens on this day, snow is predicted in parts of the Eastern U.S.), and also Palm Sunday, one week before Easter, so Easter foods, especially candy, so we’re subjected to a barrage of candy ads. Among the strongly Easter-associated candies, at least in the U.S., where they’re made, are marshmallow Peeps (discussion on this blog in the posting “Peeps” of 3/18/13) — appallingly sweet but cute candies, classically in the shape of chicks.
And now, a mixture of food genres. Ellen Evans reports on Peeps specifically in rainbow, the colors of the Pride flag; rainbow food is something of a specialty on its own — there is a Page on this blog listing postings on such food — but I don’t think I’ve seen the flag colors deployed for Easter candy before:
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(Not much about language. Mostly about actors and the male body, focused on Chris Hemsworth.)
Caught last night, a Saturday Night Live re-run of the December 15th show (season 41, episode 8), with actor Chris Hemsworth as host, sometimes being charming, also doing a long bit as an aggressive practical joker (exposing the malicious display of dominance in much practical joking, which is not just playful “kidding around”); in a skit with a bunch of men hired as male strippers who instead do a Broadway show-tune revue, inciting the fury of the women who had come to see their ding-dongs (nice inventive euphemism); in another skit masquerading as a woman singing the praises of CH as Thor; and more. So: surely not by accident, a lot of material putting a spotlight on masculinity, gender displays, and gender politics.
(Yes, I’ll get to CH wielding his phallic hammer as Thor, and of course to a shirtless shot of a carefully developed, muscular CH.)
For the 19th, the affliction (part of a nasty cold also featuring paroxysmal coughing) and the name, reproducing bits of Ancient Greek spelling carried through to Latin, French, and then English. From NOAD2:
excessive discharge or buildup of mucus in the nose or throat, associated with inflammation of the mucous membrane. ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from French catarrhe, from late Latin catarrhus, from Greek katarrhous, from katarrhein ‘flow down,’ from kata– ‘down’ + rhein ‘flow.’
(The name catarrh obviously has nothing to do with the Gulf country name Qatar, though the latter is sometimes pronounced the same as the former, /kǝtár/.)