From today’s feed: a Zits, a Rhymes With Orange, and another rich Zippy:
(#1)
(#2)
(#3)
Three Thursday cartoons
January 28, 2016Yesterday
January 28, 2016Two things yesterday: it was Mozart’s birthday, and it was a bright sunny day, cool but not cold, so after a long time away, Juan and I had an al fresco breakfast at Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden, which was packed with things in bloom (winter-blooming flowers and also spring-blooming flowers, since for plants spring starts locally in January) or simply flourishing (like many cool-weather food plants).
Dean Phoenix, Dirk Yates, and curvature
January 28, 2016On AZBlogX on the 26th, a posting “Dean Phoenix in disguise” that starts (#1 there) with an ad (titled “Ahead of the Curve”) for the Dirk Yates gay porn flick God Was I Drunk (2013), in which the DP character is presented as a straight army private who, under the influence of drink, agrees to have sex (for cash, in a video) with another straight soldier. This is a routine story line for the Dirk Yates flicks, which purport to show straight military men having sex with men (other straight military men) for the first time (for cash, in a video by Yates). The men are framed as real military men, not actors, and they always get seriously into the sex.
Lower bangs higher
January 28, 2016(Some genuine language stuff in here, but in the context of serious man-man sex described in very plain language, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
On the 25th, this ad (from a gay porn aggregation service using the name Genuine Lust), under the heading “Crossed Swords”, referring both to weapons and to penises:
(#1)
This is serious role reversal, on (at least) three fronts: class, status, and race/ethnicity. Meanwhile, the text (in the dialogue above, and in some ad copy) is both bizarre and rife with errors (of various kinds) in English. The ad copy:
Beautiful themed movies with only the best actors shot with the best cameras the humanity ever known. Watch these sirs.
Bruce Bruce Bruce
January 27, 2016Or: Australia Australia Australia!
From Daily Jocks on the 25th, this example of their own AUS line (with my caption appended):
(#1)
A triple threat: proudly
Australian, proudly
Working class, proudly
Queer – “I like to get
Down under with
Me mates”
The company’s ad copy:
Say G’day to our newest underwear collection, designed downunder (for your downunder). Featuring a soft waistband with bold AUS logo and printed Australian flag, the cotton/spandex blend will keep you feeling comfortable.
To come: more on the underwear and the body of the model in #1. Then to Monty Python’s “Bruces” sketch, notes on Bruce as a particularly Australian name (and, in the U.S., as a particularly gay name), with a digression on the wattle, and then to Australian comedian and actor Barry Humphries, Dame Edna Everage, and Aussie bloke Barry McKenzie.
Huge News For Men!
January 26, 2016The News for Penises, 1/26/16 edition.
In the February issue of GQ magazine (pp. 80-83, 119), this feature article:
Heavy phallicity from the outset: the symbolic cactus, the U of Huge made into a penis icon (complete with urinary meatus, aka piss slit). The lead-in:
An enterprising L.A. surgeon [James Elist] has invented a silicone penis implant [the Penuma], which, because we’re sure you have a frient who’ll want to know, costs 13 grand and can nearly double your size. Amy Wallace grills the good `doctor on how it works – and asks a few of his satisfied customers (and their mostly satisfied wives) how it’s working. (photos by Andrew B. Myers)
More Cristiano Ronaldo
January 26, 2016On Saturday I got a copy of GQ magazine — The Body Issue, for February — in the mail, with an announcement from Condé Nast that Details magazine had been closed and they were sending me GQ {for Gentlemen’s Quarterly] for the rest of my Details subscription period. GQ is, like Details, a fashion and lifestyle magazine, tilting towards fashion, while Details tilted towards the lifestyle side, and their target audiences are different: Details for metrosexual straight guys and gay guys (we’re all brothers, and we can learn from each other, or something like that), GQ very much for straight guys, with visible anxiety lest its readers be taken for queers because of their interest in men’s fashion, grooming, and the like.
So the February issue features Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, maintaining on the cover that he’s the “Nobel Prize Winner for Physical Perfection” and showing him there in nothing but trunks from CR7 Underwear (Ronaldo’s own company) — but pairing him there (and elsewhere in the magazine) with supermodel Alessandra Ambosio (who appears to be topless on the cover). The strategy is to surround a man featured in the magazine because of his physical attractiveness with really hot women hanging on to him, to convey his heterosexuality and so to reassure the readers that it’s safe for them to admire him and identify with him. In the case of Ronaldo, who could be described as a, to put it very gently, serial dater (details to follow), the effort would seem superfluous, but it’s a standard GQ strategy.
Put the cello to the metal
January 25, 2016(About music rather than language.)
Two rock groups that exploit cellos: the Finnish metal band Apocalyptica (a quartet: three cellists plus a drummer, all male) and the American rock band Rasputina (a trio: two female cellists who also do the vocals, plus a male pianist who also works a beat-box). Amazing stuff, especially if you like the sound of cellos.
In the burlesque boat with Zippy
January 25, 2016Today’s Zippy, continuing the cartoon’s run of burlesques:
(#1)
Yesterday it was Poe’s “The Raven”; today it’s the nursery rhyme “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”.
Unblogged mishearings
January 25, 2016There is a Page on this blog with an inventory of postings about mishearings, but there are ten examples in my files that I haven’t “read into the record” in postings. Now to make them publicly available.