The most recent Daily Jocks ad, with a caption sexual fantasy from me:

(#1)

You can buy him,
One trick a month – the
Standard hour, providing
Whatever you need –
And with a rock-bottom
Starter price of $10, the

Catch is that the price
Doubles every month. On
Month six his hour costs you a
Steep $320, but he’s
Worth it, though when the
Annual contract

Runs out in
Month 12,
You’ll be getting
$40,960 sex —
Better be
Best there is.

That’s the fantasy. Then there’s the real world, in which I tried to identify the model in #1.

At first it was a familiar story. Endless Pinterest postings (not attributed in any way) of this photo:

(#2)

(variously tagged as sexy man, beautiful body, tattoos, and even cute gay guy (almost surely a comment on the poster’s sexuality, rather than the model’s). I’m not especially a fan of extreme rippedness or of tats, but in this case I could admire both, as products of thought and hard work.

The model in #2 is presented as an object, with an impassive face and no engagement of the viewer, while in #1 is gazing intently into the viewer’s eyes, giving off the homoerotic aura of high-end underwear models in general: you can do me / you can be me.

Then I searched on the main tat message, “Would life have gotten better” (suggesting the continuation “if (only) I had …”). Here I hit image gold almost immediately, though the intention of the tat’s message never got clarified. From the Bang + Strike company’s site on the model:

Richard Rocco [Richie Amerigo Rocco III] grew up in Los Angeles [in a gritty barrio] and joined the United States Marine Corps in 2002.

When he was badly wounded in action, in Iraq, Richard’s perseverance and desire motivated him to push through physical therapy and within a year he was back in the gym. He now competes in professional power lifting competitions and has dedicated his life to health and fitness for over 10 years. Truly inspirational, especially from a man who literally broke his back.

Richard can be seen modelling for underwear brands such as Calvin Klein and Pump! [as above]

Here he is in a steamy triptych for Pump!, his body displayed like sculpture of almost unreal perfection:

(#3)

(Panel 3 is a literally ballsy shot.) All three panels are physically intense and aggressive; his aggression can be read as comptitiveness or as sexual domination, depending on the viewer’s inclinations.

Upscale underwear models and the companies they work for are perfectly aware of the homoerotic tones in their ads, and most models are happy to cater to the desires of fags like me, whatever their sexuality in real life. Here’s Rocco enthusiastically crossing the line into cock-teasing pitsntits homoeroticism:

(#4)

This is from a feature in DNA Magazine (Australian publication targeting gay men) “Rick Day Presents Richard Rocco” of 5/16/13, with this swooning copy:

Tattooed hottie Richard Rocco makes his DNA debut in these shots by Rick Day. We find all kinds of men hot and we know that there are many guys out there who are into dudes with tats. In addition to his body art, we think Richard has a totally hot bod.

Hey, I’m swooning too.

In my 3/7/13 posting “Cock tease”, there’s a section on male photographer Rick Day, who favors highy masculine models, focusing on their musculature, their faces, their butts, and, every so often, their cocks flagrantly displayed.

(Another posting in a long series. Very little about language in this.)

Cut to the chase, Brandon Quinn as Gabe Duncroft in the tv series The Fosters:

(#1)

A handsome man with a beautiful physique, very fit but not flagrantly ripped.

On the actor, from Wikipedia:

Brandon Quinn (born Brandon Quinn Swierenga October 7, 1977, in Aurora, Colorado) is a television and film actor. He started his career in 1998 as Charles Murphy in the film Express: Aisle to Glory.

He has acted in other TV series and films such as Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Nightmare Room, Big Wolf on Campus, What I Like About You, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Malachance, and Charmed.

On the series, from Wikipedia:

The Fosters is an American family drama television series created by Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg for ABC Family (renamed Freeform channel). It follows the lives of the title Foster family led by lesbian couple Stef and Lena, a cop and a school vice-principal respectively, who raise a multi-ethnic blended family that consists of one biological and four adopted children in San Diego, California.

The core cast:

(#2)

The family is named Foster, and they’re into fostering and adopting kids. A complex web of relationships here, involving the kids and an assortment of their biological families, among which is the character Gabe Duncroft, the biological father of one of the kids, a man of almost inarticulate high masculinity.

(#1)

They found one another in the
Sexual swamp, where men go to
Drop their civilized masks and
Embrace their
Animal natures,
Copulate like
Beasts.

The image is the latest from Daily Jocks, with the ad copy:

Unleash your inner beast with the thrilling new Animal Instinct Collection. An exciting selection of unique print interpretations inspired by the mystery and allure of wild animals. Stylishly matched with solid coloured blocks for maximum impact.

So get wild with the TIGER, JAGUAR, CHEETAH and GIRAFFE!

Or, in my fantasy, RED FOX and CAIMAN. In their animal forms:

(#2)

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes), largest of the true foxes, has the greatest geographic range of all members of the Carnivora family, being present across the entire Northern Hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to North Africa, North America and Eurasia. (Wikipedia link)

(#3)

A caiman is an alligatorid crocodilian belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within Alligatoridae, the other being alligators. (Wikipedia link)

[alligatorid crocodilian, a wonderful expression, two SWMWW words in succession — that is, in quintuple meter:

Quintuple meter or quintuple time (chiefly Brit.) is a musical meter characterized by five beats in a measure. The beats can have the pattern strong-weak-medium-weak-weak [as in alligatorid crocodilian] or strong-weak-weak-medium-weak, although a survey of certain forms of mostly American popular music suggests that strong-weak-weak-medium-weak is the more common of these two in these styles.

… In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet released Time Out, a jazz album with music in unusual meters. It included Paul Desmond’s “Take Five”, in 5/4 time [SWWMW]. Against all expectations, the album went platinum, and “Take Five” became a jazz standard. (Wikipedia link)]

Red foxes are omnivores (though in the family Carnivora of mammals), caimans are obligate carnivores (though not in the family Carnivora, indeed not mammals at all, but reptiles). In any case, they’re both meat-eaters. As, metaphorically, are ReFo and K-Man.

… at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford: back on January 26th, a viewing of Dutch masters of the 17th century; then this Thursday, two small exhibitions, Warhol works in connection with a Stanford course and a student-curated display of East Asian artworks featuring the lingzhi mushroom.

Dutch masters. “The Wonder of Everyday Life: Dutch Golden Age Prints” at the Cantor 11/16/16 – 3/20/17. The museum’s description:

While the Dutch Republic experienced unprecedented economic prosperity in the 17th century, printmakers were exceptionally sensitive — and sometimes obsessive — when rendering the details of everyday life. A hallmark of Dutch prints created during this Golden Age is their depiction of the grit, dark corners, and textures present in the mundane objects featured in domestic scenes, landscapes, portraits, and even compositions interpreting literature or religious texts. The prints [etchings and mezzotints] in this installation explore how Rembrandt van Rijn and his peers depicted the sensual experience of the material world, contemplated life’s fleeting and constantly changing nature, and navigated spirituality’s role in modern life.

(#1)

Jan de Baen, The Burning of the Town Hall in Amsterdam etching, 1652

Note 1. Represented in the exhibition: Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan de Baen, Adriaen van Ostade, Anthonie Waterloo, Reinier Nooms, Cornelis Bega, Ferdinand Bol, Johannes Teyler, Wallerant Vaillant, Jan de Visscher, Claes Janszoon Visscher.

Note 2. On the artist in #1, from Wikipedia:

Jan de Baen (20 February 1633 – 1702) was a Dutch portrait painter who lived during the Dutch Golden Age. He was a pupil of the painter Jacob Adriaensz Backer in Amsterdam from 1645 to 1648. He worked for Charles II of England in his Dutch exile, and from 1660 until his death he lived and worked in The Hague. His portraits were popular in his day, and he painted the most distinguished people of his time.

Note 3. On the size of images. Most of the images of artworks I post here are smaller than the works themselves, often very much smaller (a fact I regularly apologize for). But the Dutch Golden Age prints are tiny, though we’re accustomed to seeing them reproduced as enlargements. At the Stanford exhibition, large magnifying glasses are provided every few feet, so that visitors can appreciate the details of the works.

The Jan de Baen in #1 is unusually large for such a print: 10.6 x 13.2 inches.

Note 4. One preoccupation of Rembrandt and some of the other artists in this group was the play of light and dark, shadow and bursts of light. In the case of #1, the play of flames in the dark of the night. (Flames are something of a challenge to capture in an etching.)

Note 5. The printmaking technologies (for etchings and mezzotints) were recent in the Dutch Golden Age, so that what we see in the exhibition is the great creative outpouring and experimentation that comes with new artistic technologies (as happened in the early years of photography and then of film).

The techniques. First, the old technique, engraving:

Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations; these images are also called engravings.

… Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper in artistic printmaking, in mapmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. It has long been replaced by various photographic processes in its commercial applications and, partly because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking, where it has been largely replaced by etching and other techniques. (Wikipedia link)

Then etching:

Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal… As a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today.

… The process as applied to printmaking is believed to have been invented by Daniel Hopfer (circa 1470–1536) of Augsburg, Germany. Hopfer was a craftsman who decorated armour in this way, and applied the method to printmaking, using iron plates (many of which still exist)

… The switch to copper plates was probably made in Italy, and thereafter etching soon came to challenge engraving as the most popular medium for artists in printmaking. Its great advantage was that, unlike engraving where the difficult technique for using the burin requires special skill in metalworking, the basic technique for creating the image on the plate in etching is relatively easy to learn for an artist trained in drawing. On the other hand, the handling of the ground and acid need skill and experience, and are not without health and safety risks, as well as the risk of a ruined plate.  (Wikipedia link)

And mezzotint:

Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzotint achieves tonality by roughening the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth, called a “rocker.” In printing, the tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean. A high level of quality and richness in the print can be achieved.

The mezzotint printmaking method was invented by the German amateur artist Ludwig von Siegen (1609–c1680). His earliest mezzotint print dates to 1642 (Wikipedia link)

(Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky points me to the homepage of artist Belinda DelPesco, who supplies an ever-growing set of video tutorials on techniques for printmaking.)

Warhol. “Warhol Unframed”, 1/18/17 – 5/1/17. The museum’s description:

The Cantor’s curricular exhibition series continues this winter with an installation of Warhol works selected from the Cantor’s collection. Organized in close collaboration with faculty members Richard Meyer, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor of Art History, and Peggy Phelan, the Denning Family Chair and Director, Stanford Arts institute and Professor of Theater & Performance Studies and English, the exhibition complements their winter quarter class, Warhol: Painting, Photography, Performance, and will serve as a resource to their students throughout the quarter. On view in the Patricia S. Rebele Gallery [one of several very small galleries that look like they started life as storage closets]

(#2)

Andy Warhol (US, 1928-1987), detail from contact sheet [photo from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver’s wedding, with a Kennedy and Grace Jones], 1986

The exhibition has Warhol works in a variety of media, including photos, silkscreen prints, and mixed media, With examples from several of his famous series (Elizabeth Taylor, Mao, Mammy).

Bonus: a Warhol photo of Sylvia Williams posing as Warhol’s Mammy character (from Warhol’s Myths portfolio): a big black maternal figure from pop culture:

(#3)

On Williams, from Wikipedia:

Sylvia Williams née Sylvia Louise Hill (February 10, 1936 in Lincoln, Pennsylvania – February 28, 1996 in Washington DC) was a museum director, curator, art historian and scholar of African art. She helped make the study and appreciation of African art a significant aesthetic and intellectual pursuit in the United States.

Warhol’s Mammy 262, a 1981 screenprint in the exhibition:

(#4)

On screenprints, from Wikipedia:

Screen printing is a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of polyester or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance. Ink is forced into the mesh openings by the fill blade or squeegee and by wetting the substrate, transferred onto the printing surface during the squeegee stroke. As the screen rebounds away from the substrate the ink remains on the substrate. It is also known as silk-screen, screen, serigraphy, and serigraph printing. One color is printed at a time, so several screens can be used to produce a multicoloured image or design.

… Traditionally the process was called screen printing or silkscreen printing because silk was used in the process prior to the invention of polyester mesh. Currently, synthetic threads are commonly used in the screen printing process. The most popular mesh in general use is made of polyester.

… Screen printing is a form of stencilling that first appeared in a recognizable form in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD). It was then adapted by other Asian countries like Japan, and was furthered by creating newer methods.

Screen printing was largely introduced to Western Europe from Asia sometime in the late 18th century, but did not gain large acceptance or use in Europe until silk mesh was more available for trade from the east and a profitable outlet for the medium discovered.

Mushrooms. “A Mushroom Perspective on Sacred Geography”, 2/8/17 – 5/15/17. From the museum’s description:

In East Asian cultures, the lingzhi mushroom was believed to be a spiritual organism that thrived only at sacred sites. Drawing from the Cantor’s rich collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean art, A Mushroom Perspective on Sacred Geography brings together a wide variety of objects (painting, ceramic, jade, lacquer, and works on paper) to examine the dynamic interconnections between humans, natural organisms, and sacred landscapes. The exhibition, curated by Phoenix Yu-chuan Chen, a PhD candidate in the Department of Art & Art History, ultimately urges us to consider our own longstanding and ongoing relationship with nature. On view in the Lynn Krywick Gibbons Gallery [another of those small galleries]

(#5)

Yamada Masanao (Japan, b. 1890), wood netsuke of mushrooms, 20th century

The exhibition includes a 20-foot-long scroll attributed to Qiu Ying (China, c. 1494–c. 1552), “Gathering of Immortals at the Peach Festival”, ink and color on silk (blue-green style), which has three images of lingzhi gathering on it. Only the beginning of the scroll can be seen in the exhibition case, but the full scroll can be studied in computer images that can be expanded for close view and moved through the entire work from beginning (on the right) to end. Similar technology allows you to examine computer versions of the Dutch Golden Age prints in great detail.

Now, on the mushrooms, from Wikipedia:

(#6)

The lingzhi mushroom or reishi mushroom (… literally: “soul/spirit mushroom”) is a species complex that encompasses several fungal species of the genus Ganoderma, most commonly the closely related species Ganoderma lucidum, Ganoderma tsugae, and Ganoderma lingzhi. G. lingzhi [shown in #6)] enjoys special veneration in East Asia, where it has been used as a medicinal mushroom in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 2,000 years, making it one of the oldest mushrooms known to have been used medicinally.

(and it is still available in several forms from a number of suppliers).

Finally, on netsuke (as in #5), again from Wikipedia:

Netsuke … are miniature sculptures that were invented in 17th-century Japan to serve a practical function (the two Japanese characters ne+tsuke mean “root” and “to attach”). Traditional Japanese garments — robes called kosode and kimono — had no pockets; however, men who wore them needed a place to store their personal belongings, such as pipes, tobacco, money, seals, or medicines.

… Their solution was to place such objects in containers (called sagemono) hung by cords from the robes’ sashes (obi). The containers may have been pouches or small woven baskets, but the most popular were beautifully crafted boxes (inrō), which were held shut by ojime, which were sliding beads on cords. Whatever the form of the container, the fastener that secured the cord at the top of the sash was a carved, button-like toggle called a netsuke.

Netsuke are often wonderfully crafted miniatures.

(Very little of linguistic interest, beyond a penis joke in Spanish and a note on grammatical gender. Otherwise, it’s the massive Latino musclehunk “The Marvel” on display.)

From my regular correspondent RJP this morning, a (broken) link to a Facebook video by The Marvel (posting as maravilla3x). I persevered and found a working Facebook link, which FB seems now to have taken down as too racy: it shows a naked Marvel sitting up in bed humping a big heart-shaped box of Valentine’s chocolates, then taking the cover off and eating chocolates from the box while revving up the tempo and intensity of his pelvic thrusts towards climax (at which point the tease is cut off). However, The Marvel has resourcefully put the video on YouTube, and you can watch it there.

A still from the video, close to the cut-off point:

(#1)

The caption (I translate from the Spanish): “Who wants chocolates? Your Valentine’s present.”

Some things to note: the truly gigantic upper arms; the shaved armpits, the big-assed tattoos.

That degree of muscle development, like a really big dick, is out of my personal arousal zone and into the zone of abstract size awe: something remarkable to observe, but not something I’m interested in engaging with carnally. (Yes, I understand that many other fags find The Marvel’s body deeply, deeply moving.)

The shaved armpits just mark him as a bodybuilder; on his FB page he identifies himself as an “NYC Fitness Model”, and the videos and photos there include a fair number of him doing weight training (but also a huge number of flagrantly sexual displays, aimed at women but surely snaring an audience of admiring gay men as well; in interviews, the man says he’s straight but welcomes followers of all kinds). As for the armpit hair, I’m really into that and miss it in serious bodybuilders.

The ornate, intense tattoos will be better visible in photos to come.

On the Marvel’s FB page we learn that his real name is Franyely Lora, born 9/3/93, and that he began to take an interest in music at an early age and had a talent for it. On the evidence of the photos, he seems to be a keyboardist.

[Added 2/13: Some postings about him say tha he’s a singer and also that he’s worked as an underwear model for Calvin Klein.]

Linguistic note: Maravilla is a fairly common Hispanic surname (I have friends with this name). But Spanish is a language with grammatical gender, and the noun maravilla ‘marvel, wonder’ is of fem. gender grammatically, even when it’s used to refer to a man. That’s why The Marvel is (in Spanish) La Maravilla (with the fem.sg. definite article la rather than the masc.sg. el).

(He could have chosen the pseudonym El Maravilloso ‘the marvelous (one) [masc.]’, but maybe he though that was just too long, or that nouns are somehow “stronger” than adjectives.)

More images of La Maravilla, two from a huge number in which the man is posed as an underwear model. “Buenos Dias”, with his morning coffee, in a minimal brief:

(#2)

And “Buenas Tardes”, with an afternoon moose-knuckle (also showing off his pecs and abs):

(#3)

A sex-play bonus on his FB page:

(#4)

The main part of the title, up to the last word, I would translate roughly as ‘What your (female) friend needs, to calm that pelvic heat’ (calor pélvico is an entertainingly roundabout way of referring to female arousal). Now that last word might remind you of English penicillin (the drug), but the name of the drug in Spanish is penicilina, while the last word in the title is pretty clearly pene ‘penis’ plus some diminutive derivational material: what the woman needs for the fire in her genitals is a dick (and here’s a toy one). Well, that’s how I read it.

Meanwhile, enjoy those Valentine chocolates.

A recent Daily Jocks offer:

(#1)

Bob Beach

Lifelike PVC plastic figures from MaleBody®, life-size or miniature,
All anatomically correct (well-hung — but unlike gay action figures,
Not grotesquely huge) — life-size models come with the
WarmTouch® system, maintaining a natural skin temperature that’s
Pleasant to the touch — miniature models about a foot tall, no
WarmTouch, but they make attractive tabletop ornaments, can be
Engaged in imaginative play — all figures with factory-installed clothing,
Easily removable (for posing naked), additional costumes available —

Bob Beach smooth-shaven all over, including his pubes (his penis and
Testicles are marvels of detail) — each character with a back story:
Bob Beach, gay swimmer from Malibu, boyfriend Butch Beach (also
Available from MaleBody, not illustrated here), with Clone face (and
Mustache), more substantisl muscles, lightly furred body (chest, belly, forearms,
Buttocks, pubes, legs) —  they are a very hot couple — Bob found mostly in
Aquatic settings (at the beach, by a swimming pool, next to a hot tub, in a

Shower room; delightful
Standing by a koi pond)

  (#2)

KoiBob

(#3)

Akira figma

In the miniature line, Akira of Togainu no Chi,
Stripping for his Boys Love partner Keisuke (available from MaleBody) —
Pairing life-sized Bob Beach and life-sized Akira, reveling in their
Otherness, is
Deeply stirring

On Akira and Keisuke, from Wikipedia:

Togainu no Chi … is a Japanese BL [Boys Love] visual novel created by Nitro+CHiRAL. The plot centers on Akira, a young man who is made to participate in a deadly game called “Igura” (Russian for “game”) in post-apocalyptic Japan in exchange for being freed from prison.

The game’s main character, a young man named Akira, is falsely accused of a crime. Once arrested, a mysterious woman appears before him, offering him freedom if he agrees to participate in Igura and defeat Igura’s strongest man: the king, or Il Re. The story follows Akira’s life … as he fights both to survive and to unravel the mysteries developing around him.

Keisuke [is] Akira’s childhood friend and hard-working factory employee. … They grew up together in the same orphanage. Because he is a bit weak, he has always admired Akira’s strength. Though he is a bit quiet and shy, if Akira is involved, he suddenly becomes bold. Upon hearing Akira’s situation, Keisuke chases after Akira and also joins Igura, despite his weakness and lack of fighting experience.

Two stories of plastic male love: Bob and Butch Beach, Akira and Keisuke.

… or, playing over the top, and in fact doing this knowingly while winking at the audience, so that you might want to say: camping it up. I refer to the Netflix version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which Neil Patrick Harris (NPH) plays the villain for laughs, while Patrick Warburton plays the author-narrator, Lemony Snicket, ditto, and a bunch of others — notably Joan Cusack, K. Todd Freeman, and Alfre Woodard — join them.

NPH in character:

(#1)

And Warburton in character, at the beach with the three Baudelaire children:

(#2)

(Those are bathing machines and a rickety trolley in the background.)

From Wikipedia on the series:

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, or simply A Series of Unfortunate Events, is an American black comedy dramedy television series from Netflix, and developed by Mark Hudis and Barry Sonnenfeld, based on the children’s novel series of the same name by Lemony Snicket. It stars Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Warburton, Malina Weissman, Louis Hynes, K. Todd Freeman and Presley Smith, and premiered on January 13, 2017.

and on the author:

Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American novelist Daniel Handler (born February 28, 1970). Snicket is the author of several children’s books, also serving as the narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events (his best-known work) and a character within it and All the Wrong Questions. Because of this, the name “Lemony Snicket” may refer to either the fictional character or the real person.

Now, the genre of the series and the books on which it’s based: they are firmly in the genre I’ll call fantasy comedy, manifested in performances of many types: Punch and Judy shows, animated cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkle (squirrel and moose beset by comically incompetent villains Boris and Natasha), Joan Aiken’s alternative-history comedy-adventure novels for children (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, etc.), James Thurber’s book The Thirteen Clocks, the movie The Princess Bride. The protagonists tend to be absurdly innocent, the villains thoroughly wicked, the settings fantastical rather than realistic, the plot lines full of bizarre twists and turns (like Zippy the Pinhead comic strips, but with villains). Many of these performances wink at the audience, and characters often address the audience.

Series has a fantastical setting; look back at #2. The characters are cardboard figures played for laughs: the Baudelaire children are preposterously earnest, good, and plucky; the other characters are absurdly good (Cusack’s judge character), sweet but deranged (Woodard’s character, the children’s Aunt Jusephine, who’s a nut about grammatical correctness, by which she mostly means spelling and word choice), bizarrely clueless (for example, failing to recognize the NPH character, Count Olaf, in his ridiculously transparent disguises), thoroughly evil, or deeply corrupt. And Warburton’s character does nothing but address the audience, owlishly warning us about the dire events about to unfold and telling us that we should avert our eyes, look away, thus pulling us into the guilty pleasures of the show. (I’d like to point out that there’s a lot you can do with adverbs.)

Digression on comedy genres. Fantasy comedy contrasts with two other comedy genres (though, as always, the lines between genres are not crisp): what I’ll call light comedy and black comedy. These are relevant because NPH is also celebrated for his work in a sitcom (a subtype of light comedy), How I Met Your Mother, and so is Warburton (in Rules of Engagement), while Cusack is celebrated for her work in a black comedy (Shameless). (Warburton and Cusack are both specialists in comic acting, of several types — they do almost nothing else — while Freeman and Woodard are acting generalists.)

Light comedy includes sitcoms (on tv) and romantic comedy (in the movies) as well as comic novels and short stories that are realistic in both setting and character; black comedy, the comedy counterpart to dramas like Breaking Bad, manages to be both funny and horrifying at once, again in realistic settings and with characters that have identifiably human characteristics the audience can sympathize with, but also with disastrous flaws.

The black comedy Shameless has a realistic setting, a white working-class neighborhood of South Chicago, complete with the El. Its preposterous characters are nevertheless played straight, and with no winking at the audience. All the characters are seriously flawed, but all have some redeeming qualities that allow you to sometimes identify with them: even the frighteningly narcissistic, irresponsible, alcoholic and drug-addled central character Frank (William H. Macy in an extraordinary performance) has a sweet love affair – with a woman close to dying from cancer, who then commits suicide. Fantasy comedy, either meant for children or affecting a child-like view of the world, steers clear of sexual connections, while Shameless is dramatically high in carnality: the characters fuck like bonobos, almost reflexively, out of ungovernable desire and, apparently, as a way to relieve tension; there’s also plenty of same-sex butt-fucking and muff-diving; and even the baby Liam compusively masturbates.

In Series, Warburton’s character and the theme song keep telling us to look away, look away, knowing that that will make us watch. But watching Shameless, you often do want to avert your eyes, because, out of sympathy with the characters, you wish you could pull them away from the disastrous things they are about to do.

The five featured actors. NPH, Warburton, Cusack, Freeman, and Woodard.

NPH (appearing as Count Olaf in #1) is an old acquaintance on this blog, seen most recently in the posting “Annals of adorable” (with his husband, David Burtka) on the 10th. Earlier, onstage in his underwear (and nothing else), in the 2/23/15 posting “From the Oscar watch”.

On the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, from Wikipedia:

How I Met Your Mother … is an American sitcom that originally aired on CBS from September 19, 2005 to March 31, 2014. The series follows the main character, Ted Mosby, and his group of friends in Manhattan. As a framing device, Ted, in the year 2030, recounts to his son and daughter the events that led him to meeting their mother.

… Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson is a serial playboy, using his relative wealth and an array of outrageous strategies to seduce women for sex with no intention of engaging in a relationship. His catchphrases include ‘Suit Up’ and ‘Legend-wait-for-it-Dary’. He is Ted’s “bro,” often jealous of Marshall for having known Ted since college. Due to his father leaving him as a young child, Barney has abandonment issues and clings to his friends. He marries Robin in the series finale but they divorce after 3 years. In 2020, after a failed one night stand, he has a daughter named Ellie.

On Warburton, from Wikipedia:

Patrick John Warburton (born November 14, 1964) is an American actor and voice actor. In television, he is known for playing David Puddy on Seinfeld, the title role on The Tick [a superhero parody], Jeb Denton on Less Than Perfect, Jeff Bingham on Rules of Engagement and Lemony Snicket on A Series of Unfortunate Events.

And on the plot of the sitcom Rules of Engagement:

Two couples and their single friend deal with the complications of dating, commitment and marriage. It looks at different relationships in various stages, starring Patrick Warburton and Megyn Price as a long-married couple, Oliver Hudson and Bianca Kajlich as newly engaged sweethearts, and David Spade and Adhir Kalyan (the latter added in season 3) as their still-single friends. They often gather to enjoy a meal and discuss their issues at “The Island Diner”. (Wikipedia link)

The Warburton and Price characters are constantly negotiating having sex, which brings us many shots of a shirtless Warburton, as here:

(#3)

Warburton is a solid, beefy bear of a man, with a “natural”, rather than gym-boy, physique (note the hint of love handles). In Series, he always appears fully clothed, almost always in a dark business suit (as in #2). And in that show (and in some others) his tone is always wry, and even if you can’t see it, one eyebrow is raised.

Digression on camping it up. In a 12/3/16 posting “Camping it up”, I wrote about a Steam Room Stories episode, the expression camping it up (in the episode, camping it up is used as an in-group marker, for use by gay men with gay men, as a kind of bonding ritual), and the British actor Julian Clary (who camps it up a lot, rather sweetly, in public).

Series plays it for laughs, plays it over the top, to the point of camping it up, thus casting a gay lavender light over everything and disposing you to think that the male characters might be gay.

On the idiom play for laughs, from the TV Tropes website:

If something is played for laughs, it means it is being used with the intention to be comedic. It is often a parody of the instances where said device or trope is used seriously.

On the idiom over the top from NOAD2:

informal to an excessive or exaggerated degree, in particular so as to go beyond reasonable or acceptable limits: his reactions had been a bit over the top.

And then some relevant entries from GDoS:

noun camp: (also campery, campiness, camping) flamboyance, overt exhibitionism; usu. but not invariably applied to homosexuals [first cite 1932, from Scarlet Pansy]

verb camp to act ostentatiously and outrageously in a homosexual manner, although by no means restricted – verbally or physcally – to the gay world [first cite 1910]

verb camp about (also camp around, camp it up): of a man, to act in a deliberate and exaggeratedly effeminate manner; used of effeminate male homosexuals and those who, maliciously or otherwise, are attempting to mimic them [first cite 1962]

adjective campy: ostentatious, affected, effeminate [first cite 1932, Scarlet Pansy again]

All of this vocabulary can be used to refer to merely extravagant, exhibitionistic, or outrageous behavior, but a connotation of effeminacy, or merely gayness, persists. That connotation colors our view of all the male characters in the campy Series, even Warburton’s character, thanks to his slyness.

More to come on this theme in a little while. Meanwhile, back to the featured actors.

On Cusack, from Wikipedia:

Joan Cusack (… born October 11, 1962), is an American actress. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in the romantic comedy-drama Working Girl (1988) and the romantic comedy In & Out (1997)

… Cusack was a cast member on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1986. She starred on the Showtime hit drama/comedy Shameless as Sheila Gallagher (née Jackson), a role for which she has received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, winning for the first time in 2015. She is the sister of actors Ann and John Cusack.

(#4)

Cusack’s characters are almost always highly strung (as in Series). In Shameless, her character Sheila is beyond highly strung, into out-of-control, even deranged, territory: she’s cripplingly agoraphobic, compulsively orderly, hypersexual, and sexually kinky.

On Freeman, from Wikipedia:

Kenneth Todd Freeman (born July 9, 1965) is an American actor in theatre, television, and film.

… Freeman has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois since 1993 [and has appeared on stage in Wicked and Airline Highway].

… He has also had supporting roles in various films such as Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), The Cider House Rules (1999), and The Dark Knight (2008). On television, he is perhaps best known for his recurring role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as “Mr. Trick”.

The character’s Buffyverse Wiki identifies him as a young vampire and the leading minion of Kakistos and, later, Sunnydale’s Mayor Richard Wilkins, adding that:

Unlike his ancient master [Kakistos], Mr. Trick was a modernist technophile at heart. He considered time-honored customs like hunting outdated, enjoying the amenities of modern occidental life, such as fast food employees, [and] pizza delivery boys

A definitely campy character.

The actor in a nice p.r. photo:

(#4)

In Series, Freeman plays Arthur Poe, the Baudelaire parents’ family banker, in charge of placing the children in the care of a suitable guardian; he’s generally venal, but sometimes merely deluded.

On the amazing (and astonishingly hard-working) Woodard, from Wikipedia:

Alfre Woodard (born November 8, 1952) is an American film, stage, and television actress, producer, and political activist. Woodard has been named one of the most versatile and accomplished actors of her generation.

Woodard began her acting career in theater. After her breakthrough role in the Off-Broadway play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1977), she made her film debut in Remember My Name (1978). In 1983, she won major critical praise … for her role in Cross Creek. In the same year, Woodard won her first Primetime Emmy Award for her performance in the NBC drama series Hill Street Blues. Later in the 1980s, Woodard had leading Emmy Award-nominated performances in a number of made for television movies, and another Emmy-winning role as a woman dying of leukemia in the pilot episode of L.A. Law. She also starred as Dr. Roxanne Turner in the NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere

And that just gets her up to 1990; there’s a lot more. A nice p.r. photo of her:

(#5)

In Series, her Aunt Josephine is deranged (but sweet) and generally over the top.

Back to campiness. As I said above, the decidedly campy tone of Series tends to cast a lavender light on all the male characters. And then, by extension, on the actors who play those characters. On every evidence, Warburton is uncomplicatedly straight, while NPH is openly, even celebratorily, gay — but his natural presentation of self is as normatively masculine, not at all campy. (He can of course do campy; he’s a versatile, accomplished actor. And in Series, he does one episode in drag.)

That leaves Freeman, who’s an intriguing cipher. Freeman has taken several gay parts (not especially common for black actors), he’s never been married, and none of the sources about him say a word about his private life — indicators which, taken together, would suggest that he’s a closeted gay man. Staying in the closet wouldn’t be at all surprising for a black male actor: being out would risk career suicide for a black man, so the the number of out black male actors is ridiculously small.

Another, simpler case: the hard-working black actor Ron Glass, who had two standout roles in his long life in acting, until he died at age 71 late last year. From Wikipedia:

Ronald Earle “Ron” Glass (July 10, 1945 – November 25, 2016) was an American actor. He was known for his roles as literary Det. Ron Harris in the television sitcom Barney Miller (1975–1982), and as the spiritual Shepherd Derrial Book in the 2002 science fiction series Firefly and its sequel film Serenity.

His character Harris was impeccably dressed, intellectual, precise, even prissy — one “type” of gay man —  and he pinged my gaydar 40 years ago in Barney Miller (and then again much more recently in Firefly). Glass as Harris:

(#6)

The actor was, by all accounts, charming and funny, and his homosexuality was an open secret in Hollywood for many decades (though he never came out). He frequented gay places in West Hollywood and apparently had an affair with actor Tony Geary from General Hospital, during which they often appeared together in public as a couple. He’s also said to have been rather effeminate and sometimes sweetly campy. Most of the people he worked with must have known he was gay, but still he seems to have thought that his career would have been threatened by his coming out. And maybe he was right.

(Men’s underwear alert! Premium grade, but still…)

Harry stumbled one day into the neighborhood
Force field and was 22-Coded, became
Hunky, a super-beast of enormous
Strength, intense
Sexuality, and a
Fabulous body, with the power to
Transform himself —

Split into two men,

(#1)

Mirror-clone himself,

(#2)

Zoom in to enlarge himself

(#3)

Plus, he got the Cruise of Death, the stare that
Makes men melt before him, serve his needs. The

Hot underwear was an
Unexpected bonus.

(#1 was yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad; #2 and #3 are from the Code 22 website. The company has stores in Amsterdam and in Tarragona, Spain. It boasts that its materials are all European and that its clothing is European-made; it even has a .eu e-address. Go EU!)

The ad copy from DJ is a distillation of the company’s own copy (I’ve boldfaced my favorite sentence):

CODE 22 is an expression of defining men’s underwear and sportswear design. It gives meaning to the words balance, confidence and masculinity. CODE 22 is a concept born from the spirit of innovation and created for men who are in need of minimal yet elegant creations.

I don’t know about balance and confidence, but the ads have masculinity in spades: the models look testosterone-crazed, with absurdly ripped bodies. (Not that those are bad things in an underwear model. Just not so good in a real guy.)

In any case, the p.r. copy for premium men’s underwear tends to be profoundly serious: elevated and sweeping, both grandiose and worshipful in tone. And therefore risible. I mean: funny as hell.

Yes, another man in underwear… There will be plain sex talk, too.

The Daily Jocks ad from 2/10:

  (#1)

They looked upon him, found him
Wonderful, fabulous, a mighty man —
Unanimously accepted him as their
Prince everlasting — and
Had him bronzed.

Two contributions here.

First, a friend reported to me that a guy she knew was sending her dick pix, of his (admittedly) enormous prick, which he was inordinately proud of. What, she wondered, did he expect her to do with it? (She and I have had chats about really big cocks and the challenges they present. Our joint feeling was that they were mostly objects to be admired as living art, but to be dealt with manually as sexual organs.)

My suggestion was that she should have it bronzed.

Little digression on bronzing:

Bronzing is a process by which a bronze-like surface is applied to other materials (metallic or non-metallic). Some bronzing processes are merely simulated finishes (patinas) applied to existing metal surfaces, or coatings of powdered metal that give the appearance of a solid metal surface. In other cases, an actual layer of heavy copper is electroplated onto an object to produce a bronze-like surface. This electroplating is the method traditionally used for “bronzing” of baby shoes, but to electroplate a non-conductive item like a baby shoe, a conductive material must first be applied, then the copper plating is done. (Wikipedia link)

Then, the noun bronze took me to Bonzo:

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (also known as The Bonzo Dog Band) was created by a group of British art-school students in the 1960s. Combining elements of music hall, trad jazz and psychedelic pop with surreal humour and avant-garde art, the Bonzos came to the public attention through a 1968 ITV comedy show, Do Not Adjust Your Set.

… Bonzo the dog after a popular British cartoon character created by artist George Studdy in the 1920s. (Wikipedia link)

You can listen here to one of my favorite Bonzos tracks, “The Intro and the utro” (1967).

A Studdy sketch of Bonzo:
  (#2)

A truly enormous amount of Bonziana, of all kinds, was produced back in the 1920s and thereafter. And yes, there were — oh joy! — bronzed Bonzos, lots of them, of many different sorts. Here’s a Bonzo bronzed plated car mascot:

  (#3)

To put it all together, there are (of course) bronze phalluses, tons of them, from ancient Chinese to thoroughly modern (phalluses are objects of power, luck, and awe) — including this startling cast bronze penis doorpull (from a collection of phallic hardware, faucets, and barware on this site):

  (#4)

See: you can have it bronzed.

Recently the admirable Margalit Fox has been posting on Facebook a series “Demented P.R. Pitch of the Day” (Margalit seems to read more of her nonsense mail than I do). I’ll give the two most recent examples and then turn to some long-standing advertising themes in my own postings: absurd ad copy for premium men’s underwear and for gay porn. (So, yes, in the second case there will be some incidental sex talk.)

(Note: I refer to Margali Fox by her first name because we’re acquaintances — and both linguists.)

A photo of MF by Ivan Farkas:

(#1)

A posting of mine of 11/21/14 has a section on her and her work, both the many wonderful obits for the New York Times and her two books on language-related subjects.

But on to the demented p.r. pitches. #2, on 2/14:

Imagine if all of a sudden the spigot of wealthy foreigners and their cash was somehow choked off from the American real estate market? There is no doubt that the country’s real estate market would crumble.

I would love to introduce you to __ , a Manhattan based international real estate attorney, who for over 20 years, represented international high-net worth investors, world leaders and foreign billionaires in private equity, commercial, and residential real estate transactions.

__ [is] more than happy to talk about whether Donald Trump’s foreign policies so far are derailing the American real estate market. …

The first question here is: Why Margalit?

(I realize now that I do get regular e-mail from people asking me to join them in “exciting business opportunities” — but nothing as elaborate, and indirect, as the pitch above.)

Then #3, from 2/17:

Hello Margalit!

I hope you are well and having a great week! I wanted to personally connect with you to see if I can schedule a time for you to interview __ from Shark Tank and product development expert, __ . …

This is timely because they just came out with the book __, which … is filled with step by step instructions to give a winning pitch that may just land you a spot in the Shark Tank.

TOPICS THEY CAN DISCUSS:
Become The Person Of Influence
Real Life Behind The Scenes Of Shark Tank
Insider Tips Of How To Get On Shark Tank …
How Not To Blow Your Funding Before You’re On The Market
On my end I will handle the logistics of the interview and ensure we promote to our thousands of followers on social media.
Eager to hear your thoughts! I am open to any suggestions you have for the interview.

To understand this at all, you have to know this:

Shark Tank is an American reality television series that premiered on August 9, 2009, on ABC. The show is a franchise of the international format Dragons’ Den, which originated in Japan in 2001. Shark Tank shows aspiring entrepreneur-contestants as they make business presentations to a panel of “shark” investors, who then choose whether or not to invest. (Wikipedia link)

I’m pretty sure Margalit has never expressed any sort of interest in being on Shark Tank — but then the spam comments on this blog (well over 5 million so far) have recently included a whole bunch advertising erotic massage in Bucharest (yes, Bucharest, Romania). If I wanted erotic massage, I’d hire a guy on the SF Peninsula, and would not be enticed by a young woman in Bucharest.

Again, a striking fact about the pitches that Margalit gets is how elaborate they are — way beyond “I would like to talk with you about a mutual business opportunity” or “I am young Russian girl in your neighborhood and want to know you better”.

In the world of underwear. Specifically, premium men’s underwear companies, which advertise to an upscale international audience, many of whom are gay men, so they’re trying to balance appeals to the comfortable and sensuous feel of the goods (for men in general) and to raw sexiness (for gay men in particular), while covering these with a veneer of high purpose, artistry, scientific design, and snob appeal. That gives us things like the following, from a posting yesterday:

CODE 22 is an expression of defining men’s underwear and sportswear design. It gives meaning to the words balance, confidence and masculinity. CODE 22 is a concept born from the spirit of innovation and created for men who are in need of minimal yet elegant creations.

the p.r. copy for premium men’s underwear tends to be profoundly serious: elevated and sweeping, both grandiose and worshipful in tone. And therefore risible. I mean: funny as hell.

Especially funny since the high-toned copy is paired with images of extremely hot nearly naked men looking conspicuously masculine (and, usually, seductive). So we get a disjuncture between the carnal draw of visible fantasy bodies plus almost-visible dicks and little faux-philosophical treatises on the higher nature of men’s underwear. The point, of course, is to engage men’s identification with or desire for the models in the ads — that sells underwear — while soothing their anxieties over these feelings.

Not all the ads have text as absurd as this one, but a great many do. An evergreen source of entertainment, for me, anyway.

All agog at gay porn. In the case of advertising copy for gay porn, there’s little anxiety to allay — prospective buyers are well-disposed towards the product, are probably always on the lookout for it. The copywriter’s job is to convince them that this particular flick will do the trick for them, to entice them with hot copy, copy that’s crude, thick with sex, and itself arousing, but that also plugs into their previous experiences jacking off to porn: this is just the sort of thing you like, buddy (an appeal to familiarity), but even better than what you’ve had (an appeal to freshness). Your favorite stuff, but new and improved!

This means that unless you can find unbiased reviews, you won’t learn much about a flick from the ads, since they’re always (way) over the top with enthusiastic positives, descriptions of hot bodies, thumbnail accounts of hot man-on-man action, and lots of (often conventional) porn talk. What you can learn from the ads is the special interests a flick caters to: black guys, military men, lots of anal, watersports, t-rooms, bareback, cute twinks, gangbangs, huge cocks, romance, whatever. Beyond that, every ad tells you, shouts at you, that the action is hot hot hot. (In actuality, there’s a huge range of craft in gay porn, so that the copy can easily lead a gay lad astray, suck him into buying a video that’s mostly a stinker, except maybe for one serviceable scene.)

My most recent posting on gay porn, on the 18th, about Stud Finder (great name), quotes a breathless piece of ad copy, with interpolated comments of mine:

Got hung? You need to find some wood and steel, and you need it soon. Hold the tool in your hand and guide it carefully until it hits the spot… [a little forest of phallic vocabulary] or just let TitanMen Trenton Ducati and Hunter Marx be your Stud Finders, leading the charge as a group of utility players get sweatier and hornier by the second. A basement workshop heats up as Hunter Marx and Will Swagger [hard to beat as a porn name] take turns sucking each other before the hairy Hunter plows his bud’s hole. After a passionate suck exchange, buddies Ford Andrews and Jed Athens are soon under the spell of alpha-stud Trenton Ducati, whose energy takes control. Handyman Race Cooper’s ass is too much for co-worker Stany Falcone to resist; watch the duo’s tight abs and muscled bods glisten as they get breathless together. [glisten is a great porn verb]

For the genre, this is relatively restrained. Points worth noting, beyond the ones above: sweatier and hornier, the hairy Hunter, plows, suck exchange, alpha-stud, tight abs, muscled bods, breathless. No one talks like this in eveyday conversation; it’s in a special porn register. And since the porn talk is so thick and dense, it’s absurd, and funny.

Many earlier examples on this blog and AZBlogX. Not a lot of guidance for the discerning shopper, but thoroughly enoyable.

… hails from New Zealand. Pana Hema Taylor (or Hema-Taylor), who I recently watched in the first season of the New Zealand detective series The Brokenwood Mysteries, in which he plays Jared Morehu. The man in a p.r. head shot:

(#1)

Hema Taylor has a sturdy physique, a powerful but attractive face, and a strong physical presence – definitely a hunk.

On the show,  from Wikipedia:

The Brokenwood Mysteries is a New Zealand detective drama television series that premiered on Prime in 2014. The program is set in a fictitious New Zealand town of Brokenwood and was filmed in the greater Auckland region.

Synopsis: Detective Inspector Mike Shepherd [Neill Rea] is sent from Auckland to Brokenwood to assist the local police with a possible murder investigation. Brokenwood is a seemingly quiet country town, where Shepherd, who has an unconventional approach to his task, works with local Detective Constable Kristin Sims [Fern Sutherland], who is precise and efficient at her job, to solve murder mysteries. As the series progresses the working relationship between the two moves from rocky to functional as the two get to appreciate each other’s talents. [Sims is the imperturble one, Shepherd the volatile one.]

… Pana Hema Taylor [plays] Jared Morehu, Mike’s Maori neighbor. As a local who has many friends and interests, he often finds himself involved in the murder investigations.

And on the actor, from a Wikipedia article that refers to him by his first name throughout:

Pana [Lawrence] Hema Taylor (born 1989) is a New Zealand television actor of Māori heritage, best known for his roles in Spartacus, The Brokenwood Mysteries [as Jared] and Westside.

Pana was first seen on TV in 2007 on the Māori language educational series Whanau. He has since worked on various New Zealand feature films including Boy and Kawa. Pana is best known for his work in the Starz television series Spartacus: Vengeance and Spartacus: War of the Damned, playing the role of the Syrian rebel Nasir. In 2014 he was cast as Mana in the New Zealand action film The Dead Lands.

He is currently starring as Jared in The Brokenwood Mysteries and as Bert in Westside.

A (mostly) shirtless shot of Hema Taylor in costume in Spartacus:

(#2)

In Brokenwood, his character Jared is a strongly masculine strongly working-class character, quite amiable (easy-going, with a ready smile and a wide circle of friends), able in many ways (some of them surprising: in the second episode he turns out to be a talented wine-taster). A pleasure to watch. (And listen for the Kiwi vowels.)

Who drags Ashton Kutcher along with him. Since I have my shallow moments, there will also be shirtless photos, of Grace, of young Kutcher, and of more recent Kutcher. But first, about the actors and the tv show that made them famous.

Start with the show.

From Wikipedia:

That ’70s Show is an American television period sitcom that originally aired on Fox from August 23, 1998, to May 18, 2006. The series focused on the lives of a group of teenage friends living in the fictional suburban town of Point Place, Wisconsin, from May 17, 1976, to December 31, 1979.

The main teenage cast members were Topher Grace, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Danny Masterson, Laura Prepon and Wilmer Valderrama. The main adult cast members were Debra Jo Rupp, Kurtwood Smith, Don Stark, Tommy Chong and Tanya Roberts.

(#1)

The teen actors, left to right: back row Prepon, Grace, Kunis, Masterson; front row Kutcher, Valderrama

… The show addressed social issues of the 1970s such as sexism, sexual attitudes, generational conflict, the economic hardships of the 1970s recession, mistrust of the American government by blue-collar workers and teenage drug use, including underage drinking. The series also highlighted developments in the entertainment industry, including the television remote (“the clicker”), the video game Pong, MAD magazine, and Eric’s obsession with Star Wars. The show has been compared to Happy Days, which was similarly set 20 years before the time in which it aired.

… Topher Grace as Eric Forman …: Eric is a nice guy, generally geeky, physically slight and somewhat clumsy. He is a smart-aleck with a fast wit and a deadpan sense of humor. He convinces his parents to let his best friend Steven Hyde move in with them, making Hyde like a brother. His father Red is always hard on him. Eric is in a relationship with his longtime love and neighbor Donna Pinciotti [played by Laura Prepon — mentioned in a 2/14/14 posting on this blog — as a strong, steady character].

… Ashton Kutcher as Michael Kelso (seasons 1–7; recurring, season 8): The dim-witted [and goofy] pretty boy of the group wants to coast through life on his good looks. Often referred to as “The King” in many episodes, he spends the first half of the series in a relationship with the equally vapid Jackie [Burkhart, played by Mila Kunis], but their relationship comes to an end when Laurie (Eric’s older sister) reveals their affair. His best friends are Hyde [the rebel of the set, played by Danny Masterson] and Fez (a foreign exchange student, played by Wilmer Valderrama].

On to Grace. In a screen shot from the show:

(#2)

From Wikipedia:

Christopher John “Topher” Grace (… born July 12, 1978) is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of Eric Forman on the Fox sitcom That ’70s Show, Eddie Brock/Venom in the Sam Raimi film Spider-Man 3, Carter Duryea in the film In Good Company and Edwin in the 2010 film Predators.

(The usual nickname for Christopher is Chris, but Topher is another possibility.)

Then Grace being pleasantly shirtless:

(#3)

No fully clothed photos of Kutcher here; you can find them everywhere. But about the man, from Wikipedia:

Christopher Ashton Kutcher (… born February 7, 1978) is an American actor and investor. Kutcher began his career as a model and began his acting career portraying Michael Kelso in the Fox sitcom That ’70s Show, which aired for eight seasons. He made his film debut in the romantic comedy Coming Soon and became known by audiences in the comedy film Dude, Where’s My Car?

… Kutcher subsequently appeared in [many] romantic comedies [and some sitcoms] … and portrayed Steve Jobs in the biographical film Jobs

He continued to specialize in comedies, but also expanded the range of his acting. And also altered himself physically. AK as a young man, modelling for Calvin Klein and displaying his (then) lean and lanky body:

(#5)

And then more recently, displaying Buff Ashton

(#6)

For me, the main news from the Academy Awards last night was the triumph of the movie Moonlight, an innovative masterpiece that succeeded despite a tiny budget and a story situated amost entirely in a black world, with a central character who’s a (suppressed) gay man, and featuring a cast of mostly sympathetic, indeed moving, characters located in a rich socal context that is, however, unflinchingly shown as involving illegal drugs, jail time, and occasionally erupting frightening violence (along with friendship, affection, and a system of social support that operates in a subculture almost entirely out of sight of mainstream culture).

I should add that the nominees for the various awards included a large number of really excellent films: the best picture nominees had three fine powerfully black-themed movies (Moonlight, Fences, Hidden Figures), the language-themed movie Arrival, and the frothy, celebratory (but apparently rather conventional) musical La La Land.

I’ll say more about Moonlight (which I wrote an enthusiastic appreciation of here back on 11/24/16) at the Academy Awards in a moment, but as a lead-in to this morning’s Moonlight news, about a Calvin Klein photo shoot celebrating the company’s signing Moonlight stars Mahershala Ali and Trevante Rhodes as — whew! — underwear models. (By the way, both of these men give great interview.)

The Oscar news: Mahershala Ali won for best supporting actor and became the first Muslim actor to ever win an Oscar (Ali grew up in Oakland CA and converted to Islam as a teenager); it’s the first movie with LGBTQ characters at its center to ever win the best picture award; it also won the award for best writing (adapted screenplay) for Barry Jenkins; and it was nominated for five other Academy Awards, including best supporting actress for Naomie Harris, best director for Barry Jenkins, best original music score for Nicholas Britell and best cinematography for James Laxton. (My earlier posting commented some on the score and cinematography, both of which blew me away.)

On to this morning’s CK news, reported in lots of places. From the Racked website, “Calvin Klein’s New Underwear Ad Stars? The Cast of ‘Moonlight’” by Eliza Brooke:

Calvin Klein’s new creative team couldn’t have planned it better if they’d tried. Hot off Mahershala Ali’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar win for Moonlight — and even more notably, Moonlight’s surprise Best Picture win after La La Land was mistakenly announced as the victor — a new underwear ad emerged on Monday morning featuring the film’s [male] stars: Ali, Alex Hibbert [now 12 years old], Trevante Rhodes, and Ashton Sanders [now 21 years old].

(#1)

Mahershala Ali head shot, lovingly photographed by the CK studio

While the timing is perfect, this casting isn’t a total surprise. Calvin Klein dressed Hibbert, Rhodes, and Sanders for the Academy Awards (Ali wore Zegna), and the New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman pointed out on Twitter that a number of the actors attended the all-American brand’s runway show earlier this month.

The expressive black-and-white portraits are among the first advertising images we’ve seen from Calvin Klein chief creative officer Raf Simons and creative director Pieter Mulier, who were jointly appointed to these roles in early August. The team’s first campaign emerged in the lead-up to New York Fashion Week, and from its heavy use of abstract paintings and gangly models, it was clear that Simons and Mulier were seeking a more elevated, artistic way of selling branded briefs than casting Justin Bieber and Kendall Jenner.

Ali in an underwear shot, and Rhodes in an especially steamy underwear shot:

(#2)

(#3)

Ali plays a supporting character in the first third of the movie, Rhodes the central character Chiron (as an adult) in the third part. Then there are the kids: Hibbert, playing the child Chiron in the first part, and Sanders, playing the teenage Chiron in the second, here from CK:

(#4)

(#5)

A non-sexual photo of Rhodes, on the cover of the March 2017 Out magazine (which has an interview with the actor):

(#6)

Now, to respond to people who wonder why they might want to watch a film entirely about a black faggot in dysfunctional, drug-addled ghettoes (look back at my first paragraph above), I’m going to quote, in its entirety, the piece by Hilton Als in the 10/24/16 New Yorker, ““Moonlight” Undoes Our Expectations: By avoiding the overblown clichés so often used to represent black American life in film, Barry Jenkins has created something achingly alive” — the review that convinced me this was a movie I really wanted to see (I’ve now seen it twice, and will buy the DVD when it comes out); not surprisingly, Als’s reviews and my shorter appreciation are largely complementary):

Did I ever imagine, during my anxious, closeted childhood, that I’d live long enough to see a movie like “Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins’s brilliant, achingly alive new work about black queerness? Did any gay man who came of age, as I did, in the era of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and aids, think he’d survive to see a version of his life told onscreen with such knowledge, unpredictability, and grace? Based on a story by the gay black playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney — Jenkins himself is not gay — the film is virtuosic in part because of Jenkins’s eye and in part because of the tale it tells, which begins in nineteen-eighties Miami.

Four white Miami-Dade police officers have beaten a young black man to death and been acquitted of manslaughter, setting off riots in the city’s black enclaves — Liberty City, Overtown, and elsewhere. It’s hard for a man of color walking those sun-bleached streets not to watch his back or feel that his days are numbered. That’s how Juan (the beautiful Mahershala Ali) carries himself — defensively, warily. He’s a dope dealer, so there’s that, too. He may be a boss on the streets — his black do-rag is his crown — but he’s intelligent enough to know that he’s expendable, that real power doesn’t belong to men like him. Crack is spreading through the city like a fever. Stepping out of his car, Juan asks a cranky drug runner what’s up. (Jenkins and his ardent cinematographer, James Laxton, film the car as if it were a kind of enclosed throne.) Juan, his mouth fixed in a pout — sometimes he sucks on his tongue, as if it were a pacifier — doesn’t take his eyes off the street. He can’t afford to; this situation, any situation, could be changed in an instant by a gun or a knife.

In this world, which is framed by the violence to come — because it will come — Juan sees a skinny kid running, his backpack flapping behind him. He’s being pursued by a group of boys, and he ducks into a condemned building to escape. Juan follows, entering through a blasted-out window, a symbol, perhaps, of the ruin left by the riots. Inside, in a dark, silent space, the kid stares at Juan, and Juan stares at the kid. There’s a kind of mirroring going on. Maybe Juan is looking at his past while the boy looks up at a future he didn’t know he could have. It’s a disorienting scene, not so much because of what happens as because of what doesn’t happen. Throughout the movie, Jenkins avoids what I call Negro hyperbole — the overblown clichés that are so often used to represent black American life. For instance, Juan doesn’t take that runaway kid under his wing in order to pimp him out and turn him into a drug runner; instead, he brings him home to feed him, nourish him.

Juan lives in a small, unassuming house with his soft-spoken but confident partner, Teresa (played by the singer Janelle Monáe). The couple look on as the kid eats and eats; it’s clear, though, that he’s hungry for more than food. The boy doesn’t even say his name, Chiron, until Juan nudges him: “You don’t talk much but you damn sure can eat.” The affectionate scolding makes Chiron (Alex Hibbert, a first-time actor, who couldn’t be better) sit up and take notice; it tells him that he counts. And he knows he counts even more when Juan calls him by his nickname — Little — as a way of claiming him.

“Faggot” is another name, and it’s one that Chiron hears often as he grows up. He’s an outsider at school, and at home, too. He lives in public housing with his single mother, Paula (Naomie Harris), who goes on drug binges, less to alleviate her sadness than to express her wrath — against the world and, especially, against her son, who she thinks keeps her from the world. Chiron lives for the moments when he can get away from his mother’s countless recriminations and needs, and swim in the unfamiliar waters of love with Juan and Teresa. One indelible scene shows Juan holding Chiron in his arms in a rippling blue ocean, teaching him to float — which is another way of teaching him the letting go that comes with trust, with love.

But, at the end of every outing, Teresa and Juan show their respect by returning Chiron home. No matter how awful Paula is, she is still Chiron’s mother. This gesture is one of many that Jenkins, who, like McCraney, was raised in Liberty City, understands from the inside out. Growing up in this community, Juan and Paula were taught to care for children, their own and others’. (There are no white characters in the film, and this is a radical move on Jenkins’s part. Whites would have introduced a different dynamic to “Moonlight.” Jenkins’s story is about a self-governing black society, no matter how fractured.) But drugs have made a mess of family, or the idea of family, and Paula gets in Juan’s face when he tries to stop her from using. She has a child, sure, but how can he talk when he’s the one selling drugs? It’s a vicious cycle, in which the characters are oppressed by everything but hope. Still, Juan does hope, if only for Chiron. That he is able to pluck that feeling out of the darkness of those Miami nights makes him a classically heroic figure: he knows his limitations, he knows that life is tragic, but he is still willing to dream.

About thirty minutes into the film, Chiron, sitting at Juan and Teresa’s orderly table, asks what a faggot is. At the screening I attended, the entire audience froze, as did the figures onscreen. Then Chiron asks if he himself is a faggot. There’s no music in this scene; no one cries; Juan doesn’t grab a gun and try to blow the slandering universe away. Instead, he takes the word apart, and doesn’t take Chiron apart with it. He knows that Chiron is marked for misery, and how will Juan’s heart bear it, let alone Chiron’s?

“Moonlight” undoes our expectations as viewers, and as human beings, too. As we watch, another movie plays in our minds, real-life footage of the many forms of damage done to black men, which can sometimes lead them to turn that hateful madness on their own kind, passing on the poison that was their inheritance. As Juan squires his fatherless friend about, we can’t help thinking, Will he abuse him? Will it happen now? Jenkins keeps the fear but not the melodrama in his film. He builds his scenes slowly, without trite dialogue or explosions. He respects our intelligence enough to let us just sit still and watch the glorious faces of his characters as they move through time. Scene follows scene with the kind of purposefulness you find in fairy tales, or in those Dickens novels about boys made and unmade by fate.

Jenkins has influences — I would guess that Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Terrence Malick, and Charles Burnett are high on the list, along with Michael Roemer’s 1964 film “Nothing But a Man,” one of the first modern black love stories to avoid buffoonery and improbability — but what really gets him going here is filmmaking itself, and the story he’s telling. Directors such as Marlon Riggs and Isaac Julien explored gay black masculinity in the nineties, but they did so in essay-films, which allowed the audience a kind of built-in distance. Of course, no one in the nineties wanted to finance films about gay black men. Twenty years later, I still don’t know how Jenkins got this flick made. [It turns out that Brad Pitt had a lot to do with it. And to his credit, though Pitt has his name listed as one of the producers, he seems to have deliberately avoided seeking publicitiy for his efforts, preferring to let Jenkins (rightly) get the credit for the work.] But he did. And it changes everything.

The film is divided into three parts, titled “Little,” “Chiron,” and “Black.” In the second part, Chiron (played now by Ashton Sanders) is a teen-ager, thin and walking with the push, resolve, and loneliness of a character for whom Billie Holiday would have given her all in a song. Like any young person, Chiron wants to be claimed bodily but is not entirely in his body. He’s growing up without much reinforcement outside Juan and Teresa’s home. Paula’s drug addiction has escalated and so has her anger. She’s a rotten baby, flailing around, as full of bile as Terrel (Patrick DeCile, in an incredible characterization), who bullies Chiron at school. So when a classmate, Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), shows Chiron something other than hostility, it feels like a kind of fantasy. Indeed, after Kevin jokes with Chiron about a girl, he dreams about Kevin having sex with her. And it’s like a dream one night when Chiron, trusting little but wanting to trust more, approaches Kevin at the beach where Juan taught him to swim.

The light-skinned Kevin has nicknamed Chiron Black, and he asks why, wondering if it’s a put-down. Kevin, who is more comfortable in his own body, says that it’s because Chiron is black; to him, it’s not an insult. This moment of confusion — about internalized self-hatred and the affection of naming — is unlike anything that’s been put onscreen before; it shows what freedom and pain can look like, all in one frame. When the boys kiss, Chiron apologizes for it, and we wince, because who among us hasn’t wanted to apologize for his presence? Intimacy makes the world, the body, feel strange. How does it make a boy who’s been rejected because of his skin color, his sexual interests, and his sensitivity feel? Kevin says, “What have you got to be sorry for?” As he works his hand down Chiron’s shorts, the camera pulls back; this is the only moment of physical intimacy in the film, and Jenkins knows that in this study of black male closeness the point isn’t to show fucking [probably not fucking, but jacking off, or sucking at the most]; it’s to show the stops and starts, the hesitation, and the rush that comes when one black male body finds pleasure and something like liberation in another.

Watching Sanders play Chiron at this stage of his life is rather like seeing Montgomery Clift act for the first time, or Gloria Foster in “Nothing But a Man.” There’s no accounting for talent like this. Sanders has a conjurer’s gifts, and an intuitive understanding of how the camera works — how it can push into an actor’s face and consciousness, and how the actor can push back against the intrusion by inhabiting the reality of the moment.

But the moment of love doesn’t last. When Terrel challenges Kevin about his attachment to Chiron, Kevin beats Chiron up, and then Terrel jumps on him, too. It’s “The Lord of the Flies” all over again: whale on sensitivity before it can get to you. In a bid to protect his dream of love, Chiron shows up at school one day and, wordlessly, breaks a chair over Terrel’s back. It’s every queer kid’s revenge fantasy, but what follows is every queer kid’s reality: fight back, and you’ll pay for it; the power does not belong to you.

In the third part of the film, Chiron (gorgeously played by Trevante Rhodes) is an adult, but still looking after his mother. She’s in rehab in Atlanta, and he has fulfilled his destiny by example: like Juan, he’s a drug dealer in a do-rag. But he doesn’t have a Teresa, doesn’t have anyone. He wears his sensitivity like a shroud around his now muscular body, which looks very black in the moonlight as he lies in bed, startled to have received a phone call from Kevin after many years. Rhodes’s portrayal of the grownup Chiron feels like a natural evolution from the earlier performances. The gold fronts that his Chiron wears are just another form of armor against longing, in a mouth that yearns to taste Kevin’s once again, to relive that forbidden love, for which black men sometimes punish one another. Rarely has the world taught them not to. But at times, when no one’s looking, love happens, just the same.

Notes on things Als doesn’t touch on, from my earlier posting:

if you’re black [in America and many other places] you never forget it, while most white people largely think of their race as insignificant. Someone should look at how Moonlight‘s characters use the noun nigger, and someone should look at their style shifting in their interactions with one another: it’s all African American black vernacular, but it’s by no means all the same.

(Hunky guy in skimpy underwear, mildly racy talk. That’s all.)

  (#1)

Born
SwimWear GrabCock,
Of a long-ago line of
Poultry thieves,
In an eccentric
Underwear-oriented
Family, with his
Brother JockStrap and his
Sister SportsBra,

SwimWear traded his natal
Surname in for
GrabBag,
Because it wasn’t necessarily
Sexual, and he liked to
Scratch his balls

A recent Daily Jocks ad, featuring a formidably upper-bodied model, with the rest of the equipment to match (especially those thighs).

Here he is on another part of the beach, amidst the black volcanic rocks, sliding a hand into a pocket  to dig for nuts:

  (#2)

(Daily Jock guys being seductive.)

Marco Marco teases, with
jock straps, singlets, and briefs

  (#1)

coyly strokes a lip,
snaps a strap,
bumps his crotch

(#2)

flaunts his body in
scanty batwear

(#3)

soulfully yearns for you.
elbow, hip thrust out

(#4)

stares you down,
night blue, hot pink,
neon green junk

From the DJ site:

Marco is an American men’s underwear, swimwear, and sportswear manufacturer named after its founder and head-fashion designer Marco Morante. The brand is arguably best known for its underwear, which include street, sport and fashion lines. Get ready for a colour burst!

Jockstraps are no longer just for sports, and this design can be worn discretely [that is, discreetly] for almost any occasion. Men who want to show off will impress others with the eye-catching … fabric with black accents.

Marco Morante is very much in the public eye as a designer of high-fashion celebrity clothing — for women, drag queens, fashion-conscious men, including gay boys. Many of his underwear models read as gay.

In my blogging backlog, two underwear images from Daily Jocks, from the Echt Apparel company (of Australia):

(#1)

The Lowe [‘Lion’] Stringer

(#2)

The Equip Stringer

The linguistic path here starts with tank top, for a type of sleeveless t-shirt. From that, by truncation, tank ‘tank top’.

Then a particular type of tank, one with thin (sometimes string-like) shoulder straps (and, usually, a deeply scooped front): the stringer tank. From that, by truncation, stringer ‘stringer tank, stringer tank top’.

So: the stringers in #1 and #2.

Stringers are especially associated with bodybuilders. The two guys above are well bulked up, but the next two are out in the further regions of muscular development:

(#3)

At the other end of the scale, we have a nicely muscled but slender young man in slim stringers (from the New Arrival company):

(#4)

Having fallen into the world of American politics in viewing the documentary I Am the Ambassador (about Rufus Gifford, until recently the US ambassador to Denmark), I went on to doing the whole 7-year run of the tv series The West Wing, which I am urging everyone to watch at least some of — as a canny depiction of American political life (Wikipedia tells us that it “received acclaim from critics, as well as praise from political science professors and former White House staffers”), as a gripping drama with an earnest moral core, and as a show worthy of praise for its snappy dialogue, inspired casting, and first-rate acting.

This posting is about just two of the actors, Mark Feuerstein and Jimmy Smits (both prominent in season 6 of the series, which I’ve just finished watching), solid members of what I’ve called the “acting corps“, the bank of accomplished and reliable actors (short of first-magnitude star rank) that make the stage, the movies, and television hum for our pleasure and enlightenment. I find them both attractive, as men and as actors — in particular, as embodiments of an “acting persona” (a more or less enduring persona that cuts across an actor’s roles).

Through Smits, that exploration will take us to another member of the acting corps, the admirable Marg Helgenberger. (I know, I know, you also want me to write about Allison Janney and Stockard Channing, among others, but there’s only so much I can do in one posting.)

On acting personas. This is an idea that I have often blogged about in connection with porn flicks, as in these comments on pornstar Kevin Wiles and his

more enduring persona, his “porn persona”, if you will, that cuts across different roles and indeed, helps to determine which roles he’s offered and which ones he’s willing to accept and how he will realize any particular role

(A porn persona is just a special case of an acting persona, of course.)

Feuerstein has already gotten a posting of his own here (on 7/21/15), mostly about his role on the tv series Royal Pains, with two photos of him smiling (smiles are important to me), one of them also showing off his physique (shirtlessness is a regular preoccupation of this blog; ok, I’m sometimes a bit shallow).  His acting persona embraces an enormous amount of charm and a significant identity as a Jew. (For Smits, it’s passionate intensity and a significant Hispanic identity. For Helgenbarger, it’s unflappable toughness.)

But here are two more photos of Feuerstein, without his customary broad smile: one shirtless, one in character as Cliff Calley on The West Wing:

(#1)

(#2)

Feuerstein is a hunk, but he’s a compact hunk: nice muscles on a 5′ 8″ body. (On a personal note, this is a body type I find quite attractive. Not just me: the actor has a huge and enthusiastic fan base.)

Smits, in contrast, is a really big man: 6′ 3″, with broad shoulders, so he’s quite imposing. Here he is on the cover of the DVD for the tv miniseries Tommyknockers:

(#3)

The Tommyknockers is a 1993 television miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. It was directed by John Power, and starred Marg Helgenberger and Jimmy Smits in the two lead roles. (Wikipedia link)

I’ll get back to Helgenberger in a moment. First, on Smits, from Wikipedia:

Jimmy Smits (born July 9, 1955) is an American actor. He played attorney Victor Sifuentes on the 1980s legal drama L.A. Law, NYPD Detective Bobby Simone on the 1990s police drama NYPD Blue, and Matt Santos on the 1999-2006 serial political drama The West Wing. He also appeared as Bail Organa in the Star Wars Prequel trilogy and Rogue One, and as ADA Miguel Prado in Dexter. In 2012, he joined the main cast of Sons of Anarchy as Nero Padilla.

… Smits’ father, Cornelis Leendert Smits, was from Paramaribo, Suriname, and was of Dutch descent. [Suriname is a multi-ethnic country, with Dutch as the primary first language, and the English-based creole Sranan as the second.] Smits’ mother, Emilina (née Pola), was Puerto Rican, born in Peñuelas. He has two sisters, Yvonne and Diana, grew up in a working-class neighborhood, and spent time in Puerto Rico during his childhood.

Smits identifies himself as Puerto Rican and was raised in a strict, devout Roman Catholic family. He frequently visits Puerto Rico.

The actor is passionate about Hispanic causes, especially advocating education for Latino youth — a stance mirrored in some detail in his character, Democratic presidential candidate Matt Santos, on The West Wing. In real life, the man is focused and intense, and that’s part of his acting persona as well. But he also has a great smile:

(#4)

And he has a wide streak of playfulness, as manifested (for instance) in his send-up of the Cisco Kid, in a 1994 movie that had Cheech Marin playing his sidekick:

(#5)

And, much more pointedly, in a delicious Saturday Night Live skit (Season 16, 1990) — which you can watch here — in which NBC News employees (Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Julia Sweeney) over-emphasize Spanish pronunciations, but the new economics correspondent (Antonio Mendoza, played by Smits), who’s actually Hispanic, refuses to, and who eventually explodes in anger over the others’ absurd shifts into hyper-Spanish pronunciations of Spanish names and other lexical items.

Marg Helgenberger. From Wikipedia:

Mary Marg Helgenberger (born November 16, 1958) is an American actress. She began her career in the early 1980s and first came to attention for playing the role of Siobhan Ryan on the daytime soap opera Ryan’s Hope from 1982 to 1986. She is best known for her roles as Catherine Willows in the CBS police procedural drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–12, 2013) and the subsequent TV movie Immortality (2015) and as K.C. Koloski in the ABC drama China Beach (1988–91), which earned her the 1990 Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.

In her character as Catherine Willows on CSI:

(#6)

And looking glamorous, in p.r. for the tv series Intelligence:

(#7)

… of very different body types. Things saved up for some time, now to put them out.

Sage Brocklebank (Psych); Jordan Gavaris and Dylan Bruce (Orphan Black); John Wesley Shipp and Grant Gustin (The Flash).

Brocklebank. If his stage name is Sage Brocklebank, you can pretty much bet that’s his real name (cf. Meryl Streep). From Wikipedia:

Sage Brocklebank (born January 14, 1978) is a Canadian actor best known for his role as Buzz McNab, a long-standing role on the comedy-drama Psych. He also produces movies and writes for theater and film.

He’s a tall man (6´5˝) with broad shoulders, clearly a hunk:

(#1)

He seems not to appear shirtless, but I can live with that.

On his Psych character:

Officer (Junior Detective (season 8) [his promotion is a very big thing]) Buzz McNab (Sage Brocklebank) is a member of the SBPD [Santa Barbara Police Department], who occasionally works with Detectives Lassiter [Carlton Lassiter, played by Timothy Osmundson] and O’Hara [Juliet “Jules” O’Hara, played by Maggie Lawson], as well as Shawn and Gus [the centra characters, Shawn Spencer (played by James Roday) and Burton “Gus” Guster (played by Dulé Hill)]. McNab is a naive, lovable cop who is always eager to please Lassiter, even though Lassiter doesn’t always treat him well.

The character just radiates sweetness. All the other characters are interestingly neurotic, but McNab is even-tempered, well-intentioned, and empathetic, though sometimes bumbling. Here’s Brocklebank in character:

(#2)

and in a scene with Harris Trout (played by Anthony Michael Hall):

(#3)

Harris Trout is a consultant hired by the mayor to whip the SBPD back into shape in “No Trout About It”. He was made the interim police chief at the end of the episode. He is fired as interim police chief at the end of “Someone’s Got a Woody”, due to his dangerous handling of a hostage situation.

In #3 it has come out that McNab has been moonlighting as a male stripper. The dialogue:

Trout: How about you, Magic Mike? [allusion to the male-stripper movie of that name]

Buzz: I actually dance by the name “Morning Wood”.

It’s good-paying, enjoyable work, and McNab has no problem with it. Note that he’s smiling in all three of these shots.

Earlier postings about the show: on 4/4/15, in a posting about Cybill Shepherd, this Wikipedia material:

Psych is an American detective comedy-drama television series created by Steve Franks and broadcast on USA Network with syndication reruns on ION Television… The series stars James Roday as Shawn Spencer, a young crime consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department whose “heightened observational skills” and impressive detective instincts allow him to convince people that he solves cases with psychic abilities. The program also stars Dulé Hill as Shawn’s best friend and reluctant partner Burton “Gus” Guster [who is black], as well as Corbin Bernsen as Shawn’s father, Henry, a former officer of the Santa Barbara Police Department.

… Madeleine Spencer (Cybill Shepherd) is a police psychologist who is Shawn’s mother and Henry’s ex-wife.

And on 6/23/16, a posting on a moment in S1 E11 when Shawn advises “Lassie” (Lassiter), on attracting women by displaying sternum bush ‘chest hair’.

Orphan Black: Gavaris. Now for something completely different. The premise of the show, from Wikipedia:

Orphan Black is a Canadian science fiction thriller television series created by screenwriter Graeme Manson and director John Fawcett, starring Tatiana Maslany as several identical people who are clones. The series focuses on Sarah Manning, a woman who assumes the identity of one of her fellow clones, Elizabeth Childs, after witnessing Childs’ suicide. The series raises issues about the moral and ethical implications of human cloning, and its effect on issues of personal identity.

Tatiana Maslany [plays] Sarah Manning, and a number of clones …, all born in 1984 to various women by in vitro fertilization.

It’s Maslany’s show, a real tour de force. But there are several central male characters, one played by:

Jordan Gavaris as Felix (“Fe”) Dawkins, Sarah’s foster brother and confidant. He identifies as a modern artist and moonlights as a prostitute. He is the first person Sarah confides in about the existence of clones.

Canadian actor Gavaris (born September 25, 1989) is a hoot in his role as the flamboyantly gay Felix, also with an eerily convincing British accent of his own creation. (Gavaris has snapped back at critics who complain that his faggy character shows gays in a bad light, saying that it’s insulting to insist that queers must be presented only as “straight-acting”.) In one scene he’s tasked with baby-sitting his niece and nephew, and introduces them to the pleasures of cross-dressing.

Felix is a slim leather twink:

(#4)

And he loves to show off his body as much as he can. Here he is painting bare-assed (and a very cute ass it is):

(#5)

Orphan Black: Bruce. Then there’s

Dylan Bruce as Paul Dierden, an ex-military mercenary, who is Beth’s monitor and boyfriend.

Bruce is an athletic muscle-hunk (yet a third body type in this survey):

(#6)

His Wikipedia page tells us that he’s a Canadian actor born April 21, 1980, also known for his role as Chris Hughes on the CBS daytime soap opera As the World Turns.

The Flash. Now to the complexity of the DC Comics world. On the character, from Wikipedia:

The Flash is the name of several fictional characters appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert, the original Flash first appeared in Flash Comics #1 (January 1940). Nicknamed the “Scarlet Speedster”, all incarnations of the Flash possess “super speed”, which includes the ability to run and move extremely fast, use superhuman reflexes, and seemingly violate certain laws of physics.

Thus far, four different characters – each of whom somehow gained the power of “super-speed” – have assumed the mantle of the Flash in DC’s history: college athlete Jay Garrick (1940–1951, 1961-present), forensic scientist Barry Allen (1956–1985, 2008–present), Barry’s nephew Wally West (1986–2011, 2016–present), and Barry’s grandson Bart Allen (2006–2007). Each incarnation of the Flash has been a key member of at least one of DC’s premier teams: the Justice Society of America, the Justice League, and the Teen Titans.

Specifically on Barry Allen, from Wikipedia:

The Flash (Barry Allen) is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Barry Allen is the second character to be known as the Flash. The character first appeared in Showcase #4 (October 1956), created by writer Robert Kanigher and penciler Carmine Infantino. His name combines talk show hosts Barry Gray and Steve Allen. Barry Allen is a reinvention of a previous character called The Flash that had appeared in 1940s comic books as the character Jay Garrick.

The Flash’s power consists mainly of superhuman speed. His abilities allow him to move at the speed of light, and in some stories, even beyond that real-world limit. Various other effects such as intangibility are also attributed to his ability to control the speed of molecular vibrations. The Flash wears a distinct red and gold costume treated to resist friction and wind resistance, traditionally storing the costume compressed inside a ring.

Barry’s classic stories introduced the concept of the Multiverse to DC Comics, and this concept played a large part in DC’s various continuity reboots over the years.

An early comic book version of the character:

(#7)

Out of all this, I’m posting here about two tv incarnations of the Barry Allen character. First, in the 1990 tv series:

(#8)

The Flash is a 1990 American television series developed by the writing team of Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo that aired on CBS. It is based on the DC Comics character Barry Allen / Flash, a costumed superhero crime-fighter with the power to move at superhuman speeds. The Flash starred John Wesley Shipp as Allen, along with Amanda Pays, Alex Désert, and Paula Marshall. (Wikipedia link)

And then in the 2014 tv series:

(#9)

The Flash is an American television series developed by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and Geoff Johns, airing on The CW. It is based on the DC Comics character Barry Allen / Flash, a costumed superhero crime-fighter with the power to move at superhuman speeds. It is a spin-off from Arrow, existing in the same fictional universe. The series follows Allen, portrayed by Grant Gustin, a crime scene investigator who gains super-human speed, which he uses to fight criminals, including others who have also gained superhuman abilities. (Wikipedia link)

Shipp and Pays appear in both series. My interest here is especially in contrasting two different ideals of masculinity as embodied in Shipp (Priapus, powerful maturity) and Gustin (Apollo, youthful beauty), and especially in exploring the Barry Allen character as developed for Gustin.

Shipp. The man, shirtless and intense, on Dawson’s Creek:

(#10)

John Wesley Shipp (born January 22, 1955) is an American actor known for his various television roles. He played the lead Barry Allen on CBS’s superhero series The Flash from 1990 to 1991, and Mitch Leery, the title character’s father, on the drama series Dawson’s Creek from 1998 to 2001. Shipp has also played several roles in daytime soap operas including Kelly Nelson on Guiding Light from 1980 to 1984, and Douglas Cummings on As the World Turns from 1985 to 1986 (which earned him his first Daytime Emmy Award). He portrays both Barry Allen’s father, Henry, and Jay Garrick on the current The Flash series on The CW network. (Wikipedia link)

Shipp is a square-jawed major muscle-hunk, and his version of the Barry Allen character is a hard-working superhero (with not a lot of emotional complexity).

Gustin. Gustin as a thin-faced agreeable Barry Allen — indisputably masculine, but in a different way than Shipp:

(#11)

And shirtless, lean, and playful:

(#12)

And a more direct counterpart to Shipp as the Flash in #8:

(#13)

(Note: all superheroes, whatever their body type, exhibit aggressive genital masculinity; they live in the land of jockstraps, dance belts, and codpieces. It’s in their contracts. More seriously, they embody fantasies of power and strength, of secret identities, and of transcending limitations.)

Thomas Grant Gustin (born January 14, 1990) is an American actor and singer. He is known for his roles as Barry Allen / Flash on the CW series The Flash and as Sebastian Smythe on the Fox series Glee.

… On November 8, 2011, he debuted on the television series Glee as Sebastian Smythe, an openly gay member of the Dalton Academy Warblers. Gustin won the recurring role of Sebastian, a promiscuous and scheming character. (Wikipedia link)

Gustin’s Barry Allen is sweet, earnest, and principled, but also an adult and a true hero (when a hero is called for). He reflects often about how to live as a good and decent man. His best friends are a black woman and a Hispanic man, and he helps his gay friends (definitely a modern young man). So he’s an admirable character, someone you’d like to get to know — and then there’s that really cool superspeed thing, and the messing with time and alternative universes. The series has all the DC gee-whiz stuff, but it’s also amiable and funny.

An Avi Steinberg cartoon in the March 20th New Yorker, combining cavemen, clothing, and nipples:

(#1)

Cavemen: a cartoon meme. Clothing: one-shoulder garments for men. And of course men’s nipples. And then there’s Avi Steinberg, who’s a cartoonist+.

On the beach nipple patrol. My 2/25/17 posting “Displaying your nipples” — which treats men covering vs. revealing their nipples, nipple erections, nipple enlargement, and nipple worship –has one image (#2) of men baring one nipple in one-shoulder one-piece bathing suits.

One-piece bathing suits for men almost always have two shoulder straps and almost always cover the nipples. But some designers — mostly those inclined to the homoerotic — push the envelope. Here’s a Lake Style suit scooped so low that the nipples are exposed (though this image has been altered to downplay that):

(#2)

Basic black, but seriously sexy.

This Armani leather-look one=piece is specifically designed to accentuate the nipples:

(#3)

And this colorful one-piece nipple show is one-shouldered as well:

(#4)

It’s not just beachwear. Here’s a one-shoulder steampunk men’s brocade vest:

(#5)

— shown here over a shirt, but it could be worn alone as a decidedly sexy informal top, as this Rufskin Samurai top is here:

(#6)

Rufskin’s clothes (“crafted in California”) are unabashedly queer, dwelling lovingly on muscles, crotches, asses — and nips.

Still another genre of nipple-focused homowear is the wrestling singlet, scooped very low in the front to emphasize nips and crotches equally; discussion (and illustrations) in a 12/3/15 posting on this blog.

Cavewear. Cartoon cavemen wear one-piece garments of animal skins. Quite often these cover the nipples:

(#7)

(All the cartoon cavemen in this section are stock images.)

But someimes they’re topless, in which case they can be depicted with nipples, like real men:

(#8)

or without them, like cartoon animals:

(#9)

Or they can be shown in one-shouldered skins (like the guys in #1), again either with a nipple:

(#10)

or without:

(#11)

Avi Steinberg. He’s been drawing cartoons for the New Yorker for a while, but hasn’t previously appeared on this blog. Many of his cartoons have a language-related hook. Here are three, from 2014 (10/13), 2015 (4/27), and 2016 (8/8):

(#12)

(#13)

(#14)

But cartoons aren’t all there is to Steinberg. He’s also a writer, with two remarkable books published so far:

From “Books behind Bars: Avi Steinberg’s memoir of life as a prison librarian”, a review by Nell Porter Brown in Harvard Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 2011 (Steinberg is a Harvard alumnus):

An “earnest Yeshiva boy,” Avi Steinberg ’02 never thought he’d spend his days in prison. But in 2005, when offered the post of librarian at the Suffolk County House of Correction in Boston, he took it, glad to trade writing obituaries for the Boston Globe as a freelancer for a more secure job with dental insurance and a surplus of live, albeit caged, bodies. He was eagerly unaware of what was in store. “I knew this would be a stretch, and I went there searching for something,” he adds. “But I didn’t know what that was.”

For nearly two years he promoted books and creative writing to a range of students: pimps, prostitutes, junkies, thugs, robbers, con men, and even killers. His recently published memoir, Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (Random House), is a rich meditation on this wild experience and the related nuanced questions about morality and humanity that he confronted armed with little more than his own sensitivities and book learning.

From “Jewish writer travels across the world for ‘The Lost Book of Mormon’” a review by Ellen Fagg Weist in The Salt Lake City Tribune, 11/15/14:

In “The Lost Book of Mormon [subtitle: A Quest for the Book That Just Might Be the Great American Novel],” Steinberg recounts his 18-month literary quest to consider The Book of Mormon by traveling to places where its characters or its translator lived. He begins with this walks through Lehi and Nephi’s neighborhoods in Jerusalem, then takes off on a Land of Zarahemla tour with a Utah company to the Maya cities of southern Mexico and Guatemala. Steinberg later travels to upstate New York to take part in the Hill Cumorah Pageant, and finally to the Illinois jail where Smith was shot.

“The Lost Book” is the story of a winsome, questing narrator’s search for what it means to be a writer. He treats his fellow Mormon travelers with the tenderness of the formerly religious — as Steinberg says, he may not be an observant Jew anymore, instead choosing to observe from afar.

Steinberg is a funny and smart guide for the trip, and for the most part avoids mining the most common Mormon cultural clichés as he investigates the idea of publishing a sequel to the Bible. The Book of Mormon is of greatest interest to him as a book about writing a book. An important American book, that is, which is often dismissed in literary culture. The fact of that dismissal should prompt a re-evaluation, the writer says.

The writer ca. 2014:

(#15)

(Sex talk, but in mostly academic style. Still, definitely racy; use your judgment.)

This vision of shirtless high-masculinity turned up on Pinterest this morning:

(#1)

There will be another satisfyingly shirtless cowboy (these two images chosen from dozens, maybe hundreds, that are available), but the focus of this posting is on the saying

(1) Save a horse, ride a cowboy.

on its syntax, its semantics, and of course its allusion to positions for sexal intercourse.

(On a persnal note, I admit that I’ve chosen two cowboys whose body type — lean, well-muscled, long-bodied — appeals to me. Hey, it’s my blog.)

#1 appears to be from a site associated with the book “The Teenage Bucket List: 250 Things To Do Before You Turn 18” by Tammy Mitchell, a slim (34-page) 2014 book that seems to be nothing but that list of 250 things to do.

Here’s the second hunk, rather more interestingly dressed:

(#2)

This guy has on blue jeans (with a worn weather belt), with chaps over them. Chaps — see my 12/24/15 posting —  are crotchless, seatless leather pants that originated as workwear for cowboys, to protect their legs, but then came into fashion as fetishwear; the effect of chaps over jeans is to emphasize the cowboy’s basket (also his butt), so the chaps add an additional note of sexiness to an already sex-drenched image.

These cowboy images are, most of the time, designed to present the hunks in them for the delectation of women: women find them desirable, straight men identify with them as sex magnets (as attractive to women), and of course the images rope in gay men along with women. (There are also specfically homoerotic cowboy images, which a great many women find hot even though they’re not the intended audience.)

Ride that cowboy! So much for the sex that’s pretty much out in front in such images. Then there’s the allusion in the ride a cowboy part of the saying. From Wikipedia:

Woman on top, also called the cowgirl or riding position, is a group of sex positions in which the man lies on his back or sits, the woman straddles him facing either forward [cowgirl] or back [reverse cowgirl], and the man inserts his erect penis into the woman’s vagina or anus.

The cowgirl name derives from the image of the receiving partner “riding” the partner as a cowgirl rides a bucking horse. It is one of a number of receptive-partner-superior sexual positions, another being the reverse cowgirl position. It is fairly simple to achieve and maintain and pleasures both partners.

Man on man, this is Cowboy. From my 2/12/16 posting “Sex positions for gay men”:

something that came up while I was assembling a new AZBlogX posting “Liam Riley, power bottom twink”, with two images of Riley as bottom in what I’ve called sit-fucks (the bottom sits on the top’s hard dick): an in-facing (the bottom is facing towards his top) sit-fuck with top Dustin Gold and an out-facing one (the bottom is facing away from his top) with top Dillon Rossi. I then discovered, in comments on these performances that this was a named sex position, with a cute name: Cowboy for the in-facing variety, Reverse Cowboy for the out-facing. As a cowboy rides a bronco (or a bull), so the bottom rides his top’s cock.

On to the saying. The saying is variously punctuated: most commonly with a comma separating its two parts, as in #1; sometimes with a colon or dash as the separator; and, in these punctuation-shy times, with only a line division as separator, as in #2. In any case, it’s an instance of a two-part sentence construction in which each part is a V-headed constituent (a clause or a VP), with the two parts strung together without any sort of connective or subordinator:

[1: VP(BSE)] save a horse  +  [2: VP(BSE)] ride a cowboy

The mode of syntactic combination here is known technically as parataxis, a subtype of co-equal combination (with parts of equal syntactic rank): pure parataxis, in fact, with no overt coordinator. The other type of co-equal combination is (explicit) coordination, with a coordinator like and or or. Standing in contrast to co-equal combination is subordination (or hypotaxis), with an explicit subordinator, as in these alternatives to (1):

(1a) To save a horse, ride a cowboy. [with complementizer to introducing part 1]

(1b) Save a horse by riding a cowboy. [with preposition by introducing part 2]

Now one type of pure parataxis is in fact fairly common: the paratactic conditional, for instance:

(2a) You break it, you bought it. ‘If you break it, you bought it’; 2 is a result or consequence of 1

with its co-equal alternative:

(2b) You break it, and you bought it.

(Brief discussion in a 2/4/10 posting.)

Similarly, with clauses in both parts: He answers the phone, (and) you (will) die. And with BSE-form VPs in both parts (as in (1)): Learn to fish, (and) eat for a lifetime.

The example in (1) is different:

(1) Save a horse, ride a cowboy. ‘In order to 1, 2’: 1 is a reason or purpose for 2 (1 is a result or consequence of 2)

We might call this a paratactic preconditional.

The saying. Mentions of (1) refer to it as a “saying” or a “familiar saying”, but I haven’t been able to track it back very far. In fact, the trail seems to go back only to a 2004 song. From Wikipedia:

“Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” is a song written and recorded by American country music duo Big & Rich. It was released in April 2004 as the second single from their debut album Horse of a Different Color. … The song received wide exposure when ESPN featured the song in commercials for its coverage of the 2004 World Series of Poker. It was also featured in the Boston Legal episode “Death Be Not Proud”.

On February 19, 2016, a parody release by artist Skinny & Broke was released entitled “Save A Wookie Ride A Jedi” by Sony Music Entertainment.

Big & Rich also released a remixed dance version of the song which appeared on their compilation Big & Rich’s Super Galactic Fan Pak. They performed this remixed version at the CMT Video Music Awards in 2005. The song was also featured in a Chevrolet commercial that was aired during Super Bowl XLI and the 49th Annual Grammy Awards.

The song appears on the game Karaoke Revolution Country, as well as in the 2012 film Magic Mike.

The song is a fusion of country rock and country rap. The first two verses detail “Big” Kenny Alphin and John Rich’s arrival into Nashville, going into a bar, “passing out hundred-dollar bills” and, “buying the bar a double round of Crown.” They vow that Nashville is “never gonna be the same.” They ride around Nashville on horses, while everyone else says to “save a horse” and “ride a cowboy.”

(#3)

The song is addressed to women, encouraging them (I think) to ride a cowboy.

You can watch the video here.

An extra. It was bound to happen, I suppose. Frat-boy humor from a meme site:

(#4)