(Hunk in a swmsuit, oblique literate raciness. Plus religion, art, and plants.)

Today’s mailing from the Daily Jocks company takes us to the beaches of Oz, where an ad for the Aussie homowear firm 2eros’s Mandala swimsuit is framed as a postcard, complete with a 2018 Oz-floral stamp. Plus a caption of mine:

(#1) The flower of his manhood

Ramble down the
Rocks to revere his pink
Lotus flower, to
Lose yourself on the
Blue wheel of desire

The company’s remarkable ad copy:

Make your next beach getaway a journey of self-discovery with the Mandala swimwear.
Covered in a beautiful original 2EROS print inspired by the spiritual and ritual symbols used in Hinduism and Buddhism and constructed with a 4-way stretch material and internal mesh lining, you’ll be inspiring a spiritual awakening while feeling comfortable and supported at the same time!

Discover yourself through your swimmer (Aussie slang for ‘swimsuit’)! In a religious experience reached by clothing your genitals and buttocks in fabric that borrows the symbols of Hinduism and Buddhism. In the Mandala pattern, seen here close up:

(#2)

When I first saw the ad image and read its copy, I thought the fabric pattern incorporated Hindu and Buddhist religious symbols directly, which would be, at the very least, creepy — as if the company had announced a new fabric pattern Abraham, combining these three religious symbols:

(#3) Judaism, Christanity, Islam

Instead, the pattern is “inspired by” religious symbols. It’s vaguely mandala-like. From Wikipedia:

(#4) A schematic mandala (for coloring)

A mandala (emphasis on first syllable; Sanskrit मण्डल, maṇḍala – literally “circle”) is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the universe. In common use, “mandala” has become a generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically; a microcosm of the universe.
The basic form of most mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. Each gate is in the general shape of a T. Mandalas often have radial balance [so that they look like 8-petaled lotus flowers seen from above].

The lotus and other symbols. First, the lotus plant. From Wikipedia:

(#5)

Nelumbo nucifera, also known as Indian lotus, sacred lotus, bean of India, Egyptian bean or simply lotus, is one of two extant species of aquatic plant in the family Nelumbonaceae [a new one, #82, in my running inventory of plant families]. It is often colloquially called a water lily. Under favorable circumstances the seeds of this aquatic perennial may remain viable for many years, with the oldest recorded lotus germination being from that of seeds 1,300 years old recovered from a dry lakebed in northeastern China.

… Nelumbo nucifera is the species of lotus sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists.

Hindus revere it with the divinities Vishnu and Lakshmi often portrayed on a pink lotus in iconography. In the representation of Vishnu as Padmanabha (Lotus navel), a lotus issues from his navel with Brahma on it. The goddess Saraswati is portrayed on a white-colored lotus. The lotus is the symbol of what is divine or immortality in humanity, and is also a symbol of divine perfection.

… Many deities of Asian religions are depicted as seated on a lotus flower. In Buddhist symbolism, the lotus represents purity of the body, speech and mind, as if floating above the murky waters of material attachment and physical desire.

The sacred lotus is a female symbol in both India and China, and is often viewed as a symbol of female genitalia — but you can see from #5 that it could also be viewed as a symbol of male genitalia (and, of course, in gay contexts, the shifting of symbols from female to male is routine).

The lotus, side view, as a Buddhist symbol:

(#6)

And, in a view from above, as a Hindu symbol, here in combination with the Om symbol (in the center):

(#7)

From Wikipedia:

Om … is a sacred sound and a spiritual symbol in Hinduism, that signifies the essence of the ultimate reality, consciousness or Atman. It is a syllable that is chanted either independently or before a mantra in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

One more symbol, the dharma wheel of Buddhism, here in a particularly simple form:

(#8)

(My 5/29/18 posting “The 6-fold way” has a section on the 8-fold way of Buddhism and the dharma wheel symbolizing it.)

Now, some or all of these symbols might have been worked into the Mandala fabric pattern in #2 in some way, but they can’t be picked out directly in the pattern, so that the pattern doesn’t look at all religious in content.

The setting for #1. That would be the North Bondi Beach rocks in Sydney, seen here in an aerial view:

(#9)

(Most of Bondi is a wide strip of sandy beach, populated by tanning Aussies.)

The Kali tat. Moving on now from the Mandala swimmer to the Kati tat: the remarkably intricate blue tattoo on the model’s chest. From Wikipedia:

(#10)

Kālī (Sanskrit: काली), also known as Kālikā or Shyama (Sanskrit: कालिका), is a Hindu goddess. Kali is one of the ten Mahavidyas, a list which combines Sakta and Buddhist goddesses.

Kali’s earliest appearance is that of a destroyer of evil forces.

… Kali is portrayed mostly in two forms: the popular four-armed form and the ten-armed Mahakali form. In both of her forms, she is described as being black in colour but is most often depicted as blue in popular Indian art. Her eyes are described as red with intoxication, and in absolute rage, her hair is shown disheveled, small fangs sometimes protrude out of her mouth, and her tongue is lolling. She is often shown naked or just wearing a skirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads. is also accompanied by serpents and a jackal while standing on the calm and prostrate Shiva.

… In spite of her seemingly terrible form, Kali Ma is often considered the kindest and most loving of all the Hindu goddesses, as she is regarded by her devotees as the Mother of the whole Universe. And because of her terrible form, she is also often seen as a great protector.

And the Banksia stamp in #1. A recent issue:

(#10)

About this particular species, from Wikipedia:

Banksia coccinea, commonly known as the scarlet banksia, waratah banksia or Albany banksia, is an erect shrub or small tree in the family Proteaceae. The Noongar peoples know the tree as Waddib. Its distribution in the wild is along the south west coast of Western Australia, … growing on white or grey sand in shrubland, heath or open woodland. … The prominent red and white flower spikes appear mainly in the spring.

… Widely considered one of the most attractive Banksia species, B. coccinea is a popular garden plant and one of the most important Banksia species for the cut flower industry; it is grown commercially in several countries including Australia, South Africa, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Israel.

(My 7/4/17 posting “Fay Zwicky” has a section on Joseph Banks and banksias, with appearances by Captain James Cook and Kew Gardens.)

In fact, the stamp in #10 is one of a set. From the Australia Post website on 2/13/18, in “Banksias: The artwork of Celia Rosser”:

(#11)

Banksias are an evocative native Australian flowering plant; evocative because of the way they instantly conjure up the Australian bush. [The other iconically Australian plants are the gum trees (eucalypts) and the wattles (Australian Acacia spp.).]

Indeed, when Captain James Cook (1728–1729) first voyaged to Botany Bay, in 1768, on the Endeavour, with him was a team of naturalists led by Joseph Banks (1743–1820). Banks and his team collected four species (at that stage, described as “Leucadendrum”). Later, when discussing the difference between the natural environments of Australia and Europe, Banks declared that the Banksia exemplifies this difference more than any other plant species.

The Banksias stamp issue, which will be released on 20 February 2018, celebrates this iconic native flowering plant. The stamps feature the artwork of celebrated Australian botanical artist Celia Rosser. Stamp collectors may already be familiar with Celia’s work, through her incredible illustrations for the 1981 Australian Fungi stamp issue and the 1987 Cocos (Keeling) Islands stamp issue that depicted the life-cycle of the coconut.

(#12)

… Celia Rosser (b. 1930) trained as a fashion illustrator at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne but turned her hand to illustrating wildflowers, native orchids and banksias after moving to Orbost, in eastern Victoria.

Along the way she fell in love with banksias and became the artist of the genus Banksia. From Wikipedia:

(#13) Volume III of Rosser’s great work

The Banksias, by Celia Rosser, is a three-volume series of monographs [published 1981-2000] containing paintings of every Banksia species [known at the time]. Its publication represented the first time such a large genus [with around 170 species in it] had been entirely painted by a single botanical artist. It has been described as “one of the outstanding botanical works of this century.”

The paintings themselves are watercolours on Arches rag paper. The three volumes comprise plates reproduced using offset printing, and bound in green leather. Alex George wrote the accompanying text.

(Warning: eventually this posting devolves to references to, though not illustrations of, gay porn; a video of a guy dancing in nothing but his Calvins; and the decidedly raunchy, though not actually X-rated, lyrics of Beyoncé’s song “Blow”. So: rated “unhealthy for sensitive groups”, in particular, kids and the sexually modest.)

Day 11 in the smoke — not nearly as bad here on the SF peninsula as in SF itself (or, of course, closer to the Camp Fire around Paradise) — and today the local AQI (the American Lung Association’s Air Quality Index) has dipped to 129, merely “unhealthy for sensitive groups”, but I’m in several of the compromised groups, and life has been hellish for a long time. [A few hours later: up to 158, “Unhealthy”, period.]

(#1)

Aid arrived Thursday night, in the form of a Blue Pure 121 air purifier, which now stands majestically in the middle of the main area of my Ramona St. house, humming softly as it offers me clean air to breathe. Puckishly, I have named the machine Randy Blue (after a big gay porn company, itself puckishly named), so this posting will segue from pure air to raunch.

The machine. As described by the Blueair Co.:

(#2) The 121 model, wearing a baby blue pre-filter (a steel gray pre-filter comes with the machine as an alternative)

Introducing the biggest member of the Blue family, the Blue Pure 121. The Pure 121 combines electrostatic and mechanical filtering technology to purify the air five times per hour in rooms up to 620 ft² (57 m²) [and weighs 18 lbs.]. [My entire house is roughly 20 ft x 30 ft, so ca. 600 ft², and I’ve closed off one room to get greater effect in the remaining space.] Just grab it, place it wherever you want, plug it in, and breathe perfectly clean air 24/7.

… Blue air purifiers can even help you redecorate your room in seconds, thanks to fabric pre-filters in different energizing colors. As a bonus, the pre-filter catches larger particles, extending the life of the main filter. Just gently vacuum it or put it in your washing machine when it requires cleaning.

It’s hard not to anthromorphize machines, and I didn’t even try to resist the temptation. So I saw the top part of the machine as a head and the bottom part as a body — wearing a baby blue t-shirt. And I called him Randy Blue, after the big gay porn company.

Notes on the instruction booklet. From the booklet, I learn that the company is Swedish, with headquarters in Stockholm (and branch offices in New Delhi, Dubai, Shanghai, and Chicago). And I found the instructions in five languages: the four obvious ones for the North American and European markets (English, German, Spanish, and French) — plus, not Swedish, and not Hindi (for Delhi), Arabic (for Dubai), or Chinese (for Shanghai), or Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Hebrew, or Russian, but (surprise!) Polish. To refer to the company’s product in:

English (Air purifier), German (Luftreiniger), Spanish (Purificador de aire), French (Purificateur d’air), Polish (Oczyszczacz powietrza)

Randy Blue. So much for the clean stuff. Now to get down and dirty.

The name Randy Blue combines a play on Randy (as a male name) and the

adj. randy: informal sexually aroused or excited (NOAD)

plus blue alluding to eroticism in general (as in blue movie) and more specifically to homoeroticism (see the discussion in my 4/28/17 posting “Faces follow-up 1: Master Beckford”, in a section on the Gainsborough portrait The Blue Boy, on blue as a color of eroticism, and on Blueboy, the gay pornographic magazine).

From the Randy Blue website:

Producing and Providing the highest quality adult gay content for over 12 years

The videos are professionally done, but otherwise they’re mostly routine exercises, and they’ve gotten almost no mention on my blog. In any case, most of the material from the company would be fodder only for AZBlogX. But then I found a HuffPo “Queer Voices” feature from 4/14/14, “Randy Blue Gay Porn Stars Dance To Beyonce’s ‘Blow'”:

(#3) Randy Blue’s “Blow” baby blue boy

In this steamy new video, some of the stars of popular gay porn website Randy Blue strip down to one of our favorite tracks, “Blow,” off of the new Beyonce album.

The dancers’ bodies are in b&w, their Calvins brightly colored (as above). The dancers are professional porn actors, not professional dancers, but they’re still entertaining (each one is different!). (The video is available on the HuffPo site.)

“Blow”. Background from Wikipedia:

“Blow” is a song recorded by American singer Beyoncé from her self-titled fifth studio album (2013). It was written by Beyoncé, Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, J-Roc, James Fauntleroy and Justin Timberlake, and produced by the former four.

(#4) The video

The beginning of the lyrics:

I love your face
You love the taste
That sugar babe, it melts away

I kiss you when you lick your lips, I kiss you when you lick your lips
You like it wet and so do I, you like it wet and so do I
I know you never waste a drip, I know you never waste a drip
I wonder how it feels sometimes
Must be good to you

Keep me coming, keep me going, keep me coming, keep me going
Keep me humming, keep me moaning, keep me humming, keep me moaning
Don’t stop loving ’til the morning, don’t stop loving ’til the morning
Don’t stop screaming, freaking, blowing

Can you eat my skittles
It’s the sweetest in the middle
Pink that’s the flavor
Solve the riddle

I’mma lean back
Don’t worry its nothing major
Make sure you clean that
That’s the only way to get the
Flavor

Drippingly raunchy, but without any “dirty words”. (And then, of course, in the Randy Blue video, all the dirty talk is translated from female bodies to the bodies of gay men.)

On skittles, start with my 8/23/13 posting “Share the rainbow”, about Skittles, a brand of fruit-flavored candies, brightly colored spheres, with the slogan “Taste the rainbow”. Then metaphorically, skittles is also slang for drugs in pill form, especially by the handful, and for the female genitals (especially the clitoris). (Not yet in GDoS, but reported in Urban Dictionary.)

From Steven Levine on Facebook on the 15th:

(#1) “Classic Pride Rainbow Eco-Friendly Leather Boots” from DealClever.com

Look what Facebook showed me as an ad. They are leather and 50% off … I know they are meant to be “Pride boots” but I like them because they seem like something from a Dr. Seuss illustration.

The DealClever.com site is rainbow rainbow rainbow!

And there is a Dr. Seuss connection, of sorts: a Kindergarten Games pedagogical YouTube video Chasing Rainbows, for learning color names, using Dr. Seuss characters (but not his style):

(#2) The video’s rainbow is the ROY G. BIV 7-color spectrum, with indigo and violet (rather than purple); there is of course a “Rainbow Song” (a spoonful of music helps the medicine go down).

Meanwhile, on the DealClever.com site, a new item: the stainless steel rainbow silverware set:

(#3) teaspoon + dinner spoon + dinner fork + dinner knife: “This flatware set is ideal for entertaining. Perfect gift for friends and family!”

Note the semantic extension of silverware. From NOAD:

noun silverware: [a] dishes, containers, or cutlery made of or coated with silver. [b] US eating and serving utensils made of any material.

The boots, I think, are stunning (Steven actually bought a pair), but the flatware strikes me as creepy, and I worry about the colored coating. The coating is applied through some process (probably electrochemical coating) also used in architecture and jewelry making. From an International Molybdenum Association (IMOA) site offering architectural stainless steel:

The surface color and texture options for molybdenum-containing stainless steels is practically limitless. … If color is preferred, both opaque (e.g. terne [noun terne: a lead alloy containing about 20 percent tin and often some antimony and other coatings (NOAD)) and translucent (e.g. electrochemical and PVD [physical vapor deposition]) colors provide considerable design flexibility. Practically every color in the rainbow is possible including charcoal grey, black, gold, bronze, blue, green and red. If they are used appropriately and well maintained, many of the coloring processes for stainless steel will last the life of the building.

I wouldn’t be entirely comfortable putting such material in my mouth, but then I’m pretty much of a wuss.

(Hunky men in minimal swimsuits, but nothing actually X-rated. The posting is about the presentation of self in photographs, via clothing, stance, gait, facial expression, gaze, and the like. Not much about language here.)

11/9 Daily Jocks sale ad for Marcuse underwear and swimwear:

(#1) Come Wander With Me

He came from the sunset
He came from the sea
He came from my sorrow
And can love only me

He said, “Come wander with me, love
Come wander with me
Away from this sad world
Come wander with me”

The garment. It’s the Marcuse Arrest Me swim brief, available in at least the following colors: in lime, pale blue, white, grey, red, black, marine (blue), pastel green, yellow, orange, pink, blue.

The DJ ad offered:

20% OFF MARCUSE THIS WEEKEND

If you want to look good and feel great, you might not be able to resist the sexy designs and enhancement features of a pair of Marcuse underwear or show off by the pool with a pair of their very low rise swimwear

Super low swim briefs for people brave enough to bare some skin and look super sexy! Simple design with embroidered gold Marcuse logo at the back.

The model in #1 appears to be striding out of the surf. He’s loose-limbed, very loosely (as well as minimally) clothed, with fly-away hair and a complex expression: narrowed eyes, slack open mouth, maybe half-smiling, maybe flirting, maybe teasing, maybe cruising. More on reading faces in a moment, but right now study the way his body is presented, and compare it to a standard presentation for men in premium homowear — here’s another model, posing statically in a different color of the Arrest Me swim brief:

(#2)

#1 is (staged as) informal and unposed, while #2 is a male-art formal portrait, with the subject holding a conventional pose I’ve called pitsntits.

The facial expression in #2 is also conventional, a variant of the Cruise of Death, a penetrating, dominating stare. In #1 we get something more like a snapshot taken unawares, and the model’s face can be read in many ways; it’s intriguing in a way that #1’s is not (I’ve posted dozens of underwear ads with facial expressions like.#2’s).

The background. Nevertheless, #1 probably isn’t just an informal framing; it’s likely an allusion to the landmark gay porn film Boys in the Sand, and more indirectly to the whole mansex on the beach genre of male art, gay porn, and gay cartooning.

On the first, see my 9/25/15 posting “Boy in the sand”, about a DJ TeamM8 swimwear ad, with an AZ gay-erotic poem; also about Cal Culver / Casey Donovan in Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand, where the central character rises naked out of the sea.

On the second, see my 6/30/17 posting “In the dunes, in the dunes”, with a take-off on the song “In the pines” and some reflections on the genre of mansex in the dunes, on the beach.

The song. The accompaniment to #1 above is (verse 1 and the chorus of) the song “Come Wander with Me”. Despite appearances, not actually a folk song, but instead a haunting folk-like song written for a tv show. From Wikipedia:

“Come Wander With Me” is the final-taped episode of the American television series The Twilight Zone. (The Bewitchin’ Pool, however, was the last to be broadcast.) This episode introduced Bonnie Beecher in her television debut.

… The “Rock-A-Billy Kid”, Floyd Burney, arrives at a small town in search of a new song. …  Next to a lake, he encounters the singer, Mary Rachel, who reluctantly plays a song for him about two [doomed] lovers who meet in the woods.

(#3) The Bonnie Beecher recording

The singer. And a note on Beecher, from Wikipedia:

Bonnie Jean Beecher (née Boettcher, April 25, 1941), later known as Jahanara Romney, is an American activist and retired actress and singer.

Bonnie Jean Boettcher was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Art and Jean Boettcher. She knew Bob Dylan during his early career, and may have been the inspiration for his song “Girl from the North Country”. Some of Dylan’s earliest recordings were recorded at her Minneapolis home in 1961.

… Beecher married Wavy Gravy (born Hugh Romney) in 1965; the couple has one child. She has worked as Administrative Director (under the name Jahanara Romney) of Camp Winnarainbow since 1983. Her husband (under the name Wavy Gravy) serves as director of the camp, which is located near Laytonville, Mendocino County in Northern California.

That morning was 10/29, and the morning name then was Paloma Picasso: an alliterative double amphibrach. Bringing with it an allusion to her fashionable clothes and accessories, and to her father’s paintings.

Humpfoot

A-tisket, a-tasket
A-jingle, a-jangle

Apollo Miami
Miranda Nantucket
Medusa Paducah
Osiris Paramus

McTavish O’Banion
My Celtic companions

A passion, a fashion
Paloma Picasso

The amphibrach. A metrical humpfoot, WSW or ˘ ′  ˘.  Extensively exemplified above in double-amphibrach lines.

Paloma Picasso. From Wikipedia:

(#1)

(Hard to pick among so many elegant and stylish photos of PP. This one has a Venetian background as a bonus.)

Paloma Picasso (born Anne Paloma Ruiz-Picasso y Gilot in Vallauris on 19 April 1949), is a French and Spanish fashion designer and businesswoman, best known for her jewelry designs for Tiffany & Co. and her signature perfumes. She is the youngest daughter of 20th-century artist Pablo Picasso and painter Françoise Gilot. Paloma Picasso’s older brother is Claude Picasso (b. 1947), her half-brother is Paulo Picasso (1921-1975), her half-sister is Maya (b. 1935), and she has another half-sister, Aurelia (b. 1956), from her mother’s relationship with artist Luc Simon.

Paloma Picasso is represented in many of her father’s works, such as [these:]

(#2) Paloma with an Orange (1951)

(#3) Paloma in Blue (1952)

(Significant sexual content, not for children or the sexually modest.)

Making the rounds on Facebook, this photo from a store sportswear department, with a sign that appears to be exhorting Christmas shoppers to give head ‘perform oral sex’:

(#1)

Not that some prime seasonal head wouldn’t be a fine holiday gift — but the exhortation is, alas, only to give products of the Head company, which sells (among other things) sportswear.

(Hat tip to Michael Palmer, who was the proximal source of the image; goodness knows who took the photo in the first place.)

The company. From Wikipedia:

(#2) The company logo

Head N.V. is an American-Dutch sports and clothing company, which sells alpine skiing and tennis equipment. The company includes parts of several previously independent companies, including Head Ski Company, founded in Delaware, United States, in 1950; Tyrolia, an Austrian ski-equipment manufacturer; and Mares, an Italian manufacturer of diving equipment. Head Ski Company produced one of the first successful metal-wood composite downhill ski, the Head Standard, and one of the first oversized metal tennis rackets. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

give head. Previously on this blog:

on 12/13/10, in “Porn hypallage and sex-part conversion”:

You suck good cock ‘you suck cock good / well, you’re a good cocksucker’…  a transferred epithet, or hypallage …, related to the hypallage in give good / great / fantastic /… head.

In addition to the hypallage in suck good cock, give good head, etc., the base expressions suck cock, give head, etc. are themselves of note, illustrating conversions of C (count) nouns to M (mass)

… C>M: sex-part conversion. A C noun denoting a sexual part has a M use denoting this part as a generalized object of lust (“I’m looking for some cunt / pussy / cock / dick / ass”).

on 7/25/12, in “Gay Messiah”: lines from Rufus Wainwright’s song “Gay Messiah”:

What will happen instead / Someone will demand my head / And then I will kneel down / And give it to them looking down

— playing on the possibility of understanding give head as ‘give (someone) the head of your penis (to fellate)’ rather than ‘perform oral sex (on someone)’.

My pursuit of Swiss X, for various nouns X, continues with four Swiss roll chapters, starting with a cake roulade and going on to a rolled hair style; roll short for bread roll; and roll short for roll-up (referring to a bread roulade).

Bonus: the cake roulade is appropriate to the season, since a Yule log or bûche de Noël is one, just dressed up for Christmas.

The cake roulade. Previously on this blog, two postings:

— on 6/10/16, in “Ho Ho trees, Ho Ho logs”, with this information from Wikipedia:

Ho Hos are small, cylindrical, frosted, cream-filled [in the U.S., creme-filled] chocolate snack cakes with a pinwheel design based on the Swiss roll. Made by Hostess Brands, they are similar to Yodels by Drake’s and Swiss Rolls by Little Debbie.

(#1) A Hostess Ho Ho

(#2) Drake’s Yodels

— on 12/18/16, in “The Yule log”, with a section on the Yule log or bûche de Noël; information there from Wikipedia:

Made of sponge cake to resemble a miniature actual Yule log, it is a form of sweet roulade.

The original “Yule log” recipe emerged during the 19th century. It is traditionally made from a genoise, generally baked in a large, shallow Swiss roll pan, iced, rolled to form a cylinder, and iced again on the outside. [They are composed of various types of cake, various fillings, and various icings.]

(#3) Bûche de Noël of yellow sponge cake with jam filling and cocoa bark  icing (plus meringue mushrooms)

From NOAD:

noun roulade: 1 a dish cooked or served in the form of a roll, typically made from a flat piece of meat, fish, or sponge cake, spread with a soft filling and rolled up into a spiral.

Snack cakes with Swiss Rolls in their names:

(#4) Little Debbie (with vanilla and chocolate fillings)

(#5) Mrs. Freshley’s (also comes with peanut butter filling)

Now on to the Swiss rolls that these snack cakes are cheap rip-offs of. From Wikipedia:

A Swiss roll, jelly roll, or cream roll is a type of sponge cake roll filled with whipped cream, jam, or icing.

(#6) A simple Swiss roll / jelly roll with jam filling

(#7) Swiss roll: chocolate sponge cake with whipped cream filling

(#8) Swiss roll: home-made red velvet cake with buttercream frosting filling

The origins of the term are unclear. In spite of the name Swiss roll, the cake is believed to have originated elsewhere in Central Europe [see my 12/15/18 posting “Regionally ambivalent Switzerland” on Switzerland as located in central Europe], likely Austria. It appears to have been invented in the nineteenth century, along with Battenberg, doughnuts and Victoria sponge.

The connection to Switzerland is probably some combination of the association between Swiss chefs and fine cooking; a reference to French pâtissiers (pastry makers and sellers) in Switzerland; an allusion to Swiss and Austrian desserts of similar type; and Swiss associations with chocolate, as in chocolate roll cakes.

… The earliest published reference for a rolled cake spread with jelly was in the Northern Farmer, a journal published in Utica, New York, in December 1852. Called “To Make Jelly Cake”, the recipe describes a modern “jelly roll” and reads: “Bake quick and while hot spread with jelly. Roll carefully, and wrap it in a cloth. When cold cut in slices for the table.”

In recent times, jelly rolls are made with jam (especially raspberry jam) rather than jelly.

My usage, from childhood on, distinguishes jelly rolls (filled with jam) and Swiss rolls (filled with other spreadable foodstuffs: whipped cream, pastry cream, frosting, Nutella, etc.), and some others share the distinction. More on this terminology below.

The terminology evolved in America for many years. From 1852 to 1877 such a dessert was called: Jelly Cake (1852), Roll Jelly Cake (1860), Swiss Roll (1872), Jelly Roll (1873), and Rolled Jelly Cake (1876). The name “Jelly Roll” was eventually adopted.

The origin of the term “Swiss roll” is unknown. The earliest British reference to a rolled cake by that name appeared on a bill of fare dated 18 June 1871, published in the 1872 book A Voyage from Southampton to Cape Town, in the Union Company’s Mail Steamer “Syria” (London). A recipe for “Swiss roll” also appeared in the U.S. that same year in The American Home Cook Book, published in Detroit, Michigan, in 1872.

Several 1880s to 1890s cookbooks from London, England, used the name Swiss roll exclusively.

The American Pastry Cook, published in Chicago in 1894, presented a basic “Jelly Roll Mixture” then listed variants made from it that included a Swiss roll, Venice roll, Paris roll, chocolate roll, jelly roll cotelettes, and decorated jelly rolls

… Switzerland: Despite its name, the Swiss roll did not originate in Switzerland. Swiss rolls are called Biskuitroulade or Roulade in Swiss Standard German, gâteau roulé or roulade in French, and biscotto arrotolato in Italian.

… United States: American pastry chefs and menus in fine dining restaurants often use the French term Roulade. The chocolate Swiss roll, sometimes called a chocolate log, is a popular snack. Produced by many commercial bakeries, common brands include Ho Hos and Yodels, which are smaller sized rolls for individual consumption. When the filling is ice cream, it’s commonly referred to as an ice cream cake roll, and although they can vary, these often consist of chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.

Back in August, when I started collecting this material on Swiss rolls (my apologies for the delay in posting; I am many hundreds of postings behind, partly because I work very slowly, but mostly because of prolonged medical problems), I was aware that not everyone shared my jelly roll / Swiss roll distinction (some people treat them as rough synonyms) and was also aware that some people use Swiss roll / bun as a rough synonym of French roll / bun to refer to a women’s hairstyle (I do not; it’s all French to me). So I attempted to get some sense of my readers’ usage — through my 8/1/18 posting “Swiss National Day! (with a query)”:

Question: What is a Swiss roll? (“I don’t know” is an entirely acceptable answer, if indeed you don’t know of anything that goes by that name.) Answers to: arnold.zwicky@gmail.com

(Make your answer specific: don’t just say (for example), “a kind of car”, but say what kind of car.)

Obviously this is part of another chapter in my postings on things with Swiss in their name: Swiss cheese, Swiss Army knives, Swiss steak, the Swiss Hotel, etc.

I asked my respondents to answer without looking things up; I was inquiring into people’s usage, not testing their knowledge. My cautions appear to have scared almost everyone off, but I got two thoughtful responses, both from men, both citing cake roulades with jam in the filling.

From M (in Ireland), who introduces the possibility of both jam and cream in the filling:

A swiss roll is a sponge cake spread with jam (and perhaps a cream filling, as well) and then rolled tightly.  It is served sliced so that you see the swirls of jam (and cream).  I think the sponge was mostly a vanilla sponge though I have vague memories of them being chocolate flavored.  Its possible that the chocolate sponge ones came with a cream filling but the vanilla ones came with a jam filling.  Growing up in Ireland, we would have this for tea sometimes – always store bought, though.

A variation on the theme – is to cover the whole thing with chocolate.  My memories of this, though, are that this was only for miniature swiss rolls.

And from D (in Australia):

A Swiss roll is a kind of cake consisting of a thin slice of plain sponge cake (approx 1 cm thick), spread with red jam (strawberry/raspberry), rolled up into a snail-shell shape, then cut crossways. It might also be dusted with icing sugar or something similar.

Then at the end of August, M wrote again, with two photos. First, from “a shopping centre in Limerick, Ireland”:

(#9)

And then from “a more upmarket bakery” in a different Irish town:

(#10)

Sumptuous cakes that would make any Swiss (or Parisian or Viennese) pâtissier proud.

Hairstyles. I’ll start with the graphic, an advertisement for the German clothing company Hutmacherei Martin Wiesner:

(#11) Wiesner dirndls (and Swiss rolls/buns)

Accompanied by a dirndl or similar peasant costume, the hairstyle is likely to be called Swiss; otherwise it’s French.

From NOAD:

noun dirndl: 1 (also dirndl skirt) a full, wide skirt with a tight waistband. 2 a woman’s dress in the style of Alpine peasant costume [of southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerand], with a full skirt and a close-fitting bodice. ORIGIN 1930s: from south German dialect, diminutive of Dirne ‘girl’.

Meanwhile, the hairstyles in question are rolls, buns, or twists — in principle, distinct from one another, though there are transitional forms. Here’s a French/Swiss roll:

(#12)

And a bun:

(#13)

And a French twist for curly hair:

(#14)

All three styles involve gathering up the hair at the back of the head.

Dirndls and hairstyles come together in the beloved Heidi books. From Wikipedia:

(#15) Heidi is depicted in almost every imaginable hairstyle; here she is in a dirndl and a Swiss roll or twist

Heidi is a work of children’s fiction published in 1881 by Swiss author Johanna Spyri, originally published in two parts as Heidi: Her years of wandering and learning (German: Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre) and Heidi: How she used what she learned (German: Heidi kann brauchen, was sie gelernt hat). It is a novel about the events in the life of a young girl in her grandfather’s care in the Swiss Alps. It was written as a book “for children and those who love children” (as quoted from its subtitle).

Heidi is one of the best-selling books ever written and is among the best-known works of Swiss literature.

… Heidiland, named after the Heidi books, is an important tourist area in Switzerland, popular especially with Japanese and Korean tourists. Maienfeld is the center of what is called Heidiland; one of the villages, formerly called Oberrofels, is actually renamed “Heididorf”. Heidiland is located in an area called Bündner Herrschaft; it [has been] criticized as being a “laughable, infantile cliche” and “a more vivid example of hyperreality.”

(#16) (Festival of five countries) Maienfeld highlighted in red, in the center of the map, just below the country of Liechtenstein; Austria to the right (east) of this, Germany in the top  right corner, bits of Italy at the bottom right, otherwise Switzerland; with the town of Mollis, Canton Glarus — where the Zwickys come from — a bit to the west of Maienfeld

Breadstuffs. I’ll start with X roll composites naming types of bread (rather than cake or hairstyle), in particular a local specialty, the Dutch crunch roll, or just Dutch roll. From the American Food Roots site “Dutch crunch is San Francisco’s other bread” by Casey Brand from 11/3/14:

Unlike sourdough, Dutch crunch is not a particular type of bread. Rather, the name refers to the crackling, crispy topping created by painting dough with a paste of rice flour, yeast, sugar, salt and a fat such as butter or oil. The bread rises as it bakes in the oven, but the gluten-less rice flour paste does not, causing the topping to crack. Dutch crunch can be added to any type of bread, but it typically tops soft, slightly sweet French rolls, creating an intriguing contrast in taste and texture.

(The word roll here refers to ‘ a very small loaf of bread, to be eaten by one person’ (NOAD).)

That leads us to French roll, that is French bread roll,

[ French bread ] + [ roll ] ‘roll of French bread’

with first element French bread ‘white bread in a long, crisp loaf’ (NOAD), and, by extension, similar baked bread in other forms.

Parallel to this, Swiss roll ‘roll of Swiss bread’. Here there’s an incredible variety; Switzerland has no single national bread, though almost all the traditional breads are crusty. From the Newly Swissed site, “Is Switzerland the ultimate land of bread?!” from 6/14/12:

To a Swiss person, Switzerland is not so much the land of cheese or chocolate, it is the land of bread. However, if you ask most any North American or British person about the bread in Switzerland, they will tell you how they miss their soft, crust-less bread from back home.

… Swiss breads are generally very crusty.

… If you love bread, Switzerland is a country for you. There are over 200 different traditional breads in Switzerland, including 22 special cantonal bread varieties. They were officially recognized in the middle of the 19th century when Switzerland officially became a democratic republic.

(#17) An overwhelming display of Swiss breads

In any case, one sense of Swiss roll referring to bread. But there’s another,  in which roll is a shortening of roll-up. From NOAD:

noun roll-up: 2 US an article of food rolled up and sometimes stuffed with a filling: ham roll-ups.

If we combine this item roll with a first element Swiss, short for Swiss cheese (as in a Swiss on rye ‘a Swiss cheese on rye bread sandwich’), we get Swiss roll ‘Swiss cheese roll-up’, as in this recipe from the Pillsbury site:

(#18) Ham and Swiss Sweet Hawaiian Rolls

There are Pillsbury Sweet Hawaiian Crescent Roll dough wrapped around slices of ham and Swiss cheese and an apple slice, and then baked.

Well, four Swiss rolls ought to be enough. Though you could imagine a gymnastics movement called a Swiss roll, or a particular type of cylinder, or a sound (say, the noise made by Alpine thunder).

(Hunky model in his prominently bulging underwear, but otherwise not salacious.)

This Daily Jocks sale ad appeared yesterday (Christmas Eve), and for the first time in 12 days I actually attended to the ad copy (all the ads used old images from the company’s stock, so I’d skipped over them as sources for posting on this blog):

(#1)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Get early access to our end of year sale 20% off storewide.

Shop 600+ products from over 20 brands, in all your favorite styles. From Jockstraps to Wrestling Suits you will be sure to find something you love.

This is our biggest sale of the year!

By DJ’s reckoning, December 23rd, the day before Christmas, was the 12th (and last) day of Christmas. Whoa! By (Western) Christian reckoning, January 5th, the day before Epiphany (the day with the Magi, or Wise Men), is the 12th day of Christmas (and today, Christmas Day, is the 1st). There are obviously two different schemes at work here, and the carol’s words give no clue as to which one it refers to; in particular, those words have no religious content at all.

I asked a young friend about the ad, and he found nothing notable in it. For him, Christmas in the song began in the middle of December and ended on Christmas Eve — and that made sense, because the song is about getting gifts from your true love, and the weeks before Christmas are gift-shopping time.

In the Christian liturgical year, the weeks before Christmas Day are Advent, then there’s a period leading up to Epiphany, when the Magi arrive with their gifts — so that‘s the gifting period.

The song. From Wikipedia:

(#2) partridge, turtle doves, French hens, calling birds, golden rings, geese, swans, maids, ladies, lords, pipers, drummers

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” … is an English Christmas carol that enumerates in the manner of a cumulative song a series of increasingly grand gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas (the twelve days that make up the Christmas season, starting with Christmas Day). The song, published in England in 1780 without music as a chant or rhyme, is thought to be French in origin. … The tunes of collected versions vary. The standard tune now associated with it is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin, who first introduced the familiar prolongation of the verse “five gold rings” (now often “five golden rings”).

More detail, from Wikipedia, on the location of the 12 days on the calendar:

The Twelve Days of Christmas, also known as Twelvetide, is a festive Christian season celebrating the Nativity of Jesus. In most Western ecclesiastical traditions, “Christmas Day” is considered the “First Day of Christmas” and the Twelve Days are 25 December – 5 January, inclusive.

… The traditions of the Twelve Days of Christmas have been nearly forgotten in the United States. Contributing factors include the popularity of the stories of Charles Dickens in nineteenth-century America, with their emphasis on generous giving; introduction of secular traditions in the 19th and 20th centuries, e. g., the American Santa Claus; and increase in the popularity of secular New Year’s Eve parties. Presently, the commercial practice treats the Solemnity of Christmas, 25 December, the first day of Christmas, as the last day of the “Christmas” marketing season, as the numerous “after-Christmas sales” that commence on 26 December demonstrate. The commercial calendar has encouraged an erroneous assumption that the Twelve Days end on Christmas Day and must therefore begin on 14 December.

Well, there’s religious Christmas and there’s secular Christmas, and they don’t have a lot to do with each other; having Christmas trees — not to mention Santa Claus figures — in church is a historical error, surely a graver one than thinking that the 12 Days begin on December 14th. So we should probably just say that the liturgical 12 Days end on January 5th, but the secular 12 Days end on December 24th.

A memorable New Yorker cover for the New Year: an Owen Smith parody of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (one of a great many such parodies):

(#1)

Three things: Nighthawks parodies, Owen Smith, and party hats.

On the parodies, see my 12/29/18 posting “Nighthawks in search of an artist”, which has an inventory of Nighthawks parodies on this blog.

On Smith, who’s new to this blog, see the entertaining piece on The Daily Beast site, “Owen Smith, The ‘New Yorker’ Illustrator Who Killed Christmas: Owen Smith, designer of 19 ‘New Yorker’ covers, subway images, street murals and sculptures, talks about the challenge and future of illustration …” by Tim Teeman on 5/26/18 — with this pulp-noirish New Yorker cover, which one reader angrily protested had “killed Christmas”:

(#2)

And then there are party hats. I have no idea when conical hats (usually made of paper, with chinstraps to hold them on) became part of the festive regalia for various celebrations: birthdays, Mardi Gras, and New Year’s, in particular. New Year’s party hats for men come in many forms — top hats, fedoras, derbies — but the, if you’ll excuse the expression, canonical party hat is conical (and can be worn by either sex, as in #1). In bright colors, as in #1, or here with bright colors on black:

(#3)

Black, silver, and gold seem to be associated with New Year’s in the world of American commerce:

(#4)

Lexicographic note: it seems that most dictionaries don’t have an entry for the N + N compound party hat, presumably on the grounds that it’s semantically transparent — just a Use compound, referring to a hat to use at parties. But it’s more specialized than that: its use at parties is for guests to wear as a sign they are celebrating the event of the party; it’s only used at certain kinds of parties; it’s playful, often fancifully decorated; and its canonical form is conical (and some styles of hats and caps are just out: berets, turbans, cowboy hats, hardhats, baseball caps, among them).

So it’s no surprise that the compound has eventually made it into the OED. From OED3 (June 2005):

noun party hat;  a brightly-coloured (frequently comical) hat made of paper, plastic, etc., worn by guests at a party. [cites from 1961, 1978, 2002]

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

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

(#1)

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

As it turns out, Mikkie was hoping that it depicted a real-life kiss between a Muslim/Jew male couple  — composed by the photographer, of course, but nevertheless a record of the affection and passionate attachment of an actual same-sex, cross-religion couple on an Israeli street. I was dubious: posing the men in characteristic headgear of their religions looked too calculated, so I suspected it was a visual fable, a fiction of an imagined, achingly desired world.

Mikkie and I then went on searches for the source, which we quickly found. It’s a new photo, from this month, by Italian photographer Matteo Menicocci. The story, from TVM News (Television Malta, the national television station of Malta) on 1/12/19 , in “Photograph leads to major debate”:

Matteo Menicocci is an Italian photographer and an LGBTIQ activist.

The photographer decided to work on a photographic project with the intention of provoking and at the same time raising awareness on the already existing gap between different beliefs and the dangerous sentiment of homophobia.

Menicocci got his inspiration after spending a holiday in Tel Aviv with his partner Riccardo. He explained that during their holiday they ended up victims of homophobia and were insulted on several occasions. Menicocci felt the need to publish a photo which promotes love and peace between sexes and religions. In the photograph Menicocci is seen wearing traditional Palestinian garb, whilst his partner Riccardo is wearing a Yarmulke, a Jewish symbol, and they are kissing each other.

Mikkie was gravely disappointed. The photo doesn’t depict a moment of triumph for proud public display of man-on-man affection, but is instead an imagining of a better world that might some day come to be, a Peaceable Kingdom where boundaries of race, religion, class, and so on cease to be significant, where the Jewish lion can lie down in love with the Palestinian lamb.

Sim Aberson has suggested to me another work of visual fiction, one that shows a version of life for actual gay Israeli Jews coupled with Palestinian men, rather than spinning a utopian fantasy for such couples: the film Out in the Dark. From Wikipedia:

(#2)

Out in the Dark (Hebrew: עלטה‎) is a 2012 Israeli romantic drama film which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012 and in Israel in the Haifa International Film Festival in October 2012. It is the directorial debut of Michael Mayer (מיכאל מאיר).

The film tells the story of the relationship between Roy, an Israeli lawyer, and Nimer, a Palestinian psychology student. The film was released commercially in Israel on 28 February 2013.

The relationship has to be kept in the dark, in the closet.

Man-on-man affection in public. Mouth to mouth kisses, holding hands, cuddling and snuggling, and so on. In general, these actions are highly stigmatized, likely to arouse hostility, to elicit sharp comments — even vicious physical attacks — and (if continued) to result in expulsion from public places. There are safe spaces (gay clubs, places in gayborhoods, and the like), but in most places most of the time you have to be vigilant.

The hostility is usually even greater when a couple visibly cross significant social boundaries — in race or religion, in particular.

Man-on-man kisses are especially likely to trigger hostility of various sorts. Thanks to Dennis Lewis for this story from tv channel 4 in Jacksonville FL: “Sailor’s same-sex kiss prompts cheers, jeers: Mayport spokesman says Navy has always been gender neutral” by Vic Micolucci on 12/27/18:

(#3)

Jacksonville, Fla. – A couple married for a year embraced and kissed Friday for the first time in months after a long Navy deployment as a crowd at Naval Station Mayport cheered and cameras recorded the moment.

The ceremonial first kiss is a part of every naval homecoming, but because the one as the USS The Sullivans returned from the Middle East with 300 sailors aboard was a same-sex couple, so this one got a lot of attention and significant backlash.

The first kiss is decided by lottery. Sailors’ spouses donate to a good cause to enter a raffle.

Kenneth Woodington won, and when his husband, sailor Bryan Woodington walked off the gangway, they locked lips for the first time in seven months…

“I was excited and I could not wait for it to happen,” Bryan said. “I knew I was going to dip him.”

“When he got off the ship, I lost all control, I just dropped everything and I just ran,” Kenneth said.

While the kiss was greeted by cheers at the base, News4Jax got jeers. Viewers bombarded the station with phone calls and emails objecting to the decision to show the kiss.

– How sad that your station has dropped to such a low as to show a gay couple kissing on your newscast.”

– I’ll never watch your news again!!!! So long, News4Jax.”

– I thought this was a ‘family friendly’ news channel.”

The couple is aware of the negative comments. Internet users posted them on Naval Station Mayport’s page, as well.

“It didn’t really bother me,” Kenneth said. “Honestly, I’m the type of person who doesn’t really care that much about what people say.”

“My grandmother always taught me, she said, ‘You know some people have a different life and this is how they are and you just have to treat them as such, and treat them with kindness and respect,'”  Bryan said.

These newlyweds said they’ve received more positive feedback than negative and the Navy has been nothing but kind and accepting. Both said this can be a teaching moment, that it’s 2018 and they feel that love is.”

“I wanted to give him nothing but love and care and understanding right out the gate, so I think we just fell for each other really hard and we both knew what we really wanted,”

Bill Austin, spokesman for Naval Station Mayport, said a same-sex first kiss has happened before and it is not an issue for the Navy. He said the seagoing branch of the armed forces has always been gender neutral and on the forefront of progress.

(This story doesn’t mention the crossing of the race boundary in #3.)

Not in front of the children — because man-on-man kisses are sex acts, appropriate only in private (if at all), while man-on-woman kisses are displays of affection, entirely permissible (even cute) in public.

Since man-on-man kisses are sex acts, they set off a chain of metonymic associations that zips right to images of anal intercourse between men, which is of course disgusting. (Men holding hands will do it too. For some people, just displaying a Pride flag is enough.)

Many straight men react to images of men kissing with the same sort of disgust that images of maggots evoke.

And of course fundangelical Xtians view loving relationships between men as a direct affront to their deity.

And on and on.

The dream of liberté, égalité, fraternité. As represented in the fiction of #1 and advertised in the performance in #3. A time of peace and brotherhood. From Wikipedia:

In Abrahamic religions, the Messianic Age is the future period of time on Earth in which the messiah will reign and bring universal peace and brotherhood, without any evil. Many believe that there will be such an age; some refer to it as the consummate “kingdom of God” or the “world to come”.

According to Jewish tradition, the Messianic Era will be one of global peace and harmony, an era free of strife and hardship, and one conducive to the furtherment of the knowledge of the Creator. The theme of the Messiah ushering in an era of global peace is encapsulated in two of the most famous scriptural passages from the Book of Isaiah:

Isaiah 2:4 (KJV): ⁴And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Isaiah 11:6-7 (KJV): ⁶The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. ⁷And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

These images of peace and love in a world in which impediments to unity, artificial boundaries, just vanish were profoundly appealing to the Quaker artist Edward Hicks, who returned again and again to the dream world of the Peaceable Kingdom. From the Worcester (MA) Art Museum site:

(#4) Edward Hicks (American, 1780-1849), The Peaceable Kingdom (about 1833), oil on canvas

Trained as a sign, coach, and ornamental painter, Hicks painted over a hundred versions of his now-famous Peaceable Kingdom between 1820 and his death. His artistic endeavors provided modest support for his activities as a Quaker preacher in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The theme of this painting, drawn from chapter 11 of Isaiah, was undoubtedly attractive to Hicks and fellow Quakers not only for its appealing imagery but also for its message of peace … Into many versions, including the Worcester painting, Hicks incorporated a vignette of William Penn’s treaty with the Indians, an image he adapted from a popular painting by Benjamin West. Hicks may have viewed parallels in the two parts of the composition, inasmuch as Penn, who had introduced Quakerism into Pennsylvania, had also brought about a measure of the peaceable kingdom on earth.

In #4, the Englishman and the Indian are portrayed as free and equal, brothers in Hicks’s fancied peaceable kingdom. So in #1, the Israeli and the Palestinian, in Menicocci’s fiction of a better world.

Today’s ad from Daily Jocks, with a sale on men’s high-end underwear from Australian firms, in recognition of Australia Day (tomorrow, the 26th):

(#1) The 2eros Midnight Rose pattern (blue roses on a deep purple background), in a swim slip (Speedo-style swimsuit, but Speedo is a trade name) on the left and swimshorts on the right

Ad copy:

Celebrate Australia Day with DailyJocks and get 15% off your favourite Australian brands including; 2eros, Teamm8, Marcuse, Supawear & many more!

My parody caption:

Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?
Blue roses are my place on earth

Australia Day. From Wikipedia:

Australia Day is the official national day of Australia. Celebrated annually on 26 January, it marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales, and the raising of the Flag of Great Britain at Sydney Cove by Governor Arthur Phillip. In present-day Australia, celebrations reflect the diverse society and landscape of the nation and are marked by community and family events, reflections on Australian history, official community awards and citizenship ceremonies welcoming new members of the Australian community.

Race and ethnicity. For obvious reasons, Australian aboriginal peoples have, apparently, been folded into Australia Day with great uneasiness. In any case, the model on the right in #1 (in the swimshorts) is certainly not aboriginal. It’s possible he’s intended to be African Australian. From Wikipedia:

African Australians are Australians of African ancestry. Large-scale immigration from Africa to Australia is only a recent phenomenon, with Europe and Asia traditionally being the largest sources of migration to Australia. In 2005–06, permanent settler arrivals to Australia included 4,000 South Africans and 3,800 Sudanese, constituting the sixth and seventh largest sources of migrants, respectively.

African Australians are from diverse racial, cultural, linguistic, religious, educational and employment backgrounds. The majority (72.6%) of African emigrants to Australia are from southern and eastern Africa. The Australian Bureau of Statistics classifies all residents into cultural and ethnic groups according to geographical origin, including the many Afrikaner migrants from Southern Africa in the Sub-Saharan region.

Africans may have come to Australia as skilled migrants, refugees, through family reunion, or as secondary migrants from other countries.

More likely, he’s intended to appeal to 2eros customers in the US or the UK, in which case he’s African American (of sub-Saharan slave descent) or Black British (of African or Caribbean descent).

Gaze and stance. When male models are presented together in photos, specifically in ads (for underwear, for men’s high fashion, for gay porn, whatever), some relationship between them is coded into their facial expressions, gaze, and stance. In #1, swim-slip guy (the white guy) is staring off camera, engaging in his gaze neither his audience nor swimshorts guy (a brown-skinned guy who would conventionally be labeled black); this makes him at least unchallenging, quite possibly submissive. The submissive reading is reinforced by swimshorts guy’s right arm negligently resting on swim-slip guy’s shoulder, claiming rights to his body; and by swimshorts guy’s bold gaze into our eyes, the eyes of the viewers.

So the relationship between the two men is coded as intimate; this is at least mildly transgressive, since they’re an interracial couple. And then the black guy is coded as dominant (t to the white guy’s b), which is more seriously transgressive, since that’s a racial role reversal (but one that a fair number of white gay men find emotionally satisfying — remember that the target audience for these ads is white gay men).

Blue roses. Now some abstract iconography, and some botanical notes. From Wikipedia:

(#2) Blue silk roses (like the ones in the Midnight Rose pattern)

A blue rose is a flower of the genus Rosa (family Rosaceae) that presents blue-to-violet pigmentation instead of the more common red, white, or yellow. Blue roses are often portrayed in literature and art as symbols of love, prosperity, or immortality. However, because of genetic limitations, they do not exist in nature. In 2004, researchers used genetic modification to create roses that contain the blue pigment delphinidin.

… Since blue roses do not exist in nature, as roses lack the specific gene that has the ability to produce a “true blue” color, blue roses are traditionally created by dyeing white roses. [And of course roses of any color can be make from silk.]

In addition, there’s the color blue as a symbol of male homosexuality, as noted in a 11/19/15 posting of mine:

the color blue has been associated with gay men, as in the (now-deceased) gay pornographic magazine Blueboy

Meanwhile, as noted here many times, a rose flower often serves as  a sexcavity symbol — vaginal or anal.

So the blue roses in the Midnight Rose pattern drip with suggestions of mansex. “Blue roses are my place on earth” conveys a man’s desire to lose himself, and find himself, in another man’s body.

“Blue roses are my place on earth”. The line is my parodic take-off on

Blue heaven is my place on earth

which is how I, and a great many other people, recall a central line of Belinda Carlisle’s 1987 hit song (by Rick Nowels & Ellen Shipley). But in fact the central lines are:

Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?
Ooh, heaven is a place on earth

(with ooh, heaven, not blue heaven). Listen to it here:

(#3) The mondegreened blue heaven (no doubt influenced by My Blue Heaven) is pretty much unshakeable for me, even though I know it’s a mishearing

Well, not the actual penises, but the packages or pouches containing them, advertising them while technically concealing them. (Plus, butts too.)

All this in an Australia Day image found by one of my lgbt+ Facebook friends (who came across it in a “sports” group):

(#1) Comment from another friend in the lgbt+ group: “Smuggling budgies, I see”

On this blog yesterday in “Blue roses”: 2eros swimwear on sale for Australia Day. Now it turns out that #1 is also an ad for an Australia Day sale on homowear: an aussieBum (Australian men’s underwear and swimwear company) ad from 2004, back before I was collecting such ads for my postings.

The budgie reference. From my 10/6/16 posting “Smuggle me budgie down, sport”, on budgie smuggler:

Australian slang term for men’s tight-fitting Speedo-style swimwear. The ‘lump in the front’ apparently resembles a budgie [the little bird] when it is stuffed down the front of someone’s shorts

A 2004 ad bonus. The image in #1 was paired with another one in aussieBum’s 2004 campaign:

(#2) The aussieBum guys enjoying the intimacy of a circular gang shower

From my 8/4/13 posting “Gang showers”, a bit on one style of gang shower, with shower heads arranged around a central pillar (rather than in a row along a wall).

Otherwise, the two 2004 images are displays of meticulously muscled torsos — thorax plus abdomen plus perineum — on powerful male bodies clothed so as to celebrate crotches and buttocks. Australia! Australia!

A souvenir from Juan Gomez, who visited Peru (Cuzco, Machu Picchu) with his family for the New Year’s holiday: a little stuffed llama I’ve named Glama Grrl (he’s seen here perched high in the spathyphyllum forest on my worktable):

(#1)

The Peruvian camelid has been exploited for all sorts of word play purposes, perhaps most famously in the light verse of Ogden Nash, but also in joking that turns on the fact that the element llam– has (at least) three separate sources in Spanish (referring to the camelid, to fire or flames, and to calling (out)). Glama Grrl will then lead us to the original traveler from darkest Peru, Paddington Bear.

The two-L llama. From Mark Liberman’s 6/18/07 posting to Language Log, “Threeers”, on the affliction Wiiitis and on the threeer (three trains simultaneously passing some point), with the Ogden Nash poem:

The one-l lama,
He’s a priest.
The two-l llama,
He’s a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn’t any
Three-l lllama.*

*The author’s attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.

The llama. Now for something completely serious. From Wikipedia:

(#2) A trio of llamas at East Bend farm in North Carolina, where the llama farm sits alongside the Divine Llama vineyards

The llama (… Spanish pronunciation: [ˈʎama]) (Lama glama) is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since the Pre-Columbian era.

… They are very social animals and live with other llamas as a herd. The wool produced by a llama is very soft and lanolin-free. Llamas are intelligent and can learn simple tasks after a few repetitions.

… The name llama (in the past also spelled ‘lama’ or ‘glama’) was adopted by European settlers from native Peruvians.

Llamas are undeniably adorable: they are social, friendly, smart, and soft to the touch. Also hard-working and a source of lean meat.

The animal’s name in English can be pronounced with an initial /l/ (following the spelling) or an initial /y/ (more closely approximating the Spanish pronunciation.

And on camelids as a group, from Wikipedia:

Camelids are members of the biological family Camelidae, the only currently living family in the suborder Tylopoda. The extant members of this group are: dromedary camels [Camelus dromedarius], Bactrian camels [Camelus bactrianus], wild Bactrian camels [Camelus ferus], llamas [Lama glama], alpacas [Vicugna pacos], vicuñas [Vicugna vicugna], and guanacos [Lama guanicoe].

… Camelids do not have hooves, rather they have two-toed feet with toenails and soft foot pads… Most of the weight of the animal rests on these tough, leathery sole pads. The South American camelids, adapted to steep and rocky terrain, can move the pads on their toes to maintain grip.

Playfulness. First, a children’s book title playing on the rhyme (full or half, depending on your dialect) of llama and calmer:

(#3) Sarah Ford’s Be a Llama & Stay a Little Calmer (2018)

Meanwhile, there are at least three llam– elements in modern Spanish. First, the animal llam– ~ glam– element (a fem. gender noun llama).

Second, a llam– ‘flame, fire, passion’ element (Lat. flamma), also a fem. gender noun llama. Played with in the name of the acoustic pop band Flaming Llamas:

(#4) The band is headquartered in the English village of Bures (on the Essex/Suffolk border), and performs regularly at the Bell Inn, Castle Hedingham, Essex

Third, the verb llamar ‘to call’, notably in ¿Cómo se llama? ‘What is it called?’ (Lat. clāmāre) — a usage played on in this t-shirt on the 6DollarShirts site:

(#5)

Then of course there’s my play on glama (the species name) and glamo(u)r in the name Glama Grrl (in #1).

Darkest Peru. The reference is to the Paddington Bear books. From Wikipedia:

(#6) Paddington at Machu Picchu

Paddington Bear is a fictional character in children’s literature. He first appeared on 13 October 1958 in the children’s book A Bear Called Paddington and has been featured in more than twenty books written by British author Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum and other artists.

… Paddington arrives as a stowaway coming from “Darkest Peru”, sent by his Aunt Lucy (one of only a few known relatives aside from an Uncle Pastuzo who gave Paddington his hat), who has gone to live in the Home for Retired Bears in Lima. He claims, “I came all the way in a lifeboat, and ate marmalade. Bears like marmalade.” He tells them that no-one can understand his Peruvian name, so the Browns [who take him in] decide to call him Paddington after the railway station in which he was found. Paddington’s Peruvian name is ultimately revealed to be “Pastuso” (not to be confused with his “Uncle Pastuzo”).

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

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

(#1)

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

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

That’s LDV’s Cupid Face.

The holidays. Today, February 13th, is a brief valley between Lincoln Darwin Day (February 12th: both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on this day in 1809) and Valentine’s Day (February 14th, also celebrated as Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky Day).

The ad copy from DJ (with its Ad Agency Capitalization):

Happy Valentines! Put a little love in your Undies with the Marco Marco Valentines Day Exclusive. The Love Brief [aka Luv U brief] has a red heart print and is sure to be your new favorite. This new style has a peek-a-boo cutout in the back and on the sides making it just the right amount of sexy.

Treat yourself or your partner with this Limited Edition Brief.

The Marco Marco line is unabashedly queer. Note the assumption that the audience for the ad is male, in fact guys with male partners.

The briefs in detail. From the front, displaying the pouch:

(#2)

And from the side, showing the peek-a-boo cutouts that make it a half moon brief:

(#3)

The poetry. Catalectic trochaic tetrameter (a cut 4×4), 4 lines of 4 SW feet, except that the last foot is short.

The  first verse, mine, has a play on cutup / cut-up (NOAD: “a person who is fond of making jokes or playing pranks”) and cutout (NOAD: “a hole cut in something for decoration or to allow the insertion of something else”).

The second verse, Shakespeare’s, is spoken by the fairy Puck (puckish in NOAD: “playful, especially in a mischievous way”) in Midsummer Night’s Dream (in a passage that also supplies the title of this playful posting, with its inevitable fairy double entendre).

The Marco Marco files. On this blog:

on 3/3/17, “Marco Marco teases”, with information about the company

on 5/19/17, “Marco, Marco, Marco”

on 9/15/17, “The many and the one”: Tetra briefs from Marco Marco

on 3/20/18, “Perfectionist in pink sequin”

on 8/21/18, “Jo Flamingo”: in #3, a half moon brief, with the caption “Party time at Cleft House!”

(The Daily Jocks e-mail of 2/11/19 with a homowear offer from the Varsity company came with the header “NSFW: Boys in mesh”, so this posting will clearly not be for everyone. Seductively exposed buttocks, offered sexually, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

With a brief caption of mine:

(#1) Mesh Man: Always Open for Business®

Ever at the ready, a
Marvel of receptivity
Mesh Man, always there for you,

Mind reader and lightning
Provider of sexual
Emergency service

The ad copy. Introducing the all-new Varsity Mesh Collection!

Both sexy and preppy, Varsity prides itself on a great range of basics and statement pieces designed for every guy’s wardrobe. The stylish brand is influenced by American University sportswear and Frat parties, combining a mix of sporty elements and details that won’t leave you unnoticed. Totally versatile, Varsity will always have you covered for parties, the gym and everyday wear.

Jockstrap, Jock-Thong, Mesh Shorts, Mesh Singlet. All available now in Black & White.

I’m struggling to imagine Mesh Man at a frat party. Well, maybe Sigma Epsilon Chi:

(#2)

The facial expression. Mesh Man looks heroically into the far distance, scanning the sky for signals from men calling to him. He will come to you instantly if you need him.

Mesh Man’s kin. In the Marvel universe: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Iceman. In the D.C. universe: Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Catman, and especially his cousin in shmattes, Ragman.

From the Comic Vine site:

(#3)

Ragman: Wearing a suit of rags made from the souls of evildoers, Rory Regan patrols the streets of Gotham City dispensing vigilante justice. He is one of the few Jewish superheroes in the DC universe

(noun schmatte (also shmatte): US informal a rag; a ragged or shabby garment. (NOAD))

This is not generally known, but Mesh Man is also Jewish. Originally, he was Meshuga Man, projecting craziness within a sphere 20 feet around his body, but then after an especially satisfying sexual liaison with Iron Man, he discovered his true calling as a Receptive.

(adj. meshuga (also meshugga or meshugah): North American informal (of a person) crazy; idiotic (NOAD))

So a Coach ad today exhorts us:

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

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

And I couldn’t pull off the

Colorblock Shearling Jacket in Burnt Sienna

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

The jacket without MBJ in it:

(#2)

And MBJ without the jacket:

(#3) On the left, a young MBJ, lean and handsome; on the right, MBJ seriously bulked up for the Creed movies and Black Panther

On the man, from Wikipedia:

Michael Bakari Jordan (born February 9, 1987) is an American actor. He is known for his film roles as shooting victim Oscar Grant in the drama Fruitvale Station (2013), boxer Adonis Creed in the Rocky sequel film Creed (2015) and main antagonist Erik Killmonger in Black Panther (2018), all three of which were directed by Ryan Coogler.

Jordan’s television roles include Wallace in the HBO series The Wire (2002), Reggie Montgomery in the ABC series All My Children (2003–2006) and Vince Howard in the NBC drama series Friday Night Lights (2009–2011). His other film performances also include Maurice “Bumps” Wilson in Red Tails (2012), Steve Montgomery in Chronicle (2012), Mikey in That Awkward Moment (2014) and the Human Torch in Fantastic Four (2015).

And now he’s the (first) Coach Guy. From W Magazine, “Michael B. Jordan Is Coach’s First Male Campaign Star” by Marissa G. Muller on 9/20/18:

Few are having a better year than Michael B. Jordan. After starring in the historical box office hit Black Panther, the actor is making history once again — this time as the first male campaign star for Coach. Jordan is joining Selena Gomez and the rest of the Coach family as the global face of men’s ready-to-wear, accessories and fragrance, starting with the Spring 2019 season.

(…privately fantasizing about MBJ fragrances…)

Coach has fashioned this slick high-end hoodie — no doubt ruinously expensive — in a light and bright pattern (presumably to side-step the thuggish connotations of dark hoodies on black men) for MBJ, which I show here mostly because it features MBJ’s wonderful smile:

(#4)

As a complex portrait, this is wonderful. But I wonder which men would wear such a garment in what circumstances.

(This posting will go lots of places, some of which — a Greek military re-enactors’ group in Melbourne — you’ll find astonishing, but there’s no denying that, as the title suggests, it’s penis-dense. Without actually depicting them — those images are in my posting this morning on AZBlogX, “Gay Heart Throbs” — but still. However, without penises strewn along the road every few feet, there’s no getting to the fun stuff (like allusions to Miss Anne Elk and to Sonnets from the Portuguese). So use your judgment.)

Phallophilia I: self-regard. A recent Daily Jocks ad (for Kasper Military shorts from the Helsinki Athletica company) showing a hunky model gazing fixedly down at his bulging crotch, with a title and a caption supplied by me:

(#1) On contemplating his penis

Could I just say here for one moment that
I have a new theory about the penis?
Yes, well you may well ask, what is my theory.
And well you may. Yes my word you may well
Ask what it is, this theory of mine.

Well, this theory that I have — which is mine —
This theory which belongs to me is as follows.
Ahem. Ahem. This is how it goes.
Ahem. The next thing that I am about to say
Is my theory. Ahem. Ready?

My theory is along the following lines.
All penises are round at one end,
Tubular in the middle, and then
Anchored in hair at the far end.

That is the theory that I have
And which is mine, and
What it is too.

— excerpts from an interview with noted penis scholar Gay H. Throbs, DPhS. (Doctor of Phallological Science)

On the nose, GHT!

Notes on #1.

First note. The DJ / Helsinki Athletica image came with this (extremely restrained) ad copy:

The Kasper sportswear range is designed for maximum performance whilst bringing sleek European aesthetic to your workout. Featuring figure-hugging trackpants & performance running shorts.

In the world of premium men’s underwear ads, you come to expect hysterical hyperbole, along with Lots of Caps, exclamation points!!, and heavy-handed allusions to genitals and sex. This copy touches the two essential bases — performance, embracing comfort and support, and aesthetics, looking real good in your skivvies — but no more. Maybe it’s Finnish reserve.

Second note. The gesture in #1, which I’ve posted about (on 11/8/10) on AZBlogX as “The Gaze Downward”:

Several times I’ve posted photos of guys — underwear or porn models — staring fixedly down at their own hard cocks, apparently with no regard for the viewer. The Gaze Downward, seen here in a 10percent ad (with the cock in the model’s pants, but hard enough for everyone to see) and in a Pits ‘n’ Tits display in the locker room…

(#2) The 10percent ad, with moose-knuckles

… the Gaze Downward isn’t all that common, probably because it doesn’t engage the viewer directly [instead, voyeurstically]. On the other hand, it does guide the viewer’s attention to the model’s dick [out in the open, or in his bulge / pouch / package]. You start by looking at his face, then you travel down his model-perfect body, appreciating it, until you end up on his cock.

From this blog, in a 3/16/11 posting “Underwear puns”:

(#3) Undergear Greek-design (wink, wink) briefs (ok, so called because of the Greek key design on the waistband); in the same posting, an example of the even more indirect Gaze Sideward, in which the model’s eyes engage neither with the viewer nor with his crotch

Two more examples from my files:

(#4)

(#5)

Not a lot of variation. The model in #3 is bearing his weight on his right leg, with his left hip slightly uptilted, while the others are standing with equal weight on both feet. His head is also not as far tilted down as the others’. All five express little or no emotion on their faces; I have yet to see an underwear model or porn actor smile during a Gaze Downward, or come even close; it’s serious stuff, contemplating your penis.

Third note. The source of the caption. A cheap steal from Monty Python’s sketch “Interview with Anne Elk” (Miss A. Elk, who had a similar theory about the brontosaurus), with some editing down, plus alterations to make it fit a phallophilic context.

Fourth note. the degree DPhS, Doctor of Phallological Science. Based on DDS, Doctor of Dental Surgery, with a bow to PhD, Doctor of Philosophy.

Fifth note. The name of the phallologist, Gay H. Throbs. This borrowed from e-mail that came in while I was studying the image in #1, e-mail from my friend Ken Rudolph, who had come into possession of a vintage gay (porn) comic book Gay Heart Throbs No. 2 (1979), more on which below, because its cover is a festival of phallophilic signifiers. (And Gay can be a male personal name. As for the family name Throbs, well, if Hurt, why not Throbs?)

Sixth note. This would be as good a time as any to announce that this blog now has a Page inventorying  postings about gay comics and cartoons (on AZBlog and AZBlogX). Everything from the wry humor in urban upper middle class gay male life as depicted by William Haefeli in the New Yorker to the intensely raunchy excesses of the Hun’s prison diaries.

Phallophilia II: penis-dense images. A summary of today’s Gay Heart Throbs posting on AZBlogX, with 5 images, plus discussion of settings and themes in gay porn:

(#1) the cover of No. 2 (1979), a festival of phallophilic signifiers

(#2) the contents page for No. 2, featuring a really big fat dick on a guy with an anatomical-model body and a stylized Gay Clone head pasted on top

(#3) from No. 2, a historical frontier fantasy of enthusiastic manly gaysex: the rancher, the soldier, and the Injun — with, in the last panel, gallons of spurting cum and a variety of cum faces

(#4) the cover for No. 1 (1976): gay boys in fairyland, with pan flute, nymph, butterflies, and Bambi — plus a fashionable Ascot-knot scarf and a crotch loosely wrapped in fabric

(#5) the cover for No. 3 (1981), in which a flamingly camp country boy is approached with amorous intent by a biker: not a Knight in White Satin, but a  Biker in Green Leather; his boots are fabulous, and so is country-boy Dwayne’s off-the-shoulder scarf (not to mention the tiny denim scrap around his waist)

From here on out, it’s all about GHT No. 2:

(#6) Issue created by M. Kuchar / Michael J. Kuchar (and other contributors with suggestive pseudonyms)

The central elements in this composition: the man-on-man kiss and the purple pouch thong (matched by the smaller sex-red pouch on the warrior’s lover)

The accessory phallic elements, littering the landscape: spears, arrows, daggers; shields with roosters / cocks on them; stylized Spartan helmets that look like dickheads

Notes on #6.

First note. On the name Kuchar. From GDoS:

noun cooch (also cootch, cutchie [and coochie, cootchie]: (abbr./euph. for cunt; [etymology unclear, possibly involving Welsh]) 1 (US) a ‘hootchy-kootchy’ dance, i.e. belly-dancing; thus cooch dancer, coocher, a belly dancer … [1st cite 1910] … 3 (US) the vagina; thus, by metonymy, a woman. [1st cite 1966] … 4 (US gay) an effeminate homosexual male. [only cite 1972, from Rodgers’s Queens’ Vernacular] … [also, I should add, from personal experience, the male anus viewed as a sexual organ. See Urban Dictionary entry for anal cooch ‘a gay man’s vagina’ (Man 1: Hun, something is wrong with my anal cooch – from contributor “that_just_happened” 6/22/07)]

Second note. The excellent, poetically satisfying, phrase purple pouch thong, which passed by without comment above.

An actual garment:

(#7) The Daniel Alexander Protrude pouch thong in purple

And a hymn to its kind:

The Song of the Thong

Purple pouch thong
How I love thee
To thy depth and breadth
And height

I love thee to
Every day’s
Most urgent need,
Freely, with the
Passion of a lifetime

Third note. Acute readers will recognize this affirmation of love as a total travesty of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”.

Fourth note. On Spartan helmets, that dickhead gear that’s all over #6. Up close:

(#8) Mask World edition of the Frank Miller Spartan helmet from his 300 comics

Frank Miller’s blockbuster movie “300” held as steadily in the upper rank of the movie charts as the 300 Spartans did at Thermopylae. But if you were picking out the historical inaccuracies while watching this visually compelling, epic battle with the Persians, you didn’t understand the movie’s concept. “300” is not a historical documentation – it’s a masterful adaptation of a comic book.

… Our “300” Spartan Helmet, which is based on Frank Miller’s comic of the same name, is a replica of the one used by the Spartan hoplites when they battled the Persian army in the film – despite being hopelessly outnumbered. This solid head protector is made of steel with a bronze alloy coating and fastens with a chin strap. The genuine leather lining make this Spartan Helmet comfortable to wear, and it comes with a helmet stand so you can proudly display your helmet when you’re not wearing it.

In chronological order:

The 1962 CinemaScope epic:

(#9) Helmets with crests, without the facial shielding in #7

The 300 Spartans is a 1962 CinemaScope epic film depicting the Battle of Thermopylae. Made with the cooperation of the Greek government, it was shot in the village of Perachora in the Peloponnese. … It stars Richard Egan as the Spartan king Leonidas, Sir Ralph Richardson as Themistocles of Athens and David Farrar as Persian king Xerxes, with Diane Baker as Ellas and Barry Coe as Phylon providing the requisite romantic element in the film. Greek warriors, led by 300 Spartans, fight against a Persian army of almost limitless size. Despite the odds, the Spartans will not flee or surrender, even if it means their deaths

The 1998 comic books:

300 is a historically inspired 1998 comic book limited series [of 5 issues] written and illustrated by Frank Miller with painted colors by Lynn Varley.

The comic is a fictional retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae and the events leading up to it from the perspective of Leonidas of Sparta. 300 was particularly inspired by the 1962 film The 300 Spartans, a film Miller watched as a young boy. The [1998] work was adapted in 2006 to a film of the same name [300]

The 2006 movie:

300 is a 2006 American period action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. Both are fictionalized retellings of the Battle of Thermopylae within the Persian Wars. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant. It was filmed mostly with a super-imposition chroma key technique, to help replicate the imagery of the original comic book.

As for the many varieties of helmet, I’m uncertain as to both their history in ancient Sparta and to their traditions in (fictionalized) popular culture, but #8 is what filtered into the Gay Heart Throb comic of 1979.

Fifth note. On cock shields (battle shields with fighting cocks — the poultry — on them, not protective shields for penises). Notable in #6, where they look a bit silly. But they were real things, which can be reconstucted from historical records, as in this remarkable photo:

(#10) The cock shield device of Idomeneus (other shield devices from the same source: bull’s head, lambda, drinking chalice of Dionysus, serpent, hawk, dolphins, crouching lion, hibiscus flower, stars, the flesh-eating Sphinx, the Gorgon, horse, centaur, club of Herakles)

The source is The Ancient Hoplitikon of Melbourne AU:

All proud members of the Australasian Living History Federation (ALHF)

… [comprising people who] specialise in Ancient Classical and Hellenistic Greek re-enactment. The group’s focus is to study, replicate and perform with military and civilian equipment from the period of 600-100 BC.

… A major aim is to make aware to the general public that Greek culture not only lead the ancient world in philosophy, democracy, art and citizenship but also the genius of military prowess, arms technology and application on the ancient battlefield. This ability and determination to repel invaders over the centuries earned great respect and enabled Greek culture to flourish and spread through the Mediterranean world, inspiring the emerging Roman Republic.

The Greek Hoplite Warrior seems to have international appeal and encapsulates the beginnings of early European cultural determination and sense of galvanizing order out of chaos. School children or adults who may or may not have been exposed to literature of the Illiad [their spelling], Odysseus or Alexander the Great can easily identify with this imagery and instantly recognize the symbolism of Greek struggle for independence and freedom

As for the shields, about the Ancient Hoplitikon’s Shield Registry (edited):

Shield iconography had personal, family and tribal klan significance. The shield devices in our register are faithfully reconstructed based on research, rather than artistic license.

You don’t have to be Greek to participate in the association, but it does make sense that the group should be located in Melbourne VIC. From Wikipedia:

Greeks are the seventh-largest ethnic group in Australia. Moreover, Melbourne is home to one of the largest Greek diaspora communities in the world as well as being the city with the largest Greek-speaking population outside Greece.

According to the 2001 Australian census, Melbourne has the largest Greek Australian population in Australia … and the largest Greek population of any city in the [world] outside of Greece.

I told you we’d end up in Melbourne, brandishing shields (and swords and daggers).

… in Palo Alto, this morning, for breakfast with Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky. Which took me past a fitness club that closed down a while back, but is now in the process of being replaced by an even trendier sort of fitness club, Rumble Boxing; to the Palo Alto Creamery for breakfast, where I picked up the weekend edition of the Peninsula Daily Post; which had a front-page story on the fate of the artwork Digital DNA, originally installed just a bit further up Emerson St.

Rumble Boxing. This will lead us to extraordinarily muscled shirtless young men, as objectified by young women on the on-line publication PopSugar.

Rumble Boxing, which advertises itself as providing “boxing-inspired group fitness classes”, started in NYC a few years ago, and has now spread to (at least) Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — and, coming soon, Palo Alto. The SF location (180 Sansome St Suite 100):

(#1)

Then, from PopSugar site, the 3/16/17 piece “These Sweat-Covered Boxing Trainers Will Motivate You to Work Out Today” by Victoria Messina:

(#2) Noah Douglas Neiman, a cofounder of Rumble Boxing, with a Rumble punching bag and I Can’t Believe They’re Real abs,  in NYC

We’ve decided to present you with the Sexy Men of Rumble Boxing — a handful of sweat-covered trainers, along with the gym’s co-owner — to prove just how lovely an establishment it truly is. If these ripped hunks don’t motivate you to get your butt to the gym (or to book a flight to NYC just to visit Rumble), then you may want to consider visiting an eye doctor.

The PA location — with big picture windows on the street, as in #2 — is more or less across the street from what is now the Nobu Hotel Epiphany Palo Alto (formerly just the Epiphany), with rooms at $750 a night and up, and with the stratospherically expensive Restaurant Nobu in it.

Now, about PopSugar, from Wikipedia:

PopSugar Inc. is an American media and technology company that is the parent to the media property PopSugar (stylized POPSUGAR), the shopping platform ShopStyle, and a monthly subscription business PopSugar Must Have. The company was founded in 2006 by married couple Brian and Lisa Sugar as a pop culture blog. …  PopSugar features lifestyle content targeted towards women 18-34, across topics such as beauty, entertainment, fashion, fitness, food, and parenting, on mobile, video, and social media.

Digital DNA. Across Hamilton Ave. from the Nobuverse on Emerson St. is the Palo Alto Creamery, a bit of unreconstructed Old Palo Alto I’ve written about a number of times here. A smoked salmon Benedict for Elizabeth, a 3-egg scramble with ham, spinach, and cheddar cheese for me. With the Peninsula Daily Post (“serving Palo Alto and the mid-Peninsula”) for 2/23-24/19 to study.

With this story:

(#3)

The statue (7ft x 5ft, 300 lbs of digital delight) in happier days, at University Ave. and Emerson St., in Lytton Plaza:

(#4)

Artist Adriana Varella’s 2000 description (slightly edited, but largely preserving its eccentric charm) of the work, from her site:

Digital DNA … mixes languages (Arabic, Russian, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, etc). It goes deeper into branching, but above all into the origins of what comes to be the adventure of computers. Therefore, through phrases like: “Circuits of power”, “ideological circuits”, “warfare circuits”, “borderless circuits”, “sexual circuits”, “colonizing circuits”, “genetic circuits, etc, trying to simplistically verify, even if it is a glimpse of consciousness, one of the main tools-objects of our contemporary world.

Digital DNA’s sole intention is a momentary reflection about what we have been building, researching and planning for our software and hardware thinkers…. They are the ones who determine what users will be extracting form their computers (except for the hackers maybe). We hope the art piece could bring some reflection.

And close-ups of some of the egg’s contents:

(#5)

Further up Emerson St. is the Aquarius Theatre, which often appears on these pages.

Down Emerson St., in the other direction, we come to (among other things) Dan Gordon’s restaurant (“beer bbq whiskey”), the Whole Foods Market, and the Taverna restaurant (recent replacement for the Mexican family restaurant La Morenita), all of which have been featured on this blog before. Plus lots of plants I’ve written about. (Oh yes, and the office of my representative in the US Congress, Anna Eshoo).

I can’t walk far, but there’s a lot to look at along the way. And it’s always changing: there are dozens of little tech offices, which mostly get replaced every 6 to 18 months. Churning, always churning.

(Hunky male models in very little; lots of lexicography to come in later postings, but here lots of plain talk about men’s bodies and mansex, so not advised for kids or the sexually modest.)

The 3/37 Daily Jocks ad in e-mail — with the header Bottomless Shorts  — now with a caption of mine:

(#1)

He navigated the
Corridors of the Blue
Boy Bar, savoring its
Pygian gloom, signaled
Red in the smoky
Dusk of desire, whispered
Shoot me, please,
Shoot the Moon

Who is he? He is Moon Moon Moon II, whose American father, né Moon Mullins, married first Keith Moon, then another wayward Englishman, Alfie Moon. (Ban-Ki-moon proposed, but Moon rejected him; Moon I was something of a kimchee queen, but he had an overwhelming weakness for bad boys like Keith and Alfie, so a secretary-general of the United Nations was way too good for him. ) Moon II, in contrast to his father (who was flamboyantly bisexual), lives a racy but apparently straight life, while being fully engaged in the subterranean world of secret gay sex, where, like his father before him, he is an eager bottom boy.

More on the characters in this family drama below, with a thrilling digression from Moon I’s early days in which Popeye screws him. (Those were the days, my friends!) And a note on Moon II’s little brother Cosmo (a naughty boy who has a nightly tryst with the moon he loves).

But first a little background.

Barcode Berlin. See my 8/14/18 posting “Butch fagginess” on the “frank homowear” from the Barcode Berlin firm. Then in the DJ mailing on the 27th:

The new mesh leather-look Moon Shorts by Barcode Berlin will be sure to have you turning heads.

Featuring premium black mesh side panels with a contrasting colored front and back.  The pouch and rear are extremely sexy, with see-through mesh and a window right below the waistband, these shorts are perfect for those daring enough to wear them!

Moon Shorts [come] in asphalt, red, yellow

(#2) Stunning in yellow

In a follow-up posting I’ll get to the complex word play in Moon Shorts, evoking moon shots and shoot the moon, with sexual allusions in moon and shoot/shot. And then in a second follow-up posting I’ll look at DJ’s use of bottomless for things like #2 on the left.

The Blue Boy Bar in Berlin.

(#3) The Blue Boy Bar, a gay bar in Berlin (Kleiststraße 7), in business for 40 years, open 24 hours

The Moons. On to the family, starting with Moon I. From Wikipedia:

(#4) Moon I in 1947; the boy is Moon’s street urchin kid brother Kayo

Moon Mullins is an American comic strip which had a run as both a daily and Sunday feature from June 19, 1923 to June 2, 1991. Syndicated by the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate, the strip depicts the lives of diverse lowbrow characters who reside at the Schmaltz (later Plushbottom) boarding house. The central character, Moon (short for Moonshine), is a would-be prizefighter — perpetually strapped for cash but with a roguish appetite for vice and high living. Moon took a room in the boarding house at 1323 Wump Street in 1924 and never left, staying on for 67 years. The strip was created by cartoonist Frank Willard.

Then Moon’s first great love, the mercurial Keith Moon:

(#5) Keith in action

Keith John Moon (23 August 1946 – 7 September 1978) was an English drummer for the rock band the Who. He was noted for his unique style and his eccentric, often self-destructive behaviour. His drumming continues to be praised by critics and musicians. (Wikipedia link)

After Keith died in a haze of drugs, Moon Moon fell into years of intense aimless sex, with both women and men, before he found his second great love, Alfie Moon, a laddish petty criminal from London’s East End with a charming side. Just Moon’s type:

(#6) Alfie Moon as realized by Shane Richie

Alfie Moon is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Shane Richie. [2002–2005, 2010–2016, 2018–2019] (Wikipedia link)

Moon Moon and Alfie Moon were married in a fabulous ceremony on Fire Island; Moon Moon took Alfie’s name, becoming Moon Moon Moon (“You can never have too many moons in your life”, he quipped); and Alfie took on the role of adoptive father for Moon’s two sons from his days of coupling with women. The first boy, Moon, they renamed after his father: Moon Moon Moon II, called Moooooon Two for short, and nicknamed Moonie. The second boy was already named Cosmo, after Moon I’s long-time fuck buddy Cosmo Topper (see the Wikipedia page on Thorne Smith).

Both boys are a bit odd. Moon II was never comfortable with his fathers’ flagrant public queerness and retreated into a shell of stiff heteronormative respectability, while secretly engaging obsessively in public sex, on an almost daily basis, with men in many cities. He’s particularly fond of Berlin, with its vibrant gay resources right in the middle of the city, so that he can move easily from ordinary straight life to back-room bars and sex clubs, where he can satisfy his intense desire for cock. Like his father before him, he adores getting fucked; sein Arsch is famous.

Cosmo is still a boy, and a strange, dreamy one, mooning about the house. His story has now been told in print, in Cosmo’s Moon by Devin Scillian (Sleeping Bear Press, 2003). The publisher’s description from Google Books, including an account of Cosmo’s nightly tryst with the moon he loves:

(#7)

Cosmo loves the moon, and the moon loves Cosmo. They both come to realize though that lots of things depend on the moon – the ocean tides, morning glories, and the dogs, who can’t stop howling. A magical book about the power of friendship and the nature of responsibility, Cosmo’s moon will charm everyone who’s ever been bewitched by the beauty of the moon. “Cosmo loved the moon. He had moon pajamas and a moon nightlight and stars and moons all over his bedroom. Every night, Cosmo’s [fathers] gave him a hug and a kiss and tucked him into his bed. But just as soon as they closed his bedroom door, he threw aside the covers, ran to the open window, and watched as the golden moon came into the night sky just above the sycamore tree. And as a gentle night breeze blew across the curtains, Cosmo would talk and the moon would listen.”

Who knows where this will lead.

Moon Mullins’s youthful straying down the primrose path. The tale begins with a social practice in our culture, an extension of the practice of double dating. From NOAD:

noun double date: a social outing in which two couples participate.

Classically, the couples are mixed-sex, and either the two women, or the two men, or both, are close friends. The people in these pairs offer each other psychological support in their dealing with the other sex on this occasion, which is a dating event, in which romantic or sexual pairing  is potentially on the agenda (and that may be the source of some anxiety).

Such occasions are planned; they are a species of appointment. But people can also affiliate in short-term pairs on a pick-up basis, especially for casual sex, and it’s not uncommon for someone engaged in a search for a sexual partner to do so in company with a friend of the same sex (who again is a source of psychological support, encouragement, and the like). So: buddies will look together for women to score with; and if they’re successful in finding two women, may go on to consummate their connections together, say in a hotel room. The presence of the other couple takes some of the pressure off each man — he’s not flying solo — while also providing some modeling, shared arousal, and a certain degree of friendly competition. Such a relationship between men is homosocial and involves sex, but it is not necessarily homoerotic (though it can be, especially for a man  who appears to be straight but experiences significant sexual desire for men).

In any event, this is a practice, or social routine, that straight guys (at least in some social groups in the US) have sometimes engaged in, for some time now; I have heard about instances from straight friends, and the practice is sometimes represented in fiction and the movies. If it has a name, I don’t know it.

All this is a build-up to representations of the practice in Tijuana bibles, cheap and usually crude pornographic cartoon strips circulated underground in the early-to-mid 20th century. See my 6/25/12 posting “Tijuana bibles”, with a link to two such “bibles” (a Mickey and Donald bible and a Donald bible) on AZBlogX here (the 6/28/12 posting “Disney Tijuana Bibles”).

As a very popular comic-strip character, Moon Mullins was worked into a considerable number of Tijuana bibles. One of them — “Stepping Out” (c1935) — pairs Moon and Popeye engaged in the practice of two buddies hooking up with two women for sex; the cover of the bible:

(#8)

My AZBlogX posting this morning, “Popeye screws Moon”, shows p. 7 of this sexual adventure, in which the man-on-woman sex is interrupted by an interlude in which Popeye the Sailor Man screws Moon Mullins — while Moon eats pussy and a second woman licks Popeye’s balls (obviously not a WordPressable image).

Otherwise, we have no visual record of Moon I’s predilection for taking it up the ass, so ths is a precious artefact.

With that, I leave the Moon family. In postings to come: moon shots and shooting the moon; and bottomless shorts.

(Lexicographic news for penises, but nothing more alarming than that.)

From a friend in the lgbt precinct of Facebook on the 4th:

Passed a Johnson Controls van on the way home from work. I’ve always said if you have to hire a company to control your johnson you’re in real trouble.

Remarkably, the slang johnson ‘penis’ seems not to have appeared on this blog. But first, the Johnson Controls company (which does not concern itself with penises) and the movie Bad Johnson (which is all about them).

Johnson Controls. From Wikipedia:

(#1) Power Solutions headquarters in Glendale WI

Johnson Controls International plc is a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Cork, Ireland, that produces automotive parts such as batteries, and electronics and HVAC equipment for buildings. It employs 170,000 people in more than 1,300 locations across six continents.

… In 1883, Warren S. Johnson, a professor at the State Normal School in Whitewater, Wisconsin, received a patent for the first electric room thermostat. His invention helped launch the building control industry and was the impetus for a new company.

Phonological note. On the accent pattern of Johnson Controls — vs. johnson control ‘control of one’s johnson’. Both are N + N compounds, but only the second has the characteristic “compound stress” prosody, with front stress (or forestress), as in climate control ‘control of (indoor) climate’ and johnson pain ‘pain in one’s johnson’ — the default pattern for compounds with common-N first element. The default pattern for compounds with proper-N first element is the characteristic “adjective stress” prosody, with back stress (or afterstress), as in nominals like climatic control, but also generally in compounds with trade names as the first element, like:

Velveeta cheese, Kleenex tissues, Listerine mouthwash, Crest toothpaste, Ivory soap

— including those where the trade name is derived from a surname, like:

Zwicky muesli, Kraft cheese, Armour ham, Mellon bank, Ford car

And Johnson Controls.

Bad Johnson. From Wikipedia:

(#2) A poster for the movie

Bad Johnson is a 2014 American sex comedy film directed by Huck Botko.

Rich is a sex addict who ruins every relationship through infidelity. He wishes that his penis would leave him alone. He wakes up one day to find his penis has taken on human form.

With Cam Gigandet as Rich Johnson and Nick Thune as Rich’s penis. Currently rated 29% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[Digression on Gigandet. From Wikipedia:

(#3) An album of Gigandet displaying his lean and muscular body

Cameron Joslin “Cam” Gigandet (born August 16, 1982) is an American actor whose credits include a recurring role on The O.C. and appearances in feature films Twilight, Pandorum, Never Back Down, Burlesque, Easy A, The Roommate and Priest. He also starred in the short-lived CBS legal drama series Reckless. From 2016 to 2018, Gigandet starred in the Audience Network drama series Ice.]

The John family of penis slang. Assembled from GDoS, starting with johnson / Johnson:

noun johnson (also Johnson) (analogous with jock-1 (1) or jack-3 (1) … ) 1 the penis (later usage esp. US black) [1st cite 1863] … 2 a pimp; a man living off a prostitute’s earnings [1st cite 1954] … 3 (US) a dildo [1975 cite] …

noun johnny: … 9 the penis (abbr. John Thomas) [1st cite 1833]

noun jones-2: (US black) 1 the penis [1st cite 1969]

noun jong-2 : (?  john-2 (3) + schlong (1)) 1 (US) the penis [1st cite 1934]

Plus proper names used for phallic reference:

John Thomas [1st cite 1653], John Willie [1st cite 1980]

Curb your enthusiasm, and control your johnson!