(Discussions of men’s bodies and mansex in plain language, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

On AZBlogX today (this material is XXX-rated),  “In costume for Halloween 2018”, with this year’s TitanMen Halloween sale ad (#1 there); a posting on The Sword site on gay Halloween (illustration from the posting in #2 there); and a note on gay vampires in porn (two DVD covers in #3 there).

The TitanMen gay porn ad. Cropped images of the two characters in the ad, plus some text from my XBlog:

(#1) The catcher Supinus

(#2) The pitcher Erectus

As always, I enjoy the way gay porn companies approach the exercise of bending almost any holiday to their commercial purposes. If men are involved in the popular celebrations –that takes in all military-related holidays, Fathers Day, and Christmas (because of Santa Claus) — no sweat. A few solemn religious holidays — Yom Kippur, Good Friday, Ramadan — seem, quite reasonably, to be off limits. But Halloween is a big gay holiday on several grounds, starting with the costume theme of the American holiday and the license for transgressive behavior.

The Titan dickmen in the ad, catcher Supinus and pitcher Erectus, are in costume — fetishwear. Supinus is in harness, with (obviously assless) chaps made of what looks like spandex. Erectus is wearing a padded Y vest or harness that I’ve been unable to identify (Google Images sees the Erectus image as “barechested” and nothing more). And knee pads.

(I don’t know what film this scene is taken from, or who the actors are.)

Then there are the facial expressions. Supinus is in craftsman mode, focused on his performance, with his gaze on his partner. Erectus, on the other hand, is in egocentric mode (“look at me!”, projecting a seductive cruise face), gaze on his audience and totally breaking the frame of the scene.

Gay Halloween. From HuffPo on 10/31/11 (updated 2/2/16), “Halloween: America’s Gay Holiday”:

Long before June officially became Gay Pride Month and October became Coming Out Month for the LGBTQ community, Halloween was unofficially our yearly celebrated “holiday,” dating as far back as the 1970s.

… Nicholas Rogers, author of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, points out that while Halloween is enjoyed by everyone, “it has been the Gay community that has most flamboyantly exploited Halloween’s potential as a transgressive festival, as one that operates outside or on the margins of orthodox time, space, and hierarchy. Indeed, it is the Gay community that has been arguably most responsible for Halloween’s adult rejuvenation.”

Halloween allows many LGBTQ Americans at least one night annually, Oct. 31, of safely being out and “unmasked” while remaining closeted. The community revels the entire night like there is no tomorrow, and for many there isn’t. Like its pagan roots, Halloween provided an outlet for us cross-dressing and gender-bending LGBTQ outsiders who are ostracized by mainstream society.

So gay porn for Halloween is  as American as pumpkin pie. And there’s a lot of it. Here’s a selection (unsurprisingly heavy with NakedSword productions) on The Sword site (“Gay. Sex. Life.”), under the head “Things that go Hump in the Night” (by Harlan on 10/31/18):

“The Devil’s Deal & Other Sordid Tales” from NakedSword Originals

“Descent Collector’s Edition” from Hot House

“Inner Devil” from Dark Alley Media

“Frat House Cream” from NakedSword Originals

“The Devil Did The Dickin’” from Damon Dogg’s Cum Factory

“A Monster Inside Me” from Dark Alley Media

“Scared Stiff” from NakedSword Originals

“House Bizzare” from Man’s Art Studio

“A Ghost Of A Chance” from Bijou Gay Classics (“A young man dies – yet he never leaves his lover.”)

“A Wicked Game” from NakedSword Originals

“A Vampire In Town” from Oh Man! Studios

“Twinklight Vampire Diary” from Gay Life Network

An illustration from the Sword’s posting:

(#3) A jack o’ lantern crotch shot

In the Sword’s posting this is paired — #2 in my XBlog posting — with an image of steamy mansex, a Flying Cowboy fuck (with a cocksucking extra thrown in), not reproducible here.

In any case, there’s a direct association here between Halloween and queerness.

Gay vampires for Halloween. Notice the last two items on The Sword’s gay Halloween list, both with titles that play on formulaic expressions (“A Vampire in Town”, presumably based on the catchphrase (there’s) a new sheriff in town; “Twinklight Vampire Diary”, alluding to the “Twilight Saga” movies and also playing on twink) and both involving vampires. More on the vampire connection below. But first, some notes on the titles.

The American Western trope —

(#4)

— promises that things will change with his arrival, as they will when a vampire arrives.

Then there’s the allusion to the Twilight Saga. From Wikipedia:

The Twilight Saga is a series of five romance fantasy films [2009-2012] from Summit Entertainment based on the four novels by American author Stephenie Meyer. The films star Kristen Stewart [as a mortal], Robert Pattinson [as a vampire], and Taylor Lautner [as a werewolf].

Vampires get into the act in this posting because there are two associations  involving them: vampires, as a tribe of the undead, are associated with Halloween; and vampires are also associated with intense sexuality (blood-sucking as seduction and conquest), specifically with gay sexuality (sucking blood, sucking cock), so that vampires are associated with queerness. Vampires are in the middle of these associations; there would then be an indirect association of Halloween with queerness (through the mediation of vampirism), even if a direct association hadn’t come about in 1970s America.

The “Vampire in Town” DVD cover (on the left in #3 on my XBlog posting) isn’t reproducible here, but the “Twinklight Vampire Diary” cover next to it (just barely) is:

(#5)

Compare this to Robert Pattinson in character as a (pale-faced, hollow-eyed, red-lipped) vampire in the Twilight Saga:

(#5)

These are straight vampires, in the Dracula tradition. But gay vampires abound, though mostly in low-budget, even frankly cheesy productions. There are, however, at least two notable gay vampire flicks from the high-end studios: Barebackula — huge title groan — in the Michael Lucas gay porn flick of that name, treated in a 10/7/16 posting on this blog; and Kristen Bjorn’s The Vampire of Budapest (1995). The Lucas DVD cover, cropped to remove the naughty bits:

(#6)

And the Bjorn cover, which was carefully posed to conceal the naughty bits:

(#7)

Bonus: the vampire Bakula. Since someone was bound to ask, yes, Scott Bakula has played a vampire. At least once, on the tv show Quantum Leap, “Blood Moon” S5 E15 (1st aired 3/10/75), in which Sam leaps into the body of a supposed vampire.

Meanwhile, the inevitable t-shirts have been made, with this image:

(#8)

(Warning: embedded in this posting is a bit of — just barely euphemized — taboo vocabulary and the image of a hunky guy in his underwear.)

From Sim Aberson on 10/29, from WSVN, channel 7 in Miami FL:

BSO deputies arrest Dania Beach man in child porn case

Dania Beach, Fla. (WSVN) – Deputies have arrested a Dania Beach man on numerous child pornography charges.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office arrested 66-year-old Roger Aiudi on Thursday following a months-long investigation by the agency’s Internet Crimes Against Children task force. Investigators said Aiudi had 13 pornographic images of children and dozens of other images showing children in promiscuous positions.

Well yes, not promiscuous ‘having or characterized by many transient sexual relationships’, but provocative ‘arousing sexual desire or interest, especially deliberately’ (NOAD definitions). This is a very likely sort of word retrieval error, since the words are similar phonologically (sharing the accent pattern WSWW and sharing the initial syllable /prǝ/) and morphologically (both ending in Adj-forming suffixes, –ous vs. –ive) as well as semantically.

In fact, it’s possible that for the investigators who reported images of children “in promiscuous positions”, the word they produced was in fact the word they were aiming for. That is, for them, what was probably originally someone’s retrieval error has now become internalized. From the point of view of standard English, this would be a word confusion, but for them it wouldn’t be an inadvertent glitch that they would correct if they noticed it or you pointed it out to them; it would be what they think the appropriate word is. In time, the word confusion might even spread, with the result that promiscuous would develop a widely available new sense ‘arousing sexual desire or interest, especially deliberately’ that dictionaries would list. The word confusion of flaunt for flout has almost completed this course.

Even as a word retrieval error, the sort of thing I might fall into (but would correct if I became aware of it), promiscuous for provocative is of interest, because it straddles what are usually thought of as two distinct types of retrieval error: semantic errors and phonological errors (aka Fay-Cutler malapropisms). Sometimes the distinction is clear: from my files,

noun cluster for consonant cluster and teaching assistant for research assistant are straightforward examples of semantic errors

a preposition of brutal masculinity for a presentation of brutal masculinity and air traffickers for air travelers are relatively straightforward examples of phonological errors

But not infrequently both effects are operative — as in this example reported by Ron Butters in ADS-L on 2/15/08:

There were two restaurants in Durham, NC, named “Fowlers” and “Fosters.” People misspoke, miswrote, and misremembered them.

They are quite similar both semantically and phonologically, so are prime targets for error.

promiscuous and provocative. The condensed versions, from NOAD:

adj. promiscuous: 1 having or characterized by many transient sexual relationships: promiscuous teenagers | they ran wild, indulging in promiscuous sex and experimenting with drugs. 2 [a] demonstrating or implying an undiscriminating or unselective approach; indiscriminate or casual: the city fathers were promiscuous with their honors. [b] consisting of a wide range of different things: Americans are free to pick and choose from a promiscuous array of values and behavior.

adj. provocative: [a] causing annoyance, anger, or another strong reaction, especially deliberately: a provocative article | provocative remarks about foreign policy. [b] arousing sexual desire or interest, especially deliberately.

Note: NOAD orders senses roughly according to their frequency in current usage — not according to their historical development. The point is that a sexual sense is highly salient for promiscuous, but less so for provocative — tipping the scales towards retrieving promiscuous for the intended meaning.

[Digression. The semantic connection between provocative and promiscuous goes beyond mere reference to sexual activity. Part of the sexual folklore of our culture is that someone who behaves in a (sexually) provocative fashion, for instance by posing for racy photos, will be assumed to be making themselves available for sexual connection — that is, will be assumed to be promiscuous. Provocative implicates promiscuous.

This assumption, and the language surrounding it, is almost always applied to women, women being taken to be the vessels of sexuality. Only rarely do we talk about men being sexually provocative (aggressive, yes, but provocative, not so much) or being promiscuous (horndogs, yes, and players, but not promiscuous, certainly not sluts). But, of course, in contexts where male homosexuality is salient, the language of female wantonness can be imported wholesale as applying to men.

Which brings me to this week’s excellent underwear find, the Andrew Christian FUKR Provocative Brief:

AC sells very high-end playful homowear; this item is the Provocative model from his FUKR collection. From the AC website, this little hymn to Provocative briefs:

Our FUKR Provocative Brief is screaming your name. You’re pretty provocative yourself. In bright, fire-engine red fabric with the look and feel of Latex, this brand new style features sleek black contrast trim and our slimming FUKR print waistband. And wearing this new pair will feel like you’re not wearing any underwear at all. Its revolutionary hang-free design is anatomically correct with no hidden cups, straps or padding, and gives you extra room in front, just where you need it. When you pull it on, your package will fall naturally into the super soft snuggle pocket to create a truly enjoyable, unique wearing experience. We’ve virtually eliminated sticking, squashing, re-adjusting, sweating and chafing. Sexy and shiny, you need this limited edition style.]

Back to lexicography. Extracts from the longer version for promiscuous, from OED3 (June 2007):

A. adj.
1. a. Done or applied with no regard for method, order, etc.; random, indiscriminate, unsystematic. [the earliest sense, closest to the etymology; 1st cite 1570]
…  c.  spec. Of a person or animal: undiscriminating in sexual relations. Also (of sexual intercourse, relationships, etc.): casual, characterized by frequent changes of sexual partner. [1st cite 1804]

To which I add two senses that are metaphorical developments of the sexual use, which I include because of their linguistic interest:

… 3. Chiefly Grammar. Of common gender; of either sex, of both sexes. Cf. epicene adj. 1. rare. [1st cite a1637 … 2003 V. Law Hist. Linguistics in Europe iv. 71 There are epicene or promiscuous nouns, such as [Latin] passer, ‘sparrow’.]
..  6. a.  Biology. Of a protein, organism, etc.: able to infect or interact with, or bind non-specifically to, a variety of hosts or targets. [1st cite 1972; the image is of something that will hook up with whatever is available in the context; this is parallel to a linguistic use I’ll comment on in a moment]

The earliest senses of promiscuous continue to be used in scientific contexts on occasion, to describe apparently random, rather than systematic, arrangements of things. Rocks promiscuously arranged within a stratum, for example.

And then in linguistics, we get a sense development way at the end of the scale, parallel to the biological ‘binding to a variety of hosts or targets’ use. Now routine in treatments of clitics and similar elements, when they are said to exhibit promiscuous attachment — attaching indiscriminately to whatever they are adjacent to. For example, English possessive Z in things like whoever you were talking to’s ideas ‘the ideas of whoever you were talking to’, where Z attaches to, forms a word-like unit with, the preceding word to. Z is happy to hook up with all sorts of words.

The technical terms promiscuous and promiscuity go back decades. I have no idea who used them first; the metaphor, though playful, is so natural that several people might have come up with it independently.

(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.

On Facebook today, Anneli Meyer Korn posted this Bizarro cartoon from 11/17/14:

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)

I was moved to declare November 17th Teddy Bear Picnic Day, in honor of Anneli and her husband Peter, but it turns out that (by whatever obscure mechanism these things happen) July 10th is already taken for this occasion, according to the Days of the Year site.

Well, of course, if you don’t know the song, you won’t find the cartoon particularly funny. (Suppose that the teddy bear’s message were “I’m sorry, the teddy bears are conferencing at Davos today”. That would be absurd, and so to some degree humorous, but nowhere near as funny as “I’m sorry, today is the day the teddy bears have their picnic”.)

But wait! My go-to person on British royalty (Chris Ambidge), reminds me that Elizabeth acceded to the English throne on November 17th, 1558, so that today is unquestionably Elizabeth I Accession Day. From a Princeton Triangle Club show from a great many decades ago, the anthem for today:

I’m Elizabeth the First / Say it if you durst / I’m a hell of a queen!

(from memory, so maybe not entirely accurate). Two modern portrayals:

(#2) Cate Blanchett in the 1998 biographical drama film Elizabeth

(#3) Lily Cole in the 2017 tv miniseries Elizabeth I

But back to the teddy bears. From my 7/25/10 posting “Bear music”:

On my iTunes, there’s “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” (I have three versions on my iTunes), which is older than you might think, with a melody from 1907 and words [by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy] from 1932.

The song is framed as something for grownups to sing to children. It tells of a secret world, hidden from the world of everyday life, where all the bears can frolic together as they will.

The lyrics:

If you go down in the woods today
You’re sure of a big surprise
If you go down in the woods today
You’d better go in disguise!

For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain
Because today’s the day the
Teddy Bears have their picnic

Picnic time for Teddy Bears
The little Teddy Bears are having
A lovely time today
Watch them, catch them unawares
And see them picnic on their holiday

See them gaily gad about
They love to play and shout
They never have any cares
At six o’clock their Mommies and Daddies
Will take them home to bed
Because they’re tired little Teddy Bears

Every Teddy Bear who’s been good
Is sure of a treat today
There’s lots of marvelous things to eat
And wonderful games to play

Beneath the trees where nobody sees
They’ll hide and seek as long as they please
‘Cause that’s the way the
Teddy Bears have their picnic

Songs that grownups sing to kids are almost always as much for the grownups as for the kids. In this case, the idea of a secret world is naturally attractive to children, and figures in children’s literature of all sorts. But it’s also attractive to adults, especially those with tainted identities (for whom the secret world might provide an escape from the burden of their identities).

In the real world, actual picnics (or their equivalents) have provided such worlds outside of the world, places for private carnival. San Francisco’s Bohemian Grove and similar playgrounds for the elite, for instance. Meanwhile, for some years the Columbus OH gay bar Kismet (for a long time in the shadows, like all gay bars, and now gone) had a summer picnic (closed to outsiders) in a park west of Columbus. No doubt there were similar events in other cities back in the day. And eventually there were large regional and national private gay carnival events, the circuit parties; see my 6/22/10 posting “Rivers of Babylon”, with a section on circuit parties. Our picnics beneath the trees where nobody sees.

In any case, even straightforforward performances of “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” tend to come with a double vision of the event. Two such performances:

(#4) Henry Hall & His Orchestra in an early (1932) recording

(#5) Bing Crosby in a very popular 1950 recording

Thanks to the bear as a gay male “type” — a recurrent topic on this blog — the song is a favorite of gay men’s choirs, usually performed with heavy dollops of visual humor. I haven’t found a good video, but here’s an excellent audio:

(#6) London Gay Men’s Chorus (2006)

The song has been used as a theme for other gay-tinged performances. I offer the “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” (adult comedy) performance piece at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. From the Theatre Reviews site by Richard Lambert on 8/18/17:

(#7) At the Natural Food Kafe, 55 Clerk St., Edinburgh (venue 415 Edinburgh Festival Fringe) — yes, a natural foods restaurant pressed into service as a mini-theatre; the Fringe Festival takes every damn space it can find

It’s tea time at the Natural Food Kafe and in front of you is literally picnic hampers, a car chequer blanket, and teddy bears. Although this is about an all-together different type of bear! The gay male bear!

Eden [Ballantyne]’s storytelling flows light and easy on a sunny afternoon in a balmy cafe basement. His biography is hilariously enacted as a puppet show using teddy bears to portray the many character bears we encounter. As he explains, one day he stopped waxing, watched his tummy protrude over his waist belt, and realised he’d become a bear.

Throughout his life, bears have come and bears have gone, all leaving their paw prints on his heart and emotions. A little nostalgia, a lot of laughs, and a few absurd situations.

As far as I can tell, all the human characters were naked guys, bearish in one way or another. Naked men, explicit sexual themes, not recommended for under-18s. But obviously sweet, as it should be, if it’s going to riff on this song.

(My mother sang it to me when I was a little kid. She thought it was really cute; she liked a lot of cute stuff, which eventually got to be kind of annoying, and her singing was truly appalling, but then she was my mother, so what the hell. More important, I adored the song as a kid, for its secretly transgressive theme. And then it just got better.)

(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 Ned Deily on Facebook:

Today’s Revisionist Word Fail (as seen in another FB group): “today marks the 40th anniversary of the assignation of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.”

A form-based, rather than meaning-based error, but possibly prompted by spelling rather than pronunciation; the error was in writing, after all.

The spellings share ASS .. .NATION, both their beginnings and their ends. At first glance, the accent patterns are quite different, however: WSWSW in assasination, SWSW in assignation; but preservation of accent patterns is a strong factor in phonologically-based retrieval error.

But the target and error words share SWSW, with /æs/ shared at the beginning of this portion and /nešǝn/ at the end, so both effects might be at work.

As is so often the case, semantics might not be entirely irrelevant. The person who made the error might well have had Milk’s homosexuality in their mind, biasing them towards retrieving a sexually tinged item (like assignation).

I’m charmed by the idea that the diversity champion George Moscone and the very publicly gay Harvey Milk might have gotten it on, but it seems wildly unlikely: Milk was the wrong sex for Moscone, and (from all accounts) Moscone wasn’t Milk’s type.

But, oh, a sad, sad day. Harvey Milk Day on my calendar, since Milk was the prime target.

(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.

In a continuing series about (mostly useful) everyday objects, back to the kitchen, where today I needed some fresh garlic for an Indian dish of brown rice, dal, and vegetable bits with curry spices (a Penzey’s “balti mix”), so I resorted to the household’s (aluminum) garlic press.

From Wikipedia:

(#1) Two different styles of garlic press, at the top and bottom left

A garlic press (also known as a garlic crusher in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom), is a kitchen utensil [usually made of aluminum or stainless steel] to crush garlic cloves efficiently by forcing them through a grid of small holes, usually with some type of piston. Many garlic presses also have a device with a matching grid of blunt pins to clean out the holes.

Garlic presses present a convenient alternative to mincing garlic with a knife, especially because a clove of garlic can be passed through a sturdy press without even removing its peel. The peel remains in the press while the garlic is extruded out. Some sources also claim that pressing with the peel on makes cleaning the press easier.

Garlic crushed by a press is generally believed to have a different flavor from minced garlic, more of garlic’s strong flavor compounds are liberated. A few sources prefer the flavor of pressed garlic. … On the other hand, some chefs say garlic crushed in a press has an inferior flavor compared to other forms of garlic.

(Many garlic presses are multi-functional: mine, for examples, also works as a nutcracker and a cherry pitter.)

Some previous postings on this blog about kitchen utensils and gadgets (not all of them notably useful):

(#2) Brian Crane’s Pickles strip on men, women, and kitchen gadgets

on 12/9/09, “spork”

on 6/2/11, “Portmanteaus: forkchops”

on 8/31/13, “Colander song”

on 8/16/15, “Morning: mandolin, mandoline”, on the mandoline

on 6/18/16, “The avocado slicer”, on an unnecessary kitchen gadget

on 6/11/17, “Mixing it up”, on melamine bowls

on 10/29/17, “March of the rainbow mixers”, about KitchenAid stand mixers and hand mixers; rotary egg beater

on 5/1/18, “The cheese grater”

on 5/19/18, “Rolling pin”

on 5/20/18, “The egg patrol: plastic to porcelain”, about egg cookers of several sorts

On the 5th here, postings on the patron saint of bears and on Swiss saintly dogs (with a bow to the city of Bern(e)). Now: more on Bern; on the movie BearCity; and on two California cities of bears, Big Bear City in San Bernardino County and Los Osos in San Luis Obispo County.

Backdrop. My 12/5 posting “News for bears: St. Corbinian”, with

Recent news flashes for bears: the 11/17/18 posting “Teddy Bears’ Picnic Day” (with the customary bow to possible gay subtexts); and the 12/4/18 posting “Santa Barbara: smite him with lightning”, with image #2 — Corrado Parducci’s Horace Rackham Fountain at the Detroit Zoo (1939), featuring a pair of sculpture bears. Now, continuing the lives of the saints theme, but disregarding the many saints named Ursus or Ursula, we come to St. Corbinian, the [Bavarian] patron saint of bears (thanks to the 8th-century Miracle of the Bear).

And my 12/5 posting “News for (massive) dogs: St. Bernard of Menthon”, where image #2 is a map showing location of “Bern(e), which might or might not involve bears etymologically, but has one on its coat of arms”:

(#1)

The city of Bern. From Wikipedia:

Bern or Berne … is the de facto capital of Switzerland, referred to by the Swiss as their … Bundesstadt, or “federal city”. With a population of 142,656 (March 2018), Bern is the fifth-most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000. Bern is also the capital of the canton of Bern, the second-most populous of Switzerland’s cantons.

The official language in Bern is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, but the most-spoken language is an Alemannic Swiss German dialect, Bernese German.

In 1983, the historic old town (in German: Altstadt) in the centre of Bern became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

(#2) Aerial view of the Old City (in a bend in the river Aar(e))

… The etymology of the name “Bern” is uncertain. According to the local legend, based on folk etymology, Berchtold V, Duke of Zähringen, the founder of the city of Bern, vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt, and this turned out to be a bear. It has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as Bern in Middle High German. As a result of the finding of the Bern zinc tablet in the 1980s, it is now more common to assume that the city was named after a pre-existing toponym of Celtic origin, possibly *berna “cleft”. The bear was the heraldic animal of the seal and coat of arms of Bern from at least the 1220s. The earliest reference to the keeping of live bears in the Bärengraben dates to the 1440s. [The Bärengraben, or Bear Pit, is … [an] enclosure housing bears, situated at the eastern edge of the old city of Bern, next to the Nydeggbrücke and the River Aar.]

… The medieval city is a foundation of the Zähringer ruling family, which rose to power in Upper Burgundy in the 12th century. According to 14th-century historiography (Cronica de Berno, 1309), Bern was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen.

…In 1353, Bern joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming one of the eight cantons of the formative period of 1353 to 1481.

Whatever the etymology of its name, Bern has been the city of bears for at least 800 years.

BearCity, the movie. Digression on the X City snowclonelet, from my 8/11/07 LLog posting “Yet another snowclone omnibus”, in section 18, beginning with random city and weird city, from Cole Paulson:

Dennis Preston then suggested that “Fat City” was the original, and added that in his perceptual dialectology work in the 1980s he got lots of “N City” nonce names for areas of the U.S.: “Rebel City” (the South), “Eskimo City” (Alaska), “Cowboy City”, etc.

I added that I’d been assuming that the original had a noun X; at some point we got “Sin City”, and then “Spin City” (the television sitcom) as a take-off on that.  More recently, we get adjective Xs, and the use of the formula has extended from place/region names to predicatives applicable to all sorts of things (or people).  These extensions could be from “N City” examples, or they could have developed from “the Adj City” names (like “the Windy City” for Chicago), with the common-noun construction, having a definite article, turned into an anarthrous proper name.  Or, of course, both.

I suggested that the early uses of “Fat City” were for actual places — “Los Angeles is Fat City”, meaning it’s a place of opportunity or success  — or for metaphorical places, as in “I’m in Fat City now” (note the preposition), meaning I’ve achieved success.

Finally, I noted “X City” examples with X probably to be analyzed as a verb: “suck city” (city that sucks), “barf city” (a place that makes you want to vomit, or the act of vomiting), “fuck city” (a place where you can get laid, or getting laid).

And now the film, from Wikipedia:

(#3)

BearCity is a 2010 American gay-themed comedy-drama film directed by Doug Langway, and written by Langway and Lawrence Ferber. It stars Joe Conti as a young gay man in the “twink” category who fantasizes about larger, hairier men known as “bears”, and his search to find the perfect man.

The sequel BearCity 2: The Proposal was released in the fall of 2012. BearCity 3 was funded by an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, and had a limited release at various LGBT festivals and venues in 2016, and received a full release digitally and on home media in 2017.

A novelization of the [first] film, also written by Lawrence Ferber, was published by Lethe Press’ Bear Bones imprint in 2013.

[Plot:] Tyler, an aspiring actor in his early twenties, has just moved to New York City in an attempt to jump-start his career. Young and slender, he fits in the “twink” category, but finds himself attracted to “bears”, hairy and larger-bodied men. Tyler realizes his expectations of sexual escapades are falling far short of what he would have liked, while simultaneously falling for Roger [Gerald McCullouch], the muscle-bear friend of his roommates Fred [Brian Keane] and Brent [Stephen Guarino]. Meanwhile, Roger fears judgment for being with someone from outside the community, and hesitates to introduce Tyler to his friends.

Another digression, a brief inventory of my postings on bear culture and the gay community:

on 5/25/10, “Waltzing with Bears”: the song, as a children’s song and as gay male song; bear culture

[from Wikipedia:] Bears tend to have hairy bodies and facial hair; some are heavy-set; some project an image of working-class masculinity in their grooming and appearance, though none of these are requirements or unique indicators. Some bears place importance on presenting a hypermasculine image and may shun interaction with, and even disdain, men who exhibit effeminacy. The bear concept can function as an identity, an affiliation, and an ideal to live up to, and there is ongoing debate in bear communities about what constitutes a bear

on 7/15/17, “Wonder Bears!”: bear culture, drag

on 9/23/17, “Bear chairs”: gay bears; the bear pride flag, the leather pride flag

on 4/17/18, “Cuppy and his cub”: bandanna codes; drag names; bears and cubs

on 5/4/18, “Stuff your furry friend”: bear culture

on 11/17/18: Teddy Bears’ Picnic Day: another song; cf. “Waltzing with Bears”

Bear cities of California. Bears have played an enormous role in the history of California, and ursine names, images, and references are everywhere, including on the state seal:

(#4)

From all of this, I’ll provide just a tiny sample: Big Bear City in San Bernardino County and Los Osos (‘The Bears’) in San Luis Obispo County.

From Wikipedia on the first of these:

Big Bear City is an unincorporated town in San Bernardino County … along the east shore of Big Bear Lake and surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest. It is located 27 miles (43 km) northeast of the city of San Bernardino, and immediately east of the incorporated city of Big Bear Lake. Its population was 12,304 at the 2010 census, up from 5,779 at the 2000 census. The makeup of Big Bear City is mostly residential with smaller houses and cabins laid out in typical square block fashion.

… Big Bear got its name due to the large number of grizzly bears that once roamed the area. Although grizzly bears went extinct in the valley at the turn of the 20th century, there are still thousands of black bears found in Big Bear Valley

Looking east at Big Bear Valley from Butler Peak lookout tower in the San Bernardino National Forest:

(#5)

On the actually incorporated city, from Wikipedia:

Big Bear Lake is a small city in San Bernardino County, California, located in the San Bernardino Mountains along the south shore of Big Bear Lake, and surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest. The city is located about 25 miles (40 km) northeast of the city of San Bernardino, and immediately west of the unincorporated town of Big Bear City. The population was approximately 5,019 at the 2010 census, down from 5,438 at the 2000 census. However, since it is a popular year-round resort destination, the actual number of people staying in or visiting the greater Big Bear Valley area regularly surges to over 100,000 during many weekends of the year.

And on the lake, from Wikipedia:

Big Bear Lake is a reservoir in the San Bernardino Mountains …. At a surface elevation of 6,743 ft (2,055 m), it has an east-west length of approximately 7 mi (11 km) and is approximately 2.5 mi (4.0 km) at its widest measurement, though the lake’s width mostly averages a little more than 1⁄2 mi (0.8 km). … At dam’s end Big Bear measures its deepest water at 72 ft (22 m). It is a completely snow-fed lake, having no other means of tributary or mechanical replenishment.

Located 100 miles (160 km) east of Los Angeles and surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest, Big Bear Lake is accessible via four scenic highways: Highway 330 from Highland, Highway 38 from Redlands, Highway 18 from Victorville, and Highway 18 from San Bernardino.

To the north and on the coast (rather than inland), we come to Los Osos. From Wikipedia:

(#6) Los Osos flagged on the map; and note San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles

Los Osos is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place located along the Pacific coast of San Luis Obispo County, California. … The population was 14,276 at the 2010 census.

Los Osos is largely a bedroom community for San Luis Obispo, which is 10.6 miles east, and to a lesser extent, Morro Bay, which is 2.3 miles to the north.

(#7) View of Los Osos and Morro Bay from Broderson Hill

… [History:] On September 7 – 8, 1769, the Portolà expedition traveled through the San Luis Obispo area on his way to rediscover the Bay of Monterey. Finding an abundance of bears in the area, his diarist, Padre Juan Crespi, O.F.M., recorded that the name given the area by his soldiers was “Los Osos”.

Much further north we get the Cal Golden Bears, the football team of UC Berkeley (and the traditional rival of the Stanford Cardinal). Here a bear, there a bear, everywhere a bear.

[Addendum 12/8, on the bear statues of Los Osos:

(#8) The bear statue on Los Osos Valley Road; local artist Paula Zima created twin guard bear statues, one for each of the two entrances to Los Osos ]

My friend Aric was astonished yesterday to come across this food product:

Pork me: a classic presentation of faggots, in a brown gravy, accompanied by peas and mashed potatoes

No doubt he would find the following news bulletin (from Wikipedia) remarkable:

The “nose-to-tail eating” trend has resulted in greater demand for faggots in the 21st century.

Aric is American and gay, so of course pork faggots — being British and devoid of sexual associations (beyond those attending on any sort of meatball) —  are neither familiar nor salient to him.

More details from the Wikipedia article:

Faggots are meatballs made from minced off-cuts and offal, especially pork (traditionally pig’s heart, liver, and fatty belly meat or bacon) together with herbs for flavouring and sometimes added bread crumbs. It is a traditional dish in the United Kingdom, especially South and Mid Wales and the English Midlands.

Faggots originated as a traditional cheap food consumed by ordinary country people in Western England, particularly west Wiltshire and the West Midlands. Their popularity spread from there, especially to South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century, when many agricultural workers left the land to work in the rapidly expanding industry and mines of that area. Faggots are also known as “ducks” in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Lancashire, often as “savoury ducks”.

… The dish gained in popularity during the rationing in World War II, but declined over the following decades. The “nose-to-tail eating” trend has resulted in greater demand for faggots in the 21st century; British supermarket chain Waitrose once again sold beef faggots from 2014 onwards and in 2018 it was estimated that “tens of millions” of faggots were eaten every year. Faggots are often homemade and are to be found in traditional butchers’ shops and market stalls, though larger supermarkets generally stock the Mr Brain’s brand of mass-produced faggot; this is a frozen food product available in the UK, made of liver and onions rolled into meatballs and served in a sauce. These differ significantly from traditional faggots, which have a coarser texture and contain far less water.

(Just savor that last sentence.)

Very fresh lexicography, from OED3 (June 2018!) on faggot, n.and adj.:

A. I. A bundle or bunch, and related senses.

… 5. A ball or (occasionally) patty of chopped or minced meat (esp. pig’s liver or other offal), mixed with bread, suet, herbs, etc., and sometimes wrapped in caul fat. Cf. rissole n. Usually in plural. [You almost never get served just one. That’s a fact about food practices, not really about the word faggot.]

1st cite: 1815 R. Rylance Epicure’s Almanack 62  Peripatetic restaurateurs, of whom may be purchased hot soup, baked faggots, grey peas boiled, and peas-pudding.

The food and its name are British (and both class- and region-related). Meanwhile, the sexual slang faggot (also its clipping fag) is originally American. Things are then set up for heavy-duty transpondial misunderstanding. Item, from the Metro (UK) on 11/6/13, in “Faggots firm fights for its food on Facebook”:

Mr Brain’s has launched a campaign to have references to the savoury snack reinstated after members on the site had their accounts blocked for raving about their favourite dish. Demanding ‘Facebook Freedom For Faggots’ the Bristol-born company is hoping to force the American social media giant into a rethink of its censorship of the term, widely used in a derogative way about gay people in the US. ‘We’re really sympathetic to Facebook’s need to monitor offensive words but in the UK, faggots are a favourite meal amongst lots of families,’ a Mr Brain’s spokesperson said. ‘Surely there must be a way that Facebook can allow us to talk about a traditional British dish?’ Protective of the prosperity of its pork-based offal product, Mr Brain’s said it was forced to act after fans saw their profile pages put on lockdown for mentioning the fact they ‘loved faggots’. A Facebook spokesman said the temporary bans were a ‘misunderstanding’ and that faggot was not explicitly censored by the site, but Mr Brain’s said their adverts using the word are still being blocked.

(I was sure I’d already posted about  comestible faggots, on this blog or Language Log, but apparently not. Probably it was something I said on soc.motss.)

Two recent items about men trying to look attractive (to other men): on the Kitsch Bitsch Facebook page today, 1950s physique model Mel Fortune festooned for Christmas (the image is entertaining but just barely not X-rated, so if such images trouble you, leave this posting); and a William Haefeli cartoon from the latest (12/17/18) New Yorker, featuring a pair of his upscale urban gay men negotiating a date / trick.

(Hat tip to Chris Ambidge for the Kitsch Bitsch treasure, with his note:

It’s approaching Christmas. The trendy word for decorating this year is “festooning”.

More on festoon below.)

(#1) [KB caption:] KITSCHMAS DECORATING TIP #22 … festoon your packages properly

(#2) “If you knew how many times I changed my clothes before coming here, you wouldn’t ask me to take them off.”

Mel Fortune and men’s eyes. (I should probably have resisted it, but I am weak.) First, the physique magazines: see my 7/17/16 posting “A remarkable website”, with a section on Bob Mizer and his physique photography in the 1940s through the 1960s. The photos were often pretentiously themed, but many were consciously antic, as in #1.

Then, Kitsch Bitsch (website here), who mines popular culture for kitschig images. From NOAD:

noun kitsch: art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way: the lava lamp is an example of sixties kitsch.

The image in #1 hasn’t yet been filed on KB’s main site, but there’s plenty of Christmas magic there, under the heading “Welcome to My Home … at Kitschmas!”. KB is fond of the verb festoon there. Two examples:

DECORATIONS GALORE! My decor is not limited to the interior or the front of my house! I dress the swimming pool in the season’s best! My guests gasp with delight at the sight of a Cotton Candy Kitschmas with sleigh and reindeer floating and festooned in pink toule and pink cotton batting! Swimmingly Sweet!

COCKTAIL TIME! The late-night gang will be stopping by at the cocktail hour! I change into a more festive skirt and shoes. I simply roll the smaller television set back in and festoon the larger televison cabinet with a tablecloth and sparkley garland! I ready the eggnog and jello molds, then hide the daytime decorations and lampshades! The night-time pals can cause quite a ruckus! But I do provide a lute to accompany the evening’s caroling!

[Festoonish digression. From NOAD:

(#3)

noun festoon: [a] a chain or garland of flowers, leaves, or ribbons, hung in a curve as a decoration. [b] a carved or molded ornament representing a festoon. verb festoon: [with object] (often be festooned with) adorn (a place) with ribbons, garlands, or other decorations: the room was festooned with balloons and streamers. ORIGIN mid 17th century: from French feston, from Italian festone ‘festal ornament’, from festum, (plural) festa ‘feast’.

Beyond these bare lexicographic facts: festoon is the object of word attraction — specifically, word amusement — for many people (of whom I am one). We find it giggly. So, obviously, does KB.

What I believe to be a complete record of festoon on this blog:

— first, in a memorable example from my dangler postings, starting with my 3/2/11 posting “Dangling advice”, about “Shawn walked on to the stage, festooned in well-wishing posters and blue and yellow balloons”; later references to the festooned Shawn / stage in postings from 9/25/13, from 4/15/14. and from 3/4/17

— then, in postings on playful Cahoon names (including the interior decorator Festoon Cahoon, who is, however, not actually mentioned in these postings): from my 7/16/16 posting “Morning name: Colquhoun”:

a letter of mine published in Verbatim some time ago [posted on this blog here], on several language games, the first of which took off from an Olive Cahoon who married a man named Cahoon and so became Olive Cahoon Cahoon. That set some of us off to playing with the family name Cahoon and its far-flung members: Monsoon Cahoon, Rangoon Cahoon, Pontoon Cahoon, and so on.

— in my 9/24/17 posting “A sapsucking planthopper”, with a straightforward festooned:

[on the coat of arms of Pennsylvania:] The state motto, “Virtue, Liberty and Independence”, appears festooned below [an array of symbolic images].

— in my 8/13/18 posting “The nacho cart”, in the mildly antic obit headline:

Joël Robuchon, a French Chef Festooned With Stars, Is Dead at 73

End of digression. Enough with the festooning.]

I dressed for you. Haefeli’s gay guys are dealing, not terribly well, with one of the complexities of romantic / sexual coupling: the trappings you take on to make yourself attractive to a potential partner may well become irrelevant when you reach the getting naked together stage — or even impediments to intimacy. The clothes (on which you might have spent considerable effort to choose them and to wear them just so) only get stripped off. Fragrances that are attractants at a distance might be unpleasantly powerful at ground zero. For men, taking off basket-enhancing clothes might reveal unexceptional equipment; and facial scruff that advertises your masculinity and toughness (note the scruff on both of Haefeli’s guys) might well just induce beard burn in your partner. For women, carefully applied makeup, mascara, eye shadow, lipstick, and so on can become messy annoyances in a passionate clinch.

For Haefeli’s guys, fretting obsessively over the way they present themselves is especially comical, because the two of them are pretty much cut from the same cloth, with only tiny differences distinguishing them. Of course, when differences are tiny, each one becomes that much more significant.

(On the theme of Like With Like in the gay male world, see my 7/26/10 posting “Like/unlike”.)

Santa Paronomasia, the patron saint of punning, whose most recent appearance in these precincts was on the 22nd, in a posting about the Christmas shark movie — groan — Santa Jaws. Time for a round of Santa Claus puns.

(Some sexual joking.)

We’ve had the shark movie. Then there are the dog movies: The Search for Santa Paws (2010):

(#1)

and Santa Paws 2 (2012)

(#2)

Those are imperfect puns (Claus – Jaws, Claus – Paws). But there are at least two movies with perfect-pun titles: Santa Claws (2014), with kittens:

(#3)

And The Santa Clause (1994), about legal contracts:

(#4)

Outside of the movies, Santa Claws offers a range of possibilities, as in ths lobster-oriented t-shirt:

(#5) Shirt from the Chowdaheadz company

One more image, another imperfect pun, in A Santa Cause: It’s a Punk Rock Christmas album for charity (2003):

(#6)

(The name has been used for other Christmas charity drives.)

Now to let the paronomasiac mind run free. Some possibilities:

Santa Caws, with crows

Santa Gnaws, with rats

Santa Maws, with wolves

Santa Straws, for drinking eggnog

Santa Laws, regulating department store Santa Clauses

and of course Santa Raw, bareback gay porn for the season

Then a more distant series exploiting the similarity of /ɔz/ and /ɔlz/:

Santa Crawls, with snails

Santa Brawls, barroom scenes

Santa Calls, a phone-sex service offering Xmas Daddies

Santa Palls, the misery of a post-Santa world

Santa Falls, his fatal slip on the ice

No doubt you can find other tributes to Santa Paronomasia.

Small but entertaining little gifts for my Christmas, from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, Opal Armstrong Zwicky, Kim Darnell, and Maggie Ainsworth-Darnell — plus an excellent dim sum lunch at Tai Pan in Palo Alto for all of us, from Paul Armstrong.

Then: an out@in rainbow t-shirt from LinkedIn (where Kim works); a little plush wooly (spelling by the Douglas Cuddle Toy Co.) mammoth; a tote bag with an otter drawing by the artist rubyetc; and a bit of nearly indescribable Japanese kawaii that involves a little self-watering ceramic penguin that grows wild strawberry plants (Fragaria vesca) on its back, as here:

(#1) Chuppon self-watering animals and their plants: the Sea Friends dolphin/clover, penguin/wild strawberry, seal/basil, polar bear/mint

The rainbow t-shirt. Well, on the front of the t-shirt, the rainbow flag with the LinkedIn logo superimposed on it (the out@in name is on the back):

(#2)

Sprightly.

Everett the Douglas mammoth. From the Douglas Co. (Keene NH) Cuddle Toys site:

(#3)

Everett Wooly Mammoth: When a full sized Mammoth is too big to fit in the car, take Everett our plush Wooly Mammoth with you instead! At 8” long, this stuffed animal may be small in size but he’s big on prehistoric fun! Everett’s shaggy coat of chestnut brown fur is depicted with our Kohair material which makes him especially soft and cuddly. [He really is very soft.] He features two graceful, curving tusks and his four feet have been accented with toe detail. Small, dark eyes give him a sweet appearance that Mammoth lovers of any age will be sure to love. When you want to step back in time, just take Everett the Wooly Mammoth along with you on your adventure and he’ll bring the prehistoric world of the Ice Age back to life!

Everett joins four other mammoths in my bedroom. From my 12/16/17 posting “A tale of a bed: from removal to revival”, the plush toys Mammuthus Major and Mammuthus Minor. And from my 12/18/17 posting “The news for mammoths: toy stories”, the toy mammoths Fey and Butch, with more on M. Major and M. Minor. Everett is the softest and silkiest of the lot.

The tote bag, an otter print, a Christmas cartoon, and a penguin cartoon. The tote bag comes from Society6, aka søciety6 (operated by the Leaf Group in Santa Monica, formerly Demand Media). On it, this print by the London artist who goes by the name rubyetc:

(#4)

rubyetc labels this (and a number of her other works) as art prints, but the line between these and straightforward cartoons isn’t at all clear.

(Note: in another life many years ago, I was sometimes labeled an otter, a sleeker and slimmer version of the gay bear type. Now, I suppose, I’m a sea lion, or maybe a walrus.)

Then there’s her Christmas cartoon from December 18th:

(#5) “ho ho HO”

Sometimes her cartoons are self-deprecating, sometimes they are wryly despairing, sometimes they are silly, often their language is salty.

Finally, a penguin:

(#6)

Japanese ceramic penguin bearing wild strawberries. A Chuppon, distributed by the Noted Co. Their copy for the Sea Friends self-watering animals in #1:

(#7)

There are also Drinking Animal Planters, illustrated here:

(#8) cat/mint, panda/basil, pig/clover, rabbit/wild strawberry

About presentations of the male body (so not to everyone’s taste) — in this case, in a side display: a standing posture, posed so that the display focuses on the model’s face and bare buttocks (everything else is lagniappe), as in Richard Vytniorgu’s 2018 Christmas card (the work of a professional photographer, reproduced here with permission):

(#1) Greetings from a queer jockstrap Christmas elf!

Both parts of the display — the facial expression and what it might convey, the buttocks and the reason(s) for their display — are significant.

Here, Richard is flashing an amiable open-mouthed smile and gazing directly into the viewer’s eyes, conveying friendly openness. (Some other choices: a wryly modest smile, inscrutable neutrality, guardedness, dominance.) And he’s framed his naked buttocks in a jockstrap (which sets them apart from the rest of his body, accentuating them), rather than presenting them covered by clothing (underwear, swimwear, shorts, jeans, trousers) or by exposing them fully unclothed: expressing either their attractiveness (he’s literally framed his twink-butt, or twink-ass, for our viewing) or signaling that his butt is in principle available for sex (only in principle: the display merely says “I’m a bottom”, not “I want you to fuck me”), or of course both.

The buttocks on display in #1 are cute boy-butts, though there are other possibilities, familiar to enthusiasts of the male buttocks: large bubble butts, flat Irish butts, knotted muscular jock butts, kidney-shaped butts, and so on. To a large degree, however, you get what nature gave you; facial expressions have a wide emotional range, but buttocks are mostly emotionally inexpressive.

Still, the choice to display your naked buttocks is significant, and can be read in more than one way. On the one hand, it’s a display of vulnerability, not unlike the pitsntits display, and so reads as a gesture of openness and trust, or even submissiveness — even more in that the buttocks can be viewed as a metonym for the anus, subject to sexual intrusion. On the other hand, since it’s transgressive and implicates the anus metonymically, you can read it as aggressive and insulting, as a muted form of mooning (expressing protest, scorn, disrespect, or provocation, or done for shock value, fun, or as a form of exhibitionism, to paraphrase the Wikipedia site; see my 11/7/18 posting “Arousing the beast”).

All this is about how viewers might interpret a side display like the one in #1. There’s also the question of why such displays (whether the buttocks are clothed, framed by a jock or thong, or completely  unclothed) are created and disseminated. At least four possibilities:

they are art works — specifically, male photography — intended as explorations of and celebrations of the male body (the actual intention of #1)

they are parts of an ad campaign for the clothing involved (in the case of a display like #1, a jockstrap ad) — intended to sell clothing via pictures of attractive and desirable men

they are from porn (gay porn or beefcake for women) — intended to sexually arouse viewers, or to sell films or videos for that purpose

they are sexual advertisements, hook-up (or cruising) photos — intended to attract sexual partners via distribution in hard copy or on-line

(Nothing says that a particular representation can’t end up serving more than one function, whatever the intentions of its creator.)

Background. Richard is a young academic, a literary scholar, who appeared in that guise on this blog on the 24th, in my posting “Seasonal thanks”, where the photo from his website (fully clothed, but nevertheless engaging) appeared as image #3 there; I commented:

A further note: it’s ok if you judge Richard in #3 to be cute; the photo was designed to frame him as an amiable (and approachable) twink. Portraits express personas, and twink is one of Richard’s personas; the intensely engaged scholar is another.

In #1, Richard has stepped out of his academic role (as an authority on modernist figures in English literature) and slipped into his persona as an affectionate twink bottom-boy. A bold move, but then is #1 really any odder than Christmas cards in which people pose with the gear of their favorite sport (surfing, skiing, hockey, whatever), or with an assemblage of their beloved pets, or on holiday in some exotic spot they finally got to go to? Photo Christmas cards are portraits, and (as I say above) portraits express personas. Adorable fairy is a persona, one that’s quite important to Richard (and one I enjoy observing), so why not work it into a greeting card?

Very soon, I’ll get back to side displays, but while I’m on personas, here are three photos from Richard’s portfolio, showing some of the complexity in the presentation of self. Two face shots, one presenting him as serious and reflective:

(#2)

and one as invitingly boyish:

(#3)

And one full shot that combines the thoughtful and the playful:

(#4)

Two albums of butt-cheek side displays. Photos that display naked butt cheeks, in two albums: completely unclothed buttocks, from gay porn; and guys in jockstraps, from the Jockstrap Central site. The things to note are the variation in the form of the buttocks and the variation in the facial expressions.

On the gay porn beat. I’ll start with my least naked example, from one of my favorite gay pornstars, Dean Phoenix. Shown here in the woods, wearing a t-shirt, but naked below; and smiling broadly:

(#5)

Phoenix is frankly gay, preferentially a top with a thing for twinks as partners. His porn persona is also very amiable — he smiles a lot — and attentive to his partner’s needs. He’s muscular but not beefy, with pretty much a median pornstar body, all over.

Then a more modest smile (not just the mouth, but the eyes as well, from Owen Michaels, who has a bubble butt:

(#6)

Side displays from pornstars most commonly are D&A shots (which I can’t show here, because of the penises); they’re also largely from men advertising that their asses are on the table, and a fair number of these men are twinks (smaller, more slender, blonder, etc. pornstars are customarily pigeonholed as bottoms).

Two pornstars posed with more neutral, but still inviting, facial expressions. First, Rod Phillips, who flourished in the late 1980s. Lithe, mostly a bottom, with a beautiful ass:

(#7)

Then, Brandon Jones, described by Lucas Studios as an “insatiable power-bottom”, generally muscular but not beefy, with an especially notable ass:

(#8)

Then two beefier men with challenging expressions, conveying something like “Are you man enough to take this butt?”. The tightly muscled bubble-butted Aymeric DeVille:

(#9)

And one of the truly huge, an unidentified model in my 4/22/12 posting “Bookends”:

(#10)

On the jockstrap beat. Four jockstrap shots in which (as is very common in this genre) an unsmiling model fails to make eye contact with the viewer (one beefy model, in #14):

(#11)

(#12)

(#13)

(#14)

And one with both eye contact and a half smile with one raised eyebrow (plus a really butch vinyl jockstrap) — an invitation:

(#15)

Other presentations. For standing body shots, the side display is the most complex: a twist of the model’s body allows combination of a facial shot from a straightforward front display with a butt shot from a straightforward rear display. (Many illustrations of front displays and rear displays on AZBlogX and this blog.)

There are, of course, also horizontal body shots, with the model lying either in a supine display (face up, presenting the front surface of his body), or in a prone dislay (face down, presenting the rear surface of his body), or in a lateral display (lying on one side), with either the front or the rear surface of his body facing the camera. With a number of variants having to do with how the model positions his legs. (Some illustrations on AZBlogX and this blog, with some new ones, of Richard Vytniorgu, to come.)

There are more complex ways of presenting the body to the camera (and the viewer), but these are the displays you’ll find most often. What they provide is different ways of making three focal points available to the viewer: the face, and the two primary foci of male sexuality, the penis (and the testicles accompanying it) and the buttocks (and the anus within them).

(This posting — about the male body and mansex in plain language — is entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest.)

(A version of my posting today on AZBlogX , “Offers: prone, supine, lateral”, with X-rated images either cropped or removed. Meanwhile, holiday postings continue: Santa Claus appears in #10 below.)

On this blog on the 29th, a piece “The side display”, about displays of the male body (especially in photographs — including four of Richard Vytniorgu, who will appear again below), primarily about the side display,

a standing posture, posed so that the display focuses on the model’s face and bare buttocks

concluding with mention of

horizontal body shots, with the model lying either in a supine display (face up, presenting the front surface of his body), or in a prone display (face down, presenting the rear surface of his body), or in a lateral display (lying on one side), with either the front or the rear surface of his body facing the camera.

These are just displays, depictions, which can serve many functions — as works of (male) art, as illustrations in clothing advertisements, as porn or advertisements for porn, as sexual advertisements.

But displays can be amped up from mere depictions, realizing their potential as offers of the body (and so as incitements to (sexual) action).

Prone display > prone offer. Here are three prone displays (of a notably furry guy and two smooth ones):

(#1) From my 7/6/15 posting “Offers”; view from the rear

(#2) From the Naked Man Project, model Travis; view from the side

(#3) Richard Vytniorgu, view from the front/head, focused on his eyes and lips

Many gay men, responding to their predilections and desires, would look upon these butts and find them arousing, would be inclined to view them as implicit offers; but they’re just posed bodies. Sometimes, however, the offer is explicit: the subject spreads his legs and humps up his ass, making his asshole available (and his cock and balls visible), as here:

(#4) Richard Vytniorgu, spread and humped up (cropped; full shot on AZBlogX)

Spread and humped up, still in a variant of the prone position, but now offering his body. He could be easily fucked in this position, or he could raise himself up on his knees, offering himself for a doggie fuck (illustrations in the “Offers” posting). And his head is at the edge of the bed, so that whether he’s on his belly or on his knees, his mouth is aso available, for sucking the cock of a second man.

Supine display > supine offer. A supine display makes a man’s cock fully available, so this is a position that leads naturally to jacking off, and also to offering his cock for another man to suck. The display, without any offer:

(#5) Naked Man Project, Travis again (cropped; full shot on AZBlogX)

You can convert this display into an explicit offer of anal sex by “frogging up” — spreading your legs and raising them, making your asshole available for fucking in the missionary position. (See my 1/28/16 posting “Lower bangs higher” for some notes on frogging up, with “legs splayed out like a frog on a dissection mat”.) Two offers from earlier postings on this blog:

(#6) In a chair, for easy access, and easy kissing as well (image on AZBlogX)

(#7) On a sofa, a nicely composed photo of an offer that combines frogging up with a pitsntits display (image on AXBlogX)

And one from Richard Vytniorgu (pitsntits again):

(#8) Different body type; eyes closed ecstatically, rather than gazing at the camera (and the viewer) (cropped; full shot on AZBlogX)

Lateral display > lateral offer. The line between displays and offers is very thin indeed. I take this Naked Man Project shot (of the model Terry) to be mere display (from the front):

(#9)

Shots from the rear, however, focus on the buttocks and so are likely to be seen as offers, even if clothing covers the asshole:

(#10) Richard Vytniorgu, in a thong and a Christmas drama with Daddy Claus

And then there’s:

(#11) Surrealistic Table, with buttocks (from the “Offers” posting)

On AZBlogX this morning, the short short story (under a thousand words) “He kissed me” from 1/16/96, intended for a volume of such stories that was never published, perhaps in part because of the sexual explicitness of this story. The story is also one piece of my fiction about the characters Sundance and Butch (index to these here); it’s a short story about Sundance and a t-room kiss. (Explicit mansex in street language, so the story is entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest — but none of that in this posting.)

For visual interest, from See-ming Lee’s Kiss Project on Flickr, Ryan Gilbert + Michael Correntte:

And now a posting of mine (lightly edited) from the newsgroup soc.motss, on 1/17/96, the day after “He kissed me” was finished. A few days in my life, from 23 years ago:

Subject: the weekend
Organization: kissing mammoths
Summary: singers, construction workers, and a kiss

Aside from laboring at academic things, like making up homework and class handouts, I had two special events on the calendar for this weekend (Palo Alto shapenote singers at my house on Sunday, a visit from an old friend on Monday), plus a nonacademic writing task: a short short story (under a thousand words) about a kiss, for submission to a volume called One Thousand and One Kisses.

Saturday afternoon and evening were taken up by choosing recipes for the shapenoters (marinated eggplant, from Cucina Fresca; cold Chinese noodles with peanut sauce, from The Savory Way; a salad of yuppie greens (the grocery calls it “mesclun mix”, but we don’t) plus watercress; and a lovely hazelnut torte from Whole Foods), buying the ingredients (piles of fresh cilantro for the peanut sauce, piles of fresh basil for the eggplant slices, and much else), and making the eggplant dish, the noodle dish, and a stir-fry dinner for Jacques and me. Plus cleaning up the resulting kitchenful of dishes, pots, pans, and utensils. (Some of the singers are vegetarians, so i usually just go for entirely vegetarian offerings. And dishes that are best when made ahead of time and served at room temperature, so that I can sing without concern about getting the food ready for after the singing.)

Big crowd of singers — about twenty. My supply of chairs and chair-like objects did not stretch to this number, so some of us had to sing standing up. But our living room has good acoustics for singing (enough reflective surfaces to make a good ringing sound) and the group was enthusiastic. There were a lot of tenors, so that for most songs I sang treble (a “soprano” descant line, which of course I do an octave lower than written). [2019 note: soon after this, I became a male treble full-time.] A really excellent singing, and the food was much appreciated. Seven or eight of us started a second singing after we’d eaten, and that went on for another half hour. We just hate to stop, once we’ve started.

Monday’s visitor was an architect / photographer /historic-preservationist who now works for FEMA; as it happens, he was the person who negotiated the $40 million dollars that Stanford got for reconstruction after the Loma Prieta earthquake. (He is also gay, so there is definitely motss-interest here.) He’d called the engineer on one of the projects currently in progress (the Language Corner on the quad, for those of you who are Stanford-knowledgeable) and arranged for a tour. MLK day was not a holiday for the construction people; all the reconstruction projects — and there are a great many — were going full force.

So J and I and FEMA Man met the engineeer, who gave us all hard hats and took us into the building. Fascinating stuff. The interior had been basically ripped out and then re-done, using the original materials wherever possible.  The interior work was about 70% done, so that you could see where offices, lecture halls, etc. would be (again). Replacement columns for the arcades were strewn about outside the building. Construction workers lugged, sawed, nailed, and otherwise labored, all around us. (I am not above a certain faggy interest in workmen, but it was hard to study the species properly in situ, since we had to pay a lot of attention to where we were stepping and to keeping out of the way of the work.) FEMA Man took a great many pictures of this project, and the Old Library project, and the Art Museum project (which has officially begun, though just barely). We didn’t have time to check out another building under reconstruction, one I taught a big class in some years ago, which is now nothing but an empty shell; it’s somehow shocking to see it in this state.

The three of us then had dinner, out, and FEMA Man came back to our place to sit with me and dish, and learn about soc.motss and ba.motss and the dc-motss list (He lives in oakland but commutes regularly to Washington) and all that neat motss stuff.

And I finished the story for A Thousand and One Kisses. Another piece of Sundance and Butch, about Sundance’s first kiss. Short short fiction is the devil to write; well, maybe it’s just that I’ve never done it before (poetry yes, ordinarily short fiction yes, but under a thousand words no). But I’m reasonably pleased with the result. (I’ve considered posting it on soc.motss, but i’m not sure it would be welcome. It is, of course, sexually explicit in content and vocabulary, but I’m still seeing a fair number of sexually explicit postings here, despite concerns that Children Might Be Reading This.)

b a in p a, facing homework to grade

[And now you can read the story on AZBlogX.]

The audience for tomorrow’s moment of revelation, in J.C. Leyendecker’s remarkable Saturday Evening Post cover for Christmas 1900:

A portrait of the Magi, the Three Kings (or Wise Men), owing much to Art Nouveau style, and with the artist’s characteristic attention to the physical masculinity of his models.

(Hat tip to Tommy Lee Whitlock on Facebook. This posting is somewhat abbreviated; I’ve been sick.)

First, the religious festival, from NOAD:

noun epiphany (also Epiphany): [a] the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12). [b] the festival commemorating the Epiphany on January 6. [c] a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being. [d] a moment of sudden revelation or insight. ORIGIN Middle English: from Greek epiphainein ‘reveal’. The sense relating to the Christian festival is via Old French epiphanie and ecclesiastical Latin epiphania.

Then the Magi. A very complex story, with highlights from Wikipedia on the Biblical Magi:

Encyclopædia Britannica states: “according to Western church tradition, Balthasar [or Bathazar] is often represented as a king of Arabia, Melchior as a king of Persia, and Gaspar [or Caspar] as a king of India.”

… In one tradition, reflected in art by the 14th century (for example in the Arena Chapel by Giotto in 1305) Caspar is old, normally with a white beard, and gives the gold; he is “King of Tarsus, land of merchants” on the Mediterranean coast of modern Turkey, and is first in line to kneel to Christ. Melchior is middle-aged, giving frankincense from his native Arabia, and Balthazar is a young man, very often and increasingly black-skinned, with myrrh from Saba (modern south Yemen).

… The subject of which king is which and who brought which gift is not without some variation depending on the tradition. The gift of gold is sometimes associated with Melchior as well and in some traditions, Melchior is the old man of the three Magi.

On the gifts: myrrh functions as an anointing oil, also used in embalming; frankincense as a perfume, especially in incense form. More below.

On this blog, in a 12/24/16 posting “This year’s most puzzling Christmas card”, about Christmas in Barcelona, featuring the Three Kings (with Melchior as the old one).

The distribution of the kings over the three ages, three gifts, and three names varies from context to context, though in modern times Balthasar is young and black. I haven’t found a key to Leyendecker’s intentions about the kings in his magazine cover; the details on them:

left: young (and black) king — certainly Balthasar — bearing frankincense

middle: old, bearded king, bearing a jar of myrrh oil

right: middle-aged king, looking decidedly Egyptian, bearing gold

(I have some personal interest in these matters, since I am Arnold Melchior Zwicky, son of Arnold Melchior Zwicky and grandson of Melchior Arnold Zwicky, so Melchior’s my guy.)

Frankincense and myrrh. Their plant family, from Wikipedia:

The Burseraceae [#90 in my running inventory of plant families] are a moderate-sized family of 17-19 genera and about 540 species of flowering plants. … The Burseraceae are also known as the torchwood family, the frankincense and myrrh family, or simply the incense tree family. The family includes both trees and shrubs, and is native to tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

The plants in the family are the source of fragrant resins, in particular:

Frankincense … is an aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes, obtained from trees of the genus Boswellia in the family Burseraceae (Wikipedia link)

Myrrh is a natural gum or resin extracted from a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora [of the family Burseraceae]. Myrrh resin has been used throughout history as a perfume, incense, and medicine. (Wikipedia link)

Leyendecker. The subject of my 1/22/11 posting “J. C. Leyendecker”. A significant American illustrator and commercial artist, creator of (among other things) influential images of American masculinity, Leyendecker was a gay man whose very popular illustrations were often unobtrusively homoerotic. And the Magi as a subject allows an artist to indulge in whatever  form of exoticism appeals to them; see above.

From Chris Waigl on Facebook yesterday, this

VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

Pride in Polar Research wishes everyone a happy #PenguinAwarenessDay 2019! You can never be too aware of #Penguins! #LGBTQ #Science

Today is indeed Penguin Awareness Day. But not all Prideful polarites are penguins; some are polar bears. Quick checklist:

1. Take note of which pole you are at; polar bears are northern, arctic, while penguins are southern, antarctic (or nearly so)
2. Do a color check; polar bears are white (well, sometimes dingy, but that can happen to the best of us), while penguins are part black and part white
3. Do a limb check; polar bears have four clawed paws, while penguins have two flippers and two webbed feet

On closer inspection, you should be able to determine that polar bears are in fact mammals, covered in fur, with fearsomely toothed mouths, while penguins are (admittedly eccentric) birds, covered in feathers, with beaks.

LGBT polarites of both types exhibit rainbow coloration (see above) and are fiercely proud and out, and cannot be distinguished on those grounds.

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