(There’s some gay sex stuff in the last section, not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Four items that have come my way recently, all with some language play in them. Two are Christmas-related: a Green Eggs and Ham tie and a Rhymes With Orange cartoon. One has a jokey wine label. One has a wonderful invented name for a gay pornstar (and that leads to Arab characters in gay porn).

The tie. A recent novelty tie from Steven Levine on Facebook:

(#1)

That’s Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat from Green Eggs and Ham. (On the book, see my 10/22/14 posting, which has links to earlier postings on Dr. Seuss. On Steven’s novelty ties, see my 11/157/15 posting, where two of them are pictured, as #4 and #5). The relevant lines:

You may like them. You will see.
You may like them in a tree!

The maker of the tie has turned the tree in the book into a Christmas tree. Notice the green eggs and ham at the top of the tree. All very festive.

Rhymes on trimming. Hilary Price’s cartoon:

(#2)

A play on two senses of trim. From NOAD2:

make (something) neat or of the required size or form by cutting away irregular or unwanted parts: trim the grass using a sharp mower

decorate (something)

There’s a third sense that’s holiday-related, but not alluded to in the cartoon:

(the trimmings) informal  the traditional accompaniments to something, especially a meal or special occasion: roast turkey with all the trimmings

Au contraire, mon ami. The (silly) label from a bottle of wine recommended by my server at Reposado yesterday, Olmer Ortiz:

(#3)

Not what you expect, my friend: the mouse outweighs the elephant.

The wine was fabulous. From the Wine.com site about it:

Winemaker’s Notes: An elegant and silky mouthfeel with fine-grained tannins and firm acidity showcase the wine’s ripe red fruit. Pairs well with grilled and roasted meats such as lamb, pork, poultry, duck and light sauces, or with delicate cheeses.

The wine is a blend of Sonoma Coast vineyards from Sebastopol, CA to the new Fort-Ross Seaview AVA overlooking the Pacific. The full spectrum of Pinot Noir clones are represented in this wine

Wine Enthusiast: “Light and spicy, this hails from cool-climate sites. It is exhilarating in cinnamon and clove, with a structured core of wild strawberry and a finish of fennel. The aromas of violet that waft forward on the nose are incredibly inviting, as is the wine’s silky texture.

Arab characters in gay porn. (SEXUAL CONTENT WARNING) Joking with my friend Juan yesterday. We stumbled into the names of gay pornstars (and of gay pornflicks), many of which are preposterous plays on words. Juan suggested Sodom Hussein as a great name, given the penchant of many gay men for Arab men; there are falafel queens out there, who have a preference for Arab or Middle Eastern men (or men of such descent) as sexual or romantic partners, and there are a huge number who find such men to be be powerful objects of fantasy. Like black men, such men are perceived to be hypermasculine and so serve as tops (in anal intercourse) in many gay men’s fantasies. Put bluntly, lots of gay men fantasize about being fucked, sodomized, by an Arab (or by more than one).

So I searched for Arabs in gay porn and found lots of links. In particular, I found a link to a video that was billed as an Arab fucking a hungry (white) bottom. A very satisfying and well-made video it is — but I recognized it as a scene from the Michael Lucas porn flick Men in Love, set in Ibiza, and pairing top Will Helm (who is French and not of Arab descent) with bottom Damien Crosse (who is Cuban American). A shot from this scene, in which you can see that fucking is going on but no dicks are visible (yes, the scenery is amazing):

(#4)

(Brief posting on AZBlogX on 1/1/12 about this flick, where I wrote:

On New Year’s Day, from the Michael Lucas studios, this stirring ad for their porn flick Men in Love: photos from the scene “Overlooking the Sea”, with Will Helm (the leaner man, with facial hair) and Damien Crosse (the beefier man, cleaner-shaven)

(Both men have notable tattoos.) The two actors, Helm and then Crosse, in cocktease publicity shots for the movie:

(#5)

(#6)

There are Arab actors in gay porn, but apparently not enough for the many gay men with fantasies of being fucked by an Arab, so any pornstar with Mediterranean good looks and the appropriate facial hair can be framed as an Arab top.

Crosse is clean-shaven in this scene (to make a nice contrast to his top), but he often goes about with the appropriate facial hair, so he could be pressed into service as an Arab if a director wanted to frame him that way. Here he is, very hot indeed, at the Folsom Street Fair (in S.F.) in May 2010:

(#7)

(Intense eyes on Helm in #5, Crosse in #7.)

From WayBig.com on Helm:

French pornstar Will Helm is a proud and strong power top who loves nothing more than fucking a good bottom who knows how to take it and loves every second of it. Will started performing in gay porn to have fun and he loves fucking guys who have ripped muscles and excited assholes!

Crosse is versatile, but he gets fucked quite a lot in porn. For instance, there’s a film Hunger Gangbang in which he plays a slutty pig, enthusiastically taking on a gang of men, both in his mouth and in his ass (and then they come on his face), so it’s a gangsuck, a gangbang, and a bukkake flick all rolled into one. It’s notable that this flick was made by the company Stag Homme, which is owned by Crosse and his husband.

From Wikipedia:

Damien Crosse is an American gay pornographic film actor [a Cuban American born in Miami in 1982] and magazine model. He was an exclusive for Titan Media 2006-2008. Crosse is currently under contract with Raging Stallion Studios. In 2008, Crosse and gay adult performer Francesco D’Macho launched Stag Homme Studios, a production label based in Madrid. The real-life partners will be prominently featured in live webcasts, DVDs and other content. In 2009 he was living in Madrid, Spain … where, in June 2009, he married … D’Macho.

Two final notes. First, lots of American gay men fantasize about getting fucked by an Arab (from the Middle East), and lots of French gay men fantasize about getting fucked by an Arab — but a North African Arab. (There’s some hot French gay porn on the subject.) North African Arabs then roughly fill the role for French white gay men that African Americans do for American white gay men. The wages of history.

Second, it looks like many gay men have extended the gay partner-preference snowclonelet X queen from actual partner preference to fantasy partner preference, so that you could be a falafel queen just by finding Arab men really hot in your fantasies.

Two male-hunk calenders, one with an image for the Christmas season. Mr. December from the Meet the Bern calender, supporting Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders:

(#1)

And the cover image from the Calendrier des Pompiers calender, with homoerotic male photography celebrating French firemen:

  (#2)

(Hat tip to several Facebook friends for #1, to Kim Darnell for #2.)

Bern. The Sanders calendar (note: not an official product of the Sanders campaign) has attractive men in little or no clothing, most having bits of language play (including double entendres) supporting Bernie. From BuzzFeed:

Twelve months of dudes wearing not much more than a Sanders sticker — sometimes even less than that — plus a centerfold.

#1 above has a minimally clothed underwear model putting a Bernie doll at the top of his Christmas tree. Here’s Mr. May (the models are of a wide range of physical types) with a jokey caption and a Bern pun:

  (#3)

Les Pompiers. From the Bright Side website, which says:

These firemen from France have released the most stunning 2016 calendar you’ve ever seen

#2 I recognized as the work of male photographer Fred Goudon, who I’ve posted about twice on AZBlogX: “Concealing and revealing: Fred Goudon” of 11/16/10; and “Concealing and revealing: more Fred Goudon” of 11/23/10. In the latter posting I wrote:

Cinq is thoroughly erotic in tone, focused on beautiful, sensuously presented, young men (as are Goudon’s four other books).

(A sixth book, Summer Souvenirs, has now been published.)

Wikipedia on Goudon:

Fred Goudon is a French professional photographer. Originally from Cannes ([in the] south of France), he is now based in Paris.

He started shooting when his father gave him a camera as a gift on his 16th birthday. His work includes shooting of the 2006 issue of Dieux du Stade, (English: Gods of the Stadium) calendar and DVD, featuring nude and semi-nude photographs of members of Stade Français, a Paris-based domestic French rugby team as well as at times players from other rugby union clubs and athletes from other sports. He was invited again to shoot both the 2014 calendar issue and the 2015 issue of the series. He publishes some of his work in books through Bruno Gmunder publishers.

Two covers of the Dieux calendars, for 2014 and 2015:

  (#4)

  (#5)

And one more shot from the fireman calendar, a voluptous nude shot (but with the man’s penis concealed):

  (#6)

Intensely masculine men. And then Goudon does underwear photography as well, for a number of companies. A fabulous video spread of this work can be viewed on YouTube here, set to the song “Let Me Be Your Underwear” by Club 69.

(Except for the names of bdsm gear and the slang term gimp, this is mostly about sexual practices.)

My posting of December 20th had a section on gay men with a preference for Arab partners that had a piece on Cuban-American gay pornstar Damien Crosse, including a hot picture of Crosse wearing a type of harness I wasn’t familiar with:

(#1)

Those two straps clearly go under his armits to get connected in the back and then go over his shoulders. It turns out that such a harness (a piece of fetishwear, for sexual display of the body or for restraint) is known as a shoulder harness, or, because of its resemblance to devices for holstering pistols, a holster harness. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding a holster harness that has buckles for adjustment in the back (rather than the one on Crosse, with buckles in the front, where the wearer can easily adjust the buckles himself) being worn by a real human being, but I did find a version on a manikin.

Then on to yet another type of harness, the Y harness, and to some other types of fetishwear, in particular chaps and the bondage suit or gimp suit.

On a man, a harness, especially a black leather one, is a display of the wearer’s body and a projection of masculinity, in combination with a presentation of the wearer either as a dominant stud or as a submissive. (Crosse plays characters of both sorts in his gay porn work.) Crosse in #1 can be read either way, thanks to the fact that he can easily adjust the buckles himself; if the buckles had been on the back, then adjustment would be more difficult for him to do himself, suggesting that a dominant man would do the adjusting for him.

Previously on my blogs: a regular-blog piece of 8/10/13 with cross harnesses, by far the most common variety, in #1 and #2 there; and a AZBlogX posting of 9/18/13 with some more cross harnesses and also, in #4 and #5 there, a couple of bulldog harnesses.

A note on materials. Harnesses of all kinds can in principle be made of many materials, including leather, rubber, and a number of faux-leather and faux-rubber plastics, but genuine leather has a special status for fetishwear, in part because of its smell, which many people find very attractive, in fact sexy.

Now to holster harnesses. Here’s a totally simple one, in (genuine) black leather with black piping on the straps, from the BON BDSM company, seen here from the front:

(#3)

(the manikin is clearly meant to be male, but it’s a nippleless wonder)

and then from the rear, where the straps are adjustable and there’s a ring for attaching other gear (like a leash or a sex toy):

(#4)

Damien Crosse’s version just has the buckles (for adjustment)  in the front rather than the back.

This model has padding on the leather, for comfort and ease of cleaning, and it also comes in a style with white piping or (for the more blatant) shocking pink piping.

The holster harness is so called from the shoulder holsters used for carrying firearms. From NOAD2:

a holder for carrying a handgun or other firearm, typically made of leather and worn on a belt or under the arm: the Luger slid easily from the holster.

These are, respectively, hip holsters and shoulder holsters (there are also ankle holsters and leg holsters). For stability, shoulder holsters require straps, either across the chest or (more commonly) across the back, and they are typically one-sided (how many people need to carry two firearms?), but there are two-sided variants, such as this two-fisted number Brendan Fraser is wearing in his Mummy movie role (which presumably has straps in the back):

(#5)

Adapting shoulder holsters for fetish use, we get the one-sided holster harness, shown in thumbnail on another manikin:

(#6)

(This manikin has visible, but creepily flesh-colored, nipples, and it’s articulated, so that the arms can be moved and posed in different positions.)

And on to Y harnesses. Here’s a basic Y harness, with no one in it:

(#7)

Y harnesses are the same front and back, so that they can be worn with the adjustment buckles on either side — on the front, where the wearer can easily adjust the harness himself, or on the back, suggesting that a dominant man will buckle him into the harness.

Y harnesses are usually made stable by a horizontal strap around the body — a chest strap as in #7, or a waist strap, or a hip strap, or two of these. The O rings provide points for attaching a leash, a cockring, or some other sex toy. Strapless Y harnesses are another possibility, in which case the vertical strap just goes under the crotch, usually with an anchoring cockring, as in this number:

(#8)

(I have fuzzed out the business end of the model’s penis so that the image can appear on this WordPress blog.)

The O ring in back can be used to attach a leash.

In any case, this is the simplest sort of Y harness, one in which the Y of the name appears without any extras.

More fetishwear: chaps. In looking for illustrations of holster harnesses and Y harnesses — eventually I found a lot, but not before I’d written up the material above, with its prevalence of manikins and disembodied gear — I came across this wonderful image, which has been passed around on various leather sites:

(#9)

An attractive, smiling guy in a black leather bulldog harness, highlighting his nipples, and crotchless, or open-crotch, black leather chaps (which means that they’re also seatless, or open-ass, gear), but with a detachable blue leather thong. He’s displaying his handsome ass or making his ass available to other men (or both) and he’s focusing attention on his dick while concealing it, but making it easily available. An admirable performance.

Chaps are very common items of fetishwear, and crotchless garments (which I’ve called dickholewear on my X blog) are scarcely unknown, but there aren’t many occasions where a man can wear them in public without getting into hot water, so they’re mostly limited to sexual display in private or to use with an accompanying cover, like a thong.

Chaps were not, however, invented as fetishwear, but originated as clothing for working men (which jacks up their appeal as fetishwear). From NOAD2:

chaps pl. noun   leather pants without a seat, worn by a cowboy over ordinary pants to protect the legs. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: short for chaparajos.

chaparajos N. Amer. full form of chaps (also chaparejos) ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Mexican Spanish chaparreras, from chaparra (with reference to protection from thorny vegetation: see chaparral); probably influenced by Spanish aparejo ‘equipment’

Chaps can, of course, be made of various sorts of faux leather, but genuine leather is the way to go.

More fetishwear: bondage suits. My friend Juan, who is straight, has been getting an education in things gay from talking with me about my postings. Recently, that’s taken us into the world of gay bdsm, including slave collars and now harnesses. Oh, he asked a few days ago, do you know the movie Pulp Fiction? — Yes. — And the Gimp?  — Um, no; I either missed that or forgot about it.

Here’s a YouTube clip of the relevant scene, in which the Gimp, in a bondage suit, is brought out of the box / cage in which he’s been kept. (I knew about bondage suits, but the name gimp suit was new to me).

From Wikipedia:

A bondage suit, also commonly called a gimp suit, is a garment designed to cover the body completely (usually including the hands and feet), fitting it closely, and often including anchor points for bondage. It often has an attached hood; if it does not, it often is worn with a bondage hood or “gimp mask”. The suit may be made from any material; leather, PVC, rubber, spandex, and darlexx are the most usual. Leather, not being stretchy, cannot fit as tightly as the others.

A bondage suit is used in BDSM to objectify the wearer, or gimp, and reduce him or her to the status of a sexual toy, rather than a sexual partner. Unless there are suitably placed zippers, the breasts and genitals are not directly accessible while the suit is worn.

Here’s a man in a bondage suit of some sort of synthetic material, wearing a slave collar (with leash attached) that forces him to keep his head straight, and with restraints that prevent him from moving his arms, bending over, or standing up:

(#10)

Note that the panels covering the slave’s eyes, mouth, and nipples can be unsnapped.

Now a black leather bondage suit from Mr. S Leather in San Francisco:

(#11)

In the photo, the model has his eyes, mouth, nipples, and hands uncovered, so that he can pinch his tits and grab his dick, and has no restraints attached, so that he can move around freely. But that can easily be fixed.

From the Mr. S site:

This is the ultimate bondage experience.
– Made of over twenty pounds of thick soft leather.
– This improved version of the original Fetters design is completely made in our San Francisco workshops.
– Ten different lacing points with 20 separate belts that go around the suit.
– Multiple ‘D’ rings allow this suit to be attached to anything for total restraint.
– All belts and lacing included.
The Fetters Bondage suit separates at the waist in two pieces so you can wear each piece separately.
Jacket and pants are laced together with connecting eyelets to tighten enough to restrict bending or not.

It sells for $2,250, not a high price for specially made genuine leather.

Bondage suit is a transparent N-N compound. But where does gimp suit come from? Consider NOAD2 on the relevant noun:

gimp N. Amer. informal, derogatory a physically handicapped or lame person; a feeble or contemptible person. ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Dutch, of unknown ultimate origin.

The idea then is that a bondage suit disables you, makes you into a disabled person, a gimp.

(Only a little about language here, beyond the hanky code, but there is plain talk about gay sex, so this is not for kids or the sexually modest.)

On the 22nd from Daily Jocks, with a sale offer:

Get a massive 20% off the entire DailyJocks Neon Sports Range!  No minumum [note anticipation of the U in the last syllable] spend and no promo code needed + free global shipping! [On the nouning of spend, see my 8/23/12 posting on this blog.]

All made from a super breathable Airmesh and cotton/spandex blend, the jock is a brief-jock style giving you all the front support of a brief with plenty of room at the back [that is, there’s no seat panel], while the [low-rise] trunk features deep side pockets in case you need to keep anything handy.

Available in black and white with a variety of fun neon inspired highlights!

Kent just loved the pockets in his
Neon trunks. For the right, a neat
Pocket square, in navy blue –
Fuck me – or light blue – wanna
Suck your cock; for the left, his
American Sexpress card, to pay the man.
He had a magenta hanky –
Armpit fetish – but never used it, ’cause
Guys confuse magenta and mauve, and
Navels don’t do a thing for him.

The gay hanky code has been ridiculously elaborated from the high days of bar and street cruising, when navy blue (fucking), light blue (cocksucking), black (S&M), red (fistfucking), yellow (piss), white (jacking off), and maybe a few others were widely understood as signals of what you were looking for in a sex partner. Now one site lists a ton of colors, subtly distinguished; in the pink/purple range:

light pink (dildos), dark pink (tit torture), mauve (navel fetish), magenta (armpit fetish), purple (piercing), lavender (drag queen)

I mean, how many guys, even fashion-conscious fags, can reliably distinguish mauve and magenta? (Like Kent in my caption, I’m into armpits, but unmoved by navels.)

Then there are absurd things like gold lamé for muscleboys (on the left if you like them as bottoms, on the right if you like them as tops), and light blue for cocksucking (that’s standard) plus colored dots for the desired race/ethnicity: white, black, brown (latinos), or yellow (asians). There’s the Union Jack for skinheads, but nothing for men with hairy forearms or smooth-bodied men.

Some time ago, the 2008 movie of Journey to the Center of the Earth (based on the Jules Verne fantasy) came by me. It’s a piece of fluff, a fantasy action/adventure film with comic touches, starring Brendan Fraser as a volcanologist named Trev(or) who ends up exploring the center of the earth with his 13-year-old nephew Sean and a young Icelandic woman named Hannah; Trev’s brother (and Sean’s father) Max and Hannah’s father Sigurbjörn were both Vernians, taking the works of Jules Verne to be fact and not fiction, and in the end they are vindicated, but not until the three principals have been though a series of extraordinary adventures.

Fraser is something of a favorite of mine. He’s a very physical and energetic actor, who often plays charming and agreeable (sometimes goofy) characters, and he was a pleasure to watch in this lightweight film.

(#1)

Trev studies a copy of Verne’s Journey annotated by Max

From Wikipedia:

Brendan James Fraser … is an American-Canadian actor. He portrayed Rick O’Connell in The Mummy trilogy (1999-2008) and is known for his comedic and fantasy film leading roles in major Hollywood films, such as Encino Man (1992), The Scout (1994), George of the Jungle (1997), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) and Inkheart (2009). He also starred in numerous dramatic roles, such as Gods and Monsters (1998), The Quiet American (2002), Crash (2004) and Gimme Shelter (2013).

The Mummy films are all entertaining, but the first one is one of those movies you can watch again and again and still get pleasure from. Here’s Fraser as Rick O’Connell, with his two-sided shoulder holster for two-handed wasting of mummies.

(#2)

At some point in the Mummy movies, Fraser says, “I hate mummies!”, and then the line surfaces in other forms in some of his other movies. In Journey, it’s something like “Have I mentioned how much I hate field work?”

On to the very silly George of the Jungle, in which Fraser goofs around as the title character. From Wikipedia:

George of the Jungle is a 1997 American live-action film adaptation of the cartoon of the same name… It stars Brendan Fraser as the eponymous main character, a primitive man who was raised by animals in an African jungle; Leslie Mann as his love interest; and Thomas Haden Church as her treacherous fiancé.

(#3)

Back in those days, Fraser was given to appearing shirtless.

Then a truly wnderful and moving film, Gods and Monsters. From Wikipedia, in great detail, because I really admire this film:

Gods and Monsters is a 1998 British-American drama film that recounts the (somewhat fictionalized) last days of the life of troubled film director James Whale, whose experience of war in World War One is a central theme. It stars Ian McKellen as Whale [gay as gay can be], along with Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich, and David Dukes. The movie was directed and written by Bill Condon from Christopher Bram’s novel Father of Frankenstein. It was executive produced by British horror novelist Clive Barker.

… Whale befriends his young, handsome gardener and former Marine, Clayton Boone [played by Fraser] and the two begin a sometimes uneasy friendship as Boone poses for Whale’s sketches. The two men bond while discussing their lives and dealing with Whale’s spells of disorientation and weakness from … strokes. Boone, impressed with Whale’s fame, watches [Whale’s film] The Bride of Frankenstein on TV as his friends mock the movie, his friendship with Whale, and Whale’s intentions.

… Boone assures Whale that he is straight and receives assurance from Whale that there is no sexual interest, but Boone storms out when Whale graphically discusses his sexual history. Boone later returns with the agreement that no such “locker room” discussions occur again. Boone is invited to escort Whale to a party hosted by George Cukor for Princess Margaret. There, a photo op has been arranged for Whale with “his Monsters”: Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester from “ancient” movie fame. This event exacerbates his depression. A sudden rain storm becomes an excuse to leave.

Back at Whale’s home, Boone needs a dry change of clothes. Whale can only find a sweater, so Boone wears a towel wrapped around his waist. Whale decides to try to sketch Boone one more time. After some minutes, he shows his sketches to Boone, disclosing that he has lost his ability to draw. After Boone drops his towel to pose nude [as I read it, a move to try to help Whale recover some of his ability, by giving him the spur of sexual desire], Whale makes him wear a World War I gas mask and then uses the opportunity to make a sexual advance on Boone, kissing his shoulder. Boone becomes enraged and attacks Whale, who confesses that this had been his plan and begs Boone to kill him to relieve him of his suffering. Boone refuses [as I read this, Boone has now shifted from protective sympathy to pity, which means Whale has nothing left], puts Whale to bed, then sleeps downstairs. The next morning, Hanna [the protective housekeeper, played by Lynn Redgrave] is alarmed when she can’t find Whale, prompting a search by Boone and Hanna. Boone finds Whale floating dead in the pool

Fraser just after he drops that towel, shown from the waist up:

(#4)

More shirtlessness.

Fraser is in the odd position of once having been a major Hollywood star (the three movies above, though very different in tone, are from a very short span of time), and then he withered away in the consciousness of the moviegoing public, though he continued to beaver away as an actor; he’s always been a hard worker. Some of his early successes are great entertainments but not great film, and some of his more recent work is thoughtful and complex. But the public is fickle.

(Mostly about underwear, but a bit about language.)

Stumbled onto the StevenEven premium underwear site, with tons of astonishing stuff on sale, in particular things in the company’s Pikante collection. Two items from that collection: a double rainbow band thong brief, and a piece of extraordinary pouchwear, the Castro bikini brief.

The company’s blurb about the Pikante line (I have downcased the ad’s many things in SCREAMING ALL CAPS, but preserved its penchant for Initial Caps and its sometimes notably non-native syntax):

Pikante Underwear is our exclusive brand. We carry 100% of the Pikante Underwear (Spicy Underwear) Collection. If you are a Unico Underwear lover, you will absolutely fall for Pikante Underwear. What we love about Pikante Underwear is the combination of the extreme design with a sexy fit. We also recommend you this lovely brands, Xtremen Underwear. Checkout This New Brands: Joe Snyder Underwear, Candyman Underwear, Zylas & Wildmant

On the double rainbow band garment (again leaving the ad copy untouched):

Pikante 8009 Thong Lollipop Black [also in White]: The Pikante Rainbow Double Band Thong gives you minimal coverage but double the dazzling effect, thanks to the super bright double rainbow waistband. This comfy thong hugs your masculine contours, and shows off even more skin in the front through the sheer mesh pouch. If you want to go fancy, but still sport minimal coverage, this thong will do you proper. Fabric: 80% nylon, 20% spandex sheer mesh fabric pouch

(#1)

The rear, in a thumbnail:

(#2)

Oh my.

On to the Castro bikini brief (bikini in front, brief in back), with its extreme pouch. The ad copy:

Pikante Underwear Brief/Bikini Castro Black [also in White, Grape, and Green (to my eye, more like turqoise)]: The Pikante Castro Brief’s most outstanding feature is the anatomically-shaped pouch that’s elongated to cradle your package. The result is amazing comfort and a super sexy profile. The microfiber fabric forms an ultra sleek fit that won’t show under clothes, making this style ideal for when you want supreme comfort with a risque look. Composition: 85% nylon, 15% spandex stretch microfiber fabric forms ultra smooth, sleek fit

(#3)

(#4)

The pouch seems to have the ability to give its wearer a permanent half-hard-on (or it has a penile sleeve built in). Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to have much room for the wearer’s balls.

My recent “boxboys and transitive bottoming” posting led me to the informal English vocabulary for talking about the male genitals euphemistically: package, box, basket, junk, stuff, sack, unit, … (photo #1 there is an entertaining presentation of packages and boxes) — what you might think of as packagecabulary or boxcabulary. (NOAD2 has package ‘a man’s genitals’, but none of the other boxcabulary.)

That posting probably primed me to think of the premium underwear company Baskit; in the very crowded field of homoerotic underwear marketing, the company manages to be profoundly gay, starting with its name.

On to a November 17th piece “Baskit $12 Tuesday – Contrast Low-Rise Trunk” by Colleen Hennessy on the Underwear Expert site. An ad from the company, showing two boyfriends holding hands and displaying the waistbands of their Baskit underwear:

(#1)

The guy on the left is flagging blue/gold, whatever that might mean (possibly fellatio in a three-way, either two looking for one or one looking for two, with fellatio as the main course). Here’s a model in that style, illustrating the package-flattering pouch and the low-rise styling that barely, but just barely, covers his public hair:

(#2)

From Hennessy’s piece:

Give yourself a little credit. You’ve made in this far, and Monday wasn’t so bad, right? Well, whether you came out unscathed or not, treat yourself to this week’s $12 Tuesday deal on the Baskit Contrast Low-Rise Trunk!

The Contrast Low-Rise Trunk features a low-rise waistband, so you can show off those beautiful abs you’ve been working on! This is a square cut trunk so the leg openings cut off on your upper thigh for minimal coverage. The contoured pouch will keep your boys in place while you go through your daily routine.

The wide logo waistband and leg seams contrast with the color of the fabric for a fun look! Some of the styles also have contrasting season [??] in the contoured pouch to give it a little something extra. This style is available [in] five colors: orange/grey, red/black, blue/gold, grey/purple and white/turquoise. Each color combination is available on this $12 Tuesday, so stock up on every color!

Well, the sale day is long past, but we can still admire the underwear and the models who wear it.

The Contrast line comes in a number of styles (in addition to low-rise trunk: at least, (regular) trunk, brief, bikini brief, boxer brief, jock, jock brief). And there are two color combinations in addition to the ones Hennessy lists: green/gray (which is what the guy on the right in #1 is wearing, apparently conveying that he’s into stud hustling, either as hustler or as john, as the main course, and bondage) and yellow/green (piss and stud hustling). Can this coupling survive?

(Not about language, but about hunky guys doing cock teases. Yes, it’s shallow.)

Two images passed on to me by Mike McKinley (with Chris Ambidge):

(#1)

(#2)

Both guys are sporting moose-knuckles, and intentional display of a moose-knuckle is in itself a kind of cock tease. But the guy in #2 (who’s also lowering one side of his dance pants to expose his body down to the root of his penis) is more clearly toying with the viewer. On the other hand, his dance pants are thicker than #1’s briefs, and #1’s briefs are white and wet, so his moose-knuckle is really honkingly prominent (while #2’s is subtler).

#1 is a male model working for the Andrew Christian (famously homoerotic) premium underwear firm (it appeared on the AC Facebook page). The photo comes from the website for AllAmericanGuy, a membership site offering male fitness models in still shots and videos; I think the model is Luke Bryans (but I’m not entirely sure). In any case, he’s definitely ripped, with especially substantial arm muscles.

#1 is doing a carwash-in-underwear routine, a form of soft porn that AC is certainly fond of. A bunch of hunky guys (all in the same model of cute blue AC briefs and nothing else) working it and horsing around at the Andrew Christian Car Wash can be viewed in the video here; there’s also a video of cops stripping off their uniforms to wash their patrol car, and bump and grind, in a variety of AC briefs).

While we’re at the carwash, you might want to check out a Philly GayCalendar video, Boys of Summer Fiat Car Wash 2013, featuring Philadelphia gay boys, in quite a range of underwear styles, washing a car and one another.

On to #2. This came to me from the Facebook site Male Ballet Dancers, where it was posted by a Jordan Wolf, but without any information about the source of the photo, the model, or the photographer. Several people have commented that the guy doesn’t have a dancer’s body, though it’s certainly well-developed and he’s doing an entertaining cock-tease offer of it.

I put the second photo through a Google image seach and got ten or so hits, all thoroughly uninformative, though several of the sites took the model to be a body-builder (one of them offered to sell you the leggings he’s wearing). So for the moment he remains a sultry unknown.

(Underwear, men’s bodies, and gay sex, though nothing hard-core, and there will be some material on language. Use your judgment.)

Yesterday’s ad from Daily Jocks, with a racy caption of my own devising:

  (#1)

Sporty is solid working-class
South Boston, accent and all,
Quit high school to
Work construction, realized
Petty crime could be more
Profitable if you had a solid
Gang behind you, got approached by a
Needy fag for sex, discovered he liked
That work too and made a sideline as
Rough trade, looking and acting
Dangerous, slapping johns
Around, treating them like
Shit, but reliably never actually
Hurting them, so now he has a solid
Roster of johns paying good money to
Get Sporty.

The ad copy that goes along with #1:

Welcome to 2016! We’ve got an amazing year planned for you with new styles, brands and extra-special offers to help you look your best above and below the belt. [It’s a rare piece of premium underwear ad copy that doesn’t make an allusion to the crotch and its treasures; here, it’s “below the belt”.] Get started with 20% off Sportswear this week from brands including Pump, BCNU, Teamm8, Jack Adams, Marcuse Supawear and more. Workout harder with your new look.

Lots to cover here. Start with the gay slang rough trade: ‘rough or lower-class men sought, and sometimes paid, as casual sexual partners by more privileged or affluent men’ (NOAD2)

Here we see male model Christian Hogue playing at being rough trade:

  (#2)

To come: more on Christian Hogue (because he loves displaying his body, including in cock-tease shots); on the adjective sporty; and on Elmore Leonard’s novel Get Shorty and the movie made from it, as well as on Leonard’s writing, which (among other things) celebrated the vernacular speech of the working class and, and especially of lowlifes (like Sporty in the caption).

Christian Hogue.Here’s the man modeling C-In2 Core Basic (photo by Rick Day):

  (#3)

The underwear is pulled down low, and he’s got fingers hooked in the waistband to pull them down further.

And then all the way, with cock-tease Hogue naked but covering his crotch:

  (#4)

The adjective sporty. The ad in #1 exhorts the (male) viewer to get sporty, using the adjective in one or both of the first two senses from NOAD2, but also in a sense related to the fourth:

[main sense] flashy or showy in dress or behavior.
[a] (of clothing) casual yet attractively stylish: a sporty outfit.
[b] (of a car) compact and with fast acceleration: a sporty red coupe.
[c] [of a person] fond of or good at sports.

Certainly sense a, maybe also the main sense, but also in something related to sense d, namely a sense along the lines of ‘(of clothing) intended as or good as sportswear’.

Get Shorty. But the ad slogan is surely also intended as a play on the title Get Shorty. From Wikipedia:

Get Shorty is a 1995 crime thriller comedy film based on Elmore Leonard’s novel of the same name. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, and Danny DeVito, the plot remained true to the book except for a few minor details. A sequel, titled Be Cool, was released in 2005.

  (#5)

Russo, DeVito, and Hackman standing in front of Travolta

The plot is extraordinarily intricate, but here’s a bit (from a 10/20/95 review by Roger Ebert) that explains where the film’s title comes from:

Harry Zimm [(Gene Hackman)] … is found in bed with Karen Flores (Rene Russo), a “scream queen” who is the kind of actress who becomes a cover girl for Fangoria. She used to be married to Martin Weir (Danny DeVito), a major, if short, movie star. They all scheme to get “Shorty” into their picture, and the movie’s single best scene is one where Travolta gives DeVito acting lessons in how to look filled with menace.

My caption carries this ‘get Shorty to play in a movie’ sense over to the sense ‘get Sporty to serve as a sex partner’.

Elmore Leonard and his writing. The characters in Leonard’s books talk incessantly, and they do so in the accents (and grammar) of the working class, especially working-class crooks, petty criminals, grifters, and other lowlifes. (Petty criminals like Sporty in my caption, with his working-class Southie accent.)

Leonard on Wikipedia:

Elmore John Leonard, Jr. (October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013) was an American

novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, were Westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.

Among his best-known works are Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Hombre, Mr. Majestyk, and Rum Punch (adapted for the movie Jackie Brown). Leonard’s writings include short stories that became the films 3:10 to Yuma and The Tall T, as well as the FX television series Justified.

Elmore is famous for his representations of vernacular speech and also for his masterful use of free indirect style in representing the internal speech of his characters. Two relevant postings on this blog: “Lowlife dialogue” of 6/6/12, and the first section of “Two stylists” of 8/23/13, which is an obit for Leonard; the other section is an obit for pianist Marian McPartland).

Just when you thought that the ship of bromanteaus and other brocabulary (involving the (North American) slang term bro ‘brother, buddy’, used especially as an address term) had long ago sailed into oblivion, Geico comes along with a recent ad campaign that erupts with goofy brocabulary.

It’s the “gym commercial” for Geico insurance, showing two buddies working out with weights at a gym (one of them bulking up considerably in the process). For fans of shirtlessness, here’s a still from the commercial:

You can watch the whole thing on YouTube here.

It starts with Guy 1 (the guy in the still) saying to  Guy 2, “Check this out, bro”, and Guy 2 responding, “What’s that, broheim?” (using another address term meaning ‘brother, buddy’, conventionally spelled broheim but pronounced /bròhím/ in the commercial; more on the word in a little while). And then they go back and forth about the virtues of Geico insurance, each turn introducing another piece of brocabulary:

brofessor, brotato chip, brotein shake, Teddy Broosevelt

(with accented bro replacing the first syllable in the words professor, potato, protein, and Roosevelt — all syllables that are already phonetically close to [bro]).

But that’s not the end of it: the commercial (made by the Martin Agency) appears under a number of titles:

Brocabulary, Brorritos, Bromosapien, Bronoculars, Brobot, Brozone Layer

(with more initial replacements by accented bro),

Edgar Allan Bro, Vincent Van Bro

(with replacement of the last element of a name), and

Avbrocado, Guacbromole

(with replacement of a medial element). All very goofily playful.

The item broheim. Grant Barrett on the Way With Words site on 6/9/06:

broheim n. brother; friend, buddy. Also broham, brougham, or (rarely) broheem. Editorial Note: This term was recently popularized by the movie A History of Violence. Etymological Note: The Berkeley High School Slang Dictionary (2004, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California) says that the brougham variation derives from the Cadillac Brougham, a high-end sedan; however, there is no substantiation for this and it is highly unlikely.

Other speculations on its origin. Some commenters on Grant’s posting see it as as bro plus a Germanic element seen in German Heim ‘home’.  The association of the item with Black English vernacular makes this origin story (as well as the sedan-car story) relatively unlikely. Then there were commenters who knew it in an (American) Jewish context, and took it to be from a Yiddish ritual greeting, ultimately deriving from Hebrew. In general, people were reporting information about the context in which they were first aware of it, not at all the same thing as tracing the word back to its source

Grant was unimpressed with these stories, observing again and again that working out the origins  was not a particularly useful enterprise; the real question is about who uses the word, in what contexts, and for what purposes, now, and finding the original meaning (something that’s extraordinarily hard to do for many slang expressions) tells us absolutely nothing about that.

The word bro itself certainly began life as a clipping of brother, almost surely in AAVE (African American vernacular English), but it long ago escaped into much more general use.

Brocabulary. I started posting on brocabulary on this blog on 12/27/08, in “Manecdotes and brobituaries”, reporting on a book entitled Brocabulary, which was full of invented bromanteaus and related portmanteau words. The first browords to achieve widespread use seem to have been the noun bromance and its related adjective bromantic, referring to an intense (but non-sexual) relationship between straight men. Suceeding postings:

8/23/11, “Isn’t it bromantic?” (link): a cartoon with the adjective bromantic

8/26/11, “Bromantic lexicography” (link):  bromance added to a dictionary

9/20/11, “Dubious bromanteau” (link): brony = bro + pony (as in My Little Pony)

3/22/12, “man-bro-guy-” (link): brosiery = bro + hosiery

3/25/12, “On the bro- watch” (link): brogrammer (and the bronus brotein)

3/27/12, “more bro” (link): more bromanteaus: broga (bro + yoga), brogrammer again

10/4/14, “Bromantics: Pine and Quinto, Kirk and Spock” (link)

3/8/15. “Bromancing the Bone” (link): non-sexual bromance; sexual brolovers

12/12/15, “Sex between straight men: bro-jobs” (link): and other brocabulary; bro-choice campaign (involving pro-choice bros)

(No sexually problematic content, but not much language either.)

Today’s Daily Jocks ad, this time for Diesel underwear. With a caption added by me:

Tony came to in an empty featureless
Cell, all in grey, with no door he could find,
Wearing only his new Diesel “Under Denim” Trunk in
Dusty Blue, with its hot contour pouch to show off
His stuff – Where was he? How did he get here?
What would happen to him? And what was in that
Drink that Hunky Dude bought for him?

The ad copy, plus some information from Diesel about the underwear:

[DJ copy:] This brand needs [no] introduction, we welcome Diesel Underwear Collections to our lineup of styles. Featuring cutting-edge designs, bold waistbands and iconic styling – your underwear drawer will crave this addition. [Whose underwear drawer has cravings?]

[Diesel copy:] The “Under Denim” trunk [in Dusty Blue] from Diesel’s new Under Denim collection which reflects the rich heritage of the mainline denim jeans range. [Diesel also makes and sells jeans.]

With contour pouch. It also comes in Indigo and Navy.

Today from Daily Jocks: a sale on Marcuse wear, including the swim briefs modeled here by Friedrich (in Bondi Blue) and his man Karl (in Vamper Sky):

(#1)

(#2)

Friedrich quips that he and
Karl are exactly the same, he’s the
Bodybuilder model, Karl’s the
Swimmer model — met and mated in a
Historical Materialist t-room on
Ibiza, which boasts the world’s
Cruisiest Marxist colony — found
Marcuse’s unique lines of very
Low-rise committed-Marxist
Swim briefs, embodying
Carnal display and eminent
Fondleability in vigorous
Dialectic.

Notes below the fold…

On Marcuse’s lines of very low-rise swimwear, with links to Herbert Marcuse and more, see my posting “Marxuse” of 9/8/15.

The Daily Jocks ad copy for the Vamper Sky:

Set off your summer tan with the sexy summer colours of Vamper. The V-shape print adds a sense of stylish symmetry, the drawstring and lining ensure your comfort, while the Italian fabric and Marcuse gold embroidered logo add the feel of quality and uniqueness.

And note the Marcuse logo, which manages to be both a fleur-de-lis and a cock and balls.

A Pinterest page on male haircuts led me to the undercut, a cut I’ve seen but had no name for (but this is a good one). From the Max Mayo site on men’s fashion (2/25/15, “45 Stylish Looks of Undercut Hairstyle”):

2015 would be the year faux-hawk officially died. But instead of dying by way of losing sight of it on the street (remember mullets from the 80s?) faux-hawk became a permanent fixture on today’s hairstyle menu, joining the classic league of buzz cuts, side-parted and the Ivy League.

In 2014, undercut hairstyle dethroned faux-hawk and took over the “Most Popular Hairstyle” crown. The request for the “IT” haircut at barber shops and salons continues to grow 3 years after we first spotted (and then embraced) the trend. The natural progression of the trend has given birth to countless permutations of the original style.

An undercut is short on the sides and full on the top. In a disconnected undercut, the sides are very short and clearly separate from the top; in a faded undercut, the sides blend gradually into the longer top.

Some examples to come, the first featuring male model (and former footballer) John Halls, who will provoke a digression showing him hunky in his underwear (and an undercut). Then a few notes on the faux hawk (or faux-hawk), a ‘false mohawk’.

Illustration: Halls in a disconnected undercut, with a pompadour on top:

(#1)

Max Mayo caption:

Male model John Halls spotting undercut in DETAILS magazine, March 2014

At first I thought that spotting was just a typo for sporting, but the site uses spotting in other captions; no one else seems to use the verb spot this way (except in quoting Max Mayo), so the usage looks like an eggcorn (though it’s not anywhere on the Eggcorn Database site).

On to the first note: undercut in NOAD2:

a space formed by the removal or absence of material from the lower part of something, such as a cliff, a coal seam, or part of a carving in relief.

In the haircut, the hair on the lower part of the head is shaved down, though not to the point of complete removal.

Second note: Very briefly from Wikipedia about Halls:

John Halls (born 14 February 1982) is a model and former English footballer.

… After leaving Wycombe [Wanderers] in May 2012 Halls decided to retire and set up his own male fashion business. Halls currently models for Next Models.

Here he is reflectively modeling underwear (in a faded undercut):

(#2)

(Soccer player / male model is a thing. The sport is good for developing model-style bodies.)

Back to haircuts. A disconnected undercut “with dishevelled side quiff” (as Max Mayo puts it):

(#3)

Some older men have taken up the style. Here’s “silver fox Domenico Gianfrate spotting undercut”:

(#4)

On to mohawks (on the way to faux hawks). From Wikipedia:

The mohawk (also referred to as a mohican) is a hairstyle in which, in the most common variety, both sides of the head are shaven, leaving a strip of noticeably longer hair in the center. The mohawk is also sometimes referred to as an iro in reference to the Iroquois, from whom the hairstyle is derived – though historically the hair was plucked out rather than shaved.

… While the mohawk hairstyle takes its name from the people of the Mohawk nation, an indigenous people of North America who originally inhabited the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York, the association comes from Hollywood and more specifically from the popular 1939 movie, Drums Along the Mohawk starring Henry Fonda.

Here’s an example with a relatively modest spike:

(#5)

Now to faux hawks. From The Right Hairstyles for You site:

A stylish and appealing haircut can do wonders with man’s looks, especially if the haircut is just edgy enough to be intriguing yet not so over the top that it can’t be taken seriously. This is the case with the popular men’s faux hawk haircut that has been around for decades dating back to the punk rock movement, but it still continues to remain relevant due to constant updates.

… Essentially it is a haircut that is cut partially into a Mohawk, but not all the way. How to cut a faux hawk? The sides are generally clipped short with the hair longer in the top where it can be spiked or formed into a point, depending on hair texture.

Here’s an illustration of what’s identified as a “classic faux hawk”:

(#6)

Note that the back is clipped as well as the sides and that the sides are back are faded, but with a clear delineation between sides and top.

An uncut is then very similar to a faux hawk, differing from it mostly in not having a spiky or pointed top. Both cuts can have the back of the head styled in various ways.

By an odd and indirect route, I went searching on { silver mammoth } this morning, and found two items of interest: a Canadian coin and a Brazilian hard rock band. The coin:

(#1)

and from the band’s homepage:

(#2)

The background. I had a persistent dream last night about some very important linguistic finding about the words silver and turtle, stemming from some e-mail I dreamed I’d received. When I was fully awake, I started searching on { silver turtle }, unearthing a great variety of turtle figures made of silver, plus silver-dollar-sized baby box turtles, before I realized this was just another of my worthless dreams about linguistic analyses — always hard to admit, because the ideas in the dream seem so beautiful and also so significant.

But… while I was searching, I thought, why not check out { silver mammoth }? And there, admidst the dross, were two pieces of gold, so to speak. Or, admidst the chaff, two kernels of wheat. Whatever.

Mammoth coinage. From the Coin Update website on 7/4/14, “Royal Canadian Mint Begins Prehistoric Animals Series with Woolly Mammoth Coins” by Michael Alexander:

The Royal Canadian mint have launched a new coin series which will certainly appeal to those lovers of all things Jurassic – with coins dedicated to highlighting the prehistoric creatures found not only on the soil of what is today Canada but to those more well-known four-legged and flying inhabitants of the planet who shared their environs with pre-historic man. The two first coins are focusing on one of the continents more recognizable and the most recent occupant – the woolly mammoth! [a 20-dollar silver coin and  a 5-dollar gold coin]

(#3)

The appearance and behavior of this species are among the best studied of any prehistoric animal due to the discovery of frozen carcasses in Siberia and Alaska. The woolly mammoth was roughly the same size as modern African elephants. Males reached shoulder heights between 9 and 11 feet or 2.7 and 3.4 meters and weighed up to 6 tonnes. Females averaged 8.5 to 9.5 feet or 2.6 to 2.9 meters in height and weighed up to 4 tonnes. A newborn calf weighed about 200 pounds or 90 kilograms.

The woolly mammoth was well adapted to the cold environment during the last ice age as they were covered in fur, with an outer covering of long guard hairs and a shorter undercoat. The color of the coat varied from dark to light. The ears and tail were short to minimize both frostbite and heat loss. It had long, curved tusks and four molars, which were replaced about six times during the lifetime of an individual. Its behavior was similar to that of modern elephants, and it used its tusks and trunk for manipulating objects, fighting, and foraging. The diet of the woolly mammoth was mainly grass and rushes. Mammoths could probably reach the age of 60. Its habitat was the mammoth steppe, which stretched across northern Eurasia and North America or parts of present-day Canada. Despite the species’ extinction 10,000 years ago, the woolly mammoth continues to inspire and intrigue many who identify it with the last glacial period. With these finely detailed coins, the Royal Canadian Mint celebrates this impressive mammal that once roamed parts of present-day Canada and much of the north American continent.

The coins, both designed by artist Michael Skrepnik[,  depict] this majestic creature with two different designs. The coins feature scientifically accurate depictions of a woolly mammoth, verified by paleontologists from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. With its head raised, the mammoth’s trunk is outstretched between its famously long, curved tusks. The thick, coarse fur that enables it to survive the colder temperatures is shorter here, reflecting the moulting that scientists believe took place in the early summer. The mammoth’s extra hump of fat is seen over its shoulders. In the background, the low grasses and gentle sloping hills of the mammoth’s habitat stretches past the image’s outer rim on both sides.

The obverse includes the current portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II which is used on all Canadian coins since 2003, the portrait is the work of Susanna Blunt.

A second pair of coins, depicting the “American Scimitar Sabre-Tooth Cat”, was minted in 2015. I don’t know what’s up for this year.

The Silver Mammoth of São Paulo. You can see and hear them in action here, performing the title track from their 2015 album Mindlomania. And be transported back to the 1970s and 80s, in English but with a Brazilian Portuguese accent.

The personnel: Marcelo Izzo Jr. (fourth in #2), on electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and backup vocals; Chakal (third in #2), on bass; Vinnie Rabello (first in #2), on drums and percussion; and Marcelo Izzo (second in #2), on lead vocals. Yes, a father-son rock band.

Being the sort of person I am, I googled on Izzo Jr.’s name, hoping to find a shirtless photo of the man (hey, rock musicians have been known to take their shirts off in performance). No luck there (or for Rabello, the other band member I fancied), but the Google search engine is attuned to my interests (given previous searches of mine) and though I didn’t mention shirtlessness (or of course soccer), the search engine supplied me with lots of images of shirtless footballers, some of them in their underwear (there is even a undiesboyssoccer.blogspot.com site devoted to images of soccer players in their underwear), and that led me to the Colombian footballer James Rodríguez, who is accomplished not only on the soccer field but also as an underwear model (there’s that footballer / male model thing again). Here he is, in one of a series of big-pouched photos (my favorite, because he’s smiling) of him in an item from his own J10 James line:

(#4)

Very briefly, from Wikipedia:

James David Rodríguez Rubio (born 12 July 1991), known as James Rodríguez …, is a Colombian professional footballer who plays for Spanish club Real Madrid and the Colombia national team as an attacking midfielder or winger.

Generally identified as one of the best young players around.

In 2014, he became the new face of Bronzini Black underwear (and he’s started his own line).

The menswear guy, especially coats and footwear (shoes, boots, even Varvatos Converse sneakers — high end sneakers, at $100 to $140 each), though now he’s branched out in other directions: men’s fragrances and recordings, in particular. You can view a short commercial for the John Varvatos Fall 2015 Menswear Collection here. It’s a pas de deux between two beautiful fashion models (beautiful in two different ways), Nick Rea and Jonas Kesseler, left and right in this still at the end of the ad:

(#1)

The ad focuses on their coats and, in frequent shots, their boots. And it has a haunting sound track, “Old Bones”, performed by Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown (on, yes, John Varvatos Records).

Here’s Rea looking seductively beautiful in a spread of homotography by Giovanni Squatriti in Essential Homme magazine (September/October 2011):

(#2)

From that same spread, a trio of macho-hunky models, shirtless in their underwear:

(#3)

On to Jonas Kesseler, seen here looking steamy in a John Varvatos fragrance ad:

(#4)

And back to Varvatos himself. From his website:

Ask John Varvatos to pinpoint the moment when his obsession with fashion and music began, and he’ll show you a photo of The Stooges taken in 1970. “It was all hippies before these guys,” says the Detroit native. “They showed up wearing motorcycle jackets, ripped jeans, aviators … nobody looked like them at the time.”

Oh my. And there’s a Michigan connection, Detroit and Ann Arbor; from Wikipedia:

The Stooges, also known as Iggy and the Stooges, are an American proto-punk band from Ann Arbor, Michigan, first active from 1967 to 1974, and later reformed in 2003. Although they sold few records in their original incarnation, and often performed for indifferent or hostile audiences, the Stooges are widely regarded as instrumental in the rise of punk rock, as well as influential to alternative rock, heavy metal and rock music at large.

Here’s a classic Stooges shot, with the guys looking disdainful and provocative (in several senses):

(#4)

You can listen to the Stooges punking out “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (1969) on YouTube here.

On Saturday I got a copy of GQ magazine — The Body Issue, for February — in the mail, with an announcement from Condé Nast that Details magazine had been closed and they were sending me GQ {for Gentlemen’s Quarterly] for the rest of my Details subscription period. GQ is, like Details, a fashion and lifestyle magazine, tilting towards fashion, while Details tilted towards the lifestyle side, and their target audiences are different: Details for metrosexual straight guys and gay guys (we’re all brothers, and we can learn from each other, or something like that), GQ very much for straight guys, with visible anxiety lest its readers be taken for queers because of their interest in men’s fashion, grooming, and the like.

So the February issue features Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, maintaining on the cover that he’s the “Nobel Prize Winner for Physical Perfection” and showing him there in nothing but trunks from CR7 Underwear (Ronaldo’s own company) — but pairing him there (and elsewhere in the magazine) with supermodel Alessandra Ambosio (who appears to be topless on the cover). The strategy is to surround a man featured in the magazine because of his physical attractiveness with really hot women hanging on to him, to convey his heterosexuality and so to reassure the readers that it’s safe for them to admire him and identify with him. In the case of Ronaldo, who could be described as a, to put it very gently, serial dater (details to follow), the effort would seem superfluous, but it’s a standard GQ strategy.

In a separate posting, I’ll look at another story from this issue of GQ, rather coyly advertised on the cover:

Super-Size Me! We Have Huge News About Your Manhood

Here I’ll stick to Ronaldo, because there’s a lot to say, going beyond what I wrote about the man in my 8/27/15 posting “On the fashion front”, where there were three photos of him: #2, in a sexy + amiable pose; #3, in a fancy composition advertising his CR7 line; and #4, an unposed shot of him shirtless and sweaty on the soccer field.

Now, in GQ, there are two shots of him without Alessandra Ambrosio, both showing off his remarkable body (oh yes, he has a handsome face, too; smiles a lot; and projects intense energy):

(#1)

(#2)

I’ve reflected several times on this blog that soccer player plus male model (especially underwear model) is a natural pairing — soccer develops a body well suited to commercial display — but these two shots show that Ronaldo has gone way past such development, into some sort of stratospheric cultivation of a muscular swimmer-type body, achievable only by long hard work beyond staying in good shape for playing soccer.

#1 shows the man in those CR7 trunks from the cover, plus a chain/necklace by David Yurman and what is probably a very expensive Tag Heuer watch — Ronaldo lives high — though GQ gives the cost only for the trunks, $27; on the Tag Heuer site, men’s watches run from $1,200 to $8,500, and on the David Yurman site, chains like the one Ronaldo is wearing run from $350 to $1,050.

What’s especially remarkable about #1 is Ronaldo’s lats, like wings made of solid muscle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen lats quite like that on a swimmer-type body.

#2 shows the footballer in colorful CR7 trunks (again, $27; the Nike jacket goes for $85), sitting up a bit, so doing the beginnings of a crunch, which demonstrates that his abs are not just attractive (if you’re into abs), but are in fact masses of rock-hard solid muscle.

Now, getting past that body, I remind you that Ronaldo plays for the Spanish team Real Madrid and the Portuguese national team. He lives mostly in Madrid with his son Cristiano Jr., now 5. Ronaldo has steadfastly refused to identify the boy’s mother or to discuss the circumstances of the child’s birth. He does seem to be devoted to his son, or at least as devoted as a man with his demanding occupations and his lifestyle can be.

Ronaldo is the world’s highest paid footballer; and, by far, the world’s most recognizable athlete (thanks to the immense popularity of soccer worldwide). When you add to his soccer earnings the earnings from CR7 and the huge payments he gets for endorsements of various products, he is an extraordinarily rich man, quite an achievement for someone who was born 2/5/85, so will be 31 10 days from now.

Now, those women he’s dated and his girlfriends (one of whom people thought he was actually going to get around to marrying). The Ronaldo CR7 site lists 18 of them, but since that list was put together there have been several fresh entrants. (The Ronaldo CR7 site is written in very rocky English, with a fair number of misspellings (like Atinkson for Atkinson), so I had to do some fact-checking to put this list together.)

dated Portuguese model Karina Ferro in 2002 (when he was 17); Brazilian supermodel Jordana Jardel in 2003; Portuguese model Merche Romero 2005-06; Portuguese tv and film actress Soraia Chaves in 2006; 18-year-old Mia Judaken in 2006; callgirl or porn star Gemma Storey in 2007; British supermodel Gemma Atkinson in 2007; Portuguese Pop Idol contestant Luciana Abreu in 2007; call girl Tyese Cunningham in 2007; Bollywood actress and supermodel Bipasha Basu in 2007 (2007, when Ronaldo was 22, seems to have been an especially busy year for him); Spanish model Nereida Gallardo in 2008; seen with American celebrity Paris Hilton in 2009; seen with American celebrity Kim Kardashian West in 2010; Welsh model and beauty queen Imogen Thomas in 2010; rumored one-night stand with Brazilian model and tv personality Andressa Urach in 2013; five-year relationship with Russian model and actress Irina Shayk (which looked like a really serious thing at the time); tv reporter Lucia Villalon in 2015

In 2015 came reports of a relationship with 19-year-old Danish model Maja Darving; with 23-year-old Spanish model Claudia Sanchez; and with 24-year-old Marisa Mendes (the daughter of his agent, which at least one sports reporter has described as like “dipping his pen in the company inkwell” — wink wink nudge nudge).

Live hard, play hard, work out hard, spend as much time with the kid as you can (Ronaldo says they are trying to improve their Engish and their Spanish together). Oh, and he’s really close to his mother.

Or: Australia Australia Australia!

From Daily Jocks on the 25th, this example of their own AUS line (with my caption appended):

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A triple threat: proudly
Australian, proudly
Working class, proudly
Queer – “I like to get
Down under with
Me mates”

The company’s ad copy:

Say G’day to our newest underwear collection, designed downunder (for your downunder). Featuring a soft waistband with bold AUS logo and printed Australian flag, the cotton/spandex blend will keep you feeling comfortable.

To come: more on the underwear and the body of the model in #1. Then to Monty Python’s “Bruces” sketch, notes on Bruce as a particularly Australian name (and, in the U.S., as a particularly gay name), with a digression on the wattle, and then to Australian comedian and actor Barry Humphries, Dame Edna Everage, and Aussie bloke Barry McKenzie.

The underwear. #1 has DJ’s AUS underwear in a trunk (with fly). It also comes as a low-rise brief (flyless, more serious pouch):

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The AUSwear is in the blue and white of the Australian flag, but without the Union Jack or the representaion of the Southern Cross constellation:

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The model. The model in #1 has a really fine model’s body: swimmer-type build, really fit, but not ostentatiously developed. Lightly furred, neither notably hairy nor notably smooth. A very good-looking body, also “natural” — a body men can admire and identify with, or (if that’s what works for you) desire. No doubt he’s good for business.

As for the actual man, I doubt that his name is Bruce, and I have no idea whether he is Australian, working class, or queer.

Bruces. From Wikipedia:

The Bruces sketch is a sketch from the television show Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and appears in episode 22, “How to Recognise Different Parts of the Body” [aired 11/24/70]. It involves a group of stereotypical lounging Australians who are revealed to be the Philosophy Department at the fictitious University of Woolamaloo (a misspelling of the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo; this is how the suburb is actually pronounced with an Australian accent), and all named Bruce, with a common fondness for beer and a hatred of “poofters” (a derogatory Australian slang word for a homosexual). Terry Jones plays a “pommie” [British] professor, Michael Baldwin, joining the department and meeting his colleagues for the first time.

… Eric Idle co-wrote the sketch with Cleese and said he based it on his Australian friends from the 1960s “who always seemed to be called Bruce”.

You can watch the whole sketch here. It’s laced with stereotypical Aussie slang and stereotypical Aussie admiration for working-class values and behavior (and disdain for their stereotypical British counterparts). The full transcript, so you can appreciate the details:

Voice Over: Number eight. The kneecap

Pull back to reveal the knee belongs to First Bruce, an Australian in full Australian outback gear. We briefly hear a record of ‘Waltzing Mathilda’. He is sitting in a very hot, slightly dusty room with low wicker chairs, a table in the middle, big centre fan, and old fridge

Second Bruce [Graham Chapman]: Goodday, Bruce!

First Bruce [Eric Idle]: Oh, Hello Bruce!

Third Bruce [Michael Palin]: How are yer Bruce?

First Bruce: Bit crook, Bruce.

Second Bruce: Where’s Bruce?

First Bruce: He’s not here, Bruce.

Third Bruce: Blimey, s’hot in here, Bruce.

First Bruce: S’hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum!

Second Bruce: That’s a strange expression, Bruce.

First Bruce: Well Bruce, I heard the Prime Minister use it. S’hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum in ‘ere, your Majesty,’ he said and she smiled quietly to herself.

Third Bruce: She’s a good Sheila, Bruce and not at all stuck up.

Second Bruce: Ah, here comes the Bossfella now! – how are you, Bruce?

Enter fourth Bruce with English person, Michael

Fourth Bruce [John Cleese]: Goodday, Bruce, Hello Bruce, how are you, Bruce? Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce a chap from pommie land… who’ll be joining us this year here in the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaloo.

All: Goodday.

Fourth Bruce: Michael Baldwin – this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin – this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin – this is Bruce.

First Bruce: Is your name not Bruce, then?

Michael [Terry Jones]: No, it’s Michael.

Second Bruce: That’s going to cause a little confusion.

Third Bruce: Mind if we call you ‘Bruce’ to keep it clear?

Fourth Bruce: Well, Gentlemen, I think we’d better start the meeting. Before we start, though, I’ll ask the padre for a prayer.

First Bruce snaps a plastic dog-collar round his neck. They all lower their heads.

First Bruce: Oh Lord, we beseech thee, have mercy on our faculty, Amen!!

All: Amen!

Fourth Bruce: Crack the tubes, right! (Third Bruce starts opening beer cans) Er, Bruce, I now call upon you to welcome Mr. Baldwin to the Philosophy Department.

Second Bruce: I’d like to welcome the pommy bastard to God’s own earth, and I’d like to remind him that we don’t like stuck-up sticky-beaks here.

All: Hear, hear! Well spoken, Bruce!

Fourth Bruce: Now, Bruce teaches classical philosophy, Bruce teaches Haegelian philosophy, and Bruce here teaches logical positivism, and is also in charge of the sheepdip.

Third Bruce: What’s does new Bruce teach?

Fourth Bruce: New Bruce will be teaching political science – Machiavelli, Bentham, Locke, Hobbes, Sutcliffe, Bradman, Lindwall, Miller, Hassett, and Benet.

Second Bruce: Those are cricketers, Bruce!

Fourth Bruce: Oh, spit!

Third Bruce: Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce!

Fourth Bruce: In addition, as he’s going to be teaching politics, I’ve told him he’s welcome to teach any of the great socialist thinkers, provided he makes it clear that they were wrong.

They all stand up.

All: Australia, Australia, Australia, Australia, we love you. Amen!

They sit down.

Fourth Bruce: Any questions?

Second Bruce: New Bruce – are you a pooftah?

Fourth Bruce: Are you a pooftah?

Michael: No!

Fourth Bruce: No right, well gentlemen, I’ll just remind you of the faculty rules: Rule one – no pooftahs. Rule two, no member of the faculty is to maltreat the Abbos in any way whatsoever – if there’s anybody watching. Rule three – no pooftahs. Rule four – I don’t want to catch anyone not drinking in their room after lights out. Rule five – no pooftahs. Rule six – there is no rule six! Rule seven – no pooftahs. That concludes the reading of the rules, Bruce.

First Bruce: This here’s the wattle – the emblem of our land. You can stick it in a bottle or you can hold it in your hand.

All: Amen!

Fourth Bruce: Gentlemen, at six o’clock I want every man-Bruce of you in the Sydney Harbour Bridge room to take a glass of sherry with the flying philosopher, Bruce, and I call upon you, padre, to close the meeting with a prayer.

First Bruce: Oh Lord, we beseech thee etc. etc. etc., Amen.

All: Amen!

First Bruce: Right, let’s get some Sheilas.

An Aborigine servant bursts in with an enormous tray full of enormous steaks.

Fourth Bruce: OK.

Second Bruce: Ah, elevenses.

Third Bruce: This should tide us over ’til lunchtime.

Second Bruce: Reckon so, Bruce.

First Bruce: Sydney Nolan! What’s that! (points)

Cut to dramatic close-up of Fourth Bruce’s ear. Hold close-up. The superimposed arrow pointing to the ear.

Voice Over: Number nine. The ear.

A still:

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The sketch was varied in a number of ways in performances and in the version that was recorded on the 1973 album Matching Tie and Handkerchief, where the sketch concluded with the whole cast singing “The Philosopher’s Song”, which is all about drinking:

Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nieitzsche couldn’t teach ‘ya ’bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: ‘I drink, therefore I am.’
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.

The name Bruce. Now from the site Waltzing More Than Matilda ~ Names with an Australian Bias of Democratic Temper, from 9/17/14, Famous Name: Bruce:

When the name Acacia was featured for Wattle Day, I mentioned that Monty Python made gentle fun of our national flower with their Bruces Sketch, where all the philosophy faculty at the (fictional) University of Woolloomooloo are named Bruce. This seems to be the origin of the notion that Bruce is a particularly Australian name.

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Acacia podalyrifolia, Queensland silver wattle

Barry Humphries has said that the inspiration for the Bruces Sketch was his Barry Mackenzie character, who began life as a comic strip in Private Eye. Barry Humphries’ television series, The Barry Humphries Scandals, was a precursor to Monty Python, and Eric Idle has cited Humphries as one of his comedy influences.

It’s rumoured, not implausibly, that Humphries himself suggested the name Bruce as an Australian signifier, either directly or indirectly. The name Bruce peaked in Australia in the 1930s, and in Britain slightly later, in the 1940s. Even at its height in the UK, it was only around the bottom of the Top 100, so it wasn’t nearly as common there.

Humphries was born in 1934, so had peers called Bruce. The most obvious example is Australian director Bruce Beresford (born 1940), who directed the Barry Mackenzie films. Like Barry Humphries, Bruce went to England in search of career opportunities, but was unable to break into the British film industry, and found success at home, with movies like Breaker Morant and Puberty Blues, and in North America with Driving Miss Daisy, and Black Robe.

The connection between Barry and Bruce continued when Humphries took the role of a great white shark named Bruce in the animated film, Finding Nemo. The American film-makers named Bruce, primarily not as an Australian reference, but after the shark in Jaws, whose models were all called Bruce after Steven Spielberg’s lawyer. Bruce the Shark does have an Australian accent though, and uses ockerisms like “Good on ya, mate!”.

From the United States, the name Bruce gained a different stereotype, being associated with homosexuality. The reasons are unclear, but one of the most popular theories is that it’s connected to the campy Batman television shows of the 1960s, as Batman’s real name is Bruce Wayne. Another is that it is from the 1960s parody song Big Bruce, where Bruce is a camp hairdresser.

Apart from these reasons, it does seem that the “tough guy” names of one generation are often seen as effeminate, dorky, or otherwise laughable by the next. Something to think about should you be considering one of today’s rugged baby names, such as Axel, Blade, Diesel, or Rowdy.

Barry Humphries. From Wikipedia:

John Barry Humphries … (born 17 February 1934) is an Australian comedian, actor, satirist, artist, and author. Humphries is best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. He is also a film producer and script writer, a star of London’s West End musical theatre, an award-winning writer and an accomplished landscape painter. For his delivery of dadaist and absurdist humour to millions, biographer Anne Pender described Humphries in 2010 as not only “the most significant theatrical figure of our time … [but] the most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin”.

Humphries’ characters have brought him international renown, and he has appeared in numerous films, stage productions and television shows. Originally conceived as a dowdy Moonee Ponds housewife who caricatured Australian suburban complacency and insularity, Edna has evolved over four decades to become a satire of stardom, the gaudily dressed, acid-tongued, egomaniacal, internationally feted Housewife Gigastar, Dame Edna Everage.

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Humphries’ other major satirical character creation was the archetypal Australian bloke Barry McKenzie, who originated as the hero of a comic strip about Australians in London (with drawings by Nicholas Garland) which was first published in Private Eye magazine. The stories about “Bazza” (Humphries’ nickname, an Australian term of endearment for the name Barry) gave wide circulation to Australian slang, particularly jokes about drinking and its consequences (much of which was invented by Humphries), and the character went on to feature in two Australian films, in which he was portrayed by Barry Crocker.

Humphries’ other satirical characters include the “priapic and inebriated cultural attaché” Sir Les Patterson, who has “continued to bring worldwide discredit upon Australian arts and culture, while contributing as much to the Australian vernacular as he has borrowed from it”, gentle, grandfatherly “returned gentleman” Sandy Stone, iconoclastic 1960s underground film-maker Martin Agrippa, Paddington socialist academic Neil Singleton, sleazy trade union official Lance Boyle, high-pressure art salesman Morrie O’Connor and failed tycoon Owen Steele.

Barry McKenzie. From Wikipedia:

Barry McKenzie (full name: Barrington Bradman Bing McKenzie) is a fictional character created by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries (but suggested by Peter Cook) for a comic strip, written by Humphries and drawn by New Zealand artist Nicholas Garland in 1964, in the British satirical magazine Private Eye.

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The Private Eye comic strips were compiled into a book, The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie, in which McKenzie travels to Britain to claim an inheritance. The book was published in London, but was banned in Australia with the Minister for Customs and Excise stating that it “relied on indecency for its humour”.

Two films followed.

The character was a parody of the boorish Australian overseas, particularly those residing in Britain – ignorant, loud, crude, drunk and punchy – although McKenzie also proved popular with Australians because he embodied some of their positive characteristics: he was friendly, forthright and straightforward with his British hosts, who themselves were often portrayed as stereotypes of pompous, arrogant, devious colonialists. McKenzie frequently employs euphemisms for bodily functions or sexual allusions, one of the most well-known being “technicolour yawn” (vomiting). The [1972] film popularised several Australian euphemisms and slang terms which are still used today in the Australian vernacular (such as “point Percy at the porcelain”, “sink the sausage” and “flash the nasty”). Some of the sayings were invented by Humphries, while other terms were borrowed from existing Australian slang such as “chunder” [vomit] and “up shit creek” (adopted by the Australian poetry magazine Shit Creek Review).

For a later poster, on Aussie masculinity (and class): aussieBum underwear, Shearing the Ram by Tom Roberts, and Slim Dusty.

On our last visit to Australia (in “Bruce Bruce Bruce” on the 27th), we started out in Aussie underwear (the Daily Jocks AUS line), moved through Monty Python and Bruce as a  stereotypically Aussie name (and in the U.S., as a stereotypically gay name) and on to Barry Humphries and two Australian characters he created, with notes on the Aussie celebration of working-class masculinity (amiable crudity, matiness) and disdain for effete Pommies (Brits). At the end, a promise:

For a later posting, on Aussie masculinity (and class): aussieBum underwear, Shearing the Rams by Tom Roberts, and Slim Dusty.

Now’s the time. Looking ahead: two images of Aussie men in their aussieBum swimwear and underwear, a surfer and a jackaroo:

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First, two linguistic notes.

Note 1, on Aussie, the national nickname, usable as (count) N or Adj. This is pronounced Oz-ee /azi/ by Australians, but often /ɔsi/ (from the spelling Aussie) by outsiders (including, I see, NOAD2), to the great annoyance of actual Australians.

Note 2, on the bum of aussieBum. In both BrE and AuE, this noun has the same ambiguity as AmE ass and BrE/AuE arse. Green’s Dictionary of Slang has ‘the posterior, buttocks’ and ‘anus, rectum’ (from the 14th century on). Then also:

in a sexual context, the vagina (from the 17th century on)

in s sexual context, the anus as a target for sodomy (from 1681 on); in this sense, used in a number of compounds (bum boy, bum bandit, etc.)

BrE bum (probably also AuE, though I have no cites for this) has been verbed, as a transitive meaning ‘to sodomise’. Two cites from the collection Green gives for this usage: the first, [orig. published] 1970 in Angry Young Man Alan Sillitoe’s A Start in Life:

(1979) 347: If he pansies after a young man he’s buggering his son [undersood as: then in his imagination he’s buggering his son] … If he gets off with an older man he’s being bummed by his father [same proviso].

and a harrowing quote from Mark Manning’s Get Your Cock Out (ok, it’s fantastical fiction):

(2000) 57: When I was seven the fucking idiot started using my arse like a dartboard, bumming me stupid every fucking night.

Interestingly, Green has various senses of transitive arse (a verbing of the noun) in BrE and AuE, but none in a sexual sense (in particular, no cites for a sense ‘to sodomise’), and also cites for the very common intransitive arse about, arse around ‘waste time, idly wander about (1984), ‘fool around’ (1973) etc., again none sexual.

Brief conclusion: otherwise very similar lexical items can go their own ways morphologically and syntactically.

aussieBum. Back to the underwear. From Wikipedia, in a rockily written entry:

aussieBum is an Australian men’s swimwear and underwear manufacturer.

All aussieBum products are manufactured in Australia with the business run completely out of the company’s headquarters in the Sydney suburb of Leichhardt.

The company has achieved international recognition for several products such as the Wonderjock, and Essence underwear; which contains vitamins locked in the fibre which releases through the skin

… In November 2006, the Wonderjock was launched in the aussieBum underwear lines. Wonderjocks have been designed to lift and enhance a man’s genitals, through the use of a fabric cup used to protrude everything out instead of just down. 50,000 pairs of the new underwear were sold in the first seven days of being released. The name was chosen as a pun on [well, an echo of or allusion to] the popular Wonderbra line of women’s push-up bras.

Yes, push-up men’s underwear, a step above mere pouchwear. It’s All About (perceived) Size. Here’s an extreme variant, the Wonderjock Pro:

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Then there’s the PocketJockIt, “a hidden pocket in your brief” (for condoms, lube, a cock ring, a small address book, a shopping list, or whatever, though it looks too small for a cellphone, so you’ll never have to say, “Excuse me, my briefs are ringing”):

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And the LoverBoy special:

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The aussieBum lines are sexy, playful, showy, outrageous (lots of cock-tease shots in their ads), and, most of all, high-masculine Aussie: cocky underwear (in several senses). You can watch a montage of their tv commercials in their video “My Australia”. And here’s the image from a famous ad campaign of theirs:

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This is a take-off on the Tom Roberts painting Shearing the Rams:

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From Wikipedia:

Shearing the Rams is an 1890 painting by the Australian artist Tom Roberts. The painting depicts sheep shearers plying their trade in a timber shearing shed. Distinctly Australian in character, the painting is a celebration of pastoral life and work, especially “strong, masculine labour” and recognises the role that wool-growing played in the development of the country.

One of the most well known and loved paintings in Australia, Shearing the Rams has been described as a “masterpiece of Australian impressionism” and “the great icon of Australian popular art history”. The painting is part of the National Gallery of Victoria Australian art collection.

(I can’t help imagining the expression shearing the rams turned into slang for sheepsex.)

And that brings us to Slim Dusty.

A while back, at a Saturday breakfast involving my daughter Elizabeth, my grand-daughter Opal, and me, we rambled into the difficulties of explaining war to little kids (think kindergardeners) who’ve never experienced war close-up or personally, and that somehow led Elizabeth and me to Australians and war (Opal’s dad is Australian, and she has relatives in AU, PNG, and NZ), and the fact that Australia has WWI memorials everywhere but relatively few WWII memorials — because WWI had a gigantic impact on the country, something like 30% of its young men having been killed in the war.

Elizabeth has been trying to educate Opal about her Australian heritage, and at this point in breakfast she was reminded of the iconic figure Slim Dusty, From Wikipedia:

David Gordon Kirkpatrick …, known professionally as Slim Dusty (13 June 1927 – 19 September 2003), was an Australian country music singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer, who was an Australian cultural icon and one of the country’s most awarded stars, with a career spanning nearly seven decades, the archetypical “Father of County Music”. He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson that represented the Australian bush lifestyle and also for his many trucking songs.

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Australia has an official national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair”, but its unofficial national song is certainly “Waltzing Matilda”, a ballad cebrating the lives of swagmen (itinerant transient laborers) in the Australian bush. You can watch a Slim Dusty performance of the song here.

Then a trucker and beer-drinking song, “Pub With No Beer”, which you can watch here.

And finally, another comic beer-drinking song, ringing changes on Australian men’s names, “Duncan”, which you can watch here.

The lyrics for the last:

I love to have a beer with Duncan
I love to have a beer with Dunc.
We drink in moderation
And we never ever ever get rollin’ drunk
We drink at the Town and Country
Where the atmosphere is great
I love to have a beer with Duncan
‘Cause Duncan’s me mate, yeah

I love to have a beer with Colin
I love to have a beer with Col.
We drink in moderation
And it doesn’t really matter if he brings his doll
We drink at the Town and Country
Where the atmosphere is great
I love to have a beer with Colin
‘Cause Colin’s me mate

I love to have a beer with Kevin
Oh I love to have a beer with Kev.
We drink in moderation
And he drives me home in his big old Chev.
We drink at the Town and Country
Where the atmosphere is great
I love to have a beer with Kevin
‘Cause Kevin’s me mate

I love to have a beer with Patrick
I love to have a beer with Pat
We drink in moderation
And it wouldn’t really matter if the beer was flat
We drink at the Town and Country
Where the atmosphere is great
I love to have a beer with Patrick
‘Cause Patrick’s me mate

I love to have a beer with Robert
I love to have a beer with Bob
We drink in moderation
Just one more and back on the job
We drink at the Town and Country
Where the atmosphere is great
I love to have a beer with Robert
‘Cause Robert’s me mate

The song has high earworm potential.

… the item of PUMP! underwear featured in this sale ad from Daily Jocks yesterday. With my caption:

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Cruising in his Jogger, Joe
Enjoyed feeling himself up in those
Hot pockets, which
Drove the boys wild

He got one for
His guy Kev, so they could
Cruise as a couple. They loved
Three-ways, and the
Boys all wanted it

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Joe and Kev are seriously into shirt-lifting and displaying their pits. Joe in his neon green Shockwave Tank, Kev in his dark blue Star Tank:

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(Though there’s a substantial amount in this posting on art, books, and fashion, there’s also quite a lot about men’s bodies and man-man sex, in very plain language, so it’s not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Posted on AZBlogX on the 31st, “X-rated Colby Keller”, with five shots of artist and gay pornstar Colby Keller (who appeared on this blog in a 5/7/13 posting “The protean Colby Keller”, about “mail art”, gay porn, and playfulness): three from Mike McKinley, which can be arranged in a sequence, though they were taken at different times: CK unzipping in preparation for sex, CK exhibiting his body, and especially his substantial hard cock; and CK with gay pornstar Duncan Black, immediately post-fuck. Then two from Chris Ambidge: one showing CK doing a stool-lift, exhibiting his very considerable strength and balance; and one with CK displaying a favorite art book (more on the book soon), which had to go on AZBlogX because that substantial hard cock of his is standing up right in front of the book.

Before I get into the art and the steamy sex, here’s a pleasant, somewhat eccentric shot of CK amidst a field of flowers in Maine in 2014:

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CK is red-haired and changes his appearance fairly often. He’s 35 and thinking about retiring from porn. Meanwhile, he’s a strong presence in social media: he tweets (under several identities, but @colbykeller is the basic one), maintains a blog with a very large following, Big Shoe Diaries, and has a busy tumblr account (i-see-penis by cheese helen; CK is “Colby as in Cheese, Keller as in Helen”). He is endlessly playful and also constantly outrageous, and enthusiastic about sex, especially fucking (where he’s equally into topping and bottoming; asked by an interviewer about his sexual orientation, which is in fact gay gay gay, he paused for a moment to consider the question and then firmly replied, “anal”); he’s also thoughtful, widely read, and gives wonderful interviews.

From Wikipedia:

Colby Keller (born October 18, 1980) is an American visual artist, blogger, and adult actor. His career in adult film started in 2004 at Sean Cody and has since expanded to include such studios as Cocksure Men, Randy Blue, Titan Men, Falcon, CockyBoys and Men.com. Keller has amassed a large fan base with both his films and his long-standing blog, The Big Shoe Diaries.

… Born October 18, 1980 in Michigan, Colby Keller was raised in Texas,where he graduated from the University of Houston, with a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. In addition he is a graduate of The Maryland Institute College of Art, with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Visual and Performing Arts.

He has two identities and (until recently) largely separate lives. One is as a university-trained artist (in several forms, but much of it one kind of performance art or another) and scholar of artists and art history; in this guise, he hangs out a lot with artists, and they pay him the favor of drawing him, painting him, and taking photographs of him. Here are two drawings, one by Sai Hendrij, one by Paul Rob Wright (cropped here so as not to have to go onto AZBlogX):

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His other identity is as a very public personality, the gay pornstar Colby Keller. Recently, his gay porn work has more and more taken on the character of a kind of performance art, and his performance art proper has increasingly incorporated deeply X-rated gay sex acts. In addition, he’s taken up male modeling, but not the usual sort of modeling celebrities in sports and porn go into because of their very attractive bodies; instead, he’s been modeling women’s clothes for the designer Vivienne Westwood (there will eventually be photos). I did say outrageous above.

But first, some more art, in particular the art book he’s displaying, along with his hard dick, in #5 on the AZBlogX posting: Paul Thek: Artist’s Artist, ed. by Harald Falckenberg & Peter Weibel, MIT Press 2009.

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From the publisher’s blurb on amazon.com:

Paul Thek occupied a place between high art and low art, between the epic and the everyday. During his brief life (1933-1988), he went against the grain of art world trends, humanizing the institutional spaces of art with the force of his humor, spirituality, and character. Twenty years after Thek’s death from AIDS, we can now recognize his influence on contemporary artists ranging from Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman to Matthew Barney, Mike Kelley, and Paul McCarthy, as well as Kai Althoff, Jonathan Meese, and Thomas Hirschhorn. This book brings together more than 300 of Thek’s works — many of which are published here for the first time — to offer the most comprehensive display of his work yet seen. The book, which accompanies an exhibition at ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art presenting Thek’s work in dialogue with contemporary art by young artists, includes painting, sculpture, drawing, and installation work, as well as photographs documenting the room-size environments into which Thek incorporated elements from art, literature, theater, and religion. These works chart Thek’s journey from legendary outsider to foundational figure in contemporary art. In their antiheroic diversity, Thek’s works embody the art revolution of the 1960s; indeed, Susan Sontag dedicated her classic Against Interpretation to him. Thek’s treatment of the body in such works as “Technological Reliquaries,” with their castings and replicas of human body parts, tissue, and bones, both evoke the aura of Christian relics and anticipate the work of Damien Hirst. The book, with more than 500 images (300 in color) and nineteen essays by art historians, curators, collectors, and artists, investigates Thek’s work on its own terms, and as a starting point for understanding the work of the many younger artists Thek has influenced.

(Unfortunately, the book is out of print, and the prices for used copies are sky-high.)

CK in earlier enties on AZBlogX:

4/1/13: Easter threesomes (link): one shot of CK displaying his body; two shots of CK, Conner Habib, and Girth Brooks in a threesome (from Laid Off)

5/7/13: Sex with Colby Keller (link): on Big Shoe Diaries; entries about CK getting fucked by John Magnum, fucking Zach Alexander; videos of In Bed with Colby Keller, giving sex advice

5/22/13: Dale Cooper (link): two shots of Cooper and CK, goofing around in the water and crossing swords/penises

4/6/15: Cumshots and cumfaces (link): shot of cumfaced CK (another thing he likes a lot)

And in “The protean Colby Keller” on this blog: mail art and the Fluxus movement; Keller’s self-description on his Twitter account (“Artist, Blogger, Porn Star, Video Sexpert for Manhunt.Net’s Get In Bed with Colby Keller, I SEE PENIS aficionado: I SEE PENIS refers to Keller’s enthusiasm for finding phallic images all over the place); publicity shot of CK; shot of CK getting his chest hair shaved; shot of CK displaying an art book (not the one on Thek); penis-hugging Paper Colby doll (made by Canadian comic book artist and writer J. Bone)

Now from a 1/25/16 interview by Tim Teeman in the Daily Beast:

From Porn Star to Fashion Star: Colby Keller on Vivienne Westwood, Sex for Money, and Fighting Gay Conservatism: As Colby Keller becomes Vivienne Westwood’s muse, he talks candidly about a tough coming out, attempted suicide, and how sex and porn liberated him.

In one shot for Vivienne Westwood’s new womenswear campaign, the gay porn star Colby Keller is in red thigh-high boots, a tiny pair of bikini briefs, and a tatty-looking — though probably very expensive — housecoat.

In another picture he is in a green mesh dress, and in another an off-the-shoulder, skin-tight frock, with a cutout over an impressive pectoral. In a third, he is wearing a blue T-shirt, blue briefs, and yellow ankle boots.

He poses full frontal, with modesty cleverly protected, in another Westwood shot, in a black evening coat and black boots; and another picture has him in a kind of white jumpsuit meets Regency dandy that recalls New Romanticism at its most gender-blurry.

The 35-year-old Keller — a 6-foot, 200-pound, handsome drink of water, with beard, big arms, hairy chest, and friendly smile — might not appear to be the first choice for a male model for womenswear: He is far from waif-like and androgynous.

He is — as his fans know him through his videos for distributors including Sean Cody, Randy Blue, CockyBoys, and others — rugged, bearded, and muscular.

The shoot was a break from Keller’s Colby Does America project, in which he aims to have sex [actually, he says “fuck”] on camera with someone in every state (he is up to 49).

The Westwood shoot was his first high-profile non-porn gig. When we met at The Daily Beast offices — he with his husband and publicist, the fabulously named Karl Marks — Keller said the fashion shoot may have derived from a picture of him in vintage Westwood trousers that his friend, the designer Bernhard Willhelm, sent to Andreas Kronthaler, Westwood’s husband.

The bits of life story that follow are thoughful, moving, sometimes harrowing. CK has some nice things to say about the mysteries of sexual chemistry, a matter of obvious concern to a man who makes one part of his living as a pornstar and who is engaged in digging up new partners in every state of the union.

Some shots from CK’s Westwood gig, starting with one that could have been a standard (male) underwear shot, except for those cute yellow boots:

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Then CK looking slutty in those big red boots and that tatty housedress (and those minimal bikini briefs):

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And finally, fetching in white and black:

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These are not even remotely drag performances, or even performances in an area where one sex might be seen as blending into the other, but instead are boldly gender-mixed performances, with strongly asserted masculinity combined comfortably with trappings of femininity.

Now to Colby Does America. First the title, a play on Debbie Does Dallas, but without the alliteration and entirely with guys. Digression on DDD: from Wikipedia:

Debbie Does Dallas is a 1978 pornographic film starring Bambi Woods. The plot of the film focuses on a team of cheerleaders attempting to earn enough money to send the titular character to Dallas, Texas, to try out for the famous “Texas Cowgirls” cheerleading squad. The fictional name “Texas Cowgirls” was seen as a take on the real-life Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Woods had previously tried out for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in real life, but was cut during auditions. The film was highly successful, selling 50,000 copies when it made it to videotape, making it the most successful video release of a porn film in its time. It is regarded as one of the most important releases during the so-called “Golden Age of Porn”, and remains one of the best-known pornographic films.

Contrary to the title, the film is not set in Dallas nor does the eponymous Debbie “do” anyone in or from Dallas.

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Back to CK and his cross-country fucking. Here’s CK in one of a number of come-ons:

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(Some political content here, in sympathy both with those begging for work and with sex workers.)

The Colby Does America site has all sorts of stuff, including an appeal for money and a Whorestore, where you can buy stuff of CK’s (at substantial prices) to support the project. The News section has updates on the progress of the project, And you can browse through the states and select the video for any state that’s been finished, where “finished” means that CK chose his partner(s) and the setting for their encounter, selected collaborators for the project, had the encounter videotaped, and got it edited it down (often supplying music, and sometimes accompanying text with commentary). The videos are wildly disparate in tone and content (and length, though none is very long) — each one is in fact an art porn project on its own — and they’ve been edited to highlight parts that appealed to CK, so if you were hoping to see CK fucking (in either role) in every state, you’ll be disappointed: sometimes the fuck scene didn’t make the cut.

Three states. First, Ohio. Brief clip (1:38) set in the woods, CK getting his cock sucked.

Then, California. An ambitious piece directed by Justin Jorgensen, ““Plywood Wilderness”, set in The Zone: A Private Playground for Men, a Los Angeles sex club. CK wanders through the plywood wilderness for sex. A few from a fairly long section in a cubicle with three glory holes, two on opposed walls, one on the floor. Cocks appear in all three, and CK takes them all, sucking the one on the floor and jacking the two others. Later a rose appears in one of the holes; CK studies it in awe, smells it, fingers his anal rosette, inviting someone to fuck him.

Commentary by the director:

“Like much of my work, themes of masculine presentation, environment design, and solitude, are all in this piece.

I’m interested in sex spaces, how we choose them and/or design them, and our behavior in those spaces.

LA is a massive metropolis, but the nature here remains a part of the city. Coyotes on the sidewalk, deer crossing Mulholland, vines draping off the freeway overpass.

I wanted to bring that nature into the sex club space, which is artificial and fabricated. Synthesized techno playing. No windows. It’s the indoor (legal) version of (illegal) cruising in a public park or “wilderness” area. The act of sex, and literally “being on the prowl” is a very natural, maybe our most natural, animal behavior. So I wanted to address that tension, maybe excitement, that happens when we flirt with being an animal in an urban space.

In this film, amid the plywood partitions and cinder block passages of the sex club the outdoors to creep in like a memory or subconscious longing, and the experience becomes surreal and dreamlike, which is exactly what going to a sex club can be like.“ – Justin

Digression on Jorgensen. JJ has an Instagram page here and his own webpage here. And here, from the amazon.com page for his first book (with a foreword by Todd Oldham), Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur Decor, Baby Tattoo Press 2004, paperback 2015:

From Publishers Weekly: Very post–”Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” this hilarious collection of photos drawn from Internet personal ads put the average Joe’s interior decorating under close scrutiny. What’s funniest about this slim and trim collection is that the men who originally placed the ads have been “grayed out”—reduced to solid silhouettes so as not to detract from the full effects of their decorating faux-pas (though likely Jorgensen’s initial impulse to obscure them had more to do with legal reasons). Those effects are heightened by arch captions from Jorgensen (justinspace.com), who writes of a gray figure sprawled out on a hideous plaid couch: “Who really cares if the couch clashes with the carpet? … It’s your place and it should make you happy.” Other highlights include a figure manacled to a bed made up with leather sheets. “And, you’d better condition the leather before you use them,” Jorgensen quips, “or your sweat will leave white sweat marks that will look like mildew.” The photos are smallish and low quality, in keeping with their Internet sources, with Jorgensen commenting (with a wealth of double-entendres) on each crime against good taste. Will this book make men rethink what’s around them when they’re posing for their photos? As Todd Oldham says in his foreword, “as evidenced in almost every photo, we have tragic spatial issues when it comes to hanging art and objects.” Or perhaps some people actually find fake wood paneling, bow-hunting equipment and overused leather armchairs irresistibly sexy.

About the Author: Justin Jorgensen, born in Fargo, North Dakota, moved to Los Angeles and began working as a designer. [BFA, 1997, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia] In 1999 he created the pop culture based, JustinSpace.com and the hysterical online feature “Obscene Interiors.” Now an Internet Provocateur, he has also designed music videos, created theme park attractions and sold candy at the circus.

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One sample:

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Back to Colby Does America and another state with a complex video, namely New York, which can be viewed here. This is a festival of cross-dressing, piles of gay sex (cocks in action every 4 or 5 seconds), outrageous costumes and props in intense hallucinogenic colors, and (performed by CK) masturbation as an art form. You have been warned.

The piece is a collaboration involving three parties: CK. the NYC avant-garde gay designer Brad Callahan under his label’s name BCALLA (the video served as an introduction to the BCALLA Fall/Winter 2015 collection), and the NYC gay porn studio CockyBoys (love the name), for which CK has acted a number of times; in addition to CK, the CockyBoys participants in the video are Levi Karter, Levi Michaels, Liam Riley, Ricky Roman, and Tayte Hanson.

Here’s a pair of stills from the video in which cocks are not, at the moment visible:

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The same actor (I think Ricky Roman, but I could be wrong) fucking a toy, on the left, and offering his ass for fucking, on the rght.

CockyBoys is not your run-of-the-mill gay porn studio. From Wikipedia:

CockyBoys is a New York City-based producer of gay internet pornography. Managed by CEO Jake Jaxson and his two partners, RJ Sebastian and Benny Morecock, the site has drawn attention from inside and outside the adult industry for blending arthouse erotica and experimental film with mainstream-style genre films. The 2012 reality television feature film Project GoGo Boy is considered the studio’s breakout hit.

Though CockyBoys primarily releases content through its website, the studio also manufactures a popular DVD line through EuroMedia Distribution. In addition to digital media, CockyBoys partnered with Bruno Gmünder in 2014 and published a book of erotic photography titled A Thing of Beauty, leading to an international book tour.

Footnote. I have seven CockyBoys DVDs, all released in 2010-12. With one exception, these are strictly episodic flicks, with four or five scenes, each with different actors, and with no unifying thread beyond some goal of gay desire — fucking / being fucked hard, mostly. The exception is 2011’s Name of the Game, CockyBoys’ first “narrative” DVD, with an overarching theme about three guys trying to make it in New York. It even has some “arty” editing. The rest of the set, interesting perhaps because of their names:

Revenge (2010), Ride Me (2010); Fuck the Pain Away (2011), Tough Love (2011); Break Him In (2012), Crazy for Cock (2012)

When The Name of the Game was released, the studio promised a sequel The Making of a GoGo Boy; it looks like this is what turned into Project GoGo Boy.