(The title pretty much tells the story. This is a spin-off from a posting yesterday, and it doesn’t have much to do with language. On the other hand, there are no blunt descriptions of man-man sex or anything like that. Just the jockstraps.)

Yesterday’s posting “Go H+A+R+D” had a section on the Strap Jock pictured in #1 there and its differences from the classic jockstrap. That led me back into the astounding world of jockstraps and the men who love them — a huge and varied world of websites (like The Underwear Expert), companies that design jocks, companies that sell them, and blogging by fans. With tons and tons of photos.

Background. Your basic jock is a piece of athletic gear for men, worn under athletic clothing and designed to support and to some degree protect a man’s genitals during sports or other active endeavors (bicycling, working out, etc.).  It has three components: an elastic waistband, a support pouch for the genitals in front, and two straps (one for each leg) that attach to the waistband at one end and to the base of the pouch at the other. Some pouches are designed so that the wearer can insert a protective cup in them. The classic jock is white or off-white in color, but sporting goods stores usually carry models in other “masculine” colors — black or various shades of gray.

The classic jock highlights the genitals in front (cradled in the pouch) and the buttocks in the back (framed by the straps and open to the world), so it’s ripe for sexualization (it highlights the two foci of gay male sexual desire), all the more so because of its high-masculinity associations — with men’s sports, locker rooms, and the male sweat the pouch absorbs. Gay men have fetishized even the most conventional of jocks.

The degree of sexualization is muted somewhat in two hybrid garments: the jock brief,  brief in front and jock in back; and the support brief (aka sports brief), resembling a jock in front but a brief in back (where it has a back panel).

But then we move to fashion jockstraps, displaying a sense of style through color (pretty much any color you can think of, including eye-popping neon colors), fabric or material (pouches of leather, lace, crocheted mesh, see-through material, whatever), and modifications in design, often in extraordinary ways. From The Underwear Expert site on 8/9/13, “Where to Shop: The Top Ten Fashion Jockstrap Brands” by Christopher Hernandez, with a remarkable image for each of the ten brands

Baskit, C-IN2, Go Softwear, Good Devil, Gregg Homme, Jack Adams, Modus Vivendi, N2N, Nasty Pig, Pump

These brands are all gay-oriented, and their wares tilt rapidly from displays of style into clearly sexual displays: sexwear that would probably not work in the locker room (unless it’s a really really gay locker room), but would fly in a setting where you want to advertise your dick or your ass (or both) quite directly, while still preserving the emotional appeals of a jockstrap: trolling for sex in a gay bathhouse, at a gay sex party, or with a partner in private.

Riding the Rainbow. Background music: Elvis Presley singing “Riding the Rainbow”, from the 1962 movie Kid Galahad, which you can watch on YouTube here.

Now that we’re had the jockstrap tour, let’s ride the rainbow. There’s a “Rainbow postings” Page on this blog, with three Pages under it, including a “Rainhow underwear” Page, with two postings on it with rainbow jockstraps. It turns out that there are two ways to ride the rainbow in your underwear: subtly, with a rainbow waistband; and boldly, with a rainbow body. You might not get grief sporting a rainbow waistband in a typical locker room, but a rainbow body amounts to a declaration of identity that might not fly in such a locker room; a fair number of straight guys are uncomfortable (ok, unreasonably, but still uncomfortable) about hanging out naked or nearly so with an openly gay guy.

In any case, the first of these postings, from 8/6/10, has a number of guys in underwear, including a jockstrap, that has a rainbow waistband but is otherwise not highly sexualized.

The second posting, from 8/21/10, is on rainbow jockstraps specifically, most with rainbow waistbands, but then there’s this number, from Activeman (or ActiveMan), with a rainbow pouch:

(#1)

This Rainbow Pride jock has a narrow white waistband and white straps; narrow-band jocks are known as swimmer’s jocks or swimmer jocks; the narrow band allows the jock to be worn under a swimsuit without showing. The rainbow stripes are vertical.

Now, the fruits of yesterday’s jockstrap searches. First, another Activeman Rainbow Pride jock, with a black waistband and straps:

(#2)

This is a larger image, in which you can see the fabric of the pouch (from the Activeman site: 96% poly / 4% Spandex for extra support and shrink resistance). It looks comfortable.

The Rainbow Pride jock is available in all four combinations of color and waistband width (broad and narrow).

Activeman has been around for quite some time. From its site:

The Activeman Designer Jocks. The #1 Choice for Athletes and Today’s Active Man. Quality jocks made in the USA since 1898

The firm is obviously gay-supportive.

Next, another firm with an interesting history, Joe Snyder, and its entry is the Joe Snyder Rainbow:

(#3)

This is a scoop jock. with an opening at the top of the pouch, a thin white waistband and straps, and horizontal stripes. (Lots of firms make scoop jocks, but this is the only one I’ve found in rainbow.) On the opening, from the Joe Snyder website:

The Joe Snyder Jockstrap provides traditional jockstrap support, but with a twist. The opening on top allows for a sneak peak at what’s below.

Probably more significantly, the wearer can fish his dick out easily, to piss or for sex.

(The pouch looks to me to be on the small side, so this jock might not be for everyone.)

On the history, from the site Topdrawers: The Men’s Underwear Experts Since 1992!:

In 1958, Mr. Jesús Vargas Abín established in México ‘De Vargas’, a store where he sold men’s clothing, underwear and accessories. In 1977 Mr. José Vargas Snyder started working with his father.

I’d guess that José Vargas Snyder is gay, because the firm’s underwear is now way gay, and its jockstraps in particular are mostly sexwear, many of them quite extraordinary.

Next up: the Jor (or JOR) company, with this rainbow model, another horizontally striped (conventionally attached) pouch, in white with a medium-width waistband:

(#4)

On the company, something of a rave from The Underwear Expert

Founded in 2000 by Javier Ortega, former creative director of Gigo underwear, Jor Underwear fights for no specific demographic, but instead makes underwear for people around the world. The brand, based in Medellin, Colombia, is made for those who enjoy the vibrancy of the Latin spirit, and now they can enjoy it in the form of a long lasting and durable pair of skivvies.

Jor Underwear comes in the styles of briefs, boxer briefs, boxer shorts, jock straps, as well as other undergarments like tank tops, board shorts and t-shirts. Created with fabric such as microfibers, nylon/lycra and supplex combinations, Jor underwear strives to provide its wearers with complete comfortability.

Ortega’s goal is to create a garment that allows men to feel 100% sexy and safe at the same time and to be able to freely express his sexuality and show of all of his hard work on his body. “As today’s man is very active from dawn till dusk, you will feel just as confident wearing Jor to the office, the gym, or out on the town,” Ortega said.

Jor underwear is made with 100% Latin spirit, and all of the brand’s collections focus on comfort in fit, high quality construction, top of line fabrics as well as an incredible style. The brand’s designs can feature striking patterns and designs essential to Latin heritage while also offering simpler styling of underwear with solid, bold colors.

Whether you go for a eye-catching design or pattern in your underwear or a bright red mesh look, Jor Underwear can provide you with the right product.

Jor makes some really handsome, and not especially extravagant, underwear and swimwear.

On to Diesel, a big operation that offers stylish but not extravagant underwear, including a horizontally striped rainbow jock (gray waistband and straps) in very bright colors, with the rainbow broken up by bands of white:

(#5)

(The same pattern is available in a boxer.)

Diesel has an on-line store that sells not only underwear and swimwear, but also jeans, other clothes, shoes, wallets, jewelry, watches, and more. And it has bricks-and-mortar stores in Big Gay Cities, mostly in California: L.A., Santa Monica, San Diego, NYC, and S.F.

Finally, NDS Wear. No, I don’t know what the initials stand for. A lot of their underwear and jockstraps is extravagant sexwear, and much of it is gay-themed. Here are two odd rainbow-pouch  jocks, not representing the gay flag, but using the colors of the flag in patterns: snake-skin scales and a  geometric pattern:

(#6)

(#7)

(Yes, the very same image in every detail. Only the pouch varies.)

From the website (not edited):

We are one of the premier designer label brands of men’s apparel.

We have a wonderful selection of Men’s underwear and mens swimwear including thongs for men or jockstraps, buy your sexy mens costumes and much more by NDS WEAR

(including sheer underwear and jockstraps, giving the wearer an entirely visible dick.)

The company is based in Phoenix AZ, but I don’t know anything else beyond what’s above.

An offer from Daily Jocks yesterday, with an image that will be #4 below, from Obviously Apparel, advertising their new Lumber collection. Manly underwear for lumberjacks (and the men who love them). Especially for well-endowed lumberjacks (and the men who love their endowments). Four images of a single model, worked into a story.

But first, a word from Monty Python. You can view the video here.

The sadness of the new morning

(#1)

Already he misses Simon,
Even though the man’s
Smell is still on his body
And in his mouth.

The dick of death

(#2)

He takes his coffee outside, to
Ponder the day, thoughtlessly strokes his
Pouch (Patrick jokes about
Il Monstro, but Simon, that shameless
Size queen, worships him).

The impalement

(#3)

First task of the day, taking WOL out for
His morning hunt, to plummet
Down
On small
Woodland creatures.

The felling

(#4)

Then to hard work, wielding his
Axe on the trash trees that
Spring up everywhere. His body glistens with
Sweat, his smell mingling with the
Fading scent of Simon’s furry
Chest and the sweet taste of Simon’s cock.

Patrick doggedly chops away.

…..

The company’s statement:

Obviously Apparel is an Australian designed and world renowned premium men’s underwear and undershirts brand. Our online store offers the ultimate in comfortable underwear and undershirts coupled with sophisticated design.

Obviously Apparel can be found in stores across Australia, the US, Canada, Russia, UK, Japan, France, India, and we are constantly expanding our global network of partners. Obviously Apparel puts an emphasis on what we believe is the most important aspect of clothing – comfort.

Our meticulously engineered anatomical pouch design is what places our brand at the forefront of the underwear market. In order to provide you with the ultimate in superior quality of underwear we have chosen to use nothing but the finest natural fabrics – Bamboo Rayon and Licensed Lenzing Modal. These fabrics allow us to create underwear that is perfect to convey the feeling of softness, durability and support. Our fabrics have significant health benefits over regular cotton and synthetic underwear fabrics, they are highly UV resistant, non Genetically Modified (GM), sustainable and environmentally friendly.

In their advertising, all premium men’s underwear companies play on the homoeroticism of their products, and Obviously is no exception: the photos above dwell lovingly on the model’s body, even at the cost of not showing much of his clothes (except in #2, where the long boxer briefs, with their prominent pouch, are the centerpiece). In #1, in fact, the model is wearing underwear with the new AnatoMAX design, with a truly huge pouch, but you can’t tell that from the picture, which focuses on the model’s handsome face, his well-developed biceps, and his nice (but not extraordinary) abs. (Unusually, the model is not tanned. But par for the course, his body is smooth, except for very light fur on his forearms; whatever their natural state, underwear models are usually presented as smooth, often the result of shaving. Me, I would have liked some fur on his chest.)

(I haven’t been able to discover the model’s name or anything about him as a person. Underwear companies rarely identify their models, though there are a few notable exceptions.)

That said, Obviously’s advertising and its products are remarkably restrained, showing none of the extravagant (and often entertaining) fagginess that many companies display. (Examples in many of my earlier underwear postings, including a fair number that had to go on AZBlogX because they were too explicit.) They really do focus on comfort, in the design of the garments and in the fabrics they use, which wick moisture away from your privates.

On design: this review on the Underwear Expert site:

Well endowed men who love all the styles Obviously has to offer will be happy with their newest pouch design! The Obviously AnatoMAX Pouch aims to maximize comfort by providing extra room where you need it most.

The AnatoMAX is the largest pouch ever produced by Obviously! It will provide extra comfort, room and size for men who need it. … This collection is available in four colors: graphite, gray, white and black. These colors are perfect for everyday wear as well as the nightlife. [That is, in or out of your other clothes] If you’re someone who tends to love specific styles in underwear, you won’t be left without options. The Basics Collection is available in eight styles: 9 inch boxer brief, 3 inch boxer brief, jockstrap, thong, bikini brief, brief, hipster brief, and hipster trunk.

Eight styles and four pouch sizes; the new AnatoMAX is one step above the previous top size, AnatoFREE.

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.

(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.

(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).

(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):

(#1)

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

The company’s ad copy:

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

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

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):

(#2)

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:

(#3)

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:

(#4)

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.

(#5)

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.

(#7)

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:

(#1_

(#2)

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:

(#3)

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”):

(#4)

And the LoverBoy special:

(#5)

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:

(#6)

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

(#7)

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:

(#1)

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

(#2)

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:

(#3)

(#4)

Two recent items passed on to me by Mike McKinley: one a photograph of young male dancers at the barre, the other a video compilation of dancer Joseph Gatti in an assortment of his roles. The photograph, found on a Facebook page (where it wasn’t identified in any way: where? when? who are they? who was the photographer?):

(#1)

The Gatti compilation can be viewed here; it has some remarkable stuff.

#1 has three dancers, all young, lean, and muscular, all wearing nothing but their dance belts. The first two are at rest at the barre. The third, with his remarkable buttocks, is, also remarkably, standing en pointe at the barre. It’s a wonderful photograph, of dancers, of male bodies, of faces, of people at work; I might have asked the photographer to shade down the background behind the first two dancers, to make their heads stand out more clearly, but, on the other hand, leaving the shot this way underscores its unposed character.

I appealed to Google Images to find the source, and the program found a huge number of examples of this image: dozens and dozens on various Pinterest pages, large numbers on tumblr pages, but not a single one with any information at all. (One of the Pinterest people thought it was an old-time photo, I don’t know why.)

Now Gatti is young (30), very much a dancer of our times, and easy to find information about. Well, he tweets., so I know something about his career, his gigs, the fortunes of his favorite sports teams, his enthusiasms for some surprising dancers (like Michael Jackson), his friendships, and the excellence of his girlfriend. He sounds like a nice man, and he’s cute:

(#2)

Another compilation, put together from his performances in various competitions and remixed, can be viewed here.

From an Orlando (FL) Sentinel story from a year ago, “After 13 years, Joseph Gatti returns to Orlando Ballet”:

After nearly 13 years, Joseph Gatti is coming home.

From 2001-2003 the dancer was an apprentice with Orlando Ballet, under then-director Fernando Bujones. Just 17 when he departed — he’s now 30.

“It’s the right decision,” Gatti said about returning to live in Central Florida. He’ll perform with Orlando Ballet as principal guest artist during the 2015-16 season and work as an instructor at the school.

“I’ve been through a few companies now, big and medium,” said Gatti, who was a principal dancer with Cincinnati Ballet from 2007-2008, then a principal dancer with Corella Ballet in Spain and most recently a first soloist with Boston Ballet.

“I just don’t feel the need to sacrifice love and happiness for the name of a bigger company,” said Gatti, citing the stress found in big-name troupes. “I’ll be really happy here and loving my career, dancing until the last day I can dance.”

For the past few years, Gatti and his dance partner [not his girlfriend], Adiarys Almeida Santana, have performed freelance gigs with companies worldwide.

(#3)

Gatti in flight in mid-air. And here’s Gatti and Bradley Schlagheck flying together in Polyphonia (choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon to music by György Ligeti), photo by Gene Schiavone, at The Boston Opera House in February 2012:

(#4)

Bonus. In looking for the source of #1, I found lots of other neat stuff, including the amazing young dancer Jorge Barani, trained in Cuba, who can be seen in action here.

Today is Lunar New Year — and tomorrow is the religious holiday Shrove Tuesday, widely known in the U.S. (not just in New Orleans) as Mardi Gras ‘fat Tuesday’ (for the consumption of rich and fatty foods, before Ash Wednesday inaugurates Lent, a period of fasting and prayer) and a number of other names (more below). The name Mardi Gras has now been fixed on by a number of charitable organzations as the basis for the punning name Mardi Bras or Mardi Bras and Boxers (using the name of the women’s undergarment, the bra), money-raising events of many kinds held on Mardi Gras. Here’s an announcement for one in McKinney TX:

(#1)

Some other names for Shrove Tuesday: Pancake Day / Tuesday, Fastnacht Day (in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, where there are several alternative spellings), Fasching, and Carnival.

Though Shrove Tuesday is originally a Roman Catholic occasion, it also figures in the calendars of other Christian churches, notably the Lutheran and the Anglican churches. But you don’t have to be religiously observant, or even a Christian, to participate in and enjoy the food customs and the carnivals (lower-case C) of the day.

Mardi Gras beads seem to feature generally in Mardi Bras (and Boxers) events, some of which are charity balls framed as Mardi Gras celebrations. All have some connection to bras, often by way of fanciful bras fashioned for display, taking advantage of the fact that bras (and men’s boxer shorts, especially if they have briefs on underneath) are acceptable as indoor, if racy, wear in some contexts (and women can wear boxer shorts too). Like this rainbow number:

(#2)

And for men, here are boxers with Mardi Gras masks and beads on them:

(#3)

(The usual warning: not for kids or the sexually modest)

Two recent ads from Daily Jocks, both with double entendres (for Teamm8, in the header for the ad; for C-IN2, in the body of the ad), which I have of course expanded on in my captions.

Come Down Under

(#1)

Sex in shorts

They exhorted him to
Come Down Under, so he
Came in his shorts, right there in
Public, and it felt fan-bloody-
Fuckin’-tastic, but it was
Damn messy, and he got a lot of
Dirty looks.

(#2)

Hard time

Nasty boys, committed to
Underwear Jail, where you
Fought hard in the yard, no hands on
Dicks allowed, until one of you
Came – White always came
Rabbit-quick, so aroused by Black’s
Body, the smell of his
Sweat, knowing that Black would soon
Fuck him delirious.

C-IN2’s Underwear Jail, showing new inmates — fish — being initiated into the ways of the institution. (This is genuinely from C-IN2. The company’s website is a riot of sexiness. And jokiness.)

(#3)

Ad copy for #1:

Teamm8 2016 has been released with hot new swimwear and shorts now available. Featuring Teamm8’s innovative print technology, new colour combinations and designs to make you look good.

And for #2:

C-IN2 Men’s H+A+R+D Lowest Punt Trunk: Bold C-IN2 logo repeating around waistband and leg-straps contoured pouch with center seam and functional fly [in black, white, and grey]