(Warning: Another underwear ad, with a sexual text.)

The main image from today’s Daily Jocks sale ad, with a parody text from me, set in Fire Island Pines:

In the Pines

My guy, my guy, don’t lie to me
Tell me me where did you screw last night

  (#1)

In the dunes, in the dunes
On the sand, under the moon
We would screw the whole night through

A take-off on an American folk song. From Wikipedia:

“In the Pines”, also known as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” and “Black Girl”, is a traditional American folk song which dates back to at least the 1870s, and is believed to be Southern Appalachian in origin. The identity of the song’s author is unknown, but it has been recorded by many artists in numerous genres. Traditionally, it is most often associated with the American folk and blues musician Lead Belly, who recorded several versions in the 1940s, as well as the American bluegrass musician Bill Monroe, who helped popularize the song (in a different variant, featuring lyrics about a train) among bluegrass and country audiences with his versions recorded in the 1940s and 1950s.

The song, performed by The Four Pennies, reached the UK top twenty in 1964. A live rendering by the American grunge band Nirvana, which reinterpreted Lead Belly’s version and was recorded during their MTV Unplugged performance in 1993, helped introduce the song to a new generation.

The crucial words from the Lead Belly version (parodied above):

My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night

In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don’t ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through

Hauntingly sad.

Three performances, from hundreds. The first: one of Lead Belly’s (briefly on Huddie Ledbetter, who performed as Lead Belly but is often referred to as Leadbelly, on this blog here), which you can listen to here.

The second, a twangy version by the Louvin Brothers, with Bill Monroe’s extra train-oriented verses, you can listen to here.

(On the Louvins, from Wikipedia:

The Louvin Brothers were an American musical duo composed of brothers Ira Lonnie Loudermilk (1924–1965) and Charlie Elzer Loudermilk (1927–2011), better known as Ira and Charlie Louvin. The brothers are cousins to John D. Loudermilk, a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member.

The brothers wrote and performed secular country music, as well as fire and brimstone Gospel music. Ira played virtuoso mandolin and generally sang lead vocal in the tenor range, while Charlie played rhythm guitar and offered supporting vocals in a lower pitch. They helped popularize the vocal technique of close harmony in country and country-rock.)

Finally, the Nirvana live performance, which you can watch here.

(On Nirvana, from Wikipedia:

Nirvana was an American rock band formed by singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1987. Nirvana went through a succession of drummers, the longest-lasting being Dave Grohl, who joined in 1990. Despite releasing only three full-length studio albums in their seven-year career, Nirvana has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and important alternative bands in history. Though the band dissolved in 1994 after the suicide of Cobain, their music maintains a popular following and continues to influence modern rock and roll culture.

Cobain used the Lead Belly lyrics.

Sex on the beach. A recurrent theme in gay porn, with a whole subgenre devoted to sex at Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove. On Gay Fire Island, from Wikipedia:

Fire Island Pines (often referred to as The Pines, simply Pines, or FIP) is a hamlet in the Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County, New York, United States. It is located on Fire Island, a barrier island on the southern side of Long Island.

Fire Island Pines along with the adjoining Cherry Grove, are the areas most strongly associated with the gay community on Fire Island.

Men in the Fire Island dunes, but during the day:

  (#2)

The trailblazing FIP film was Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand; on this and other Poole films, see my 9/25/15 posting “Boy in the sand”. More recently, there’s a whole series of Michael Lucas Fire Island Cruising videos. The cover of one:

  (#3)

Meanwhile, gay cartoons, like gay porn (and real-life gay encounters), are sometimes located on the beach, especially in the dunes. On this blog, from a 1/14/16 posting “Kike Sorroche, ilustrador homoerótico”, with

cartoons about the character Aday … [and] Aday’s adventures at the beach, mostly cruising in the dunes. Un chico entre las dunas is an allusion to Wakefield Poole’s landmark gay porn movie Boys in the Sand.

Sorroche may be Spanish, but he appreciates the dunes of Fire Island.

(About men’s bodies; some readers may want to exercise caution.)

The Michael Lucas (gay porn studio) Fourth of July sale for this year:

(#1)

They are covering their junk with the Stars and Stripes (and their hands): the flag as fig leaf, or modesty shield.

Covering your nakedness. The minimal protection for your genitals is what you already have available: your hands:

(#2)

Or you can hold some fabric — a washcloth, a towel, a sock, a shirt, whatever — over your junk as a modesty shield, as here (genderfuck performer Sinon Loresca):

(#3)

Or you can hold or suspend some object over your crotch. Like a football (rugby player in a Dieux du Stade calendar):

(#4)

Or a guitar (Peter Sellars in the nudist colony scene from A Shot in the Dark):

(#5)

Or a top hat (Neil Patrick Harris):

(#6)

For longer-lasting, hands-free concealment, you can use a garment designed to be minimal, but still junk-covering: a g-string, some kind of thong, a cock sock. or a jockstrap, all of which have been illustrated on this blog.

Now, if you’re going about in public naked except for some kind of modesty shield, then, yes, you’re concealing you naughty bits, but you’re also calling attention to them. There is a fine line between modesty and cock teases, and to me, #1 seems clearly over that line. Enjoyable (if you’re into men’s bodies), but not at all modest. Instead, it says: Independence Day is Dick Day!

A messier interpretation. Maybe the three guys in #1 are using the flag not to conceal their junk, but to mop up after ejaculation. Ick, the Stars and Stripes as a cum rag (aka cum-rag, cumrag, or come rag). For Desecration Day.

On this sense of cumrag, from Wiktionary:

A piece of fabric [this is a bit too specific, since cum rags include items of clothing and paper tissues as well as bits of fabric] used by a male to clean semen from himself after masturbation: Socks make great cumrags.

You can buy labeled cloths for this purpose:

(#7)

(Towels labeled jizz are also available for purchase.)

For more improvisatory guys:

(#8)

A chart ranking types of cum rags, from the thefrisky.com site (directed at women):

(#9)

Note that actual rags, in this sense from NOAD2,

noun rag: a piece of old cloth, especially one torn from a larger piece, used typically for cleaning things: he wiped his hands on an oily rag | a piece of rag.

don’t figure in the cum rag chart. That is, the compound cum rag is non-subsective: a cum rag is not, in general, a rag (though a rag can be pressed into service as a cum rag). Instead, the compound is resembloid: a cum rag is like a rag, in that it’s a piece of clothing, fabric, or paper tissue that looks like a rag and is used for a similar purpose.

As far as I can see, cum rag and its variants don’t appear in standard dictionaries, even the scholarly multi-volume slang dictionaries (GDoS and HDAS) and the OED, though all these big dictionaries have come / cum shot. Maybe I’ve just not searched carefully enough.

In any case, the compound, in the sense above, is in widespread vernacular use.

Then it turns out that there’s a second sense of cum rag, involving a semantic extension from a piece of material to a person serving a purpose like that of the piece of material: someone who enthusiastically mops up semen — that is, a cum whore / slut / fag. From Wiktionary:

A person who engages in sex frequently and receives semen inside or on them: John is a total cumrag when he wants to be.

This brings me to another t-shirt:

(#10)

The shirt in #8 has the label this shirt on it, referring to the shirt on which the label is printed. But the shirt in #10 has no demonstrative in its label, opening the way to (at least) two interpretations: one in which cum rag refers to the shirt on which it’s printed (roughly, ‘This is a cum rag’), one in which cum rag refers to the person wearing the shirt (roughly, ‘I am a cum rag’). The second understanding is almost surely the one most people are likely to get, since t-shirts identifying the wearer are not at all uncommon, even in matters of sexual preference and identity.

For instance, I posted on 2/27/15 about a line of Curbwear singlets and underwear bearing labels for gay male sexual preferences, among them:

POWER BOTTOM – POWER BTTM – BOTTOM – TOTAL TOP – TOP – VERSATILE – ACTIVE

And on the Usenet newsgroup soc.motss on 5/16/04, I told this t-short story (lightly edited):

Some years ago, with the collusion of an Ohio auto registrar, I obtained a Queer Card from the state of Ohio: I wore my QUEER QUEER QUEER t-shirt, and she got it into the frame, and then I had that for five years. About this time, a friend on soc.motss had Queer Cards printed up for us all, but *I* had a photo ID.

A piece of the shirt (made by the Don’t Panic company, but apparently no longer available from them):

(#11)

The two interpretations in #10 are familiar from another labeling context, namely the labels on medicine bottles. The ‘This is a cum rag’ interpretation is parallel to the understanding we give to Child-Proof on a medicine bottle (the bottle is child-proof); and the ‘I am a cum rag’ interpretation is parallel to the understanding we give to Adult Strength on a medicine bottle (the contents of the bottle are adult strength).

(The classic reference here: Jerrold M. Sadock, Read at your own risk: Syntactic and semantic horrors you can find in your medicine chest. Chicago Linguistic Society 10.599-607 (1974).)

Everybody’s got a Fourth of July sale going. Here’s the Daily Jocks entry, with my caption:

Twinkdependence Day

Put the package in stars,
Wrap the rump in stripes,
Fly it all on a pole.

I’m not sure why the display is so pallid, but that’s the way it came from DJ. Maybe the boys got bleached in the bright summer sun.

(Another underwear ad, with my caption. Steamy topic, but not, I think, over the line.)

(#1) The company darling

Eddie found the company’s
Dress code peculiar, but he
Loved wearing the silky blue
Hooded lounge robe and
Scanty briefs at his desk.

Daily Jocks ad from the 10th, featuring, in the new Edison line from N2N Bodywear, a lounge robe and brief. On the robe:

Sexy sleeveless robe w/belt. Super silky feel. Full hood. 92% Polyester 8% Spandex. Made only in Los Angeles. US$46.

N2N will help you dress for success.

DJ’s pitch for the company, which has been featured on this blog a number of times:

N2N Bodywear from Los Angeles has created sexy, unique and well fitting apparel for every kind of man. N2N provide a range of collections including underwear, sportswear, swimwear and their playful wrestling range.

The company is, um, adventurous in its offerings and unabashedly pitched to gay men.

For the Pride Month of June, the company altered its usual logo to a rainbow version:

(#2)

— which I’ve made more intense by exchanging the white background for black:

(#3)

Now there’s a butch logo.

(Men’s bodies, underwear, snarky captions, and some slang.)

A recent offer from Daily Jocks, SUP BRO t-shirts from the Australian company Supawear:

(#1)

That’s my shirt bro
It comes from A U
I’m Buster Brown
Look for me down there too

The Supawear firm likes to play on its name — as here, with the play on AmE slang ‘sup, bro?, short for whassup, bro?, a casual-speech variant (probably originally from black street speech) of what’s up, bro?, combining the informal idiomatic query what’s up? with the address term bro, which (like ‘sup?) has diffused from black street speech into much wider use among young men.

From GDoS:

what’s up? (also ‘sup? wassup? whassup? wha’s up? what up? whazzap? wuzzup? ‘zup?) 1 a general enquiry or greeting [first cite 1855] 2 what’s the matter? esp. in what’s up with you/her? etc. [first cite 1837] 3 what is happening? what’s going on? [first cite 1912]

what’s up, G? (also what up G?) (orig. US black) a greeting [1991 cite as campus slang; other cites from black sources] with [generic address term] G (derived from ‘Gangster’) ‘Whasup G?’

The main entry lists syntactic variants (what up?, with omitted auxiliary, alongside what’s up?) and phonological variants (what’s up?, wassup?, ‘sup?; variation between /a/ and /ʌ/ in the variants of what; variation between /s/ and /z/ in the reduced auxiliary) and possibly mere orthographic variation. The full range of facts about the variants and their contexts of use is extremely complex; a dictionary can’t be expected to go much beyond cataloguing the variants that occur in texts and mentioning a few of the social parameters that seem to be relevant.

Bro is complex as well. From a 4/28/16 posting:

The story of the address term bro in relatively recent years begins with its use by black men to black men, roughly (but not exactly) like the widely used American buddy — a term of male affiliation. It then spread into the wider culture, serving as a mark of male solidarity. This is what I called in a 4/12/16 posting “good”, positive, bro. But male solidarity tends to come with a dark side: rejection of anything perceived as feminine, played out as sturdy misogyny and homo-hatred in general; and the elevation of boys’ clubs (formed for whatever reasons) to boys-only clubs, aggressively hostile to women and to men perceived as inferior. When these guys use bro to address (or refer to) one another, then we’ve got what I called “bad”, negative, bro.

Regular use of bad bro between men in groups, for instance by fraternity boys and so-called brogrammers, has led to a steady pejoration of the term for people outside those male groups; bro is now a tainted term for many people, calling up unpleasant images of aggressive masculinity.

Bro has made its way to Australia, where it seems to fit in well with the macho strain in the culture. The Supaware ads play on it as a marker of male solidarity and combine that edgily with the homoerotic currents of premium men’s underwear advertising in general, and Supaware in particular: the advertising is offering underwear, swimwear, and gymwear, but it’s also offering the model’s bodies as objects of desire.

Here’s the model in #1 displaying his body in Supawear Rainforest briefs:

(#2)

In the Cairns
Rainforest,
Buster became a
Fruit bat.

A frontal offer, of a smoothly masculine body. Another frontal offer, from the European firm Code 22, this time a scruffily masculine body:

(#3)

El Caimán
Lays in wait for
Spanish boys in
La laguna azul.

On to the often outrageous Canadian firm PUMP! From a 9/2/15 posting about

[PUMP!’s] larger catalogue, which tends to feature underwear models “projecting steamy desirability” (as I put it in my Rafael Nadal posting) — in fact projecting a male-hustler persona while teasingly flaunting the pleasures of their bodies.

And on 11/9/15:

PUMP! specializes in gym-oriented images (pumping iron and all that), though they also have a few pretty-boy models and a lot of models doing the slutty rentboy look

Their models do front displays in bodywear that sets off their pouches strikingly, and several models specialize in rear displays — for example:

(#4)

(#5)

L’Ami en Rose, from his
Tattoo and the song, sometimes
Le Miracle de la Rose, from the
Rosebud of his body, à la Genet.

(Men’s underwear, bodies, and fetishes, so not to everyone’s tastes.)

The Daily Jocks ad from the 19th displayed this vision from Cellblock 13 / CellBlock 13 / Cell Block 13 (plus my caption):

(#1) Commando jockstrap and neoprene harness, in camo/red

Over years, bit by bit, Butch
Stripped his clothing down to the
Bare minimum.

DJ’s sexy suggestive copy:

These days, it’s not only gay men who take obsessive good care of their bodies. Straight men and women are also looking for clothes that show off their hard work in the gym and on the playing field – and maybe even signal their deep-seated desires.

Well, people harness up for a variety of reasons, including displaying their bodies (for commando and bulldog harnesses, highlighting the pecs) and enjoying the feeling of being constrained.

By the same company, but offered by International Jock rather than DJ, this remarkable garment:

(#2)

Lucian dreamt he was a
Sex kitten in his
Silky Covert Harness.

The ad copy:

The Covert Harness tank by Cellblock 13 is made of sporty mesh fabric and features a slick and stretchy black Liquid Skin material detail on the shoulder straps and back. Perfect for those times you wish you were in a harness but can’t be.

Note: my caption for #2 is a take-off on the long series of “I dreamed I Xed in my Maidemform Bra” ads from the 50s and 60s, like this one:

(#3)

(Men flaunting their junk, codpieces, prehistoric creatures, superheroes, language play, and more. Use your judgment.)

On the 21st, a posting on Cellblock / CellBlock / Cell Block 13 garments, featuring a young man in a commando harness (plus a jockstrap). Then in yesterday’s mail, a Daily Jocks ad with another remarkable CellBlock 13 costume (plus my caption):

(#1) X-Wing Harness and X-treme Hybrid Short, in red

Vic the Prick, cynosurus,
Caught every eye at the
Reptile Ball.

The clothing. The harness — with X-crossed straps in back — is designed to show off the wearer’s shoulders (in back) and to frame his pecs and abs (in front).

The hybrid shorts — a cross between (nylon/spandex) sport shorts (tightly hugging the wearer’s buttocks in back) and a jockstrap (thrusting his pouch out in front) — are in fact extreme homowear. From the Jockstrap Central description of the garment:

It’s the ultimate short with secret weapon both front and back. Made with a tough by luxuriously smooth skin-tight Nylon/Spandex fabric with lots of stretch. It’s a short with a length ending a few inches above the knee… Secret #1: There’s an opening in the crotch – it’s where the body hugging, cock gripping and detachable Jock Armour Cock Ring sits and attaches to the frame of the jock brief via a series of fasteners. An outer pouch snaps on over the works. Secret #2: There’s a fully functional zipper in the rear – when you’re open for business, simply unsnap the front or unzip the rear or both for full service. At the top is Cellblock 13’s signature one and half inch wide comfort waistband with sports striping and Cellblock 13 logo front and center. Includes two metal rings at the top of the waistband to attach the matching X-treme Hybrid Harness

When the front is snapped up and the back is zipped up, the garment looks like a pair of (skin-tight) cycling shorts / bike shorts, so a guy could in principle go out in them in public (while being always ready to step into private for sexual action in front or back) — well, he could if he was comfortable being out and abroad in a what amounts to a codpiece.

I’ll get back to codpieces in a moment. First, ad copy for the bodywear company, from Daily Jocks:

CellBlock13 is the raunchy big daddy to its founder Timoteo. Created with a unique style for the man that likes to get down and dirty in his underwear choices, you’ll love CellBlock13’s risqué and seductive designs.

Fantasy homowear for Vic.

Codpieces. On this blog, two notable postings (both with illustrations):

on 4/17/11, “Bulges”

on 11/17/15, “Alaskan cod-pieces”: The codpiece is cousin to the jockstrap, the thong, and pouch-enhancing underwear — all clothing focusing on a man’s package (and so related to the lack of underwear in the practice of freeballing, aka going commando, which encourages the development of visible packages: moose knuckles).

Add to this the celebration of Batman and Robin’s packages in the 1997 movie Batman & Robin:

(#2) George Clooney and Chris O’Donnell in B&R costume

Clooney and O’Donnell are both wonderfully amiable and sexy men (for an appreciation of O’Donnell, see this posting), but they’re wasted in this movie (as are others, in particular Uma Thurman, playing one of the menagerie of villains, Poison Ivy), which attempted to be kid-friendly by reverting to the over-the-top jokey style of the old Batman tv series.

The caption. My caption for #1 introduces the noun cynosurus, a portmanteau of two remarkable words, cynosure and cynosaurus — the first notable because of its etymology, the second notable because of the prehistoric creature to which it refers.

On the noun cynosure , from NOAD2:

a person or thing that is the center of attention or admiration: the Queen was the cynosure of all eyes. ORIGIN late 16th century: from French, or from Latin cynosura, from Greek kunosoura ‘dog’s tail’ (also ‘Ursa Minor’), from kuōn, kun– ‘dog’ + oura ‘tail.’ The term originally denoted the constellation Ursa Minor, or the star Polaris that it contains, long used as a guide by navigators.

(I suppose you could see Vic’s package in #1 as the embodiment of a dog’s tail or a little bear.)

As for Cynosaurus (‘dog lizard’), it’s is an extinct genus of mammal-like reptiles, known from fossils in South Africa. Some closely related creatures:

(#3)

(Pronunciation note: both cynosure and cynosaurus are pronounced with initial /s/ in English. It’s canine with a /k/, but cynic — yet another ‘dog’ word etymologically — with an /s/.)

(The underwear and men’s bodies thing again, plus gaydolls and some homoerotic art. Outrageous enough that it won’t be to everyone’s taste.)

Daily Jocks sale on the 8th offering the Barcode Berlin Thermo Brief in white (it also comes in black), with a caption of mine:

(#1) 83% Cotton 17% Polyester. US$25. Model not included.

Billy the Berlin
Barboy
Works the room in his
Barcode Berlin
Pouch-panel
Briefs.

Barcode Berlin. From DJ about the company, which is new to its offerings (ad copy reproduced here without editing; it’s almost surely written by a native speaker of German):

Barcode Berlin is one the world’s leading men’s sports- & fetish wear label.
Barcode Berlin has a distinct style and is authentic & sex-infused home base in Berlin. The clothes are a distinct pairing of comfort and sex-appeal. Guys that wear Barcode-Berlin love to show their sporty and masculine side but especially for those people who love to be able to live their fetish. Barcode-Berlin loves fetish and having a large fetish fan base

Slanting towards the fetish side is the bluntly named Bang Singlet (in black), displayed here front and rear:

(#2)

(#3)

New leather imitation material. Exclusively produced for Barcode-Berlin. Laboratory styles mixed with other special materials perfectly showcases Barcode´s unique and distinctive styles and color combination.

Innovative. Resistant and washable. High quality look. Material is soft, eslatic and matt-silky. With 2 pockets in the front.

Homowear singlets are designed to show as much as possible of the wearer’s body, front and back. Still, the designers managed to work two front pockets into the thing. Rubbers? A mini-cellphone?

Now a gaydoll break, and then a return to Barcode Berlin.

Billy dolls. Our Berlin Barboy is named Billy, after the iconic queer doll / action figure. From the Back2Stonewall site —

(#4)

“LGBT Flashback 1997 – The Billy Doll: The Worlds First Anatomically Correct Gay Doll” by Will Kohler on 5/16/12:

The “Billy Doll” created by artist John McKitterick and marketed in the United States by London-based Totem International was known as “the first out and proud gay doll” McKitterick who originally designed Billy as limited-edition run of 1,200 dolls created to benefit an AIDS charity decided to mass market his creation after the entire first lot sold out in a matter of days.

Billy was 13 inches tall and was introduced in a number of versions, many based upon stereotypical gay characters of the time.

Billy also came dressed in many outfits, including a standard business suit, but Billy was also available as Sailor Billy, Cowboy Billy, Master [aka Leather] Billy, San Francisco Billy [also Army Billy and Gay/Basic Billy, in black tanktop and jeans], and even once as Dolly Parton Drag Billy. Other dolls in the Billy line included Carlos, Billy’s Puerto Rican boyfriend, and Tyson, their African American friend. And best of all Billy was anatomically correct!

(As for anatomically correct, the whole package is there in detail, and it’s decidedly larger-than-life in all dimensions.)

On this blog, a 7/14/10 posting “Dolls and action figures”, with a section on Billy dolls (and Tyson and Carlos), each in a variety of personas, plus a photo of Army Tyson preparing to mount Leather Carlos.

An array of gay action dolls:

(#5) Gay/Basic Carlos, SF Tyson, Cowboy Billy, Sailor Billy, Leather/Master Billy, SF Billy, Army Carlos

And the action dolls in drag:

(#5) Billy and Carlos donned drag in 1999, with Billy dressed in a gingham checkered pantsuit as “Dolly” and Carlos as “Carmen” in a polka dot outfit reminiscent of those worn by Carmen Miranda: Gay/Basic Carlos, Carmen Carlos, Dolly Billy, Leather/Master Billy

Salem Beiruti. Enough of the gay 90s, back to Barcode Berlin, now with its studiedly outrageous Can You Host tank top, with a design by Madrid conceptual artist Salem Beiruti. Front and rear:

(#6)

(#7)

The shirt’s slogan has a sexual specialization of the verb host ‘to receive or entertain people as guests’: ‘to host for sex’. Usually, this conveys ‘to host for sex at one’s own place’ — an escort who advertises I host services clients at the escort’s place, one who advertises you host services clients at the client’s place. In combination with the extended fuck-finger and the placement of the image on the front of the shirt (the side of the body with the wearer’s penis) rather than the rear (the side of the body with the wearer’s buttocks), the slogan uses host to convey ‘to host for sex (in particular, anal sex) in one’s own body’, that is, ‘to bottom, to get fucked’.

The guy on the shirt in #6 and #7 is wearing a bright red t-shirt, and the model in the shirt is wearing a red jockstrap. Red presumably conveying sexual heat.

And then the model is clutching his dick, offering that rather than his ass — reinforcing the message that the wearer of the shirt is advertising himself as a top looking for a bottom.

Beiruti’s Behance page has a rich assortment of male art, in several media, some of it romantic, much of it rough-edged, some both. Two examples:

(#8) “Te Quiero”

(#9) “Brian Maier”

His coffee-table book Morphosis (Bruno Gmŭnder) came out earlier this year:

(#10) Cover of Morphosis

(#11) Three images from the book

He’s been working on a Lumbersexual calendar in Salem OR.

Aggressive days in the men’s underwear world, in my adaptation of a Daily Jocks ad from the 11th. There will be hot men in their underwear, suggestive captions, and a certain amount of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics; use your judgment.

OR

  (#1)

Well, now they often call him Bluto
But his real name is Dickie Steele

 (#2)

OR ELSE:

 (#3)

His balls are fuckin’ awesome
But nothing like his guy Genteel’s:

(#4)

Steele remembers Speedo,
A guy who don’t never take it slow:

 (#5)

Well, now, some may call on Joe:

 (#6)

And some may call on Moe:

 (#7)

But the twins can’t never beat Bluto
To put two lips together and blow.

……………………………………………………………………………………….

Ingredients. The main image is this DJ ad offer:

(#8)

This is the offer on the DJ site:

The DailyJocks Monthly Underwear Club is the best way to discover men’s underwear. Every month, we choose from a curated selection of underwear from international designer brands and send you a pair in your size and preferred style. It’s like a monthly surprise of the best underwear around.

It’s $21.95 a month after the come-on offer.

In (#1), the offer line has has been removed from #8, and the simple juxtaposition of clauses —

Join our underwear club
We’ll send you designer underwear every month

— (intended to convey a promise) has been turned into a (threatening) coordination with or:

Join our underwear club
Or we’ll send you designer underwear every month

After #1 comes a version of the I Want You Uncle Sam poster from World Wars I and II, an I Want You to Obey version from the Federal Trade Commission. And then in #3 a Popeye cartoon with Popeye’s nemesis Bluto pounding Popeye.

There follow four additional intense underwear images from the DJ offer site (#4 – #7). It’s all drenched in sex.

The text for all of this is adapted from the lyrics of the 1955 doo-wop hit “Speedoo” (in the original spelling) / “Speedo” (in most later references). The relevant lyrics:

Well, now, they often call me Speedo
But my real name is Mister Earl
… Well, now, some may call me Joe
Some may call me Moe
Just remember Speedo
He don’t never take it slow

You can listen to the original Cadillacs recording here.

[Digression: the lyrics of the original have been misunderstood in an enormous number of ways, including the one that I firmly believed in for years: “… they up and call me Speedo”, with the colloquial Up And VP construction. I still think that’s a more interesting line than “… they often call me Speedo”.]

From Wikipedia:

The Cadillacs were an American rock and roll and doo-wop group from Harlem, New York, active from 1953 to 1962. The group was noted for their 1955 hit “Speedoo”, written by Esther Navarro, which was instrumental in attracting white audiences to black rock and roll performers.

… Earl “Speedo” Carroll [the lead singer, whose nickname gave the title to the song] died on November 25, 2012.

Parataxis, hypotaxis, conditionals, promises, and threats. We start with Offer-Jux (above), a simple juxtaposition of two clauses, the first (join our underwear club) a subjectless BSE-form VP, the second (we’ll send you designer underwear every month) a full finite clause. Your task as reader or hearer is to construct a plausible connection between these two, to make this two-clause text coherent.

This is the general task for making sense out of text, but there are shortcuts that are conventionalized to one degree or another, and one of these is for pairs of the form above, which are more or less automatically understood as conveying a conditional:

Talk to me that way again, I’ll kiss you conveying ‘If you talk to me that way again, I’ll kiss you’

(which can be taken as a warning or threat, or as an offer or promise). In any case, a paratactic form conveying a relationship that would ordinarily be conveyed by hypotactic syntax.

In #8, the two clauses are juxtaposed on separate lines, without punctuation (as is customary in advertising copy), leading readers to take the first clause to be not merely a subjectless BSE-form VP, but in fact an imperative, so that #8 conveys both an instruction or injunction (to join the underwear club) and a conditional, that is:

Join our underwear club / We’ll send you designer underwear every month conveying ‘You should join our underwear club, and if you join, we’ll send you designer underwear every month’

Turn now to conditionals. In addition to a particular relationship between situations, conditionals can also convey either a warning or threat or an offer or promise. The same is true of coordination with and, as in

Talk to me that way again, and I’ll kiss you. (It all depends of how the addressee feels about the prospect of being kissed.)

Join our underwear club, and we’ll send you designer underwear every month.

The second of these would ordinarily be understood as an offer, on the plausible assumption that it’s directed at an audience that would welcome getting designer underwear every month; but if this assumption is wrong, then it sounds like a threat.

The corresponding coordinations with or usually convey a threat or warning

Join our underwear club, or we’ll send you designer underwear every month conveying ‘If you don’t join our underwear club, we’ll send you designer underwear every month (and I believe you wouldn’t like that)’

which is what I was playing with in #1.

(Note: my observations about the examples in this section are not original, but have been framed here so as to play down complexities in the technical literature.)

Another underwear ad, with a somewhat raunchy (but indirect) caption, with references to mansex, so not to everyone’s taste. This will lead us to Swiss comedians on ice skates, the Backstreet Boys, and much more.

(#1)

Flic and Flak
Share a moment of
Post-wallow bliss, after
Connecting in the
Backroom of a
Backstreet bar,
While seeking dirty
Backdoor action

Flic is the blond one, and he’s French (Fr. slang flic ‘cop’). Flak is a gunner’s mate in the U.S. Navy (flak ‘antiaircraft fire’). They both know how to handle guns. They become BBFs, best buddies forever, but also backdoor buddies forever — who first connected tricking in a backroom bar (a gay backroom bar, one with a secluded space for sex in situ). They’re backboys.

Earlier on this blog, on 10/19/15, a posting on Nasty Pig underwear, with notes about (sexual) piggishness.

Meanwhile, another couple of backboys, Flick and Flack, a railway switchman and a p.r. man (verb flick ‘turn something electrical on or off by means of a switch’; noun flack ‘a publicity agent’). Desire makes for some odd couplings.

/flɪk/ and /flæk/ (Flic and Flak, Flick and Flack) is a play on /frɪk/ and /fræk/, Frick and Frack, with several senses for this expression. Three in this Wikipedia article:

(#2) Swiss clowns flying on skates

Frick and Frack [F&F-1] were two Swiss skaters who came to the United States in 1937 and joined the original Ice Follies show as comedy ice skaters. “Frick” was Werner Groebli (April 21, 1915 – April 14, 2008), born in Basel. “Frack” was Hansruedi (Hans Rudolf) Mauch, (May 2, 1919 – June 4, 1979), also born in Basel. Frick and Frack were known for skating in Alpine Lederhosen and performing eccentric tricks on ice, including the “cantilever spread-eagle”, created by Groebli, and Mauch’s “rubber legs”, twisting and bending his legs while skating in a spread eagle position. Only a few skaters have successfully performed the duo’s routines since.

Michael Mauch, the son of Hans, once described the origin of their names: “Frick took his name from a small village in Switzerland; Frack is a Swiss-German word for a frock coat, which my father used to wear in the early days of their skating act. They put the words together as a typical Swiss joke.”

… “Frick and Frack” has become an English slang term used in two ways. One is [F&F-2] to refer to two people so closely associated as to be indistinguishable; the other way is [F&F-3] as a term of derision for any two people, on par with calling one person a “Bozo” or three people “Stooges”. Comic radio [auto] mechanics Tom and Ray Magliozzi performed for years under the name Click and Clack [another play on Frick and Frack].

F&F-2 takes us to the boy band the Backstreet Boys. From a BSB fan site:

If you have been a Backstreet Boys fan from the beginning, you know that nothing rivaled the friendship Nick Carter [Frick] and Brian Littrell [Frack] had.

Tons of photos of Nick and Brian as total bros, hangin’ out, goofin’ off, and so on. Just one from this trove:

(#3) F&F-4: the blond bro, Nick, is Flick

On to F&F-5, another backboy couple: Frick the art collector and Frack the petroleum geologist; like I said, desire makes for some odd pairings. (Frick from the Frick Collection, the art museum in NYC, Frack from fracking, hydraulic fracturing.)

Then there’s /flɪp/ and /flæp/. Two further surprising backboy couplings. First Flip the comedian and Flap the political agitator (the adj flip: glib; flippant and a bow to the comedian and actor Flip Wilson; and the noun flap ‘informal a state of agitation; a panic’) — two sharp verbal types. And then Fripp the guitarist and Frappe the barista (a bow to guitarist Robert Fripp, plus the noun frappe ‘(chiefly in New England) a milk shake, especially one made with ice cream) — Fripp supplies the music, Frappe the food.

They plow into hot sex together, then in the warm after-glow of a satisfying coupling (see #1), they exchange names and thumbnail life histories, like what they hear, and become regular sex buddies, even boyfriends.

And finally, /flɪt/ and /flæt/ (filling out the third point of articulation for voiceless stops — first /k/, then /p/, now /t/). Just one backboy couple this time, a fabulous pair: Flit the flamboyantly faggy exterminator (who takes his name from the insecticide Flit and defiantly displays himself as a flit — noun flit ‘(slang mainly US) a male homosexual’) and his dancer lover Flatt (who takes his name from the gay dancer and choreographer Ernie Flatt, but isn’t at all flat, is in fact inordinately proud of the huge bulge in his dance belt). On Ernie Flatt, from a brief death notice in the NYT on 6/17/95:

Ernest O. Flatt, a dancer, choreographer and director who won four Emmy Awards for his work in television, died on Saturday during heart surgery. He was 76.

Mr. Flatt made his television debut as the choreographer for “Your Hit Parade” in the 1950’s. He was best known to television audiences for “The Ernie Flatt Dancers,” who were regulars on “The Carol Burnett Show.”

… He is survived by his companion, Bill Arms of Palm Springs, Calif., and two sisters

As sometimes happens, though both Flit and Flatt are enthusiastic sexpigs, their preferred roles are perhaps not what you would have expected: Flit’s a top, Flatt’s a bottom (“flat on my back for my guy”, he jokes).

Out of the backroom, into the bedroom.

Underwear ads again (from today’s Daily Jocks sale), with captions from me. Men’s bodies, mansex allusions, not for everyone.

(#1) Sweat with me, baby

Solid Chet the gym jock
Sweats hard
Lick the salt he’ll
Towel you off

(#2) Lowriders on the storm

Lean Bo the surf jock
Goes low pull him
Lower use your
Teeth those trunks are
Made for cruising

Sweaty Chet and lowball Bo.

Note on body types. Both men are fit and muscular (almost alarmingly so), but in two different body types, alluded to in the captions: Chet is solidly hunky, Bo lean and chiseled.

DJ’s ad copy. For Chet’s shorts:

Marcuse has come out with a new line of shorts. These shorts are sexy, soft and extremely comfortable. Made with fine towel fabric, they are ideal for home, gym, beach or lounging in.

The pitch here is comfortable softness and absorbency. Wicks up that sweat like anything.

For Bo’s swim trunks:

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

This time the pitch is sexy display. This is a Marcuse theme. Here’s the Marcuse Hermoso [Sp. ‘beautiful’, as in hombres hermosos ‘beautiful men’] Swim Brief, also minimal:

(#3)

And the even more minimal Marcuse MA-Xtreme Xtreme, in pink:

(#4)

The copy says this one

stays low on the waistline that helps you to flaunt your sexy body. The design and the drawstring and the sexy pouch are the other features that completes the underwear.

It’s all about lowrise / low-rise / lowrider / lowriding / low-riding swim trunks (and in other contexts, briefs, jeans, and, in fact, women’s panties).

Chet’s caption. “Sweat with me, baby” — an allusion to “Dance with me, baby”, a song lyric that has been set to music many times, and vies with “Do you want to dance?” as an invitation to dance in pop music.

Two landmarks for “Do you want to dance?”: Bobby Freeman’s 1958 song (covered a great many times), which you can listen to here; and a line from Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want” (1971), which you can listen to here:

Do you want – do you want – do you want
To dance with me baby
Do you want to take a chance
On maybe finding some sweet romance with me baby
Well, come on

Strictly on the wording “Dance with me, baby”, there are tons of choices. Among them, Paice Ashton Lord’s 1976 song, which you can listen to here; and more recently a song on a hot video that’s billed as being by Cazwell, but seems to be Kazaky’s “In the Middle” from 2011, with the line “Dance with me, baby” in it; it might be that the video is part Cazwell, part Kazaky. (Cazwell — posted about here several times before this — is openly gay and flamboyant, and Kazaky was openly gender-fluid.) The male dancers in the video are studly and athletic. You can watch it here. One smoldering screen shot:

(#5)

On Kazaky, from Wikipedia:

Kazaky was a Ukrainian-based synthpop dance boyband from Ukraine, made up of Kyryll Fedorenko, Artur Gaspar and Artemiy Lazarev. Assembled in Kiev in 2010 by former original member Zhezhel, a skilled choreographer, the group has released two albums and several singles so far. In 2016 the group announced they were disbanding

On to Bo’s caption, “Lowriders on the Storm”, a phrasal overlap portmanteau, lowriders (referring to low-rise clothing) + Riders on the Storm (the song by The Doors); note the crashing surf in #2.

First, on lowriders. The noun is ambiguous, between a reference to the clothing style and a reference to a vehicle style. On the latter, from Wikipedia:

(#6)

A lowrider (sometimes low rider) is a class or style of customized vehicle. Distinct from a regular lowered vehicle, these customized vehicles are generally individually painted with intricate, colorful designs, ridden on 13-inch wire-spoke wheels with whitewall tires, and fitted with hydraulic systems that allow the vehicle to be raised or lowered at the owner’s command. Given these specific characteristics, while a lowrider is not always a lowered car, a lowered car is always a lowrider. The term is used to describe a class of vehicle, not simply the height from ground to chassis.

It began in Los Angeles California in the mid-to-late 1940s and during the post-war prosperity of the 1950s. Initially, some Mexican-American barrio youths lowered blocks, cut spring coils, z’ed the frames and dropped spindles. The aim of the lowriders is to cruise as slowly as possible, “Low and Slow” being their motto. By redesigning these cars in ways that go against their intended purposes and in painting their cars so that they reflect and hold meanings from Mexican culture, lowriders create cultural and political statements that go against the more prevalent Anglo culture. The design of the cars encouraged a “bi-focal perspective-they are made to be watched but only after adjustments have been made to provide ironic and playful commentary on prevailing standard of automobile design.” However, this resulted in a backlash: The enactment of Section 24008 of the California Vehicle Code in January 1, 1958, which made it illegal to operate any car modified so that any part was lower than the bottoms of its wheel rims.

The term lowrider can also refer to the driver of the car.

For both the clothing and the vehicles, the question is:

How low can you go?

And this is a formulaic expression worth notice in its own right, a catchphrase whose history is by no means clear, though it appears that its use in the song “Born to Hand Jive” in the 1978 movie of Grease was a vehicle for its spread.

Next, “Those trunks were made for cruising” in Bo’s caption. This is a play on the title

“These Boots Are Made for Walking”

as sung by Nancy Sinatra in 1966.

Finally, the second half of “Lowriders on the Storm’; from Wikipedia:

“Riders on the Storm” is a song by American psychedelic rock band The Doors. It was released as the second single from their sixth studio album, L.A. Woman (1971), in June 1971.

… “Riders on the Storm” is a psychedelic rock song that according to band member Robby Krieger was inspired by the song “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend”.

You can listen to the song here. A significant couplet:

Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone

Bo is no doubt a dog, but he certainly has a bone, and though he’s alone in the photo in #2, I doubt that his time by the beach will be solitary.

(Men and their underwear, plus suggestive mansexiness, so not for everybody.)

Today’s Daily Jocks sale ad for Marco Marco (in this case, the company’s Light Tetra Brief), with a caption of mine wrapped around it:

Tetras maricones,
Showy fish,
Flash their stuff at
Sandbars.

(#1)

Marco
Maricone
Tiled his crotch in
Triangle pastels,
Not only a
Shield, also an
Enticement.

Yes, a cheap play on the Spanish offensive slang maricón ‘faggot’ (pl. maricones). Combined with the name Tetra of the line of Marco Marco briefs: the Light Tetra in #1, the Dark Tetra below:

(#2)

(same model, different hand positions, and #2 doesn’t show the fabulous hair).

DJ ad copy:

MARCO MARCO SALE!

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

The Tetra name might be meant to suggest the Greek numerical prefix tetra– ‘four’, though the tiling on the briefs is 3-sided rather than 4-sided.

Or the computer tiling game Tetris (though again there’s the 4-sided problem):

(#3)

Tetris (Russian: Те́трис) is a tile-matching puzzle video game, originally designed and programmed by Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra– (all of the game’s pieces contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov’s favorite sport. (Wikipedia link)

Or the showy tropical fish, the tetras:

(#4) Neon tetras in a school

A tetra is one of several species of small freshwater fish from Africa, Central America, and South America belonging to the biological family Characidae and to its former subfamilies Alestidae (the “African tetras”) and Lebiasinidae. The Characidae are distinguished from other fish by the presence of a small adipose fin between the dorsal and caudal fins. Many of these, such as the neon tetra (Paracheirodon innesi), are brightly colored and easy to keep in captivity. Consequently, they are extremely popular for home aquaria.

Tetra is no longer a taxonomic, phylogenetic term. It is short for Tetragonopterus, a genus name formerly applied to many of these fish, which is Greek for “square-finned” (literally, four-sided-wing). (Wikipedia link)

Tetras the fish gave me an opening to allude to the slang fish in the sense ‘an effeminate male homosexual’ (GDoS), esp. a young one. (And to play on the bar of sandbar and gay bar.)

My invented Spanish surname Maricone inadvertently echoes the Italian surname Morricone, as in the film composer Ennio Morricone:

(#5)

Ennio Morricone (born 10 November 1928) is an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and former trumpet player. He composes a wide range of music styles, making him one of the most versatile, experimental and influential composers of all time, working in any medium. Since 1946 Morricone has composed over 500 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. (Wikipedia link)

You can listen to the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme here. No particular linguistic or underwear relevance, however.

(The Daily Jocks ad (for PUMP!) from 9/19, with a caption from me, plus some fantasy. About the gay world and mansex, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

(#1) Doorman of the underworld

Gymangelic Portalo guards a
Subterranean landscape of
Man with man, a secret, dark,
Sweaty country overseen by
Angel Eagle

Pay Portalo with a kiss to
Enter, explore,
Embrace, explode, to be
Embraced, entered,
Occupied.

Angel Eagle. The wingèd angel-man, queer archangel (see my 9/30 posting on the archangel Michael):

(#2)

Angel Eagle is the patron saint of the places of secret gay sex: t-rooms, glory holes, cruising turf, video arcades, gay bathhouses, saunas at gay gyms, backrooms of gay bars.

Three scenes in the shadows.

(#3) The approach of the muscle boys (photos by Steve Back)

(#4) In the orgy room 1

(#5) In the orgy room 2

(#4 and #5 are screen shots from the, um, moving gay porn video Metro Disco Orgy on xhamster.)

(About English, but in the context of a gay porn flick, with plain-language discussions of men’s bodies and mansex, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Two items of linguistic interest that came up in preparing a posting (soon to appear) on pizza boys as cultural figures, especially in gay porn, the great work of the genre being William Higgins’s 1986 The Pizza Boy: He Delivers. From scene 5 of the movie, the sexual slang canyon yodeling ‘anilingus’ and an occurrence of underwear as a plural count N.

The capsule description of scene 5: Steve Henson and Troy Ramsey take turns rimming and fucking each other. (The movie in general is “sexually democratic”, as I say in my posting about it: sucking, rimming, fucking, everybody enjoys both roles in the act.) In action (anuses and genitals cropped for modesty):

(#1) A focused Henson, about to tongue Ramsey

(#2) Henson enjoying Ramsey’s tongue (both are smiling)

Henson suggests canyon yodeling, approaches Ramsey in #1, rims him in this position, and asks him to sit on his face. Henson still has his underwear on in #1, but soon Ramsey will rip Henson’s underwear off to get access to his cock and ass. Henson protests, “I hope you realize — those are new underwear”, but he rapidly sacrifices the underwear for the sake of Ramsey’s enthusiastic rim job (in #2).

Sexual slang canyon yodeling ‘anilingus’. From GDoS:

v. yodel in the canyon (of love): 2 (also grin in the canyon (of love), yodel, yodel from the highest tower, yodel down/in/up the valley) to perform cunnilingus [first cites: three examples from Tijuana Bibles 1997 (c.1935 and c.1938)

n. canyon: 1 the vagina. [in yodel in the canyon, plus later cites in 1970 and 1980]  2 the anus. [one cite, from 1995, not in a gay male context]

In Pizza Boy, we see the metaphorical extension from ‘cunnilingus’ (sexual stimulation of the female genitals by tongue and lips) to gay male ‘anilingus’ (sexual stimulation of the anus by tongue and lips) — another instance of “the male anus viewed as a sexual organ”, as in my 7/26/13 posting. More generally, this is exporting vocabulary used for women to use for gay men.

PL C underwear ‘underpants‘. Steve Henson’s protest:

(1) … those are new underwear

shows plural subject-verb agreement (VAgr), with are rather than is, and plural anaphoric agreement (AnaphorAgr), with those rather than that. With the predicative noun underwear, the standard alternative would be:

(1′) … that is / that’s new underwear

And with other predicative nouns referentially similar to underwear, but formally plural, the alternatives would be

(1″) … those are new underpants / undershorts / underclothes / undies / briefs / boxers / skivvies

Pizza Boy was shot in 1985. More recently, these underwear are — with plural demonstrative agreement (DemAgr), in these underwear rather than this underwear, and plural VAgr, are rather than is — has widely appeared in underwear ads. It was reported with astonishment by Wilson Gray on ADS-L on 7/6/16, citing:

These Fruit of the Loom breathable underwear are perfect!

but it’s appeared with considerable frequency in material published over at least the past ten years, and it’s used for both women’s and men’s underwear. One example of each:

These Underwear Are Designed to Enhance Your Camel Toe [publicity for women’s panties] (link)

Oh God These Underwear Are Orgasmic [posting about Calvin Klein men’s micro modal trunks] (link)

And in a billboard ad for the anti-diarrheal product Imodium, but with men’s underwear front and center:

(#3) Don’t soil those expensive briefs!

I interpret these as involving what I’ll call PLunderwear: PL C(ount) underwear, but with an unmarked-PL item underwear (roughly similar to PL C sheep, as in these sheep are), indeed a PL-only item (with no corresponding SG — *one underwear but one sheep — so, closely similar to PL-only items like police — these police are, *this police is), rather than the standard SG M(ass) underwear (this/much underwear is).

An alternative analysis (floated by Larry Horn on ADS-L in a response to Wilson Gray’s posting) would take underwear in (1) and the like to be a COLL(ective) N — a subtype of C Ns — with (partially) notional syntax, syntactically functioning sometimes as singular, sometimes as plural, like the COLL N family: My family is/are ridiculous. But though notional syntax allows for plural VAgr, it doesn’t allow for plural DemAgr (this family, *these family — contrast these underwear above) or most other syntactic concomitants of plurality, so I reject the notional-plural proposal in favor of the PLunderwear analysis. More on this below.

I turn now to the conceptual underpinning for what I’ve just written. Before this, one more reference to scene 5 from Pizza Boy. My forthcoming posting on the porn flick features Steve Henson, but offers only brief mention of Troy Ramsey. I’d hoped to unite the two themes of this posting, canyon yodeling and underwear syntax, with an image of Troy Ramsey in his underwear, but I came up, um, short, and can only offer a shot of him out of his underwear, which seems to have been his characteristic state during his gay porn career:

(#4) Gratuitous male nudity in service of sexual slang and syntax

C/M, SG/PL, COLL/UNIT. There’s a Page on this blog on postings about C/M and related matters. An important posting is one I did on Language Log on 12/8/06, “Plural, mass, collective”. The first crucial point is that the categories in question — C/M, SG/PL (for C Ns), and COLL(ective) / UNIT(ary) (for C Ns; labeled +COLL/-COLL in that earlier posting) — are grammatical categories, manifested in morphosyntax, not semantic categories, though there are important systematic associations between the grammatical categories and semantics.

Note 1. Some PL Ns bear no mark of the PL category; some of these (police, for instance) are PL-only, but some (sheep, for instance) are zero-PLs, with the PL form identical to the SG.

Note 2. Some otherwise SG COLL Ns (like family) can have (partially) notional syntax, functioning either as SG for VAgr and AnaphorAgr with it/they or as PL (the whole family is/are coming for Thanksgiving; it/they will probably be in disarray) – but not for other syntactic purposes, particularly not for DemAgr (demonstrative determiner agreement) – this/that family, *these/those family – and only marginally for AnaphorAgr with demonstrative pronouns – this/that is my family, ?these/those are my family [pointing to a group of people].

PLunderwear doesn’t have the syntax of notionally plural COLL Ns: it does have plural VAgr and allow plural AnaphorAgr with the personal pronoun they, but it also shows plural DemAgr with the demonstrative determiners these/those and (as in (1)), plural AnaphorAgr with the demonstrative pronouns these/those.

Note 3. In their determiner selection, COLL Ns are neither PL C (many shrubs, *many family, two shrubs, *two family) nor SG M (much shrubbery, *much family), but resolutely SG C (one shrub, one family).

PLunderwear behaves like a PL C noun: non-standard how many underwear, only two (of the) underwear, etc.

Note 4, with complexities. The assignment of C/M is subject to variation for particular Ns; there are systematic conversions of C to M and vice versa; and the availability of notional syntax for COLL Ns varies from dialect to dialect (BrE is well-known for its notional plural syntax, in particular plural VAgr, for COLL Ns referring to groups of people: The committee are enthusiastic about the proposal, etc.)

Now back to work on pizza boys as cultural figures…

(Underwear guys, inspired by the Daily Jocks ad in #2 below. Sexy text, trips to the gay baths, so probaby not for kids or the sexually modest.)

(#1)

The doorman of the underworld:
Portalo, the Blue Knight —

Gymangelic Portalo guards a
Subterranean landscape of
Man with man, a secret, dark,
Sweaty country overseen by
Angel Eagle

(#2)

The doorman of the underwear:
Rufus, the Red Knight.
Inflaming desire,
Drawing you in

(#3)

The attendant of the dark baths:
Nero, the Knight in Black
Satin, painted with the
Stain of Satan, over
Seer of orgy

Nero’s paint:

(#4)

And two cinematic denizens of the underworld:

(#5) Laurence Olivier and John Gavin in Spartacus (1960)

(#6) Bathhouse couple from Mixed Kebab (Belgium, 2012)

Notes:

The image in #1 and the main text there are re-plays from my October 3rd posting “Doorman of the underworld”. An image of Angel Eagle is there too. Plus images of men doing deliciously dirty things to one another in the dim light of the gay baths

The title “Knights in Black Satin” in #3 is a play on the Moody Blues song title, “Nights in White Satin”, which you can listen to here.

The obvious place to go next is the Pink Knight, but that will have to wait for another time.

(The title tells the story. There will be some plain talk about men’s bodies and mansex, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

For this year: a Daily Jocks Xmas ad with a somewhat disheveled St. Nick in Santa cap and red mini-brief (available for $20 off the regular price!); and a TitanMen Xmas sale offering pornstar David Anthony (amiably smiling well-muscled big-dicked daddy-top) wearing absolutely nothing at all (so he’s #1 in an accompanying AZBlogX posting “More Xmas porn”).

From last year: the TitanMen sale, offering “12 Gage of Xmas”, 12 days of Joe Gage porn scenes (a ponderously phallic poster, so also in the AZBlogX posting, #2); and a Twitter Xmas card from Dallas Steele (@DallasSteeleXXX) and his boyfriend Taylor Bishop (@boySteele), doing the Daddy-Boy thing in scraps of red and green (and gold and white) and big smiles.

The DJ Sale. The ad:

(#1) For the month from St. Nicholas’s Day (Dec. 6th) through Epiphany (Jan. 6th), Santoro wears nothing but his Santa cap and his cute little red brief

All praise to Santoro, quirky elf!

David Anthony bares all for you at Xmas. Over on AZBlogX, where I note that Anthony comes with none of the trappings of the season, in the TitanMen ad — or anywhere else, as far as I can tell. He just is.

Among earlier postings on Anthony (who’s something of a favorite of mine):

on 3/31/13, “Threesomes and more”: with a short writeup on the pornstar, with photos of him in sexaction, showing him to be muscled, handsome, older, given to smiling, and blessed with a big dick that suits the rest of his body well. His persona is of an amiable top, a good Daddy.

on 4/26/13, “Anthony, Saint, Stallone”: with a section on Hung: The Best of David Anthony

Anthony doing a friendly cock tease:

(#2) Beat me, Daddy, with your fleshy hose!

12 days of Joe Gage. Last year’s TitanMen offering, cropped here (full image on AZBlogX):

(#3) 12 Gage of Xmas playing on 12 Days of Xmas; incorporating 12 Gage as a play on 12-gauge from 12-gauge shotgun, with its phallic imagery; and maybe folding in days for gays, since each of its 12 scenes is of gay sex

From Manhunt Daily on the product and its marketing:

Joe Gage is one of porn’s most well-known directors. When you see his name in the credits, you know the men are going to be treating each other like sex piggies at an ass trough. TitanMen is using the holiday season to celebrate Joe’s career by re-releasing 12 of his class scenes that HE handpicked and remastered! I’ve included all 12 teasers below. They will release one a day over the next 12 days. Hate the holidays? This will get you through em’. This is honestly what I want for Christmas. Fuck gloves, give porn.

(Whoa! Fuck gloves are for fisting, aren’t they? Oh, V + object N, not N + N compound. Never mind.)

Dallas and Taylor do what they can to make ass-fucking cute. Their Titanic greeting card from last year:

(#4) Boy and Daddy

Steele’s red and green cap and loincloth are especially remarkable — Daddy’s demanding dominance sweetened by his silly costume, and that salt-and-pepper smile.

Bishop has a cute nose, boy-smooth body, and most important of all, an absolutely adorable ass:

(#5) Fuck me, Daddy, I love you

(Apparently a selfie, but a very nicely composed one. The open door asa central feature is a nice touch.)

(Riff on the Daily Jocks ad of 12/29/17. Men in their underwear. Doing stuff. Free verse. You have been warned.)

(#1)

El Bruto
Wants you to
Pump! up your
Underwear, you’ll
Do what El Bruto
Wants, else he’ll
Crush your
Puny self
Between his
Muscular thighs ’n
Leave you a
Spent husk

Spent, exhausted, spent, used up, spent, wasted away:

(#2) The Wages of Dissolution

Driven to a wreck by El Bruto. So many boys ruined. Sad story.

(#2 is a collage of mine, with the boys’ wee dicks fuzzed out. There are more in the series.)

(#3) The Lost Boys

(Men’s bodies, underwear, and some mansex — offstage but undeniably hard-core. So not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Well, homowear — harnesses, jockstraps, armbands, suspenders, pouches, even socks. Queer fetishwear that glows in the dark, in four neon colors (blue, green, yellow, red) and rainbow, either in solid or flashing mode, for “guys who are ready to light up the night!”.

(#1) We gonna rock down to Electric Underwear / And then we’ll take it harder

Posing steamily in shoulder harnesses, armbands, jock pouches and straps, all in LED glowwear from the raunchily named Breedwell company.

The jockstraps come with either plain black or glow pouches (with a highlighting dick strip) and either plain black or glow straps — allowing the wearer to neon-advertise his cock or his ass or both, according to what he wants to put on public offer.

(And #1 with its play on Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” — on which, see this 8/18/17 posting.)

(#2) Rainbow bulldog harness, jockstrap with glow pouch

You man enough to take this?

(#3) Red shoulder harness, plain jock pouch, red glow straps

Breed my butt, baby!

(#4) Rainbow armband in a close-up

On the right: give it to me. On the left: take it from me. Both sides: let’s contend.

From the Daily Jocks  company this week, with care instructions (which kind of take the edge off the hard-on vibes of the ads):

Featured in this weeks Brand Spotlight is the controversially named but hottest new addition to DailyJocks.com, Breedwell.

The NYC based brand came onto the scene in late 2016 and has since amassed a cult following of guys who are ready to light up the night!

Boasting 30k followers on Instagram and an ever-growing product range, Breedwell is a brand that won’t be left in the dark.

Leading their product range is the flagship Glow Collection, the only LED harnesses & underwear on the market right now. Available in a range of block colours to a hot rainbow range, it takes only 2 hours to recharge your harness/underwear to full capacity, which means 12 hours of glow in solid mode or 26 hours of glow in the flashing mode.

Breedwell products are no regular underwear which means you will have to care for your LED collection differently to your regular underwear to ensure you’re always shining the brightest.

To clean your LED products, apply a colour-safe fabric detergent with a wet cloth (we strongly recommend that you only use a wet cloth which has been wrung out well). The Glow collection should never be fully submerged in water or soaked through as this may damage the battery. Gently apply the detergent to the harness strap in an up/down motion until this has been thoroughly cleaned to your liking.

All Glow products are sweat-proof, adjustable and USB rechargeable. They have both solid and flashing modes of glow.

And from the 8/4/17 Underwear News Briefs blog: “Brighten your fetishwar – interview with Breedwell Gear”:

Fetishwear is a growing market in men’s underwear/gear. I think we are going to see this across sexual orientation lines and go full on mainstream. Personally, I think we are on that verge. It’s not odd to see a harness or jock anymore. Plus, I think more guys want to get in touch with their kink side they may have hidden.

I discovered Breedwell on Instagram. They are a fetish brand that mixes in LED technology to their gear. Which is super cool to me. It’s taking gear to the next technological level. I just thought they were amazingly cool. I reached out to the owner Mike and got to find out more about Breedwell Gear and why he made it! I hope you guys take the time to check out the gear and have fun with it!

[Interviewer] For our readers who aren’t familiar can you quickly tell about your brand?

Breedwell is a clubwear and lifestyle brand that is focused on combining LED technology into sexy fetish fashions we create products that are best worn out when hitting the town at night. We have in development a T-shirt line that will have edgy graphics that will be sure to get attention when wearing to a bar or club.

The line of graphic tees is now out: Breeding World Tour, My Name Is Whore [on a nametag], Filthy and Fabulous, Filth Slut, Sleeze Pup. All very much in-your-face.

We love taking traditional fetish silhouettes, applying our patented light system and fetish gear that glows. What separates Breedwell from all the other fetish brands on the market is that when you walk into a club or bar wearing our product people immediately see you and recognize the confidence needed to light the night. Our gear is designed to be durable and still be functional and fun. As the owner, I wanted to create LED fetish gear that didn’t just look good but also felt substantial and had a chunkier construction. I wanted to make sure that everything we make with LED, could be USB rechargeable and cleanable.

On the name of the company, from my 4/26/11 posting “Argument structure in porn”, about shoot / cream / cum / breed / seed s.o.’s ass:

… on two vernacular verb uses related to shoot s.o.’s ass on the INTO reading: seed s.o.’s ass and (heteronormativity alert!) breed s.o.’s ass, both confined, so far as I know, to descriptions of barebacking male-male anal intercourse.

… another transitive use of seed, this time with a direct object referring to a man, but conveying seeding his ass in the sense above [I’m gonna seed you]

… Similar uses for barebacking transitive breed. [Breed me, baby!] ]

The name of the firm (like so many of its garments) can be read as insertive or receptive: with agentive active breed (as in He breeds his boyfriend’s ass / his boyfriend well / with gusto); or with midde-voice breed (as in Joey breeds well ‘Joey is satisfying / easy to breed, Joey is a great fuck’).

Latest ad from the Daily Jocks folks, for the newest line of Helsinki Athletica underwear, with the ad copy:

(#1) ilves ‘lynx’ at top, front view; peura ‘reindeer’ at bottom, rear view

Helsinki Athletica: Ilves & Peura: Limited edition of Helsinki Athletica underwear featuring Finnish native animals. The low rise design is great for everyday wear with the soft, stretchy cotton fabric ensuring all day comfort and you can be sure of excellent support in the dual layered pouch.

A whimsical turn for a company mostly noted for its homo-steamy Lukas line of briefs, jockstraps, and trunks:

(#2) Helsinki Athletica, offering sportswear, underwear, socks, swimwear

Also in the new animals line:

(#3) karhu ‘bear’ in a brief

(#4) susi ‘wolf’ in a brief

Reindeer and lynx — and wolves and bears. To echo Dorothy. the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow in the 1939 Wizard of Oz (you can watch the scene here), oh my!

As for Lukas shorts, three earlier postings on this blog:

on 10/11/15, in “The Exotic of the North Country”, with ad copy: “Helsinki Athletica, anatomically designed sports underwear for every active man”

on 3/11/16, in “Boxer in shorts”: Lukas shorts by Helsinki Athletica

on 11/13/16, in “Lukas is back!”: more Lukas shorts

(Men’s bodies and sexual desire, decidedly racy but not explicit. Use your judgment.)

The latest from Daily Jocks, with an offer of the 2018 Pump! calendar:

(#1)

Male photography by Rick Day for the Pump! firm, projecting carnal desire and carnal desirability in equal measure. The model — I think of him as Cal, for Calendar Boy — is presented displaying his muscular body (upper arms, pecs, abs) in a pitsntits come-on pose, wearing a Pump! Cooldown Boxer in Red (the color of hot sex, in blatant pouchwear), and with a High Desire face (slit eyes, slack open mouth, and what you can imagine are flaring nostrils). The inset of Mr. Feb. gives you the butt shot to match the pouch display, offering both foci of gay male desire..

The point of the ad photos is to offer something for everyone: you can identify with the model or desire him, want to be him or do him. The ad copy that accompanies the photos usually emphasizes comfort and support, sometimes style, but always intangible masculine values. A regular Pump! ad (as usual, headless, to put the focus on the crotch):

(#2)

The ad copy:

Stay up late with the PUMP! Free-Fit Boxer. This full micromesh body boxer offers total comfort, while its sleek design aesthetic exudes masculinity, athleticism, and sophistication. A new take on the everyday classic, this boxer brief stands out with its statement white contrasting lines and statement waistband. Get active and own the night with the PUMP! Free-Fit Boxer.

This is the second 2018 calendar on offer from DJ. The first was their very own production, described in my 12/6/17 posting “gruggerware”: 12 months of the Melbourne Chargers Rugby Union LGBT Football Club.