Today’s Zippy, in which Dingburgers exhibit an incapacity for conveying (very specific) meanings by facial expressions and gestures:

Note the absurd specificity of some of these meanings: ‘I’m available for weddings and bar mitzvahs’ and ‘Let’s shampoo my poodle’.

Digression on the names (Bill Griffith chooses his names carefully). Mulva calls to mind an episode of the tv sitcom Seinfeld:

“The Junior Mint” is the 60th episode of the American sitcom Seinfeld. It was the 20th episode of the fourth season. It aired on March 18, 1993.

Having neglected to ask the name of the woman he is dating (played by Susan Walters), Jerry tries to solve the mystery. Given the clue that her name rhymes with a part of the female anatomy, Jerry and George come up with possible candidates: Aretha (for urethra), Celeste (for breast), and Bovary (for ovary). The payoff to the joke comes at the end of the episode when she presses him to say her name. Jerry guesses Mulva (for vulva), causing her to storm out of Jerry’s apartment. As she is leaving, Jerry incorrectly guesses another name, Gipple (for nipple) and Loleola (for areola). Then, in a flash of insight, Jerry runs to the window and yells “Dolores!” (for clitoris). (link)

(Yes, the standard pronunciation of clitoris has primary accent on the first syllable, not the second, so it doesn’t actually rhyme with Dolores.)

The unusual name Wyandanch surely comes from the name of a hamlet in the town of Babylon, on Long Island NY:

This hamlet is named after Chief Wyandanch, a leader of the Montaukett Native American tribe during the 17th century. (link)

Sedgewick has a number of possible sources, and might have been chosen just for its sound.

Back to facial expressions in Dingburg and elsewhere. I’ve posted once before on the topic, here, where their inscrutability was the point.

In earlier Zippy strips: from 5/21/06, again with absurdly specific meanings (plus a guest appearance by Borden’s Elsie the Cow):

and from 2/3/11, with Dingburger disagreement about the meanings of facial expressions and gestures (and air-vacuuming — similar to air guitar — as a bonus):

From today’s Miami Herald, a story on the wages of disrespect:

A woman facing a drug possession charge was sentenced to 30 days in jail for flipping the bird to a Miami-Dade judge.

Penelope Soto, 18, appeared in court on video after her arrest for possession of Xanax. In front of Circuit Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat on Monday, she was asked about her assets.

Soto appeared as if the hearing was a big joke and laughed off the judge’s questions, blurted out “Adios” and then gave him the finger.

The judge, feeling disrespected, demanded she return to the podium and then sentenced her to 30 days in jail for contempt of court.

Judges do have that power.

Another chapter in the annals of phallicity, now on the gestural front.

The very brief history from Wikipedia:

In Western culture, the finger (as in giving someone the finger or the bird), also known as the finger wave, the middle finger, flipping someone off, flipping the bird or the one finger salute is an obscene hand gesture, often meaning the phrases “fuck off” or “fuck you”. It is performed by showing the back of a closed fist that has only the middle finger extended upwards, though in some locales the thumb is also extended. Extending the finger is considered a universal symbol of contempt. Many cultures use similar gestures to display their disrespect

The gesture dates back to Ancient Greece and was also used in Ancient Rome. Historically, it represented the phallus. In some modern cultures, it has gained increasing acceptance as a sign of disrespect, and has been used by music artists, athletes, and politicians. Many still view the gesture as obscene.

… Linguist Jesse Sheidlower traces the gesture’s development in the United States to the 1890s. According to anthropologist Desmond Morris, the gesture probably came to the United States via Italian immigrants. The first documented appearance of the finger in the United States was in 1886 when Old Hoss Radbourn, a baseball pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters, was photographed giving it to a member of the rival New York Giants.

One variant:

The gesture is the rough equivalent of the verbal insults fuck you or up yours or up your ass — all non-literal, not entailing sexual connection, and in fact canonically used by a man to a man, to demean the recipient of the insults and the gesture by treating him (metaphorically) as if he were being fucked by a man (that is, functioning like a woman). (Some time ago the insults and the gesture all came to be used without regard to the sex of the persons involved, though man-on-man is still clearly the most frequent use.)

There is a question, which seems to come up every so often in legal contexts, as to whether the gesture is merely offensive / insulting or whether it is actually obscene, which which bring down legal sanctions on the fingerer.

The very leading edge of a long and complex legal story involving the finger (from the NYT on January 4th, “Middle Finger Flashed in ’06 Lives On in Suit”, by Benjamin Weiser):

There is usually no mistaking the act or intent of extending a middle finger.

Take John Swartz, for example. In May 2006, Mr. Swartz was a passenger in a car in a rural part of upstate New York when he spotted a police car that was using a radar speed-tracking device.

Mr. Swartz, a Vietnam veteran and retired airline pilot, acted on instinct to show his displeasure: he extended his right arm outside the passenger’s side window, and then further extended his middle finger over the car’s roof.

The reaction was swift. The officer followed the car; words were exchanged; backups were called; and Mr. Swartz was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct.

He later filed a civil rights lawsuit, and although a lower court judge dismissed the case, the prestigious United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan reversed that decision on Thursday, ruling that Mr. Swartz’s lawsuit can go forward.

(The officer maintained he thought Swartz was calling for help, a — preposterous — position that has seriously muddied the legal waters.)

In any case, I would seriously recommend not giving the finger to a judge.

… in today’s Zits:

This is a topic that Scott and Borgman (somewhat wearisomely) just can’t leave alone. I do like the economical communication of Jeremy’s nonplussed state of mind, though.

Over on AZBlogX, I’ve been punching out a series of postings on gay porn, postings I hope to do more with now that the, ahem, raw material has been assembled. Here are pointers to three of these items.

5/3/13: “Global porn”. Gay porn in the US has moved over the decades from using (mostly) working-class American boys to taking advantage of men from all over the world. Now we get celebrations of men like these (shown here from the pecs on up):

They are Brendan Austen (Australian), François Sagat (French), Max Schutler (Argentinean), Huessein (Turkish German). (Plus mentions of Rick Gonzales, Rafael Alencar, Joey Milano, and Justin Christopher.)

5/3/13: “The view from behind”. Taking off from a GameLink ad for gay porn celebrating men’s butts. To consider: why many women find men’s butts so moving (why gay men do so is not much of a mystery). Photos of Pedro Andreas, Ashley Ryder, and Marco Blaze (and mention of many others).

5/4/13: “What do I look like when I’m getting fucked?”, About facial expressions during sex: the Man At Work, the Ecstatic, the Loving Buddy. Featured actors: Alexander Garrett / Hugo Alexander, Christopher Daniels, Connor Patricks, Dale Cooper, Danny Palick, Jake Steel, Shawn Wolfe, Tommy Defendi, Johnny Parker, Tyler Alexander, Warrick Cade.

To come: more on porn compilations, along the lines of the David Anthony retrospective. About Dean Flynn, Marco Blaze, and Damien Crosse. All favorites, and incidentally all scruffalicious; scruffy is the thing these days.

Noticed in the NYT Magazine on Sunday, an ad for the “NYT Global Forum: Thomas L. Friedman’s The Next New World” (6/20/13, City View at Metreon, San Francisco), with photos of 10 of the 19 scheduled speakers, including this one of Cynthia Breazeal (Associate Professor, Media Arts and Sciences, M.I.T.):

  (#1)

Not only smiling — many of the speakers pictured on the event’s website are smiling — but doing a head tilt, a characteristically feminine gesture subject to a variety of interpretations, most not appropriate for someone who wants to be taken seriously as an authority.

There are four women speakers in the set of 19. Here are the other three:

  (#2)

Beth Comstock (Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, GE)

  (#3)

Sharmila Shahani-Mulligan (C.E.O. & Founder, ClearStory Data)

  (#4)

Marina Gorbis (Executive Director, Institute For The Future)

Two more smiles, but no head tilts. None of the 15 men pictured (listed in an appendix to this posting) is doing a head tilt.

On the head tilt, from a website on “The 13 Most Common Gestures You’ll See Daily”:

Tilting the head to one side is a submission signal because it exposes the throat and next and makes the person look smaller and less threatening.

… Charles Darwin was one of the first to note that humans, as well as animals – especially dogs – tilt their heads to one side when they become interested in something. Women will use this gesture to show interest in men they fancy

… Studies of paintings from the last two thousand years show that women are depicted three times as often as men using the Head-Tilt and women are shown in advertisements tilting their heads three times as often as men.

From another site, adding uncertainty or query:

Tilting the head sideways can be a sign of interest, which may be in what is said or happening. It can also be a flirting signal as it says ‘I am interested in you!’

Tilting can similarly indicate curiosity, uncertainty or query, particularly if the head is pushed forward, as if the person was trying to look at the subject in a different way in the hope of seeing something new. The greater the tilt, the greater the uncertainty or the greater the intent to send this signal.

… The tilted head exposes the carotid artery on the side of the neck and may be a sign of submission and feelings of vulnerability.

From the TV Tropes site, on the Quizzical Tilt:

It is common in all forms of animation, as well as in Real Life, for a character to tilt his head sideways in confusion. In anime, this is often accompanied by a “…” while it is more often accompanied by a “…huh?” in western animation. A raised eyebrow is common in every genre.

Common in Animal Reaction Shots, especially with dogs (although animals who behave like dogs may do it too), accompanied by a Quizzical (or Disapproving) Whimper.

Finally, from yet another popular advice site, this time on “Seven Common Body Language Mistakes”:

The head tilt is an ancient sign of listening, yet it is often seen in the workplace as a sign of agreement. It also can be misconstrued as acquiescence or flirting. [Carol] Kinsey Goman [a business coach specializing in body language] recommends practicing saying something with your head tilted and then straight in front on the mirror — you will notice how much authoritative you’ll appear when your head isn’t cocked to one side.

  (#5)

(Compare this what-not-to-do photo with #1 above.)

The set of head-tilt messages then includes all these possibilities:

attentiveness; curiosity, interest; uncertainty, confusion; query; agreement; acquiescence; submission, vulnerability; flirting

It’s routine, of course, for a gesture to be subject to many interpretations, but in this case most of the messages undercut authority. So Breazeal’s photo really caught my eye.

Appendix. Male speakers at the Forum:

- Nick Bilton (Lead Blogger, Bits Blog, The New York Times)

- Erik Brynjolfsson (Director, M.I.T. Center for Digital Business)

- David Carr (Business Columnist and Culture Reporter, The New York Times)

- Barry Diller (Chairman and Senior Executive, IAC and Expedia, Inc.)

- Patrick Doherty (Director, Smart Strategy Initiative; Deputy Director, National Security Studies Program)

- Thomas L. Friedman (Foreign Affairs Columnist, The New York Times)

- Quentin Hardy (Deputy Technology Editor, The New York Times)

- Reid Hoffman (Executive Chairman of LinkedIn; Partner at Greylock Partners)

- John Gregory Markoff (Senior Correspondent, Science, The New York Times)

- Andrew McAfee (Principal Research Scientist, M.I.T.)

- Mark Mykleby (Senior Fellow, Smart Strategy Initiative)

- Moisés Naím (Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

- Slava Rubin (C.E.O. and Co-Founder, Indiegogo)

- Dov Seidman (Founder and C.E.O., LRN)

- K. R. Sridhar (C.E.O., Bloom Energy)

Today’s Zippy:

More meta-cartooning, with a text about cartoons and cartoon characters. In the last panel, Zippy becomes more cartoony by developing big eyes, like the cartoon animal characters Garfield and Odie, Felix the Cat, and (from Disney) Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck, and Goofy — and like the human character Betty Boop, plus most human characters in anime and manga.

Today’s cartoon crop includes a Tundra strip (passed on by Chris Waigl) with a penguin as the central character (and a pun and an implicature) and a penguinless one (today’s Pearls Before Swine) that’s about characters from one strip appearing in another — but then leads to another cartoon penguin (and portmanteau animals and a hand signal):

  (#1)

  (#2)

Strip #1. By asserting a generalization about common knowledge — everyone knows (that) penguins can’t fly — the penguin implicates that it can’t fly (and therefore must drive).

Folded in there is a play on two senses of intransitive fly. From NOAD2:

(of a bird or other winged creature) move through the air under control: close the door or the moths will fly in | the bird can fly enormous distances.

• (of an aircraft or its occupants) travel through the air: I fly back to New York this evening.

Now, on Tundra:

Tundra is a comic strip written and drawn by Wasilla, Alaska, cartoonist Chad Carpenter. The comic usually deals with wildlife, nature and outdoor life. Tundra began in December 1991 in the Anchorage Daily News and is currently self-syndicated to over 500 newspapers.

… Tundra is primarily drawn in two styles, single-panel gag comics using puns in combination with wildlife and the outdoors, and a three-panel strip that employs regular characters: Sherman the Squirrel, Dudley the Bear, Chad the Cartoonist, Andy Lemming, Whiff Skunk, and Hobart the Wise [a monk]. (link)

(It’s significant that Chris Waigl lives in Alaska and so sees this strip regularly.)

Strip #2. Pearls Before Swine has been indulging in metastrips recently (as I noted here). In this one, not only does the cartoonist (Stefan Pastis) appear as a character in his own strip — as Bill Griffith regularly does in Zippy the Pinhead  (and Chad Carpenter does in Tundra) — but a character (Steve Dallas) from a different strip appears as well (something Griffith also does every so often in Zippy):

Steve Dallas is a fictional character in the American comic strips of Berke Breathed, most famously Bloom County in the 1980s.

He was first introduced as an obnoxious frat boy in the college strip The Academia Waltz, which ran in the University of Texas’s Daily Texan during 1978 and 1979. Steve then reappears in Bloom County after graduation as a self-employed, unscrupulous lawyer.

He was the first character to have been featured in all four of Breathed’s comic strips. He appeared regularly, albeit much older, in the Sunday-only Opus. (Wikipedia link)

Two views of Steve:

  (#3)

  (#4)

I’ll get to some details of #4 in a little while. Right now, what’s most important is that Steve Dallas leads us to that most famous of cartoon penguins, Opus:

Opus the Penguin (Opus T. Penguin) is a character in the comic strips and children’s books of Berkeley Breathed, most notably the popular 1980s strip Bloom County. Breathed has described him as an “existentialist penguin” and the favorite of his many characters. Until November 2, 2008 he ran in the comic strip Opus.

… Opus’ appearance changed since his inception – he originally looked like a common penguin, but between 1982 and 1986 his nose grew dramatically (developing its signature bump in the middle, of which Opus is very self-conscious). Mike Binkley, during one Sunday strip, points out the fact that Opus more closely resembles a puffin, a revelation which shocks Opus. (In the final panel of the same strip, Opus responds by telling Binkley that he looks like a carrot.) Opus says he is attracted to “svelte buoyant waterfowl”.

… Over the years Opus has served as Steve Dallas’ legal secretary, journeyed to Antarctica in search of his mother, played the tuba in heavy metal group Deathtöngue (later renamed Billy and the Boingers), wooed (and was briefly married to) an abstract sculptor named Lola Granola, worked as a newspaper personals editor, lifestyle columnist and comic strip writer, had brief, experimental stints employed as a farmer, garbageman and even a cartoonist (or, as he called it, a stripper, which he would also be at one point), and run for vice president on the National Radical Meadow Party ticket, along with his running mate Bill the Cat. (Wikipedia link)

In this early strip (about misperceptions of speech), Opus’s nose/beak is still fairly realistic:

  (#5)

(Note the Wikipedia reference to the heavy metal group Deathtöngue, whose name appears, without the umlaut, on Steve Dallas’s shirt in #4.)

Digression on portmanteau animals. While we’re in Bloom County, here’s a Breathed character of linguistic interest, the basselope:

  (#6)

The basselope is a hybrid of the basset hound and the antelope — a hybrid with a portmanteau name. The model for it is the celebrated jackalope:

The jackalope is a mythical animal of North American folklore (a so-called “fearsome critter”) described as a jackrabbit with antelope horns or deer antlers and sometimes a pheasant’s tail (and often hind legs). The word “jackalope” is a portmanteau of “jackrabbit” and “antalope”, an archaic spelling of “antelope”. (Wikipedia link)

  (#7)

(Note the wonky subject-verb agreement in the last sentence of the postcard’s text.)

The hand signal. Back to #4 and the gesture Steve Dallas is making in it:

Hook ‘em Horns is the slogan and hand signal of The University of Texas at Austin. Students and alumni of the university employ a greeting consisting of the phrase “Hook ‘em” or “Hook ‘em Horns” and also use the phrase as a parting good-bye or as the closing line in a letter or story.

The gesture is meant to approximate the shape of the head and horns of the UT mascot, the Texas Longhorn Bevo [seen on Steve Dallas's shirt in #4 with its tongue sticking out]. The sign is made by extending the index and pinky fingers while grasping the second and third fingers with the thumb. The arm is usually extended, but the sign can also be given with the arm bent at the elbow. The sign is often seen at sporting events, during the playing of the school song “The Eyes of Texas”, and during the playing of the school fight song “Texas Fight”. It is one of the most recognized hand signals of all American universities.

Bonus: penguin cartoon postings. An inventory of some penguin cartoons, on Language Log and this blog.

First, from Language Log Classic, a posting “Spheniscid-American? Polar American?”, with this Glen Le Lievre cartoon (which is no longer available in the LLC archives):

  (#8)

Then on New Language Log, in the posting “Ar(c)tic”, an Alex Hallatt Arctic Circle penguin cartoon.

On to this blog:

6/22/11  It doesn’t always stay in Vegas (link): a Michael Shaw penguin cartoon

12/14/11  Recognition (link): a Shannon Wheeler penguin cartoon

1/23/12   Happy Penguin Awareness Day (link): a captioning

3/4/12   The news for penguins (link): the claymation tv series Pingu; a 1937 animated cartoon “Peeping Penguins” by Dave and Max Fleisher

5/13/12   The penguin chronicles (link): an American Scientist cartoon by Leighton; two captionings

4/17/13   Penguins and tuxedos (link): 7 cartoons — a Bizarro with penguins in t-shirts and open-necked shirts instead of tuxedos; a Carol Stokes cartoon on the Emperor’s new clothes; a Rob Cottingham cartoon on Linux; a Phil Selby cartoon with a foul-mouthed penguin; a Savage Chickens on the Last Supper; a Rob Middleton cartoon showing a penguin with Sigmund Freud; a Randy Glasbergen cartoon showing a penguin in the executive office

6/2/13   Penguin cartoon (link): a Rhymes With Orange showing a penguin that is not a flight risk

From many sources, in e-mail and on Facebook, this ad from the Family Research Council:

(#1)

“Oral Sex and Doggie Style! Family Research Council: Call 2 Fall Is Call 2 FAIL!” by Lisa Derrick 6/27/13:

Gay-hating Family Research Council, now labeled a hate group rather than carrying the Christian branding of being a loving faith-based group, has yet another epic fail on their sweaty social media hands. Their latest campaign, Call 2 Fall complaining about marriage and the repeal of DOMA using hip cool internet lingo is the most hysterically wrong-thinking ad since, well their last one.

… This image from Family Research Council … clearly suggests fellatio followed by modified doggie style intercourse.

So: a “call to fall on our knees” comes out looking like a call to fellatio.

A blogger who uses the name twolf has altered the image to make the fellatio more explicit:

(#2)

The gesture of kneeling can convey many things: submission, obedience, worship, etc. — and, yes, intention to perform oral sex. Gestures and postures are just bits of behavior, which have to be interpreted in context; they are, in principle, always ambiguous. (So it is with linguistic and paralinguistic features like voice pitch, creaky voice, “g-dropping”, and so on; it’s all, as I like to say, “just stuff”.)

Gestural ambiguity can be combined with lexical ambiguity, as in Rufus Wainwright’s song “Gay Messiah”, discussed in this 2012 posting:

On to Rufus’s text, which is packed with ambiguities pairing religious references to sexual ones, most notably in the refrain “the gay messiah’s coming” (arriving, ejaculating), but also in the allusion to the beheading of John the Baptist (someone will demand Rufus’s head, and he will give it — that is, give head to them, fellate them [or, possibly, that he will give them the head of his penis for them to suck]), and in “pray for your sins”, combining praying to be forgiven for your sins and praying to engage in sins.

From the song:

…No I won’t be the one
Baptized in cum

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

Better pray for your sins
Better pray for your sins
’cause the gay messiah’s coming

Anti-gay groups have a poor track record with their ad campaigns. Here’s the National Organization for Marriage:

On April 8, 2009, NOM began a “2 Million for Marriage” (2M4M) initiative with the intention of organizing two million activists nationwide. When NOM used the abbreviation “2M4M” for their “2 Million for Marriage” campaign, the media noted that in personal ads, “2M4M” is code for two men seeking a third male sexual partner. NOM did not secure the domain name and other net resources that use the “2M4M” term. Christopher Ambler, a consultant in rapid web development who characterizes himself as a “happily married straight guy”, purchased the domain “2M4M.org” and branded it as “Two Men For Marriage,” running material counter to NOM’s 2M4M aims

Visual and lexical ambiguity are especially likely to co-occur in material involving sausages, hot dogs, etc., where phallic symbolism and reference are always lurking just below the surface. As in this eCard:

(#3)

(When this was posted on Facebook, it set off a thread on men’s names for their penises.)

The card alludes to a well-known Oscar Mayer jingle that goes:

My bologna has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R
My bologna has a second name, it’s M-A-Y-E-R
I love to eat it every day
And if you ask me why I’ll say
’Cause Oscar Mayer has a way
With B-O-L-O-G-N-A

Hard to beat “I love to eat it every day”. Get down on your knees and eat my bologna, kid!

Then there’s the Oscar Mayer jingle that takes the opposite viewpoint, that of the wiener:

Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener
That is what I’d truly like to be
’Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener
Everyone would be in love with me

Everyone would be in love with me because everyone would want to eat me. Down on your knees and eat me, kid!

Oh, my.

(Warning: This posting has an image of man-man sex that is right at the X line — that’s one of the topics of the posting, in fact — and some frank description of gay sex, so it might not be to everyone’s taste.)

In my e-mail yesterday, a stirring ad from Lucas Entertainment (Michael Lucas’s porn flick company, not George Lucas’s film company) for its film Lovers in Paradise, with a shot of Wagner Vittoria penetrating Tiziano Fuentes — an image that I’ll show some distance below the fold; it’s technically not X-rated (there’s no penis, testicles, or anus visible in it), though no one could mistake what’s going on there. As in my posting “X or not?” of 5/19/13, I’ll muse some on where the X line gets drawn.

First, though, a description of the scene and some information about three remarkably named pornstars (these two and Vittoria’s pornstar boyfriend Diego Lauzen).

From Lucas Entertainment:

There’s love and there’s lust — it’s a line that Wagner Vittoria and Diego Lauzen blur when it comes to their sex life. That’s why when Wagner caught sight of Tiziano [Fuentes] he knew he had to have him — with the permission of Diego, of course. Diego gave his okay, so Wagner practiced his topping skills on Tiziano after they wandered into the Costa Rican rainforest together.

(Details of oral and anal sex, Fuentes receptive and Vittoria insertive, follow.)

On Lauzen and Vittoria, shown here together (Lauzen, on the left, looking distinctly quiffy), along with the Lucas site’s breathless descriptions of them:

(#1)

Height: 5’9  Weight: 190 lbs  Dick Size: 7.5″  Position: Versatile
Diego Lauzen and his partner Wagner Vittoria are making fast names for themselves in hardcore gay porn, and it’s no wonder why when seeing them in action! Diego in particular is gorgeous, plain and simple: he’s a muscular beauty with a sex drive that’s nearly insatiable. So long as his partner is by his side, Diego is up for anything in bed, or out in the open, or in nature, or on camera! Diego doesn’t believe in limiting his sex life and how he shows it off!

Height: 5’10   Weight: 195 lbs   Dick Size: 7″   Position: Versatile
It’s rare to see Wagner Vittoria perform on camera without his boyfriend, Diego Lauzen, but that’s just fine because why only have one when you can have two of the most incredible guys in gay porn today! Wagner’s sweet baby face is in contrast [with] his beefy body and beautiful cock, and for this reason he’s a gay porn treasure. Wagner is a versatile guy in the sack, and he’s a total sex animal when he and his boyfriend get worked up!

Both men are from Brazil. They performed in porn at first simply as Diego and Wagner — Diego is a routine Latino name, but Wagner stands out — and then filmmaker Kristen Bjorn gave them their porn last names (both unique in gay porn, so far as I can tell).

On to Tiziano Fuentes, looking available in this cock-tease shot:

(#2)

His name is another mixed-nationality concoction: Tiziano is a distinctly Italian personal name (derived from a Roman family name), and Fuentes is a common Spanish/Latino family name (from the Latin fuentes ‘springs, wells’). Side fact: Fuentes is rentable in Paris, from rentboy.com; he doesn’t smoke, says he practices only safe sex, and is available for a large range of sex acts.

The Lucas puffery:

Height: 6’1 Weight: 165 lbs Dick Size: 7″ Position: Versatile
Tiziano Fuentes is a handsome guy who is a welcome newcomer to the gay porn scene. It might be deceptive to look at him, but Tiziano is a bottom that is begging for a pounding when he meets a guy worthy of his round and hungry bubble butt. Tiziano Fuentes’ performance in Lucas Entertainment’s 2013 blockbuster film “Original Sinners” is not something to be missed!

Now, finally, to the shot from Lovers in Paradise:

(#3)

Clearly a fuck scene. On the facial expressions: Fuentes is displaying the open-mouthed grimace of the Ecstatic Hole, Vittoria the focused mien of the Man At Work (using my labels from AZBlogX discussions of facial expressions during gay sex).

What takes you over the X line, in visual art, is the display of a visible ONB (Officially Naughty Bit): vulva, penis, testicles, or anus. None of which you see in #3 (or #2, for that matter), so that I presumably won’t get in trouble for reproducing it here (though I did warn you what was coming). ONBs are barred from various sorts of public display (on postcards, posters, ads, and billboards, for instance — especially, in the U.S., in any place where someone under 18 might see the images) and (in principle) from Facebook, Google+, and WordPress.

Well, the ban applies only to human ONBs; images of animal ONBs might be considered crude, but they aren’t obscene. And there are other exception clauses: masterpieces of art (like Michelangelo’s David), cherubs and the baby Jesus, anatomical diagrams used for scientific or educational purposes, and so on. Then there are contexts in which the bar is higher — contexts, for instance, in which parts of female breasts can be displayed, but not the nipples. It’s all something of a morass; I’m especially puzzled about when the art-masterpiece exception applies, a concern for me since I post a lot about visual art (painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film).

Over on AZBlogX, I’ve continued a series on facial expressions during gay sex with a report on some scenes from the porn flick Hole 1 (God knows how many gay porn flicks have hole in their titles). It starts with Trenton Ducati playing a businessman consumed by lust for fellatio with five — count them, five — erect penises, and goes on from there.

Along the way you get one shot of Adam Killian exhibiting (once again) his proficiency at AI-AI (Acrobatic Insertive Anal Intercourse), not to be confused with the lemur the aye-aye – a side benefit of his training in dance and years of working out at the gym.

There’s a moderate amount on facial expression and gesture, little specifically on language. Also: totally not for the kiddies or the sexually modest.

(Warning: Very high (homo)sexual content. Not for everyone.)

On AZBlogX, I’ve done a series of postings on facial expressions during gay sex (recently, Wagner Vittoria on Tiziano Fuentes in Lovers in Paradise, illustrating a technically non-X photo whose sexual content is absolutely clear). One image I’m especially fond of: Tommy Defendi on Jimmy Fanz, both wonderfully ecstatic, in Hole 1; the original image has no Officially Naughty Bits, but still I’ve cropped it to be absolutely clearly non-X (while also being clearly a fuck shot). And then I’ve added a caption (from the musical Gypsy):

(#1)

Sing out, Louise!

Alternative captions:

The two tenors in concert.

They make beautiful fuck music together.

(Fuck music is my term for vocalizations — speech, grunts, whatever — during intercourse.)

More captioned croppings (four couples and a threesome) from AZBlogX postings of mine:

(#2)

With a lover’s concern, Kaden is
Intent on giving Cash
Exactly what will please him.

(#3)

Thomas and Kaden enjoy
Two-part harmony.

(Once again the music.)

(#4)

As Brandon filled him up, Zach suddenly and
Poignantly realized how much he loved the man.

(And again the love theme.)

(#5)

“Oh baby, baby, Tyler baby,”
Angel roared, and Tyler
Grunted his pleasure in response.

(Well, yes, sex is animalistic. And that’s fine.)

(#6)

Jake and Adam use Trenton for their
Pleasure and his delight, but they really
Love each other.

Some more short takes, on a notable person, avoidance of non-taboo words, wordless instructions, typefaces, and a libfix.

1. John Lewis. In the NYT on the 14th, a substantial piece by Sheryl Gay Stolberg on John Lewis, “Still Marching on Washington, 50 Years Later”:

Washington — John Lewis was the 23-year-old son of Alabama sharecroppers and already a veteran of the civil rights movement when he came to the capital 50 years ago this month to deliver a fiery call for justice on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Today Mr. Lewis is a congressman from Georgia and the sole surviving speaker from the March on Washington in August 1963. His history makes him the closest thing to a moral voice in the divided Congress. At 73, he is still battling a half-century later.

Lewis is a hero of mine (and I was startled to realize that we are the same age).

On the MoW, from Wikipedia:

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom or “The Great March on Washington”, as styled in a sound recording released after the event, was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech advocating racial harmony…

King’s great speech overshadowed Lewis’s at the time, but Lewis went on to a distinguished career in politics and is currently fighting the retreat on the Voting Rights Act.

2. Bizarre taboo avoidance. First, from Robert Coren, in a comment on my “Fie on tech” posting:

I thought of the semi-baffling taboo avoidance I mentioned the other day, namely espn.com’s editing a quoted tweet to call someone a “jacka–”.

Ass avoidance, even though the ass of jackass (the name of an animal) is a different lexeme from ass ‘buttocks, anus’.

And then, even more bizarrely, in One Million Moms’ sniffy commentary on the Kraft ads featuring Zesty Anderson Davis:

A full 2-page ad features a n*ked man lying on a picnic blanket with only a small portion of the blanket barely covering his g*nitals. It is easy to see what the ad is really selling.

This isn’t really taboo word avoidance — more like taboo idea avoidance achieved by concealing (entirely inexpertly) non-taboo vocabulary in the domain.

3. Communicating through drawings and gestures. From Derek Wyckoff, his captioning of a drawing about Ikea and its reliance on wordless instructions (intended to be usable by speakers of any language):

4. Mixed case. In the Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker on 6/24/13, from “Clarity” by Katia Bachko:

New York City street signs have been shouting [in all-caps] for years. But soon  the city will provide a more subdued directional experience [with mixed-case signs]

… [According to Donald Meeker and James Montalbano, the designers of the new typeface,] the benefits of mixed case go beyond politesse; readers identify words by their shapes. When “Church Street” is set in mixed case, the pattern of verticals and curves helps drivers make out the words more quickly

5. Pseudonyms and pen names. In the NYT Sunday Review of 7/27/13, in the “Draft” column, “A Writer by Any Other Name”:

After J. K. Rowling admitted that she, and not a military veteran named “Robert Galbraith,” wrote the new mystery novel “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” The New York Times asked several writers to choose a hypothetical pen name and describe what kind of book they might write under — or perhaps behind — that name. (Note: This informal survey was conducted before any of them had a chance to consider “Carlos Danger” as an option.)

The writers and the names they suggested:

André Aciman: Valerie Scott Smythe, Lydia Davis: Percy, Ben Fountain: B. E. Fountainhead, Carl Hiassen: Rick O’Morris, Anne Lamott: Dr. Morris Fishback, Stacy Schiff: P. G. Wodehouse, Rebecca Skloot: Rhoda Stokol, John Wray [a pseudonym]: John Henderson [real name]

The full piece has the writers suggesting genres for their alter egos and discussing their choices.

6. Bots. From the NYT Sunday Review of 8/11/13, the beginning of “I Flirt and Tweet. Follow Me at #Socialbot.” by Ian Urbina (with the relevant words bold-faced):

From the earliest days of the Internet, robotic programs, or bots, have been trying to pass themselves off as human. Chatbots greet users when they enter an online chat room, for example, or kick them out when they get obnoxious. More insidiously, spambots indiscriminately churn out e-mails advertising miracle stocks and unattended bank accounts in Nigeria. Bimbots deploy photos of gorgeous women to hawk work-from-home job ploys and illegal pharmaceuticals.

Now come socialbots. These automated charlatans are programmed to tweet and retweet.

Three occurrences of the libfix bot, one of bot in the portmanteau bimbot (bimbo + bot), and one of bot as as an independent word. Bots everywhere.

The libfix bot has made it into Michael Quinion’s affixes list, as a word-forming element. Quinion’s entry:

Automatic or autonomous device or software program.
[The ending of English robot.]

Robot, an automatic or programmable machine, originally one resembling a human being, derives from Czech robota, forced labour.

One sense, directly derived from the concept of a robot, is that of an autonomous device, usually mobile, with a degree of awareness derived from computer technology; many examples are found in scientific or science fiction contexts, but few have become widely known. Examples include nanobot (Greek nanos, dwarf), a hypothetical robot of molecular dimensions; cryobot (Greek kruos, frost), a NASA-invented device for penetrating deep ice layers to examine what lies beneath; killerbot, an autonomous military killing machine; biobot, a robot which mimics biological behaviour.

The more common sense is of a semi-autonomous software program, usually linked to networking and especially to the Internet and the World Wide Webb. Well-known examples include cancelbot, a program that searches for and deletes specified mailings from Internet newsgroups; knowbot, a program which has reasoning and decision-making capabilities; and spambot, a program which scans Web pages in order to harvest e-mail addresses to which unsolicited commercial advertising (spam) can be sent.

Bot also exists as a word in its own right, in reference to a device of either kind.

Only spambot is shared by Urbina’s list and Quinion’s.

(Technically not visually X-rated, but very heavy in sexual content.)

In writing about facial expressions during gay sex (especially, during man-on-man intercourse), I’ve remarked on an ecstatic expression often shown by one partner (usually, the bottom) or both of them. From a posting on “Captioned croppings”, this example of mutual ecstasy (mouths open, eyes narrowed or fully shut):

The expressions are an outward manifestation of an inner state of mind (and body), an intense giving over of one’s self to, or losing one’s conscious self in, the sexual experience — an ecstasy or rapture. Gay men sometimes speak of a bottom in this transcendant state as being in heat; the counterpart for a top would be, I suppose, being in rut or rutting, though I’ve never heard the expression. These ways of talking adopt the vocabulary of sexual behavior in certain animals for an only very roughly analogous human phenomenon.

From Wikipedia:

In species with estrous cycles [like cats and dogs], females are generally only sexually active during the estrus phase of their cycle … This is also referred to as being “in heat”. (link)

The rut is the mating season of ruminant animals such as deer, sheep, elk, moose, caribou, ibex, goats, pronghorn and Asian and African antelope. During the rut (also known as the rutting period, and in sheep sometimes as tupping), males often rub their antlers or horns on trees or shrubs, fight with each other, wallow in mud or dust, and herd estrus females together. (link)

In human beings, the transcendant state during sex can be distinguished from a preceding state of intense desire for sex, though the two are part of a larger behavioral and psychological pattern. For the state of intense desire for gay sex, the general expression in English seems to be the all-purpose being horny, although this is most often used of men desiring the sexual services of another man (who serves as fellator or bottom). Otherwise, being in heat or in rut can be extended to the preparatory phase, or a longer, more compositional expression can be used: need dick or be hungry for dick, need a blow job, need to be fucked, need (an) ass, etc.

Some animal behavior that looks sexual may in fact spring from other sources — humping in dogs, in particular. (The term humping relates the phenomenon to sexual intercourse, since it also serves as a synonym for the stronger fucking.)

From a Psychology Today piece of 9/1/12, “Why Dogs Hump: There isn’t, a single reason behind this normal behavior”, by Mark Bekoff:

“On a beautiful, warm afternoon, I watched a group of dogs frolic in a dog park. Suddenly, I heard a woman’s high-pitched yelp, followed by the pounding of human feet. There was no need to look; it was obviously about humping, which we can also refer to as mounting.” So wrote Julie Hecht in her excellent review of humping by dogs. Indeed, because humping often often offends some people, Julie titled her essay ”H*umping”.

Mounting and humping by dogs are among those behavior patterns about which humans make lots of assumptions but we really don’t know much about them. Dogs will mount and hump other dogs and other nonhuman animals … from a wide variety of positions, human legs, and objects such as beach balls, water buckets, food bowls, pillows, and garbage pails without a care in the world. If you want to watch please do but an audience isn’t necessary. Sometimes they hold on for upwards of 20-30 seconds and sometimes they just jump on and slide off and saunter away. And size doesn’t matter.

While many humans feel embarrassed when they see a beloved four-legged friend mount and hump in public places, this behavior is a normal part of a dog’s behavioral repertoire. Both males and females mount and hump, and these behaviors first appear early in a dog’s life, particularly during play. Mounting and humping should not be considered abnormal behavior patterns.

While mounting is best known for its role in reproduction, it also occurs in many other contexts and emotional states. Dogs mount when they’re excited and [aroused] and even when they’re stressed and anxious. Take out the leash to go for a walk and Lassie starts humping Toto. You come home after a long day’s work and Spot goes for your leg.

From a Facebook discussion between a black woman T, a white guy C, and me, over the interpretation of a baffling — because drastically poor in detail — news story involving two young black men, a set of store employees, and a policeman: the guys asked for sliced cheese; an employee said the store didn’t carry it; the employee then herded the staff into a back room, locked it, and called the police; the cop who turned up told the guys they had to leave the store or they’d be arrested. T and I suspected that race might have been involved in the incident, and I was especially dubious about the sliced cheese part of the story; C maintained that race was not at issue, and in any case we didn’t have enough information to suspect that it did. At this point, T to C:

please don’t use your woke status to affirm your reading of the story and to presume that Arnold is alone in his side eye.

That is, my figurative side eye (or side-eye): I didn’t actually look sideways to express distrust or disbelief, but I certainly did express those attitudes (verbally rather than visually).

Slang check. The adjective woke ‘be socially aware’ (about the situation of black people), especially in the collocation stay woke, has spread relatively recently in AAVE. It’s natural for T to use it of C.

The compound side eye ‘a sidelong glance conveying disapproval, contempt, criticism, animosity, scorn; shock, surprise; distrust, disbelief’ (combining glosses from a number of different sources), on the other hand, turns out not to be particularly associated with black America, though, as it happens, I first heard it used by black speakers. Two illustrations of the gesture, from Justice Sonia Sotormayor and comedian Bernie Mac:

(#1)

(#2)

And as an emoji:

(#3)

Now, on the expression and also the word, from Merriam-Webster’s “Words We’re Watching” site, the piece “The History of ‘Side-eye’: We have our eyes on this one. Chances are you’ve been on both ends of the side-eye. It’s that sidelong look, that glance or gaze that doesn’t want to involve the front of the face, but instead says way more by shifting to the corners of the looker’s eyes”:

People have of course been using side-eye forever, but the term side-eye (also styled side eye) is only newly popular. Since the end of the first decade of the 21st century it’s been increasingly used in major publications.

At its core, the term is about a physical act that communicates any number of things: suspicion, scorn, annoyance, jealousy, veiled curiosity. When we use the word, the context explains what the look being referred to expresses:

It’s this friendship, presented with utter sincerity, that serves as the movie’s emotional rudder. Though there’s humor in the unexpected pairing, the actors play it with the innocence of children who do not yet count the judging side-eye as part of their vocabularies. — Eliza Berman, Time, 18 Mar. 2016

The guy who stole your heart as the class clown can seem like just a clown out of his original context, like when people are giving him side-eye for cracking lame jokes in the hostess line. — Lauren Panariello, Cosmopolitan, July 2014

NZ comedian Steve Wrigley later commented that Kiwis have a unique habit of laughing enthusiastically, while at the same time sounding like they aren’t sure if they should be, and shooting a sneaky side-eye at their neighbours to make sure they are laughing too. — The Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand), 27 Apr. 2010

It’s often (and increasingly) used with the:

For the most part, the singular focus on results washes away concerns about getting the side-eye from a colleague judging you for not being in your cubicle, said Jack O’Laughlin, executive director of employment experiences at Edmunds. — Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, The Chicago Tribune, 18 Mar. 2016

Suddenly, Eddie … is attracting the attention of barons of the boardroom …, bullies on the street … and some mysterious third guy who keeps giving him the side eye and chasing him around Manhattan. — Cary Darling, The Detroit Free Press, 18 Mar. 2011

Newly ubiquitous though the word may be, it’s not a new term at all. James Joyce used it in Ulysses, published in 1922:

A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands.

But he was by no means the first. Our earliest evidence of side-eye in use is from 1797:

Here we come to what calls for the strongest eye-sight, the most steadfast gazing. Our being in Adam has been looked on with a side eye. The subject has provoked dislike; I may almost say, contempt. It is now painful to speak of it. — Remembrancer For Lord’s Day Evenings, 19 Mar. 1797

We’ve also seen some evidence of verb use, with the earliest example dating to 1916, but most evidence dating to the current decade:

In his mind’s-eye he saw himself associating with actor-folk, who invariably side-eye him and whispered among themselves: “That’s Alonzo Gubbins —frightfully wealthy — just about the real backing of the Frohman ventures –though, of course, Frohman is putting up the name and reputation!” — The Arizona Republican, 26 Aug. 1916

I naturally and perpetually side-eye every woman who can rock a pointed-toe shoe with ease. How divine your black, nude or brightly colored shoe looks on your tiny foot. — Lauren Porter, Essence, 23 Mar. 2016

With Zika Virus Headed North, American Scientists Side-Eye Asian Tiger Mosquitoes — headline, Inverse (inverse.com), 9 Mar. 2016

One other thing about side-eye: in these modern times, there’s some debate about what exactly side-eye is — in particular, about whether or not a turn of the head disqualifies a sidelong glance from being side-eye. Some say you have to keep your head steady and straight ahead and do it all with your eyes.

From a lexicographer’s perspective, the jury is very much still out on that. If people refer to both versions as side-eye, then both versions qualify. We’ll see if that changes. In the meanwhile, throw side-eye however you like. We won’t take it personally.

Even stronger: stink-eye. These explorations took me to another eye-rejection compound, stink-eye, that I had also heard first from black speakers. This, too, seems not to have any strong connection to black speech.

From GDoS:

stink-eye (US) an aggressive, hostile look. 1989 shot the dude a direct stink-eye … 2007 Not a hug, not a handshake, just the fuckin’ stink-eye all night

give someone the stink-eye (v.) to stare at someone in a hostile manner. 1999 Vic gave Jay some of that piping-hot stink-eye …

stink-eye v. to stare at in a hostile manner … 2005 The clerk just stink-eyed the greenback

There seems to be a general feeling that stink-eye is more extreme, more malevolent, than side-eye, but the evidence is uncertain. For one thing, the very same photos (of Michelle Obama, for instance) appear as examples of both; only the heading or caption differs. On the other hand, some stink-eye photos do seem more extreme that your typical side-eye photo — but not because of what the subject’s eyes are doing (which is side-eye), but because of what their mouth is doing in addition (a lip curl or sneer, for example). An especially nice example, from the character Sam Weir in the U.S. tv show Freaks and Geeks, as played by John Francis Daley (later Lance Sweets on Bones):

(#3)

(“Freaks and Geeks is an American teen comedy-drama television series, created by Paul Feig, with Judd Apatow as executive producer, that aired on NBC during the 1999–2000 television season.” (Wikipedia link))

One more: the eye-roll. The side-eye or stink-eye is directed at someone; it’s an aggressive act. Other eye-rejection gestures are aversive, and the most dramatic of these is the eye-roll, illustrated here dramatically by Saturday Night Live‘s Tina Fey:

(#4)

(Note the oral reinforcement.)

The OED has citations for roll the/one’s eyes back to the 15th century (Milton, Paradise Lost; Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece), but referring to a gesture conveying lust. The aversive gesture is iconic and might well be universal or nearly so. But the great fashion for it among teenage girls seems to be relatively recent; in this context, it can sometimes be passive-aggressive, but very often it seems to be a display of independence.

More terminology for eye gestures conveying aggression and/or rejection. Just three more idioms that occurred to me: to look daggers at (someone), to give (someone) a dirty look, to give (someone) the hairy eyeball. I haven’t researched their histories.

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

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

(#1) On contemplating his penis

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

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

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

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

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

On the nose, GHT!

Notes on #1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two more examples from my files:

(#4)

(#5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes on #6.

First note. On the name Kuchar. From GDoS:

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

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

An actual garment:

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

And a hymn to its kind:

The Song of the Thong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In chronological order:

The 1962 CinemaScope epic:

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

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

The 1998 comic books:

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

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

The 2006 movie:

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

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

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

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

The source is The Ancient Hoplitikon of Melbourne AU:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Men’s bodies and tons of mansex — anal, anal, anal — in street language. No actual penises on display, but nevertheless absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Padraig porn for the day:

(#1) The TitanMen gay porn sale for this weekend: Kiss me, I’m Irish

Four things: One, Dakota Rivers fucking Liam Knox in Dick Danger 2: The Return of the Dick, and their facial expressions — in particular, Knox’s half-smile of pleasure in being fucked. Two, Kiss me, I’m Irish and playful variations on the catchphrase, including Fuck me, I’m Irish and Blow me, I’m Irish. Three, a note on the pleasures of being fucked. Four, some bilingual wordplay on Kiss me / Baise-moi.

How Dakota and Liam look while they’re fucking. Two previous postings on Rivers and Knox in The Return of the Dick:

on 3/9/18 on this blog, “The further adventures of Dick Danger”, about the forthcoming release of the porn flick (with a title punning on dick ‘penis’ / ‘detective’)

on 7/4/18 on AZBlogX, “Liam Knox for the 4th”, in which #4 has the full photo of Rivers fucking Knox (missionary style) in Dick Danger 2 — used as the ad image for the TitanMen April Fool’s Day 2018 sale; now it appears again for St. Patrick’s Day 2019 — a fuck that will apparently live on and on in the holiday jack-offs of gay men (bonus shots from The Return in the 7/4/18 posting: #7 with Rivers fucking Knox doggie style, #8 with Rivers sucking Knox’s cock)

Now, the men’s faces in the holiday image:

(#2) The workmanlike Rivers, intent on fucking Knox (and gazing into his eyes)

(#3) Knox’s half-smile of pleasure at having Rivers’s cock in his ass oh yes baby yes yes yes fuck me like that oh sweet jesus fuck (not an actual transcript)

Possibly Knox is on his way to full Ecstatic, just at the early Happy Boxboy stage. That’s for us to imagine; this is, after all, a still shot staged for the ad, not a screen shot of the action in the flick.

But it’s evocative and satisfying to view. Knox is lying back with his head resting on his hands, his entire body open (in a pitsntits presentation) for his fucker to appreciate, a thin sheen of sexsweat on his forehead. The scene is, first of all, about the men’s faces, then Knox’s body, and then, in the visual center of the photo. Rivers’s sturdy cock entering Knox’s asshole and Knox’s sweet balls and half-hard cock (a fully engaged fuckhole is of course aroused by his fucker’s face, body, and cock, but his intense pleasure is mostly focused on his asshole, not his own cock).

Above, in #3, that pleasure as distilled in Knox’s relaxed but alert body and  in his face.

V me, I’m Irish. A catchphrase of the day. From Wikipedia:

Kiss me, I’m Irish is a common phrase associated with St. Patrick’s Day. It often appears on T-shirts.

(#4) The catchphrase as a t-shirt slogan

It originates from the legend of the Blarney Stone, which is believed to bring luck and eloquence to those who kiss it.

According to Jemma Tosh of Manchester Metropolitan University, the phrase is related to anti-Irish racism and sexual violence: “Whether it is the popular ‘Kiss me I’m Irish’ or the more aggressive ‘Rape me I’m Irish’ ‘joke,’ the conceptual Irish body is positioned as an object for others to act upon.”
[“”Rape Me, I’m Irish”: An Analysis of the Intersecting Discourses of Anti-Irish Racism and Sexual Violence”. Intersectionalities. 4 (1): 59–81 (2015)]

Whoa! “Rape me, I’m Irish” is not the punchline of a joke with any currency at all. On the other hand, “Fuck me, I’m Irish” — a playful variation on the catchphrase (on playful variations, see, among other postings, this one from 2014 and this one from last week) — is available as a slogan on tons of t-shirts, of many different designs. One here:

(#5) A (genuinely) light-hearted t-shirt, intended to convey a P-construal of fucking — anal or vaginal — as a social act, rather than a V-construal

From my 2/10/17 posting “Annals of adorable”, on two different accounts of how one man might come to be fucked by another:

(P) men engage in these sex acts because they find them both physically pleasurable and emotionally satisfying [P is for pleasure]

(V) being fucked is being subjected to an act of violence, a painful, aggressive, and humiliating violation of the body (humiliating because it is both feminizing and also a defeat at the hands of another man) [being fucked is being raped; V is for violence]

Almost all gay men who bottom for other men construe the act as one of pleasure for them. And of course in their ordinary life, straight women hope that getting fucked will equally be a source of pleasure for them. In both cases, a t-shirt like (#5) is an offer of mutual pleasure (for both parties). A hyperbolically promiscuous offer, to be sure, but an offer nevertheless. And it assumes that being Irish (in fact or in the ad-hoc fantasy of the holiday) makes the wearer attractive.

In fact, the fuck variant of the catchphrase is potentially ambiguous between an older Agent-Subject, Patient-Object sense of fuck (Fuck me! says I want you to fuck me) and a newer Patient-Subject, Agent-Object sense (Fuck me! says I want you to fuck for me, I want to fuck you). Details in my 7/9/13 posting “Sexual lexical semantics”. But no matter who’s the penetrator and who’s the recipient, the t-shirt in #5 takes the P-view of the act of fucking, not the V-view.

Of course, the fuck variant of the catchphrase isn’t the only one around. There are oral variants:

(#6)

(#7)

And variants with (rough) synonyms of fuck: eat me, screw me, bang me, all attested (but not illustrated here).

And variants that aren’t sexual at all: trust me, beer me, punch me, fight me, plant me [garden store], murder me [murder mystery game], …

The happy boxboy. Back in my 2/10/17 “Annals of adorable” posting:

The disjuncture between (P), the celebratory, bright sexual world according to gay men, and (V), the alarming, dark world of mansex according to some straight men, could hardly be greater. What gay men can do, what I can do, is amplify on the former world, explaining the physical pleasures and the emotional satisfactions of mansex in vibrant detail, to sketch an alternative to (V). Not to say, Try It, You’ll Like It — though in fact the techniques of mansex can be learned, and can provide satisfactions even if you’re a guy who’s not aroused by other guys, as straight brolovers have discovered — but to depict an attractive alternative sexual world based on mutual pleasure and regard.

… since we’re on butt-fucking here, let me just say that when I’m in [the bright world of gay sexual pleasure] I love getting fucked. It feels fantastic [physically, in several ways], and when it really goes well (as it almost always did with Jacques) I feel intensely masculine, sharing my body with another man, becoming man-squared with him inside me (and on his end J felt the same way: joined together, we were awesomely powerful). That’s a really big emotional payoff.

Very briefly on the physical pleasures of getting fucked up the ass:

the stimulation of the anal ring (comparable in some ways to stimulation of the lips, both the mouth and the anus being abundantly supplied with nerve endings), also exploited in other sorts of anal play (stroking, finger-fucking, rimming, dildo play)

the sensation of being pleasurably filled (up)

the stimulation of the prostate, a guy’s version of a woman’s O-spot

There are also psychological pleasures in receptive sex, as I noted above. These can be quite intense. From my 2/9/16 posting “Morning names: wiles, Wiles”:

I’ve been reflecting on [Kevin Wiles’s] take on cocksucking and bottoming. In both cases, he goes well beyond mere willingness (after all, anyone can learn to perform these acts at least competently) and beyond enthusiasm, into something deeper and more intense, amounting to a kind of sexual orientation of its own, in which he submits with pleasure to another man by taking that man’s cock into his body (into his mouth or into his asshole) and worships it by having it become, in his sexual imagination, part of his own body. He absorbs that cock, as a symbol of the man it represents and the essence of his masculinity, and becomes one with it. He is deeply oriented towards cock (and consequently towards cum), as (I now say) an ubercocksucker or uberbottom (or both, as in KW’s case).

For some men, there’s a further psychological satisfaction: submission. See my 2/17/19 posting “Eat it! The oral humiliation you deserve”, on the paradoxical pleasures of (some or all of) SHAC:  submission, humiliation, abuse, constraint.

A lexical note, from my 12/29/15 posting “Boxboys and transitive bottoming”:

there’s a set of everyday terms for the vagina, and box is one of those — at the euphemistic end of the scale, with pussy taking us into taboo territory, and cunt at the extreme, flagrantly coarse, end of the scale.

… all everyday vocabulary for the vagina can be (and, as far as I can see, has been) pressed into service to refer to the male anus viewed as a (receptive) sexual organ (see my 7/26/13 posting on the phenomenon). That gives us a series of synonyms of bottom boy ‘man whose preference is to serve as the recipient in anal intercourse, man who prefers to be fucked’: from the top on down: cuntboy, pussyboy, and, yes, boxboy. (All of these have boy used for a gay man, of whatever age.)

The fairy’s fuck. Another round of play on kiss me, now from French. From  my 9/13/13 posting “Défonce Moi”, on French vulgar slang:

The new routine vulgarity [largely replacing foutre] is the verb baiser, as in the title of a controversial French film … Baise-moi (Fuck Me)

Baiser is a French verb meaning “to fuck”; it also means “a kiss” when used as a noun (un baiser)

and is now in competition with the even more vulgar, more powerful défoncer.

But in the appropriate context, the noun le baiser ‘the kiss’ can still distantly evoke fucking, which makes the title Le baiser de la fée (The Fairy’s Kiss) potentially risible. From Wikipedia:

Le baiser de la fée (The Fairy’s Kiss) is a ballet in one act and four scenes composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1928 and revised in 1950 for George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet.

(#8) Cover art: The Fairy Woods by Henry Meynell Rheam, 1903

Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s short story Isjomfruen (English: The Ice-Maiden), the work is an homage to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, for the 35th anniversary of the composer’s death.

Things pile up in the context: not just baiser, but also la fée / fairy, with their possible, um, fey connotations, and then the association with the homosexually inclined Tchaikovsky.

(The TitanMen TaXXX Day special offer ad for this year is heavy with massive erections from the 2017 gay porn flick Taxxx, so that’s off on AZBlogX. What’s here is packed with crude language about men’s bodies and mansex, definitely not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

The DVD cover, just barely penis-free, for Taxxx:

(#1) left: Matthew Bosch, middle: Liam Knox, right: Alex Mecum (the ad photo has these individual images, but in the order Mecum, Bosch, Knox)

If you’re jacking off, I’ll tax your meat,
If you like getting fucked, I’ll tax your seat

And the cover for its predecessor, 2016’s The Taxman Cumeth:

(#2) left: Adam Ramzi, right: David Benjamin

If you hustle studs, I’ll tax your receipts,
If you’re doing it in the bushes, I’ll tax your mesquite

Three things then: the facial expressions in these photos, especially the smiles; the content of the two flicks; and the Beatles song “Taxman” parodied above:

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.

Facework 1: display shots vs. action shots. Publicity photos for gay porn come in two basic varieties: the pornstars displaying themselves to the audience (display shots) and the pornstars engaging in sex for the audience (action shots). Both are carefully posed, even the action shots.

Display shots are most often frontal displays — though the rear display is also popular, because it showcases the model’s buttocks. (And see my 12/29/18 posting “The side display”.) In any case, the model’s face is as important as his package and his butt — because we are facially oriented creatures and because the porn companies are marketing specific pornstars, and their faces serve as symbols of their porn personas.

In a display shot, the actor’s gaze is most often forward, locked with his audience — though other gaze directions do occur, especially the gaze downward (which I’ve posted several times on this blog).

Finally, in a display shot, the actor is most often smiling, establishing a rapport with his audience (in a Good Buddy presentation). In contrast, in action shots the participants most often present themselves either as Men at Work, serious Craftsmen; or as Ecstatics, unhinged with pleasure. (There are other possibilities; see the links in the “Facial expressions in mansex” Page on this blog.)

DVD covers mostly use display shots rather than action shots — usually, display shots engineered so that no cocks or balls are visible. That allows the DVDs to be publicly visible; the back covers will usually have an array of X-rated display shots of the actors and (X-rated) action shots, to show the serious prospective buyer what he can get.

#1 and #2 are typical DVD front covers for gay porn, complete with smiles from everyone. Contrast these presentations with the action shots released for Taxxx, all of which have the pornstars, in character, doing either Craftsman or Ecstatic. Two examples, with the dicks cropped out or fuzzed over:

(#3) Two Men at Work: Bennett Anthony fucked by Liam Knox

(#4) Craftsman does Ecstatic: Eddy Cee Tee fucks Alex Mecum

(Side note: in action shots, there’s a tension between naturalism, in a photo that looks like it was just caught on the fly; and (artistic) composition, in a photo that has the bodies aligned in formally satisfying arrangements. On the naturalism side in #3, on the composition side in #4 (though at least one Ecstatic definitely loosens up a formal composition).)

Facework 2: smiles. #1  shows some of the range of what you can do with your mouth in smiling: All three men exhibit the primary physical gesture of smiling, a contraction of the muscles at the corners of the mouth, causing the corners to rise a bit. That’s pretty much all of the oral action in Matthew Bosch’s smile in #1. His lips are closed. Liam Knox’s lips are somewhat open, Alex Mecum’s even more so, producing a “broad smile”. (Mecum’s ecstatic grimace in #4 is even broader.)

(The broadness of a smile is often taken to be an indicator of the degree of the emotion expressed by smiling: pleasure, happiness, amusement, whatever. Simple-smile emoji , broad-smile emoji  .)

Other relevant oral dimensions: extent of corner-raising, taken to an extreme in the conventionalized smiley —

(#5)

and lip-rounding (to various degrees) and lip-spreading or -widening (to various degrees). Rounding and spreading are antagonistic gestures. A very broad smile with rounding gives an extravagant version of the O-face (or cum-face), as here (source not identified):

(#6)

On the other hand, spreading a simple smile gives the “surfer smile”, seen here on Australian surfer Owen Wright:

(#7)

The Wikipedia article on smiles introduces another dimension of smiling, very much relevant to #1 and #2:

A smile is formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Smiles performed without the eye contraction may be perceived as insincere.

Among humans, smiling is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, joy or amusement. It is distinct from a similar but usually involuntary expression of anxiety known as a grimace.

… While conducting research on the physiology of facial expressions in the mid-19th century, French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne identified two distinct types of smiles. A Duchenne smile involves contraction of both the zygomatic major muscle (which raises the corners of the mouth) and the orbicularis oculi muscle (which raises the cheeks and forms crow’s feet around the eyes). The Duchenne smile has been described as “smizing”, as in “smiling with the eyes”.

From my 10/13/15 posting “Numb3rs and a soap-opera-handsome hunk”:

(In this photo, Vilasuso isn’t quite smiling with his mouth, but he’s definitely “smiling with his eyes” — appparently known as smizing in some circles. The verb smize is of course a portmanteau of smile and eyes.)

(The term smizing might have been introduced by supermodel Tyra Banks on America’s Top Models; certainly she popularized it.)

Previous notice on this blog of smiling with the eyes in gay porn:

— on 2/14/17 “Sex and smiles for VDay”

— on 2/15/19 “From the files of facial expressions in gay porn”

Now, everybody in #1  and #2 is sporting a nice Duchenne smile. So that you can separate the optic effects from the oral effects, I’ve cropped out the eyes in the two photos:

(#8) The eyes of #1

(#9) The eyes of #2

All could be identified as smiling, just from these bits of their faces. David Benjamin in #2, with his strong Duchenne eyes and his fairly broad and fairly spread mouth, comes across as especially warm.

Here’s Benjamin in a photo from his own portfolio, showing that smile:

(#9) Striking hazel eyes, half-Latino (his father is Guatemalan), 7″ cut, versatile, gives good interview

Movie guide. Gay porn scenes can be set in the most unlikely circumstances, but one recurring setting involves situations where there’s a power imbalance between men: the more powerful man imposes himself on the less powerful, or the less powerful  seduces the more powerful, or the less powerful turns the tables. The IRS agent and the (possibly errant) taxpayer fits the format nicely.

TitanMen descriptions for the two flicks. First for the one in the mailer, Taxxx (2017), three scenes, very briefly described (with, of course, verbal sexplay):

The agents are back, and they’re ready to bust your balls. The only way out of this TaXXXing situation is to unzip a big out-of-pocket contribution. Watch what happens when TitanMen exclusives Matthew Bosch, Eddy CeeTee and Liam Knox show some personal interest in their jobs.

Taxman Matthew Bosch works out a deal with deduction abuser Jason Vario, the two deepthroating each other’s uncut monsters before Matthew gets his furry ass inspected.

Stressed out Alex Mecum needs a break from his forms, and gym-fresh Eddy CeeTee is happy to donate his dick to the cause.

Agent Liam Knox catches “massage therapist” Bennett Anthony in a big fat lie, then blackmails him with his big fat dick.

Then for the previous film, The Taxman Cumeth (2016). Here the TitanMen description is long and detailed, pretty close to an act-by-act account, The long form is in the AZBlogX posting on these flicks; here’s my short form:

He’s got a personal interest in you. He means business. And he’s going to audit your ass [note your ass ‘you’] if you withhold from him. He’s the tax man, always ready to whip out a penalty for early withdrawal. Join these men as the taxman cumeth and they collect on their dirty debts.

Tex Davidson [confronted by] agent Eric Nero, conducting an inspection for a home office deduction.

SF Titans baseball coach and former star player Diesel Washington gets a visit from his accountant David Benjamin, who’s nervous about income his client wants him to ignore.

Stroking his bushy meat, Nick Prescott gets interrupted by bearded agent Adam Ramzi, who needs to do a home office inspection. “Most home offices don’t have a bed in them,” says the skeptical taxman.

The Beatles and their “Taxman”.  From Wikipedia:

(#10)

“Taxman” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles and released as the opening track on their 1966 album Revolver. Written by the group’s lead guitarist George Harrison, its lyrics attack the high levels of progressive tax taken by the British Labour government of Harold Wilson.

Harrison said, “‘Taxman’ was when I first realized that even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes. It was and still is typical.” As their earnings placed them in the top tax bracket in the United Kingdom, the Beatles were liable to a 95% supertax introduced by Harold Wilson’s Labour government (hence the lyrics “There’s one for you, nineteen for me”, referring to the pre-decimal pound sterling which consisted of twenty shillings).

Don’t ask me what I want it for
If you don’t want to pay some more

Lauren Hall-Lew writes on Facebook:

2020 is here and #WWIII is the new Twitter hashtag.

Crystal Patterson Muneau follows up:

I need an emoji reaction button to indicate how terrified I am.

You could, of course, just press Edvard Munch’s The Scream into service, or one its its many variants, like this Bizarro version:

(#1)

But actual emoji have been designed.

Here, for example, is the Face Screaming in Fear emoji from EmojiTerra:

(#2)

Note the wide-open eyes, the mouth opened in full voice, and the hands to the sides of the face.

(Men’s bodies and references to mansexual orgies. So not for everybody.)

Yesterday’s offering from Daily Jocks, for a Helsinki Athletica sale. With a bit of AZ free verse interpreting the image:

(#1)

(#2)

The image. Other than the model’s remarkable physique, functioning as a sales come-on, there are two especially salient aspects of the image: his facial expression and the gesture with his clothing.

The face. He’s searching intently (but otherwise without emotion) to his left, into the middle distance. Not gazing at us, the consumers of his display, or at his own body or clothes. He’s fixed on others, and they’re important to him.

The bare facts. I’ve enriched this interpretation by giving the model’s character a name, Stan, and putting Stan onto the sidelines of an orgy of mansex, where he’s looking to find a place for himself.

Orgies are often complex, sometimes apparently chaotic (it’s hard for an observer to keep focused), and they’re organized on several different principles; from my Page on group sex for men, see especially my 7/13/13 posting “More group sex” (focused on gay porn), on simple orgies (separate clusters of men having sex with one another in the same space), fluid (smorgasbord-style) orgies, and many-on-one sex (gangbangs and the like). I note that in real life (and also sometimes in porn), orgies very often involve sexual free agents roaming the space: men stroking their hard dicks and looking for partners to hook up with.

So there’s a lot for Stan to search through on the sidelines, as the orgy unfolds in front of him. No wonder he’s so intent. (More on the orgy scene below.)

The clothing. Stan has already pushed his grey Kasper Joggers down below his hips, and now he has his left hand hooked into the waistband of his bold Finnish-blue jockstrap, getting ready to pull that down, to make hs cock and balls available to the orgiasts. At the ready!

The DJ ad copy that accompanies #1 (as an ad for a 25% off FLASH SALE) focuses on its sexiness:

You’ve worked hard for your body – why not show it off in Helsinki Athletica? With an unmistakable focus on bold Euro styles and quality fabrics that emphasise your physique, the Helsinki Athletica collection is the sexy design you’ve been waiting for.

(The company is genuinely oriented towards athletic equipment, but they’re not unmindful of their big queer appeal.)

At the orgy. We have Stan on the verge of joining into the orgy, presenting himself as a top, looking for ass. There will surely be enthusiastic takers. The event might in fact be catering especially to his tastes; there is, after all, a Love to Get Fucked Blogspot site (with the obvious address: lovetogetfucked.blogspot.com) where you can find images of manpussy orgies (I had one such image, with that name, edited for use here — it shows an event with three slots available for Stan to fill — but decided that it was too crude for this relatively light-hearted posting).

As it happens, on the light-hearted side, I’ve been sitting for some time on a link, provided to me by my long-time reader RJP, to an Imgur gallery on “Men’s Fashion from the 70’s” by janetspots: a gigantic trove of absurd apparel from the period (such as I have occasionally posted on here). Many of the men appear to be, like Barbie’s Ken, desexed, with vacant crotches, but others are laughably oversexed, with obtrusive packages. From the latter set I’ve selected two examples of men — pre-orgiastic, but clearly revved up for the occasion — that Stan might be appraising as targets for his sexual attentions:

(#3) A bottom advertising his ass (also displaying a gumball machine, what could he be trying to say?); two amiable tops, dicks at the ready — but are they willing to share?

(#4) Glitter Boys in Heat: should Stan go for the gold?

(On facial expression and gaze in sexual negotiations between men, definitely mansexually raunchy, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Yesterday’s ad from Next Door Studios (specializing in regular-guy boy-next-door types — twinks and swimmer-body young men — enthusiastically engaged sexually with each other, covering a range of acts from vanilla mansex on out to moderately kinky stuff). In it, Dakota Payne is preparing to slip his cock (fuzzed out here) into a deliciously sling-bound Alex Tanner. But these next-door boys aren’t focused on each other; they are instead staring penetratingly into the eyes of their audience, who are pantingly stroking their dicks in appreciation of their performance. This particular image now exploited to illustrate a dialogue for learners of the Spanish language; the by-ways of kink are strange indeed.

(#1) Alex y Dakota, Diálogo 17: ¿Dónde está el pescadero?

Alex: ¡Ay caramba! / Dakota: No lo creo.
Alex: ¡Que desastre! / Dakota: No importa.
Alex: Pero te deseo, mi querido. / Dakota: ¡Vete a la mierda!

The dialogue. A fairly clunky English translation, for the Hispanophonically deprived:

A: Oh no! / D: I don’t believe it.
A: What a mess!. / D: It doesn’t matter.
A: But I want you, darling/buddy. / D: Fuck off!

(I hope to post some on the complexities of Sp. queridx soon.)

Note how you struggle to get the content of the conversational exchange to fit the context depicted in the photo. People labor, sometimes heroically, to find coherence in discourse. (You can almost hear Alex continuing the exchanges with some equivalent of the passionate plea, “No, no, fuck on! Please, please, fuck on, baby!”)

A side note. On Buy One Get One Free. NDS intends to be offering a free video for each one (from those on sale) you buy. I preferred to read it as offering a two-for-one sale on Alex and Dakota as male escorts (that is, rent boys / stud hustlers). Look, gay porn is a tough business to make a living in, and plenty of the actors / models also work as escorts. Alex Tanner certainly does; I can’t be sure about Dakota Payne.

It all turns on the ambiguity in context of the indefinite pronoun one. One of the videos offered in the sale associated with Buy One Get One Free; or one of the men in the photo associated with Buy One Get One Free.

Facial expression and gaze in mansexual negotiations. From earlier essays on this blog.

from 7/19/18, in “Get your cruise face on”, about sexual offers with accompanying facial expressions, in a variety of settings:

The facial expression for classic cruising-for-sex between strangers in public is impassive, betraying no emotion; what’s important is the exchange of gaze, held for much longer than would normally be polite in the circumstances.

from 7/27/19, in “Wary”, about a Lucas Studios Dog Days of 2019 sale offer, featuring two pornstars I treated as characters with the names Bongo and Pongo:

(#2) Head and torso shot of Bongo and Pongo together (full photo in “Wary”), showing their gazes fixed on their audience

For a change, this is not about men’s bodies, pleasing though these are; nor about pink/purple men’s bikini briefs, though there’s a fabulous array of them on display on the net; but about facial expressions.

I’m far from an expert on gesture, facial expression, stance, and gait, but I know a bit of the literature, and try to observe carefully. I’ve specialized in two cases from the world of gay men, using examples from real life and from gay porn: facial expressions during mansex (there’s a Page on this blog about postings on the topic) and cruise faces (facial expressions as part of the rituals of cruising for mansex).

My first reading of Bongo’s and Pongo’s expressions above was: suspicion; wariness; distrust; maybe even fear. Not any cruise faces I’d seen before. But both their mouths are somewhat open, in some contexts a sign of arousal.

Bongo looks especially intense, but Pongo might possibly be entertaining a trace of amusement.

And they seem to be conferring. Maybe contemplating a prospective trick. (For you? For me? Let’s do him together?)

Without more context, facial expressions are hard to read. They are seriously indeterminate: they can convey many things, indeed more than one thing at a time, they are highly variable, they are only partly under conscious control, and so on. Like intonations in conversation, vocal qualities, and other paralinguistic features. All impossible to read accurately out of context, and not fully determinate even in context.

Alex and Dakota, in #1, seem to be easier to read: they’re doing some kind of buddy cruise, together inviting the viewer to engage (imaginatively) with them sexually — as a voyeur of their couple sex; in a three-way; or in a pairing with one of them (while the other one engages with a fourth man). Maybe Bongo and Pongo are doing the same thing, but with an overlay of other emotions.

In #1, Alex is, not however, impassive; his eyebrows are arched upwards, in a facial expression that could be read many ways. Or it could just be the customary setting for his eyebrows; I have a friend with perpetually  raised eyebrows, and I’ve had to learn that he’s not expressing surprise at anything, that’s just his look.

But, no, that’s not Alex’s default expression in repose. Here he is in a p.r. photo, a head and torso shot:

(#3) He’s described as “a cute blond” in several places; his hair is sometimes strawberry blond (as here), sometimes sandy brown, but never, so far as I can tell, blond blond (I do not dispute the cute)

So the question is what he’s conveying with his markedly arched eyebrows in #1. Almost surely not dismay at getting fucked, which he appears to enjoy quite a lot.

End note on NDS. From the studio’s site, about their 15th anniversary:

The Next Door Studios story began in 2004 with the launch of our very first site, NextDoorMale.com, that introduced fresh new faces and hot amateur guys next door in intimate solo videos. The site helped launch the careers of many popular pornstars who are still performing today!

NextDoorBuddies.com soon followed to pair these fledgling stars in with hardcore videos of the guy next door with the guy next door. The site has evolved from amateur videos to a polished production with a wide range of performers from fresh newcomers to experienced exclusives.

Over time, the Next Door Studios expanded to include a stable of exclusive performers including Cody Cummings, Austin Wilde, Marcus Mojo (now performing as Landon Mycles), Rod Daily and more.

While Next Door Studios has continued to evolve, one thing remains the same, our committment to providing our members with the best quality content, fresh new faces, and exciting action!

Interesting evolution to the current relatively high degree of professionalism.