The morning name on the 15th, but also discussed some here in my “Young gay love” posting of the 15th (about gay love songs), representing what I suppose we’ll have to call mature gay love — with a link to him performing his gay love song “The Way You Love Me” (“makes me want you more”).

Some (but not enough) background from the Wikipedia article about him:

Colton Ford (October 12th, 1962, Pasadena, California), is the stage name of the former American gay pornographic actor, Glenn Soukesian, who returned to his original career path of singer, and actor [in fact, singer-songwriter and dancer as well as actor]. As of May 2007, he resides in New York City.

[He] appeared in a dozen gay adult celebrated films. Notable performances include Conquered[, which] earned him 2002 Grabby Awards for “Best Group Sex Scene”, Gang Bang Café[, which got him nominated] for the 2003 GayVN Awards for “Best Performers” and his lead role in Colton[,] for which he won “Gay Performer of the Year” during the 2003 GayVN Awards.

In his first mainstream film appearance, Ford appeared in the 2005 documentary film Naked Fame directed by Christopher Long. The film follows Ford’s transition from the world of adult films to mainstream club/dance music. The movie was released theatrically in 2005 in the United States and Canada.

On television, Ford co-starred for three seasons on the TV series The Lair, playing [the] role of Sheriff Trout. The series was broadcast on here! TV. He was a featured panelist on the here! TV’s resident chat show Threesome.

[has also appeared in music theatre and a stage play]

Two shots of Ford being sexy: as a relatively young man, though already with a graying beard: Solidly muscular, hot hunk material — and flagging top. Doing a relatively modest cock tease, a bit of pants-lowering:

(#1)

Then, at roughly 50, a hugely muscled-up silver daddy, displaying himself boldy. Doing a different sort of cock tease, a monumental moose-knuckle:

(#2)

This is the guy who now sings and dances in high-energy music videos. He’s made a montage of his displays of his body, some with other men, often doing cock teases, and often entirely naked (though with no genital nudity). You can watch it here. The background music is Queen’s gay anthem “I Want to Break Free”, from their eleventh studio album The Works (1984); you can watch the music video of the song here.

I can find nothing about Ford’s life before be started appearing in gay porn in the early 2000s. Some have written that he was a model for Colt Studios (which in its heyday was the source of very high-quality gay porn still photos — top-of-the line jack-off fuel); it’s still in business, but (not surprisngly) seems to be mostly invested in videos. (Its founder, the photographer Jim French, working under the pseudonym Rip Colt, is now 83.) But I can find no evidence that Colton Ford ever worked for Rip Colt. (Ford’s stage name Colton is probably an homage to Rip Colt and the materials he produced.)

I have, in fact, also not found any stills from Ford’s porn work that I could post on AZBlogX, or even any full-frontal display shots for publicity.

[update 2/24/16: I have now found both of these things.]

But there are videos. Conquered is still available on DVD (and I have it); Gang Bang Cafe is available via VOD; Colton is available on DVD (and I have ordered it); Best of Colton Ford is available on DVD (and I have ordered it.

This will turn into another News for Penises postings.

Today’s Bizarro shows a man in the throes of what we might call ulnarism:

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)

Two pieces of stuff here.

First, the ambiguity of funny bone. From NOAD2:

[1] the part of the elbow over which the ulnar nerve passes. A knock on the funny bone may [by stimulating the ulnar nerve] cause numbness and pain [or just a strong twinge, a funny — that is, odd — feeling] along the forearm and hand.

[2] a person’s sense of humor, as located in an imaginary physical organ: photographs to jostle the mind and the funny bone.

The second sense (a play on words that hinges on two senses of funny) is the one in the cartoon.

Second, the text that the woman is reading from. This is based on one version of a warning customarily provided by the makers of the erection drugs Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra:

If you experience an erection lasting more than four hours, seek immediate medical help.

You should get help because you’re suffering from persistent erection, or priapism, a very dangerous (but treatable) condition, associated with blood pooling in the penis, that can be triggered by erection drugs.

And that takes us to Priapus. From Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, Priapus … was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Priapus is marked by his oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism. He became a popular figure in Roman erotic art and Latin literature, and is the subject of the often humorously obscene collection of verse called the Priapeia.

And then there’s St. Priapus Church, briefly covered in a 11/5/13 posting of mine. Members of the church worship the phallus and semen. I happen to belong to a much looser community of men devoted to similar practices, but at home or in informal gathering places.

(About photography/video and the male body, rather than about language.)

It started with a wonderful atmospheric photograph of a gorgeous nude man, sent to me by Mike McKinley, but without a source. The image is #1 in a posting I just did on AZBlogX; although it’s clearly a work of art (by a professional photographer using a professional model), it has a penis in it, so I can’t reproduce it here or on Facebook or Google+.

I gave the image the name “Romantic Haze” (since the model was posed in a blue-purple haze) while I searched for the source. This time Google Images eventually brought me to young Dutch filmmaker and photographer Paul Sixta and his model Marios.

From Sixta’s website, a brief bio:

Paul Sixta (Netherlands, 1979) graduated in 2003 from the Audio-Visual department at St. Joost Breda. Sixta works as a filmmaker and photographer. His films and video-installations were shown on festivals and museums worldwide and won several prizes. Sixta often collaborates with other artists and his work ranges from visual anthropology to performance videos. Sixta’s work deals with sensitive subjects, emphasizes the story telling, and delicately explores relationships.

There’s a generous sampling of his work on his website. There’s a wide range of stuff, including work on couples of all sorts, among them male couples. The studies of men are certainly homoerotic, but they are also character studies. My AZBlogX has three examples, of very different tones; in each, the model’s penis plays a role in the story you might tell about the man in the photo.

Sixta has done other nude studies of Marios, without showing his penis, so I can sample a few of these for you here. First, a shot of Marios’s face:

(#1)

Then a model who is probably Marios but might be another of Sixta’s bearded models (his body seems to be slenderer),  pretty much in full, with his head tilted back, perhaps ecstatically:

(#2)

And then a remarkable pair of mirror-man studies:

(#3)

(#4)

Again, this might be Marios or it might be another of Sixta’s bearded models (he uses a number of them); the model seems to be substantially more muscular and hairier than the Marios in (#1) or in the AZBlogX photo — still, those eyes and that hair!. (Of course, some of these characteristics can be altered by shaving or grooming, and some by manipulating images digitally; note the moustache+beard differences between #3 and #4.)

(Almost no language stuff: it’s about mythic, in one sense, performances by hunky men. Yes, I have my shallow moments.)

The appearance on my cable tv menu of the playing of the 2012 Wrath of the Titans got me to check the movie out. That brought me to a list of (relatively) recent movies and tv shows with mythological themes and hunky actors in starring roles. By actor, reverse chronologically:

Sam Worthington (film: Perseus in Clash of the Titans (2010) and Wrath of the Titans (2012))

Brad Pitt (film: Achilles in Troy (2004))

Ryan Gosling (tv: Young Hercules (1998-9))

Kevin Sorbo (tv: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-99))

Worthington as Perseus. On the films, then on Worthington, who’s new to this blog:

[the Titans films:]  Clash of the Titans is a 2010 British-American fantasy adventure film and remake of the 1981 film of the same name produced by MGM (the rights to which had been acquired by Warner Bros. in 1996). The story is very loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus. … it received generally negative reviews from critics and received two Golden Raspberry Awards nominations. The film’s [financial] success led to a sequel, Wrath of the Titans, released in March 2012. A third film titled Revenge of the Titans was in development but then later cancelled.

[Worthington] Samuel Henry John “Sam” Worthington (born 2 August 1976) is an English-born Australian actor, best known for his portrayals of main character Jake Sully in the second-highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar; Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation; Perseus in Clash of the Titans and its sequel, Wrath of the Titans; and Alex Mason in the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops and its sequel Call of Duty: Black Ops II. … He performed predominantly in leading roles in a variety of low-budget films [before moving to major studio films], ranging from romantic drama and comedy-drama to science fiction and action.

Poster for the first film:

(#1)

Worthington as Perseus:

(#2)

Haven’t found a shirtless shot of Worthington in character, but here’s one of the man at the beach:

(#3)

The man is well-built and nice to look at, but not record-breaking in physique — but he’s well-represented on the net as enormously built and muscular (thanks to software manipulations), apparently in the form his fans would like to fantasize about his having. As the mythical Sam Worthington, you might say.

Brad Pitt as Achilles. The Titans movies were stinkers from the critics’ point iof view, but they made a ton of money. Troy, on the other hand, got critical acclaim and big bucks as well.

On the film, from Wikipedia:

Troy is a 2004 American epic adventure war film written by David Benioff and directed by Wolfgang Petersen. It is loosely based on Homer’s Iliad, though the film narrates the entire story of the decade-long Trojan War rather than just the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in the ninth year. Achilles leads his Myrmidons along with the rest of the Greek army invading the historical city of Troy, defended by Hector’s Trojan army. The end of the film (the sacking of Troy) is not taken from the Iliad, but rather from Virgil’s Aeneid as the Iliad concludes with Hector’s death and funeral.

A poster:

(#4)

Pitt in costume as Achilles:

(#4)

and shirtless, but still as Achilles:

(#5)

Pitt is quite proud of the body he achieved for this role, and the net is full of postings about Pitt as Achilles, almost all of it providing advice on how to use Pitt’s rigorous workout routine to get a body like the one in #5 — if you’re a man and really really dedicated to the project.

My 8/6/13 posting “Seven Supermen and Brad Pitt” has a final section on Pitt with a write-up about him, a photo of the beautiful young man (Thelma and Louise), and one of the bulked-up mature hunk (Fight Club).

Back on 2/18/09, in “The Curious Case of B. B.”, I posted about someone who misquoted the movie title The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which stars Pitt) as The Curious Case of Benjamin Britten — which prompted someone else to post a womderful photo of Pitt as Britten with Tom Cruise as Peter Pears (actually Pitt and Cruise in Interview with the Vampire).

Gosling as Hercules. On the tv show, from Wikipedia:

Young Hercules was a spin-off series [framed as a prequel] from the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It was aired on Fox Kids Network from September 12, 1998 to May 12, 1999. It lasted 1 season with 50 episodes and starred Ryan Gosling in the title role. The series was based on the Greek mythology hero, Hercules.

Gosling as the young Hercules in the show:

(#6)

An unusually beautiful hero, but then he was playing the young Hercules.

Gosling on this blog:

on 10/22/11, “Annals of taboo avoidance:’, about the site Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling

on 8/15/13, “Hollywood Sparks”, with a write-up about Gosling and shirtless photos

Sorbo as Hercules. About the earlier show, from Wikipedia:

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys is an American television series filmed in New Zealand. It was produced from January 16, 1995 to November 22, 1999, and was based on the tales of the classical Greek culture hero Heracles (Hercules was his Roman analogue). It ran for six seasons, producing action figures and other memorabilia as it became one of the highest rated syndicated television shows in the world at that time. Later it would be surpassed by its own spinoff show, Xena: Warrior Princess.

… The show starred Kevin Sorbo as Hercules; Michael Hurst, who had become a naturalized New Zealand citizen, first guest-starred in Season 1 to 2 as his sidekick Iolaus, and became a series regular from Seasons 3 to 6. Rotating as Hercules’ other regular companion, particularly in the first three seasons, was Salmoneus (Robert Trebor), a wheeler-dealer ever looking to make a quick dinar. In the later seasons, particularly after Kevin Sorbo suffered a serious health issue in Season 4, Michael Hurst, Robert Trebor and Bruce Campbell as Autolycus, King of Thieves, featured prominently along with the late Kevin Smith (1963-2002) as Ares, to ensure Kevin Sorbo could reduce his front of camera workload.

And very briefly about Sorbo:

Kevin David Sorbo (born September 24, 1958) is an American actor best known for the roles of Professor Radisson in God’s Not Dead, Hercules in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Captain Dylan Hunt in Andromeda, and Kull in Kull the Conqueror.

Sorbo as Hercules in the show:

(#7)

(Sorbo with a half-smile is entirely appropriate, since the show had a lot of humor in it)

and shirtless, still as Hercules:

 (#8)

(in his woven leather plants).

Gosling has a very nice body, Sorbo is a serious muscle hunk (fitted for playing a Greek hero). Both fine to look at, but different body types.

I found the show immensely enjoyable, and as a bonus you get (in it and in Xena) really stunning New Zealand scenery.

(Pretty solidly about men’s bodies and mansex, in very plain street language — which I consider to be the default vocabulary for talking at length about the details of mansex —  but much of it is about the presentation of a sexual self and the structuring of gay porn, and some about the vocabulary for talking about these things. There are sexy images, but none over the line; the X-rated visuals are in an AZBlogX posting “X-rated Trent Atkins”. Still, this posting is absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)

I begin with the DVD that in some sense inspired this posting, Trent Atkins’s Best of DVD:

(#1)

A smooth (smooth-bodied and clean-shaven) very fit young man with a nicely muscled swimmer’s body; mid-length hair with a bit of blond streaking; an inscrutable facial expression that is neither challenging nor ingratiating; and jeans pulled down in reveal a substantial male ass in tighty-whities. Not exactly a classic twink, but maybe a muscle twink or just a muscle boy. In any case, displaying that ass and making it available for fucking. (This is, after all, a DVD of scenes from gay porn, a context in which an ass displayed like this sends a Fuck Me message.)

Images on AZBlogX:

#1: Atkins displaying his naked body in a frontal shot, with discussion of height (short at 5 ft. 5), body type (swimmer), body size (slim and compact rather than massive), and dick size (at 6 in., in the normal range, and entirely proportional to his height and body mass, but short of the usual 7-inch minimum for gay pornstars). Oh yes, Indiana Univ. logo tattoed on his hip.

#2: Atkins fucked by taller, bulkier, more muscular, hairier (and apparently older) Alessio Romero — though, despite these disparities the two men are in competition over who’s in charge in the encounter. Atkins is an enthusiastic bottom, virtually exclusively so far as I can tell (in his porn roles and in real life), but he’s nevertheless inclined to assume the dominant t role in his encounters, ordering his partners to fuck him, demanding that they do it (“Do it, now: fuck my ass!”), rather than submissively asking, or even begging, them to do it (“Oh god, please fuck me!”). Bottoms are often taken to be low in masculinity (getting fucked is the province of women), but Atkins counteracts this with t behavior.

#3: Atkins as the focus in a gang bang, taking on six bangers.

#4: Atkins as the focus in another, more entertaining, gang bang, taking on four bangers, in a screenshot with Atkins doing a handstand to make his asshole more easily available to one of the bangers (this at the rimming stage of the gang bang, before the fucking and bukkake stages). More detailed discussion of the encounter on AXBlogX. For an explanation of the handstand, see the following.

IMDb notes on the actor:

Trent Atkins participated in gymnastics for ten years before switching to springboard and platform diving. In 1997, he received a scholarship to Indiana University for his athletics. He never finished his stint there and went to Los Angeles where he became an adult film actor. While working in the adult industry, Trent managed to contact a diving coach in Hawaii, where he attended The University of Hawaii at Manoa and earned a BA in Economics.

(He was born 12/27/78 in Minot ND but grew up in San Diego CA. He sees himself as something of  a California beach boy.)

He took a break from gay porn for a time while he was working on his degree, but is now back at work. Interviews suggest that he sees his porn work as a serious job, a profession even, that requires commitment much like that needed to train for gymnastics and diving. (He’s also a licensed massage therapist, by the way. A body man in a whole lot of ways.)

As for his sexual orientation, he is frankly gay. Well, he might say that his orientation was as a bottom, and the same-sex desire, gay self-identification, and involvement in gay culture followed from that. (I wonder if there are any gay-for-pay porn actors — men who identify as straight — who are total bottoms. As far as I can tell, all the celebrated bottoms in gay porn have been frankly gay, though a few, like Joey Stefano, have been sadly conflicted over their desires, ashamed of them.) That is to say, Atkins has a kind of deep emotional commitment to bottoming; he’s what I’ve called an an uberbottom.

(Like so many gay pornstars, Atkins loves to display his body for an audience, and he has a high sex drive.)

In his presentation of self outside of his porn roles, he comes across as clearly gay (also as sweet, smilingly amiable, funny, thoughtful, and smart): he has a light (rather than deep) voice (so do I), and, more important, he has a modestly gay voice (with some of the phonetic properties of the GV — which I do not); especially when this is combined with his facial expressions and gestures, I don’t think you’d miss that he was gay, but he doesn’t come across as exaggeratedly so. (Obviously, I find him very attractive.)

Some images, concentrating on changes in his hair over the years. First, an early photo from men magazine, Atkins looking very twinkish:

(#2)

Then the visual presentation in #1, with shorter hair and only a small flash of blond. And then the short- and dark-haired Atkins in the Michael Lucas Raunch film Ride it Wet (2012), a watersports  feature:

(#3)

Here Atkins is in his pisspig costume for the role: PigSkin briefs in piss-coded yellow. The TLAGay blurb, which I include here because I think it’s hyperbolically hilarious (bring on the horse-hung hot tops!):

There’s no shortage of hot and horny guys with hungry asses [piling on the H] ready to take cock and Ride It Wet from some of Lucas Raunch’s filthiest hung tops. Cuban pornstar Damien Crosse drenches muscle bottom Felix Barca in piss before fucking him in the shower. Raunchy top Edji Da Silva degrades Rio Montenegro with wads of spit and puddles of urine. Preston Steel fucks tight bottom-boy Trent Atkins on a piss-soaked sofa. Kyle King uses Tate Ryder’s mouth as a urinal. And hardcore pornstar Drew Cutler fucks Adam Herst through a gloryhole before soaking him to the bone. [The verb drench and the idiom soak to the bone are clichës of the watersports genre.] All of these hot, dominant tops have no problem making their bottom boys Ride It Wet.

(I see no reason why fuckbottoms should also be pissbottoms, but in this feature the two roles are rigidly aligned, possibly because some men, maybe even Michael Lucas himself (who’s both a fucktop and a pisstop, think that both roles are humiliating. But an uberbottom like Atkins doesn’t psychologically configure getting fucked as humiliating: for such a man, it’s an exhilarating sharing of masculinity in which he absorbs masculinity from his top (via the top’s cock in his body) and simultaneously flaunts his masculine toughness.)

[Later interpolation, spurred by comments from friends. I’m not disparaging humiliation (not to mention submission and pain and even disgust) as sexually powerful — I’ve posted several times on these pleasures for many men and written on them as streaks in my own sexual makeup — just denying that they seem to be the main things that are going on with Trent Atkins. About some other uberbottoms and ubercocksuckers I’m not so sure. Of course, the springs of tastes can be multiple and complex (as well as outside consciousness). To this end, I note that Atkins’s preference for partners in real life seems to be for bigger, more muscular, hairier, and more strongly masculine men — who want to serve as top and who are, of course, gay.]

Finally, his long-prevalent visual presentation, with light brown hair in a masculine buzzcut, here in The Velvet Mafia, Part 2 (Falcon, 2006):

(#4)

A bit into this scene, Atkins is supine, ankles in the air, getting Missionaried by his top, Brock Penn, when Penn slaps Atkins’s ass — and Atkins orders Penn to slap him more, and harder (and Penn does, reddening Atkins’s ass to the bottom’s satisfaction). An arresting moment: Atkins doesn’t have control of his body at all, but he’s still calling the shots.

Two interviews. There’s a brief video interview on Lucas Raunch, which you can view here, where you can see and hear the man. In his early 30s then, but still (to my eyes and ears, anyway) definitely cute as well as pleasantly gay.

Then a nice print interview from 2011, with Atkins doing shop talk: on G4P (gay for pay), on taking enormous things up his ass, and on dick size, among other things. Excerpts:

Interviewer: If there was one thing you would change about the business, what would it be?

Atkins: If I had my own company I wouldn’t use gay for pay models. I like working with guys who are into me, and I like to watch porn where you can see a definitive chemistry between two people.

… I honestly hate to work with so called gay for payers. They take forever, complain a lot, and tend to have more attitude than I care to deal with. I come to every job believing that nobody is better than anyone else. I don’t care who you think you are. We are all paid to do the same thing. If you can’t be professional, show up on time, and follow the rules then you shouldn’t be there.

Interviewer: Your on screen personae is a bottom who [personae are bottoms who OR persona is a bottom who] can handle any size of a dick. [any size of a dick is a notable csse of Exceptional Degree Modification (EDM), for which there is a Page on this blog] [Sorry, I can’t just suppress the linguist in me; but feel free to make bad jokes like “Sorry, Prof. Zwicky can’t come to the phone right now: he has a linguist in him and can’t get out of bed at the moment.”] Does that translate into your personal life? Have you ever been presented with a dick that was just too much?

Atkins: I never say too big. I’m flexible, so things seem to just slide right in. Ha! Ha! I think I was just born to bottom. [“born to bottom” – wonderful phrase, should be made into a song, or maybe a whole movie]

In my personal life though, I prefer ’em all sizes. Some of my best lovers have had smaller dicks. Sometimes when a guy has a huge dick, he thinks that’s all he needs to be a good fuck. Guys with small dicks know they are small, so they pay more attention to love making. That’s just my own personal experience though. I think huge dicks are fun to look at, and smack around, but [for getting fucked] I prefer anything from 5 to 8 inches.

Passed on by Mike McKinley, information about the NutSac company. They make man-bags, and this is their logo:

(#1)

From their website, with studied disingenuousness about the name (clutches his junk: What? A nutsack allusion? Not us!) :

Our Story: Founded by a couple of nuts 2009 in Corvallis Oregon, NutSac, LLC makes cool, well-designed, American-made bags.

NutSac got it’s start designing and manufacturing bags for disc golf. We’ve gained a reputation for producing high quality, American made bags and excellent customer support. We love our customers.

NutSac was named because the founders realized that you’d have to be a little bit nuts to manufacture in America and compete against cheap, Asian products. You’d also have to be a bit nuts to try to source American-made materials. And you’d have to be really nuts to trust that your customers will value your commitment to fair business practices and quality design.

(We’ve heard that some unscrupulous people make rude double-entendres on our name, but we disavow all such behavior.)

At NutSac we’re leading the man-bag revolution. Our bags will change your life. Give us one week, and we guarantee you’ll love carrying an efficient bag vs. stuffing your pockets.

Our first bags are the MBD (it’s a man-bag, dammit), the Satchel, and the Mag-Satch.

The 2nd edition of the MBD, on a couple of models:

(#2)

Don’t stuff your pockets, stuff yout Nutsac.

A follow-up to my 2/18/16 posting “Ben, advertising” about Curbwear model Ben (with four photos on him in briefs), a man I was much taken with, and it now turns out that he has quite a following, among people who praise him for his “male beauty”, citing his handsome face, gorgeous eyes, and hot body (sometimes also his cool hair, beautiful smile, or notable bulge). Since the photos in the earlier posting showed an unsmiling (but not challenging or threatening) Ben, after a little background I’ll give three photos of him smiling (and shirtless and looking athletic) and go on to analyze his male beauty and compare him to some other beautiful men, of several types.

Ben — Ben Riches (aka Ben Hunt) — is now officially The Face of Curbwear, under an exclusive contract with the company, which means that he appears all over their advertising . The company specializes in the sexy, the outrageous, and the decidedly gay-oriented, but unlike many firms with that profile their models are not presented in a stud-hustler persona; instead they are mostly amiable, fit and athletic, young men, with Ben Riches as the prototype.

Ben in three smiling photos, shirtless, looking athletic:

(#1)

Ben, not in briefs for a change, waving a trophy

(#2)

Featuring Ben’s smile and his upper body

(#3)

Ben flexing for the camera, showing his lean muscular body, and a serious bulge

(As far as I known, this is as close as Ben gets to nude photos or more overt penis display. He’s photographed apparently out and abroad in London in nothing but Curbwear briefs, but that’s as outrageous as he gets.)

Ben’s widow’s peak and neat beard frame a heart-shaped face (a shape usually taken to be feminine), and he has big, beautiful eyes (again, a feminine attribute), but the man has masculine hair, that beard, and a neat mustache, and his hair is dark rather than blond, so he’s decidedly masculine, and also not boyish (much less feminine): a beautiful man.

References to male beauty usually focus on beautiful male faces, and there are collections of facial photos. In these collections, the young Brad Pitt, especially smiling, is a famous beautiful man, and he also had a beautiful body and a strongly masculine physicality in motion. My 8/6/13 posting, “Seven Supermen and Brad Pitt”,  has a section on Pitt with two shirtless photos: #12 the beautiful boyish man from Thelma and Louise, #13 Pitt in training for Fight Club, bulking up, though still with a beautiful face. Then in a 2/29/16 posting, “Four mythic hunks”, we see Pitt hugely bulked up for the part of Achilles in the movie Troy, in three photos (#4-6, the third shirtless), into a much rougher presentation of himself, with a handsome face, but not a beautiful one.

For some people, Robert Redford as Sundance in the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is the model of facial male beauty. A close-up of him in this role:

(#4)

A beautiful face, and blond hair as well. His mustache serves as a masculine counterweight to the beauty of his face. Here’s Redford side-by-side with Paul Newman as Butch:

(#5)

Both very good-looking men with strongly masculine physical presences, but Newman is more on the rugged side, Redford more on the beautiful side.

A more recent actor often nominated as a model of male beauty is Robert Pattinson, who came to fame in the role of the vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight series of movies. My 4/3/13 posting “scruffilicious” has two maximally contrasting (though both lightly scruffy-faced) photos of Pattinson: darkly (bad-boy) beautiful in the seventh photo in that posting, broadly smiling beautiful in the eighth. Then Pattinson plays the central character in the movie Bel Ami:

(#6)

From Wikipedia:

Bel Ami is a 2012 drama film starring Robert Pattinson, Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci and Colm Meaney. The film is directed by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod and is based on the 1885 French novel of the same name by Guy de Maupassant.

Now several Bel Ami digressions,

the first on the expression bel ami, an Adj + N phrase, with the masc. N ami as head. The N ami (fem. counterpart: amie) translates most neutrally as ‘friend’, but depending on context it can refer to a buddy / mate, or to a boyfriend.

The masc. sg. Adj beau (fem. counterpart: belle) translates as ‘beautiful, handsome, good-looking, pretty (as in pretty boy)’ or in an extended  sense just ‘nice’;  beau has the variant bel before a vowel-initial N, hence bel ami rather than beau ami.

The combination bel ami is idiomatic, in that it doesn’t normally refer to good looks in a male friend, but instead to that friend’s niceness or to the closeness of the friendship. Typical neutral translations are ‘fine / nice / good / close friend’; or if the friendship is romantic or sexual, ‘boyfriend’ (usable by both women and gay men). Beyond that, the phrase can be used ironically or sarcastically, conveying something like ‘scoundrel’ — and indeed the usual translation of the novel’s name is The History of a Scoundrel.

bel ami ‘pretty boy’. Unlike the examples above (and the ones to follow after these digressions), there are styles of male beauty that  feature adolescents (or those who look like adolescents) sometimes referred to as pretty boys: smooth-faced, smooth-bodied, young-looking, with a boyish rather than rugged face (“weak” chin, large eyes), slim rather than muscular bodies, “soft” rather than “tough” presentation, attentive to grooming and men’s fashion, unaggressive, playful. This is pretty much the Twink Package, but real-life twinks are in fact very variable, and a fair number of them have beautiful, rather than pretty, male faces, while pretty boys are, well, pretty.

A Korean pretty boy from a tv series:

(#7)

More Bel Ami! From Wikipedia:

Bel Ami …, also known as Pretty Boy, and Pretty Man, is a South Korean romantic comedy television series starring Jang Keun-suk, IU, Lee Jang-woo and Han Chae-young. Based on the same-titled 17-volume manhwa [Korean comic, and cartoon, also animated cartoon] by Chon Kye-young, it aired on KBS2 from November 20, 2013 to January 9, 2014 … for 16 episodes …. Dokgo Ma-te (Jang Keun-suk) is a pretty boy.

(Korean names get variously represented in English spelling; Jang Keun-suk also appears as Jong Geun Suk, though both versions have the family name first.)

Still more Bel Ami, this time for gay porn slanted towards the twinkish. From Wikipedia:

BelAmi is a gay pornographic film studio with offices in Bratislava, Prague and Budapest. It was established in 1993 by filmmaker George Duroy, a Slovak native who took his pseudonym from the protagonist Georges Duroy in Guy de Maupassant’s novel Bel Ami.

The intention in the name of the studio seems to have been to play on beau/bel referring to male beauty — the studio specializes in beautiful young men, who are framed as being considerably younger than they actually are — and on bel ami ‘boyfriend’ (the characters are presented as being each other’s boyfriends, who can then be fantasized by gay male viewers as being theirs). From a 4/28/11: AZBlogX posting “Lukas and Johan (and Chance)”:

Bel Ami is the world of Gayboys’ Dreamtime — of adolescent companionship, buddy-play, and incandescent horniness. This world is especially well portrayed in An American in Prague, a big Bel Ami hit whose main story line has an American hunk, Chance, visiting Johan [Paulik] in Prague while getting ready to do a porn shoot there and being taken on a four-day tour of gay-sexual Prague. Their scenes together are full of adolescent horseplay as well as hot sex. (A bonus disc has an assortment of backstage scenes, including a delightful one of the two stars goofing off in bed, with a lot of playful talk about their dicks; King Missile’s “Detachable Penis” figures prominently.)

On Johan Paulik, who was the studio’s first big star and (under this name) in some sense the embodiment of the studio’s ideal, from Wikipedia:

Johan Paulik (born [Daniel Ferenčík] 14 March 1975) is the stage name of a Slovak former gay pornographic model. In 2000, he was inducted into the GayVN Hall of Fame with Lukas Ridgeston and George Duroy, owner of Bel Ami, the studio Paulik worked for his entire career. In 2002, Paulik became general manager for Bel Ami in Europe.

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Yet another beautiful man, not really a pretty boy, but certainly more twinkish than his acting colleague and near-contemporary Lukas Ridgeston, seen here in an early photo:

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A strikingly beautiful man, closer to muscle boy than classic twink (and he became more muscular as he aged).

Almost all the Bel Ami actors are straightforwardly G4P (gay for pay). This is the case for the actor who plays Johan, despite his having spent virtually all of his working life in the gay porn business (as actor, director, and now business manager). The actir who plays Lukas, exceptionally, is cagey about identifiying his sexuality.

In any event, the Bel Ami films are chock full of boyish playfulness. I recently watched Mating Season (Bel Ami, 2006), featuring a crew of boys on bikes in the Slovakian countrside, with lots of adolescent horsing around, but also with an appetite for tons of enthusiastic mansex.

Four more beautiful men. Now, out of the world of bel ami and back to male beauty in mainstream actors. Some time ago I had the opportunity to consult two authorities on this world: two teenage girls. My deep thanks to Maggie and Opal, who pretty quickly nominated four men, starting with one who seems to have some fame as a man with a perfect beautiful face, Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester in the tv show Supernatural). In my 8/20/13 posting “Five television hunks”, you can see Ackles in #5; Jared Padalecki (playing his brother Sam Winchester) in #4; and the two paired in #7, where you can compare their faces. My consultabts say that Padalecki is really cute, but Ackles is beautiful.

Next up: Johnny Depp, seen here in a head shot:

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Depp was a teen idol in the tv show 21 Jump Street and then a great commercial success in the Pirates of the Carbibbean movies, while taking on a very wide range of other roles.

Then Orlando Bloom in a head shot:

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Bloom is most famous as the elf Legolas in the Lord of the Ring trilogy of movies.

Finally, actor and fashion model Richard Grieco, shown here as a beautiful bad boy in 21 Jump Street:

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Coming by accident almost at the same time, an opera singer who’s a remarkable muscle-hunk (from Larry Schourup) and a ballet dancer with an equally notable male dancer’s physique (from Mike McKinley). Barihunk Craig Verm and ABT principal Marcelo Gomes.

Craig Verm. An extreme barihunk (a baritone who’s a hunk; see my 7/26/13 posting on the concept). Verm has remarkable pecs and abs, and truly astounding muscular arms, both well beyond the requirements of any operatic role I know of. Here he is as Adonis in John Blow’s Venus and Adonis:

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And a thumbnail with a front view of him in this role

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And a show of his arms, with the man in his Barihunk t-shirt (yes, there’s a website):

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I tried to find a good clip of him singing, but to no avail. What I found had him in ensemble  singing or in clips that were mostly interviews or commentaries.

A remarkable feature of his singing is the very wide range of roles he takes on, including many in contemporary operas (and contemporary oratorios, cantatas, and songs).

Marcelo Gomes. Verm has a muscleman’s physique. Dancer Gomes is astonishingly muscular in a few ways, but otherwise he has a dancer’s lean body (and an amazing, striking face). The photo Mike McK. sent to me was this one:

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Really nice lines. And very strong arms and legs.

Now some information on Gomes, from Wikipedia:

Marcelo Gomes (born September 26, 1979) is a Brazilian ballet dancer currently performing with the American Ballet Theatre.

Born in Manaus and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Gomes began his dance studies at the Helena Lobato and Dalal Achcar Ballet Schools. At the age of 13 he left Brazil to attend the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton, Florida, and at 16 he studied for one year at the Paris Opera Ballet school. He also studied at the schools of the Houston Ballet, Boston Ballet, and Cuballet. …

Gomes first joined the American Ballet Theatre in 1997 as a member of the corps de ballet. He was promoted to soloist in 2000 and to principal dancer in 2002.

Now two photographs (by Nikolay Krusser) of the darker Gomes dancing with the lighter Denis Matvienko (of the Mariinsky Ballet), on a “Kings of Dance” tour. One highlighting his arms and his face:

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And one highlighting his beautiful buttocks:

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… but then he’s not Irish, but English.

(Note: mostly about men’s bodies and gay porn. Not in plain street talk, but still you might want to exercise your judgment.)

Below the fold, an ad from the gay porn studio Channel 1 Releasing, with an image of gay pornstar Harley Everett under the header

I’m not Irish! But you can still GET LUCKY.

(by taking advantage of sale items and getting off to them).

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Beautiful body (of which he is very proud) and amazing tats. A front view, in jeans:

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(Butch Dixon is the name of a porn studio.)

This is a Really Big Man. Broad shoulders, astounding pecs and enormous arm muscles. He’s 6′3″ and 215 lbs., with a thick 8.5″ uncut dick. He’s English, frankly and openly gay, with a long-time partner he was engaged in 2013 to marry (in England) . He and his partner (not a porn actor, but apparently fully supportive of Everett’s career) are both maniacs for muscle development, working out intensively together five times a week. He’s been doing gay porn since about 2010, he’s anally versatile, and he’s passionately into BDSM, leather, and fetishes. (His first scene in gay porn was a heavy watersports encounter.)

The pec tattoo says “Fortaleza y honor”, Spanish for the phrase in Proverbs 31:25 most often translated in English as “Strength and dignity”, but sometimes “Strength and hono(u)r”.

(Not much about language. Mostly about actors and the male body, focused on Chris Hemsworth.)

Caught last night, a Saturday Night Live re-run of the December 15th show (season 41, episode 8), with actor Chris Hemsworth as host, sometimes being charming, also doing a long bit as an aggressive practical joker (exposing the malicious display of dominance in much practical joking, which is not just playful “kidding around”); in a skit with a bunch of men hired as male strippers who instead do a Broadway show-tune revue, inciting the fury of the women who had come to see their ding-dongs (nice inventive euphemism); in another skit masquerading as a woman singing the praises of CH as Thor; and more. So: surely not by accident, a lot of material putting a spotlight on masculinity, gender displays, and gender politics.

(Yes, I’ll get to CH wielding his phallic hammer as Thor, and of course to a shirtless shot of a carefully developed, muscular CH.)

As one of the incompetent strippers:

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And in drag:

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(A wonderful smile, very often on display.)

Overview from Wikipedia:

Chris Hemsworth (born 11 August 1983) is an Australian actor. He is best known for his roles as Kim Hyde in the Australian TV series Home and Away (2004) and as Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Thor (2011), The Avengers (2012), Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). He has also appeared in the science fiction action film Star Trek (2009), the thriller adventure A Perfect Getaway (2009), the horror comedy The Cabin in the Woods (2012), the dark fantasy action film Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), the war film Red Dawn (2012) and the biographical sports drama film Rush (2013).

CH is an energetic, highly physical, high-testosterone actor, and the parts he’s played, though varied in some ways, almost all align with his tastes in presentations of self.

Hemsworth was born in Melbourne, to Leonie, an English teacher, and Craig Hemsworth, a social-services counsellor. He was raised both in Melbourne and in the Australian Outback in Bulman, Northern Territory. He has stated, “My earliest memories were on the cattle stations up in the Outback, and then we moved back to Melbourne and then back out there and then back again. Certainly most of my childhood was in Melbourne but probably my most vivid memories were up there in Bulman with crocodiles and buffalo. Very different walks of life.” He attended high school at Heathmont College before his family again returned to the Northern Territory, and then moved a few years later to Phillip Island. He is the middle of three boys; his brothers Luke (older) and Liam (younger) are also actors. [Luke born in 1980, Chris in 1985, Liam in 1990]

Now the big payoff, from a bodybuilding site on 12/1/15, in “Race God To Norse God: Chris Hemsworth Thor Two Workout”:

Chris shaped up to play Thor for the blockbuster “The Avengers,” then slimmed down to become British Formula-1 world champion driver James Hunt for “Rush.” Immediately afterward, he bulked right back up again to don the red cape and wield the mighty hammer of his alter ego for “Thor: The Dark World.”

He put on 30 pounds of muscle for The Avengers, to get the look that fans expect in a superhero,  then thinned down for a very different part, then muscled up again for the next Thor film. Nature gave him broad shoulders and relatively narrow hips, but all the rest is hard work.

The bulkings-up put him on a fierce unforgiving diet and work-out regimen that became the topic of endless net discussion, directed at men who would like to look like CH in Thor mode.

In Thor mode, clothed:

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and shirtless. in training:

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(Little about language, mostly about one actor and his body. Shirtless photos, but nothing racier than that.)

It started with a Facebook posting about the new comedy film Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, with this very brief plot line, from Wikipedia:

After meeting Joe Manganiello, Pee-wee Herman leaves his hometown of Fairville and goes on the first vacation of his life to reach New York to celebrate Joe’s birthday party, before getting caught up in wacky hijinks and trouble across the country.

The movie pairs the big (6′ 5″ tall), famously muscular, and intensely masculine actor Joe Manganiello, as himself, with Paul Reubens (at 5′ 10″, and slim, even weedy) in his flamboyantly childlike character Pee-wee Herman, who becomes infatuated with the electrically attractive Manganiello at their first meeting:

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Los Angeles Times reviewer Rebecca Keegan, in a mixed notice, nevertheless praised “an adorably self-aware Joe Manganiello as the object of Pee-wee’s man-crush”.

JM has been through a series of roles in which he enthusiastically displays his body for the admiration of some of his audience (especially straight men, who would like to look like him and project his strength and easy assurance) and for objectification by much of his audience (women and gay men). He’s immensely proud of his body (achieved through considerable hard work) and revels in his viewers’ attentions — but all with self-aware good humor. A very entertaining presentation of himself.

As the title of this posting puts it, we get

Manganiello. The Huge. The body-proud.

— in an echo of:

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A characteristic photo, from his True Blood period (2010-14):

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On JM, from Wikipedia:

Joseph Michael “Joe” Manganiello (… born December 28, 1976) is an American actor, director, producer, and author. He played Flash Thompson [Spider-Man’s nemesis] in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and had various recurring roles in television … before landing his breakout role as werewolf Alcide Herveaux on the HBO television series True Blood.

… True Blood was his favorite television show before he joined the cast. He had originally auditioned to play Coot, another werewolf in the series, but was asked to read for Alcide instead. He grew a beard and trained for five months to add muscle for the role, as author Charlaine Harris had described Alcide as having “arms the size of boulders”. He also got a suntan to set himself apart from the other characters on the series and spent time studying live wolves.

[Note on the Wikipedia article, most of which must have been written by JM himself or someone very close to him. It goes through his life, event by event, listing virtually every part he played, going back to his school days. It cries out for an editor.]

In True Blood, he regularly strips off his shirt, and sometimes his pants as well. In this role most of his body is shaved smooth, presumably to be attractive to female admirers, especially young ones, many of whom are put off by furry (or frankly hairy) male bodies. But he’s also been photographed in shots clearly meant to arouse gay male viewers, as here:

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JM in a classic white jockstrap, a potent masculinity symbol for many gay men; with his nicely furry body unshaven (or maybe just trimmed some); and with a bit of nipple play with his left hand.

On to Magic Mike XXL (2015), for which he bulked up a little more to play male stripper Big Dick Ritchie. On the cover of Details magazine (now defunct):

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(On the movie, on this blog, a 7/2/15 posting “Pecs, abs, and dancing”.)

And at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards, in his fireman stripper gear:

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And then on to adventures with Pee-wee.

Bonus: Manganiello’s book:

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The photo on the cover is not, so far as I know, of Manganiello himself (though it has his face); he is bulked up, yes, but he has nowhere near the extreme bodybuilder physique in the photo. But I could be wrong.

Following on my posting earlier today on “Dubious commercial names” (about Hand Job Nails & Spa on Castro St. in San Fracisco, whose name might be dubious but was transparently intended as a winking double entendre), two Facebook comments with other commercial names that are sexually suggestive:

from Mike McKinley: I have a niece who does “Brazilans.” I told her she should open a salon and call it “The Muff Dive.”

from Christopher Walker: Years ago I clipped a brief item from the newspaper that the Secretary of State in Illinois had refused incorporation papers to a prospective business to be called the Eat It Raw Discotheque

And then back to three earlier postings on this blog with dubious commercial names, ranging from the flagrantly transgressive to the winkingly suggestive to the possibly innocent in intent.

Brazilians. We start with the notion of the Bikini wax (let me just say OUCH OUCH here). From Wikipedia:

Bikini waxing is the epilation of a woman’s pubic hair in and around the pubic region by the use of wax. While the practice is mainly associated with women, men remove pubic hair at times. A bikini line delineates the part of a woman’s pubic area which would normally be covered by the bottom part of a swimsuit. It generally refers to any pubic hair visible beyond the boundaries of a swimsuit.

With certain styles of women’s swimwear, pubic hair may become visible around the crotch area of a swimsuit. Visible pubic hair is widely culturally disapproved and considered embarrassing, and so is at times removed. However, some people also remove pubic hair that is not exposed, for aesthetic, personal hygiene, cultural, fashion or other reasons.

American waxing is the removal of only the pubic hair that is exposed by a swimsuit, depending on the style of the swimsuit.

French waxing leaves a vertical strip in front (sometimes called a landing strip or a Playboy strip), two to three finger-widths long just above the vulva, and 4 cm (1 1⁄2 in) wide.

Brazilian waxing is the removal of all hair in the pelvic area, front and back, while sometimes leaving a thin strip of hair on the mons pubis

So Mike McK. suggests the name The Muff Dive for a salon specializing in Brazilians (that is, Brazilian bikini waxes). On the one hand, there’s the sexual slang  muff diving ‘cunnilingus’. On the other hand, there’s the non-sexual slang dive ‘disreputable nightclub or bar’.

Eat It Raw. Maybe it didn’t fly in Illinois, but it soars in Florida:

Here we have the snowclonelet composite raw bar, a place that serves a selection of plates of raw, rather than cooked, food (especially bivalves: oysters, clams, mussels, scallops).

[Digression: snowclonelets of the form X bar are covered in a 10/18/14 posting, which lists a number of subtypes; raw bar fits into type d, characterized by the type of food served (usually not involving the serving of alcohol): sushi bar, tapas bar, snack bar.]

That gives us literal eat it raw (eat food that is raw rather than cooked). But then there’s the sexual slang eat me ‘fellate me, suck my dick’; eat it ‘peform fellatio, suck dick’ — which can be amplified, made even cruder, with raw used as an adverbial. Which is what the Illinois officials rose up against it.

Earlier history on this blog

from 12/6/10, “Possibly unfortunate names”:  three possibly unfortunate names: Plumed Serpent for a gay bar; Pink Taco for a restaurant; and Tube Steak for a hot-dog stand

from 12/7/10, “More notable business names”: Fat Cock Coffee in Austin TX … and Pussy Cafe in Chile (… (my informant:) “The Americans called it Café Coño”)

from 9/14/12, “Another notable business name”: Glory Hole Doughnuts in Toronto

Today’s Dilbert has the pointy-headed boss talking to Dilbert about listening to his gut instincts:

The covert punch line is prefigured in the first panel, with the word analysis. Then in the third panel, Dilbert (recognizing that his boss’s gut instinct can’t literally be telling him anything, since it can’t literally speak) slyly suggests, via his question, that his boss’s gut is figuratively speaking through an orifice closer than his mouth, namely his anus — that is, that the boss is, as we say in vulgar slang, talking out of his ass.

The vulgar slang talk out of one’s ass has two related senses, both referring to non-veracious speech short of outright lying or dissembling, roughly ‘say foolish things, talk nonsense’ and ‘exaggerate one’s achievements or knowledge of a subject; bluff, boast’ — both akin to the verb bullshit (also with anal associations).

(Vanishingly little of linguistic interest.)

It started with this photo of a male model cavorting in a bunny suit, posted on Facebook by Michael Palmer for the Easter holiday:

(#1)

David Preston then identified the model as Casey L., a professional name for Casey Levens, from the MC2 Model Management lookbook for Miami; the shot is from a “Rabbit in a Hat” series shot by Scott Teitler for JÓN Magazine (“a specialist mens title based in London, UK”, according to its website).

David also supplied a steamy shot of Casey L. lookin’ lean, photo by Steve Burton:

(#2)

More from “Rabbit in a Hat”: Casey L. grinning in the whole suit (#3); wielding the head and displaying his body (#4); in a front shot, mostly out of his costume (#5) — and then in a big bunny hop viewed from the rear, #1 above.

(#3)

(#4)

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Happy Easter from fertility symbol Casey L.!

(On sexual vocabulary and its uses, but not in street language.)

Back a few days, in my sexy-playful posting “Magnitude boys” (underwear with captions), the Rocky character calls out (to two other men), “Move over boys, Daddy needs nookie!” What he wants is sexual intercourse, but he’s saying this playfully. He could have used much earthier and more direct phrasing (and he could also have been more specific about what role he wanted to take in intercourse), but he chose instead to use the lighthearted, even sweet, word nookie (variant spellings nooky, nookey, nookee).

Three things about the word: its range of meanings (narrowly focused on sexual matters); its etymology (disputed and unclear, but culturally fascinating); and its penumbra of associations, which makes it sound “cute”, so much so that it can be used (albeit still with sexual overtones) in the name of an Australian brand of clothing for hip young women, Nookie Nation (with its cheeky mascot, the Nookie Girl).

One: meanings. The very condensed version, from OED3 (Dec. 2003):

Orig. uncertain.  slang (orig. U.S.).  1. A woman considered as a sexual object. Usu. considered offensive. [1928 on]. 2. Sexual intercourse. [1930 on]

These two senses appear at virtually the same time, and in fact Green’s Dictionary of Slang dates them both back to 1928, but with a suggestion that the ‘sexual intercourse’ sense might be considerably older. In any case, the two senses are closely tied: the sexual act and (in conventional heterosexual usage) the person in the patient (rather than agent) role in that act, treated as defined entirely by performing that role.

The expansion of this account in Green:

1 (orig. US) sexual intercourse [first regular cite 1928]

2 (orig. US) (also piece of nookie) a woman seen as no more than an object of possible seduction [first cite 1928]

3 (orig. US) the vagina [first cite 1968]

4 (US gay) the anus [the only cite is from The Queens’ Vernacular (1972) by the pseudonymous “Bruce Rodgers”]

Though senses 1-3 are marked as originally U.S., they have clearly spread throughout the English-speaking world.

Sense 3 is a metonymy, but with an extension from whole (the entire woman) to part (her vagina), the opposite direction from the most usual extension in these matters, seen in (for example) the development of cunt, from part (the vagina) to whole (a woman considered as a sexual object, a woman viewed derisively or as worthless).

Sense 4 is a very common metaphorical extension of sexual vocabulary — from applying to women to applying to gay men, in this case with the anus seen as the counterpart of the vagina.

Two: etymology. The OED leaves things at “uncertain”, but Green is willing to speculate, listing two main possibilities —

? nug v. or Du. sl. neuken, to fuck

— but adding (for its sense 1) a possible precedent in a 1868 quote with “John Nugi” or “Johnnie Nookee”, deriving this from Japanese carnal practices with women.

For nug, Green has:

[dial. nog, to jog with the elbow, to strike [from Latin]] to fondle, to indulge in sexual foreplay, to have sexual intercourse. [first cite c1505]

To these, the Wikipedia summary of uses for nookie adds (alas, without citing any source):

British Army slang for vagina, from Arabic niki

The British Army slang is entirely plausible, but the Arabic etymology is almost surely spurious; it was probably inserted by a Wikipedia writer who had come across an Arabic word transliterated as niki or nikki that also had a sexual meaning (perhaps ‘fuck’). But /nUki/ is only somewhat similar phonetically to the Arabic word, and accidental similarities between words in different languages are surprisingly common.

All of these etymological speculations lack a trail of citations in their sociocultural contexts that would make them plausible. Etymology is hard, requiring a broad knowledge of texts and a broad cultural background needed to understand those texts in their social setttings, and such knowledge is notoriously hard to come by for slang vocabulary. Latin, Dutch, Japanese, Arabic, whatever — no one has yet come even close to nailing down an actual history for nookie; apparently we know virtually nothing about its history before 1928.

Some cultural history. Once in the language as slang, nookie has been put to all sorts of cultural work. The Wikipedia summary piece gives a number of these uses:

Two straightforwardly sexual uses in songs:

“Nookie”, a 1999 song by Limp Bizkit

“Nookie”, a 2004 song by Jacki-O, also known as “Pussy (Real Good)”

Plus, in another song:

“Nookie Wood,” a song by John Cale from his 2012 album, Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood; the reference seems to be to the noun nook, especially as a place of seclusion or safety.

NOAD2: a corner or recess, especially one offering seclusion or security: the nook beside the fire. ORIGIN Middle English (denoting a corner or fragment): of unknown origin

Also, further afield:

Nookie Bear, a puppet handled by British ventriloquist Roger De Courcey

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Roger De Courcey (born 10 December 1944 in London, England) is a British ventriloquist, best known for performing with Nookie Bear. (Wikipedia link)

And the Nittany [National Penn] Bank Nookie Monster, mascot of the minor-league baseball team State College Spikes (in State College PA):

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(The Nookie Monster  in #2 is clearly based on the Muppet Cookie Monster; the origins of De Courcey’s Nookie Bear are less clear to me.)

So much for items cited by Wikipedia. Now we go to Australia, noting first that nookie ‘sexual activity, intercourse’ appears in the Australian Slang Dictionary on-line; the word found its way to Oz a while ago, and it still has its sexual tinge, but now it’s “cute” and kicky. First, the Café Nookie, whose on-line ad says, somewhat racily:

NOOKIE: GET SOME. 268 Cleveland St, Surry Hills NSW 2010 Australia. We’re a shoebox-sized, hole-in-the-wall café that does it better than others more than twice our size! We serve insanely great coffee, cakes, sandwiches and pastries. Attitude at no extra charge.

And then there’s Nookie Nation:

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Their head office is at 16-22 Dick St. (they seem to be proud of this address), Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia. From their site:

Cheeky, wearable and effortlessly cool, the Nookie brand reflects the kind of wanderlust girl you want to be. Bright prints, structural designs and flattering forms enhance the Nookie girl’s natural beauty and style charisma.

Once you live the Nookie lifestyle, there’s no turning back. It means long summer nights, laughing and dancing until your sides hurt, looking and feeling good, and living life in the moment.

Born out of a desire for a head turning yet effortlessly sexy clothing label that could go from beach to bar and back again, Nookie is the creative result of Australian Fashion Designer Nikita Sernack who created the label in 2005. Nikita’s strong direction and understanding of the Nookie girl – thanks to being the ultimate one herself – has seen the brand go from strength-to-strength and hit highs such as showing at multiple Australian Fashion Weeks, being worn by aspirational local and international celebrities and models as well as the creation of super popular swim label, Nookie Beach.

You could be a Nookie girl on Nookie Beach!

Three: the cloud of associations. A variety of elements contribute to the “feel” of the word nookie, prime amongst them the hypocoristic suffix /i/. From Michael Quinion’s affixes site:

–y² Also –ie and –ee. Forming affectionate or pet names, or nouns that imply smallness. [Scots –ie, used in names but of uncertain origin, taken over in Middle English.]

The ending appears in affectionate versions of people’s names (Johnny, Sandy, Tommy), in names for objects or people associated with childhood (dolly, kitty, tummy), in familiar terms of address (ducky, sonny, lovey), or affectionate names for objects (hanky, telly for television in British usage).

The –ie and –y [spellings] exist in parallel in modern English and it is often a matter of taste which is used. As both endings have plurals in –ies (frillies, kiddies, sweeties) there is a tendency for the –ie ending to be taken as the usual singular form, especially in newer creations (Brummie, a person from Birmingham, druggie, a drug-taker, veggie, a vegetarian [or a vegetable]). However, some older words usually take –y: baby, daddy, granny, mummy. Reflecting its Scots origin, certain words associated with Scotland usually take the –ie ending: beastie, laddie, lassie, caddie (in the golfing term; caddy when it is a container of tea).

Common (rather than proper) nouns in /i/ rhyming with nookie: bookie, cookie, hookey, rookie. Except for bookie, not a bad neighborhood to be in.

And then nookie is phonetically very similar — differing only in the feature of voicing — to the very American noun of childhood noogie. From NOAD2:

Amer. informal a hard poke or grind with the knuckles, especially on a person’s head. ORIGIN 1970s: perhaps a diminutive of knuckle.

And finally, there’s the connection to the noun nook (as above), with its vaginal associations and simultaneously its connotations of safety and security.

All of this makes nookie “feel” sweetly racy or racily sweet, in a way that just doesn’t work for cunt (for ‘vagina’) or fuck(ing) (for ‘sexual intercourse’). I mean: cookies, playing hookey, book nooks, kiddies, duckies, etc. So Nookie Monster merely suggests Cookie Monster (with maybe a bit of sexual play), and not a vagina dentata.

(Acting and a fine shirtless man.)

Re-run today of a Castle episode — S3 Ep12 “Poof! You’re Dead” from 1/10/11 — prominently featuring supporting actor Jon Huertas, playing homicide detective Javier Esposito on Capt. Kate Beckett’s team. The show is an ensemble cop drama with plenty of comic and romantic touches, well directed and well acted.

The Esposito character is both solid and amiable, with lots of interaction between him and homicide detective Kevin Ryan, played by Seamus Dever. Dever and Huertas:

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But in the “Poof!” episode, we see the character Esposito’s romance with Dr. Lanie Parish, a medical examiner and a friend of Beckett’s (played by Tamala Jones), including a really steamy bedroom scene (with carefully composed nudity in a darkened room) in which we get a nice shirtless sequence of Huertas, incuding this shot:

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He’s solidly built and really fit, but with a “natural” look rather than a gym-rat, killer-abs look. In combination with his handsome face, the persona he projects in his Esposito character, and his easy, unflashy acting skills, that makes Huertas a really attractive guy in my book.

From Wikipedia:

Jon Huertas is an American actor of Puerto Rican descent. He is best known for his role as Sergeant Antonio ‘Poke’ Espera in HBO’s Generation Kill, Joe Negroni in the film Why Do Fools Fall in Love, and homicide detective Javier Esposito in Castle.

… Huertas, born Jon William Hofstedt [on October 23, 1969], enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1987 and served … as a pararescue jumper and nuclear weapons technician. He participated in Operation Just Cause [in Panama] and Operation Desert Storm.

From back in January, a story that got a lot of media coverage at the time, over this piece of metal sculpture Territorio by Edgardo Carmona in Fort Myers FL:

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(Not in Fort Myers, but elsewhere; the work has been displayed in a number of locations outside the U.S., sometimes with a flow of water from both figures.)

Yes, a dog and a man both relieving themselves, both marking their territories.

The Fort Myers installation was quite something, but within a few days the other 22 of Carmona’s “iron giants” had been overshadowed in the media by this one.

The poster for the installation:

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And the story of the unveiling (by Charles Runnells in the Fort Myers News-Press on January 6th):

The phone had been ringing all week at the Fort Myers mayor’s office. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know the same thing: What’s up with all those covered figures scattered around downtown Fort Myers?

On Thursday, the mystery finally got solved. And Mayor Randy Henderson was there to help unveil what’s been hiding under tarpaulins and plastic wrapping: A family of 23 iron giants created by Colombian sculptor Edgardo Carmona.

“In our wildest dreams, we couldn’t have anticipated something like this,” Henderson told a crowd of journalists, city employees and art officials Thursday morning, when the sculptures were revealed. “This is a world-class event: From the Eiffel Tower to the beautiful streets of Fort Myers.”

The larger-than-life, artfully rusted sculptures mark the first time Carmona has exhibited his art in North America. The show — a promotion for the planned luxury condo towers Allure — was organized through the city’s Public Art Committee and Allure’s staff (including developer Eduardo Caballero, Carmona’s childhood friend in Cartagena, Colombia).

But Territorio soon hogged most of the interest. A local TV news report (quickly carried by media outlets around North America and abroad):

(WBBH [NBC2 News for Southwest Florida]) One of the statues unveiled in downtown Fort Myers, Florida Thursday is causing quite a stir.

The metal sculpture appears to show a man, holding a beer, while he and his dog urinate on a pole. The graphic display has some people taking action by covering the man’s privates with a tarp, while others say it’s art. [Note: if it’s art, then exposing the privates is ok.]

There seems to have been no problem with the European installations.

(Unicorns are of course phallic symbols. But there’s more here.)

The first Facebook query came from Melinda Shore, who hoped I’d be able to identify the heavily muscled model in this campy purply-pink composition on Imgur:

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I had no idea, and tracking down any composition on a meme site is almost invariably hopeless, so the best I can do is pass this on to you.

Then came Season Von Hexe, offering up another mystery mani-corn-aganza, this time on a rainbow them:

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Also taken from life, but this time unposed, at some sort of public event. In this case a Google Images search served me well.

The mani-corn in #2 turns out to have been a big hit at the 2016 Coachella Festival (the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio CA), and this photo has made thr rounds on a great many sites. At least one of them identified the photographer as Frazer Harrison — but Harrison almost never identifies the people he photographs.

In any case, the guy in #2 is quite something to look at, and he sports rainbow (as well as a golden horn) with great aplomb.

The cartoonist Ed Fisher (who now has his own Page on this blog) is most closely identified with the New Yorker (which published over 700 of his cartoons), but he drew for other publications as well, including the British weekly Punch. William Cole’s 1969 anthology The Punch Line: Presenting Today’s Top Twenty-five Cartoon Artists from England’s Famous Humo(u)r Magazine has a section devoted to him, in fact. From this volume, three cartoons of linguistic interest.

Page 27: what the birds say, and maid:

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What the birds say (the top cartoon in #1). In order:

the albatross, from Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

the bald eagle, symbol of the U.S.

the dove of peace and the hawk of war

the owl, from Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat”

the swan, from Sibelius’s composition The Swan of Tuonela (Tuonela being the realm of the dead)

the rooster Chaunticleer (now Chanticleer) from Chaucer’s “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales

the hen Chicken Little (also known as Henny Penny) in the folktale

On maids (the bottom cartoon in #1). Robin Hood’s men are having a crude joke at Maid Marian’s expense, over the epithet maid. From NOAD2, the two archaic or literary senses relevant here:

a girl or young woman, especially an unmarried one

a virgin

(the ‘female domestic servant’ is a development from this). The crude jab in #1 rests on the fact that Maid Marian was no longer particularly young, but, more important, on the men’s assumption that she was no longer a virgin (in particular, they assume that Robin’s been doing her).

Maid goes back to Middle English, where it originated as a shortening of maiden, with the same two senses as above. Though this isn’t relevant to the cartoon, the metaphorical developments of maiden  from youth and inexperience (especially lack of sexual experience) to other senses of inexperience. From NOAD2:

being or involving the first attempt or act of its kind: the ship’s maiden voyage

denoting a horse that has never won a race, or a race intended for such horses

(of a tree or other fruiting plant) in its first year of growth

On to page 31 and this cartoon:

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Well, if you’re not a prude, you might name them with some term for ‘breasts, teats’ in your language: French mamelles, Spanish tetas, or something cruder. There’s even a technical term; from Wikipedia:

A breast-shaped hill is a mountain in the shape of a human breast. Some such hills are named “Pap”, a word for the breast or nipple. Such anthropomorphic geographic features are to be found in different places of the world and in some cultures they were revered as the attributes of the Mother Goddess, such as the Paps of Anu, named after Anu, an important female deity of pre-Christian Ireland.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. we have the Grand Tetons. From Wikipedia:

Grand Teton National Park is a United States National Park in northwestern Wyoming. At approximately 310,000 acres (480 sq mi; 130,000 ha; 1,300 km2), the park includes the major peaks of the 40-mile-long (64 km) Teton Range as well as most of the northern sections of the valley known as Jackson Hole. It is only 10 miles (16 km) south of Yellowstone National Park, to which it is connected by the National Park Service-managed John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway

… Grand Teton National Park is named for Grand Teton, the tallest mountain in the Teton Range. The naming of the mountains is attributed to early 19th-century French-speaking trappers — les trois tétons (the three teats) was later anglicized and shortened to Tetons.

Winter on Grand Teton at center with Mount Owen at right and Nez Perce at left:

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TThis morning’s name: something anatomical, I recognized, but what? From NOAD2:

zygoma (pl. zygomata) Anatomy   the bony arch of the cheek formed by connection of the zygomatic and temporal bones [aka zygomatic arch, cheekbone]. ORIGIN late 17th cent.: from Greek zugōma, from zugon ‘yoke[, join]’

Annoying of this dictionary not to give cheekbone — and not to connect cheekbone (for which it says merely “the bone beneath the eye”) to zygoma or zygomatic arch.

Wikipedia, under zygomatic arch, makes these connections, provides tons of anatomical details, and adds:

High cheekbones are pronounced zygomatic arches, causing the upper part of the cheeks to jut out and form a line cut into the sides of the face. High cheekbones, forming a symmetrical face shape, are very common in fashion models and are considered a beauty trait in both males and females.

Tons of sites of models and actresses with high cheekbones, but none of them identified, until I came across a site on “Models famous for their beauty quirks”, which provided  Carola Remer, “whose distinctive wide-set eyes and high cheekbones give her a beautiful extraterrestrial look”:

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Wikipedia tells us that German supermodel Remer was born on 10/4/91 and her catwalk debut in fall 2011, modeling for Ralph Lauren, Emilio Pucci, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Tom Ford. Here she is as the centerpiece in a spread for the firm Agent Provocateur:

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On the company, from Wikipedia:

Agent Provocateur is a British lingerie retailer founded in 1994 by Joseph Corré and Serena Rees] The company has 100 stores in 13 countries.

… The company is famous for its provocative videos. Its most recent addition sees Melissa George of Home & Away fame, English model Chloe Hayward and American beauty Elettra Wiedemann all star in the John Cameron Mitchell-directed campaign, which urges women to control their own destinies (while wearing luxury AP lingerie, of course).

As for named men with high cheekbones, they’re easy to find on the net. A favorite, Benedict Cumberbatch:

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Previous posting here on the actor from 2/27/15.