Following up on yesterday’s posting “No cigar”, on a Tom Chitty cartoon with phallic foodstuffs striving to become cigars, two items: You’re no Cigar (Lloyd Bentsen: You’re no Jack Kennedy) and Sometimes a cigar is a lot more than a cigar (apocryphal Sigmund Freud: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar).

You’re no Cigar. Photo, with my caption:

(#1)

Sir, I smoked with Señor Cigar. I knew Señor Cigar. Cigar was a friend of mine. Sir, you’re no Cigar.

Two things combined absurdly: Lloyd Bentsen on Jack Kennedy; and Stephen F. Dennstedt’s 2014 photo of Señor Cigar, shown here in a gallery:

(#2)

#1 is in fact a photo of Dennstedt, savoring one of his favorite Cubans.

Of #2, Dennstedt says on his Indochine Photography website:

I photographed Señor Cigar in Trinidad, Cuba, during my visit in April & May of 2014. He was a character, and deserves our help.

[Digression: Dennstedt on his career:

I’m an itinerant American expat traveling the world and taking my pictures. Before I got a life I was a commercial banker for thirty years, and a (very) young Marine Corps Sergeant in Vietnam. I’ve been snapping shutters for over sixty years, and finally turned professional in 2009 founding my company Indochine Photography. I left the USA in early 2012 to pursue my lifelong dream of photographing the world, and interacting with its diverse cultures. Shortly after arriving in Yucatan, Mexico, I spent a year as the staff photographer for The Yucatan Times newspaper, and also provided my photographic services to the Kaxil Kiuic Biocultural Reserve and Puuc Jaguar Conservation. Since I’ve been on the road I’ve adopted the philosophy of: Live Simple, Live Cheap, Live Free.

A high-masculinity guy who’s also an artist.]

On to the 1988 vice-presidential debates, between Senators Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen:

Quayle: I have far more experience than many others that sought the office of vice president of this country. I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency…

Bentsen: Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.

“You’no Jack Kennedy” quickly became a tag line conveying reproof to someone who thinks too highly of themselves. And that, finally, gets us to “Sir, you’re no Cigar”, with its alternative reading for no cigar.

Sometimes a cigar is a lot more than a cigar. The background is a quotation — in several versions, which eventually crystallized into the canonical Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar — widely attributed to Sigmund Freud, and intended to convey that cigars aren’t always phallic symbols. No one denies that cigars are sometimes phallic symbols, and the relationship is the source of jokes, like this adaptation of a classic Freud photo, with the man’s cigar swapped out for another phallic symbol, a hotdog:

(#3)

(It’s all in pink for the sake of a Pink Floyd / Pink Freud joke. See my 9/11/10 posting “Pink Freud”.)

To admit that a cigar isn’t always a phallic symbol is not, however, to maintain that cigars don’t have any symbolic values whatsoever. In fact, they are powerful symbols of masculinity (and masculine sociability and bonding) throughout European culture. There are cigar lounges, with a clientele largely (in some cases, exclusively) male; private cigar smoking groups (almost all, so far as I can see, men-only); and, of course, the social custom of all-male cigar smoking (and “masculine” conversation) after dinner.

But what, you ask, did Freud actually say? The Quote Investigator got on the case a while back; Garson O’Toole’s final report of 8/12/11 concluded, after a thorough scouring of the record, “Freud probably did not make this statement” (Garson frames his assessments very cautiously; on the basis of his evidence, I would have been much more dismissive).

Beyond its symbolic values of masculinity and masculine sociability, tobacco smoking — of any sort — also has powerful psychological value for some people. For some, it’s a sexual fetish, providing pleasure and arousal, known in clinical literature as smoking fetishism or capnolagnia.

[Digression on the term capnolagnia. First element Gk. capno– ‘smoke, vapor’ (also, in an extended use in technical contexts, ‘carbon dioxide’). Second element: Gk. –lagnia ‘morbid sexual arousal’ (as Michael Quinion’s affixes site glosses it), used primarily in technical terms in psychiatry — in (for example) urolagnia (urine, urination), algolagnia (pain), and coprolagnia (feces).]

Okay, you’ve got something that has the symbolic values of masculinity and male sociability and also possible sexual fetish values. What do you expect? Really heavy gay-male sexual-fetish value. And we get it: cigars are a significant element in the gay-male leather world. Just two images from a huge number:

(#4)

(#5)

#4 is from the Smokinghunks.com site, a gay-sex site about hunks smoking (cigars or cigarettes) — but also about hunks who are smokin’ ‘first-rate; OR sexually excited’ and about hunks who are smoking (sucking) cock. #5 has a cigar-smoking boy in full leathers; many of the guys in these images are older rough-daddy types or bears.

On the ambiguity of smoking in Smoking Hunks. First, as in tobacco smoking, from NOAD2:

inhale and exhale the smoke of tobacco or a drug

Second, a family of senses for the positive-evaluation and intensity adjective smoking, from Green’s Dictionary of Slang:

[orig, jazz use smoking, technically skilled] 1 first-rate, excellent [first cite 1964, in a jazz context] 2 (US campus) difficult, intense [first cite 1977] 3 (US black) very urgent, very excited, esp. in a sexual context [first cite 1970] 4 (US black) attractive, well-dressed, elegant [first cite 1989]

The guys in #4 and #5 are presented as smoking / smokin’ (but of different body types) in sense 1, and the guy in #4 is also smokin’ in sense 3.

Third, the third verb smoke in Green’s:

(play on n. pipe; note Fr. synon. faire une pipe) to perform fellatio (on) [1st cite 1966 in a collection of adult sex words and phrases] … G. Hasford, Short Timers 10: You queer for Private Cowboy’s gear? You smoke his pole? … [1993 quote] You want to smoke me?

Note that this verb smoke has essentially the syntax of suck ‘perform fellatio (on)’. In particular, its direct object denotes either a penis (Suck/Smoke my cock!) or a fellatee (Suck/Smoke me!).

In #4, the tobacco-smoking smokin’ dude is getting smoked. Smoke it, kid!

(Personal note: I am indescribably not into cigars, gay or otherwise. And I was so even pre-asthma (when I smoked cigarettes). In fact, the idea of performing masculinity over cigars has always chilled my soul.)

(About men’s bodies and man-man sex, in very plain talk, with only a little bit of linguistic interest — so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

What is this man so earnestly fixed on?:

A penis, which he’s about to fellate avidly. (The full picture, and some details, in #6 in the AZBlogX posting linked to below.)

On AZBlogX, an extended pictorial essay “Poised to prong, psyched to suck”, on the representation of fellators in publicity for gay porn. Here’s the text (without the thoroughly X-rated images), edited down somewhat to concentrate on the visual conventions in a corner of the gay porn world, but preserving the style of the original, which uses lots of street vernacular.

This is an essay on the representation of man-man sex in the publicity shots for gay porn — not in the porn itself, but in the stills used for publicity. These aren’t screen shots, but carefully posed photos designed to advertise the flicks themselves: buy this (or rent this or view it on demand, but pay for it), it’s **hot**!!! (As I’ve noted before, not infrequently these photos show things that never actually made it on screen.)

Visual gay porn is focussed, first of all, on dick; secondarily on asses: these two as sources of sexual pleasure. The overriding principle is Everything To the Max: really big — magnificently long and thick — cocks, in particular, accorded Maximum Visibility. The porn actors jack those cocks (their own or each other’s) off, suck them and get theirs sucked, fuck with them or get fucked by them, and all the while the cocks are the stars of the action, the top draw for the men using the videos for their own pleasure, so of course the films show as much of the stars as they can, for as long as they can. This drive for Maximum Visibility is much greater in still shots, of course.

In videos, a cock shown in all its splendor can be — will be, must be — engulfed, in part or in whole, in a mouth or asshole, but more of it will soon be back on view. On the other hand, in still shots, you have only the frozen moment; a photo of cock plunged to the hilt in ass or mouth shows no cock at all, and is therefore not even technically X-rated. In any case, many men find such shots unsatisfying (I find them quite moving, since they depict the deepest possible union between two bodies), so we get publicity shots in which cocks are shown in their entirety (poised to thrust into mouth or asshole) or almost so (with only the tip inserted). The latter approach, which I’ll call tipping, is a compromise between Maximum Visibility and another principle of visual porn, Carnal Connection, calling for actual physical engagement of two bodies. The other, less carnal, approach I’ll call gearing-up.

My impression is that tipping is by far the dominant approach in publicity shots. #1 on AZBlog shows a recent all-tipping mail ad from the C1R company for some Cocky Boys videos — which I was going to post anyway because of the remarkable athleticism (so wonderful to look at, so unlikely in real life) in the ad for Hung Flip Fuckers.

The real topic of the AZBlogX posting, however, is gearing-up, because it was featured so prominently in an issue of Adam Gay XXX Showcase (Vol. 8 No. 7, January 2001) I recently unearthed (from only 15 years ago, but in some ways an artifact from another world).

In tipping shots, the enthusiasm of the receptive (cock-taking) partner isn’t at issue; after all, the guy has the dick in his mouth or (partly) up his ass. But for gearing-up shots, things are not always so clear. For fuck shots, you’ve got the fucker poised to prong the hole, and the hole has usually arranged himself to convey his enthusiasm for the deed (humping up for doggie sex, for instance). In any case, all he really has to do is offer his asshole, make it available.

But for suck shots, you’ve mostly got the insertive partner doing the offering, and the prospective fellator showing, somehow, that he’s psyched to suck. I find these gearing-up for cocksucking shots almost always somewhat ridiculous, unintentionally funny. So many choices for the cockhound: how to position himself vis-a-vis the engorged treasure, what facial expression to display, what to do with his mouth (and tongue). The fellatee, meanwhile, can just stand (or sit or lie) there, offering his stiff rod, and his face can take on any expression appropriate for a guy engaged in having sex, of any kind (including solo jacking-off) — but the fellator is having a social encounter with a much-desired phallic partner. Hablale, to paraphrase Almodóvar.

The AZBlogX posting then surveys 10 Adam Gay images of such encounters, from three jack-off flicks released in 2000. Several are beautifully composed, several strike me as notably (unintentionally) funny, and one has an especially impressive implement, as I put it there. Some, of course, are artless or awkward. But they’ve all got dick.

(Male bodies and elaborate photographic fantasies, to inaugurate 2017, which is, by the way, a prime number.)

From my correspondent RJP, a link to the work of the Skiinmode studio (supplying Asian male muscle posed in complex fantasy scenes) on Tumblr. (The material is available on a number of sites, especially on Tumblr and Instagram.)

Men of several nationalities and body types (all with pleasing muscles and most in cocktease poses), in fanciful settings, sometimes appearing as complex imaginary creatures.

(The Asia of this material seems to start in Southeast Asia and go on east from there.)

Four examples, from a great many available on the web:

(#1)

(#2)

(#3)

(#4)

(About men kissing and how people interpret such acts. There will be references to man-on-man sexual acts, so you should be prepared to exercise some judgment.)

A kiss is not just a kiss; it’s almost always something else as well. Sticking to the topic of men kissing men, we’ve got MSMs (“men who have sex with men” — but identify as straight) who sometimes won’t kiss men; and then we’ve got people who are offended and disgusted just at the sight of same-sex kisses, especially between men, and lash out in various ways, from having them banned from public view to verbally abusing the kissers to physically attacking them. These two reactions spring from two different views of same-sex kissing: for MSMs, who want “just sex”, kissing can be problematic because it isn’t sex, it’s affection and love, and emotional intimacy is not what they’re in the market for; while for enraged objectors, same-sex kissing is a sex act, and doing it in public is having sex in public, which is offensive, simply unacceptable.

Then there are people like me, for whom images like this —

  (#1)

— are deeply satisfying, because we see the kiss as embodying both loving affection and sexual connection, while not being in itself a sex act. Two responses, together: “Awww, so sweet!” and “Wow, that’s hot!”

Three more kisses. The kiss in #1 (a David Vance shot of models Paul Francis and Levi Pouter) and the many other man-man kisses I’ve posted about over the years (there is now a”Men kissing” Page on this blog) are displays of affection and sexual connection, not social kisses, not merely conventional actions. Here are three more images: one more with “like attracts like” as in #1, where two similar men kiss; and then two with “opposites attract” (black man and white man kissing, older man and younger man kissing):

  (#2)

  (#3)

  (#4)

I don’t know the sources of #2 and #3, but #4 is a photo by Spanish artist Juan Hidalgo that was used by the Madrid-based Visible Culture LGBT group for its ‘Gay Arts Looks For A Home’ initiative in 2012. It was one of a number of images of same-sex kisses removed by Facebook in (roughly) 2010-12 on the grounds that the images portrayed sex acts (while similar kisses involving a man and a woman were not treated this way).

The song. The title of this posting quotes one line from the song “As Time Goes By”, treated in a 10/12/15 posting “You must remember this”:

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by
And when two lovers woo
They still say, “I love you”
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by

The song was made famous by the movie Casablanca and has since become the representative song of Warner Bros. and was also the title and theme song of the 1990s British romantic comedy series As Time Goes By.

The line “A kiss is just a kiss” was also used as the title of a 1971 British tv play, which might have had a gay theme, though that’s hard to judge from the cryptically minimal Wikipedia entry. In its entirety:

A Kiss is Just a Kiss is a 1971 British TV play written by Alec Coppel for ITV Playhouse.

Wealthy young lawyer Kit Shaeffer [David Hedison] visits his doctor [Dr. Alex Noon (Keir Dullea)] for a check up.

In the land of MSMs. From yesterday’s report on Danny Vox in the ultimate fantasy t-room (Mens Room Bakersfield Station), where he has enthusiastic receptive sex with a number of men:

[Danny Vox’s character] doesn’t get kissed — in fact, turns away from attempts to kiss him — until his very last moments in the t-room

… At the end of the Bakersfield flick, a man appears, takes DV’s arm and says, encouragingly, “Don’t panic”, bends forward, and kisses DV passionately; DV melts into him, while the music swells.

DV’s character is presented as a young man who is intrigued by mansex and only somewhat reluctantly (at the beginning) enters into sexual acts with other men, but he quickly warms to his role as a total dickslut, though he doesn’t identify as gay. Director Joe Gage frames DV’s character, like most of the other 12 men in the fantasy t-room, as an MSM, in this place just for sex (some of them wear wedding bands), As in real life, where many MSMs are entirely comfortable with kissing (in fact, enthusiastic about it as foreplay to “real sex” or as a sign of satisfaction after a sexual encounter — “thanks, buddy, that was fantastic!”) while others reject it as coming too close to emotional intimacy, so in the fantasy Bakersfield t-room: some of the t-room men kiss with abandon, especially at the beginning or end of sexual connections, while others avoid kissing. DV’s character is on a voyage on sexual self-discovery, moving from curiosity to identification as a t-room sex man (in fact, a sexually submissive one) and eventually to acceptance of himself as a gay man, seeking not only sexual but also emotional union with other men.

Insofar as I understand these things, in the real world, MSMs do gain emotional satisfactions from the mansex they engage in, but they’re not the satisfactions of loving intimacy. Instead, MSMs see themselves as celebrating their masculinity, boosting it even, by bonding sexually with other strongly masculine men. Discussing their sexual activities, they sometimes compare them to playing sports with a buddy: possibly on a team together, but also making each other better men by competing with each other. These attitudes make it entirely possibly for an MSM to be enthusiastic about getting fucked but repelled by the idea of getting kissed by another man.

Horror at PDAs. Public displays of same-sex affection — kissing, embacing, or just holding hands — can set off firestorms of negative reaction. Especially if they’re between men, especially if the observer is male.

At the low end of the scale, we get reactions like Facebook’s banning images of same-sex kisses on the grounds that they are depictions of sex. The background attitude here is that affection between women and men is simply normal, not rooted in sex in any way, and that affection between two men or two women is an abnormality, a deviation, a sickness, a sin, whatever, which manifests itself in the performance of certain sex acts. In this way of looking at the world, same-sex affection is all about sex, and consequently homosexuality is a private matter, which should never be brought into the public sphere.

For a long time now, queers have worked to re-shape these attitudes, to establish a parity and symmetry between gay and straight. For many younger, white, educated Americans, this program has largely succeeded, and you’ll find dialogues like this one between a young gay man and his straight buddy (dimly recalled from some tv program):

YGM: You get hard for pussy, I get hard for dick; we’re just wired different, that’s all.

SB: Yeah, no biggie. [They go on to talk about video games, or sports, or movies and tv, or music, or current events, or their problems getting dates, the way guys do.]

The point is that SB doesn’t think that hanging out with a gay guy will make people think that he’s gay (not that there would be anything wrong with that): gayness isn’t bad, it’s not, like, a communicable disease, it’s just a state of being, and, by the way, gay guys aren’t predatory, they’re not after your precious heterosexual dick (no matter how wonderful you think it is), and they’re not interested in fucking your precious heterosexual ass (no matter how handsome you think it is), so they’re not threatening.

But Oldthink persists in many corners, maintained in considerable part by the teachings of the homo-hostile churches (notably, the Roman Catholic Church, evangelical churches, and the Mormon Church), which tell their flocks that homosex is a sin, in a special sense of sin, which can be forgiven only through an act of renunciation and contrition on the part of the sinner. The churchly notion of sin, from NOAD2:

an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law

It’s the ‘transgression against divine law’ part that brings the homo-hostile churches into the matter, because they claim to know that homosex is an offense against God’s Law. But enlightened queers cut things off before they get to the divine law shit: we straightforwardly deny that homosex should be considered immoral, so we refuse to renounce our desires and practices, we are uncontrite, and we don’t accept the short-circuit in reasoning and imagination that gets so many people from a mere indexing of homosexuality immediately to raw homosex, especially to guys fucking guys. Of course, homosex in public is no more acceptable than heterosex in public (except in special spaces, like sex clubs and gay baths, carved out as, in effect, private for sexual purposes, even though the acts are visible to those in them), but none of the following is, we maintain, homosex in public:

announcing or presupposing that you’re queer

referring to a same-sex relationship of yours

displaying same-sex affection in public

displaying a symbol of queerness, a queer slogan, or a queer image (like the male kisses above)

or, even, publicly discussing homosex (as I do here on a regular basis, though with warnings to my readers)

(This list is not exhaustive.)

But there are plenty of people — some men are especially vocal on the subject — who see all of these things as homosex in public and have violent visceral reactions to them, ranging from assertions that these things make them want to puke, all the way up to murderous attacks on the sources. (The ghost of Dan White will, apparently, always be with us, as will the Levitical “abomination” text that calls for all of us fags to be stoned to death; I mean, it’s God’s Law, right?)

Changes in public attitudes have now evolved to the point where a lot of people seem to believe that unrepentant queers have a right to their lives and their same-sex relationships (up to and including marriage), but only if they keep everything in the closet, keep everything private, out of the sight and hearing of decent people, who would, only naturally, be offended and disgusted. I, of course, flagrantly and fiercely refuse.

Public displays of affection are a tricky business. Jacques and I behaved affectionately among friends and our families (including our parents), and in a few places we gauged to be both tolerant and safe. I’m pleased to hear (from staff) that the restaurant Reposado finds nothing noteworthy about same-sex couples holding hands or kissing, and the same was true of the restaurant Gordon Biersch (its successor, Dan Gordon’s, is a sports bar, so not a safe bet). But elsewhere and on the street, even in supposedly liberal and tolerant Palo Alto, Jacques and I were circumspect. Back in the bad old days, we were verbally harassed on the street for having a rainbow sticker on our car (and the car was defaced), I got death threats on the phone for being a fag, and acquaintainces were thrown out of places and beaten up on the street because of public displays of affection.

Hearteningly, all of that moderated. But now the winds of intolerance blow fresh and strong (for Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, women, and queers too). So I live in fear (and wonder whether I should be fleeing to Canada, but I’m an old man and tightly woven into my life in Palo Alto). Nevertheless, I’m doubling down on flagrant displays of queerness, everything from images of men kissing (which I totally adore — the images and the kissing both) up to images of cock-sucking and butt-fucking (which I also totally adore — again, the images and the acts both — and am happy to subject to extended analysis).

Now for something completely different: something that has to do neither with Valentine’s Day nor with sex / sexuality. Instead, a project portraying linguists, in photographs and texts, from an emotional, rather than academic, perspective. A project of Stephanie Shih at UC Merced (a Stanford PhD), who last appeared on this blog as the co-editor, with Vera Gribanova, of the volume The Morphosyntax-Phonology Interface.

Steph — from here on I’ll refer to her familiarly rather than formally —  is not only into linguistics (specifically computational linguistics and phonology) and cognitive science, but also food and music… and photography, all quite seriously.

Her description of the snapshot project:

A Snapshot of the Field: Linguistics: a work-in-progress collection of portraits and origin stories of academic linguists

In academia and particularly in highly theoretical fields, there is a concerted and idealistic effort to divorce knowledge from individual emotion and personality: scholars should remain disconnected from the subjects they study so as to maintain objective points of view, and the topics that are chosen for study should be driven purely by intellectual motivations. As much as this sort of emotional disconnect is championed, however, I believe that such a rigorous divide is humanly impossible. What we care about, how we care about it, who we are as individuals, and how we form our relationships with other scholars drive our academic fields and questions of study as much as the intellectual factors.

“A Snapshot of a Field” is a photographic portraiture project that seeks to create an audio-visual ethnography of the modern-day academic field of Linguistics by documenting the scholars that comprise the discipline. It is a common practice in academia to make appraisals of our fields from a scholarly point of view, asking what progress have we made on the main questions of linguistics and where does the field go from here. In this project, I aim to take stock of the field from an emotional point of view, archiving a slice of the discipline by making portraits of academic linguists, focusing on their individual personalities through portraiture. As a component of the portrait sessions, there will also be short interviews with the linguists on how they started in the field. The artistic goals of this project are to explore how the individuals and the sum of their personalities and relationships form an academic community. These photographs and interviews will ultimately be displayed en masse, as a collection representing how the scholars in the subject define the field of Linguistics.

Of course I now provide a photo of Steph, very much in the style of the photos in her Tumblr portfolio:

(#1)

Smiling and side-lit — and (to my eye) somehow suggesting enthusiasm, intensity, and playfulness, all together.

The photos in her portfolio are all of (relatively) young linguists, like Steph herself. Almost all are smiling. Many are of linguists who once took courses from me or worked with me in other ways.

Here are two more photos, one woman, one man:

(#2)

Lauren Hall-Lew, Stanford PhD, now at the University of Ediburgh

(#3)

Patrick Callier, Stanford BA, Georgetown PhD, now back at Stanford on a post-doc with Rob Podesva

In a later posting, I’ll say some things about how I got into doing the things I do in linguistics (beyond the pleasure of intellectual problem-solving). Advance note: social class and my family’s linguistic background are important.

… the male model, in body-display, rather than fashion-display, mode — so only a little about language. On the other hand, this posting is, in word and image, at least technically SFW (though homo-steamy).

It begins with a Facebook comment from Ken Rudolph about image #1 in my “Hitchhiking” posting of yesterday:

(#1)

Ken asked:

Who is #1? And where did that still come from…it looks more like a regular movie than a porn.

Not any kind of movie, but a posed still done by a professional photographer (as are, I think, #2-7 in my hitchhiking posting, and the three photos in the accompanying AZBlogX posting). Meanwhile, a Google Images search led me to Saucier.

(The name Saucier is, no surprise, originally French. It comes, at least in part, to the U.S. from Canada, through Acadians who settled in Saucier, Mississippi, and no doubt other places as well.)

Proviso. There are two Corey Sauciers. Searching on the net leads you mostly to the one above, a Texan white guy still in his 20s, but sometimes to the Californian (went to UCSC, lives in L.A.) black guy, an HIV-positive writer and performance artist who’s now 40 — and also much more massive than the Texan model. His current profile photo:

(#2)

He too is given to shirtless photos, so on that score they could be confused.

The fashion model began appearing in print in 2010, managed by several agencies and modeling for DNA magazine and Calvin Klein, among others. A gay-gushy piece on the homorazzi site (portmanteaus are everywhere: homosexual + paparazzi), “where homos dish everything”: “Model Behavior: Corey Saucier”, by Donovan on 11/18/11:

For this week’s Model Behavior, I really wanted to give you one saucy beyotch [beyotch is a friendly version of bitch]. In this case, it’s pretty literal. Meet Corey Saucier. As his last name suggests, he’s definitely “saucier” than your average male model next door. Perhaps, it’s due to the fact he’s from Houston, Texas. They say everything grows bigger in the Lone Star state and this 6’1″ stud certainly lives up to that motto. I’d gulp down this tall tasty drink of sexy any day of the week. [Have I discussed tall drink of a man? Apparently not.]

The 23-year-old male model was raised in a Houston suburb – Spring to be exact. Growing up, he played numerous sports including football, baseball and basketball. He continued with both football and baseball all the way through til his college years at Texas State University. He majored in business management but dropped out to pursue a career in modeling after being urged by friends to give it a try.

Those friends definitely knew what they were talking about. Upon arriving in New York, Saucier quickly signed with AIG model management. In his relatively short career, Corey has caught the eye of gay the community thanks to his spreads in Out magazine, The Advocate and YVY Mag. With his extremely hot body its hard not to get noticed. He’s also caught the eyes of veteran photographers like Jeremy Kost, Greg Lotus and Eric Schwabel. Check out a few pics from these photogs and others of Saucer below. Be forewarned, you might need a cold shower from all the shirtless pics. Enjoy.

Homorazzi has a substantial photo display, as do a number of other sites from the period; Saucier has a big fan base, among women and gay men. I’ll start with a smiling shirtless pose (with lowered jeans as a bonus) that’s closest to #1 above:

(#3)

(The spread-lip smile is by no means confined to SoCal, though it’s a stereotype of surfer dudes there. Part of the stereotype is that it’s the source of the unrounded variant, [ʉ], of /U/ in good etc., there: those dudes smile, with spread lips, all the time, so they can’t manage to round their lips for /U/. Mysteriously, they round just fine for /u/, as in pool and cute.)

On the homorazzi site, a pubic hair cock tease (also conveying power via his muscular pecs and neck):

(#3)

On the Morphosis (Men’s Fashion and Music) site in 2011, a head and torso shot with hot nips:

(#4)

In a photo by Jeremy Kost for DNA on 12/1/10, we get an armpit display, plus low-riding jeans:

(#5)

Finally, two “Corey Saucier – Male Model Monday” photos on the SocialiteLife site (“Celebrity News, Photos & Gossp”, with a Shirtless album of men as well as a Bikini album of women) on 5/16/10, both decdedly homoerotic (steamy naked pit shot, Calvin Klein crotch grab):

(#6)

(#7)

Then recent news on the Ford Models Facebook page on 4/11/16:

Announcing Corey Saucier as our #MCM [Man Crush Monday]! Corey went to school for business in San Marcos, TX and joined the #FORDmen team soon after!

There’s a brief video interview with Saucier there.

Sexualized images of models are collaborations between photographer and model; #1 and #3-7 above are deliberate achievements, presenting Saucier’s body as sexually desirable, and the homoerotic appeal is deliberate. Meanwhile, Saucer works out regularly to maintain this body, and I’m guessing that he shaves his body as well as his face, to craft the image of one type of masculine beauty, maintaining a youthful smoothness that appeals to many women and gay men. At the same time, he’s got the boyish hair and a stock of varied facial expressions, and he projects a sense of physical power in reserve. Plus the flagrant cock teasing.

Like male models in general, in collaboration with his photographers, he’s using his body to sell himself and the clothes he wears. Of course, none of this says anything about his own sexuality — but he has to appreciate the homoerotic appeal he projects, be comfortable with it, and (to be really successful) welcome it, revel in it. Good job, Sauce Man!

Not about language, but about my life. In photographs from over 70 years ago. Partly in response to a request from a friend on Facebook to post baby photos, partly as part of a project to post more family photos for my grand-daughter Opal.

Three: a photo of me as a newborn in 1940, with my young and delighted parents; then a page of four snapshots of me as a baby; and another page of 4 of me as a little kid. More to come.

The earliest photo of all, posted here on 2/7/11 in “Old photographs”:

(#1)

My mother, Marcella Rice Zwicky, and my father, Arnold Melchior Zwicky. Known, in almost all friendly social contexts as Marty and Zip: my mother detested the name Marcella, and disliked her birth middle name, Ida, almost as much; Zip was my dad’s college nickname (he had a lot of zip).

In those days, everybody wore hats for serious occasions.

Baby time. A set of four snapshots:

(#2)

Upper right: left to right, my maternal grandmother, Susannah Hershey Rice (who was boundlessly nice, but rarely smiled; she had a very hard life indeed); my aunt Marian (Marian Fries as she was then), my mother’s twin sister; and my uncle Herb Fries, bottle-feeding a very small me.

Upper left, mother and baby (I am now able to sit up, but not yet walk).

Bottom right, father and baby.

Bottom left, chaired baby.

The little kid (part 1). Now mobile, the kid in another page of 4:

(#3)

On the top, the lone kid. On the bottom, the familial kid.  Left: my mother, my paternal grandmother (Bertha Waelti Zwicky), me, my paternal grandfather (Melchior Arnold Zwicky). Right: mom, dad, and me. I can’t identify the settings at all.

The text:

And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered or driven to its knees
But it’s alright, it’s alright, for we live so well, so long
Still, when I think of the road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong, I can’t help it I wonder what’s gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying, I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me, smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying, and high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty, sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was flying

A song of loss, regret, weariness, resignation… and transcendance.

This is my man Jacques’s death day (14 years ago, on a day as beautiful as this one is). I was about to post some photos of his, from Columbus OH and here in California, and I’ll still do this, but Ann Burlingham just posted on Facebook a reminiscence of a moment from the time when she shared the Columbus house with J and me, a sweet reminiscence of Ann and me dissolving on hearing, by chance on the radio, the song excerpted above, sung hauntingly by the Indigo Girls.

The song is Paul Simon’s “American Tune”. From Wikipedia:

(#1)

“American Tune” is a song by the American singer-songwriter Paul Simon. It was the third single from his third studio album, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973), released on Columbia Records. The song, a meditation on the American experience, is based on a melody line from a chorale from Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

The lyrics offer a perspective on the American experience; there are references to struggle, weariness, hard work, confusion, and homesickness. The bridge conveys a dream of death and of the Statue of Liberty “sailing away to sea”. The song ends with an assertion that “you can’t be forever blessed” before the lyrics return to the idea of work, tiredness, and resignation.

You can watch a 1975 performance by Simon here. And here you can watch a 2004 live performance by Simon together with Art Garfunkel, then in their 60s. J and I are within a year of Simon and Garfunkel in age. They were troubadors of our generation, and we were big fans.

The verses above are the middle two of the song. The first verse:

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken, and many times confused
Yes and I’ve often felt forsaken, and certainly misused
Ah but I’m alright, I’m alright, I’m just weary thru my bones
Still you don’t expect to be bright and bon-vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And the last:

But we come on a ship they called Mayflower
We come on a ship that sailed the moon
We come in the ages’ most uncertain hours and sing an American tune
And it’s alright, oh it’s alright, it’s alright, you can’t be forever blessed
Still tomorrow’s gonna be another working day and I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying, to get some rest

It’s been a good run, but you can’t be forever blessed.

The Indigo Girls are from the next generation after us. I don’t recall J’s feelings about Amy and Emily, but I’m a fan. They’ve performed “American Tune” many times over the years. The performance Ann and I heard was from Ben & Jerry’s Newport Folk Festival in 1991. With her FB posting, Ann included the video of their performance at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mt. View CA on 10/2/94 (a venue close enough to me that I can sometimes hear the music out my front window); you can watch the video here. And there’s also a video from the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale FL on 2/12/11, which you can watch here. A shot from that video:

(#2)

Photos by Jacques. Go back with me now to the late 1980s in Columbus, when J and I were embarking on a series of renovations in the house there. I’m not sure of the year, but these two photos show the beginning of the exterior work on the house and garden — front (facing north) and back (facing south):

(#3)

The top photo. The house came with two huge yews, Taxus baccata (trimmed to be dense shrubs about 4 ft high), flanking the front steps. The whole plant is highly toxic and the yews required constant trimming, so eventually we cut them down, removed the roots, brought in a truckload of flat stones, built two planting areas fenced in by stone, filled the “planters” with good soil, and planted interesting stuff, which you see here at the very beginning.

The tallish green plants are bayberries, in the genus Myrtica. From Wikipedia:

(#4)

Myrica is a genus of about 35–50 species of small trees and shrubs in the family Myricaceae, order Fagales. The genus has a wide distribution, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America, and missing only from Australia. Some botanists split the genus into two genera on the basis of the catkin and fruit structure, restricting Myrica to a few species, and treating the others in Morella.

Common names include bayberry, bay-rum tree, candleberry, sweet gale, and wax-myrtle. The generic name was derived from the Greek word μυρικη (myrike), meaning “fragrance. “

And fragrant they are.

On the plant family, a new one on this blog, so #64:

The Myricaceae are a small family of dicotyledonous shrubs and small trees in the order Fagales. There are three genera in the family, although some botanists separate many species from Myrica into a fourth genus Morella. About 55 species are usually accepted in Myrica, one in Canacomyrica, and one in Comptonia. (Wikipedia link)

In fact, the genus Taxus of yews is also in a new plant family here, so #65:

Taxaceae, commonly called the yew family, is a coniferous family which includes seven genera and about 30 species of plants, or in older interpretations three genera and 7 to 12 species. (Wikipedia link)

The species in the family almost all have common names with yew in them.

The bottom photo. This is a transformation of a scene shown in part in my 5/23/17 posting “Corn snakes and eggplants”, where the snake was nestled in the crubling wall of the stars going down to the basement. We had the wall taken down and a new one built, and then this excellent deck built out from it. The table and umbrella shown above was a temporary arrangement, until we got a proper teak table with chairs and a bigger umbrella.

The big visible plants are, in back, a huge pot of lemongrass; across the front, left to right: a grevillea, or silk oak (I nursed California trees through the winter), a fig tree, and an Indian lime tree (which bears orange-colored limes).

On lemongrass, see my 9/7/15 posting “Shooting stars, hydrangeas, and lemongrass”, where I wrote about

lemongrass, which I grew in containers for years (both in Ohio and here in California), for use in Chinese cooking. It is in fact a grass (in the Poaceae), and it’s absurdly easy to grow: get a stalk from your local Chinese grocery, let it root in water, and then plant it in soil. It will flourish and divide. Outside of a container, it will sprawl

More information there, with photos #4 and #5.

Then grevillea. From Wikipedia:

Grevillea is a diverse genus of about 360 species of evergreen flowering plants in the family Proteaceae, native to rainforest and more open habitats in Australia, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Sulawesi and other Indonesian islands east of the Wallace Line. It was named in honour of Charles Francis Greville. The species range from prostrate shrubs less than 50 cm (20 in) tall to trees 35 m (115 ft) tall. Common names include grevillea, spider flower, silky oak and toothbrush plant.

… Many species of grevilleas are popular garden plants, especially in Australia but also in other temperate and subtropical climates. Many grevilleas have a propensity to interbreed freely, and extensive hybridisation and selection of horticulturally desirable attributes has led to the commercial release of many named cultivars.

On the family:

The Proteaceae are a family of flowering plants predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The family comprises 83 genera with about 1,660 known species. … Well-known genera include Protea, Banksia, Embothrium, Grevillea, Hakea, Dryandra, and Macadamia. Species such as the New South Wales waratah (Telopea speciosissima), king protea (Protea cynaroides), and various species of Banksia, Grevillea, and Leucadendron are popular cut flowers, while the nuts of Macadamia integrifolia are widely grown commercially and consumed. Australia and South Africa have the greatest concentrations of diversity. (Wikipedia link)

This is yet another plant family new to this blog, so #66.

Finally what I know as Indian lime (grown from seeds gotten from Transue family friends in West Palm Beach FL) but which seems to be properly West Indian (or Mexican) lime, Citrus aurantifolia. The fruits are green when immature, but ripen to yellow:

(#5)

Two more photos by Jacques, both taken from the foothills above Stanford, where the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences is located:

(#6)

There are trails along the top of the ridge behind CASBS, and Jacques walked them often with me and Fellows at the Center and other friends, when I was at the Center in 1981-82 and 1990-91. J loved the secluded calm of the Center and the intellectual companionship it offered, and he just adored the trails — usually identified as the Dish trails, after a large radar dish that stands over everything. J had little interest in the Dish, but a lot of interest in the rocks and plants and animals you could see and the amazing vistas the trails could offer.

The top photo is a vista looking out to the San Francisco Bay, in a light haze, with a circling raptor scanning for ground squirrels, pocket gophers, and similar prey. The bottom photo shows two of the cows that graze over sections of the foothills. They’re kept within bounds by cattle grids / guards, like the one shown here on a Nevada road:

(#7)

A cattle grid (UK English) – also known as a stock grid in Australia; cattle guard in American English; and vehicle pass, Texas gate, or stock gap in the United States Southeast; or a cattle stop in New Zealand English – is a type of obstacle used to prevent livestock, such as sheep, cattle, pigs, horses, or mules from passing along a road or railway which penetrates the fencing surrounding an enclosed piece of land or border. It consists of a depression in the road covered by a transverse grid of bars or tubes, normally made of metal and firmly fixed to the ground on either side of the depression, so that the gaps between them are wide enough for an animal’s feet to enter, but sufficiently narrow not to impede a wheeled vehicle or human foot. This provides an effective barrier to animals without impeding wheeled vehicles, as the animals are reluctant to walk on the grates. (Wikipedia link)

The foothills have lots of beautiful California live oaks on them, and in Center has long used images of the tree in its publicity:

(#8)

The hillside is dotted with carefully planted live oak seedlings in wire cages — to protect them from the depredations of deer. We live in a delicate balance between nature and cultivation.

Today’s Zippy takes us to photographic LA:

(#1)

While namechecking the famous American photographers Diane Arbus, Edward Weston, Berenice Abbott, and Weegee, Zippy peers in the window of the Darkroom at 5370 Wilshire Blvd. in LA, now a bar and restaurant, originally a camera shop in the shape of a camera.

Looking for buidings in the shape of a camera will then take us around the world, thanks to a construction company in Karawang, West Java, Indonesia.

The Darkroom. From the Los Angeles Conservancy site:

(#2) The Darkroom now (as seen in #1)

Originally a camera shop, this unique structure (now a restaurant) is one of the city’s last remaining examples of programmatic architecture, in which a building physically resembles its purpose.

The façade’s nine-foot-tall Argus camera announced The Darkroom’s wares quite literally. Some claim that during the building’s heyday, the tenant would project short films through the camera lens/window for pedestrians to watch.

Although the famed store is long gone, the black vitriolite facade remains as a protected city landmark (Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument).

Yet its Art Deco neon signage was not protected. Removed and hidden for decades in a private collection, the sign is now owned by the Museum of Neon Art.

Two shots of the facade from its camera-shop days:

(#3) Wider view

(#4) Up close and in color

Programmatic architecture: the camera. The term programmatic architecture was new to me, though I was familiar with the term mimic architecture, referring to a subtype of novelty architecture, as in this Wikipedia article (with the relevant passage bold-faced):

Novelty architecture is a type of architecture in which buildings and other structures are given unusual shapes for purposes such as advertising or to copy other famous buildings without any intention of being authentic. Their size and novelty means that they often serve as landmarks. They are distinct from architectural follies, in that novelty architecture is essentially usable buildings in eccentric form whereas follies are non-usable, ornamental buildings often in eccentric form.

Although earlier examples exist, such as the planned but never completed Elephant of the Bastille, generally the style became popular in the United States and spread to the rest of the world as travel by automobile increased in the 1930s. The Statue of Liberty in New York is a replica building that is part sculpture and part monument, which like many subsequent examples of novelty architecture, has an accessible interior and became a tourist attraction.

Constructing novelty architecture near to roads became one way of attracting motorists to a diner, coffee shop, or roadside attraction, so buildings were constructed in an unusual shape, especially the shape of the things sold there. “Mimic” architecture became a trend, and many roadside coffee shops were built in the shape of giant coffee pots; hot dog stands were built in the shape of giant hot dogs; and fruit stands were built in the shape of oranges or other fruit. Tail o’ the Pup [is] a hot dog-shaped hot dog stand; Brown Derby is a derby-shaped restaurant; Bondurant’s Pharmacy is a mortar-and-pestle pharmacy; the Big Apple Restaurant … and the Big Duck are respectively a tall apple and a (now defunct) poultry store shaped like a duck.

Novelty or programmatic (mimetic) architecture may take the form of objects not normally associated with buildings, such as characters, animals, people or household objects. Lucy the Elephant and The Longaberger Company‘s head office are examples. There may be an element of caricature or a cartoon associated with the architecture. Such giant animals, fruits and vegetables, or replicas of famous buildings often serve as attractions themselves. Some are simply unusual shapes or constructed of unusual materials.

Bill Griffith is much taken with novelty architecture, and I’ve posted a number of times about Big or Giant X structures, mostly inspired by Zippy strips.

Searching for information about a camera shop in the shape of a camera led me to the page “9 Buildings with Architectural Design Look Like Camera Shape” (the text is in Indonesian, the title in decidedly non-native English) on the site of Pt. Niki Four, a general contractor and building maintenance firm in Karawang, listing:

1. The Big Camera in Perth, Australia
2. Picture Perfect Nail Salon in Marion, NC, USA
3. The Darkroom in Hollywood
4. Art Decal by [Chilean artist] Diego Castillo Roa
5. Giant Camera in Point Lobos, CA, USA
6. Camera Inspired House in Pontyprid[d], Wales, UK
7. Public Toilet in Chongqing, China
8. Dreamy Camera Café in Yangpeyong-gun, South Korea
9. Camera House in Biddeford Pool, ME, USA

The third item on this list was clearly what I was looking for. Bingo.

All nine buildings are entertaining, but I was particularly taken by the seventh:

(#5)

Why the city of Chongqing chose to build a public toilet in the shape of a camera I do not know.

Back on the 12th, I posted about the “War of the Weeds” in back of the Palo Alto downtown library, across the street from my house: a contest between common ivy, ailanthus, and golden bamboo for control of the territory. Now I have better photos, showing the whole length of the jungle, in three sections, without cars.

Meanwhile, at the Y where I go to my senior fitness class, there’s a whole rank of California peppertrees covered with red berries, and with leaves already turning for the fall.

All this caused me to delve into the notion of an urban jungle. Turns out different people have very different ideas about what that phrase refers to, and that exploration will take us to Hong Kong, Chongqing, urban gardening, and “wild” parks in various cities, including the Ramble in NYC’s Central Park — with Al Pacino in full gay cruise mode.

The weed-war panorama. (Photos by Juan Gomez.) In three sections, starting on the east:

(#1)

East: crape myrtle in the distance, big ailanthus in the center

(#2)

Middle: the three weeds at war

(#3)

West: out to Ramona St. and a California live oak

Most of what you’re seeing is a low fence (starting under that big ailanthus tree in #1), with the dead wood of a once-sturdy vine twined on it, now with ivy marching west on it, also up into any tree it finds. Golden bamboo thrives on this side of the fence; it marches west rapidly at ground level and has pretty well killed off the periwinkle (Vinca minor) that used to cover the ground. All those trees close up are trees of heaven (Ailanthus altissima).

So three hyper-vigorous plants — two garden ornamentals and a common street tree — vying with one another along that fence, uncontrolled, running amok, creating an ever-expanding urban jungle, a wild untamed place in the middle of the city.

Side notes. That crape myrtle in the distance belongs to a house on Bryant St., the next street west of mine. Under it there’s a pretty white rose bush. And a bit in from that there’s a striking bougainvillea vine (which you can’t see). Further in, on the left in #1 is a very tall, very dead conifer (with, of course, ivy growing up it): a picturesque eyesore, but also potentially dangerous if it comes down.

Behind your back as you look at the photos is the back of  the library building, with a row of Victorian box trees (Pittosporum undulatum) along the wall — one of them totally dead (recently) and two others in trouble — plus wisteria vines running amok. Things are not happy in the parking lot.

California peppertrees. On to another parking lot, at the Ross Road Y in Palo Alto, where a long dividing strip is planted with peppertrees (Schinus molle) –like Victorian box, they are small, pretty trees. They are thick with pinkish-red berries (which, when crushed between your fingers, smell like fresh black pepper) — see #4 below —  and their leaves are now turning red — see #5 (photos by Kim Darnell):

(#4)

(#5)

Around the margins of the parking lot are much more substantial trees, thickly planted. In fact, Palo Alto in general is tree-dense, with street trees, yard trees, and lots of tree-filled parks. Something of an urban forest. But only occasionally jungly.

Urban jungle 1. The expression urban jungle used to refer to truly wild, untended areas in a city — like the library area across the street from me, at least at the moment (until someone cleans it up). Every city has waste areas, abandoned lots, and the like, in which vegetation just runs riot. Jungle areas.

Urban jungle 2. Next sense of urban jungle, not about plants at all. Instead, the expression has metaphorical jungle, the jungle of concrete jungle. With densely packed tall buildings playing the role of jungle trees.

Photographer Andy Yeung has explored one urban jungle in this sense, in a series of studding aerial photographs of Hong Kong. From the designboom site (which is fond of lower-casing) on 3/9/16, “andy yeung’s drone photography captures hong kong’s urban jungle” by nina azzarello:

(#6)

Yeung, Urban Jungle 02

andy yeung, a photographer based in hong kong, captures the bustling metropolis from a completely new perspective for his series ‘urban jungle’. documented via a drone camera, the images depict the architectural sprawl from hundreds of meters above the earth’s surface, highlighting the extreme heights and dramatic depths covered by hong kong’s crowded cityscape. looking down at the city from above, viewers are treated to a typically unseen vantage point — one that accentuates the high-volume high-rises and their impact on the landscape. see images from ‘urban jungle’ below, and more city landscapes by andy yeung on his website

Urban Jungle 3. Some writers use urban jungle loosely to refer to any green spaces in a city, such as those in Palo Alto.

Occasionally the first two senses come together, as in photographer Raphael Olivier’s studies of Chongqing, China, which depict the urban landscape (almost always enveloped in smoggy haze), but with a special interest in green places in the city. From Olivier’s website:

(#7)

Olivier, Urban Jungle #3

Chongqing, Western China, is a municipality covering the area of Austria, home to almost 30 milion people. Even though most of its territorry and population are still rural, its urban center is under massive expansion making Chongqing the fastest growing city in the world. Yet this development is mostly chaotic and unregulated (the city is notorious for its corruption). Over the past years this has led to an incredible forest of buildings taking over mountains and surrounding farm-lands, creating one of the most incredible urban landscapes on Earth. This photo essay aims to show the unique scenery created by Chinese mass urbanization, endemic lawlessness, mountainous topography and subtropical climate, in a very organic urban sprawl out of a science fiction movie.

Yeung’s and Olivier’s portfolios are both impressive, well worth checking out.

Urban Jungle 4. An even looser use of urban jungle is to refer to any city greenery, even house plants, as in the title of this 2016 book:

(#8)

Urban Jungle 5. A final use of urban jungle combines the utterly ‘wild’ sense (1) with the ‘park’ sense (3). In it, the expression refers to parkland that is elaborately designed to seem wild, while being carefully tended to maintain a certain degree of order, as in areas of great urban parks in many parts of the world. For instance, in the U.S., areas of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, among them the Back Bay Fens in Boston and Central Park in NYC. Here I’ll look at the Ramble in Central Park.

From Wikipedia:

(#9)

Stone Arch in the Central Park Ramble

The Ramble and Lake is a main feature of Central Park in New York City. Part of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s “Greensward” plan (1857), The Ramble was intended as a woodland walk through highly varied topography, a “wild garden” away from carriage drives and bridle paths, to be wandered in, or to be viewed as a “natural” landscape from the formal lakefront setting of Bethesda Terrace (illustration below) or from rented rowboats on the Lake. The 38-acre Ramble embraces the deep coves of the north shore of the Lake, excavated between bands of bedrock; it offers dense naturalistic planting, rocky outcrops of glacially scarred Manhattan bedrock, small open glades, and an artificial stream (The Gill) that empties through the Azalea Pond, then down a cascade into the Lake. Its ground rises northwards towards Vista Rock, crowned by Belvedere Castle, a lookout and eye-catching folly.

Secluded “wild” areas in urban parks quite often serve as locales for cruising and hooking-up for sex. In particular,

Since at least the early 20th century, the seclusion of The Ramble has been used for private homosexual encounters. In the 1920s, the lawn at the north end was referred to as the “fruited plain”, and in the 1950s and 1960s, The Ramble was feared by many as a haven for “anti-social persons”… Today, The Ramble’s strong reputation for cruising for sex has given way somewhat to nature walks and environmentalism. However, some in the gay community still consider The Ramble to be “ground zero for outdoor gay sex”, enjoying the “retro feel” of sneaking off into the woods. As a tradition much older than Christopher Street and Fire Island, The Ramble continues to be a gay icon even in the more open environment of modern New York.

The Ramble figured prominently in the movie Cruising. From Wikipedia:

(#10) Al Pacino, undercover and on the prowl

Cruising is a 1980 American crime film written and directed by William Friedkin, and starring Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino, and Karen Allen. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name, by The New York Times reporter Gerald Walker, about a serial killer targeting gay men, in particular those associated with the leather scene in the late 1970s. The title is a play on words with a dual meaning, because “cruising” can describe police officers on patrol and also cruising for sex.

From June 30th, a posting “In the dunes, in the dunes” about Fire Island Pines, in reality, in gay porn, and in gay cartoons. At the time, Emily Rizzo wrote me about Tom Bianchi’s [2013] book on the golden days of FIP (which I do not, alas, have, though I have other Bianchi books of male photography). And now, from Randy McDonald, a link to a Unicorn Booty piece on an exhibition of Bianchi’s photos.

Cover of the book:

(#1)

From the Unicorn Booty piece, “These Fire Island Polaroids Offer Us a Rare Glimpse Into a Lost Gay World” by Danny Polaris:

In the ’70s and ’80s, New York’s Fire Island Pines was one of the few places in the world where men could be openly gay and show affection in public. Today, a stunning collection of Fire Island Polaroids, taken by artist Tom Bianchi between 1975 and 1983, documents that lost ‘golden age’ for gay men. Currently on exhibit in New York City, Fire Island Pines: Polaroids 1975-83 can be seen at Throckmorton Fine Art [145 E. 57th St.] through Sept. 16 [exhibit June 29th – Sept. 16th, gallery closed August 30th – Sept. 4th].

A book carrying the same name as the exhibition was listed as one of Time magazine’s Best Photo Books of 2013. Now large versions of the Polaroids are available for all to see.

Some of Bianchi’s Fire Island Polaroids don’t look real, resembling paintings or sketches more than photographs, as if Tom of Finland had gone on holiday to the beach and swapped his black and white cartoon hunks for bronzed gods, golden sands and turquoise skies. There are dozens of gorgeous shots of guys holding hands, kissing and being affectionate in a world where it was still almost unheard of to be able to do so publicly and openly. But these are real photos of real guys living in a different time.

Bianchi gained the trust of the men he photographed in their Fire Island haven by sharing Polaroids with them, celebrating them and making it clear he was on their side.

“In the Pines, my dreams of being an out gay man and artist became possible,” says Bianchi.

In decades past, up to 10,000 men would descend on Fire Island on the weekends for its famous tea dances and legendary all-night parties. It was the first time many would men would ever feel safe enough to hold hands in public, and perhaps still is. Fire Island remains one of America’s ultimate gay vacation destinations, and its parties are themselves still legendary.

When the AIDS crisis hit, Bianchi’s Fire Island Polaroids stopped. They were put away in a box until their publication only a few years ago.

If you’re in New York or visiting before Sept. 16 [but not over Labor Day weekend], it’s well worth seeing the large, limited-edition versions of Bianchi’s amazing photography. If not, the book is another amazing option.

Three examples of the Polaroids:

(#2)

(#3)

(#4)

The name of an Instagram site, which I learned about from Laura Staum Casasanto today. Stunning plants (heavy on houseplants, but by no means confined to them) accompanied by good-looking men, handsomely photographed. Laura supposed, correctly, that the combination would work well for me, and she was right.

The Monster. Let’s start big, with a young man hefting a potted Monstera deliciosa:

(#1)

The plant is young, and (for a Monstera) small. From Wikipedia:

Monstera deliciosa is a species of flowering plant native to tropical rainforests of southern Mexico, south to Panama. It has been introduced to many tropical areas, and has become a mildly invasive species in Hawaii, Seychelles, Ascension Island and the Society Islands.

The specific epithet deliciosa means “delicious”, referring to the edible fruit, while monstera means “monstrous,” in reference to the sheer size that this plant can grow to — over 30 feet in many cases.

Common names include fruit salad plant, fruit salad tree (in reference to its edible fruit, which tastes similar to a fruit salad), ceriman, Swiss cheese plant (or just cheese plant), monster fruit, monsterio delicio, monstereo, Mexican breadfruit, locust and wild honey, windowleaf, balazo, and Penglai banana. The names in Spanish (costilla de Adán) or Portuguese (costela-de-adão) or French (plante gruyère) refer to the change of the leaves from entire to fenestrated (comparing it in the first case with the ribs of Adam and in the second with the hole-filled gruyère cheese).

… Monstera deliciosa is commonly grown for interior decoration in public buildings and as a houseplant. Commonly referred to as the Split Leaf Philodendron. It grows best between the temperatures of 20–30 °C (68–86 °F) and requires high humidity and shade. Growth ceases below 10 °C (50 °F) and it is killed by frost.

Monstera is in the arum family (Araceaea) — with spathe and spadix flowers, like calla lilies or spathiphyllums:

(#2) Flower and immature fruit

The Spikeulent. (My ad hoc portmanteau for spiky succulent.) The woofy Australian yoga guru Patrick Beach embracing a really big agave:

(#3)

Bird of paradise. Finally, for nipple fans, a young man in the shadow of a Strelitzia plant:

(#4)

From Wikipedia:

(#5) Strelitzia reginae (orange bird of paradise) in flower

Strelitzia is a genus of five species of perennial plants, native to South Africa. It belongs to the plant family Strelitziaceae [a new family on this blog, #74]. The genus is named after the duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, birthplace of Queen Charlotte of the United Kingdom. A common name of the genus is bird of paradise flower / plant, because of a resemblance of its flowers to birds-of-paradise. In South Africa it is commonly known as a crane flower and is featured on the reverse of the 50 cent coin. It is the floral emblem of the City of Los Angeles; two of the species, Strelitzia nicolai and Strelitzia reginae, are frequently grown as house plants.

A showy plant, often used as an accent plant in the gardens of coastal California. A magnificent stand of Strelitzia reginae grew just outside the front door of my man Jacques’s dementia care facility. Unfortunately, it turned out that he deeply detested the plants, why I don’t know, and was inclined to swat at them in anger.

(‘Whatever Seurat is, Seurat is’, that is, ‘Seurat is what he is’. That’s with English que /ke/, as in “Que Sera, Sera”.)

A photo by Elizabeth Zwicky on Facebook on the 14th:

(#1) Boston harbor; the orange bit is a reflection of a construction crane

In the photo (of ripples in water, with reflected points of sunlight), Ellen Evans, on Facebook, saw life imitating art, in this case, Seurat’s pointillism, and I agreed, hence the title of this posting. Robert Coren suggested Monet, and that’s not impossible, but a pointillist painter is a better fit.

The art. From my 11/30/16 posting “Poet in search of his moose”, #4 Barry Kites’s collage “Sunday Afternoon, Looking for the Car”:

On the background painting, from Wikipedia:

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (French: Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte) painted in 1884, is one of Georges Seurat’s [1859-1891] most famous works, and is an example of pointillism.

The original:

(#2)

Note the water. Water figures prominently is a great many pointillist paintings. Here’s Paul Signac‘s Steeple in Saint Tropez, 1896:

(#3)

On the technique, from Wikipedia:

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.

Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term “Pointillism” was coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists, and is now used without its earlier mocking connotation. The movement Seurat began with this technique is known as Neo-impressionism.

… The technique relies on the ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to blend the color spots into a fuller range of tones. [“Don’t stand, don’t stand so, / Don’t stand so close to me”]

In comparison to Seurat and Signac, a representative Monet:

(#4) Blue Water Lilies, 1919

From Wikipedia:

Water Lilies (or Nymphéas, French) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). The paintings depict Monet’s flower garden at his home in Giverny, and were the main focus of Monet’s artistic production during the last thirty years of his life.

Monet’s water ripples are achieved by short brushstrokes, not dots.

The song. And, especially, its title. From Wikipedia:

(#5) Listen to Doris Day singing the song here

“Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)”, first published in 1956, is a popular song written by the songwriting team of Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. The song was introduced in the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), starring Doris Day and James Stewart in the lead roles.

… The popularity of the song has led to curiosity about the origins of the saying and the identity of its language. Both the Spanish-like spelling used by Livingston and Evans and an Italian-like form (“che sarà sarà”) are first documented in the 16th century as an English heraldic motto. The “Spanish” form appears on a brass plaque in the Church of St. Nicholas, Thames Ditton, Surrey, dated 1559. The “Italian” form was first adopted as a family motto by either John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, or his son, Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford. It is said by some sources to have been adopted by the elder Russell after his experience at the Battle of Pavia (1525), and to be engraved on his tomb (1555 N.S.). The 2nd Earl’s adoption of the motto is commemorated in a manuscript dated 1582. Their successors — Earls and, later, Dukes of Bedford (“Sixth Creation”), as well as other aristocratic families—continued to use the motto. Soon after its adoption as a heraldic motto, it appeared in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus (written ca. 1590; published 1604), whose text (Act 1, Scene 1) contains a line with the archaic Italian spelling “Che sera, sera / What will be, shall be”. Early in the 17th century the saying begins to appear in the speech and thoughts of fictional characters as a spontaneous expression of a fatalistic attitude.

The saying is always in an English-speaking context, and has no history in Spain, Italy, or France, and in fact is ungrammatical in all three Romance languages. It is composed of Spanish or Italian words superimposed on English syntax. It was evidently formed by a word-for-word mistranslation of English “What will be will be”

Side note. It seems there are programs for altering photographs to make them appear pointillist, giving output like this:

(#6) Relatively simple pointillization

This morning I stumbled on an odd vein of art: superhero parodies of the Last Supper. Two examples:

(#1) by Michael Kozlov; note Thanksgiving turkey

(#2) by Luis M. Hernandez

The intersection of two genres, both of them substantial: art works in which superheroes are assembled in a group; and parodies of Leonardo’s Last Supper.

Superhero assemblages on this blog:

on 12/1/12, “ab-vengers”: pastiche of superheroes

on 1/4/16, “Urinating superheroes”: Hrjoe superhero compositions

And one Last Supper parody:

on 8/24/11, “Marisol”: Marisol’s Last Supper: translation, reinterpretation, burlesque?

Leonardo da Vinci background. From Wikipedia:

(#3) The Leonardo original: Jesus in the center, with two groups of three apostles on each side of him (an arrangement preserved in #1 and #2)

The Last Supper specifically portrays the reaction given by each apostle when Jesus said one of them would betray him. All twelve apostles have different reactions to the news, with various degrees of anger and shock. … From left to right, according to the apostles’ heads:

– Bartholomew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Andrew form a group of three; all are surprised.

– Judas Iscariot, Peter, and John form another group of three.

Judas is wearing green and blue and is in shadow, looking rather withdrawn and taken aback by the sudden revelation of his plan…

Peter looks angry and is holding a knife pointed away from Christ, perhaps foreshadowing his violent reaction in Gethsemane during Jesus’ arrest.

The youngest apostle, John, appears to swoon.

– Jesus

– Apostle Thomas, James the Greater, and Philip are the next group of three.

Thomas is clearly upset; the raised index finger foreshadows his incredulity of the Resurrection.

James the Greater looks stunned, with his arms in the air. Meanwhile, Philip appears to be requesting some explanation.

– Matthew, Jude Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot are the final group of three.

Both Jude Thaddeus and Matthew are turned toward Simon, perhaps to find out if he has any answer to their initial questions.

On the Kozlov, from the Harlequin Tea Set blog on 11/25/14:

I thought it was pretty interesting that Superman is put in the middle (I have read comparisons of Superman to Jesus so it makes sense), and it’s cute that Batman is in the role of Peter (the jealous disciple in this painting) – aka, Superman’s biggest rival. Also, Wonder Woman as [Mary] Magdalene is a pretty good choice – the only other alternatives I can see there is Cat Woman or a X-Men heroine…

I like how all the major superheroes are in this painting – although I’m not sure how fans would like the mixing of DC superheroes with Marvel – although there is a good message of tolerance in this Last Supper!

Then for the Hernandez, the artist’s own detailed comments:

As much as ten years ago I had envisioned the Last Supper involving superheroes. I came to see the apostles themselves and Jesus as superhero characters who influenced western thought and culture in the past, every bit as much as many people believe comic book characters influence the present, or at least embody the sensibilities of many of these historic and significant religious characters.

It always intrigued me which characters would play each disciple; and who would play Jesus? Where would the event take place?

It ended up being Superman, to be the obvious choice as the first and foremost superhero. As the first superhero to be published regularly in his own series, Superman possesses many Jesus-like qualities. Like Jesus, Superman displayed miraculous and powerful feats even beyond that which the other superheroes are capable of. Like Superman, Jesus was more than a man even as Superman is more than a superhero. How many times has Superman sacrificed himself for the world? Like Jesus, Superman has also died and resurrected. Like Jesus, Superman was sent by his father to help the world.

In my interpretation Superman is betrayed by a trusted hero, one of his own colleagues exploiting two of his most significant weaknesses; the first is physical (the Kryptonite, which can be fatal) and the second is emotional (Superman’s nobility, purity, and trusting nature).

As for disciples, I made Spider-Man play John because he was addressed as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” as is quoted from scripture. It is also said that John was the “youngest disciple” and I suspect that as Peter Parker, Spider-Man may well be the youngest superhero at the table, probably as young, or even younger than Robin. John is also a key figure in scripture; according to the scholars John, under the influence of the Holy Spirit wrote the Book of Revelation. He alone is the witness to the end of days and final battles between the forces of good and evil; and of all the heroes, Spider-Man is the everyman, the one lucky and crafty enough to survive to tell the tale.

Being the physically largest characters, Hulk is Bartholomew and Hawkman is Simon the Zealot merely to balance out the painting and anchor the other figures into the composition. Thor is James son of Alphaeus and Iron Man is Andrew expressing bewilderment and shock at the betrayal of Superman.

Wolverine played a pivotal role in the modern age of comics by being one of the pioneering characters to blur the lines of morality by freely embracing extreme violence, and having no qualms about taking a villain’s life. Wolverine ushered in the new era of the “anti-hero’; when killing criminals is embraced and accepted as the norm; since then many similar, darker superheroes have been introduced into comics. Wolverine represents a stark contrast to the nobility and grace of Superman, who would strive to use humane methods to subdue evildoers rather than using extreme force to take their lives. Thus I felt it appropriate for the controversial Wolverine to portray another controversial character; the infamous Judas Iscariot, one of the most sordid, if not interesting and misunderstood characters in the scriptures. In a way, Judas contrasts Jesus (in servicing himself) as opposed to Jesus’ selfless sacrifice (for mankind) as sharply as Wolverine’s questionable morality contrasts Superman’s idealism. Another way to look at Judas would be as the man who had to step up and betray Jesus so that God’s will could be fulfilled; in a way Judas is as much a sacrificial lamb as Jesus. As both men fulfill biblical prophecy, in which Judas sets in motion the events that would lead to Jesus’s crucifixion as both men shared the same goal; to fulfill the redemption of mankind through Jesus’ fate. This could be parallel to Wolverine and Superman fulfilling their own common goal; to act as heroes, saving innocent lives however at odds their methods may be. Like Judas, Wolverine tips over the salt container with his elbow (symbolism for “spilling the salt”, which means “betraying one’s master”)… Obviously the bag of coins clutched in Wolverine’s fist symbolizes materialism, greed, monetary wealth, opportunism and the comic book industry’s effort to capitalize on whatever new sociological trend is popular (violent heroes, giant robots, big guns, hyper-sexualization, zombies, whatever is popular, etc). Perhaps symbolizing the degradation in storytelling and cheap commercial gimmicks that negatively affected comic book sales in the 90’s (multiple cover variations and other cheesy frills such as “gold” covers, “silver” covers, and other money-making schemes).

Just as Peter held a knife (pointed away from Jesus in Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece), foreshadowing his violent reaction to Jesus’ arrest in the garden later than evening, Captain America holds his shield. Peter would later become the leader of the Apostles, the Rock of the new church of believers, and Jesus’s most reverent supporter. In a way Captain America is very similar in beliefs and noble, wholesome ideals as Superman (truth, justice and the American Way, etc.). The Captain is a true believer in right and wrong, black and white, every bit as much as Peter was convinced that Jesus was “the way, the truth and the light”. If DC and Marvel were united as one common universe, there would be no doubt that Captain America would be Superman’s most stalwart supporter.

Thomas is played by the Green Lantern, who (as in Leonardo’s masterpiece) portrays a clearly upset Thomas’ incredulous, skeptical nature by holding his finger up indignantly at Superman (Jesus), only to show his famed ring glowing with defiant power.

Wonder Woman (as James the Greater) looks stunned, her arms in the air as the Flash (portraying Philip) appears to be denying any involvement in the current predicament.

Batman portrays Matthew the tax collector; as he and Robin (as Jude Thaddeus) turn towards a perhaps confused Hawkman (Simon the Zealot) to attempt an explanation. Despite outward appearances Batman and Matthew’s each share an analytical mind which serves Batman well in fighting crime and Matthew in collecting taxes. They is also a sense of mistrust against them; all the other heroes do not fully trust the dark, enigmatic Batman and question his methods of inducing fear and intimidation into the “superstitious, cowardly lot” just as the much as the apostles did not trust Matthew because of his profession as a tax collector, who were regarded with contempt and revulsion for using intimidation and fear; threatening legal penalties and harsh punishment (such as Roman flogging) on defiant citizens.

As one of the most famous paintings in the western world, the Last Supper has been parodied again and again, even to versions with poker-playing dogs standing in for the apostles. And many famous images have been re-worked with superheroes as the figures in them. Two that have tickled me: Kozlov’s version of the Abbey Road cover, and Dan Avenell’s interpretation of the 1932 photo Lunch atop a Skyscraper:

(#4) George, Paul, Ringo, John

(#5) Spider-Man, The Hulk, Batman, Superman

(#6) Lunch atop a Skyscraper (New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam)

is a famous photograph taken [on September 20, 1932] atop the steelwork of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, during the construction of the Rockefeller Center, in Manhattan [The authorship of the photo is disputed, and is currently listed as unknown by the owners.] (Wikipedia link)

(#7) Avenell, Breakfast of Champions

“Breakfast of Champions”, the Wheaties slogan penned by adman Knox Reeves in 1927.

(Men in fetishwear, or less, starting with today’s Barcode Berlin model from Daily Jocks, with a caption from me. Steamy and suggestive, but no more.)

(#1)

Felix, an athletic
Submissive, can be
Viewed, or used, at our
Fuggerstraße showroom
From 2200 through 0200
Daily – rated AA for
Beauty, AAA for
Agreeableness and
Experience

What especially struck me about the photo was the elegance of the lines of the model’s back muscles and lateral muscles, emphasized by the play of light and shadow. In male art — painting, drawing, photography, or sculpture — the lateral muscles can be featured in views from the back (as here), the side, or the front. A collection of examples…

Paintings (rear views).

(#2) William Etty (British, 1787-1849), Male Nude, Kneeling, from the Back, circa 1840

(#3) Manuel Ignacio Vázquez (Mexican), Desnudo masculino (Male Nude), 1823

Charcoal drawings (rear views).

(#4) William Willes (Irish), Rear view of Seated Male Nude, c.1808

(#5) Amateur artist Hongtao-17, gay male nude

Photographs. From various photographers, different views.

(#6) Michael Stokes, side view

(#7) Michael Stokes, side/rear view

(#8) Rick Day photo of Richard Rocco, front view

(#9) David Velez “The Rear Window”, side/front views

(#10) James Demitri photo of Daniel Garofali, front view

The Flandrin pose. Showing the male body from the side:

(#11)

Some postings on this blog on the pose:

on 5/13/11 “The Flandrin pose”: 3 examples, including the Flandrin original

on 5/23/11 “Another Flandrin pose”: Flandrin original and another

on 11/27/11 “Prairie Flandrins”: two Flandrin photos

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

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

(#1)

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

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

(#2)

The ad copy:

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

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

I post a lot about the world out my front door: what can be seen and appreciated within a few blocks of my house on Ramona St.: buildings, businesses, public art, parks, food, and (especially) plants.

“The world out my front door” is an allusion to the wonderful 1978 book of photography by Ruth Orkin: The World Through My Window:

(#1)

What’s out my front door is downtown Palo Alto, and at somewhat greater distance, Menlo Park, Stanford, and the Professorville, Old Palo Alto, College Terrace, and California Ave. neighborhoods of Palo Alto. What was out of Ruth Orkin’s window (on Central Park West in NYC) was Central Park, which she captured in photographic images (mostly in color) that have become iconic. Central Park in mist and haze, Central Park in the snow.

Central Park as above and (with a hot-air balloon in the haze) here:

(#2)

At the same time, Orkin was capturing life on New York City streets in b&w photographs, like these:

(#3)

(#4)

From Wikipedia:

Ruth Orkin (September 3, 1921 – January 16, 1985) was a self-taught award-winning American photographer, photojournalist, and filmmaker, with ties to New York City and Hollywood. Best known for her photograph An American Girl in Italy (1951), she photographed many celebrities and personalities including Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Ava Gardner, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, and Alfred Hitchcock.

… Orkin’s most celebrated image is An American Girl in Italy (1951). The subject of the now-iconic photograph was the 23-year-old Ninalee Craig (known at that time as Jinx Allen). The photograph was part of a series originally titled “Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone.” The image depicted Craig as a young woman confidently walking past a group of ogling Italian men in Florence. In recent articles written about the pair, Craig claims that the image was not staged, and was one of many taken throughout the day, aiming to show the fun of traveling alone.

(#5)

In 1952 Orkin married photographer, filmmaker and fellow Photo League member Morris Engel. Orkin and Engel collaborated on two major independent feature films, “Little Fugitive” (1953) and “Lovers and Lollipops” (1955). After the success of the two films, Orkin returned to photography, taking color shots of Central Park as seen through her apartment window. The resulting photographs were collected in two books, “A World Through My Window” (1978) and “More Pictures from My Window” (1983).

My recent Swiss steak posting,”Braised short ribs with Swiss chard, and the Swiss Hotel” on the 15th, in considering Swiss chard as an ingredient in cooking, also looked at the semantics of the composite Swiss chard (it’s relational rather than predicational: Swiss chard isn’t Swiss, but instead is related to or associated with Switzerland in some way — but in what way?) and illustrated one culinary use of the plant’s leaves.

But there’s more. First, there’s more on the semantics. Swiss chard is a synonym of chard; all chard is Swiss chard. That is, the Swiss of Swiss chard isn’t restrictive, but rather appositive: not ‘chard that is related to Switzerland (in such and such a way)’, but ‘chard, which is related to Switzerland (in such and such a way)’.

Second, thanks to the striking colors of its ribs and leaves and to the complex textures of its leaves, Swiss chard is beautiful: it’s a frequent subject for artists (in paintings, water colors, and pencil drawings) and photographers, and it’s grown as an ornamental plant (like ornamental cabbage and kale — the ornamental crucifers — and some herbs, notably rosemary, thyme, and sage).

Finally, my adventures with the composite Swiss chard led me to two specific culinary uses of the plant: in the characteristic dish of Romansh-speaking Switzerland, the chard-wrapped meat dumplings capuns; and the combination of   Swiss chard with white beans (in sautés, stews, and soups) — one of the staples of my Swiss grandmother’s cooking.

Chard semantics. Ok, Swiss chard is relational rather than predicational, but what’s the association between Swiss chard and Switzerland? Chard is in fact an everyday culinary ingredient throughout Switzerland: in the German-speaking areas, the French-speaking areas, the Italian-speaking areas, and the Romansh-speaking areas. Also in the Swiss diaspora in the US. (And also in France, Bavaria, and northern Italy — all adjacent to Switzerland.) In contrast, in the UK, in Scandinavia, in the Slavic areas of Europe, in most of North America, and so on, it’s not unknown, but it’s an “exotic” vegetable (like napa, daikon, or jicama). So in the real world there’s an association between chard and Switzerland, so that the name Swiss chard makes sense.

You might have noticed that in the preceding paragraph I shifted from talking about Swiss chard to talking about just chard. That’s because Swiss chard is just another way of referring to chard, as this NOAD entry makes clear:

noun chard (also Swiss chard): a beet of a variety with broad white leaf stalks that may be prepared and eaten separately from the green parts of the leaf.

The modifier Swiss merely amplifies chard: ‘chard, which (by the way), is associated with Switzerland’. That is, Swiss is an appositive modifier, not a restrictive one. On the distinction, see my 2/8/07 Language Log posting “Droning on”, about pilotless drones and similar examples.

Chard art. A little while back, an exhibition at the Pacific Art League Palo Alto (just up Ramona St. from my house) included a very striking painting of Swiss chard leaves — at a price well beyond my means, so I took no further note of the work. But it did alert me to the fact that Swiss chard, with its striking colors and complex textures, was actualy a frequent subject for art work (in various media) and photography.

Two paintings on the Fine Art America site:

(#1) Jeelan Clark, Swiss Chard in a Vegetable Garden (link)

(#2) Steven Fleit, Swiss Chard (link)

And a photo by Hank Erdmann, one of a substantial portfolio of chard photos:

(#3) “Swiss Chard is used as an ornamental border planting in the gardens at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, DuPage County, Illinois”

A painting of Swiss chard used as a garden ornamental: Natasha Hersh, Cabbage And Swiss Chard (link):

(#4) “An intriguing planting at Wave Hill Botanical Gardens in Riverhead, NY showing how decorative vegetables can be sharing space with your ordinary flowering plants.”

Varieties of Swiss chard have been bred specifically for their colorful stalks:

(#5) “Bright Lights” hybrids (with some plain white-stalked, green-leaved chard for comparison)

Then, from the Michigan Gardening website, “The Blended Garden” by Ellen Zachos:

Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris ssp. vulgaris) is a traditional vegetable, but the ‘Bright Lights’ cultivars are pretty enough to grace any ornamental garden bed. Stems and midribs come in bright orange, yellow, red, or white, and contrast nicely with the green leaves. They have an upright growth habit, and look especially pretty clustered in groups of three to five plants. Find a sunny spot at the front or middle of your garden for this lovely edible.

(#6) “Leaf lettuces, Swiss chard, rosemary, and peppers light up this edible container just as well as its floral counterparts”

Chard food.  First, a (somewhat edited) comment by Steve Anderson on my “Braised short ribs with Swiss chard…” posting:

“Swiss chard” (French côtes de bette, German Mangloldblätter, Rumantsch Grischun [a proposed pan-dialectal standard for Romansh] urtais, Surmiran [Romansh dialect] mangold) is the crucial ingredient (as wrapper) in one of the most distinctive dishes of the Rumantsch speaking parts of Graubünden [aka Grisons], capuns. I have two cookbooks with nothing but recipes for capuns, hundreds of different variations. (link)

Capuns are meat-filled dumplings of Spätzle / Spätzli noodle dough, wrapped in chard leaves, cooked in Milchwasser (milk and water), and topped with grated cheese

(#7) Capuns mit Salsiz (capuns with sausage) from the Betty Bossi site (in German)

(On the language, its history, its structure, and its dialects, see Steve’s survey article “Romansh (Rumantsch)”, in draft here.)

Meanwhile, while looking for chard art, I chanced upon sites about dishes of white beans and swiss chard: sautées, stews, and soups, using Navy beans, Great Northern beans, or cannellini. For example, from the Flavor the Moments website on 2/28/18, a recipe for “Instant pot [crock pot, or pressure cooker] spicy white bean and chard stew”:

(#8) White bean and Swiss chard stew

The recipe uses dried Great Northern beans and Swiss chard; chopped onion, carrots, and garlic; red pepper flakes; a can of diced tomatoes; vegetable stock; and rosemary, oregano, a bay leaf, salt and pepper; with grated parmesan cheese on top. This is a vegetarian version; otherwise, you could use chicken broth and add sautéed chopped pancetta or bits of bacon. A version of this stew, with chicken stock (and sometimes bits of chicken) but without the red peppers, was one of my my Swiss grandmother’s staple dishes. (My Swiss grandparents always grew Swiss chard in their farm garden, as did my parents in our smaller backyard garden.)

Other variants of the stew use chickpeas (garbanzos) rather than white beans, or add small pasta or rice (as in minestrone), or both. They’re all delicious.

(About the social-sexual world of gay men — men negotiating for sex — so much of this is not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Two recent Daily Jocks postings featuring men displaying their bodies in what is clearly a sexual offer, with accompanying facial expressions: from July 9th, a DJ ad for CellBlock13 underwear, with a model performing two different cruises; and from July 11th, a selfie that won a DJ gift box for its subject:

(#1) On the left, crotch display and Engaged Face (“Hey, buddy, we can do this”); on the right, butt display and Seductive Face (“Think you can handle this, big boy?”)

Ad copy:

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

The Cyber X-treme collection features brand new Harnesses, Jockstraps and Shorts with both the latter featuring a detachable pouch and c-ring.

Yes, the pouch unsnaps in a jiffy, so its wearer can achieve an instant response to the exigencies of the sexual moment.

(#2) Frontal muscle fantasy and Supercilious Face (“Look on my body, you peon, and despair!”); Diego is modeling the Varsity brand Debut jockstrap in light blue and teal

Then there’s street cruising, with its apotheotic facial expression, the Killer Cruise, aka the Cruise of Death:

(#3) From my 7/30/11 posting “X of death, killer X”, a cartoon from Ortleb & Fiala’s 1978 book of gay cartoons, Relax! This book is only a phase you’re going through

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. As here, in this bear-cruising photo by Boots Bryant (more on him below):

(#4) In the next photo in the series, Checked Shirt goes down on Business Suit

On to cruising. From NOAD:

verb cruise: [no object, with adverbial] 1 [a] sail about in an area without a precise destination, especially for pleasure: they were cruising off the California coast | [with object]: she cruised the canals of France in a barge. [b] take a vacation on a ship or boat following a predetermined course, usually calling in at several ports. [c] (of a vehicle or person) travel or move slowly around without a specific destination in mind: a police van cruised past us | [with object]: teenagers were aimlessly cruising the mall. [d] informal wander about a place in search of a casual sexual partner: he spends his time cruising and just hanging out in New Orleans | [with object]: he cruised the gay bars of Los Angeles. [e] [with object] informal walk past and assess (a potential sexual partner): he was cruising a pair of sailors. ORIGIN mid 17th century (as a verb): probably from Dutch kruisen ‘to cross’, from kruis ‘cross’, from Latin crux.

[d] and [e] are the mansexually relevant senses.

Guys can cruise each other anywhere, even on elegant shopping streets and in farm fields, but there are canonical sites for public cruising:  certain men’s rooms (for t-room action) and cruising areas of woods and parks. This activity is rarely represented in mainstream media, but it surfaces occasionally (often with the scent of scandal clinging to it).

An example from cruising areas of parks: from my 8/19/17 posting “An urban jungle”, a section on The Ramble in NYC’s Central Park, featuring Al Pacino in the film Cruising. And from t-rooms: from my 4/25/18 posting “At the t-room urinals”, a section on Frank Ripploh’s film Taxi zum Klo.

Some photographers have specifically celebrated public cruising in their works. From the Advocate site on 10/21/17, in “61 Photos of Men Cruising for It in Public” by Christopher Harrity:

In these photographs, [Long Beach CA-based artist] Boots Bryant [Kevin Johnson] depicts the tense erotic rituals of traditional public cruising

On  Bryant’s Facebook page he characterizes himself as an

Artcivious [art + lascivious] shutterbug and artist. My work falls on the boundary WHERE FILTH MEETS FINE ART!

From the portfolio:

(#5) Locking eyes in the woods

(#6) T-room offer

(#7) After the eye-lock stage, the crucial stage 2: contact!

Then on The Fader site on 12/16/11, “Interview: Photographer Chad States on Cruising” by Alex Frank:

(#8) Stage 2 among the evergreens

Chad States opens his book of photographs with an old quote from writer Edmund White: “Although people still talked about sex as ‘disgusting’ and ‘filthy,’ I thought of it as romantic.” Cruising is States’ proof that this is true, a documentation of two years he spent visiting state parks around the country not to go birdwatching or take hikes, but to photograph, quite romantically, the age-old practice of cruising for gay sex in the woods. He took thousands of pictures that are amazing enough for their subject matter alone — in a world where you can watch Kim Kardashian go to the OB-GYN on syndicated television, it feels special to access one of the few remaining undocumented private spaces left. But what’s awesome is that States is more than just an anthropologist. Bathing his subjects in soft light, the work is just as much a lovely coffee table book about nature and an affirmation of the things humans do, and have always done, quite naturally. States turns something thought of as sordid into a celebration.

It begins with this photo, sent to me by a gay friend who found it, unattributed, on a hot-men website; found it, um, moving; and thought I would too:

(#1) Filed under “Hunks at play”, though the hunks don’t seem particularly playful

They are, first of all, hunks. The photographer’s gaze dwells on their bodies, presenting them as desirable pieces of meat. Then, they are sullenly inexpressive, not playful at all, despite the fact that they’re messing around on a boat.

I thought I recognized the style and the content as well, and I was right: Bruce Weber, a photographer who has played a major role in making homoeroticism — crudely, men as meat — a thing in the ad world (women as meat in ads has a much longer history). “Hunks at play” is actually Weber’s “Capri, Italy 1994”.

From my 1/25/13 posting “Bruce Weber”:

On AZBlogX, a posting about photographer Bruce Weber, the man who (among other things) made homoeroticism a central feature of men’s clothing ads. It’s on my X Blog because three of the six images there (from Weber’s book of male photography Bear Pond) show full frontal nudity.

The other three are of hot male models in their underwear.

Homoerotic photography of men in pairs or larger groups comes in many flavors: men in competition, in athletics or fights; men bonding as buddies, arms around each other; men sexually engaged with one another; men at play, horsing around.   The group portrait in #1 comes closest to the last type (a genre I’m fond of); for some examples, see my 10/24/16 posting “Naked boys playing at liberty”, featuring photos from Shoreleave, by Anthony Kennedy; shots of the Warwick Rowers; and some not fully identified photographs.

Weber can do playful (while not slacking on homoerotic), as here:

(#2) Hunk mounted on his toy zebra

He can do intensely steamy couples, as in this ad shot for Gianni Versace:

(#3)

And he can do buddies, in ths case with some athletic competition thrown in (in a jauntily homoerotic Abercrombie & Fitch ad):

(#4)

“Kyle and Lane Carlson (born December 24, 1978) are identical twin brothers known as the Carlson Twins. The Carlson twins work together as male fashion models.” (Wikipedia)

The Carlson twins doing intense and impassive:

(#5)

Looking at portrait photos.

Every portrait works in triplicate: depicting the sitter, revealing the photographer and reminding the viewer of a shared humanity. (Teju Cole, NYT Magazine)

Virtually all of Weber’s photographs are posed — the subjects are posing (rather than caught unawares), in positions chosen by Weber. They’re portraits, some informal (giving the impression of life captured on film, as in #1 and #4), some formal (clearly arranged for the camera, as in #3 and #5). In either case, there’s a question about how we look at the portraits and what we see there. What traits, identities, attitudes, and so on were the subjects projecting? Which of these was the photographer aiming at? And what do we find when we bring our own experiences, expectations, and judgments to the photographic record?

Like any other kind of portrait, a photographic portrait is an artistic construction, subject to all the complexities of contexts, intentions, and interpretations that attend all portraits. But especially clouded by our inclination to see photographs as slices of reality and so to judge them as we would assess people in front of us. (Making such judgments is incredibly complex in real life, but then the camera’s eye intervenes between the subjects and our own eyes.)

And so to Teju Cole in his On Photography column in Sunday’s NYT Magazine, “There’s Less to Portraits Than Meets the Eye, and More” (on-line on 8/23), about this portrait photo:

(#6) “Young Man at a Tent Revival, Brooklyn, NY, 1989” (photo by Dawoud Bey, from Stephen Daiter Gallery and Rena Bransten Gallery)

We tend to interpret portraits as though we were reading something inherent in the person portrayed. We talk about strength and uncertainty; we praise people for their strong jaws and pity them their weak chins. High foreheads are deemed intelligent. We easily link the people’s facial features to the content of their character. This is odd. After all, we no longer believe you can determine someone’s personality by measuring their skull with a pair of calipers. Phrenology has rightly been consigned to the dustbin of history. But physiognomy, the idea that faces carry meanings, still haunts the interpretation of portraiture.

The reason for the temptation is obvious: Faces are malleable. A smile is intentional and might indeed indicate happiness, just as a furrowed brow might be proof of a melancholic temperament. But we also know that emotion is fleeting and can be faked. We thus shouldn’t really trust whatever it is a photographic portrait seems to be telling us.

This is not to deny any of the wonder or gratitude you feel before a superb portrait. Sometimes this response is amplified when it’s a portrait of someone not famous, a face that isn’t burdened with predetermined knowledge. I’m looking at one such image in Dawoud Bey’s magnificent career retrospective, “Seeing Deeply” (2018). In the book, this black-and-white photograph is given a full page. The format invites contemplation, and this should be mentioned because what we see in a photograph is connected to its material circumstances: An exhibition print of the same image would give one impression, a magazine reproduction would be another, a digital file meant to be seen on a computer or hand-held device is something else again. The warm tone and low gloss of this photograph in this book are calming. A boy stands alone before a tent and some chairs. We don’t know who he is, and the caption doesn’t help much: “Young Man at a Tent Revival, Brooklyn, NY, 1989.” The surprising detail there is the date, as this picture looks as if it could have been taken at any point in the past century. It is strangely timeless, with his attire somewhere between formal and casual, the slim dark tie and serious black pants contrasting with the baggy pale-colored plaid shirt.

I want to fall back on old ways and say that the gentle arch of the boy’s left eyebrow seems to mark him as an ironic sort, or that the symmetry of his features make him both trusting and trustworthy. But really, that would be projecting. What we can really say is that there’s something poignant about the way the skinny tie is tucked into the skinny belt and the way the numerous verticals in the picture — the tent poles, the ropes of its rigging, the legs of the chairs in the background, the tie, the lines of the shirt and finally the boy himself — all seem to be tilting just off true.

The picture wavers in tremulous equilibrium. Even the boy’s head is cocked to the side. Quizzically? Or is he simply at his ease? I don’t know. But the cumulative effect is endearing. There’s a boy, and his appearance is dense with a life that we can only guess at. There’s faith in it (it’s a revival, after all); there’s probably hope, too. But what we can be surer of is that there’s love: the love with which Dawoud Bey has seen the elements of the moment and captured them for posterity, and the love with which, almost three decades later, I am looking at this portrait in a book.

Very briefly on Cole, from Wikipedia:

Teju Cole (born June 27, 1975) is [a Nigerian-]American writer, photographer, and art historian.

Cole is the author of a novella, Every Day is for the Thief (2007); a novel, Open City (2012); an essay collection, Known and Strange Things (2016), and a photobook, Punto d’Ombra (2016; published in English in 2017 as Blind Spot).

And on Bey:

Dawoud Bey (born 1953 [as David Edward Smikle]) is an American photographer and educator renowned for his large-scale color portraits of adolescents and other often marginalized subjects. In 2017, Bey was the recipient of a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He is a professor and Distinguished Artist at Columbia College Chicago.

… A product of the 1960s, Dawoud Bey said both he and his work are products of the attitude, “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” This philosophy significantly influenced his artistic practice and resulted in a way of working that is both community-focused and collaborative in nature. Bey’s earliest photographs, in the style of street photography, evolved into a seminal five-year project documenting the everyday life and people of Harlem in Harlem USA (1975–1979) that was exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979.

… Of his work with teenagers Bey has said, “My interest in young people has to do with the fact that they are the arbiters of style in the community; their appearance speaks most strongly of how a community of people defines themselves at a particular historical moment.”