Previously on Shirtless Television, David Boreanaz (Angel in Buffy) and James Marsters (Spike), plus Spangel (Spike/Angel) slash imagery. More Spangel images are now on AZBlogX, in “Television notes” (#3, #4, and #5), along with a Leo/Cole image, putting together two characters from the series Charmed, Leo Wyatt (played by Brian Krause) and Cole Turner (played by Julian McMahon). On to a shirtless Krause and to McMahon and his Nip/Tuck co-star Dylan Walsh, shirtless together.

On Charmed, from Wikipedia:

Charmed is an American television series created by writer Constance M. Burge and produced by Aaron Spelling and his production company Spelling Television, with writer-director Brad Kern serving as showrunner. The series was originally broadcast by The WB Television Network for eight seasons from October 7, 1998, until May 21, 2006.

The series narrative follows three sisters, known as the Charmed Ones, the most powerful good witches of all time, whose prophesied destiny is to protect innocent lives from evil beings such as demons and warlocks. Each sister possesses unique magical powers that grow and evolve, while they attempt to maintain normal lives in modern day San Francisco.

… Leo Wyatt is introduced into season one as the sisters’ handy-man, but they later discover that he is their Whitelighter [effectively, their guardian angel]. Leo has the power to orb himself and others in space and across some dimensions, but most frequently by healing the sisters or their circle of contacts.

… Cole Turner is introduced into season three as an Assistant District Attorney. He is half-human and half-demon by blood, and better known to the demonic world for over a hundred years as the legendary demonic assassin, Belthazor. Cole possesses a number of magical abilities [, including] the power to teleport and the power to throw projective energy balls which could stun or kill.

So Cole is a dark character and Leo his opposite. Here they are, shirtless together (Cole on the left, Leo on the right). The image has been cropped to eliminate Cole’s huge erection (the full image is #2 in the AZBlogX posting); presumably Leo is about to service Cole sexually.

  (#1)

Now Brian Krause alone:

  (#2)

(Again, this is a cropped photo; the full nude photo is #1 in my AZBlogX posting.)

The brief story on Krause:

Brian Jeffrey Krause (born February 1, 1969) is an American actor and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Leo Wyatt on The WB television series Charmed (1998–2006). (Wikipedia link)

And on McMahon:

Julian Dana William McMahon (… born 27 July 1968) is an Australian actor and former fashion model. He is best known for his portrayals of Cole Turner in The WB hit series Charmed, womanizing plastic surgeon Christian Troy on the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning TV show Nip/Tuck and Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. (Wikipedia link)

McMahon takes us to Nip/Tuck:

Nip/Tuck is an American drama series created by Ryan Murphy, which aired on FX in the United States between July 18, 2003 and March 3, 2010. The series focuses on McNamara/Troy, a controversial plastic surgery practice, and especially its founders, Sean McNamara and Christian Troy (portrayed by Dylan Walsh and Julian McMahon). (Wikipedia link)

From the show, Walsh and McMahon, shirtless together in a gay dream sequence, in which the two men go as a couple to a gay resort:

  (#3)

As you can see, Walsh has a notably hairy chest (and McMahon has notably broad shoulders).

On Walsh in brief:

Dylan Walsh (born Charles M. Walsh: November 17, 1963) is an American actor. He is perhaps best known as Dr. Sean McNamara in the FX television series Nip/Tuck. (Wikipedia link)

Here he is showing off his notably hairy forearms:

  (#4)

(Not about language.)

Omitted from my last posting on more television hunks. the earlier history of Brian Krause (Leo in Charmed, 1998-2006). In his very early 20s, Krause did Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), in which he appeared as a cute blondish curly-haired twink (in preposterous demi-costumes).

On the movie:

Return to the Blue Lagoon is a 1991 American romance and adventure film starring Milla Jovovich and Brian Krause, produced and directed by William A. Graham.

The film tells the story of two young children marooned on a tropical island paradise in the South Pacific. Their life together is blissful, but not without physical and emotional changes, as they grow to maturity and fall in love. (Wikipedia link)

Not a great moment in the history of the cinema,

Two shots, a shirtless torso shot and then Krause in costume:

(#1)

(#2)

At some point between Lagoon and Charmed, BK went to the gym and transformed himself from twink to the hunk you can see in #2 my previous posting.

My recent postings on slash fiction and imagery, and fan fiction and art, pulled up a series of truncations and clippings, the most notable being manip, a count noun referring to a digital or photo manipulation of an image or video. From “Spike / Marsters” on the 20th:

Angel can be viewed in my previous posting (image #2, and with the Winchester brothers and Spike in a fourgy in #9). Doug Wyman supplied a Spangel [Spike/Angel] manip in a comment to that posting, and here’s another that I like: [#2 in "Spike / Marsters"]

That’s digital or photo manipulation truncated to manipulation, then clipped to manip. Well, it’s short and snappy.

On these manipulations, from Wikipedia:

Photo manipulation (also called photoshopping or — before the rise of Photoshop software — airbrushing) is the application of image editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception (in contrast to mere enhancement or correction) after the original photographing took place.

The term is used for both the technique (as a mass noun) and its product (as a count noun).

On to clippings of fiction as fic (parallel to the clipping of literature as lit, as in chicklit or chick lit). First, in fanfic:

Fan fiction (alternatively referred to as fan-fiction, fanfiction, fanfic, FF, or simply fic) is a broadly-defined fan labor term for stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator. Works of fan fiction are rarely commissioned or authorized by the original work’s owner, creator, or publisher; also, they are almost never professionally published. Because of this, stories often contain a disclaimer stating that the creator of the work owns none of the characters. Fan fiction, therefore, is defined by being both related to its subject’s canonical fictional universe and simultaneously existing outside the canon of that universe. Most fan fiction writers assume that their work is read primarily by other fans, and therefore tend to presume that their readers have knowledge of the canon universe (created by a professional writer) in which their works are based. (Wikipedia link)

From the same Wikipedia entry:

In almost all fandoms, slash refers to same-sex male pairings. The term originates from the slash between the names of the characters in a relationship (e.g. Kirk/Spock).

And that gives us slashfic, short for slash fiction.

A New Yorker cartoon by Emily Flake:

(#1)

The reference is to Miley Cyrus’s performance at the recent Video Music Awards.

From Rolling Stone on the 25th, “Miley Cyrus ‘Can’t Stop’ Twerking at VMAs 2013, Twitter Reacts: Pop star stuns alongside giant dancing bears” by Erin Couleran (with a video):

Miley Cyrus performed her hit summer single “We Can’t Stop” at the 2013 VMAs [Video Music Awards] with a parade of giant bears dancing around her. The pop singer performed her racy song in a silver sequin leotard with an image of a bear sticking his tongue out.

After “We Can’t Stop,” Robin Thicke, Kendrick Lamar and 2 Chainz took the stage and performed “Blurred Lines” with Miley. She danced with Thicke, gyrating in a flesh-toned plastic bikini with a foam “We’re No. 1″ hand.”

It was definitely one of the night’s most talked-about moments, with some fans expressing shock and others applauding the pop singer’s wild antics.

A still from the performance:

(#2)

On twerking, on this blog, see here. And on Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, see here.

Cyrus has come quite a distance since her Disney younger years. From Wikipedia on those years:

Miley Ray Cyrus (born Destiny Hope Cyrus; November 23, 1992) is an American actress and recording artist. The daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, she held minor roles in the television series Doc and the film Big Fish in her childhood. In 2006, Cyrus rose to prominence as a teen idol after being cast in the Disney Channel television series Hannah Montana, in which she portrayed the starring character Miley Stewart.

It seems to be a Chuck and Beans morning (see here and here). Now an up-to-the-moment strip:

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The two stories: Miley Cyrus and twerking (coverage on this blog here), and the casting of the next Batman movie (which will bring us to Justin Timberlake and then to other actors).

On Timberlake (of wardrobe malfunction fame) and Batman, from Rolling Stone, in “Justin Timberlake Wants to Play the Riddler From ‘Batman’: ’If I’m gonna play crazy, I wanna play proper crazy’ “by Erin Coulehan 8/30/13:

Justin Timberlake gets enough adulation as a superstar that he’s ready to play a villain: the singer wants to show his maniacal side as the Riddler from the Batman franchise, Variety reports.

Timberlake said in a recent interview on New York radio station Fresh 102.7 that he would rather play a bad guy than take on a role like Batman’s sidekick Robin.

… Timberlake also expressed confidence that [Ben] Affleck is equal to the challenge of playing Batman in the upcoming Man of Steel sequel. “I think he’s an extreme talent, so he could surprise a lot of people,” Timberlake said.

Now onto the gratuitous shirtlessness (hey, it’s a holiday weekend here, and I can indulge myself):

(#2)

Timberlake (shown here in a cock tease shot, plus pits ‘n’ tits) has a nice, lean, but not overdeveloped body (what i think of as Hot Normal).

On the man:

Justin Randall Timberlake (born January 31, 1981) is an American actor, businessman and singer-songwriter. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, he appeared on the television shows Star Search and The New Mickey Mouse Club as a child. In the late 1990s, Timberlake rose to prominence as the lead singer and youngest member of the boy band ‘N Sync (Wikipedia link)

Then he got hot.

While I was collecting shirtless Timberlake shots, I stumbled onto a Jason Priestley thread. On Priestley:

Jason Bradford Priestley (born August 28, 1969) is a Canadian-American actor and director. He is best known as the virtuous Brandon Walsh on the television series Beverly Hills, 90210 and for his current role starring as Richard “Fitz” Fitzpatrick in the show Call Me Fitz. (Wikipedia link)

That led me to Luke Perry:

Coy Luther “Luke” Perry III (born October 11, 1966) is an American actor. Perry starred as Dylan McKay on the TV series Beverly Hills, 90210, a role he played from 1990–1995, and then from 1998–2000. Much publicity was garnered over the fact that even though he was playing a sixteen-year-old when 90210 began, Perry was actually in his mid-twenties at the time. Perry returned to 90210 in 1998 (this time billed as a permanent “Special Guest Star”) and remained with the series until its conclusion in 2000. (Wikipedia link)

Bad-boy pistol-packing Perry:

(#3)

Good shirtless shots of Brandon Priestley are harder to come by, but I did luck on this silly Perry – Priestley pose:

(#4)

Both Hot Normals. Nice guys. Ok, with their pants at their feet.

Noted in an episode of the old tv show The Rifleman, this bit of dialogue. The main character, Lucas McCain, has just explained to his son, Mark, that Mark is quite a psychologist (after Mark’s deft handling of  difficult situation). Lucas explains (in brief) what a psychologist is, and Mark struggles to pronounce the word psychologist. Mark:

I may be one, but I’ll never be able to pronounce it.

Ok, one ‘a psychologist’ plus it ‘the word psychologist‘. Use, mention, and an anaphoric connection between them.

On the show:

The Rifleman is an American Western television program starring Chuck Connors as rancher Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show was filmed in black-and-white, half-hour episodes. “The Rifleman” aired on ABC from September 30, 1958 to April 8, 1963 as a production of Four Star Television. It was one of the first prime time series to have a widowed parent raise a child. (Wikipedia link)

A shot of the three major participants: Mark, Lucas, and the rifle:

A lot of the show was about Lucas, his ideals, and his rifle. But a lot was about his close relationship with his son, and that was genuinely touching.

From the NYT on the 1st, this entertaining piece by Teddy Wayne, “Explaining Twerking to Your Parents”, beginning:

Every child dreads this day: sooner or later, your parents will come to you, innocently wide-eyed, to ask you about twerking. How you handle this difficult conversation is extremely important and could have a significant impact on the way your parents think about twerking for years to come. You may prefer to put off the big “twerk talk,” but remember that it’s far better for you to be the one to explain than for them to learn on their own by searching YouTube.

A critical first step is to acknowledge that twerking is a normal part of life and that there is nothing shameful in their questions. They’re parents, after all, and this is the sort of thing they hear about on NPR, and, well, they’re curious.

Explain that twerking is a dance move typically associated with lower-income African-American women that involves the rapid gyration of the hips in a fashion that prominently exhibits the elasticity of the gluteal musculature.

They will reasonably wonder why Miley Cyrus, who is white and wealthy, does it at every opportunity. Patiently respond that, for Ms. Cyrus, twerking is a brazenly cynical act of cultural appropriation being passed off as a rebellious reclamation of her sexuality after a childhood in the Disneyfied spotlight, but, in the end, who are we really to judge? I mean, it can’t be a picnic being Billy Ray’s daughter, and remember that Vanity Fair picture of them? That was just …weird.

Previously on this blog:

“Twerking” 7/13/13
“Twerk time” 8/28/13
“Cyrus – Timberlake” 9/1/13

And the creepy Vanity Fair photo:

Probably my last posting on twerking. Who could top this?

Reflecting on portmanteaus yesterday, I was reminded of the breakfast cereal Quisp, with a name that combines Quaker (Oats Co.) and crisp. Quisp was introduced with a companion cereal Quake, with a name that alluded to both Quaker and earthquake.

From Wikipedia:

Quisp is a sugar-sweetened breakfast cereal from the Quaker Oats Company. It was introduced in 1965 and continued as a mass-market grocery item until the late 1970s. Sometime afterward, the company sold the item sporadically, and upon the rise of the Internet began selling it primarily online. Quisp made its return to supermarkets as a mass-market grocery item in late 2012.

Quisp was initially marketed with a sister brand, Quake. Its joint-product television commercials were produced by Jay Ward, a major producer of animated television series.

History: Quisp and the similarly marketed cereal Quake were originally released in 1965 in the United States by the Quaker Oats Company and generally advertised together (during the same commercial) with their character mascots competing against each other. The successful ads were cartoons created by Jay Ward, who also created the cartoon characters Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, and many others, and the Quisp ads used some of the same voice actors as the Rocky and Bullwinkle series, including Daws Butler as the voice of Quisp (an alien [from Planet Q]) and William Conrad as the voice of Quake (a miner [from the center of the earth]).

Description: Quisp is a baked paste of corn meal and syrup shaped like saucers. The taste is similar to fellow Quaker Oats cereal, Cap’n Crunch. Quake cereal was produced by the same process and ingredients, but shaped like the letter Q. Packaging as of 2012 carries the tagline on the front panel, “Crunchy Corn Cereal”, and on side panels, “QUAZY Energy Cereal”.

(Energy in this context means lots and lots of sugar.)

On the voice actors:

Charles Dawson “Daws” Butler (November 16, 1916 — May 18, 1988) was a voice actor originally from Toledo, Ohio. He worked mostly for the Hanna-Barbera animation production company and originated the voices of many familiar animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound. (Wikipedia link)

William Conrad (born John William Cann Jr.; September 27, 1920 – February 11, 1994) was an American actor, producer and director whose career spanned five decades in radio, film and television.

A radio writer and actor, he moved to Hollywood, California, after his World War II service and played a series of character roles in films beginning with the quintessential film noir, The Killers (1946). He created the role of Marshal Matt Dillon for the popular radio series Gunsmoke (1952–1961), and narrated the television adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (1959–1964) and The Fugitive (1963–1967).

Finding fewer on-screen roles in the 1950s, he changed from actor to producer-director with television work and a series of Warner Bros. films in the 1960s. Conrad found stardom as a detective in the TV series Cannon (1971–1976) and Nero Wolfe (1981), and as a district attorney in the legal drama Jake and the Fatman (1987–1992). (Wikipedia link)

From Ben Zimmer, two instances of ass-avoidance in the news.

First, from the New York Times, a story about GoDaddy shifting its advertising strategy, “GoDaddy Steps Away From the Jiggle” by Stuart Elliott (on September 5th):

A marketer whose sexy advertising polarized consumers for years is trying to distance itself even more from its previous provocative approach, as executives seek to strike a balance between being noticed and being castigated.

In a commercial scheduled to begin running on Thursday, GoDaddy, the Internet services company, will recast itself as a helpmate to small-business owners by adopting a new theme for its advertising, “It’s go time.” The commercial, by Deutsch New York, part of the Deutsch division of the Interpublic Group of Companies, features the action movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme playfully embodying the new GoDaddy brand personality by enabling entrepreneurs to meet whatever challenges they face.

In interviews and news releases, GoDaddy executives are describing the new brand personality with phrases like the one a family newspaper would paraphrase as “enabling our customers to kick tail.” But the sassy unparaphrased version is missing from the commercial, which will appear on godaddy.com as well as on television, initially during the NBC coverage of the first game of the N.F.L.’s 2013-14 season.

The changes in GoDaddy’s approach arrive as marketers and consumers debate how far is too far when it comes to language and imagery in mainstream ads. The original GoDaddy brand personality was characterized by buxom, scantily clad women called “GoDaddy Girls”; ad copy replete with double entendres, many delivered by the racecar driver Danica Patrick; and online commercials that were racier than the eyebrow-raising television versions. Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy who was then its chief executive, originated and reveled in those tactics for what he called “GoDaddy-esque” ads.

The unexpurgated “help you kick ass” version can be viewed here:

 (#1)

This is a big step away from the raciness of the earlier GoDaddy ad copy, though it has the slang idiom kick ass (with the alternative kick butt):

[Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms 2003] to be very exciting or effective … The DVD of that war movie truly kicks ass.

[Collins English Dictionary 2003] [vb intr] to be impressive, esp in a forceful way pop music that kicks ass; [adj kick-ass]  forceful, aggressive, and impressive

But even this has been toned down for the NFL tv ad, and the NYT has chosen to paraphrase the idiom because of the word ass in it, despite the fact that the word is not understood literally.

The paper has not always been so ostentatiously modest. Its coverage of the Kick-Ass movies, for instance, has been straightforward.

On the first movie, from Wikipedia:

Kick-Ass is a 2010 British-American superhero action-comedy film based on the comic book of the same name by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. The film was directed by Matthew Vaughn, who co-produced with Brad Pitt and co-wrote the screenplay with Jane Goldman. Its general release was on 25 March 2010 in the United Kingdom and on 16 April 2010 in the United States. It is the first installment of the Kick-Ass film series.

It tells the story of an ordinary teenager, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who sets out to become a real-life superhero, calling himself “Kick-Ass”. Dave gets caught up in a bigger fight when he meets Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), a former cop who, in his quest to bring down the drug lord Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) and his son (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), has trained his eleven-year-old daughter to be the ruthless vigilante Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz).

The cover of the comic book and a poster for the movie:

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(#3)

And from the 4/16/10 review of the movie by Manohla Dargis in the NYT:

A story about a teenager who yearns to be a superhero, and a little girl who’s the star of her own splatter-happy head trip, the big-screen comic “Kick-Ass” could not be more calculating, or cynical.

No avoidance there, or in other Times stories about the comic book and the movies.

Now on to a different case of ass-avoidance, involving author Meg Medina and her young-adult novel Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, about bullying. In her own words (from September 4th):

Author Uninvited: A School Decides I’m Trouble

Let me start by saying that I am not making this up.

This week I was officially uninvited to speak on bullying at a middle school due to the title of my latest YA novel, YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS.

The timing could not have been more ironic. September is the month when the American Library Association celebrates Banned Book Week, our annual reminder about the importance of intellectual freedom.

Sure, the title has raised eyebrows – as I knew it would. But the title of my book wasn’t an issue several months ago when I was contracted  to be part of the school’s anti-bullying event. YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS  is the story of girl’s unraveling as she navigates being in the crosshairs of a physical and emotional abuser.

… last Friday, I received a painful email from the teacher who had reached out to me in the first place. She was apologetic as she explained that her principal needed reassurances. He needed to be sure that I would not state the name of my novel. Or show a slide of the cover. Or use “coarse language” during the presentation.

Medina was of course unwilling to provide these reassurances, so she was uninvited.

(#4)

Here we have a different slang idiom. From the Cambridge Idioms Dictionary (2nd ed., 2006):

kick (somebody’s) ass  (mainly American very informal!)  to punish someone or to defeat someone with a lot of force The General saw the conflict as a chance for the Marines to go in and kick ass. We want to go into the game and kick some ass.

Or, as in Medina’s title, ‘beat somebody up’. Not (necessarily) literal ass-kicking, but generalized aggression and dominance — a sense that is extended further in the ‘forceful, aggressive, impressive’ idiom kick ass.

(Not much about language.)

Catching up on old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer this morning, I noted that though I’ve posted about two of the hunky male characters (Angel and Spike), I neglected some of the others, most especially the central character Xander (played by Nicholas Brendon) and Buffy’s love interest for several seasons Riley (played by Marc Blucas). I didn’t find really stunning shirtless photos of them separately, but I did come across a manip (on the term, see here) of the two of them in carnal congress, Riley screwing Xander (viewable on AZBlogX, here).

Some previous postings on manips:

Wincest (Sam and Dean Winchester from Supernatural), Spangel (Spike/Angel): “Five television hunks” (link)

More Spangel: “Spike / Marsters” (link)

Leo/Cole, from Charmed: “Television hunks, separately and together” (link)

Now about Brendon, from Wikipedia:

Nicholas Brendon (born April 12, 1971, as Nicholas Brendon Schultz in Los Angeles, California), is an American actor best known for his character Xander Harris in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003).

Nicholas Brendon was born Nicholas Brendon Schultz on April 12, 1971 in Los Angeles, three minutes after his identical twin brother, Kelly Donovan.

As a youth, he aspired to become a professional baseball player, but he “lost the passion for it” at 20. Instead, he decided to pursue acting in an attempt to overcome his stuttering problem, which had first become apparent at age 7 or 8, and had made him so fearful of speaking or interacting with strangers that he did not begin dating until 21 or 22.

And on Blucas:

Marcus Paul “Marc” Blucas (born January 11, 1972) is an American actor, known for playing Riley Finn in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Matthew Donnally on Necessary Roughness.

Blucas at first aspired to be a professional basketball player, but ended up in acting. He’s a big man, 6′ 2″, with broad shoulders. Brendon is a hunk but of more ordinary dimensions, and only 5′ 11″. (The differences in height and bulk are probably why the manip has Riley topping Xander. Well, also, Xander is a really sweet character, and Riley is a tough federal agent.)

In contrast to the men, Buffy (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, now Prinze) is tiny, 5′ 4″ tall on a small frame. The show makes a lot of Buffy’s power and strength, and in the scenes in which Buffy and Riley appear together (including some of love-making), the two act as equals, despite the physical disparity. Buffy rulz.

The cover of the August/September 2013 Instinct magazine, with (as usual) male eye candy:

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Given the sexy photo, I expected the Putignano piece to be about so-called “sex addiction”, but in fact it’s about drug addiction.

From the article:

Joe Putignano has lived a lot of life in his 30 some-odd years. A world-class gymnast with Olympic dreams, athletics all too soon took a backseat to drugs, alcohol, depression and eventual homelessness. Joe’s new book, Acrobaddict, out in September, is a compelling chronicle of his journey from young Boston kid in the gym to heroin addict on the streets of New York to performing at the Metropolitan Opera House. But this isn’t just some addict-gets-sober memoir. Acrobaddict delves into an athlete’s obsessive struggle for perfection, the relationship between self-doubt and self-harm and the unbelievable resilience of the human soul.

… “When I wondered if I was gay, this feeling of trauma would come over me,” he says. “The fact is, it was harder to admit I was gay than admit I was a drug addict.”

Note the portmanteau acrobaddict.

On sex addiction. from Wikipedia:

Sexual addiction (sometimes called sex addiction) is a conceptual model devised in order to provide a scientific explanation for sexual urges, behaviors, or thoughts that appear extreme in frequency or feel out of one’s control — in terms of being a literal addiction to sexual activity. This phenomenon is not newly described in the literature, but it has been described by many different terms: hypersexuality, erotomania, nymphomania, satyriasis, Don Juanism, Don Juanitaism, and, most recently, sexual addiction, compulsive sexual behaviour, and paraphilia-related disorders.

… Medical studies and related opinions vary among professional psychologists, sociologists, clinical sexologists and other specialists on sexual addiction as a medical physiological and psychological addiction, or representative of a psychological/psychiatric condition at all.

The issue is one of the categorization of behavior — whether certain behaviors and inclinations should be characterized as pathological, and if so, whether they should be classed with substance addictions.

Shirtless bonus. While I was on the Instinct site, I came across this arresting cock tease photo of Brazilian model Beto Malfacini:

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Abs city, plus a fantastic smile. On the Instinct site, some shower videos of Malfacini from the Brazilian reality tv show A Fazenda, including one in which he manages to scrub his crotch and butt thoroughly without exposing either. On the show:

A Fazenda (… English: The Farm) is the current Brazilian version of the The Farm reality television show based on the Swedish television series of the same name that was originally created in 2001 by Strix and produced in association with Sony Entertainment and Endemol.

The show is based on a group of celebrities living together twenty-four hours a day in a Farm (located in Itu, São Paulo), isolated from the outside world (primarily from mass media, such as newspapers, telephones, television and the internet) while having all their steps followed by cameras around-the-clock, with no privacy for three months.

Twelve items that have come by me recently.

1. Today’s holiday. It’s (International) Talk Like a Pirate day today. Last posting on the holiday on this blog (with links): 9/10/11 “R!”.

2. On the spam watch. By the end of the day, I will have accumulated 400,000 spam comments on this blog since it started. Meanwhile, spam e-mail has been accelerating; I’m now getting hundreds of pieces a day: spam in Chinese, lots of spam from Dr. Oz, huge amounts of penis enlargement spam, and much more. Fortunately, almost all of this comes via a Stanford server that will shut down at the end of the month. Meanwhile, it takes a lot of time just to find legitimate mail in this heap.

3. Semantics of compounds. My AZBlogX piece on “Harnesses” yesterday distinguished two types (and illustrated them): the cross harness and the bulldog harness. The semantics of the first compound is straightforward — the harness resembles an X (in both front and back). The second compound is more complex: the harness resembles the sort of harness used for bulldogs.

4. Porn POP. On AZBlogX this morning, a trifle on the gay porn flick Pacific Rim Job. The title is a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau), combining Pacific Rim (the film features Asian men) and rim job ‘anilingus / analingus’ (the film features fucking and rimming).

This came to my attention in a GameLink ad for a bunch of porn films with titles of a variety of types: International Sausage Fest #3, Locker Room Workouts, Boys Home Alone, My Latin Lover, Horse Hung Hispanics 2.

5. More snarky fashion.  Also on AZBlogX this morning, two more snarkily captioned vintage ads for men’s clothing, with links to the three previous postings of this sort.

6. Electric crackers. From Arne Adolfsen on Facebook, this entertaining ad for Hippo Electric Crackers:

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I was enchanted by the idea of electric biscuits (especially with a hippopotamus as mascot) — imagine an electric Ritz Cracker — until I read the firm’s name and realized that the ad was for firecrackers (cracker as a truncation of firecracker), not biscuits (U.S. crackers). Ambiguity is everywhere.

7. Popularity. The September 8th New York Times Magazine had a section on popularity, with Adam Sternbergh’s piece “The Wisdom and Whimsy of the Crowd: What does it mean to be popular now?” as its central feature. Sternberg notes that for pop culture, the notion of popularity has been fragmented; “we no longer experience culture as one hulking, homogenous mass”, and what counts as popular depends on how popularity is measured.

Along the way, boxes with observations on examples of popularity: the most popular baby names in New York right now are Jayden and Isabella; the most popular cat names in America are Max and Bella, the most popular dog names Bailey and Bella; the best-selling baseball jersey is for Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants (yay!); and so on.

8. ISIS on Slate. On Slate’s Lexicon Valley blog on the 17th, a nice piece “Are You a Double-Is-er?” by Alyssa Pelish, about ISIS, aka “Double-is,” “Extra-is,” “Double-be,” and the “Nonstandard Reduplicative Copula”. Pelish consulted with linguists (including me) and read a lot of literature on the topic (including my summary piece “Extris, Extris“), and then boiled things down to a fairly short piece for a general, non-technical audience. Good job.

9. An endangered language. And in the August Harper’s Magazine, “VNG³¹GYEU⁵³SVR⁵⁵ : How to read the dictionary of an endangered language” by Ross Perlin (assistant director of the Endangered Language Alliance), about the endanged language Trung (of Yunnan province in southwest China; about 7,000 speakers remaining); Perlin and three Trung collaborators have been putting together a substantial Trung-Chinese-English dictionary, to be finished later this year. The article has two sample pages, with discussion.

10. Mad Men. In the same issue, Thomas Frank’s Easy Chair column “Ad Absurdum”, about the tv show Mad Men. On p. 6, Frank reports trying to track down the origin of the expression in the show’s title, without great success:

The only instances of the phrase that we could find from Don Draper’s heyday occurred in a 1957 Saturday Review article and in an obscure novel published the next year, both of them by one James Kelly. That his pet coinage spread no further is hardly a surprise, since the ad industry of the day understood itself as a rational, even scientific, enterprise rather than a hotbed of lunacy.

11. Saganaki. One segment of a tv program on cheese that I stumbled on recently looked at saganaki. From Wikipedia:

Saganaki (Greek σαγανάκι) refers to various Greek dishes prepared in a small frying pan, itself called a saganaki, the best-known being an appetizer of fried cheese.

The word saganaki is a diminutive of sagani, a frying pan with two handles, which comes from the Turkish word sahan ‘copper dish’, itself borrowed from Arabic

… In many United States and Canadian restaurants, after being fried, the saganaki cheese is flambéed at the table (sometimes with a shout of “opa!”), and the flames then extinguished with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. This is called “flaming saganaki” and apparently originated in 1968 at The Parthenon restaurant in Chicago’s Greektown, based on the suggestion of a customer to owner Chris Liakouras.

The show included a visit to the Parthenon. I have in fact had flaming saganaki at the Parthenon.

12. Return to tartare. Continuing the food theme, I turn now to Mark Bitman’s September 15th piece in the New York Times Magazine, on tartare (discussed on this blog here), “Rescuing Tartare From the Stuffy, Old Power-Lunchers”:

In the go-go ’80s, “tartare” pretty much meant a pile of raw, well-seasoned chopped beef topped with a raw egg yolk. It was seen as food for the carnivorous power-lunch crowd — tartare even had a cameo as a status symbol in “Wall Street”— and for old-fashioned people who ate at old-fashioned restaurants.

I’m not sure what the first nonbeef tartare was, but I do remember getting a chuckle when my friend and co-author Jean-Georges Vongerichten introduced me to beet tartare sometime around 1990. In any case, tuna tartare has far surpassed beef in popularity, lamb tartare is fashionable and carrot tartare is expensive. In short, the field is wide open, and it’s time for home cooks to forge ahead.

It couldn’t be simpler; if you can chop or use a food processor, you can make tartare. The method is mostly an exercise in buying and tasting: first you find meat, fish or vegetables you’d want to eat raw (quality is essential, of course), and then you find combinations of garnishes that work. A few natural combinations to get you started: salmon with egg, chives, anchovies and capers; scallops with zucchini, miso and soy sauce; tuna with mustard and soy.

In a picture:

(#2)

Caught in passing in a posting of mine on AZBlogX about porn actor Boomer Banks (I am not making this name up), who’s notable (at least) for his very long and thick cock (illustrated in my posting), this item in his Rentboy ad (image #3 in the posting):

(1) I clean up well

conveying that Banks can make himself presentable as an engaging companion for social occasions as well as serving as a hot and sweaty sexual partner.

The idiom to clean up well/nicely is a “reflexive/middle-voice” verbal: (1) is roughly paraphrasable as “I clean myself up well” or “I can be cleaned up well/easily”. That is, the referent of the subject is the Patient (the affected participant) in the event, rather than the Agent. Compare the classic This book reads easily.

The classic figure who cleaned up well/nicely is Cinderella, appearing radiant for the ball (often at the top of a staircase). But it works for guys too.

Now, googling nets actor Charlie Hunnam, previously seen on this blog scruffilicious and shirtlesss here, but popping up in recent media news in connection with the movie of Fifty Shades of Grey. On babble.com, a Septermber 8th piece by SunnyChanel (aka Sunny Chanel). “50 Shades of Grey: Charlie Hunnam Cleans Up Well for Sons of Anarchy Red Carpet!”:

It was HUGE casting news when it was announced that Charlie Hunnam of Sons of Anarchy fame would be taking on one of the most talked about roles in the last couple of years. The 33-year-old actor will be playing Christian Grey in the film adaptation of EL James’ bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey. Some had a hard time imagining the actor, who plays a biker on Sons of Anarchy, as a businessman (albeit a kinky one). But Charlie Hunnam is giving us a taste — he cleaned up very nicely at the season premiere red carpet for the new season of the popular FX show.

Three views of Hunnam. First, in the earthy Sons of Anarchy character, in an elaborately posed photo:

(#1)

Second, shirtless but shaven and unthreatening:

(#2)

And then suited up for the red carpet:

(#3)

Hunnam’s body is one of his great draws, so we can all hope Fifty Shades gets him shirtless a lot (while he’s still young and hot).

From several sources, pointers to this piece of in-your-face public art:

(#1)

The story from the NYT on the 22nd: “Angry at Prague, Artist Ensures He’s Understood”, by Dan Bilefsky:

“The finger,” said the Czech sculptor David Cerny [in Czech spelling Černý] “speaks for itself.” On that point, at least, everyone could agree.

Mr. Cerny is not known for understatement or diplomacy, from depicting Germany as a network of motorways resembling a swastika to displaying a caricature of a former Czech president inside an enormous fiberglass rear end.

But on Monday, Mr. Cerny, 45, took his political satire to new heights — or depths, depending on your perspective — when, on the eve of Czech general elections this weekend, he installed on the Vltava River a 30-foot-high plastic purple hand with a raised middle finger. It is a symbol, he said, that points directly at the Prague Castle, the seat of the current Czech president, Milos Zeman

Mr. Cerny said the monumental hand with its 16-foot-long outstretched middle finger, placed on a float facing the castle, was a “scream of alarm” against the state of politics in the Czech Republic, endemic corruption and Mr. Zeman, a former leftist prime minister, whom he accused of becoming intoxicated with power.

He said the sculpture, which he gave an unprintable title, was also aimed at the country’s Communist Party, which could gain a share of power in the coming elections for the first time since the revolution that overthrew communism more than two decades ago.

The statue is generally referred to as “Middle Finger”, though presumably the Czech name is something stronger, like ‘Up Yours” or ‘Fuck You’.

On the finger, from Wikipedia:

In Western culture, the finger (as in giving someone the finger or the bird), also known as the finger wave, the middle finger, flipping someone off, flipping the bird, shooting the bird, the rude finger or the one finger salute, is an obscene hand gesture, which is often a sign of extreme or moderate contempt, roughly equivalent in meaning to “fuck off”, “fuck you”, “shove it up your ass”, or “go fuck yourself.” It is performed by showing the back of a closed fist that has only the middle finger extended upwards, though in some locales the thumb is also extended. Extending the finger is considered a universal symbol of contempt in several cultures, especially Western cultures. Many cultures do use similar gestures to display their disrespect, though others use it to express pointing with no intentional disrespect toward other cultures.

There’s a rich literature on the finger. One of its byways is the appearance of the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate on the Laugh-In tv show:

Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (often simply referred to as Laugh-In) is an American sketch comedy television program that ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968, to March 12, 1973, on the NBC television network. It was hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin and featured, at various times, Chelsea Brown, Johnny Brown, Ruth Buzzi, Judy Carne, Richard Dawson, Henry Gibson, Teresa Graves, Goldie Hawn, Arte Johnson, Larry Hovis, Jeremy Lloyd, Dave Madden, Pigmeat Markham, Gary Owens, Pamela Rodgers, Barbara Sharma, Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin and Jo Anne Worley.

… The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award, saluting actual dubious achievements by the government or famous people, such as the announcement of a new Veterans Administration hospital to be erected in Southern California shortly after another such facility was destroyed in the Sylmar earthquake of 1971. The trophy was a gilt, outstretched finger atop a square base. “The flying, fickle finger of fate” was already a familiar catchphrase on the show (Dan Rowan would use the phrase when ushering “new talent” like Tiny Tim on stage).

As I noted in a posting on Zippy the Pinhead, cartoonist Bill Griffith has an attraction to

tabooed F words, especially the Big F, fuck. The American tv comedy show Laugh-In flirted with the F Word on a regular basis, notably in Rowan and Martin’s granting of Flying Fickle Finger of Fate awards, “saluting actual dubious achievements by the government or famous people” (from the Wikipedia page), and in appearances by the Farkel Family, a large clan who were introduced, one by one, by name, on every appearance: Sparkle Farkel, Flicker Farkle, the twins Simon and Gar Farkel, Charcoal Farkel (a black child, identical twin to the white Sparkle Farkel), Mark Farkel, Fritz and Fred Farkel. The sketches presented occasions for cast-challenging tongue twisters like “That’s a fine-looking Farkel flinger you found there, Frank”.

Two other Černý sculptures:

(#2)

(#3)

An often playful, and rarely subtle, artist.

[Addendum: an earlier posting on the finger, "Annals of obscene gestures" of 2/5/13.]

(Not really about language, but just about popular culture on a Sunday morning.)

Re-runs of House have been going past me this morning. On the show, from Wikipedia:

House (also known as House, M.D.) is an American television medical drama that originally ran on the Fox network for eight seasons, from November 16, 2004 to May 21, 2012. The show’s main character is Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), a drug-addicted, unconventional, misanthropic medical genius who leads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital … in New Jersey.

The show is formulaic, tying medical drama (with the team running through a series of diagnoses in the face of baffling symptoms) into the seriocomic soap-operatic drama of the characters’ lives.

The star of the show:

James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE (born 11 June 1959), known as Hugh Laurie …, is an English actor, comedian, writer, musician, and director. He first became known as one half of the Fry and Laurie double act, along with his friend and comedy partner Stephen Fry, whom he joined in the cast of A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Blackadder, and Jeeves and Wooster from 1985 to 1999.

From 2004 to 2012, he played Dr. Gregory House, the protagonist of House, for which he received two Golden Globe awards, two Screen Actors Guild awards and six Emmy nominations. (Wikipedia link)

Laurie’s performance in House is remarkable because of his ability to speak amazingly good American English; not many actors can shift dialects so convincingly.

Then there’s House’s only real friend on the show:

Robert Sean Leonard (born Robert Lawrence Leonard; February 28, 1969) is an American actor. He is best known for playing Dr. James Wilson on the television series House, M.D. and Neil Perry in the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society. He regularly stars in Broadway and off-Broadway productions. (Wikipedia link)

Here are the characters Wilson (left) and House (right), wearing t-shirts with one of the show’s slogans:

(#1)

Next up:

Jesse Gordon Spencer (born 12 February 1979) is an Australian actor and musician. He is best known for playing Dr. Robert Chase on the American medical drama House, and Billy Kennedy on the Australian soap opera Neighbours. He currently stars as Lieutenant Matthew Casey on the American drama series Chicago Fire. (Wikipedia link)

Here’s a shirtless Spencer as an Australian surfer dude:

(#2)

And then:

Omar Hashim Epps (born July 20, 1973) is an American actor, rapper, songwriter, and record producer. His film roles include Major League II, Juice, Higher Learning, Scream 2, The Wood, In Too Deep, and Love and Basketball. Epps’ television work includes the role of Dr. Dennis Gant on the US medical drama series ER, and, between 2004 and 2012, Dr. Eric Foreman on the Fox medical drama series House. (Wikipedia link)

(#3)

(Mostly not about language.)

Seen on Smallville this morning, an episode (centered on character Jimmy Olsen) that switched into film noir style for most of its time. This is a trope — duly noted on the TV Tropes site — that has appeared in episodes on other tv shows: Charmed, Moonlighting, Monk, Castle, plus some shows that drew on the style throughout (Peter Gunn, Angel, Veronica Mars). A borrowing of a characteristic visual style and thematic content from one (historical) medium into another, intended affectionately rather than mockingly.

Today’s Zippy, a pointedly political strip (Griffy vs. Claude), but reproduced here for the diner in it:

(#1)

The diner here is famous in the diner world. From Wikipedia:

White Manna [Hackensack] and White Mana [Jersey City] are the names of two fast food diners in the U.S. state of New Jersey, named after manna, the Biblical food. They were originally opened by Louis Bridges, who purchased the original diner that was introduced in the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens. Both buildings were manufactured by Paramount Diners of Oakland, New Jersey in the late 1930s. Bridges owned five diners, all named “White Manna”.

The White Mana, located at 470 Tonnele Avenue in Western Slope in Jersey City is a historical landmark and was the 1939 World’s Fair building, as well as the first Manna to open. When originally introduced, it was called the “diner of the future” and an “Introduction to Fast Food.” According to the present owner, Mario Costa, Jr., the difference in spelling was the result of an error when the sign was serviced. It is famous for its hamburgers and sells approximately 3,000 a week.

… The Hackensack White Manna Diner is a fast food restaurant located at 358 River Street. The diner has been at the site since 1946, and it is on the banks of the Hackensack River. From time to time, two local brothers will pull up to the small store via boat, much to the delight of the patrons.

The Hackensack location, as pictured in #1:

(#2)

Today’s Zippy, with yet another diner:

(#1)

That’s the Modern Diner in Pawtucket. Then there’s the allusion to the limerick beginning “There once was a man from Nantucket”.

On the diner, from Wikipedia:

Modern Diner is a historic restaurant at 364 East Avenue in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States.

Built in 1940, as one of the Sterling Streamliners, the diner was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

(#2)

Then the limerick. From Wikipedia:

“There once was a man from Nantucket” is the opening line for many limericks, in which the name of the island of Nantucket creates obscene rhymes and puns. The protagonist is typically portrayed as a well-endowed, hypersexualized persona.
The line is so well-known that it has been used as a stand-alone joke, implying upcoming obscenities or taboo language.
The earliest published version appeared in 1902 in the Princeton Tiger:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

Other publications seized upon the “Nantucket” motif, spawning many sequels. Among the most well known are:

But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.

That gets us to Pawtucket. Then come the ribald versions (going back at least to the 1920s), taking advantage of the Nantucket / fuck it rhyme.

Today’s Bizarro, punning and meta:

Carbon footprint, cartoon footprint. Plus the cartoon references,

Two references, to Mr. Natural and Nancy.

From Wikipedia:

Mr. Natural (Fred Natural) is a comic book character created and drawn by 1960s counterculture and underground comix artist Robert Crumb. The character first appeared in the premiere issue of Yarrowstalks (the May 5, 1967 issue).

[Added 11/13: Bob Richmond points out that the character above is one of Crumb's, but not Mr. Natural (who can be viewed in the posting linked to just below). Instead, it's the Keep on Truckin' Man. Both characters step out with big feet in front.]

Mr. Natural and Nancy appeared together in a posting of mine (from January 11th):

For some time I’ve been meaning to post on the underground comics of the ’70s (and later), but the project grew unwieldy, and I never got around even to the major figure of the period, R. Crumb, the Crumb of the Keep on Truckin’ comics and the characters Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural [illustration in the posting]

… Crumb’s own site is here. The Wikipedia entry labels him as an artist and illustrator, not a cartoonist (there’s that art vs. the comics thing again):

Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943) — known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb — is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive [I would say savage] view of the American mainstream.

Then there’s Bushmiller:

Ernest Paul Bushmiller, Jr. (23 August 1905 – 15 August 1982) was an American cartoonist, best known for creating the long-running daily comic strip Nancy. (link)

… For years I took the adventures of Nancy and Sluggo to be symptomatic of what had gone wrong with the daily comics after their golden days: bland, flat, formulaic, and not at all funny. (Many people pick Garfield as the exemplar of the great descent into inanity.) But canny observers, including Bill Griffith [of Zippy the Pinhead], have found much to admire in Nancy.

The posting goes on to give an appreciation of Nancy from comics theorist Scott McCloud (who’s come up on this blog several times).

The rhyming name was inevitable, but today’s Zippy takes a strange turn with it:

Macho Nacos: flame retardant, Liquid Paper, Bondo [putty], and Glue Stik. In the real world, Macho Nachos are more appetizing.

You can find a number of recipes on the net. Paula Deen’s involves the following ingredients:

1 can refried beans
1 large bag white corn tortilla chips
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup shredded pepper jack
1 jalapeno, sliced crosswise, plus extra for garnish
1 can chili, or your favorite chili recipe
1 cup shredded cheddar
1 cup sour cream
1 cup green onion, chopped
1 tomato, diced