(A men’s underwear posting, racy but not outrageous.)

The Daily Jocks offer from 6/24 (I have a huge underwear backlog), with the ad copy and my caption:

(#1)

Funky Trunks are back with brand new underwear and swimwear! Australian brand Funky Trunks always provided bright, bold designs and their new collection is no different. You will want to be seen in these, check out full range now!

Hot Wash and
Trunked Up, the
Hard funk boys for
The Aussie Swim ‘n’ Sex
Experience, patrol the
Changing room
Relentlessly

The swimsuit line includes: Topsy Turvy Trunk, Liquefied Trunk, Hot Wash Trunk, Trunked Up Trunk, Shattered Trunk, Still Black Trunk — and Rubiks Runner Trunk and Black Attack Trunk, below:

(#2)

(#3)

(Same model, slightly different poses.)

On the lexical items funk 1 (noun) and funk 2 (noun and verb) and funky (adjective), from NOAD2, with complex, not always clear, sources and sense developments:

funk 1

[1a] (also blue funk) [in sing.] chiefly N. Amer. a state of depression: I sat absorbed in my own blue funk.

[1b] chiefly Brit. a state of great fear or panic: are you in a blue funk about running out of things to say?

ORIGIN mid 18th cent. (first recorded as slang at Oxford University in Oxford, England): perhaps from funk [‘strong or musty smell’] in the slang sense ‘tobacco smoke’

funk 2

noun 1 a style of popular dance music of US black origin, based on elements of blues and soul and having a strong rhythm that typically accentuates the first beat in the bar.

2 [in sing.] N. Amer. informal, dated  a strong musty smell of sweat or tobacco.

verb [with obj.] (funk something up) give music elements of the style of funk.

ORIGIN early 17th cent. (in the sense ‘musty smell’): perhaps from French dialect funkier ‘blow smoke on,’ based on Latin fumus ‘smoke.’

funky

[1a] (of music) having or using a strong dance rhythm, in particular that of funk: some excellent funky beats.

[1b] modern and stylish in an unconventional or striking way: she likes wearing funky clothes.

2 N. Amer. strongly musty: cooked greens make the kitchen smell really funky.

ORIGIN late 18th cent. (in the sense ‘smelling strong or bad’): from funk [‘strong or musty smell of sweat or tobacco’]

(Though there’s no etymological connection, funk is inclined to pick up a racy tinge from its close phonological similarity to fuck.)

The title of this posting is a play on the title of a musical. From Wikipedia:

Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk is a musical that debuted Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in 1995 and moved to Broadway in 1996. The show was conceived and directed by George C. Wolfe, and featured music by Daryl Waters, Zane Mark and Ann Duquesnay; lyrics by Reg E. Gaines, George C. Wolfe and Ann Duquesnay; and a book by Reg E. Gaines. The choreography was by Savion Glover.

… Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk is a musical revue telling the story, through tap, of black history from slavery to the present. The musical numbers are presented along with supertitles, projected images and videotapes and with continuing commentary.

(#4)

(Underwear ad, suggestive but not explicit text.)

From Daily Jocks yesterday, featuring Andrew Christian underwear. The image, the ad copy, my caption (inspired by the extraordinarily plastic-synthetic look of the model):

  (#1)

Raunchy, cheeky, and playful, Andrew Christian always pushes underwear styles to the limit. Andrew Christian has developed into a hugely popular underwear brand that’s not afraid to show off the male form with crazy designs, bright colours and attention seeking styles.

Crafted from
Cutting-edge materials,
Cristiano29 is the latest,
Most life-like
Model in the
Andrew Christian M4M
PerfoHunk line,
Guaranteed to perform all
Sexual functions to your
Satisfaction.

Enhanced model 29ST does
Pleasant small talk, 29DT
Dirty-talks to your
Personal
Specifications.

Thanks to a clause in the NAFTA treaty, Cristiano29 is fully trilingual, in French, English, and Spanish. Truly a miracle of AI.

The Perf Boys, as they are known in the business, serve at their owner’s pleasure five days a week, but have Mondays and Tuesdays off as private days. Days Cristiano29 spends with his mate of three years, Armano33, who serves a local Army unit the rest of the week. Armano is lean but mean, a perfect complement to the bulkier Cristiano29 (mates are chosen for one another by a computer program, of course, to ensure compatibility). Armano33 on military duty:

  (#2)

Armano33 as Cristiano29 sees him during their days together in their pod:

  (#3)

Since I’m guessing you were wondering, Armano33 is preferentially a top, Cristiano29 preferentially a bottom.

Even androids have their tastes.

Halloween advances upon us, and there are sales of all kinds. As always, sales in the gayverse, including men’s underwearworld, where Daily Jocks made an offer today:

A bright orange C-IN2 strap jock (with that criss-cross effect), on a black body. Or at least what we describe as a black body, though outside the domain of skin color, the (absurdly fit) model’s body would be described as dark chocolate brown.

Now, it’s true that the C-IN2 jock’s waistband has the company name in black, so all on its own the garment is (screaming) orange and black. But I also think it’s no accident that the company chose a very dark-skinned  black model for the ad, which is then a composition in black and orange, the Halloween colors. (The colors are widely assumed to represent death — All Hallow’s Day is, after all, the Day of the Dead — and life, in the flaming colors of autumn. The Dutch House of Nassau, which became the House of Orange (William and Mary, 1688!) in Great Britain, and ultimately at Princeton (“Going Back to Old Nassau”), has nothing to do with it, despite the orange and black.)

Note: underwear ads quite frequently crop the model’s head, presumably to force the viewers to focus on the model’s extraordinary body (which does a major part of the selling) and of course on the garment on offer. A face will get viewers’ attention first, thus distracting from business. (I yearn for the faces, because they give personality and character to the models, but for underwear hawkers they’re an unwelcome distraction.)

The point is that the model’s headlessness isn’t a black thing; CIN-2 is deeply into beheading models in ads. On the other hand, I spent some time this morning looking at large numbers of C-IN2 catalogue ads for jockstraps, and they all had white models — white like the target gay male customers, for whom black men are objects of lust, not objects of identification, ad identification is what would sell jocks. That’s commercially comprehensible, but icky.

But on to the real point here, about the labels we use to name colors. The basic color words in English (naming the colors that serve, to put it very briefly, for quick labeling of things) include both black and brown, and in those terms the C-IN2 model’s skin is indisputably brown, not black.

What’s crucial here is that when we’re in the domain of skin-color names, a different system of (“race”) categorization applies. In this system, people perceived to be of sub-Saharan African descent are all said to be black, whatever their actual skin tone, while (among others) Filipinos, Iraqis, North Indians, and Mexicans and other Latin Americans are said to be brown (unless they are perceived to be of sub-Saharan African descent, as many Brazilians and most Haitians are).

Yes, it’s all deeply screwy, but that’s the way of judgments of race and ethnicity. Charles Darwin got it right, rejecting all race classification in favor of seeing gradations along various dimensions.

But racial categorization (both folk and “scientific”) framed in terms of skin color has a history, going back in the West to ancient times. In some contexts, there are only two categories, black and white, and this scheme tends to serve as a backdrop for further refinements, in the form: whoever is not white is black.

These refinements take us into as many as five race categories named on the basis of skin color, many of them ostensibly scientific. From Wikipedia:

Linnaeus’ protégé, anthropology founder Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) divided humanity into five broad classes based primarily on skull shape (craniometry) – each approximately corresponding to a range of skin colors. He termed these five groups :the Caucasian or white race; the Mongolian or yellow race; the Malayan or brown race; the Ethiopian or black race; and the American or red race.

Note the convenient fact that these presumably scientific categories correspond to basic color terms in standard Western languages: in English, white, yellow, brown, black, red.

Though there are many books’ worth of things that can be said about such a taxonomy, the immediate point here is that color-word vocabulary is being deployed in a specialized way within a specialized domain, in this case the domain of racial classification. A domain in which brown in the basic color domain sometimes is black in the racial skin-color domain.

There are, of course, other specialized domains for color naming: hair color, for instance. A domain in which (as has often been noted) the English basic color word red is used for a hair color that would clearly fall within the basic color category (named in English) orange; within the hair-color domain, there’s no other widely accepted term for this color (compare the specialized hair-color terms blond(e) and brunet(te)), though there is BrE ginger (sometimes derogatory) and the carrot of carrot-top.

(Well yes, men’s bodies, and lots of gay innuendo, but nothing to frighten the horses.)

Headline in The Gaily Male:

“How Giacomo ‘Giacco’ Giaccone’s
SuperSnapJock made me into a sniveling bitch”

  (#1)

Big
Jimmy ruled the
Gym with a thumb of
Steel – one
Snap of his
Strap made the
Strongest man
Kneel

Big Jimmy’s in a Timoteo 84 Jockstrap in black. Here’s his younger brother Little Jake (also delicious, but much less threatening), in a Timoteo Shadow Jockstrap in black/red:

  (#2)

#1 came from the Daily Jocks people yesterday, with this (unusually staid) ad copy:

Timoteo underwear, swimwear and sportswear has grown into an internationally recognised menswear brand. a go-to-brand around the globe for stylish men. Known for their exceptional fit, quality and cutting-edge designs.

Two earlier postings on this blog about Timoteo, a name I like to think of as meaning ‘fear of God’ (Latin verb timere ‘to fear’ and noun timor ‘fear’, plus Greek theos ‘god’; yes, I know, the name Timothy / Timoteo / Timothée / etc. actually has Greek timao ‘to honor’ as its first element):

a posting on 7/11/13 “Steve Grand, DNA, Timoteo”: “The Timoteo line [of menswear by Timoteo Ocampo] is deeply devoted to men’s bodies, especially their crotches.”

a posting on 4/10/16 “Magnitude Boys”, with two shots of the Timoteo Magnitude jock in red, white, and blue

On Big Jimmy’s Italian names:

Giacomo [James] > nickname Giacco [Jim(my)] > augmentative Giaccone [Big Jim(my)]

(or Jacob for James and Jake for Jim).

Big Jimmy’s gym is called Rip Rep Rap City. The rip is simple; note the ripped bodies above. (Rip Rep Rap City is definitely Hunkytown.) But rap and rep come from the black dudes in Giacco’s crib: from the rap music that plays non-stop at the gym, especially the local favorite, “(I be) Reppin My City” performed by Brisco, Triple C, & Rick Ross, from Ross’s Trilla (2008). (You can listen to it here.) The slogan on a t-shirt:

  (#3)

On the verb rep in Green’s Dictionary of Slang:

(US black) to represent [first cite 1977]

Represent can here convey quite a range of meaning: ‘stand for’, ‘front for’, ‘stand up for’, ‘be a credit to’.

Advanced note for the sound-inclined: rip rep rap has a series of three lax (and open) front vowels /ɪ ɛ æ/ descending in height  — and with descending frequency of the second formant, giving the perceptual impression of a descent in pitch and a synesthetic impression of an increase in size (so, getting lower and bigger, in steps). The series continues with /a/ and /ɔ/; in my American variety, I have the whole series in big/dig beg bag bog dog (but other dialects have quite different phonetics).

A little while back, Kim Darnell pointed me to several sites with collections of astounding men’s clothing (some underwear, some not) from the 1970s. Culled from a great trove of material, here are six of these gems, with captions added by me.

Let me say that while I indulged in various regrettable items of clothing (including bell bottoms, muscle shirts, and remarkable underwear) during this period, I didn’t reach the heights illustrated here. So I snicker and guffaw, but nervously.

(In earlier postings, mostly on AZBlogX, I took relatively unremarkable vintage men’s fashion ads and perverted them with snarky captions. I’ll inventory these postings at the end of this one. But the ads below are a step beyond; the viewer is moved to gasp, “What could they have been thinking of?”)

The first is from Ah Men, an haut-pédé West Hollywood store that I occasionally actually shopped at and in any case was the source of a catalog, simultaneously fabu and tacky, that enabled men to mail-order its wares up in discreetly labeled packages:

(#1)

The cream dream of
West Hollywood,
The Shiny Dick Boys and
Stephanie, the Goddess of
Balls

On to a tableau of three suited men. You really have to admire them (especially the guy on the right, dressed as a Raging Queer) for going out in public in these costumes:

(#2)

Wait-listed for the
Sergeant Pepper cover, they
Rashly went into business as
“Secret Agent Who, A
Time Tale in Three Parts”

Another group photo, with a strained play on words:

(#3)

The entire decade
Slid past in Roller Derby
Madness and
Tasteless underwear

Another trio, this time of teenagers (the prices are for patterns, not garments):

(#4)

ButtonFly HardHat Harry and
Mighty FashionMouse Mickey both
Ached for
Black B-Boy Bo,
Suffered the
Pangs of
Teenage triangular love

A quartet of mannequins:

(#5)

Manufactured in
Hong Kong from
Sturdy lifelike plastics,
Engineered to
Double as
Durable sex toys

Saved for last, my favorites of the 70s fashion dudes:

(#6)

The Glisten Trio, always
Oiled, always
Silky, always
Flaunting their
Muscles and their
Dicks, always
Steely serious, never
Apart

Postscript: the earlier postings of vintage men’s fashion ads, with snarky captions:

1/30/13: “Snarky fashion”

2/8/13: “More snarky fashion”

3/29/13: “Crimplene”

9/19/13: “Snarky fashion 4”

9/30/13: “Snarky fashion 5”

10/8/13: “Snarky fashion 6”

Today’s Daily Jocks ad (for Pump! underwear), with my caption:

Once fully inflated, the
Figure needed foot weights for
Stability, then was disposed as an
Adornment for the trophy room,

Inspiration for the men on the team.

(Underwear and raunchy innuendo, with a jock harness bonus, and some language stuff, but, yes, men’s bodies, so not to everyone’s tastes.)

The latest Daily Jocks offering, with my caption:

(#1)

Lukas and the Back Alley Boys
Return this week for a
Short engagement,
Featuring old favorites
— “Butt Up, Baby”, and
Fresh stuff
— “Pullin’ My Pants Down For You”,
Soon to be released on their
Ballsy new album
Silly Love Songs

(Lukas sport shorts from Helsinki Athletica.)

Apologies to Paul McCartney, whose 1976 song “Silly Love Songs” actually was about silly love songs. And of course to the Backstreet Boys for the play on back alley  (from Green’s Dictionary of Slang: alley ‘vagina’, 1st cite in 1842, then, inevitably, alley ‘anus’, 1st cite in 1934, a usage often played on in a gay context, as in the San Francisco leather street fair Up Your Alley).

Bonus material, with fortuitous finds, discoveries from checking the Daily Jocks site. Which led me to this:

Cellblock13’s new X Wing Jockstrap is one of the sexiest jock we’ve had. This specific jock/pouch can only be worn with a harness. For a complete gear look, wear it with the “X Wing” Neoprene Harness [sold separately].

Two parts: the jock, which won’t work on its own, because it has only the butt band, with no waistband to hold it up; and the harness, a cross harness (or X harness). Front view of the jock-harness combo, in red:

(#2)

Focused on the jock. Moving up the body:

(#3)

And then the side view, which shows you how it all fits together:

(#4)

(Not really the point here, but this strikes me as a satisfyingly homoerotic shot.)

The jock harness doesn’t come cheap: $34 for the jock, $62 for the harness. A big outlay to show off your bulge, your big pecs, and your hot butt.

At this point, realizing that Jock is a reasonably common personal name (a Scottish name, diminutive of John, like English Jack) and that Harness is an attested surname, there might well be guys named Jock Harness.

And so there might, but my search for them was overwhelmed by pieces of apparel called jock harnesses, all of them combining something like a jock with some kind of harness. None, as far as I can tell, as fine as Cellblock13’s model.

Also thrown up in my searching: links to things labeled as vegan jock harnesses. You might well want to mouthe a jockstrap, but eat one?

Well, it turns out that vegan here is short for vegan leather (truncation is everywhere): leather not involving animal products, that is, artificial leather. From Wikipedia:

Alternative leather (bicast leather) is a fabric or finish intended to substitute for leather in fields such as upholstery, clothing, footwear and fabrics, and other uses where a leather-like finish is required but the actual material is cost-prohibitive, unsuitable, or unusable for ethical reasons.

… Artificial leather is marketed under many names, including “leatherette”, “faux leather”, “vegan leather”, “PU [polyurethane] leather” and “pleather”.

And of course, the branded Naugahyde (“Tell me, Eric, just how many innocent naugas had to be sacrificed to make you those sexy chaps, jockstrap, and big bulldog harness?”).

(Hunky guy in underwear, somewhat suggestive caption, nothing to frighten the horses. But in case this isn’t what you want to see …)

The Daily Jocks ad from the 14th, with a caption added by me:

By himself in the
Darkened rainbow
Sex room,
Cromo reflected on the
Secret of his
Crotch, found it was a
Flash piece of
Top-notch meat.

The caption reflects the ad copy from DJ:

PUMP! has propelled itself into the top-draw of men around the world due to their use of bright colours, mesh fabrics, sporty appeal and attention-seeking imagery. With Pump’s athletic designs, hit up the town in style with a flash piece of underwear from a top-notch brand.

DJ is from Australia, PUMP! is from Montrẻal. The slang adjective flash, from NOAD2:

informal, chiefly Brit. 1.  (of a thing) ostentatiously expensive, elaborate, or up to date: a flash new car; (of a person) superficially attractive because stylish and full of brash charm: he was carrying this money around and trying to be flash. 2 archaic of or relating to thieves, prostitutes, [homosexuals] or the underworld, especially their language.

Cromo’s crotch is apparently ostentatious, stylish, attractive, and queer, all at once.

(From my back files, a Daily Jocks sex-drenched N2N ad from June 21st, with my caption. Negligible linguistics.)

(#1)

Just
Studio Groove
Briefs in Coral,
He thought

But
The briefs
Multiplexed him

And
Then he was
Two … four … eight!,
Intoxicatingly manifold

Still
Multiply alone,
Longing for
Hot boys in
Neon pink

Nothings

When he was one:

(#2)

Two of the unattainable objects of his desire:

(#3)

Snap the strap: vision 1, in a Classic Cotton Jock in Neon Pink

(#4)

Pits to prick: vision 2, in a Classic Cotton G-String in Neon Pink

Earlier on N2N on this blog, in the 12/3/15 posting “José Parra”, there’s a section on the L.A. firm N2N (‘next to nothing’), supplying primo homowear (with illustrations).

The DJ copy for #1:

N2N BODYWEAR: Check out the latest new brand DailyJocks has in stock! N2N Bodywear from Los Angeles has created sexy, unique and well fitting apparel for every kind of man. N2N provide a range of collections including underwear, sportswear, swimwear and their playful wrestling range! [wrestling singlets designed for the bedroom, not the gym mat]

And from the UK firm BANG+STRIKE’s site:

Los Angeles based brand N2N is not designed for the shy [amongst] us, with their seriously low cut briefs, tight stretch wrestling singlets and range of sheer and semi-nude underwear and loungewear. BANG+STRIKE introduced N2N to the UK back in 2006 and their loyal customer base continues to grow.

So if you are after the skimpiest of speedos, sheer net briefs or knockout wrestling singlets then N2N is your brand.

Or following the example of Chance the Gardener (“I like to watch”), you could just watch.

Two news items about men’s junk: a Guardian story about the mammalian penis bone, and its lack in human beings; and an ad for a new line of quirky men’s underwear, the Eletrunks (“Now you can adjust your manhood discreetly”).

 Stiff Times at Dickmont High. Or: Science marches on. A piece by Ian Sample in yesterday’s Guardian, “Why don’t humans have a penis bone? Scientists may now know: Speed of human mating might be behind the lack of a baculum in humans, suggests study tracing bone’s evolution”.

Kit Opie[,] who ran the study with Matilda Brindle at University College London, said that penis bone length was longer in males that engaged in what he called “prolonged intromission.” In plain English, that means that the act of penetration lasts for more than three minutes, a strategy that helps the male impregnate the female while keeping her away from competing males. The penis bone, which attaches at the tip of the penis rather than the base, provides structural support for male animals that engage in prolonged intromission.

In chimps, the penis bone is no longer than a human fingernail. The tininess of the bone correlates with the very short spell that the male spends mating, in the order of seven seconds. In chimpanzee groups, females mate with all the males, in what appears to be a strategy to reduce the risk of her children being killed by older males. “It gives each male an idea that they may have fathered the subsequent offspring, and it is in her interests to get that done quickly,” Opie said.

Humans may have lost their penis bones when monogamy emerged as the dominant reproductive strategy during the time of Homo erectus about 1.9 million years ago, the scientists believe. In monogamous relationships, the male does not need to spend a long time penetrating the female, because she is not likely to be leapt upon by other amorous males. That, at least, is the theory.

(#1)

Penis bones from various mammals. The baculum varies so much in terms of length and whether it is present at all, that it is described as the most diverse bone ever to exist.

On the baculum (Latin baculum ‘stick, staff, baton’), from Wikipedia:

The baculum (also penis bone, penile bone or os penis) is a bone found in the penis of many placental mammals. It is absent in the human penis, but present in the penises of other primates, such as the gorilla and chimpanzee. The bone is located above the male urethra, and it aids sexual reproduction by maintaining sufficient stiffness during sexual penetration. The homologue to the baculum in female mammals is known as the baubellum or os clitoridis – a bone in the clitoris.

On the speed of ejaculation in human beings, from Wikipedia:

The 1948 Kinsey Report suggested that three-quarters of men ejaculate within two minutes of penetration in over half of their sexual encounters.

Current evidence supports an average intravaginal ejaculation latency time (IELT) of six and a half minutes in 18- to 30-year-olds. If the disorder is defined as an IELT percentile below 2.5, then premature ejaculation could be suggested by an IELT of less than about two minutes.

… There is no uniform cut-off defining “premature”, but a consensus of experts at the International Society for Sexual Medicine endorsed a definition including “ejaculation which always or nearly always occurs prior to or within about one minute”.

… studies report PE prevalence ranging from 3 percent to 41 percent of men over 18, but the great majority estimate a prevalence of 20 to 30 percent — making PE a very common sex problem

Be kind to your balls-bearing friends. Brought to my attention by Kim Darnell, this entertaining video ad for Eletrunks boxer shorts. A still version:

(#2)

The ele- from elephant, elephants being animals with trunks; and from elevate, elevating your junk being the point of the underwear. The garnent is designed to be kind to the testicles of boxers-wearing men, and to allow for lifting them discreetly in public — though you still have to stick a hand in your trousers to get at the lifter.

Background information from Wikipedia for understanding the company’s ad copy (to come):

Modal is a type of rayon, a semi-synthetic cellulose fiber made by spinning reconstituted cellulose, in this case often from beech trees. Modal is used alone or with other fibers (often cotton or spandex) in household items such as pajamas, towels, bathrobes, underwear and bedsheets.

Now for the company’s breezy copy:

How we started

While taking a sabbatical to travel Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, founder Michael decided to buy a motorcycle to explore the mountains and jungle at his leisure. He found that every pair of boxers compromised the comfort of his family jewels.

He decided to fix the issue and designed what you see today – Eletrunks!

The making of Eletrunks

Manufactured in Brooklyn. Sourced in NYC from material made in the USA.

Made of breathable, environmentally friendly, incredibly soft modal fabric.

Modal = Beachwood tree fiber. 20x less water than cotton, 10x more production. 99.5% recycled process.

Soft, silky, sustainable.

How are Eletrunks different?

Eletrunks literally let you elevate your manhood without reaching below your waistband. They also create chafe-free zones under the legs and keep you from sticking to yourself.

How you ask?

Your manhood goes into the pouch, keeping it away from your legs. When you need to readjust, you simply use the patented ‘Lifter,’ a string that attaches from the waistband to the bottom of the pouch, and it elevates your entire manhood.

Because of the pouch design, you receive the benefit of gaining maximum coverage along the legs which eliminates any skin to skin contact. This is the brilliance and difference in the design.

Or you could wear briefs.

A preposterous vintage 70s fashion ad that’s all over the net (though, as usual, without a verifiable source):

What to marvel at most? The idea that packing your dick in the fur of a dead animal will make it more attractive (luxurious, sensual, provocative — an irresistible invitation to hard ‘n’ heavy action)? Or even be comfortable? Or the color options: ebony, ranch, champagne? (Champagne?)

Mostly I’m creeped out. Hard ‘n’ heavy action is going to result in some bodily fluids, and they don’t combine well with fur (whether genuine or fake). Ick, messy.

Leather jocks are really hot, but leather takes some special care. Otherwise, even high-end fashion jocks — think Andrew Christian — are made of breathable, washable fabrics. If you’re flaunting your stuff properly in such a juck, you’re probably going to leak into the fabric, and that’s just fine.

Today’s Zippy, savoring words:

  (#1)

Eschew the muu!  Bonuses: the preposterous name Relentless Betablocker; men’s fashion underwear.

Zippy’s polka-dotted muu-muu (or muumuu) has been his costume since the early days, and has become the standard fashion for all the Pinheads of Dingburg. This strip takes advantage of the rhyme between muu-muu and the (formal and relatively rare) verb eschew. From NOAD2:

deliberately avoid using; abstain from: he appealed to the crowd to eschew violence. ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French eschiver, ultimately of Germanic origin and related to German scheuen ‘shun,’ also to shy [‘start in fright; avoid doing’].

The verb eschew occurs prominently in the jokey slogan “Eschew obfuscation”, a call for clear writing — expanded in this t-short slogan:

  (#2)

Beta blockers. From Wikipedia:

Beta blocker … is a class of medications that are particularly used to manage cardiac arrhythmias, and to protect the heart from a second heart attack (myocardial infarction) after a first heart attack (secondary prevention). They are also widely used to treat hypertension

No visible relevance to the content of the comic strip, but it has a nicely alliterative name.

Undico. In the last surreal panel, Dingburger Relentless Betablocker is discovered to be working as a machinist in an Undico underwear factory (with a name that combines underwear and an abbreviated company, as in the trade name Nabisco). Now there is a Undico company that supplies men’s underwear, but it’s located in the Australian state of Victoria, far far from Dingburg.

There’s a men’s fashion underwear brand named Unico, produced by the considerably larger company Mundo Unico (webpage here). From Wikipedia:

Mundo Unico is a men’s apparel company based in Medellín, Colombia [but with branches in a number of other countries, including Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.]. Developed by Nicolas Echeverri, Unico has been noted for its introduction of Lycra, elimination of seams, and color to its products.

Unico is also seriously into accentuating men’s baskets, as in this 7″ short boxer from the Mundo Unico Asia Collection for Autumn 2015:

  (#3)

I haven’t found the locations of the factories, but (given the economics) it’s unlikely that ay of them are in the U.S., much less close to Dingburg.

(This is a fantasy using a big set of Daily Jocks ads for men’s high-end underwear. A fantasy about male prostitution, entirely unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest. Discussion in very plain language of men’s bodies and man-on-man sex, plus sexual fetishes and paraphilias, some of them distasteful.)

MeatMarket.com offers top-quality MeatMen at good prices. We supply a variety of types of meat, each piece with a catalog number and a nick (no real names are used in transactions). A few prime pieces of special interest, some on sale:

#419, Bondi: mixed-race piece from Oz, foul-mouthed:

(#1)

#253, Zen: Asian piece, insolent, huge dick:

(#2)

#520, Rap: black piece, muscleman, pretty in pink:

(#3)

#401, Rip: white piece, outdoorsy, switches easily between giving and taking aggression:

(#4)

We specialize in young, very fit, highly masculine pieces of meat, but on request we can supply other types. In particular, we have a small stable of good-looking nelly queens who can supply the full range of services of the butch pieces (described below); and we have a small stable of older pieces, who are, like the younger ones, very fit and highly masculine.

All our pieces are certified to be at least 21 years old; our photographs and descriptions are guaranteed to be recent and accurate; your piece will turn up clean and well-groomed (unless you specifically request otherwise); and he will have been recently tested for a full range of STDs and certified disease-free at the time of testing. Nevertheless, you’re being serviced by a stud hustler who’s tricked with a boatload of men, so we insist that condoms be used in fucking, no exceptions.

All our pieces are experienced and adept at all the services we offer. Before we whore them out, they are field-tested by others in our stable, and if they are inexperienced in some of these services or reluctant to perform them, they are trained by their stable mates (at our expense) until they can perform them with skill and enthusiasm.

We provide out-calls or (for a small surcharge) service on our site, which is well supplied with bedrooms and rooms for sex play (private or public).

Insofar as we can respond to them, we will entertain requests for pieces with specific personal characteristics: crudely working-class; college-educated intelligent conversationalist; fan of a particular sports team; opera queen; motorcycle gearhead; whatever. You’re also welcome to treat your trick as nothing but a piece of meat. (Physical characterstics will be clear from the catalog photos and descriptions.)

Payment beforehand to our agency, by any means you wish. No other money is to change hands unless you want to tip your piece for especially satisfying services, in which case you should pay him cash, and the transaction is entirely between the two of you. Any piece of meat who asks for a tip will be fired immediately. Whatever happens between the two of you sexually, you are in control of the transaction. (However, our hustlers are an investment; a good piece can easily work for ten years, so we want to support him in many ways: we pay for his gym membership, provide him not only with a significant cut of the profits but also reasonable benefits, and intend to protect him from mistreatment by johns. If you treat your piece badly in any way, you’ll never be able to hire meat from us again, and we’ll do our best to see that no other agency will take you on either.)

Standard service runs $200/hr., one hour minimum. (In the trade, a one-hour encounter is called a quicky.) Discount rates on longer services, but you have to stick to however many hours you contracted for. So if you think that if your initial sexual encounter goes well, you might want to take a break for affection or talk and then go at it again in a while, you should contract for two hours. Remember that your piece is on the clock, and if it’s just quickies for him, he’ll probably want to do three a night, and you need to respect that.

Standard service covers all of the following: kissing (you actively kissing him, you receptively taking his kiss, mutual exchange), stroking any or all parts of the body, light slapping, tit play (his tits, your tits, both), armpit play (your armpits, his, both), nuzzling and sucking balls (him on you, you on him, both), jacking off (him on you, you on him, mutual), rubbing cock on his body (you on him, him on you, mutual), rimming (him licking you, you licking him, taking turns), sucking cock (him doing you, you doing him, 69, taking turns), fucking (you in him, him in you, flip fucking), verbal abuse (you on him, him on you, exchanging dirty talk), and simple watersports (see below).

Your trick will be prepared to do any or all of these things, with enthusiasm and entirely without shame, and he wants to give you what you want, without any judgment on you. For him to do his job, he needs you to say what you want: what you require (maybe you want to be fucked hard and deep), what you won’t do (lots of men won’t rim a guy, and a surprising number won’t kiss, no matter what else they’ll do), and specific details about your wishes (maybe it turns you on to be verbally abused, but being called a faggot is over the line; maybe you’re ashamed that your cock is small, but it suits you to stand up to the humiliation of being called a little-dicked bitch). Your trick will follow your lead – he’s a pro — but he has to know what’s in your head. We’ll give you a form that you can fill out ahead of time, so that you don’t have to negotiate face-to-face. Or, if you want, your trick will negotiate with you on the spot, get you to speak your desires out loud – a kind of sex act in itself.

Extended service (fetishes and paraphilias) runs $250-$500/hr., depending on what you want. (Frankly, the agency makes its biggest profits on these services.) Again, you’ll have to say what you want; not every piece of meat in our stable is comfortable with all of these acts, though for each we have at least a couple of enthusiasts. At the low end of the scale is advanced watersports. Simple watersports is getting pissed on or pissing on your trick, or taking his piss in your mouth (and you can ask for weak piss or strong, bitter piss, your choice). Advanced watersports is pissing in your trick’s mouth.

Then we get to various kinds and levels of bdsm, involving restraint, obedience, dominance, submission, and pain. And elaborate role-playing, for instance a fantasy in which one man plays a stern father to the other man’s boy, or in which one man submits as a slave to the other man as master, or military or prison fantasies. And specific fetishes, like the (very common) sexual fetishization of feet. Or of feces: if you want your trick to literally fuck the shit out of you, or you want to literally fuck the shit out of him, then we’re into messy scat territory, even if no one actually takes shit into his mouth. For all of this stuff, you need to tell us in some detail what you want, so we can match you with a meat man: not all of our pieces are sufficiently good at acting to cover all the parts that clients have asked for, and not all of them are comfortable with some of the fetishes (a few in the current stable aren’t comfortable drinking piss, and though they’re all willing to shit in another guy’s mouth, only two are willing to eat (as a practical matter, this scarcely affects the agency, since it seems that shiteaters hugely outnumber shitfeeders).

Now back to some highlights from our current catalog.

Double-teaming. This is #123, Paco (half-Hispanic) and #215, Stavros (Greek-American): looking insolent:

(#5)

Paco and Stavros prefer to work together, doubling down on a john. They are boyfriends in real life, both fully versatile on the job (though at home Paco prefers to bottom and Stavros to top).

Tatman. #396, Inky: white guy, intensely oral (pitching and catching):

(#6)

The Flash. #276, Balls: All-American white guy, in constant motion, huge nuts:

(#7)

The Swimmer. #401, Fish: cute white boy, high school swimmer, now working on a computer science degree, will do absolutely anything sexually, currently on sale:

(#8)

Body Proud. #367, Pits: another high school jock, vain about his body, fucked by every single guy on the baseball team, voted most valuable player, also on sale:

(#9)

Stands His Ground. #228, Rocco: Italian-American fashion queen, can maintain a hard-on indefinitely, almost instant bounce-back (refractory period of only a few minutes):

(#10)

By Subscription. #405, Showy: Armenian-American bodybuilder, loves to display his basket in jockstraps, available for a monthly subscription service (he’s yours once a month for a year)

(#11)

The most recent Daily Jocks ad, with a caption sexual fantasy from me:

(#1)

You can buy him,
One trick a month – the
Standard hour, providing
Whatever you need –
And with a rock-bottom
Starter price of $10, the

Catch is that the price
Doubles every month. On
Month six his hour costs you a
Steep $320, but he’s
Worth it, though when the
Annual contract

Runs out in
Month 12,
You’ll be getting
$40,960 sex —
Better be
Best there is.

That’s the fantasy. Then there’s the real world, in which I tried to identify the model in #1.

At first it was a familiar story. Endless Pinterest postings (not attributed in any way) of this photo:

(#2)

(variously tagged as sexy man, beautiful body, tattoos, and even cute gay guy (almost surely a comment on the poster’s sexuality, rather than the model’s). I’m not especially a fan of extreme rippedness or of tats, but in this case I could admire both, as products of thought and hard work.

The model in #2 is presented as an object, with an impassive face and no engagement of the viewer, while in #1 is gazing intently into the viewer’s eyes, giving off the homoerotic aura of high-end underwear models in general: you can do me / you can be me.

Then I searched on the main tat message, “Would life have gotten better” (suggesting the continuation “if (only) I had …”). Here I hit image gold almost immediately, though the intention of the tat’s message never got clarified. From the Bang + Strike company’s site on the model:

Richard Rocco [Richie Amerigo Rocco III] grew up in Los Angeles [in a gritty barrio] and joined the United States Marine Corps in 2002.

When he was badly wounded in action, in Iraq, Richard’s perseverance and desire motivated him to push through physical therapy and within a year he was back in the gym. He now competes in professional power lifting competitions and has dedicated his life to health and fitness for over 10 years. Truly inspirational, especially from a man who literally broke his back.

Richard can be seen modelling for underwear brands such as Calvin Klein and Pump! [as above]

Here he is in a steamy triptych for Pump!, his body displayed like sculpture of almost unreal perfection:

(#3)

(Panel 3 is a literally ballsy shot.) All three panels are physically intense and aggressive; his aggression can be read as comptitiveness or as sexual domination, depending on the viewer’s inclinations.

Upscale underwear models and the companies they work for are perfectly aware of the homoerotic tones in their ads, and most models are happy to cater to the desires of fags like me, whatever their sexuality in real life. Here’s Rocco enthusiastically crossing the line into cock-teasing pitsntits homoeroticism:

(#4)

This is from a feature in DNA Magazine (Australian publication targeting gay men) “Rick Day Presents Richard Rocco” of 5/16/13, with this swooning copy:

Tattooed hottie Richard Rocco makes his DNA debut in these shots by Rick Day. We find all kinds of men hot and we know that there are many guys out there who are into dudes with tats. In addition to his body art, we think Richard has a totally hot bod.

Hey, I’m swooning too.

In my 3/7/13 posting “Cock tease”, there’s a section on male photographer Rick Day, who favors highy masculine models, focusing on their musculature, their faces, their butts, and, every so often, their cocks flagrantly displayed.

(#1)

They found one another in the
Sexual swamp, where men go to
Drop their civilized masks and
Embrace their
Animal natures,
Copulate like
Beasts.

The image is the latest from Daily Jocks, with the ad copy:

Unleash your inner beast with the thrilling new Animal Instinct Collection. An exciting selection of unique print interpretations inspired by the mystery and allure of wild animals. Stylishly matched with solid coloured blocks for maximum impact.

So get wild with the TIGER, JAGUAR, CHEETAH and GIRAFFE!

Or, in my fantasy, RED FOX and CAIMAN. In their animal forms:

(#2)

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes), largest of the true foxes, has the greatest geographic range of all members of the Carnivora family, being present across the entire Northern Hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to North Africa, North America and Eurasia. (Wikipedia link)

(#3)

A caiman is an alligatorid crocodilian belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within Alligatoridae, the other being alligators. (Wikipedia link)

[alligatorid crocodilian, a wonderful expression, two SWMWW words in succession — that is, in quintuple meter:

Quintuple meter or quintuple time (chiefly Brit.) is a musical meter characterized by five beats in a measure. The beats can have the pattern strong-weak-medium-weak-weak [as in alligatorid crocodilian] or strong-weak-weak-medium-weak, although a survey of certain forms of mostly American popular music suggests that strong-weak-weak-medium-weak is the more common of these two in these styles.

… In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet released Time Out, a jazz album with music in unusual meters. It included Paul Desmond’s “Take Five”, in 5/4 time [SWWMW]. Against all expectations, the album went platinum, and “Take Five” became a jazz standard. (Wikipedia link)]

Red foxes are omnivores (though in the family Carnivora of mammals), caimans are obligate carnivores (though not in the family Carnivora, indeed not mammals at all, but reptiles). In any case, they’re both meat-eaters. As, metaphorically, are ReFo and K-Man.

(Very little of linguistic interest, beyond a penis joke in Spanish and a note on grammatical gender. Otherwise, it’s the massive Latino musclehunk “The Marvel” on display.)

From my regular correspondent RJP this morning, a (broken) link to a Facebook video by The Marvel (posting as maravilla3x). I persevered and found a working Facebook link, which FB seems now to have taken down as too racy: it shows a naked Marvel sitting up in bed humping a big heart-shaped box of Valentine’s chocolates, then taking the cover off and eating chocolates from the box while revving up the tempo and intensity of his pelvic thrusts towards climax (at which point the tease is cut off). However, The Marvel has resourcefully put the video on YouTube, and you can watch it there.

A still from the video, close to the cut-off point:

(#1)

The caption (I translate from the Spanish): “Who wants chocolates? Your Valentine’s present.”

Some things to note: the truly gigantic upper arms; the shaved armpits, the big-assed tattoos.

That degree of muscle development, like a really big dick, is out of my personal arousal zone and into the zone of abstract size awe: something remarkable to observe, but not something I’m interested in engaging with carnally. (Yes, I understand that many other fags find The Marvel’s body deeply, deeply moving.)

The shaved armpits just mark him as a bodybuilder; on his FB page he identifies himself as an “NYC Fitness Model”, and the videos and photos there include a fair number of him doing weight training (but also a huge number of flagrantly sexual displays, aimed at women but surely snaring an audience of admiring gay men as well; in interviews, the man says he’s straight but welcomes followers of all kinds). As for the armpit hair, I’m really into that and miss it in serious bodybuilders.

The ornate, intense tattoos will be better visible in photos to come.

On the Marvel’s FB page we learn that his real name is Franyely Lora, born 9/3/93, and that he began to take an interest in music at an early age and had a talent for it. On the evidence of the photos, he seems to be a keyboardist.

Linguistic note: Maravilla is a fairly common Hispanic surname (I have friends with this name). But Spanish is a language with grammatical gender, and the noun maravilla ‘marvel, wonder’ is of fem. gender grammatically, even when it’s used to refer to a man. That’s why The Marvel is (in Spanish) La Maravilla (with the fem.sg. definite article la rather than the masc.sg. el).

(He could have chosen the pseudonym El Maravilloso ‘the marvelous (one) [masc.]’, but maybe he though that was just too long, or that nouns are somehow “stronger” than adjectives.)

More images of La Maravilla, two from a huge number in which the man is posed as an underwear model. “Buenos Dias”, with his morning coffee, in a minimal brief:

(#2)

And “Buenas Tardes”, with an afternoon moose-knuckle (also showing off his pecs and abs):

(#3)

A sex-play bonus on his FB page:

(#4)

The main part of the title, up to the last word, I would translate roughly as ‘What your (female) friend needs, to calm that pelvic heat’ (calor pélvico is an entertainingly roundabout way of referring to female arousal). Now that last word might remind you of English penicillin (the drug), but the name of the drug in Spanish is penicilina, while the last word in the title is pretty clearly pene ‘penis’ plus some diminutive derivational material: what the woman needs for the fire in her genitals is a dick (and here’s a toy one). Well, that’s how I read it.

Meanwhile, enjoy those Valentine chocolates.

A recent Daily Jocks offer:

(#1)

Bob Beach

Lifelike PVC plastic figures from MaleBody®, life-size or miniature,
All anatomically correct (well-hung — but unlike gay action figures,
Not grotesquely huge) — life-size models come with the
WarmTouch® system, maintaining a natural skin temperature that’s
Pleasant to the touch — miniature models about a foot tall, no
WarmTouch, but they make attractive tabletop ornaments, can be
Engaged in imaginative play — all figures with factory-installed clothing,
Easily removable (for posing naked), additional costumes available —

Bob Beach smooth-shaven all over, including his pubes (his penis and
Testicles are marvels of detail) — each character with a back story:
Bob Beach, gay swimmer from Malibu, boyfriend Butch Beach (also
Available from MaleBody, not illustrated here), with Clone face (and
Mustache), more substantisl muscles, lightly furred body (chest, belly, forearms,
Buttocks, pubes, legs) —  they are a very hot couple — Bob found mostly in
Aquatic settings (at the beach, by a swimming pool, next to a hot tub, in a

Shower room; delightful
Standing by a koi pond)

  (#2)

KoiBob

(#3)

Akira figma

In the miniature line, Akira of Togainu no Chi,
Stripping for his Boys Love partner Keisuke (available from MaleBody) —
Pairing life-sized Bob Beach and life-sized Akira, reveling in their
Otherness, is
Deeply stirring

On Akira and Keisuke, from Wikipedia:

Togainu no Chi … is a Japanese BL [Boys Love] visual novel created by Nitro+CHiRAL. The plot centers on Akira, a young man who is made to participate in a deadly game called “Igura” (Russian for “game”) in post-apocalyptic Japan in exchange for being freed from prison.

The game’s main character, a young man named Akira, is falsely accused of a crime. Once arrested, a mysterious woman appears before him, offering him freedom if he agrees to participate in Igura and defeat Igura’s strongest man: the king, or Il Re. The story follows Akira’s life … as he fights both to survive and to unravel the mysteries developing around him.

Keisuke [is] Akira’s childhood friend and hard-working factory employee. … They grew up together in the same orphanage. Because he is a bit weak, he has always admired Akira’s strength. Though he is a bit quiet and shy, if Akira is involved, he suddenly becomes bold. Upon hearing Akira’s situation, Keisuke chases after Akira and also joins Igura, despite his weakness and lack of fighting experience.

Two stories of plastic male love: Bob and Butch Beach, Akira and Keisuke.

(Men’s underwear alert! Premium grade, but still…)

Harry stumbled one day into the neighborhood
Force field and was 22-Coded, became
Hunky, a super-beast of enormous
Strength, intense
Sexuality, and a
Fabulous body, with the power to
Transform himself —

Split into two men,

(#1)

Mirror-clone himself,

(#2)

Zoom in to enlarge himself

(#3)

Plus, he got the Cruise of Death, the stare that
Makes men melt before him, serve his needs. The

Hot underwear was an
Unexpected bonus.

(#1 was yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad; #2 and #3 are from the Code 22 website. The company has stores in Amsterdam and in Tarragona, Spain. It boasts that its materials are all European and that its clothing is European-made; it even has a .eu e-address. Go EU!)

The ad copy from DJ is a distillation of the company’s own copy (I’ve boldfaced my favorite sentence):

CODE 22 is an expression of defining men’s underwear and sportswear design. It gives meaning to the words balance, confidence and masculinity. CODE 22 is a concept born from the spirit of innovation and created for men who are in need of minimal yet elegant creations.

I don’t know about balance and confidence, but the ads have masculinity in spades: the models look testosterone-crazed, with absurdly ripped bodies. (Not that those are bad things in an underwear model. Just not so good in a real guy.)

In any case, the p.r. copy for premium men’s underwear tends to be profoundly serious: elevated and sweeping, both grandiose and worshipful in tone. And therefore risible. I mean: funny as hell.

Yes, another man in underwear… There will be plain sex talk, too.

The Daily Jocks ad from 2/10:

  (#1)

They looked upon him, found him
Wonderful, fabulous, a mighty man —
Unanimously accepted him as their
Prince everlasting — and
Had him bronzed.

Two contributions here.

First, a friend reported to me that a guy she knew was sending her dick pix, of his (admittedly) enormous prick, which he was inordinately proud of. What, she wondered, did he expect her to do with it? (She and I have had chats about really big cocks and the challenges they present. Our joint feeling was that they were mostly objects to be admired as living art, but to be dealt with manually as sexual organs.)

My suggestion was that she should have it bronzed.

Little digression on bronzing:

Bronzing is a process by which a bronze-like surface is applied to other materials (metallic or non-metallic). Some bronzing processes are merely simulated finishes (patinas) applied to existing metal surfaces, or coatings of powdered metal that give the appearance of a solid metal surface. In other cases, an actual layer of heavy copper is electroplated onto an object to produce a bronze-like surface. This electroplating is the method traditionally used for “bronzing” of baby shoes, but to electroplate a non-conductive item like a baby shoe, a conductive material must first be applied, then the copper plating is done. (Wikipedia link)

Then, the noun bronze took me to Bonzo:

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (also known as The Bonzo Dog Band) was created by a group of British art-school students in the 1960s. Combining elements of music hall, trad jazz and psychedelic pop with surreal humour and avant-garde art, the Bonzos came to the public attention through a 1968 ITV comedy show, Do Not Adjust Your Set.

… Bonzo the dog after a popular British cartoon character created by artist George Studdy in the 1920s. (Wikipedia link)

You can listen here to one of my favorite Bonzos tracks, “The Intro and the utro” (1967).

A Studdy sketch of Bonzo:
  (#2)

A truly enormous amount of Bonziana, of all kinds, was produced back in the 1920s and thereafter. And yes, there were — oh joy! — bronzed Bonzos, lots of them, of many different sorts. Here’s a Bonzo bronzed plated car mascot:

  (#3)

To put it all together, there are (of course) bronze phalluses, tons of them, from ancient Chinese to thoroughly modern (phalluses are objects of power, luck, and awe) — including this startling cast bronze penis doorpull (from a collection of phallic hardware, faucets, and barware on this site):

  (#4)

See: you can have it bronzed.

Recently the admirable Margalit Fox has been posting on Facebook a series “Demented P.R. Pitch of the Day” (Margalit seems to read more of her nonsense mail than I do). I’ll give the two most recent examples and then turn to some long-standing advertising themes in my own postings: absurd ad copy for premium men’s underwear and for gay porn. (So, yes, in the second case there will be some incidental sex talk.)

(Note: I refer to Margali Fox by her first name because we’re acquaintances — and both linguists.)

A photo of MF by Ivan Farkas:

(#1)

A posting of mine of 11/21/14 has a section on her and her work, both the many wonderful obits for the New York Times and her two books on language-related subjects.

But on to the demented p.r. pitches. #2, on 2/14:

Imagine if all of a sudden the spigot of wealthy foreigners and their cash was somehow choked off from the American real estate market? There is no doubt that the country’s real estate market would crumble.

I would love to introduce you to __ , a Manhattan based international real estate attorney, who for over 20 years, represented international high-net worth investors, world leaders and foreign billionaires in private equity, commercial, and residential real estate transactions.

__ [is] more than happy to talk about whether Donald Trump’s foreign policies so far are derailing the American real estate market. …

The first question here is: Why Margalit?

(I realize now that I do get regular e-mail from people asking me to join them in “exciting business opportunities” — but nothing as elaborate, and indirect, as the pitch above.)

Then #3, from 2/17:

Hello Margalit!

I hope you are well and having a great week! I wanted to personally connect with you to see if I can schedule a time for you to interview __ from Shark Tank and product development expert, __ . …

This is timely because they just came out with the book __, which … is filled with step by step instructions to give a winning pitch that may just land you a spot in the Shark Tank.

TOPICS THEY CAN DISCUSS:
Become The Person Of Influence
Real Life Behind The Scenes Of Shark Tank
Insider Tips Of How To Get On Shark Tank …
How Not To Blow Your Funding Before You’re On The Market
On my end I will handle the logistics of the interview and ensure we promote to our thousands of followers on social media.
Eager to hear your thoughts! I am open to any suggestions you have for the interview.

To understand this at all, you have to know this:

Shark Tank is an American reality television series that premiered on August 9, 2009, on ABC. The show is a franchise of the international format Dragons’ Den, which originated in Japan in 2001. Shark Tank shows aspiring entrepreneur-contestants as they make business presentations to a panel of “shark” investors, who then choose whether or not to invest. (Wikipedia link)

I’m pretty sure Margalit has never expressed any sort of interest in being on Shark Tank — but then the spam comments on this blog (well over 5 million so far) have recently included a whole bunch advertising erotic massage in Bucharest (yes, Bucharest, Romania). If I wanted erotic massage, I’d hire a guy on the SF Peninsula, and would not be enticed by a young woman in Bucharest.

Again, a striking fact about the pitches that Margalit gets is how elaborate they are — way beyond “I would like to talk with you about a mutual business opportunity” or “I am young Russian girl in your neighborhood and want to know you better”.

In the world of underwear. Specifically, premium men’s underwear companies, which advertise to an upscale international audience, many of whom are gay men, so they’re trying to balance appeals to the comfortable and sensuous feel of the goods (for men in general) and to raw sexiness (for gay men in particular), while covering these with a veneer of high purpose, artistry, scientific design, and snob appeal. That gives us things like the following, from a posting yesterday:

CODE 22 is an expression of defining men’s underwear and sportswear design. It gives meaning to the words balance, confidence and masculinity. CODE 22 is a concept born from the spirit of innovation and created for men who are in need of minimal yet elegant creations.

the p.r. copy for premium men’s underwear tends to be profoundly serious: elevated and sweeping, both grandiose and worshipful in tone. And therefore risible. I mean: funny as hell.

Especially funny since the high-toned copy is paired with images of extremely hot nearly naked men looking conspicuously masculine (and, usually, seductive). So we get a disjuncture between the carnal draw of visible fantasy bodies plus almost-visible dicks and little faux-philosophical treatises on the higher nature of men’s underwear. The point, of course, is to engage men’s identification with or desire for the models in the ads — that sells underwear — while soothing their anxieties over these feelings.

Not all the ads have text as absurd as this one, but a great many do. An evergreen source of entertainment, for me, anyway.

All agog at gay porn. In the case of advertising copy for gay porn, there’s little anxiety to allay — prospective buyers are well-disposed towards the product, are probably always on the lookout for it. The copywriter’s job is to convince them that this particular flick will do the trick for them, to entice them with hot copy, copy that’s crude, thick with sex, and itself arousing, but that also plugs into their previous experiences jacking off to porn: this is just the sort of thing you like, buddy (an appeal to familiarity), but even better than what you’ve had (an appeal to freshness). Your favorite stuff, but new and improved!

This means that unless you can find unbiased reviews, you won’t learn much about a flick from the ads, since they’re always (way) over the top with enthusiastic positives, descriptions of hot bodies, thumbnail accounts of hot man-on-man action, and lots of (often conventional) porn talk. What you can learn from the ads is the special interests a flick caters to: black guys, military men, lots of anal, watersports, t-rooms, bareback, cute twinks, gangbangs, huge cocks, romance, whatever. Beyond that, every ad tells you, shouts at you, that the action is hot hot hot. (In actuality, there’s a huge range of craft in gay porn, so that the copy can easily lead a gay lad astray, suck him into buying a video that’s mostly a stinker, except maybe for one serviceable scene.)

My most recent posting on gay porn, on the 18th, about Stud Finder (great name), quotes a breathless piece of ad copy, with interpolated comments of mine:

Got hung? You need to find some wood and steel, and you need it soon. Hold the tool in your hand and guide it carefully until it hits the spot… [a little forest of phallic vocabulary] or just let TitanMen Trenton Ducati and Hunter Marx be your Stud Finders, leading the charge as a group of utility players get sweatier and hornier by the second. A basement workshop heats up as Hunter Marx and Will Swagger [hard to beat as a porn name] take turns sucking each other before the hairy Hunter plows his bud’s hole. After a passionate suck exchange, buddies Ford Andrews and Jed Athens are soon under the spell of alpha-stud Trenton Ducati, whose energy takes control. Handyman Race Cooper’s ass is too much for co-worker Stany Falcone to resist; watch the duo’s tight abs and muscled bods glisten as they get breathless together. [glisten is a great porn verb]

For the genre, this is relatively restrained. Points worth noting, beyond the ones above: sweatier and hornier, the hairy Hunter, plows, suck exchange, alpha-stud, tight abs, muscled bods, breathless. No one talks like this in eveyday conversation; it’s in a special porn register. And since the porn talk is so thick and dense, it’s absurd, and funny.

Many earlier examples on this blog and AZBlogX. Not a lot of guidance for the discerning shopper, but thoroughly enoyable.