1984’s Best Song About Being Ejaculated Upon

Here, please watch the video for Vanity’s 1984 pop song “Pretty Mess,” which is not just sexual in nature but unusually specific in the type of sex it seems to be celebrating. Have a look and listen for yourself.

“Pretty Mess” is not a good song, exactly, but you have to admit it’s efficient in communicating its message. if there were any doubts about what Vanity is singing about, those would be tidily removed by the video, which manages at least six metaphors for genitalia and the substances that come out of genitalia. These metaphors are as follows:

• at 1:06, Vanity getting showered in white feathers
• at 1:26, the female bartender dripping honey all over the counter
• at 2:04, Vanity getting showered with champagne that’s gushing out of the bottle
• at 2:37, Vanity attempting to catch a white throw pillow (and notably failing to catch it)
• at 3:02, Vanity dancing at the rear of a long, arguably flesh-colored hallway while singing “and then he found a hallway that went all the way”
• at 3:08, Vanity and her male companion getting showered in white confetti

And that list excludes the references made in the lyrics but not accompanied by a visual metaphor: “boiling like a kettle,” “dripping like a hot tea” and the strange line “he pulled a seam and it went all the way,” in which Vanity runs the “and” into the “seam” so it kind of sounds like she’s saying “semen.”

I’d imagine that if you were in your car listening to the radio during the few weeks “Pretty Mess” would have been getting airplay back in 1984 and you were just hearing the lyrics, you might ask yourself, “Wait, is she singing about getting jizzed on?” But if you were watching the video, the message would be clear: Yes, she really is singing about getting jizzed on. I liken it to Grace Jones’ 1981 track “Pull Up to the Bumper,” which seems like it’s about having sex with a guy with a big black dick but which Jones herself insists is not the case. It’s maybe even funnier for Jones to pretend that she just made a song about parking a car, but the video at least keeps it ambiguous: It’s just Grace Jones dancing onstage, superimposed on images of traffic.

Not that there’s anything wrong with writing and performing a song about getting ejaculated upon, I suppose.

People who have been reading this blog for a while might remember that I wrote about “Pretty Mess” before. However, since that posting, the video disappeared from the internet. I’m posting this today because I finally found the video again but also because looking back on the original post, I hate the way I talked about this song. The post title was “‘Pretty Mess’ Is a Filthy Song for Prostitutes,” and I was implying that Vanity shouldn’t have made this song. If I thought this back then, I no longer think so now. I love that she made this song, bad as it is, and I think we can celebrate it in the context of “Wow, can you believe this song got made? Can you believe she got away with this video?” And it’s all the more notable when you consider that “Pretty Mess” was Vanity’s first solo single after dropping out of Vanity 6, the girl group assembled by Prince and the group responsible for the 1982 hit “Nasty Girl.” As Prince was wont to do, he gave Vanity her stage name, though it the context of this song, it’s notable to point out that she told People in 1984 that he initially wanted to dub her “Vagina.” Even considering how forthright sexuality was a part of Vanity’s persona since the beginning of her music career, “Pretty Mess” still seems remarkable in how blatantly it discusses the matter at hand. (Or you know, at other body parts.)

So please, pop singers of the future, if you feel inclined to write further songs about being ejaculated upon, feel free to do so. It doesn’t seem like a tall order to make a jizz-positive song that’s better than this one.

Miscellaneous notes:

• Ten years after “Pretty Mess,” Vanity overdosed and nearly died. She subsequently converted to born-again Christianity and cut all ties with the music industry. In Matthew Rettenmund’s book Totally Awesome 80s, Vanity is quoted as saying, “When I came to the Lord Jesus Christ, I threw out about 1,000 tapes of mine—interview, every tape, every video, everything.”
• I don’t know if it’s even possible, but I wonder if her decision to distance herself from her music career had something to do with the “Pretty Mess” video suddenly becoming unavailable online. For a few years, you just could not find this video, when it was easy to find before that. This struck me as weird. “Pretty Mess” was a Motown Records release that did kinda-sorta okay on the Billboard charts, after all, and it’s odd to have a video for a major release such as this just vanish. I’d periodically look for it—often propelled to do so after exclaiming something along the lines of “Oh my god, you have to see the video for this song”—and it has only returned following Vanity’s death in February 2016. At the very least, I can hope that other people looking for it end up here.
• Another explanation for its unavailability online? It’s just not that great of a song. At several points during the song, Vanity sounds like Miss Piggy in heat, and I apologize if me pointing this out damages your mental image of Miss Piggy.
• Pop songs about ejaculation seem to be rare, and those about ejaculate specifically even more so.
• I’m unclear whether Vanity wrote “Pretty Mess.” The Wikipedia page credits her as the sole writer, while the page for the album Wild Animal credits Bill Wolfer. I like the song more if I think that she chose to write and perform it herself, rather than some man handing it to her and saying, “It’s a song about spooge. You’re singing it now.”
• Vanity plays the female lead in Enter the Dragon, but her acting career began before Prince’s involvement in her life. Notably, she play, the girl in the sexy Egyptian girl costume in the 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis slasher Terror Train, which means that she and David Copperfield share a movie credit. (She’s credited as D.D. Winters, though she was born Denise Katrina Matthews.)
• I can’t tell if Vanity is also playing the female bartender into the video or if the actress cast just looks like her. Anyone?
• Vanity’s love interest in the video suggests a hypothetical love child created by Limahl and a lesbian New Wave amazon.

Bonus video tidbit: Speaking of Prince muses who have surprisingly literal music videos, have you ever seen the video for Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train”? It's more or less what you might expect until you realize that the dude she’s singing about is actually the train conductor. He takes the train because his job is driving the train.

That’s... weird, right?

The Further Adventures of Homoerotic Anime

Last year, I started posting supercuts of the more conspicuously sexual parts of Saint Seiya, an anime series that started airing in Japan in 1986 and which later surfaced in English-speaking areas as Knights of the Zodiac. It’s pretty classic “dudes in armor” fighting action. It’s also gayer than gay sex. I don’t think it was meant to be so laden with innuendo, but it’s hard to read this series of grunts, glances and one-on-one fight sequences as anything other than thinly veiled dickbutt.

Free time has been harder to come by since the last post, but I’ve still been watching, grabbing spare scenes as I happened across them. Here’s the latest series of head-scratchers.

Some context:

0:01 — Hyoga gets his powers from Cygnus, the constellation shaped like a swan, and therefore must flap around like an elegant bird to create ice magic. Totally hetero, in the way a beautiful male figure skating routine is also totally hetero. His special move is Diamond Dust, which sounds more like a Sailor Moon attack, which should be familiar to those who grew up playing RPGs, and which is an actual meteorological phenomenon.

0:25 — Cygnus clutches his hands into a fist-pumping pose and fires off white energy blasts.

1:10 — Women play an odd role on the show. The female saints must keep their faces covered with a mask at all times, and that makes it all the stranger that Argol wields Medusa’s face as a weapon. There’s a theory that Medusa’s face is a symbol of the vagina dentata. Think about it: it’s a fanged, snarling version of a thing that’s usually not dangerous, and it’s lethal to even behold to say nothing about interacting with it. It’s also surrounded by coiled snakes which, if you’re taking this analogy to its full extent, could be interpreted a similarly dangerous version of pubic hair. Medusa is weaponized female beauty, and the fact that she attacks by making enemies rock hard? The symbolism is almost too much. Death-boners, all around, in the same way that that one Poison Ivy episode of Batman had gave people deadly, permanent wood.

1:18 — Argol has to turn his backside on enemies to unleash his weaponized vagina power. Hmm.

2:00 — Whenever anyone talks about putting anything into something that’s quivering, it’s easy to assume it’s sexual.

2:13 — I feel like Andromeda reads as a very feminine man. I mean, his name is Andromeda. He’s the only major male character to be named after a mythological character that is expressly female. But that makes it all the more interesting that his weapon is a snaking chain that lends itself to penile comparisons. In this scene, his chain goes limp.

3:27 — Perseus’ outfit. Just saying.

4:12 — Just look at the way Andromeda runs those chains through his hands. He’s like a snake-charmer.

And here are the previous clips.

(And there’s a little more on this particular weirdness here.)

This Tree Bears Deadly Fruit

Can we talk about the loaded symbolism of this comic book cover for a moment?

On second thought... let’s not.

DC’s Unexpected, May 1972. Cover art by Nick Cardy. Originally posted by Rainy Day Recess.

Also, while on the subject, Unexpected, December 1867. Cover art by Jack Sparling.

A Conversation With Online Advertising About My Recent Underwear Purchase

Me: I have purchased underwear online.

Online advertising: HEY DO YOU WANT TO BUY UNDERWEAR

Me: Hmm? Oh, no. I already did.

Online advertising: HEY DO YOU WANT TO BUY UNDERWEAR

Me: No, I bought a sufficient amount.

Online advertising: HEY BUT UNDERWEAR

Me: Right. I actually use the internet for purposes other than underwear-purchasing.

Online advertising: HEY

Me: Yes? What?

Online advertising: LOOK HERE IS THE UNDERWEAR YOU WERE LOOKING AT

Me: Thanks. I know. I don’t need to see it again until it arrives in the mail.

Online advertising: THEY COME IN COLORS TOO

Me: You know, I’m actually typing in a sort of public space right now…

Online advertising: OUR ADS LOOK LIKE GAY SOFTCORE KINDA

Me: Yes, a lot of men’s underwear advertisements look that way.

Online advertising: IF YOU WERE LOOKING AT THIS PHOTO ON TUMBLR OR SOMETHING AT WORK YOU COULD GET IN TROUBLE

Me: You know, the page I’m on right now isn’t even remotely underwear-related…

Online advertising: HERE WE PUT A LADY IN THE AD IF THAT MAKES IT BETTER

Me: It really doesn’t.

Online advertising: LOOK THERE’S LESS LADY NOW.

Me: …

Online advertising: HEY.

Online advertising: HEY BET YOU’RE NOT LOOKING AT THE LADY NOW HA HA HA

Me: Gosh, this online dictionary site has a lot of banner ads.

Online advertising: HEY WHY ARE YOU EMBARRASSED ABOUT WEARING UNDERWEAR

Me: I’m really not, it’s just that—

Online advertising: HEY ARE YOU GOING ON VACATION MAYBE

Me: ...

Online advertising: HEY BUT UNDERWEAR

Me: [runs away, abandoning laptop at the coffee house]

Online advertising: HEY BUY SOME MORE UNDERWEAR

(And yes, I have written about this exact phenomenon before, but as it’s been said online far too many times this week, It is happening again.)

Did The Dick Van Dyke Show Make a Semen Joke?

Without even hearing my argument, most people remotely familiar with The Dick Van Dyke Show would answer, “No, of course not, because it’s The Dick Van Dyke Show,” but here I go anyway.

You see, I have this problem with media from before I was born — and before censorship standards on mainstream entertainment got more lax. Sometimes I’ll hear or see something that seems sexually suggestive. Part of me wants to say that this piece of media — a song or a TV show or a movie or whatever — comes from a more innocent time when risque was rare. The other part of me counters that, no, the people who made this thing had the same plumbing as we do today and therefore would have understood the implications.

And in this one instance, I can’t decide which seems more likely.

A little context before the clip: In the episode “The Ballad of the Betty Lou,” Rob and his best friend, Jerry Helper, decided to go halvsies on a sailboat. The idea immediately is vetoed by their wives, Laura and Millie, on grounds that it will tear their friendship apart, but the men proceed with the plan anyway, to Laura and Millie’s dismay. In this scene, Rob and Jerry are talking themselves into why this is a good idea. And during that conversation, the following exchange happens.

Jerry corrects Rob’s nautical terminology: “No, no, Rob. I’ll be the captain and you’ll be the seaman.” Cue laughter. And then Laura and Millie shoot each other a knowing look.

If you assume that The Dick Van Dyke Show was an exceedingly wholesome series that had Rob and Laura sleeping in twin beds, you could interpret the exchange fairly innocently. Laura and Millie’s reaction is simply them already seeing that they were right: Differences in opinion over the boat will ultimately cause a fight between their husbands, just like they predicted.

The person arguing for the more risque reading of the scene, however, would point out that Jerry simply correcting Rob is not very funny, even though there’s a laugh cue immediately after Jerry pronounces the word “seaman.” What about that line should get a laugh other than the fact that “seaman” is pronounced exactly like “semen”? And Millie and Laura don’t just roll their eyes, “Here we go again”-style. In fact, Laura arches her eyebrow.

If actors and comedy writers in 1963 functioned more or less like they do today, I have to think that everyone involved would have realized how close they were coming to making a big, goopy cum joke. (I mean, someone at some point had to make a joke about the show’s name.) But then again, I wonder why a censor didn’t object to the line, if only to avoid the possibility that any puritanical-minded viewer would think that filth was invading primetime TV… unless back then such a joke was so unheard of than no one would have read smut into it, reproductive plumbing notwithstanding.

I’d ask the guy credited with writing the episode, Martin Ragaway, but he died in 1989. What do you think?

And while you ponder that, perhaps also have a think about the time Elizabeth Montgomery was on Password and the secret word ended up being “vibrator.”

EDIT: And if you want to see the joke in the context of the whole episode, here you go. The line comes around the 2:30 mark.

Lizard Misty and Other Saturday Morning Surprises

For reasons I cannot explain even to myself, I continue to watch Saint Saiya, an 80s anime, and I continue to compile its baffling sexual imagery for your personal entertainment. You’re welcome. The following supercut takes us to episode 25 or so, and it may well be the gayest thing you see this week,

Of particular note: two separate bare bottoms (both male), falling in love with a woman you acknowledge looks exactly like your own brother, more Death Queen Island, fisting, [suggestive grunts], just the oddest dialogue choices coupled with the oddest line-readings, and a staggeringly gay big bad named Lizard Misty who is (a) not female, despite the fact that he looks like Princess Peach and is clearly wearing lip gloss; (b) a legitimately powerful foe, irrespective of his effeminacy; and (c) doesn’t perspire so much as radiate homoeroticism.

A lady, just a biologically male lady.

Saint Seiya and the weird sexy, previously:

And for a detailed breakdown of the extended gayfight in that last one, click here.

Battle of the Ambiguously Sexual Signifiers, Anime-Style

Honestly, I don’t know enough about anime to proclaim any given scene the most homoerotic-ever.  However, I know an opportunity for over-reading when I see one, and the 80s action series Saint Seiya is fruitful, so to speak.

In the universe of Saint Seiya (or Knights of the Zodiac, depending on what translation you’re watching), saints are armor-clad superheroes who derive their powers from constellations, because no one on the Japanese side of this project knew a Catholic person.

This scene, which comes from the series’ sixth episode, the pits the Andromeda saint — pink armor with an especially busomy-looking breastplate, and don’t forget that the constellation is named for Greek mythology’s No. 1 damsel in distress — against the purple-clad Unicorn saint. The more passive of the two, Andromeda resists fighting, but he’s goaded by Unicorn, whose most outstanding wardrobe feature, it should be noted, is a single protruding horn. “It sounds like the ladies really love you, don’t they, pretty boy?” Unicorn taunts. Andromeda is unflustered. “I’m sad, and filled with emptiness,” he says, which is clunky entendre but which still gets the point across. The two engage. We get a pink-hued freeze frame of the two intertwined — Unicorn looking focused and aggressive, Andromeda looking serene, even pleased.

Andromeda, however, flips the script when he proves more powerful by virtue of his telekinetic control of a chain — a long, snaking instrument that acts like an extension of his body and which has a pointed tip at the end. (“That chain! It’s like a living thing!”) The scene inexplicably shifts to a celestial backdrop, where he’s superimposed on an image of the Andromeda constellation. It’s a mix of signifiers — phallic weapon combined with maiden imagery. Time literally stands still. Unicorn persists in attacking, and Andromeda calmly sends the chains after him, penetrating him repeatedly. (“Of all the parts of the Nebula Chain, the top is the strongest!” Really.) Based on the noises you hear from the crowd (and the reaction shot you see of the Lady Purple Hair), it’s all being done for the delight of female spectators. You don’t hear a single male voice cheering.

The lesson? Appearances are deceiving, and the dude with flowing ladyhair may be the strongest one in the room.

That’s pretty loaded, just from the standpoints of gender and sexuality. I realize there are always problems in a person from one culture using his terms to analyze something produced by a second culture. But no matter how a Japanese audience would have read the scene back in 1986, this guy over in America in 2014 has a hard time not seeing a whole lot of sexual cues.

Why am I watching Saint Seiya in 2014? I don’t really know. I was trying to look up one minor trivia point and ended up finding a cache of the episodes available online. It turns out I like the look of Japanese animation from back when I was a kid even if I wasn’t watching it at the time. I don’t know why. Regardless, the combo of awkward translations plus bizarre line-readings makes for a more entertaining experience than you might think. Case in point: “My cosmos is about to explode,” which is either bad grammar or bad innuendo or both.

The less said about Death Queen Island, the better.

EDIT: I have encountered another.

Just Dripping With Creativity

Today I learned the subtext of the word seminal. It’s semen. Yep, just like it sounds.

Years spent around the endless praise of arts journalists may have warped my thinking, but I feel like when people use the word today, they’re most often using it in the context of creativity — a seminal book is one so original that it prompts the existence of later works. But even that use — planting a metaphorical seed — goes back to the primary definition listed in Merriam-Webster: “of, relating to or consisting of seed or semen,” as in seminal vesicles. Etymonline says that the generative sense of the word has been in use since at least the 1630s.

So remember: The next time someone refers to a book or album or film or artwork as being seminal, you’re not only allowed but encouraged to ask whether this thing is generative or just covered in semen. If someone objects, just explain, “Hey, there’s thing called etymology, you clod.”

via

While we’re on the subject, is there any way that Donna Summer’s seminal 1980 dance track “Hot Stuff” is also the other kind of seminal as well? If you haven’t listened to it recently, do so, give the lyrics a once-over and then ask yourself just what kind of hot stuff she’s looking for.

Suggested topic of conversation for dinner parties: “Hey, can anyone guess why the disco anthem ‘Hot Stuff’ is doubly seminal?”

Words that are surprisingly sexual, previously:

• bukkake (as a food item)
• looms (not just for prairie grandmas anymore!)
• bracket (March Madness just got more homoerotic)
• vanilla (sexier than its reputation would indicate)
• broomrape (not as bad as it sounds)
• orchid (DO NOT REMOVE)

At Last, the Sexualized Fungus You’ve Been Waiting For

You know that line in “Landslide” where Stevie Nicks says that she saw her reflection in the snow-covered hills? This is kind of like that.

via

This because I’ve been a little pressed for time lately, so this is all I can offer you at the moment: mushrooms shaped remarkably like penises. It’s not much, but isn’t it also everything?

The Disappointing Adventures of Leather Boy

My go-to in any discussion of awful superhero characters had always been Cocaine, a DC character who hails from Colombia and whose powers all stem from cocaine and whose name seems pretty obvious now that you know his backstory. And I stand by his suckiness, but I think we’ve got a solid Plan B: the Marvel character Leather Boy.

via

Leather Boy (real name, tragically: Gene Lorrene) applies for membership to the Great Lakes Avengers — a Milwaukee-based spin-off to the Avengers, which itself kind of sounds like a joke. He’s rejected, however, because he lacks any superpowers. You see, he’s not Leather Boy so much as a leather boy, ball gag and all, and he only applies because he mistakes the Great Lakes Avengers for an S&M fetish group. (An easy mistake to make, given the language that would go into such a classified ad, no?)

Leather Boy comes back years later, however, still smarting over the fact that he wasn’t allowed into the group in spite of everything I just relayed to you in the previous paragraph. Now wearing a leather fetish version of Doctor Doom’s costume, Leather Boy unleashes his rage on Monkey Joe — who, weirdly, is not a monkey but a squirrel who happens to be the sidekick of Squirrel Girl, whom Leather Boy felt didn’t deserve membership for reasons that should be fairly obvious. He kills Monkey Joe.

via

In the end, he is apprehended by Big Bertha, who sits on him. Bertha, by the way, has the superpower to increase her weight dramatically, though she can only return to her regular size by making herself throw up.

via

“In spite of all this, I still love comic books.” — me, reminding myself.

Superheroes, previously:

• Typography-inspired superheroes that I demand exist
• Jean Grey, the less-than-marvelous girl
• The connection between Solomon Grundy and salad
• The bizarre preponderance of the letter “L” in Superman comics

On Bukkake

I know, I know — that post title, right? How dare I title something I wrote with that when Joyce Carol Oates' On Bukkake remains the definitive text on the subject?

Know that I'm only writing this to inform you of one simple but nonetheless notable fact: the word bukkake may not always mean what you think. Now if bukkake doesn't mean anything to you, please do not Google it, especially if you're at your work computer. Please also do not inquire about the subject at your local library. Also, please don't go to the Wikipedia page for bukkake, because it's somehow even worse to see the whole explosive process explained in matter-of-fact language and diagrams. It's just one of those things you don't know about until you do, at which point you can never forget what it means and you occasionally wonder, "Wait, how did I learn what bukkake was?"

The word calls to mind some rather vivid imagery, too, and that's what makes the other meaning so strange: It's food — udon, in fact. And I know because a coworker recently wrote about ordering bukkake udon from a Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo.

Here's the photo:

courtesy kcet food

Surprisingly tame, right? Compared to how you might have imagined bukkake udon, this looks rather savory, I think. (And that's savory in the sense of polite behavior, though I imagine it also tasted savory.) So why must this dish share its name with a sex act? Per my understanding, it's unlike the majority of udon dishes — which arrive soup-style, with the noodles floating in broth — in that the diner is served the noodles and topping and then required to pour the broth-like sauce over it immediately before eating. (Do I have that right? Please straighten out my understanding of the various bukkakes if not.) In case that doesn't make the connection clear enough, know that the word bukkake means "the act of splashing" in Japanese and comes from the verb bukkakeru, "to splash with (a liquid rudely)." Fair warning: that link may well be NSFW, depending on whether you work for squares.

So there you go. Now you know. May all your future bukkakes be the kind you ordered. Just be specific with your server.

Food written about in an unappetizing fashion, previously:

• The yogurt of last resort
• Chicken with merkin
• The penile aspects of vanilla
• You asked for pork faggots
• A spoonful of mystery

Elsie and the Looking Club

An old book held and celebrated for its cover but not flipped through and then pondered after the fact:

Wait, so is it about a weirdly sexy cow and her friends that spend all day looking at a mirror?

Or is it about a club that just likes looking at Elsie, the weirdly sexy cow, who may not be the most appropriate friend for these children to have?

What, exactly, are they watching Elsie do? Cow stuff? Lady stuff?

Does Elsie know they are watching? (I mean, she looks like she is into it.)

Or do they just all go around looking at things, Sexy Elsie and her human child-friends that maybe she had kidnapped for all I know, because they live in a strange world where a slender-shouldered, elegant cow-woman is somehow not the most interesting thing to look at?

But she is unusually sexy for a cow, no?

Did the children make the daisy chain for her? Is that hinting at something awful? Though literally speaking, they would have had to, because elegant forehoof notwithstanding, she doesn’t have the fingers necessary to weave daisies together.

Is it weird if I can only imagine the worst possible uses for the bucket at the bottom of the illustration?

Are they milking her?

Are they “milking” her?

God, I hope they are milking her and not “milking” her.

Is it a “looking but not touching” club?

Me Gusta la Banana

I think we have a new contender for worst song ever: the 1984 recording “Banana” by someone calling herself Jane Chiquita.

If the pairing of name and subject matter seem a little on the nose, then you too may be questioning whether this could be a joke. Or maybe it’s just some poor woman’s realization of her banana-centric destiny, at which point she, having completed the task for which she was sent to Earth, simply stopped existing. What I’d like to think — what I’m hoping, really — is that the song is about dicks and the suits in the studio said, “No, Jane, you can’t record a song just about dicks, even though this is Italy,” and so she was all, “Fine. Let’s make it about flesh-colored swords. No, wait — bananas! That’s easier to rhyme.” Because I can’t wrap my head around anyone thinking it would be a good idea just to make a song about how much they like bananas, though it wouldn’t be the first time someone had been tricked into singing about dicks.

Me being shortsighted, I took Latin as my foreign language, and so I can’t be sure what she’s actually singing about? Is this song in Spanish or Italian? Can someone smarter tell me if the lyrics are filthy? Or is it just a celebration of potassium?

Bigamy and Cartoon Rabbits

— "Mom, what's bigamy?"

— "Where did you learn that word?"

— "Cartoons."

— "Was it The Simpsons?"

— "No, it was Tiny Toons."

— "Are you sure?"

This a partially remembered, probably fictionalized version of a conversation that occurred several years before my mom probably wanted to learn about bigamy, trigamy or any of the polygamies offering married types a respite from the horrors of monogamy. I hadn't thought about it in years, but Sunday morning, I was struck with the similarity of the word bigamy and the phrase big of me. Then I realized why: Tiny Toons had made the joke years ago.

Of course, the clip is posted on the internet:

Even knowing about the whole finger prints/finger Prince joke on Animaniacs a few years later, doesn't this seem like a unusually adult joke for this show? Vocabulary-wise, if not alternative lifestyle-wise? Especially because the payoff isn't that great? I mean, it's just entry-level wordplay. And yet the censors — you know, the people that Tiny Toons purported to crack up, per the opening theme song — must have seen this and said "Yeah, that seems about right. If they didn't learn about bigamy from the Bible, they can learn it on Tiny Toons."

A Penis Where You Would Not Expect One

When you’re riding in the waybackseat and it occurs to you that English has two looms — the noun for the thing your weave on and the verb that dark clouds and scandals do — you really have no better opportunity to look up the etymology on your iPhone. Because when else would the two looms seem more pressing?

The two words have nothing to do with each other, in the end. You could have guessed that, maybe, but you know for sure when the etymology identifies the verb loom as being Scandinavian in origin and perhaps being related to the word lame. The noun loom, meanwhile, comes from Old English and would seem to be related this Old English word andloman, meaning “apparatus” or “furniture.”

But then there’s the penis.

The second sentence of the entry for the noun loom throws a curveball. I quote: “Originally ‘implement or tool of any kind’ (cf. heirloom); thus, ‘the penis’ (c.1400-1600).”

No explanation of that. Just “thus, ‘the penis.’”

See? And you thought looms were boring.

In closing, I would like to say that no discussion of looms — penile or otherwise — would ever be complete without this throwaway joke from The Simpsons.

It’s Marge demonstrating to Bart how she took loom in school, and it represents everything about Marge Simpson as a character.

Womannequin

I don’t want to be that guy, but it hasn’t to be said: Damn, that mannequin’s got some big ol’ jugs.

Like, really. I feel like every mannequin I’ve ever seen is fairly flat-chested, but this gal is showing off more that a lot of shirtless dummies would. I’m almost inclined to say that this photo captures something interesting, what with her in the center, this partial human form who’s anatomically different than most of her type. And then she’s flanked on either side by this disembodied mouths grinning meanly. And there’s the skeleton hanging in the background, reminding the shoppers — themselves partial human forms, as a result of the photo’s cropping — that no matter what they purchase at whatever discounted price, the item will likely persist long after they too die and become like the skeleton.

But naw — just them jugs. That’s the prevailing sentiment here. Jugs.

“The Girl Likes Lozenges. Can You Blame Her?”

The lessons to be learned here: (1) One good ye-ye deserves another, and (2) Serge Gainsbourg had a pervy sense of humor.

Yesterday, I wrote about the French Adele, but in bouncing around online to research that post, I came across a story about another French pop song from the same era — “Les Sucettes,” an ode to lollipops sung in 1966 by France Gall. Yes, that’s her stage name, and yes, it’s just one letter off from France Gaul, which would be the name of the country she’s from and the ancient name for area that country now occupies. Such nationalism! She damn near rivals that airport guy.

And what a face, too. Seeing what she looks like, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that France Gall was once considered for a live-action musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. It failed to materialize after Walt Disney died in 1966, but no worries, because Gall’s career was also stewarded along by Serge Gainsbourg. The same year as Disney’s death, Gainsbourg wrote the song “Les Sucettes” specifically for Gall. The following video resulted.

Let’s take a quick inventory: It’s about sucettes (“lollipops,” but literally “suck-ettes”), the French lollipops of the 60s were flagrantly phallic, cutaways show women who aren’t France Gall cramming lollipops into their mouths and, finally, people wear full-body lollipop costumes that allow them to waggle their long, pointed shafts back and forth. Gainsbourg had transformed Gall into a Lolita. Incredibly, though Gall was nineteen when “Les Sucettes” was released, she claims she was oblivious to all the sexual implications. And though you have to wonder what nunnery could have produced a girl naïve enough that she found nothing suspicious about the lyrics “When the candy stick / With anise flavor / Goes down Annie’s throat,” According to Wikipedia, Gall was so mortified when someone finally pointed out the obvious that she dissolved her successful partnership with Gainsbourg.

And that, friends, is the story of the sweet little French girl who accidentally sang a song about gobbling dongs.

Dinner Wig

So I made this for dinner.

Merken tastes a lot better than you’d think, mostly because it’s actually merkén, a Chilean seasoning blend of salt, cumin, coriander and something called cacho de cabra. But considering that merkén is a thing and all, you’d think whoever designed the packaging would have thought to include the accent mark, because merkins are also things. In fact, in spite of the associated shame, people would probably recognize merkin before they’d recognize merkén.

This is like the smen incident all over again.

Food gets sexy, previously:

• What’s so weird about a croque-madame?
• That carrot is more obscene than most
• The degree to which you find this one sexy says a lot about what kind of person you are
• Vergina (also not a typo)
• Candle salad

International Whoopie

Whoopie twelve times, but also three times, depending on how you look at it.

Gosh, after seeing the word whoopie like that, again and again in different languages, it starts to sound like nonsense. To think of it!

Seriously, though, given the connotations of the word whoopie and even the word pie, I’d maybe avoid using the word cavity in conjunction. You know?

Your Mother Sews Socks That Smell! (Three Questions About The Exorcist)

Wondering why a rainy St. Patrick’s Day evening prompted me think about The Exorcist, I nearly wrote “Lord only knows.” Then I realized how that statement, in the context of this movie, might imply more than it meant. But that’s where my mind ended up tonight.

I probably think about this movie more than most people. To me, it’s not just a horror flick; it’s also one of the most pro-religious, pro-God movies I’ve ever seen, and if that statement seems surprising, you should give the movie another go with an eye toward its endgame and not all the blasphemy. However, it’s not just a film about God’s eventual triumph over evil. It has bits and pieces that don’t quite add up, and I’m posting them here, hoping of getting a response from some of the film-savvy regulars on this blog but more realistically imagining that other weirdos considering these matters will Google their way here and at least tell me that I’m not the only one wondering.

Burke Dennings. He’s the director friend of Chris MacNeil’s who gets tossed down the steps leading up to the apartment. He’s the first casualty of little Regan’s “troubles.” Before he dies, he’s depicted as an outgoing kook — the kind who makes parties fun but who maybe isn’t the type a woman would trust with her kid. Chris McNeil does anyway, and Dennings winds up dead as a result of his one-on-one time. Is there some kind of implied impropriety in his interactions with Regan? Specifically one that may have gotten him killed? Or am I just mapping Roman Polanski-ness onto the character? And yes, I’m aware that The Exorcist preceded Polanski’s sexual assault arrest by several years.

Sharon Spencer. In a similar sense, what motivates Chris’s assistant, the woman played by Kitty Winn? She sticks by Chris through all manner of badness. I mean, most people would consider a Satan infestation grounds for quitting. What’s her devotion all about?

Father Dyer. Now this is the weird one — the one that seems a lot less under-the-radar than the other two. Am I the only one who reads this guy as a gay character? No, no I’m not. But isn’t it strange that a film that ultimately delivers such a conservative meaning would prominently feature a Jesuit priest who speaks the line, “My idea of heaven is a solid white nightclub with me as a headliner for all eternity, and they love me”? I’m not sure that coding the character as gay is progressive or just bizarre, but it’s especially notable that this gay-seeming character was played by the Reverend William O’Malley, an actual Jesuit priest who also served as William Friedkin’s technical advisor on the set of The Exorcist. That said, according to a few online sources, he’s also famous for directing drama productions at the various schools he’s taught at. Which, well…

Am I overreaching? Maybe. But a movie that makes a character do that with a crucifix isn’t exactly daring viewers to reject sexual readings of the film.

One more bit before I’m done: There’s a surprising connection between The Exorcist and Groucho Marx.