...in the next stall. Okay, this ad is really for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and their Dinosaur exhibit. But I can't imagine what the creative team was thinking when they came up with this image to go with the campaign theme: "They're just waiting to be discovered." Well, maybe I can imagine, I just don't want to think about it anymore.
Describing itself as a " not-for-profit organization dedicated to producing audio descriptions of sample movie clips from adult web sites" this bizarre little site offers an odd selection based supposedly on requests from, uh, listeners. See, uh, hear for yourself.
Thanks to Digicynic.wordpress.com
Rare to see condom advertising without the essential heterosexual couple looking at each other longingly. At lest in the U.S. This campaign (from Euro RSCG courtesy of adsoftheworld) from Germany features three print ads for a flavored condom. I can't find any info about the company that makes these other than a mention that in another campaign their slogan was "Get there later." Well, this lovely ribbed chocolate bar suggests another old slogan to me: melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
On the 4th of July, the NY Times reported on the peculiar phenomenon of giant American flags at sporting events. On I95 there is a huge American flag that is tattered and brown that flies over a car dealership. It is so big the wind has to be pretty strong for it to wave. The Times quoted one manufacturer:
"'People go ape when they see it,' said Jim Alexander, a retired Coast Guard commander who runs Superflag, the company that basically invented the industry and once held the world record for the largest flag, which temporarily hung on the Hoover Dam. It was 255 by 505 feet"
Go ape. That is a telling phrase. Lose one's humanity. Behave like an animal. It's no surprise many of these flags are displayed at football games or NASCAR events.
Don't get me wrong. I love this country. But I continue to be appalled at people who put more importance on the symbols and little to no importance on the ideals (or for that matter the Constitution or Bill of Rights).
All this seemed even weirder when I was visiting my old friend John in Providence the weekend they held their Pride Celebration. Knitting Nation, a group founded by a RISD prof, Liz Collins, brought together dozens of knitters to create the country's largest rainbow flag. John and I wandered down to Waterplace Park to watch the people at their machines go at it like a looking-glass version of a New England Mill.
Each colored segment was unrolled on a knoll and sewn to the others as the segments kept coming out of the machines. As this went on, different people read letters, web postings, articles and memoirs of what this symbol meant to them. Love it or hate it. Listening to all those voices was fascinating.
Of course, I don't think Jim Alexander and the NASCAR patriots would take too kindly to knowing that a queer flag was bigger than his. Then again, perhaps this is their misdirected and sublimated size queen thinking. I just want to know who's making all the flag poles.
A search of advertising that either shows men at urinals checking each other out, or is site specific — and the site we're talking about is a urinal where the advertising that runs there speaks to male insecurity — is rather amazing. There's just lots of ads that use male insecurity about penis size. Comedy Central is one example of site specific work that pokes fun at size insecurity. While Funk sunglasses advertising is an one
of many examples of a print ad that shows two men standing at a urinal with one 
clearly checking out the other's equipment — and making an editorial comment about size.
Yes, men are sensitive about dick size. And advertisers taking advantage of this doesn't merely extend (pardon me) to pumps and Smiling Bob (who lost his smile when the company that made Enzyte was ordered to pay millions to consumers for fraudulent claims). Even Sony got in the act, with their uncomfortably funny and justifiably famous PSP TV spot.
Now the 3M has entered the competition, with the site specific ads seen below that offer a truly terrific product demonstration while at the same time encouraging the target, who is standing at a urinal, to let his eyes wander to the urinal next to him. The product is a privacy guard for computer display screens that completely masks what is on screen from anyone who isn't looking at it head (ahem) on.
Yes, men are very sensitive indeed. Of course what a man is sensitive about won't be protected by this product. Nevertheless, the whiz-kids at Cozum the agency in Istanbul that's responsible for this work, has created work that demands to be looked at in a place where men studiously appear to be looking away. And that deserves attention indeed.
Perhaps the ultimate expression of alienation is the fleshlight, which reduces the most intimate human connection to an automated orifice. But reducing our desire to parts of people rather than a whole human being alive in his otherness is nothing new. Apart from the obvious example of porn, the fashion world (which sometimes appropriates and approximates porn images) uses it in all kinds of odd ways. Here are two very peculiar examples.
First, this old promotional item for Jordache jeans — a telephone that looks like the bottom
half of a manikin. Put the butt to your ear, the ankle near your mouth and start talking. Now I ask you, regardless of what your particular preferences might be with regard to butts, would you want a butt in your ear? Would you, even if you were a foot fetishist, want to speak into an ankle?
Now I understand the value of a brand, and how it can be extended, made iconic with other merchandise. But this is simply kitsch. Of course, some companies would use kitsch intentionally. I doubt that is the case here. You may disagree, if so I’d love to hear your reasoning.
Then there is some very visually striking new advertising for 707, which appears to be a clothing brand in Indonesia:
Kind of creepy, but you can’t not look at it. Kind of like the ads you see in the back of HX or Next or online at some gay “dating” sites: just pecs, abs, or other parts. Not that these parts aren’t nice. However speaking personally, I’m looking for more. And I know I’m not alone.
Why do we sell ourselves short? Why do we believe just this part is what we have to attract someone? Certainly we believe it because we’re attracted ourselves to bits and pieces. We all notice certain things first. Advertisers and magazine publishers know this and create promotional phones, jeans ads and all kinds of material to get our attention. And in a feedback loop it creates fetishists of us all.
Don’t get the idea that I’m a puritan. Not by any means. I just think that cutting people up like this gets in the way relationship to the real, not to mention a real relationship.
This ain't Brokeback Mountain. And I never played with my toy cowboys like this. Clearly a failure of the imagination on my part. Click on the image and see how Todd the Tonka cowboy finds true love...
This little bit of advertising for the Sony PSP is a visual trope that appears again and again in advertising -- and could be used by Larry Craig's defense lawyer though I suspect the former Senator has never had his hands on a video game.
I've seen this visual gag for shoes, for watches...recently a team at my agency came up with the idea for another product entirely, and would have shown it had I not pointed out that this is overdone, trite...but there is no question it is effective. I find it particularly interesting that heterosexual men (regardless of where they fall in the Kinsey scale) in advertising come up with this situation again and again. And I leave it to you to consider or contribute to what it might mean:
Mae West is reputed to have said, “Keep a diary and one day it will keep you.” While Leo Lerman never published his journals and diaries in his lifetime, it has enough naughty gossip, hidden history and sheer human insight to find itself on the bestseller list for a while.
Mae West herself doesn’t show up in the book, though several drag versions of both Mae and Marlene Dietrich to name a few do turn up in passages about gay speakeasies in the 1930s. And of course, the real Marlene Dietrich is everywhere in The Grand Surprise, along with Maria Callas, Truman Capote, Cary Grant, Philip Johnson, Greta Garbo, Josephine Baker, Henry Kissinger, Jackie Onassis…
well just about every major figure in art, music, film, theater, fashion, politics and literature in the 20th Century.
The press has already started to feed on the revelations about the bisexual affairs of Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner. And while the book is chock full of the guilty pleasure of this kind of gossip, the book is a revelation deeper and more moving for those who are willing to read it from start to finish instead of browsing the index for celebrity names. 
Stephen Pascal, who worked for Lerman for 12 years as his assistant, has edited the 50 years worth of journals into a coherent story. And he knows that many people will be tempted to simply browse, or compulsively browse. Over dinner and a bottle of fine Bordeaux last week we talked about Leo’s story, and the story of his editing the journals.
AQJB: I have to admit, I haven’t been able to avoid browsing the index looking for names. There are just so many, and so many juicy tidbits. And it’s a long book, over 600 pages. What will people miss if they just browse for these stories?
SP: They’ll miss some of the most important stories as they develop over time — starting with the Leo’s life story, and the story of his 47-year relationship with his lover Gray Foy. As well as his relationships with those “sacred monsters” Dietrich, Callas, Capote and others he knew intimately from the start of their careers all the way to the end.
His journals tell their stories with the immediacy of one who was there, the insight of someone who could see what was really happening, with all the bitchiness and compassion of a true friend. So you feel all their, and Leo’s, full humanity.
And Leo’s story itself is a particularly American story — the child of immigrants who worked hard, he moved to the very center of American society, and helped shape taste and culture for four decades.
AQJB: Let’s talk for a bit about his relationship with Gray Foy. This is a journal that tells the story of a
loving relationship between two men that lasted almost 50 years. That lasted through major changes in the lives of gay men in America. First, how have people, readers and reviewers, responded to this story? Have you noticed a difference in the way the gay press or gay readers have responded from the mainstream media?
SP: Well, one thing gay men have been responding to has been the depiction of this relationship. — Gay readers have told me how moved they are to see such an intimate relationship develop over time. There
are so few examples of this in fiction or in other journals. One reviewer in the mainstream media (whose gender preference I certainly don’t know) referred to the writing about this relationship as the “mushy" and uninteresting parts, but for gay men, who rarely have their relationships reflected back this way, well, it stirs up a lot of emotions.
The mainstream reviewers, so far, remember the book has been out about a week, but for the most part they’ve not really made a big deal about the gay relationships It’s just been acknowledged without smirks or insinuations.
But let’s face it, the mainstream reviewers, given a choice between writing about Marlene Dietrich’s affairs, or Maria Callas — or writing about Leo’s relationship with his lover, they’re going to focus on the gossip because it’s what interests people and what will get the reviews read. Really, Leo’s relationship with Gray was like any conventional marriage, except for the gender of the parties involved.
AQJB: Early in the book, Leo tells of his coming out experiences, going to speakeasies, back rooms and drag bars. I was stunned to read of a back room bar on West 72nd Street in the early 1930’s — and then of course I remembered the old chestnut that every generation believes it invented sex, and I guess I’m just as guilty of that as anyone. But I have to say that Leo didn’t seem to suffer the oppression that we associate with being gay, or for that matter, Jewish, in the early 20th Century. How did he manage to succeed and rise to the rarefied circles he did?
SP: As someone who must have been excluded from many places for being gay or Jewish, he very rarely writes about it. Really the circles he chose to move in, publishing, theater, art, were some of the more open places to be. And while his background made him an outsider, he lived his life pretending to be the consummate insider that in fact he became.
AQJB: Wasn’t there an incident in the 40's at the writer’s colony at Yaddo where he came up against homophobia?
SP: Well, he was certainly hurt an anti-gay comment made by the director of Yaddo, Elizabeth Ames, and
it shook him up. Despite his membership in this elite young artistic circle (Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, and Marguerite Young were also there at the time), it reminded him of his precarious position in society and made him so uncomfortable he considered leaving early.
AQJB So everyone knew he was gay, he was out, whatever that means for the time.
SP: Well he chose not to hide, even though it wasn’t something he talked about unless you were a close friend. I mean, he was such a dandy that if someone thought him gay it would hardly have been a leap. And he lived openly with his lover, inviting everyone to their home. Yet few spoke with him about his relationship; it was a simple fact that was unmentioned.
AQJB: Sort of the way some reviewers in the mainstream media have dealt with it.
SP: Except for the fact that some gossip columnists have been running with some of the information about “stars.” That’s what sells papers you know.
AQJB: I loved that Yul Brynner had an affair with Hurd Hatfield and Marlene Dietrich. I guess that when she sang “See what the boys in the back room will have, and tell them I’m having the same,” she was not unaware of the double meaning we’ve always laughed about...(continued)
Purim is the queerest holiday on the Jewish calendar. The time when we put on masks that show the selves we keep hidden the rest of the year. The time when we bring the shadow out for full display and celebrate it. So it is of course no surprise it is the time when you’ll see men in drag — since there’s no shadow men are more afraid of than their own connection to the divine feminine. Sometimes this is true even of gay men, who today, have bought into the hyper-masculinity sold in the magazines that reflect the fantasies we are told are acceptable to have. If we’re going to love men, then they have to be masculine men — fey boys who serve the goddess aren’t allowed. Except on Purim.
This year, the Purim full moon is also the night of a full lunar eclipse. When the moon masks itself with the shadow of the earth. And what happens when it takes off its mask? What happens when we take off ours?
Years ago (so many I was still a teenager) I tuned in to WBAI late one night and came in a couple of paragraphs into a story that I hadn’t heard introduced. The reader told a story of a rather plain bartender who met a blond woman in a bat costume on the subway and found himself on an adventure with her downtown in what seemed to be a citywide costume party. The played and flirted with each other all night, running through the streets amid the revelry. And at one point, they won a prize for their costumes. At midnight, they kissed, and the blond bat said to the bartender, “Take off your mask.”
Of course, he wasn’t wearing one.
Eventually I learned the story was by Spencer Holst, and I like to read it aloud to friends at times when costume parties are the custom. You can find it in his anthology, The Language of Cats.
So here we are on the night Jews commemorate Esther’s removal of the mask — revealing herself as a Jew to the King. And many of us who are queer Jews celebrate and reveal the hidden “other.” For some that means opening to the feminine within. For others who aren’t quite a Kinsey 6 it means opening to our heterosexual desires (assuming we don’t fall prey to heterosexual panic, a defense I don’t believe I will ever hear in a court room).
Then there are the queer Jewish Buddhists among us. This gay jubu finds meaning in the holiday’s union of opposites. Not merely that of masculine and feminine, but also in the exhortation to become so divinely drunk that we can’t tell Haman from Mordechai. To get beyond good and evil.
This is not to deny the evil of Haman. But often Jews wonder about this tradition of the holiday. My take on it is entirely Buddhist. Haman is suffering — and like many who are not awake, he acts out his suffering in the world and creates more, for others and for himself. And thus, while we should do everything in our power to prevent his carrying out plans to spread suffering, he is just as deserving of compassion as Mordechai. Not a popular message nowadays. Not even an easy practice for those who take it on. But the heart of the Buddha’s teaching.
All this I hope serves as an introductory ramble to this new blog — Just Another Queer Jewish Buddhist. While I expect to offend Jews, Buddhists, and many in the GLBT community, my hope is to create community of people of GLBT people who cross boundaries and transcend categories in the search for the heaven that exists right here on earth in front of us at every moment of the ongoing creation.
