Cut the Bull Cuss

“SPECIAL ISSUE” OF GQ UNVEILS BRILLIANT NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN POPSICLE-AS-PENIS INNUENDO.  PROVES ONCE AND FOR ALL KATE UPTON IS NOT A DISPOSABLE REHASH OF EVERY OTHER BIKINI BIMBO TROTTED OUT IN THE SWIMSUIT ISSUE ERA.  NO WORD YET ON REBUTTAL FROM KATY PERRY CAMP IN CONTINUING BATTLE FOR “WOMEN NAMED KATE WHO HAVE LITTLE MORE TO OFFER THAN A PAIR OF BREASTS WHO MAKE HAMFISTED DICK INNUENDOS FOR ATTENTION” SUPREMACY.  THIS MUCH IS SURE: GQ AND ITS ILK WILL NOT BE FAWNING ALL OVER ANOTHER PAIR OF D CUPS ENTHUSIASTICALLY BLOWING A FROZEN TREAT NEXT YEAR (OR NEXT MONTH).  STAY TUNED FOR MORE UPDATES ON THE INTELLECTUAL BRILLIANCE OF THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY.

gq:

GQ July 2012: Kate Upton
The Special Yay-America! Issue

Our issue this month is a special tribute to the US-of-A: The 50 Things We Do Better Than Anyone Else. At the top of the list: blonde bombshells. Exhibit A is our latest and greatest star of the genre, Kate Upton. We thought long and hard about who best to put on this particular cover, and then we decided we were overthinking it and went with Kate. Click here for lots more photos. Or you can just stare at this one for a while.

[Photographs by Terry Richardson, duh]

Best Made Co. impresses me again: Max’s Axe.

I don’t generally advocate advertising, but I appreciate Best Made’s appreciation of masculinity absent any bullshit macho posturing.  Max’s Axe is a tribute to the late Maurice Sendak, and proceeds go towards the It Gets Better Project, advocating for LGBT youth.  Well, well, well done.

If you’re one of those that doesn’t mind dropping $300 on a gift, great for Father’s Day.

GQ’s forced fetishization of Brooklyn Decker as a closet bi/lesbian of some sort because she admitted admiration for Gisele’s looks is pathetic.  Some truths it’s time to face: 1. Women are allowed to admire other women without wanting sex with them.  2. Women who do want sex with other women aren’t just secretly begging for your penis to share to make them “complete” (Shorter version: pornography is fiction).  3. Even if a woman like Decker makes it in this world on pure sex appeal, it’s not necessary to twist her every utterance into some manner of juvenile innuendo better reserved for Howard Stern.

I wish GQ had the self-awareness to realize that their own fetishization of men’s looks and style so closely realizes Decker’s own admiration for Gisele, that it should, by their own logic, suggest a strong gay instinct by their editors.  Let your imagination run wild, in GQ’s words.

Spot on.

@leducviole: @GnarlMarx Esquire is Maxim for olds. GQ’s almost prim compared to Esquire’s “A PAIR OF TITS TELL YOU A JOKE ABOUT SEX” schtick

— Mobutu Sese Seko (@Mobute) April 1, 2012

Best Made Co.

A lot of cool shit, like the caliper pen above, that your dad would love.  Axes, books, patches, maps.  All obscenely overpriced.  Look, but don’t buy.  Nice for masculine design fetishists/nostalgia lovers, but nothing you couldn’t get cheaper elsewhere.  Still nice that such a place exists.

“Watching ‘Mad Men’ With My Mother”- via New York Times Magazine

Elisabeth Donnelly recounts an interesting perspective on the show, which is brief and deserves a read.  An excerpt:

“Mad Men” made my mother remember life in her 20s — too clearly. When the show focused on Don Draper’s wife, Betty, a repressed housewife in suburbia, my mom visibly cringed. “During Betty’s scenes,” she told me, “I feel this pain, right in my gut.” She took a breath and explained that she loved her life and her marriage now, but when she watched Betty say she just wants to serve Don, it took her back to when she and my father were just married. “That’s the way I thought. I lived to serve. I wanted to make him happy.”

The end of the article is a bit Creative Writing 101, but it’s nice to encounter a new perspective on Mad Men that isn’t idiotic or worship veiled as criticism.