Saturday
Now: The Virgin Sex Slaves of Arabia’s Whip-Mad Sheik
What’s your hobby? Whatever it is, I urge you to find excuses to pursue it with more passion and more time. You can make the time because by shedding the ancillary people and their requests for time and favors, for a more centered soaking-up-of-good-beams life.
In 2002, during long days with Morrie to take my mind off my journey, I spent a lot of time with a software program for manipulating digital photos. I’ve long desired to be a graphic designer, not just a writer, and this software let me feel like I was honing my chops as a designer. Of course, this really wasn’t the case, because I simply don’t have the eye or the software skills to create like real designers.
Learning this software led me to manipulate the old pulp magazine covers and movie posters for my first book and then my non-profit, the MansGland Campaign. And my search through online galleries of old magazine covers and posters provided me with great insights into what made guy’s psyches pulsate in the past. And surprisingly to me, it was a pretty easy stretch to transfer the terrors of old as depicted in magazines and movies into the terrors surrounding what I consider today’s men's health crisis: apathy to men's health media and cavalier inertia and fear about doing right by oneself.
In the 30’s and early 40’s, the pulp magazine terrors were monsters and other assorted hooligans, including a lot of Fu-Manchu-mustachioed alien invaders from the Far East. Most often these nasty characters put damsels in distress, so that manly heroics could save the day. Sex as a topic was taboo, but of course when a damsel is in distress, she is not too concerned about how revealing her ripped and disheveled clothing is to her captors and the reading public. And, when the topic is an evil medical experiment, then the artists could lay the ladies out horizontally for lascivious eyes to traverse.
In the late 40’s and into the 50’s came the march of the Japs and Nazis, and again they were after ‘our’ women, damn them. Or in hilarious cases, the Japs and Nazis employed women to inflict sadomasochistic pain on our guys.
On the heels of these dastardly deeds came the pre-Playboy ‘sleaze’ magazines, and finally sex became a topic and not just a wink-wink enticement via pictures. Titles like All Man, Man’s Peril and Man’s Life featured horrible grainy cheesecake photos of ugly women, and scintillating fiction with titles like The Virgin Sex Slaves of Arabia’s Whip-Mad Sheik.
Many movie posters through these periods featured a couple facing some peril together, giving them ample excuses to grapple with each other in terror or relief, pulling the fabric of women's blouses more tightly against the body.
I'm thankful that author Denis Boyles introduced me to pulp fiction art forms because I took both delight and comfort in imagining how the world really changes very little over the decades. Our bad guys are just more scurrilous and stupid and there are new unseen monsters -- like whacked prostate cells -- attacking our manhood and our ability to love. ¶ 1:19 PM
In 2002, during long days with Morrie to take my mind off my journey, I spent a lot of time with a software program for manipulating digital photos. I’ve long desired to be a graphic designer, not just a writer, and this software let me feel like I was honing my chops as a designer. Of course, this really wasn’t the case, because I simply don’t have the eye or the software skills to create like real designers.
Learning this software led me to manipulate the old pulp magazine covers and movie posters for my first book and then my non-profit, the MansGland Campaign. And my search through online galleries of old magazine covers and posters provided me with great insights into what made guy’s psyches pulsate in the past. And surprisingly to me, it was a pretty easy stretch to transfer the terrors of old as depicted in magazines and movies into the terrors surrounding what I consider today’s men's health crisis: apathy to men's health media and cavalier inertia and fear about doing right by oneself.
In the 30’s and early 40’s, the pulp magazine terrors were monsters and other assorted hooligans, including a lot of Fu-Manchu-mustachioed alien invaders from the Far East. Most often these nasty characters put damsels in distress, so that manly heroics could save the day. Sex as a topic was taboo, but of course when a damsel is in distress, she is not too concerned about how revealing her ripped and disheveled clothing is to her captors and the reading public. And, when the topic is an evil medical experiment, then the artists could lay the ladies out horizontally for lascivious eyes to traverse.
In the late 40’s and into the 50’s came the march of the Japs and Nazis, and again they were after ‘our’ women, damn them. Or in hilarious cases, the Japs and Nazis employed women to inflict sadomasochistic pain on our guys.
On the heels of these dastardly deeds came the pre-Playboy ‘sleaze’ magazines, and finally sex became a topic and not just a wink-wink enticement via pictures. Titles like All Man, Man’s Peril and Man’s Life featured horrible grainy cheesecake photos of ugly women, and scintillating fiction with titles like The Virgin Sex Slaves of Arabia’s Whip-Mad Sheik.
Many movie posters through these periods featured a couple facing some peril together, giving them ample excuses to grapple with each other in terror or relief, pulling the fabric of women's blouses more tightly against the body.
I'm thankful that author Denis Boyles introduced me to pulp fiction art forms because I took both delight and comfort in imagining how the world really changes very little over the decades. Our bad guys are just more scurrilous and stupid and there are new unseen monsters -- like whacked prostate cells -- attacking our manhood and our ability to love. ¶ 1:19 PM
