'TIL FIVE HOURS LATER I'M CHEWING ...: Stephen Malkmus (long late of Pavement) and the Jicks want to get their new single, "Senator," on the few radio stations that play songs like those played by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks. The problem is that the song includes the word "blowjob," which you can't say on the radio, even on a radio station whose listeners are comprised 100% of people who know and occasionally use the word "blowjob." Just saying it this way makes me think that FCC decency rules are kind of like cryptography, where the speaker and the listener want to communicate but are required to scramble the message. Whatever.
In any event, to get around the ban on the word "blowjob," the Jicks and their label, beloved Matador, are holding a contest to come up with a euphemism for "blowjob". My suggestion is "act in which a person uses the mouth and tongue to stimulate the genitalia of a male sexual partner." Because you can't say "blowjob" on the radio.
The spelling bee kids are gone, right?
Joe Blob.
ReplyDeleteSo let's get to the point
ReplyDeleteAnd let's roll another ... what, Tom Petty? Is that a "tih-NOWJ"
And yet classic rock stations have no problem with Lou Reed's description of a transexual hooker's disposition as "But she never lost her head/Even when she was giving head" How is giving head allowed but blowjob not?
ReplyDeleteAs an FCC practitioner who just checked the relevant portions of the CFR, I can say that the proper answer is "owblay objay."
ReplyDeleteI think it was Shakespeare, in Othello, who came up with the clever "Making the beast with two backs, with one of said backs being generally perpendicular to the other back. Job. Exeunt."
ReplyDeleteI suggest "credenza." I always loved that word, and I imagine many people love the one it would replace...
ReplyDeleteHoser?
ReplyDeleteI never liked the term "blowjob" anyway, because there's relatively little blowing going on. Is the more formal term "fellatio" also banned by the FCC? Because it seems that that would be easier to rhyme.
ReplyDeleteHoratio (good double entendre opportunity there), ratio, letter-h-you-know, hellacio, relatio...nship.
ReplyDelete<p><span><span>Ok, this is too good an opportunity to pass up. I’m going to tell a story I’ve had a great deal of fun telling over the past few months.<span> </span></span></span>
ReplyDelete</p><p><span><span>As some of you know, I’ve recently entered the dating world after being married effectively all of my adult life.<span> </span>So, I went on my first-ever real date a few months ago.<span> </span>We had emailed for about a week on one of the major dating sites, seemed to get along, etc., and got together for lunch on a Friday at a popular restaurant in DC (so: people were nearby).<span> </span>Over the first hour or so, we got along just fine and had lots to talk about, but it seemed pretty clear that “Sue” and I were very different people.<span> </span>She had been widowed by her husband “Tom” shortly after they moved to the east coast from LA, and had two young boys, and I surmised that this awful experience had hardened her quite a bit.<span> </span>Anyway, during that first hour or so, she made some odd sexual references.<span> </span>Not propositions – just offhand remarks I wouldn’t have expected from a 38-year-old woman on a first date.<span> </span></span></span>
</p><p><span><span>Then, about an hour into the lunch, she says, “So, I usually don’t tell this story on a date, but when Tom and I had been dating for about four months, we went to Las Vegas with his parents.<span> </span>And on the way back, well, so I kind of gave him a blowjob in the car.”<span> </span></span></span>
</p><p><span>I responded, “Oh?”</span>
</p><p><span>She replied, “Yeah.<span> </span>We were in the back seat.<span> </span>His parents were driving in the front.”
</span>
</p><p><span>I said, smiling, “First of all, you can’t use that term to a guy who’s been celibate for months.<span> </span>Second of all, how does that work??”</span>
</p><p><span>She said, “Well, they thought I was sleeping.<span> </span>And the road had a lot of hills.”<span> </span>(I wasn’t sure whether that was meant to explain that they were focused on the road, or that it made sense for her head to be moving in his lap, or something else.)</span>
</p><p><span>[cont'd]</span></p>
[cont'd from above]
ReplyDelete<p><span>But then, she continues:<span> </span>“So, years later, at Tom’s unveiling [for non-Jews:<span> </span>this is a Jewish ceremony generally conducted about a year after someone dies, in which the grave stone is formally “unveiled”], I was alone with his dad.<span> </span>And I said to him, ‘Hey, remember that time we all drove from Vegas to L.A.?<span> </span>Yeah, I blew your son in the back seat.’”</span>
</p><p><span>I said, “And how did he respond?”</span>
</p><p><span>And she says, “He said, ‘Oh, so I guess you weren’t asleep!’”</span>
</p><p><span>I didn’t see “Sue” again.<span> </span>When I tell that story, almost all women respond, “Good – sounds like she has serious issues.”<span> </span>Most men say “Why the hell not??”<span> </span>But however you slice it, it was a great first “first date,” and I’m thrilled to have that story.</span></p>
Do we both know what perpendicular means? I guess I can think of one way that perpendicular backs works, but it doesn't seem like the most common or natural way, and it certainly needn't be part of the definition.
ReplyDeleteBack when I listened to those stations 25 years ago, they used to cut the line about giving head. Was that Candy? Candy came from way out on the island/in the back room she was everybody's darling"? I had the 45, but the version on the radio just repeated one of the other verses or maybe just cut it out and cut to the sax solo.
ReplyDeleteY'know, I almost wanted to take it back after I posted it, because it just wasn't right, but I figured you'd probably have something entertaining to say (and on that you did not disappoint). Poor choice of spatial description by me.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you said this because now my neck is sore.
ReplyDeleteIt was Candy. Candy Darling, in fact (hence the pun in the second line). Little Joe was the hooker -- "everybody had to pay and pay."
ReplyDelete<span>I was just going to "Like" your post, Russ, but I thought that wouldn't be enough. While I can't speak for others here, I would like to add that as far as I'm concerned you are welcome to share dating stories anytime. Very entertaining.</span>
ReplyDeleteBut good job on the exeunt.
ReplyDeleteMy goodness. Yes, serious issues, but also sounds like someone I'd end up friends with.
ReplyDeleteHummer.
ReplyDeleteI kissed a Dick.....oooh
ReplyDeleteWhich you could totally get away with, in the context of the song, by claiming that the Senator just wanted to drive an enormous, now-defunct brand SUV.
ReplyDeleteAs a guy, I'm going with issues. Seriously, telling the story is one thing. Doing it is one thing. BUT TELLING THE FATHER?!? That's more issues than I can be comfortable with.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a euphemism -- just a story. When I was nine, a teen age kid in our neighborhood used the word "blowjob" and made a vague reference to what it was, and I distinctly remember walking home stratching my head, thinking "why would anyone want to blow air up there?", and wondering why he was so fired up about it.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, later in life, some magazines illustrated the process for me, making it easier to understand.
When I started covering this with my roommate, I tried to get him on board with singing TNIOG in one chorus. I was unsuccessful, but I'm glad someone else remembers that. :)
ReplyDeleteThey went from "roll" to "hit (clever clever Petty)" to "TNIOJ!"
Any halfway decent Shakespeare improv at some point involves the words "Thrift, thrift, fellatio!"
ReplyDelete...Or maybe that's why I was never asked to join a troupe in Pittsburgh.
I submitted "a mouth's touch," then checked the recent submissions, and someone did so much better:
ReplyDeleteWhat the senator wants is a mouth hug.
GENIUS. PURE GENIUS.
I will be spending the day trying to top that. Probably not a tale with a happy ending. OH!
Agree. Especially telling the father AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS SON'S GRAVESTONE!!! WHAT???
ReplyDelete1) Nice of Dad to pretend he didn't realize at the time.
ReplyDelete2) Issues, sure, but only "serious" issues if she followed up her confession by asking if he'd like to share a cab home from the unveiling.