Movie Parking

(Sometimes called TV Parking.) Not parking for the movies, but the kind of ridiculously easy parking a character in a movie gets when s/he pulls right up to his/her destination, zeroing in on a miraculously wide-open parking spot in what otherwise is an impossibly tight urban area.

During the 1950s and 1960s, in movies and on television, Doris Day got such a rep for manifesting that lucky talent that a spin-off term was coined; see "Doris Day Parking." Generally Ms. Day's roles had her piloting sensible domestic sedans and station wagons, a visual metaphor for her competence, efficiency, self-reliance and ability to live without a man. By way of contrast, the neurotic characters Tony Randall portrayed often struggled with temperamental British roadsters, and Rock Hudson played dissolute types who poured themselves into a taxi -- hungover, drunk, in a hurry, or all three.

Times did change -- a little. On "The Doris Day Show," CBS-TV's' late 1960s career-girl sitcom and vehicle (no pun intended) for Ms. Day, her character drove a 1969 Dodge Charger. A red convertible Charger, on a legal secretary's salary. Modernity notwithstanding, Doris never seemed to have much trouble finding instant parking. In San Francisco. Business-district and high-rise parts of San Francisco. In all fairness, though, the opening credits included a very brief shot of her on the California Avenue cable car.

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In 1985 writer-director-male lead Albert Brooks, playing opposite Julie Hagerty in the film comedy LOST IN AMERICA, saw a movie convention ripe for satire. The lead couple, having had all kinds of bad luck in the Heartland, moves to New York City to find new careers. As the soundtrack blares Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," their car, shown in exteme high shot, dives (no backing) right into a perfectly sized parking space dead center in front of a white high-rise office building in Midtown Manhattan. This knowing send-up of, and homage to the Movie Parking convention (which fit the plot perfectly) never fails to draw howls from the audience.

"Man, we were so lucky. TV parking in front of the building; the FedEx van had just pulled away."

"You want to see Movie Parking at its finest? Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO from 1957. Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara bel Geddes, all drove right up to Jimmy's apartment building, and it seemed to be the same spot perpetually open and waiting for them. Diagonal parking stalls, no less, or as you Midwesterners like to call it, angle parking."

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punk

Pre-Sid Vicious, pre-any stringy young male, "Punk" referred to the passive or "bottom" partner in a male-on-male prison sexual relationship. (The dominant or "top" man was called the "jock" or "jocker".) Since the punk was usually the scrawnier and younger of the two, that meaning of the term escaped into the general culture and eventually became attached to young, rebellious men fronting kick-ass rock bands.

(Description of a prison killer in Truman Capote's IN COLD BLOOD 1966): "Just two jockers fighting over a punk."

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friction fiction

Slang for porno stories printed in softcore skin magazines, generally designed to provoke and encourage masturbation. (Such magazines, that combine the stories with nude pictorial spreads and other features, are often called "stroke books").

Ever since they stopped publishing MEN magazine, I've lost my favorite source of friction fiction.

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phallus

1. The penis itself.

2. Specifically, an erect penis.

3. A representation of a phallus, often exaggerated, in art or myth.

4. A non-literal representation of phallic shape, intent or function.

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1. It's a little pompous to refer to one's penis as a phallus, but it is lexically correct.

2. A penis is for urination; when it becomes erect it is a phallus, serving sexual or reproductive purposes.

3. Two representations of phallus:

a. For example, a primitive sculpture that shows a grotesquely large penis is using the organ as a phallus to indicate fertility, or to represent masculine potency in general.

b. Similarly, the exaggerated genitalia in the work of gay artists such as Tom of Finland emphasize the erotic quality of the phallus, sometimes called hyper-masculinity.

4. A penis, phallus or idea of potency symbolized in an object. The most commonly used term, derived from Freudian psychoanalysis, is called a phallic symbol. One example of this is the very last shot of Hitchcock's 1959 thriller NORTH BY NORTHWEST, which wittily shows a passenger train plunging into a tunnel. Because of the prior plot, the audience knows very well that a train has erotic potential, so the last shot indicates sexual intercourse.

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Stroke Book

Slang for an erotic magazine, frequently a well-distributed glossy monthly, generally featuring soft-core pornography in the form of nude pictorials ("photo spreads") and short fiction.

The "stroke" in "Stroke Book" is the frequent use of such periodicals to achieve sexual fantasy, arousal, and usually solo sex, that is, manual stimulation or masturbation to orgasm on the reader's part. The focus of such magazines is usually to highlight nudes of one specific gender in the pictorials, not both, and the perspective of one gender as narrator of a graphic erotic encounter in the short fiction.

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"Hey, Sis, can I borrow your copy of nudie magazine? I need a stroke book, if you know what I mean."

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"Okay, Leslie, but bring it back afterwards and don't get the pages stuck together!"

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Eight By Six

A term a man, particularly a gay man, might use to describe his penis in length and then by width (sometimes meaning girth or circumference), in inches (20 by 15 cm). He's lying, of course. Or at least, no more than a two percent chance he's in that territory.

If he claims six by eight (six long, eight "wide" or perhaps in circumference), you're getting into choad territory. See choad also spelled chode. Demand immediate proof.

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"So he told me, 'I've got an eight by six.' At first I thought he was talking about a new kind of car engine, or something. I finally figured out what he meant, but he had already proven himself to be such a jerk that I had no desire to check out that particular attribute."

Old Joke -- Q: What's a Gay Eight? A: Six inches.

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Thirty Helens Agree

"Thirty Helens Agree" was a brief sketch that opened several episodes of TV's THE KIDS IN THE HALL during its first season. Typically thirty women (all named Helen, apparently) would stand out in a field and chant the answer to the proposition -- such as Announcer: "Thirty Helens Agree" -- Chorus of Helens: "You can't spend too much on a good pair of shoes (or similar bromides)." Then one or two of the Helens would appear and add testimony to the stated point -- "These have lasted me for years," or similar.

Announcer: "Thirty Helens Agree" --

Thirty Helens in field: "Haste makes waste."

Individual Helen: "Don't get in a hurry (or similar)."

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