BijouBlog

Many many years ago, I was waiting for a bus on a bitterly cold day. Typical Chicago winter. The bus stop was located across the street from the local ABC station, in Chicago known as the Channel 7 Eyewitness News. The weatherguy, Mike Kaplan, emerged and strode resolutely across the street, and before I could say Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up, I was on television. And I didn't freeze up in front of the cameras like Cindy Brady on The Brady Bunch. 

Mike just asked me some general questions about the weather situation, and if there were any issues with the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) that day. I said I had experienced no problems with the buses, and I proceeded to explain my fashion strategy for keeping warm, layering, ear coverings and hat, big scarf around the neck. I said cheekily, “If you want to stay warm, you have to dress like a dork.” 
 

Those who saw me on television later that evening (I appeared on the 6 p.m. broadcast) enjoyed a good laugh, but a couple of years later, when I did a vanity google search on my name, someone said, _____ said he was a penis on the ABC Eyewitness News. 

Yes, dork also means penis. Well, kind of. According to Leigh W. Rutledge inThe Gay Book of Lists, the word dick probably came from the the Middle English word dirk, meaning a small sword. Dirk actually came from the word dorke, which meant the horns (origin of the expression horny?) of an animal. Dirk and dork later became slang expressions for the penis. 

Now, there's some controversy that the work dork means a male penis. It actually means a whale's penis. And it's big. Really big. 
 

So, I am a big penis. And thus I am a small sword, and I am the horns of an animal. I guess I am not what I eat. 

All I know, is the day I wake up without that morning wood, I'll really feel like a big dork. 
 

 

In the spring of 1975, states were repealing sodomy laws, though on April 12 the Arizona House passed an emergency measure to ban same-sex marriages, and the Colorado Attorney General ruled such marriages were illegal too.

For example, on April 30, Fred Halsted's film Sextool came out. Its definitely experimental approach - which involved surrealistic imagery, BDSM sex, and disjunctive editing - turned off rather than on many reviewers, but it did get a write up in the mainstream press. Variety actually claimed Halsted was “the Ken Russell of S & M homoerotica.” Bijou's review is here.

On May 19, Jack Stillman made his debut as Jack Wrangler when he performed a striptease on cowboy gear at the Paris Theater in Los Angeles. He was dressed like a cowboy. He took his surname from those cowboy jeans that really show off a cute ass, of course.

Later that year, he starred in his first gay porn film, Ranch Dudes, a 15-minute loop where he jacks off his big member in a corral. He must have really been into that cowboy look early in his career. We have remastered an edit of this loop, calling it Cowboy, in our Magnum Griffin 14 compilation.

Here at Bijouworld.com and Bijougayporn.com (where both of these titles can be found) we are dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of key artistic mediums that shaped and continue to shape gay sexuality.

I recently combed through one of my favorite books, The Gay Decades, by Leigh W. Rutledge. I found this fascinating tidbit about some stars from the Bijou Classics collection. On January 15, 1983 (hard to believe that was thirty years ago), quoting Rutledge: