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Tom of Finland

Tom of Finland (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991) was the pseudonym of one of the best-known erotic gay artists of the Post-World War II generation.

He was born Touko Laaksonen, in Finland, and as a young man based his drawings on masculine archetypes like Finnish lumberjacks, and later the soldiers and sailors he knew (sometimes intimately) during World War II.

His original erotic images were submitted and ran in USA and Japanese physical culture journals of the 1950s. In the Sixties, with the decline of overt censorship, his drawings became yet more explicit and ran in many of the then-new gay magazines.

Typically Tom of Finland men, clad or not, have large bulging muscles, very large penises, a readiness to engage in any kind of gay sex (often in very unorthodox locations), and a sense of humor. Many of today's gay artists owe much of their visual style to Tom of Finland, and the artist himself is still widely recognized by gay men.

The Tom of Finland Foundation exists to perpetuate his work and to serve as a showcase for young artists.

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"I can spot a Tom of Finland illustration at a hundred paces."

"Me, too, but sometimes his more recent imitators trip me up."

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by al-in-chgo March 22, 2010
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Man Up

It means act like a man, but in a non-sexist way. It is not meant to be chauvinistic or disparage other groups. Similar phrases would be "be a man," "be a mensch," "be a stand-up guy" or "wake up and accept responsibility for your actions."
Judge Marilyn Milian on THE PEOPLE'S COURT occasionally uses the term "man up" in the way described above, somewhat like an earlier TV instruction of hers to "butch up your act" but not so gay-identified. She has been provoked to the "man up" remark when confronted with such clueless men as the biological father who claimed he 'wanted to be a daddy' when he in fact had not visited his son nor contributed to his support, and the man who consistently maintained he had put only a scratch on plaintiff's car when in fact all the witnesses confirmed and all the photographic evidence showed that he had done considerable damage. It would be absurd for Judge Milian to order a woman to "man up" but she has other, analogous remarks, to make to similarly witless or hypocritical women.
by al-in-chgo February 20, 2010
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doxxing

Doxxing, by way of "name-dropping," is document (doxx) dropping. It's publicly exposing someone's real name or address on the Internet who has taken pains to keep them secret. Also spelled "doxing."
"She calls herself 'Connie from Fat City' but someone outed her real identity and location as Karen last name from Palo Alto,' even giving street address, and put it all over the web."

"I hate that kind of doxxing. It's mean."
by al-in-chgo April 25, 2014
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retrosexual

Two meanings:

(a) A man who is comfortable with or embraces typical working-class dress, usually work clothes, that have changed very little over the years.

(b) A man, usually a young man, who enjoys dressing up but in the outmoded 'square' fashions of the Fifties and early Sixties.

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(a) Tom dresses like a bear but he's not gay. In that flannel shirt, work jeans and lace-up boots, he's classically retrosexual.

(b) Jeff loves to scout out fedoras, slim ties and Ivy-League cut suits. The more he looks like Frank Sinatra in the late Fifties or a character from TV's MAD MEN in the early Sixties, he is really pushing the retrosexual button.

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by al-in-chgo August 22, 2010
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Legoland

Legoland is that place in your town or urban area where medium-height buildings (10-25 stories) seem to have sprouted almost overnight between about 1985 and today. Such an area with a high Legoland factor will boast modestly asymmetrical offices and hotels, and a fair degree of dark gray window glass, set among multilane roads and parking garages. Because of zoning designed to benefit large corporate builders, there will be an absence of such attractive nuisances as billboards and strip malls. Public transit will be close to nonexistent.
--What's the most Legoland place in the Chicago area?

--Many people would say Schaumburg but I would nominate the area west of Chicago at the intersection of the I-88 Reagan Toll Road and I-355. The buildings are all modern and were probably considered modestly daring in the past 25 years when they were built, but in reality are unchallenging and dull.

--Why doesn't Schaumburg qualify?

--It has some newer buildings but also lots from the mid-Sixties to the mid-Eighties, a style more Judgment City than Legoland.

(see "Judgment City").
by al-in-chgo June 19, 2011
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Priority None

How a person travels (frequently impromptu) who uses no special-affinity credit cards (that tie into retailers, hoteliers, etc.), keeps no priority accounts with hotel chains, does not accumulate airline miles, nor qualifies for rebates or discounts, nor contributes to add-a-dollar or round-it-up programs.
"When I travel I go where I want to go when I want to go. I don't travel often, but when I do I pay standard fare or phone ahead. I don't rack up hotel points, airline points, Amtrak points, cruise-ship points, department store points, major-league team points, hotel/motel points, rent-a-car points or charity points. I pay what I pay and if it's too much, I shop around or don't go. Nobody needs to know my password or log-in, and I don't get a dozen e-mails a week. I get bumps and privileges like you wouldn't believe. Nothing influences my choice of company or chain when I travel. That's called flying Priority None."
by al-in-chgo May 10, 2010
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Broken Nose

The late Chicago journalist and author Mike Royko (BOSS) said that loving Chicago was like loving a beautiful woman with a broken nose: once you're used to her, other merely beautiful women don't quite look right.
Some of the "broken noses" of Chicago:

1. North Side pro baseball team, the Cubs, who perpetuate an execrable win/losss record but are nonetheless idolized as the "cubbies";

2. Weather: coldest major American city other than Minneapolis, snowiest outside Buffalo, steamiest summers outside the Mississippi River Valley or Deep South. Winter days are so short that evening rush occurs in the dark. Even on the best spring days, "San Francisco sweater weather" is practically nonexistent.

3. Political corruption, which is awesome due to its extent, its reach, its resourcesfulness and the apathy with which it is greated by most Chicagoans.

more pleasant phenomena of Chicago that still have a slight eccentric or "broken nose" quality:

1. Italian beef, which is roast been marinated in gravy, garlic and giardinera, served on Italian-crust sandwich bread, and almost unobtainable outside Chicago.

2. the conviction (and it still actually works) that if you place old dinette chairs in the spot from which you just extricated your hitherto snowbound car, that spot will be waiting for you when you get back.

3. Refusal to call the 'Willis Tower' anything other than its original name, the 'Sears Tower.'

"Is this a great city or what"?
by al-in-chgo January 2, 2011
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