[Ads-l] "twisted steel and sex appeal"

[Jonathan Lighter]

1966 _Bomb_ (Virginia Military Institute) 148: Early each morning John
sucks up enough courage from his cigarettes to give his 137 lbs. of twisted
steel and sex appeal momentum for the day.

1969 _Lucky Bag_ (U.S. Naval Academy) 401: One hundred and twenty-five
pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal.

2001 Bill Sammon _At Any Cost_ (Washington, D.C.: Regnery) 137: The USS
Tarawa, an amphibious assault ship that Russell liked to refer to as
"40,000 tons of twisted steel and sex appeal."

JL

On Sun, Nov 19, 2006 at 8:04 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

> And they say ESP ain't real !  This phrase, which I brought to your
> attention many months ago, came to mind and a Google search just now finds
> this article from today's Charleston (S.C.) _Post and Courier_:
>
> http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=sports&tableId=119238&pubDate=11/19/2006
> .
>
> The writer associates the phrase with the recently deceased Rocco Monroe
> DiGrazio, 75, who wrestled professionally under the name Sputnik Monroe,
> described as "two hundred and thirty-five pounds of twisted steel and sex
> appeal with the body men fear and women love."  According to Juan Williams
> in _My Soul Looks Back_ (N.Y.: Sterling/AARP, 2004), p. 37,
> Monroe sometimes added "rough, tough, and hard to bluff" (about 350 raw
> Googlits) to this list of his rasslin' virtues.
>
> Just when Monroe adopted these phrases for his own is not clear. He began
> wrestling in the '40s, but didn't fully retire until 1998.
>
> Rick Atkinson (_The Long Gray Line_, Houghton, 1989, p.114),  asserts that
> West Point cadets were using the cliche' in 1965. No documentation, but his
> book is based on extensive interviews. See it at Google Books.
>
> Sputnik liked to say, ""Win if you can, lose if you must, always cheat,
> and if they take you out, leave tearing down the ring." Over to you, Fred.
>
> JL
>
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