The plots are preposterous, whimsically gay, and anally focused. For My Billionaire Triceratops Craves Gay Ass:
Jeremy was never quite sure about his feelings for Oliver, his gay pet dinosaur, until Oliver scores big and leaves home to pursue his dreams of being a dancer.
Years later, the two of them reconnect for dinner in New York City, and realize that there may have been more to their relationship besides prehistoric pet and master. Now a wealthy socialite, Oliver the triceratops is willing to take another chance on Jeremy, and soon the two find themselves locked in a passionate evening of gay human-dino love.
This erotic tale is 4,300 words of sizzling human on gay triceratops action, including anal, blowjobs, rough sex, and prehistoric beast love.
The books are brief, and so far mostly involve either gay dinosaurs or gay unicorns. In the genre:
Space Raptor Butt Invasion
Gay T-Rex Law Firm: Executive Boner
My Billionaire Triceratops Craves Gay Ass
My Ass Is Haunted By The Gay Unicorn Colonel
Pounded By The Gay Unicorn Football Squad
Taken By The Gay Unicorn Biker
Pounded By President Bigfoot
I’m Gay For My Living Billionaire Jet Plane
Amazon supplies this fanciful description of the author (presumably supplied by the author):
Dr. Chuck Tingle is an erotic author and Tae Kwon Do grandmaster (almost black belt) from Billings, Montana. After receiving his PhD at DeVry University in holistic massage, Chuck found himself fascinated by all things sensual, leading to his creation of the “tingler”, a story so blissfully erotic that it cannot be experienced without eliciting a sharp tingle down the spine.
DeVry University is a division of DeVry Education Group, a for-profit higher education organization that is also the parent organization for Keller Graduate School of Management, Ross University, American University of the Caribbean, Carrington College, Chamberlain College of Nursing, Becker Professional Review, and DeVry Brasil. The school was founded in 1931 as DeForest Training School, and officially became DeVry University in 2002. As of 2014, DeVry had over 60,000 students across 90 campuses throughout North America and over the internet.
It offers associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degree programs, but not doctoral degrees (certainly not Ph.D.s).
In the 2/19/15 issue of The New York Review of Books, an appreciation, “The Subtle Games of Duane Michals” by Jed Perl, on the occasion of two exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and the publication of ABCDuane: A Duane Michals Primer by Michals.
(Meanwhile, I’ve evoked Michals in “Captioned Bookend 1″, here.)
Duane Michals (… born February 18, 1932) is an American photographer. Michals’s work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.
… Michals cites Balthus, William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Eakins, René Magritte, and Walt Whitman as influences on his art. In turn, he has influenced photographers such as David Levinthal and Francesca Woodman.
He is noted for two innovations in artistic photography developed in the 1960s and 1970s. First, he “[told] a story through a series of photos” as in his 1970 book Sequences. Second, he handwrote text near his photographs, thereby giving information that the image itself could not convey.
Michals came out in his 20s, and has lived with his male partner for over 50 years.
Now, from Perl’s article:
The photographer Duane Michals is a law unto himself. In a career spanning more than half a century he has worked in both utilitarian black-and-white and luxuriant color, produced slapstick self-portraits, evoked erotic daydreams, pamphleteered against art world fashions, and painted whimsical abstract designs on vintage photographs. You would be in for a disappointment if you expected a sober summing up in “Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals,” the big retrospective of the eighty-two-year-old artist’s career that is currently at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Michals remains aggressively idiosyncratic, the curator of his own overstuffed, beguiling, disorderly imagination.
… In ABCDuane, a book of autobiographical vignettes organized as an alphabet and published in time for the Pittsburgh show, Michals observes of his friendship with Andy Warhol, a Pittsburgh native, that “we had so much in common, coming from a similar background. We were both blue-collar kids, with a Slovak immigrant heritage and artistic inclinations.” [Not to mention their homosexuality.] Pittsburgh when Michals was coming of age in the 1940s was one of those tough, prosperous industrial cities where cultural life was seen as an essential element, something needed to balance and sanctify the rest.
… [Comparing Michals to Cocteau:] Admiration is essential to Michals’s enterprise (this was true of Cocteau as well). In a gallery adjacent to the Michals retrospective, the Carnegie is exhibiting a group of small works by Magritte, De Chirico, Balthus, Braque, Morandi, and other artists that are from Michals’s own collection and that he is donating to the museum. Over the years he has managed to visit and photograph a number of older artists whom he admires and clearly regards as inspirations, masters of the unexpected and enigmatic.
In reviewing my postings on “morning names” (now assembled here), I see that there are names I mentioned but didn’t post on — including the actor Danny Pino, whose work I have enjoyed for several years.
Daniel Gonzalo “Danny” Pino (born April 15, 1974) is an American actor currently starring as Detective Nick Amaro in the long-running NBC legal drama, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
… Pino is known for his critically acclaimed performance as Mexican druglord and serial rapist, Armadillo Quintero, on FX’s The Shield… Pino also starred in the hit CBS series Cold Case as Detective Scotty Valens.
I dreamt I went on the internet in my Dolce & Gabbana briefs.
Appreciative viewers then tried to idenfify the model. And obstacles appeared.
Opinion was that the model was either Chris Evans or Scott Evans. On Chris, from Wikipedia:
Christopher Robert “Chris” Evans (born June 13, 1981) is an American actor and film director. Evans is best known for his superhero roles as Steve Rogers / Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Johnny Storm / Human Torch in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007).
Scott Evans (born September 21, 1983) is an American actor, best known for his role as the police officer Oliver Fish on the ABC daytime soap opera One Life to Live. He is the younger brother of actor Chris Evans.
(Scott is openly gay; Chris is straight but gay-supportive.)
Then people noted that the face in #1 was more like Chris than Scott, but that the tattoos in #1 were not like Chris’s. You can see that clearly above. (And if Scott now has tats, I haven’t seen them in still shots or videos of him.) Eventually, #1 was traced to a Pinterest posting, from adrianostar.tumbr.com, where it was identified as Chris Evans.
It is true that people change their appearance, hair styles and even color in particular, so that you can’t go much on those details. And people who once had no tats get them. So here’s Chris in his state as a fitness workout guru, sans tats:
I don’t watch the Oscars shows, but you can’t avoid being exposed to information about them and images from them. So this shot of host Neil Patrick Harris (apparently in an allusion to the movie Birdman) from yesterday’s show came my way:
Shirtless, showing off his carefully tended body, and in snug briefs, showing off a nice but not extravagant package, in the fashion of underwear ads for many many years. This is the Neil Patrick Harris of, among other things, Doogie Howser, M.D.; How I Met Your Mother; and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
The photo appeared on the Entertainment Weeklysite under the head “Oscars 2015: Neil Patrick Harris appears nearly naked on stage”. Shock, horror. And then, in comments on the site, the (I suppose inevitable) exhortations to think about the chldren. From commenter annie1001:
I thought it was funny because it was so very random…however, I wish he had been wearing boxers or something that didn’t show him “hanging” so much…I mean, little kids do watch this awards show…and it was a bit uncomfortable having young kids see a guy nearly naked like that.
I don’t know where annie1001 has been in recent years, but public images of men filling out briefs and nothing much more have been with us for many years. From my posting “Underwear gods” of 10/19/10, a quotation from Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003) describing
stunted humans in the shadow of the underwear gods that adorned the soaring billboards. … men immortal in their muscle tone, in the clustered bulge at the crotchline.
Marky Mark and all that.
Back further than that, newspaper and magazine ads for men’s underwear regularly focused on pouches containing (but not actually showing) genitalia. There are collections of such vintage ads, for instance a Buzzfeed site with an assortment of examples, among them this rather alarming vintage ad for Carter’s Trigs:
I find it hard to believe that any kids are harmed by pouches in underwear ads, though no doubt gay boys with an interest in male genitalia find them satisfying.
Two notes on the pronunciation of proper names: on the city of Bangor ME and on the actor Ryan Phillippe.
Bangor. From Karen Chung on Facebook a while back, this YouTube video on the pronunciation of Bangor ME as /bæŋgɔr/ (with secondary accent, and hence a full vowel, on the last syllable), not /bæŋgər/ (with unaccented last syllable, and hence a schwa there). As Karen pointed out, this is the opposite treatment from some other place names, like Oregon, where the local pronunciation favors schwa; the usual story in the second cases is that familiarity facilitates ease of articulation, hence the schwa. Similarly with Lancaster PA, where the “outsider” pronunciation follows the British usage, with secondary accent and full vowel in the second syllable — /lænkæstər/ — while the local pronunciation has a reduced vowel there: /læŋkɨstər/.
Opposed to ease of articulation for Bangor is the assertion of local identity with an unexpected and distinctly local pronunciation. Any number of places take pride in the unexpected and distinctly local pronunciations of their place names. Things can go either way.
Phillippe. Until a few days ago, I hadn’t heard the surname pronounced, only read it in print, so I assumed it was pronounced with an anglicized approximation to French — /fɨˈlip/ — but now that I’ve heard it pronounced on television, I discover that it’s /ˈfɪlɨpi/ (like fillipy); according to his Wikipedia entry, the surname was originally German, and spelled Phillippi. In any case, now the pronunciation is whatever he says it is (within the boundaries of phonological well-formedness in English), and it’s not our business to say otherwise.
More on the man from Wikipedia:
Matthew Ryan Phillippe (… born September 10, 1974), better known as Ryan Phillippe, is an American actor and director. After appearing on the soap opera One Life to Live, he came to fame in the late 1990s starring in a string of films, including I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, and 54. In the 2000s, he appeared in several films, including 2001’s Academy Award Best Picture nominee Gosford Park, 2005’s Academy Award-winning ensemble film Crash, and the 2006 war drama Flags of Our Fathers. In 2007 he starred in Breach, a movie based on the true story of FBI operative Eric O’Neill, while in 2008 he headlined Kimberly Peirce’s Iraq war film Stop-Loss. In 2010, he starred as Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Greg Marinovich in The Bang-Bang Club.
Watching re-runs of CSI: NY and appreciating three of the actors, who are notable hunks: Carmine Giovinazzo (as Detective Danny Messer), Eddie Cahill (as Detective Don Flack), and Hill Harper (as Dr. Sheldon Hawkes). The first two had serious early lives as athletes, and both are native New Yorkers (so their NYC accents on tv, though exaggeratedly working-class, have some origin in their personal experience). Harper, originally from Iowa, came to acting after a Harvard legal and public administration education (J.D. and M.P.A.).
CSI: NY actor A. J. Buckley (playing lab technician Adam Ross on the show), Giovinazzo, and Cahill, left to right:
Frank Eugene Harper (born May 17, 1966), known professionally as Hill Harper, is an American film, television and stage actor, and author. He is best known for his portrayal of Dr. Sheldon Hawkes in the CBS television show CSI: NY.
Harper showing off his body in the tv series City of Angels (in a thumbnail photo):
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. (#2)
(An extra: Harper is a basketball buddy of Barack Obama.)
Carmine Dominick Giovinazzo … (born August 24, 1973) is an American actor, writer and musician, known for his role as Detective Danny Messer in CSI: NY.
… Giovinazzo is the first actor to appear in all three CSI series
Edmund Patrick “Eddie” Cahill (born January 15, 1978) is an American actor best known for portraying “Miracle on Ice” goalie Jim Craig in the movie Miracle, and for playing the roles of Tag Jones on Friends and [cocky, snarky homicide Detective Don Flack] on CSI: NY
A thumbnail of Cahill and his abs:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. (#4)
(I note that the actors in the show include several admirable women, but here I’m indulging in appreciation of the male body.)
In the middle of the night on Saturdays here the TNT network shows re-runs of the current Hawaii Five-0 tv series, so I’m kept alert by acrobatic fistfights, exchanges of gunfire, and car chases all over scenic Hawaii. And the banter between the two principal characters — it’s a buddy drama, a bro show — with significant interludes of muscular shirtlessness.
Hawaii Five-0 [2010- ] is an American police procedural drama television series and a remake of the original 1968–80 television series.
… The series covers the actions of a small special state task force [essentially an ad hoc state police] created by the Governor of Hawaii … The team is headed by Lt. Commander Steve McGarrett, USNR [Alex O’Loughlin] as it investigates crimes ranging from terrorism to kidnapping. McGarrett chooses as his partner Honolulu P.D. Detective Danny “Danno” Williams [Scott Caan].
Steve is the more cautious of the pair, Danno the headstrong and impulsive one. They quarrel like brothers, but stand together when they need to. They are also both hunks, deeply into physical fitness and sports, and rarely in repose.
Scott Andrew Caan (born August 23, 1976) is an American actor. He currently stars as Detective Danny “Danno” Williams in the CBS television series Hawaii Five-0… Caan was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of actor James Caan and Sheila Marie Ryan, an actress and former model.
(Beginning with this posting, a series of postings, some loosely connected to one another, on movies and tv shows and actors in them. Minimal linguistic content.)
On handsome actor Doug McClure, whose career high point was in the 1960s (something of a favorite of mine).
Douglas Osborne “Doug” McClure (May 11, 1935 – February 5, 1995) was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s. He is best known for his role as the cowboy Trampas during the entire run from 1962 to 1971 of the NBC western television series, The Virginian, loosely based on the Owen Wister novel. … He also starred in four other series:
as Frank “Flip” Flippen on NBC’s western, Overland Trail (1960), with co-star William Bendix
as Jed Sills on the CBS detective series Checkmate (1960–62) opposite Anthony George as Don Corey and Sebastian Cabot as Dr. Carl Hyatt
as C.R. (Christopher Robin) Grover in the sci-fi/detective series Search (1972–1973) in which he rotated the lead with Hugh O’Brian and Anthony Franciosa as a high-tech PROBE agent, and
in the series Out of This World (1987–1991) as Mayor Kyle Applegate.
James Drury (the Virginian) and McClure (Trampas):
The King’s Pirate is a 1967 American pirate film directed by Don Weis and starring Doug McClure, Jill St. John and Guy Stockwell. It is a remake of the 1952 film Against All Flags. A British naval officer volunteers for a dangerous mission to infiltrate the base of pirates who threaten shipping off Madagascar.
Finally, the tv series Checkmate, which I enjoyed in its original showing and, more recently, on DVD. From Wikipedia:
Checkmate is an American detective television series starring Anthony George, Sebastian Cabot, and Doug McClure. The show aired on CBS Television from 1960 to 1962 for a total of 70 episodes and was produced by Jack Benny’s production company, “JaMco Productions” in co-operation with Revue Studios. Guest stars included Charles Laughton, Peter Lorre, Lee Marvin, Mickey Rooney and many other prominent performers.
The series chronicled the adventures of a private detective agency set in San Francisco. Created by Eric Ambler, the program involves the cases of the detective agency called Checkmate, Inc. Anthony George and Doug McClure run the agency, which specializes in preventing crimes before they happen, from George’s (Corey’s) stylish apartment, supposedly at 3330 Union St. Sebastian Cabot portrays a Ph.D. college professor whom they employ as an adviser.
Sebastian Cabot, Carolyn Craig and Doug McClure from the television program Checkmate:
Actors take on roles of all sorts, often adopting another ethnicity as well as another personality. Actors of Mediterranean ancestry, in particularly, are (within limits) often cast in roles of other Mediterranean ancestries (or, by an extension from this practice, in Mexican roles). Here’s the case of Greek-American Telly Savalas, son of two Greek-Americans (who grew up on Long Island, though Greek was his first language).
Aristotelis “Telly” Savalas (… January 21, 1922 – January 22, 1994) was an American film and television actor and singer, whose career spanned four decades. Perhaps best known for playing the title role in the 1970s crime drama Kojak, Savalas was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).
The character Kojak was himself Greek-American, so there was no ethnic stretch here.
A much bigger stretch was his stint as the hyperbolic supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (German/Polish) in the James Bond films.
(I don’t know if he’s taken on a role as a Turk; Mediterranean ethnics sometimes refuse roles that would take them over the lines defining politically sensitive ethnic differences.)
(Minimal linguistic content — but some homoerotic shirtlessness, if that’s your thing)
Two comments on my Doug McClure posting: from Chuk Craig (“I always liked his cousin Troy”) and Christopher Walker (on whipping scenes: #3 in my posting is a whipping scene from The King’s Pirate). So the whipping theme led of course to Robert Conrad in The Wild Wild West and his scenes of shirtless bondage.
Troy McClure is a fictional character in the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. He was voiced by Phil Hartman and first appears in the second season episode “Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment”. McClure is a washed-up actor, usually shown doing low-level work, such as hosting infomercials and educational films. He appears as the central character in “A Fish Called Selma”, in which he marries Selma Bouvier to aid his failing career and quash rumors about his personal life. McClure also ‘hosts’ “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular” and “The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase”.
McClure was partially based on B movie actors Troy Donahue and Doug McClure as well as Hartman himself.
Troy Donahue (January 27, 1936 – September 2, 2001) [born Merle Johnson, Jr.] was an American film and television actor and singer. Donahue became a popular male sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s.
Hollywood B pictures & television have offered a fair number of whipping scenes for Our Fair Generic Hero. A couple that come to mind are Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers (1997); Sam Heughan in Outlander (2014); and, if I remember correctly, Stephen Dorff in Space Truckers (1996).
Robert Conrad. And, oh my, Conrad in The Wild Wild West on television, who was regularly subjected to shirtless bondage and, often, whipping.
The Wild Wild West is an American television series that ran on CBS for four seasons (104 episodes) from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969. Two television movies were made with the original cast in 1979 and 1980, and the series was adapted for a motion picture in 1999.
Developed at a time when the television western was losing ground to the spy genre, this show was conceived by its creator, Michael Garrison, as “James Bond on horseback.” Set during the administration of President Ulysses Grant (1869–77), the series followed Secret Service agents James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) as they solved crimes, protected the President, and foiled the plans of megalomaniacal villains to take over all or part of the United States.
The show featured the train the pair rode through the West in, a large number of inventive gadgets they deployed, dastardly villains (in particular the evil dwarf Miguelito Loveless), and violence extreme enough to get the show cancelled.
Robert Conrad (born March 1, 1935 [as Conrad Robert Norton Falk]) is an American film and television actor, best known for his role in the 1965–1969 CBS television series The Wild Wild West, playing the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West
If you’re gay, it was the best soft porn to be found on commercial television.
In one episode, “The Night of the Underground Terror”, West tries to track down a Civil War prison commandant and ends up once again in shirtless bondage; then during a fight, his pants split open, esposing his tighty-whiteys:
(Some frank talk about (gay) sex, but no X-rated images. Not a lot about language, but some.)
Over on AZBlogX, I’ve just posted oncumshots (images of ejaculation) and (gay) cumfaces (photos of men with ejaculate on their faces). The last of the photos showed a happy cumfaced Dirk Caber (a gay pornstar), and I threw in a full-frontal picture of Caber as a bonus. Now for some non-X material about the man.
Information from various sources (his blog, several interviews with him): He grew up on the coast of Maine; is a classically trained musician and composer (with a flute sonata, a set of eclogues for chamber orchestra, and other compositions to his credit); got into porn at age 39 (quite late for the industry), via the New York BDSM scene; and is married to fellow pornstar Jesse Jackman (who I’ve posted about on AZBlogX twice: in 1/9/13 “Cockature” and 5/11/13: “Titan Rough”)
Linguistic note 1: from these sources, I learn that someone (like Caber) who plays the tuba can be known as a tubist as well as a tuba player.
Linguistic note 2: the man’s stage name is heavy with phallic references (to the highlands of Scotland, in addition). From NOAD2:
dirk noun a short dagger of a kind formerly carried by Scottish Highlanders. ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: of unknown origin.
caber noun a roughly trimmed tree trunk used in the Scottish Highland sport of tossing the caber. This involves holding the caber upright and running forward to toss it so that it lands on the opposite end. ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from Scottish Gaelic cabar ‘pole.’
(from the Magnum Ice Cream site; “Magnum Ice Cream Bars are made with creamy Ice Cream and Belgian Chocolate”). The bars are big in size and big in flavor. The ads tend to feature (female) models with bars in their mouths: both oral and phallic. Here’s model Lucy Wolfert in one ad:
Magnum ice cream bars. A magnum of champagne. Magnum condoms by Trojan. Magnum cars and trucks. Magnum cartridges and firearms. And of course Thomas Magnum of Magnum, P.I., as played by Tom Selleck.
It starts with the Latin magnum (neuter nominative singular of the magn- stem) ‘great, big’.
Magnum is an ice cream brand owned by the British/Dutch Unilever company and sold as part of the Heartbrand line of products in most countries.
… In 2011, Magnum ice cream was launched in the US and Canada with six varieties: Double Caramel, Double Chocolate, Classic, Almond, White and Dark.
The magnum bottle. A magnum is a wine bottle of twice the standard size, normally 1.5 liters, especially of champagne. Sizes, in number of standard bottles (750 ml):
So a magnum is definitely big, though not as big as they come.
Magnum condoms. A condom brand manufactured by Trojan. From the Trojan site, where of course the name is in all caps:
MAGNUM™ Lubricated Condoms
Larger than standard latex condoms for extra comfort
Tapered at the base for a secure fit
Silky smooth lubricant for comfort and sensitivity
Special reservoir end for extra safety
In silhouette:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. (#4)
Now from the Date Report site, “Why Are So Many Men Suddenly Buying Magnum Condoms?” by Regina Bresler on 3/26/13:
Given the heavy social pressure to be well-endowed, not to mention the status and ego-boost that come with it, what man wouldn’t want to sport a condom that announces to the world that he’s bigger than the rest? Even if the condom itself really isn’t that big?
Head to head, as it were, the Magnum vs. the standard Trojan ENZ:
Vehicles. Various models of cars and trucks have been labeled Magnum to highlight their size and/or power: Dodge Magnum, a car; Renault Magnum, a truck; Vauxhall Magnum, a car; Chrysler LA engine line, several of which are named Magnum; Chevrolet Optra Magnum, a car.
Men and their vehicles!
Cartridges and firearms. In the world of weaponry, a magnum firearms cartridge is one larger or more powerful than the standard for a given caliber, or a firearm that uses such a cartridge: a .357 Magnum pistol.
Magnum, P.I. No doubt from the firearms usage, the title character in this show has the surame Magnum. From Wikipedia:
Magnum, P.I. is an American television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum [Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV], a private investigator living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from 1980 to 1988 in first-run broadcast on the American CBS television network.
Caught in passing, in a NYT obit for Don Mankiewicz, a reference to his writing scripts for many tv shows, including Simon & Simon, which was a great favorite of my guy Jacques.
Simon & Simon is an American detective television series that originally ran from November 24, 1981 to January 21, 1989. The series was broadcast on CBS and starred Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker as two brothers who run a private detective agency together.
The show revolves around the polar opposite Simon brothers, Rick (McRaney) and Andrew Jackson, a.k.a. A.J. (Parker). Rick was a United States Marine Corps Vietnam veteran and had much more street sense, while A.J. went to college and had book smarts. Rick’s tastes were viewed by his brother as lower class, like pickup trucks (Rick’s Dodge Power Wagon is notable for its dull paint and large metal bumper used in one episode to crush the engine of a car), while A.J. took care of his money and could afford to be more fashionable (A.J. often drove a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible, and later, a customized Chevrolet Camaro Z28 and also drove a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro RS convertible in the two-part episode, “Pirate’s Key”). A.J. was a practicing Catholic; Rick was not. Rick lived on a boat in A.J.’s yard. A.J. preferred to first try to do things by the rules, while Rick was much more of a free spirit, using a classic P.I. type of justice. Even their guns are different: Rick has a .44 Magnum revolver, and A.J. has a .357 Magnum revolver.
Differentiation. The brothers are differentiated from one another in a number of ways: age, of course (though the actors themselves are very close to the same age); social class (it’s not uncommon for brothers to end up differing in the social class they project, via their speech, dress, interests and activities, and so on); temperament; and hair color (A.J. is the blond brother).
In “partner” tv shows, the two characters are customarily sharply differentiated. By race (among other things) in I Spy; by sex (among other things) in Silk Stalkings; by social class, temperament, and hair color in Cagney & Lacey and Rizzoli & Isles (where two women are the partners). Simon & Simon is right in this tradition.
The actors. Brief notes from Wikipedia:
Gerald Lee “Mac” McRaney (born August 19, 1947) is an American television and movie actor. McRaney is best known as one of the stars of the television shows Simon & Simon, Major Dad, and Promised Land. He was a series regular for the first season of Jericho, and the final season of Deadwood. (link)
Francis Jameson Parker Jr. (born November 18, 1947) is an American actor, best known for his role of A.J. Simon on the 1980s television series Simon & Simon. … in 1987, [he] starred alongside Donald Pleasence and Alice Cooper in John Carpenter’s horror movie Prince of Darkness [and has made guest appearances on a number of shows]. (link)
Both men are physically fit and proud of it. Here they are shirtless in the show:
In a discussion of The Gospel Four (I Won’t Walk Without Jesus) on Facebook, things veered — don’t ask — onto the tv show Mama’s Family, which brought us to Allan Kayser from the show and led me to some excellent shirtlessness.
Mama’s Family is an American television sitcom starring Vicki Lawrence as Thelma Harper (Mama). The series is a spin-off of a recurring series of comedy sketches (1974–77) on The Carol Burnett Show and (1979) Carol Burnett & Company called The Family.
The show is a “class comedy”, affectionately playing on lower-class values and behaviors, while coming very close — uncomfortably close, to my mind — to mocking them.
Allan J. Kayser II (born December 18, 1963) is an American film and TV actor.
Kayser was born and raised in Littleton, Colorado, and attended Columbine High School from 1978-1982. Shortly after graduating, Kayser moved to Los Angeles, California and began his acting career. He was a part of several motion pictures in the 1980s, including Hot Chili and Night of the Creeps. However, Kayser is perhaps best known for starring in 95 episodes of the American television sitcom Mama’s Family from 1986–1990, making him a teen idol in the 1980s.
[A few films since then: Next Caller (as Handsome Billy Bob Brown) in 2009; House of Forbidden Secrets in 2013; House of the Witch Doctor in 2013.]
He might not be getting top roles these days, but he certainly has buffed up his body since he was a teen idol. One shot:
This morning’s name was Burton Richter, the Stanford physicist. That led me to a photo of Richter with a quote from him — and Google then obligingly turned up a photo of soap opera hunk Steve Burton with a quote from him.
Burton Richter (born March 22, 1931) is a Nobel Prize-winning American physicist. He led the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) team which co-discovered the J/ψ meson in 1974, alongside the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) team led by Samuel Ting. This discovery was part of the so-called November Revolution of particle physics. He was the SLAC director from 1984 to 1999.
Jack Stephen “Steve” Burton (born June 28, 1970) is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Jason Morgan on General Hospital from 1991 to 2000, briefly in 2001, and from 2002 to 2012.
Just viewed on tv, a 2003 Smallville episode “Prodigal”, with an actor credited as Paul Wasilewski playing an intense Lucas Luthor. During the course of the episode, the actor shows off his body in an exercise routine — looking roughly like this:
A serious hunk who works out and is proud of the result.
A while after this, the actor changed his stage name (for obvious reasons), to Paul Wesley, and continued an intense workout program, shaping a seriously ripped (and bulked-up) body for himself:
Paul Wesley (born Paweł Tomasz Wasilewski; July 23, 1982) is an American actor, director, and producer. He is known for his role as Stefan Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries.
He was born and raised in the U.S., to Polish parents, and for some years he spent some time each year living in Poland. As for the name, he went from Pawel Wasilewski to Paul Wasilewski to Paul Wesley.
The Vampire Diaries is an American supernatural drama television series developed by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec, based on the popular book series of the same name written by L. J. Smith. The series premiered on The CW on September 10, 2009.
The series takes place in Mystic Falls, Virginia, a fictional small town haunted and surrounded by supernatural beings. The series narrative follows the protagonist Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) as she falls in love with vampire Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley) and is drawn into the supernatural world as a result. As the series progresses, Elena finds herself drawn to Stefan’s brother Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder) resulting in a love triangle.
(Rotten Tomatoes has a sampling of “50 years of vampire TV shows”, from Dark Shadows to three current series, including The Vampire Diaries.)
For some time now, lycanthropy and shirtless masculinity have gone hand in hand, on tv and in film. Earlier on this blog, we’ve had “Lycanthropic shirtlessness” of 7/2/13, on hunk Taylor Lautner in the Twilight Saga films, and the next-day followup “Music and words”, with pianist Jeremy Denk blogging entertainingly about Lautner’s abs.
Caught two episodes of Murder in the First (set in San Francisco) on cable tv this morning and was struck by one member of the supporting cast, Ian Anthony Dale, playing Lieut. Jim Koto. Yes, despite the name Ian Anthony Dale, the actor is Japanese-American, with striking good looks and an intensity in his performance. He also looked hauntingly familiar. Ah yes, the character Adam Noshimuri on Hawaii Five-0, where he gets to play a romantic lead part.
Ian Anthony Dale [born July 3, 1978] currently stars as Lieutenant Jim Koto on TNT’s “Murder In The First” from creator Steven Bochco. Additionally, Dale continues to be a fan favorite on the hit CBS show “Hawaii Five-0” where he plays Adam Noshimuri, a reformed Yakuza and love interest of Kono Kalakaua (Grace Park).
Dale is often recognized for his break out role in NBC’s acclaimed series “The Event” as double agent Simon Lee. His additional television credits include a series regular role on “Surface,” and recurring roles on “Day Break,” “24,” and “Criminal Minds.” He has also appeared on “American Horror Story,” “The Mentalist,” and all three shows in the “CSI” franchise. Feature film credits include “The Hangover,” “Tekken,” “The Bucket List,” and “Mr. 3000.” Dale is also part of the most watched web series of all time “Mortal Kombat: Legacy” where he plays the iconic Scorpion.
He has an interesting family. His mother Olga (now retired from a long career as a pediatric nurse in Minnesota) is originally Japanese, and his father, originally French-Canadian, is now an abstract painter, also in Minnesota. Here’s the short story from a site on his art:
Jack Dale is a non representational abstract painter.
… Jack went to college (University of Minnesota) on a hockey scholarship, played on the 1968 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team and three years as a professional before an injury ended his career. The good fortune is that he turned to his art and has been painting ever since.
Ian originally planned on a career in baseball, but was sidetracked by a serious injury into an acting career.
(Ian confesses that he speaks no French at all and, despite his mother’s efforts, only a tiny amount of Japanese. A classic story of American linguistic assimilation.)
(shown here in a body-display pose that emphasizes his torso, makes a V that points to his crotch, and stops just short of exposing that crotch. A cock-tease shot, plus a darkly handsome face.)
Photo passed on to me by Mike McKinley, an appreciator of hunky young Hispanic men, along with a story about Minor from the Mexican style magazine EstiloDF, where we learn that Minor came in third in the contest:
Mr. World 2014 nombró al mexicano José Pablo Minor, el tercer hombre más guapo del mundo. ¡Conócelo!
El pasado fin de semana finalizó la búsqueda del hombre más guapo del mundo Mr. World 2014, donde el primer lugar lo consiguió el danés Dane Nicklas Pedersen, el segundo lugar el nigeriano Emmanuel Ifeanyi y en tercer lugar quedó nuestro mexicano José Pablo Minor.
José Pablo tiene 23 años y durante el concurso superó las cinco etapas: talento, deportes, multimedia, moda, estilo y un reto extremo.
The Mr. World competition aims to pick, in each year, not just the most handsome man in the world (el hombre más guapo del mundo), choosing from the Mr. World winners in specific countries that year, but in fact to pick the most desirable man in the world. (It’s framed as appealing to women, but of course it has a huge gay following.)
The contest is associated with the Miss World competition, but there are interesting differences in the structure of the two events (more on that below).
Unlike conventional Male “Beauty Pageants”, Mr World is a 2-3 week competition designed to test the candidates in a variety of ways through a series of challenge events, interviews and a final stage show. These challenges test every aspect deemed necessary to be “The World’s Most Desirable Man.”
FIVE challenge events take place: Fashion & Style, the Extreme Challenge [“punishing assault courses”], the Multi-Media Award [“With each contestant given online portals using their official social media platforms, they were tasked to create an impression of themselves and their time at Mr World in the most inventive and exciting ways possible”], the Sports Challenge [several sports, individual and team] & the Talent Competition. Each one of these Challenges has a winner, who takes his place in the Final TOP TEN of the competition. There are also collective points earned through the team based elements of the challenges, with the contestants split into four teams throughout the event.
The Winner is then selected by the panel of judges who weigh up the performances of each candidate before hearing from them on stage as to why they want to win Mr World, and what it would mean to them.
Similarities to women’s contests: the formal dress component, the talent contest, the sexualized display of the body (swimsuits for women, shirtlessness and other displays in dance numbers for men). One set of contestants en masse:
For the women, the emphasis is on femininity, for the men, masculinity, especially in the sports competitions (note the emphasis on that male ideal, teamwork) and in displays of physical toughness and endurance (in the assault courses and a series of elimination races). They might be male models and actors, for the most part, who spend a fair part of the competition looking gorgeous, but they’re also supposed to demonstrate toughness and athletic prowess.
The contest strives to offer a diversity of physical types, and it’s fairly successful at that, but it’s notably poor in black men. In any case, this year’s winner was a blond Dane, Nicklas Pedersen:
Note: the other Mr. World. Quite separate from this pageant of masculine desirability, there are bodybuilding competitions Mr. World and Mr. America. From Wikipedia:
AAU Mr. World was a bodybuilding competition started by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). It was first held in 1950s.
In the mid-1940s, Joe and Ben Weider started the IFBB [International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness] as an alternative to the AAU. They held their opposing contest the IFBB Mr. America in 1949 and then from 1959 onwards. The AAU voted to discontinue holding bodybuilding competitions in 1999.
The IFBB sponsors bodybuilding competitions for both men and women, and distinguishes two kinds of competitions, Physique and Pro. Here’s a Pro:
Zesty, bold, and unexpected — and that’s just the included fake mustache. Sazon Mas Guapo ($10) is a spice blend that falls somewhere between a dry rub and seasoning salt, and promises to make “any chef seem more handsome,” while also making your food “more better.” (link)
(Another in a series of postings about performers who have given me pleasure. Minimal linguistic content.)
Seen on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit a few days ago: the episode “Escape” (season 5, episode 11, originally broadcast 1/6/04), featuring Milo Ventimiglia, an actor familiar to me from Gilmore Girls and, especially, Heroes.
Milo Anthony Ventimiglia (… born July 8, 1977) is an American actor best known for his role as Peter Petrelli on the NBC television series Heroes. Ventimiglia’s first career break was in the Fox series Opposite Sex, playing Jed Perry, the main protagonist of the show. Ventimiglia was first noticed by fans during his three-year stint on the WB series Gilmore Girls, playing Rory Gilmore’s love interest Jess Mariano from 2001 until his final guest appearance in 2006.
After his own WB series The Bedford Diaries, a recurring role as Meg Pryor’s love interest on NBC’s American Dreams, and playing Rocky Balboa’s son in the sixth and final installment of the Rocky series, Rocky Balboa, Ventimiglia’s big break came in 2006 when he received the part of nurse-turned-superhero Peter Petrelli for four seasons on NBC’s Heroes.
Heroes is an American science fiction television drama series created by Tim Kring that appeared on NBC for four seasons from September 25, 2006 through February 8, 2010. The series tells the stories of ordinary people who discover superhuman abilities, and how these abilities take effect in the characters’ lives. The series emulates the aesthetic style and storytelling of American comic books, using multi-episode story arcs that build upon a larger, more encompassing narrative.
Heroes moved Ventimiglia from largely teenage roles to a fully adult role and brought Peter Petrelli into especially close interaction with two of the other characters:
Nathan Petrelli, Peter’s older brother, a congressional candidate with the ability to fly, played by Adrian Pasdar (who I enjoyed as Declan Dunn in the tv seriesMysterious Ways)
Hiro Nakamura, an office worker who can manipulate space-time, played by Masi Oka (who plays the coroner Max Bergman in CBS’ new version of Hawaii Five-0; I’ve posted here on the hunks of that show, but Oka’s character there is a geek rather than a hunk)
Ventimiglia is also something of a hunk, as in this photo:
Image may be NSFW.
