(Men’s bodies and tons of mansex — anal, anal, anal — in street language. No actual penises on display, but nevertheless absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Padraig porn for the day:
(#1) The TitanMen gay porn sale for this weekend: Kiss me, I’m Irish
(Significant discussions of gay porn, men’s bodies, and mansex — definitely not for kids or the sexually modest.)
In yesterday’s “Deviant Passover rites”, a section on gay Jewish guys partying at the Sederlicious event in NYC, including a note on non-Jews who appreciate Jewish men — called bagel chasers in write-ups of the event (my 12/19/15 posting “X queen” mentioned matzo(h) queen for a man with a preference for Jewish men, and also hummus queen or falafel queen for a man with a preference for Arab/Middle Eastern men).
So in the gay sexual marketplace, there are certainly outgroup customers for Jewish men (and for Muslim men), but there’s evidence that this is a minority taste (suggesting significant implicit prejudice): while gay porn featuring Jewish men isn’t unknown, there’s not a lot of it — certainly nothing like the enormous amount of porn featuring black and Latino men as objects of desire. Black and Latino men, especially working-class men, are seen as strongly masculine and powerful (and therefore attractive as fantasy lust-objects, in what you might think of as thug porn), while Jewish men in general are not.
With the (partial) exception of Israelis. The stereotype of Israeli men is that they’re soldiers, physically tough guys, while American Jews are stereotypically businessmen, accountants, lawyers, scholars, and so on. So there’s a vein of high-end gay porn featuring actors identified as Israelis (promoted especially by Michael Lucas) and a considerable genre of amateur porn offering men identified as Israelis, but not much featuring the sort of American guys who might turn up at Hebro events like Sederlicious.
Illustrations to come from Michael Lucas porn; Israeli gay icon Eliad Cohen; and an unusual piece of amateur (but well produced) gay porn starring a man identified as young Israeli dancer Yoav Bosidan (currently dancing with the Ballet am Rhein).
Back on December 17th, my posting “Xmas follies 2017: the shirtless men of the season” featured (in #1 and #2 there) pole dancer Domenico Vaccaro, engaging in an activity that is both sport — there are competitions — and art form — performances are scored on aesthetic criteria as well as on the achievement of specific moves. Think of it as ballet with a prop, a prop that allows a dancer to fly suspended in mid-air. Male pole dancers frequently perform shirtless, so they also show off their full bodies, which are aesthetic objects in their own right.
And now, thanks to Kim Darnell, another male pole dancer, the Hungarian Peter Holoda, a great pleasure to watch in action. In a still shot:
(#1) You can watch here a piece of a stunning performance by Holoda to music from the film Schindler’s List, played by Holoda’s frequent collaborator, cellist Tina Guo
My friend Michael Siemon died back on November 1st in Oakland CA, and now his California family have planned a memorial dance in his honor, on the afternoon of Sunday March 25th. The flyer:
(#1)
A man of great charm and very wide intellectual and artistic interests.
In #2 in Tuesday’s posting “Dancing with the cars”, I returned to the world of male ballet dancers with a photo of Bolshoi soloist Jacopo Tissi suspended in mid-air during the ballet Etudes — a demonstration of extraordinary athleticism. Tissi himself is young (born in 1995), good-looking, well-spoken (he gives good interview), and also an amazing musclehunk. A friend I showed this posting to then noted that I also posted a lot about the conventional fantasy figures of gay porn — cowboys, firemen, truckers, pizza boys, hitch-hikers, and so on — and was there a genre for male dancers too?
The short answer is no, for fairly obvious reasons (which I’ll write about below). But my question then was whether there’s any ballet-based gay porn. The answer here is yes, at least one film: Jack Deveau’s 1975 Ballet Down the Highway. Straight trucker falls for gay male ballet dancer, lots of mansex ensues.
Which has now gotten showings as an art house film, at a venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
(#1) Poster for the Brooklyn showing in 2015
Another pun committed by the Bizarro/Wayno collaborative:
(#1)
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
ballet, valet, what’s the difference? And who can resist a man in a tutu? (Cue Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.)
Another crowded seasonal category — I’ve already been through music, decorations, clothing, and food — in which there seems to be no end of entertaining folly. In this case, no end of shirtless men in Santa or elf costumes (down to a cap and nothing else).
On color coding: a red Santa cap can be worn by Santas or elves, while green or green+red indicates an elf.
Some weeks ago YouTube brought me a delightful video of a flash mob performance of Ravel’s “Boléro” (in a town square in Toluca, Mexico). About the same time, my Enhance Fitness class (aimed especially at older and disabled participants) at the Palo Alto YMCA conceived of the idea of converting one of our regular exercise routines — done to the original Billy Ray Cyrus recording of “Achy Breaky Heart” — into a flash mob performance in the lobby of the Y (all this achieved at 5 p.m. on Wednesday September 20th).
Both musical flash mobs were “cumulative” — starting with just a few participants, with more and more added in stages until there was a true mob. Especially effective for the Ravel, which starts with a snare drum ostinato to which a flute is added, and then further instruments, a few at a time, as the piece builds to a crashingly loud finale.
(#1) Homer Simpson ejaculates
From the American tv show Psych, S2 E12 “The Old and the Restless” (2008):
Shawn Spencer: Can you check for a John Doe, please?
[Desk clerk nods, turns to her computer]
Shawn Spencer: Actually, can you check all the Does? Tae Kwon, Cookie, Play, Do-Si…
An extended play on the syllable /do/ in English.
If you think you can escape the Summer Song of 2017 — Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” (pop crossed with rap) — you’re probably mistaken. Yes, you can do the obvious: avoid Puerto Rico and Latino-heavy sections of the US, stay away from Mexican, Salvadoran, Cuban, etc. restaurants, all that sort of thing. But you could flee far away, to the Balkans, to Ireland, to Southeast Asia, to Hungary, and it will be in vain: the song will haunt you, in instrumental versions on piano, cello, violin, bamboo flute, oud, you name it; with words in French, Chinese, Gaelic, Croatian, Malay, whatever; performed by one man, one woman, two men, a man and a woman, on up to crowd-sized choruses; as heavy metal, as Romantic-style classical music, as jazz, and so on; as a sweet and softly romantic song, as hard-driving bump-and-grind music, as an enthusiastic anthem, or as flat-out parody; with fresh choreography in almost any dance style imaginable.
I didn’t appreciate the scope of the phenomenon until Kim Darnell sent me a video of Peter Bence (a 25-year-old Hungarian pianist and composer) doing a jazz-inflected piano version (channeling Keith Jarrett), and watching that led me to all this other stuff.
