Macbeth in the buff — why hadn’t anybody thought of it before?

The idea was as natural as …well, as Mickey Rooney turning to Judy Garland and bubbling “I know! Let’s set Shakespeare to music!” And Judy bubbling back “But lets do it in Swing!”

When a theater company in Arlington, Virginia decided to put on a Macbeth for the 21st Century, director Jose Carrasquillo wanted something tribal and violent, something suggestive of “an animal-like clan and society.”

“Twenty minutes,” decided the critic for the Washington City Paper. “That’s about how long it takes to get used to the nudity in José Carrasquillo’s eerie, intelligent, and visually arresting Macbeth.”

A tad more skittish about the balls-out production, with its cast of mostly male actors (give or take a few witches), was the reviewer for the A.P. wire service: “Folks in the front sometimes cringe and move back a few rows during intermission,” the scribe reported sheepishly. “One man watched the play with a programme in front of his eyes, blocking out the lower half of his field of vision.” (Awwwww, the poor fragile darling. What? Were all the showings of Evening sold out?) (more…)

Who didn’t love Tammy Faye, who died this past week (but not before doing the full hour with Larry King)? She was crazy in that crazy American way. Singing and crying and loving on Jesus, then in the next breath telling you all major credit cards were accepted.

Her trademark was the triple-ply false eyelashes, mascara-streaked tears bubbling out through the blissed-out smiles, and an ability to sing, laugh and cry all in the same hallucinatory moment.

It was a talent later imitated but never quite equaled by another screaming-Mimi of the Christian Ministries, Jan Crouch, the Jayne Mansfield to Tammy’s purer, more sincere Marilyn.

Sincerity, that is, as far as it went for a wiggy televangelist like Tammy who would sprint off to dismal foreign slums for a day and wrap her on-camera arms around a starving child — some adorable wretch with big suffering eyes and flies alighting on his lips — and then all at once something kooky would happen.

The script would fly out of her head; Tammy could never linger too long on the negative. A sunburst would break through the tears, one of her notorious outbreaks of inappropriate giggling. She’d start praising the lord and thanking Jesus for all her own gifts, which could be yours too if you sent in the prayer money. Then, mission accomplished, sticky child removed from arm, she would store the big hair back on the private jet and fly home to one of several plantation-style mansions in the subdivisions of South Carolina. (more…)

By Zeus, Dick rules the heavens!

Yes, several sightings of the Celestial Phallus have made the news this month.

Certainly you’ve heard of, if not been visited by, the miraculous Divine Penis.

That Wing-ed Divinity, its proud erection and stiff little winglets so like those of the Christian dove or the Rococo cherub (its later appropriations) was beloved of the Ancients — and is still worshiped by many a Modern today, hey boys?

1. Down from Mount Olympus

First up this month was the rebirth of Zeus, Apollo and all the gang in the annual party dance-show Broadway Bares, a charity event to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

This year the theme was Myth-Behavior and so laurel wreathes and just a hint of toga, no more than a few shipwrecked shreds, covered Broadway’s most sensational boys and girls of the chorus. Everywhere gods, demi-god and just plain hunkeroonies stripped down to their raw, near-naked talent, in obedience to those tenets so oft repeated on Inside the Actors Studio, peel away the layers, serve the character. Yes, boys and girls, Art was in her temple.

Featured was a jaw-droppingly salacious number, Heroes, in which a roll call of the major Greco-Roman beefcake came to life (Hercules, Odysseus, Adonis) and went against humpy reimaginings of the Minotaur, the Cyclops and a campy Harpy played by a comic actor.

Our favorite moment: the Sirens, appearing in all their Neptunal, sea-weedy weirdness, singing — this, the genius touch — the theme from Love Boat (”Aw-hhh, Love. Exciting and new. Come aboard. We’re expecting you…)

In addition was the annual Stripathon, right, which needed no theme more eternal than cowboy hat, boots and a jockstrap. (More Myth-Behavior photos and details )

This year’s show was so successful (a record-breaking $740,000 haul) that Variety reports talks are now ongoing with an unnamed Las Vegas casino to bring the show permanently to the Strip, rebaptised for a less New York-centric audience, Peep Show. (more…)

It’s bound to happen.

More so during these mid-summer days when a randy vibration charges the air and the fitzy pop of beers opening is the accompanying soundtrack.

Radios blare endlessly too. How many more times can we hear Rhianna’s Umbrella without committing hara-kiri?

The heat. The booze. The music.

Guys with guys, just hangin’ and kickin’. Dreading September. Itchy, twitchy, non-stop thoughts of fucking and sucking. The constant state of horniness can be exhilarating but exhausting.

What to do?

Consider the impact of these sultry days on Justin and Park. (more…)

This is my first post as an intern for Nightcharm. I hope I’m doing this correctly.

Early today Nightcharm’s publisher David K. emailed me some naked men pictures from Raging Stallion Studios and told me I was to write some kind of commentary or entry, (I think he called it an entry), for the new video Smoking, I mean Pokin’ In The Boys Room. This was to appear tonight in the blog.

A scene from this video is available to members of the Inner Circle (which is the private area of Nightcharm that shows hardcore videos and other off-limits material).

So anyway, here’s the photo (above) from that video scene.

The photo depicts two guys engaged intimately through a large hole in a wooden partition. I’m not sure I understand the contraption’s function, or what its specific purpose is for, so I’ve made a note to ask David about this tomorrow morning.

Personally I’ve never been in a bathroom anywhere, much less a public restroom, that featured this kind of structure — but then again I’m from Wisconsin and only arrived at the Seattle Greyhound station three days ago.

There are also some other photos — with more anal stuff going on and some oral activity as well — through that same hole — that I need to display for you.

I’ll post those now. (more…)

The gay blogosphere is in an uproar this week over Baring the Truth, an article in the August Out Magazine (not available online) that is unusual for abandoning the typical HIV sermonette in favor of a frank and sober evaluation of the popular, if controversial — some would say deadly — practice of anal fucking without rubbers. (This uproar has even hit our own site. See the angry comments that readers left on our recent Dawson entry.)

Baring the Truth wonders if bareback porn is responsible for a recent upswing in HIV sero-conversions.

According to Out, barebacking accounts for a third of the gay porn industry’s output and — get this — one half of all rentals from a popular DVD rental site. A poll of Out readers found that while 15% disapproved of such porn, finding it “irresponsible and misguided,” an overwhelming 70% either “loved” the raw dicking (”because porn is just a fantasy”) or found it “compelling” but disturbing.

Meanwhile, the major players in the industry were divided into warring camps. To one side you had porn producers like Chi Chi LaRue (”People call me a condom Nazi”) and Tim Valenti of NakedSword (”I found many [young models] to be extremely naive … [they] were being pushed into participating in something without having a clear understanding of the ramifications. I didn’t want to be part of it”). Above, we see two models from Raging Stallion Studio, which has a strict policy of condom-only fucking. (more…)

Treasure Island Media’s resident stud shaman is back in Meat Packing.

His previous two movies, Dawson’s 20-Load Weekend and the coyly titled, Cum Sloppy Buttholes have garnered the burly giant a world of fans and made him a stand out among Treasure Island’s gallery of irresistible male stars.

Before we send you on your way to view his latest video extravaganza, consider the following fun facts:

Dawson’s from a small town in Maine.

Off-camera he works for a biotech company’s sales dept.

His love life? As he told a reporter recently he has “No significant other at this point. Not many people can handle the porn thing, let alone that it’s bareback. It’ll take a special person to see past that.”

And what about the furor surrounding barebacking? (more…)

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