Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
– Leon Trotsky

Brokeback Mountain gave Heath Ledger his promise for greatness.

Or maybe it was that Heath gave his all to Brokeback Mountain. Regardless, with that film a heartthrob died and a formidable actor — a star was born.

Not to say Ledger didn’t have meatier rolls (I haven’t seen the heroin-laced Candy yet), but Brokeback was that magic moment in an actor’s career where the Gods deign to flash hints about how one might find the footpath to Olympus (aka: the Hollywood Walk of Fame.) And now Heath’s gone there.

I watched Brokeback the other night on HBO and was rattled once again during the now-classic “I wish I knew how to quit you” scene. That moment where the two lovers, now years older, get together at the mountain and Ennis tells Jack that they won’t be able to reconnect until later in the year — in November — when his job permits. One insult leads to another and before you know it the two go swinging at each other but end up on their knees where Ennis crumbles into Jack’s chest mumbling “I can’t stand this anymore.”

Christ! Every time. The space behind my eyes blooms and I’m teary in a trice. It’s one of those gut punch occasions in a movie where, seconds after the scene, you ‘come to’ and you’re spookily wowed by an actor’s ability to ring out the very core and soul of their character. That scene never fails to make me cry. (read the full article)

Square jawed and clear eyed, these beautiful men seem to have tumbled out of a time machine from exactly 100 years ago, the Gilded Age before World War I, looking all slick-haired and suited and ready for some modern man-on-man.

We might even think we had come upon a hidden stash of fabulous retro-porn if we didn’t know that the artist, Benoît Prévôt, is not only alive, he is a mere 38 years old!

A lifelong Parisian, whose day-job is designing cartoon characters for children’s television, sitting at a computer doing 3D backgrounds and images, Prévôt views the erotic drawings he does at night as his more important art.

In Prévôt’s swanky re-imaginings of the past, we get a glimpse of what the Arrow Collar Men were doing when the Gibson Girl was out on a motor trip.

We imagine the stately Gibson Girl coming home suddenly, unexpectedly, all leg-of-mutton sleeves and upswept hair behind motoring goggles, only to find husband and best friend slavering over each other in the drawing room. Solid patrician that she is, trained from childhood to be The Wife, she looks right on past the dog and pony show, gazing in her dreamy, heavy-lidded way out at the grounds, thinking ackh! men! (read the full article)

Absolutely Elegant Entertainment: “We do have standards, after all.”

That guy.

We’ve all encountered him at one point or another. A big, swaggering no-neck as full of himself as he is protein shakes and Creatine.

He could be a construction worker, drill sergeant, police officer, lunkhead gym teacher, or gym rat fixture.

He’s vain, ego-driven, loud, devoid of a selfless thought in his head and prone to flaunting his body — all attributes that should make him a complete turn-off. Yet, on some primal level, he arouses us against all reason. While we may hate ourselves for it, that distinct urge to put him over a chair and jack hammer away at his adamantine loins gets the better of us.

Champion bodybuilder Brad Hollibaugh is that guy. At least onscreen. In real life he’s a recognizable name on the bodybuilding circuit, holder of countless titles, a former college wrestler, a father and grandfather, as well as a soft-spoken gentlemen who just happens to be built like Hercules.

Thanks to the cottage industry of self-produced Muscle Worship DVDs, he’s become a bona fide sex symbol, not quite Porn Star, not quite performance artist. His persona comes straight out of Archie Comics and mail order Charles Atlas ads: the dreaded Muscle Bully played to the hilt. Via his web cam and DVDs, we get to experience this unique specie’s daily life, be it measuring his massive biceps, showering languidly, singing his own praises, or admiring himself in front of his mirror, mirror on the wall.

Of course Mr. Hollibaugh’s confirming what we’ve always suspected: the Muscle Monster is a skilled cock tease who just loves to be admired and really doesn’t care who’s doing the eyeballing as long as he’s the center of attention. Hollibaugh actually gets the irony he’s playing at and what makes his act all the more glorious to behold is his genuine wide-eyed rollicking in his own astoundingly pneumatic bod. Few men can claim to inspire such a collective case of blue balls as this man does. (read the full article)

“Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.” — Mason Cooley

The Cult of Mormon.

America’s longest-running scam? An authoritarian and insular power structure that holds its members in a stranglehold of fear and shame? Establisher of the driest and most score-free college campus ever?

Publisher of a highly-specific guide to overcoming the insidious effects of masturbation that depicts the act as if it were heroin addiction or demonic possession?

All of the above?

Damn right. But there’s more!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints finds itself under the microscope as of late what with the recent accomplice-to-rape conviction of self-styled prophet/child slaver Warren Jeffs and the vapid would-be presidential bid of Mitt Romney, who with the aid of his saccharine sons has attempted to deflect sentiments that he’s a Mormon cyborg by staging the campaign equivalent of an Old Spice ad. (read the full article)

Have you ever wondered about the rampant gayface you see on professional homophobes?

Take a look at this gallery of “manly” faces — the simpering Gary Bauer, the Golly Gee eyed Peter LaBarbera, the pudding-faced Robert Knight — all of them spokesman for organizations that freak out regularly over gay civil rights — the so-called “gay agenda.”

In point of fact, it is these spokesman for Christian-front organizations with names like Americans for the Truth about Homosexuality (a one-man operation by nutjob LaBarbera) and Concerned Women for America (odd isn’t it, for a man — pudgy-wudgy Robert Knight — to be the head of a woman-specific organization)… it is these Concerned Morons for Homophobia that have the agenda — a theocratic one.

But that’s not all they have. These Prisoners of the Inappropriate Gayface also possess an oddly fine tuned gaydar that goes off — in full, flaming four-alarm mode — at the first breath of a whisper, at the teeniest hint of gender “confusion” in Barbie dolls, at the “blatant gay militancy” to be found on the cardboard cups at Starbucks , at the softest rustling in the bushes … (read the full article)

It seems like we scan a thousand blogs each week. Queer blogs especially. It’s an occupational hazard. We understand that. But does the process need to be so painful?

Not everyone, god love ‘em, has the creative wherewithal to pull something together that warrants regular eyeballing — be that journalistically or graphically. Given that folks don’t really read anymore, the importance of an original visual theme for a blog is doubly important. That was our criteria this year for choosing Nightcharm’s second annual Queer Blog of the Year Award.

And the winner for 2007 is: (read the full article)

Types. Everyone has one. Everyone is one.

The Boy Next Door. The Dreamboat. Mr. Right. Mr. Vain. Big, Dumb and Slutty. Every cliché exists in life. Some lose ground and become merely quaint. Others gather stream and become iconic. The It Type of the moment: Douchebags. They’re everywhere, and this emerging new type is easy to nail but hard to nail down. Not soulful, tortured or cool enough to be true Bad Boys and too oversexed to be geeks, it seems to be sheer unwarranted self-belief in all-consuming ego that drives them. Hollywood — the lodestar of all that we love and loathe sexually — is churning these dipwads out by the bucketful. With a sea of Summer’s Eve to wade through, how ever does one choose the pioneers?

Now, for your pleasure and edification, the definitive Top Ten Guide to the Douchebag Pantheon featuring a dazzling array of deluded D-bags not soon forgotten:

10. Wilmer Valderrama: Fun-Sized Douche

Like technically hot-from-the-neck down Dax Shepard and Sean “I couldn’t decide on a first name” William Scott, Wilmer is yet another Ashton Kutcher douche protégé. Wilmer really went against type on That ’70s Show by playing a petit, fey man-child with a strange name who could only get young women who had terrible emotional problems to spread for him. His real claim to fame is his role as Hollywood’s preeminent Virgin Surgeon.

All manner of unsuspecting young starlets are drawn to his magnetic douchiness. Either that or his immense tool, which Wilmer is always happy to boast about. Quoth the douche: “Honestly, I’ve been very blessed. This is the place where I will tell you, yes, I am cursed with this gift. It’s over 8 inches.” Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be deflowered by this sawed-off lothario so that he can later rate you on a scale of 1 to 10? Fate has smiled again on Wilmer as he’s now essaying the role he was born for: portraying Francis “Ponch” Poncherello in the upcoming C.H.I.P.s remake, a part once made famous by his predecessor douche equivalent Erik Estrada. (read the full article)