It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely candidate for an elite French film journal than the new release Lumberjack Gang Bang — a frank exploration of the cum-flying, ass-plowing, and mouth-jamming that can be expected when lumberjacks are stranded in the wood, due to a bridge collapse, and can’t get their weekend quota of — as the screenplay drolly puts it — “pussy banging.”

Even the tagline for the film is simple and direct, warranting, so it would seem, no further analysis: In the forest only lumberjacks can hear you beg for more!

Thus we were electrified when we picked up the December issue of Cahiers du Cahiers, which specializes in close readings of American film and bills itself as “a meta-journal” — the name means “Notes on Notes” and is one step up in mental abstraction from the now aged Cahiers du Cinéma.

“A wartime masterpiece,” raved cinéaste Jean-Baptiste Bresson, “in which the subtext is Iraq and the American soul.” The massive essay begins, as is the style of the journal, with a long, meditative anecdote on how Bresson had intended to write about Ken Burns’ The War, a 19-hour documentary on World War II that he had just seen at the Cannes Film Festival. (read the full article)

Troubling men’s style trends are not unlike sex crimes.

Some we walk into like a punch and resist them with everything we’ve got. Others leave us ashamed, wondering if we were somehow asking for it, and over-exfoliating with the loofah.

Some era-specific fads that fell by the wayside in retrospect worked rather well and could warrant being brought back into rotation: Nehru jackets, Carnaby Street suits, Beatle boots, and quiffs cut fine turns on the right men.

Then there are the ones that played out — cargo pants, camouflage, faux hawks, and Caesar cuts — because every guy you passed on the street jumped on the bandwagons. Lastly, there are the Untouchables — the Sucios — that still turn up in dark corners of the world: soul patches, extreme fade haircuts, Mantyhoses, Members Only jackets, Fabio hair, mandanas, and tribal tattoos that retain their claw-like hold on the oblivious.

The Porn ‘stache as this year’s most omnipresent trend polarizes as extremities are wont to do, in no small part due to the fact that there’s little in the way of mitigation when it comes to pulling it off with any sort of aplomb. It may not be as impossibly impractical as a Francois Sagat full-cranium tat or the genital-wilting braided beard, but you’ve got to be near the top rung of the ladder in terms of attractiveness (like this fine guy on the left) in order to even ironically attempt it.

The best case scenario is an ’80s Brawny paper towel coverboy mien; fail in your venture, and you risk the ignobility of looking like that cop from Sleepaway Camp. Virtually every postpubescent male celebrity has opted for some variant on the quicker picker upper, ranging from the appealing (George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Thomas Jane), to the dismaying (Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law), to the rape whistle-ready (the hideous Fu Manchus adorning Easter Island-headed Michael Phelps and douche-faced Pete Wentz).

Though satire-inclined urban hipsters (these are the same guys who tried to bring back the zoot suit during the especially lame late-90’s swing dance resurgence) are the ones likely to be given credit for sporting the look and propelling it back into the public eye, the truth is the Porn ‘stache has remained extant in various circles since the advent of hardcore porn in the late ‘60s. (read the full article)

Once a week when I was a teenager, my friends and I would drive to a gay nightclub downtown. Thursday nights were alcohol-free and 16 was the age of entry. Since there were only a handful of openly gay students at each of our high schools, if even that, the only way we knew to connect with other young gay people was over the Internet and in that club.

Inside was a sea of dancing skinny, hairless teenage boys from the suburbs who looked even younger than they really were, ringed by a flock of straight girls we brought with us, who pole-danced against our thighs. The lesbians gathered in their own clusters to the side. You could hear the bassy music from outside on the patio and cigarette smoke choked the air just before indoor smoking bans hit major cities. Some of the boys would take their shirts off and sag their pants low enough that you could tell their pubes were shaved. The rest of us would sit at the tables smoking, or in my case, take occasional drags from friends’ cigarettes and talk about people who passed by.

Almost everyone in the club was under the age of 20, but there were always a couple of guys aged 27 or so in the mix, and occasionally we’d see a socially-awkward man in his 30s or 40s gawking at the young kids as if to memorize every face. We thought those guys were creepy, and talked shit about them as we talked shit about the teenage boys who were their friends. (read the full article)

It’s like this for me:

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