What’s more maddening than getting job advice from the well-employed or dating tips from the perpetually attached?
How about sage wisdom on substance from fawning celebrity glorifiers?:
“If I could change one thing about our world, I would change how people measure their self-worth against material objects. I enjoy capitalism, but I do not let capitalism define me. You are not who you are married to or what car you drive or what kind of apartment you live in. What you are is how you are as a human being.â€
Sometimes in life people can make statements in the face of all critical self-awareness that will result in my eyes involuntary rolling back into their sockets. I’m talking about the “Yes, Dear!” Cheney and Bush wives complaining about using gays as a wedge issue, Lindsay Lohan whining about lack of privacy, or Tyra Banks — she of the slimming cameras and fake hair — crowning herself a media-victimized Everywoman.
The above avowal is a beauty queen-worthy musing from Mike Ruiz, demure violet who photographs famous people for a living and has appeared on such empowering fare as America’s Next Top Model and Canada’s Next Top Model. He presumably drives a Ford Fusion Hybrid when he isn’t draped over the hood of a sports car, and spends his time in his modest Newark one bedroom “brand new, super-fancy high-rise in Chelsea.” He’s only there for the austere focus, though, much like those monks who live on CPW. “I love descending slowly into sleep, thinking about my next shoot, or my next subject, or my next picture, staring at the Empire State Building. I am blessed.”
But please don’t think Mike’s life has been easy just because of his looks. Physical perfection led him into what we know as the Beautiful People’s version of the Peace Corps — acting — but Mike found his inspiration behind the lens, which happily still allows for him to pose in front of the camera and hug celebrities, all without that exhausting talking and emoting. “I get turned on by guys and that’s what inspires me to shoot them,” he…elaborates?
While others may suffer from poverty and rampant unemployment, Mike’s lifelong struggle has been with real obstacles like sugar and gluten. “I have turned art back onto myself,” he opines of his physique. He hasn’t allowed being chiseled to hold him back in life. Reports MintMale.com: “He spends a lot of time wining and dining his famous clientele and still stays true to his rules. He finds the healthiest option on the menu and will customize when necessary.” Phew! Eating is such a mêlée!
I know I sound like I’m simply tearing down someone more successful than me, but lately my inner Tyler Durden — a character I’ll admit I once found infantile and completely unrelatable but whom lately I’ve started to mirror in my enmity for the world — has been feeling particularly nihilistic about chasing carrots like success, beauty, and fame.
I’m sick to my dick of yuppie culture gentrifying every major city the point that they all become playgrounds with a Logan’s Run-style mandate that jettisons anyone under a certain income bracket. I find people in the fashion field to be the most inane of human specimens. And the one thing I cringe at more than anything else in gay culture: The A List.
It’s the upper echelon of gay culture you can reach only if you have the right luxury-oriented career, the perfect overpriced apartment, and enough cash to jab yourself full of roids and surgically carve yourself into a cyborg. Barring that, you just have to fuck the right people and become essentially a live-in whore. It is possible for depthlessness to be all-encompassingly hermetic in the sense that it can dictate your every action and consume you.
Think of all the celebutantes whose very lives revolve around being photographed and having their staged antics filmed, or how the evil girl cult from Jawbreaker — a favorite movie of mine whose hellcats helped coin for me my go-to oxymoron “profoundly shallow” — has a typical school day amount to strutting down the hallways, checking their make-up, and not being caught dead eating lunch in front of the peons.
If you’ve ever really looked into the eyes of someone terminally devoid and seen the abyss within looking back, you can relate to my antipathy for David Barton Gyms and Chelsea Boys with porn tats and Zoolander pouts. SoHo might as well be SoGo, with me as a stranded and out-of-it Barbarella. Release the Matmos!
This fall, Mike will be donating his presence to headline Logo’s ambitious The A List (working titles: Gay Housewives of New York, The 10 10′s, and Kept). “It’s a story that is loosely based on the eccentricities of me and the posse of super hot guys I ran around with in the early 1990s.” Tune in and feel the depth as Mike joins a cast of models, aspiring models, Models/Actors/Whatevers, starfuckers, hairdressers, modeling agents, high-priced escorts, gold diggers, mercenary arm candy, former models, one of Marc Jacobs‘s hit-it-and-forget-it-five-minutes-later himbos, and the Lost Smoke Monster for an odyssey of self-discovery and exfoliation. What could be better than watching actual grown men fill in for the materialistic drag queen manqués of the soul-salting Sex & The City 2 or the Real Housewives franchise? Of course the ladies are horrible, but nobody does wealth-wallowing and fame-whoring better than The A List Gays, gurl!
“I want to continue to be a decent guy, honest at the end of the day,” Mike asserts. “Above and beyond anything else, I just want to be aspire to be a decent human being that is not a total douchebag.”
In related news, Naomi Campbell has seen the error of her ways and is now encouraging spoiled princesses everywhere to report for work on time, avoid excessive contract riders, and not abuse the help.
© 2010, Shawn Baker. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com
Cynicism much appreciated. I’m glad someone else out there gets it… I’ve felt the same way about celebrities and the “A list” for years now. Truly insipid people.
Daria to Quinn: “Sometimes your shallowness is so thorough, it’s almost like depth.”
Worse is when u r trying to come out, enter the whole gay scene and every guy u meet aspires to be paris hilton.
I also like the cynicism- fuck the A-listers!
Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Pepe! Mike sounds like a pre-teen bubbling over the Jonas Brothers. His photo work is pretty fantastic and the man is living out his dream. Get “Latin Boys Go to Hell” off of Netflix. He was truly incredible-looking a dozen years ago when he didn’t spoil it by talking.
Congratulations, Shawn! You need not apologize for your new feelings. Although reaching this state of mind can at first be disorienting, and many obviously fail to ever achieve it at all, it’s called “growing up.” A word of warning: that eye-rolling you spoke of? It will only get worse.
I’m really surprised that he thinks that that katie perry song has made any positive difference on being gay. For a successful man, he seems astonishingly stupid.
I love how Mike claims he “abandoned” acting because it wasn’t “like, his passion”. Bitch can’t find a celeb he won’t hang off or a name he won’t drop, but he doesn’t like all the attention. That’s why he bends over for any reality show that he can get.
Colton Ford also killed it for me when I saw “Naked Fame” and realized he was really just a twelve year old girl who wanted to be Britney Spears.
@Gus…Deep as a teaspoon, shallow as an ocean.
Gilding indeed. I love that his highest aspiration is to be a millimeter above the “you must be this much of a non-douchebag” line on the painted Masonite clown stand-up planted at the gateway to existence. I suspect even Lindsay Lohan would agree that no manner of shoe lifts is going to get this scumbag above that line. Slapping him would slough off valuable skin cells from the forever-understanding surface of my overtaxed palm. And let’s be honest. This is a not a slap situation; it cries plaintively for brass knuckles. The non-metaphorical kind.
Never heard of this guy before.
But, Russell Tovey. . . that’s a man I’d go gay for.
“I get turned on by guys and that’s what inspires me to shoot them,â€
that could be read in different ways….
“yuppie culture gentrifying every major city the point that they all become playgrounds with a Logan’s Run-style mandate that jettisons anyone under a certain income bracket”
Kudos.
anyway, I totally agree with this article. I suspect I’d end up being guilty of another trope, the hipster indie douche, if I had the opportunity, so I can’t say much, but I get it.
also, thanks, Gus, for the Daria quote. I miss that bitch.
I need to buy the DVDs. I hear they’re out now.
Mike is a great guy, and I am confused by the direction of this article. He is not superficial and He does care about a lot issues and has been a great model for Gay men. This is a porn blog and site not a place to judge professional and successful man like Mike Ruiz. If I’m incorrect on the nature of the article then I do apologize. Also we asked him questions on health and fitness and his work because we are a gay men’s lifestyle magazine that features health, love, food/drink, politics fashion. You forgot the quotes about how he feels about gays in business, marriage and advice for young professionals. Is porn not superficial?
Oh, I know the parts you’re referring to, Joey. Maybe they play better when not in the printed form? I’m not sure I’m helping Mike’s case by including these, but you asked for it.
Mike on gay culture:
“We’re not like some cult, some left wing deviant group. This country is practically ran by us- I mean we run the media, everything is ran by us. Just suck it up middle America and live with it!”
Candidly, the Lambrusco I was sipping at the exact moment I first read that quote and laughed out loud traveled up into my nasal cavity and left my sinuses burning for several hours afterward. That probably killed it for me. But it was peppy.
Mike’s advice to young up-and-comers navigating a fucking sinkhole of a job market:
“To not let fear keep you from anything.”
I can’t. I…just…can’t…
As for porn being superficial and this not being the venue to call bullshit, well, this is the Land of Nightcharm — where porn is never simple and nothing is at it seems. Here we bite the hand by not only lampooning porn, but by side-eying politics, fashion, love, and gay superheroes who sound like Bettina Barnes from “Psycho Beach Party.”
We can make anything dirty.
god i love you for writing this. on the eve of la pride, it seems there is so little to be “proud” of here in weho that doesn’t involve dieting, binge drinking, tipping well-oiled go-go boys, or shopping for underwear. disillusionment, attained.
Joey, this is a guy who has devoted his entire life to being beautiful, and creating beautiful images of beautiful people. If you can’t see that this is one of the most superficial, image-obsessed human beings ever to walk the face of the planet, then I cannot help you. That’s neat that he’s made a nice living for himself and achieved his lofty dreams (literally) of being in the entertainment industry, but that does not make him a superhero or someone we should be worshipping. He may be nice, but that does not make him deep or provide any real contribution to humanity.
i like that…can i have your facebook and chat with you?????
Mike walking in on Dirk Jager and Martin Mazza and promptly starts snapping pictures is actually for me a more natural a scenario for one day in the life of Mike Ruiz. Better yet, I could definitely see Roman Raggazzi walking in on him and demanding a sleek portfolio session. Which promptly deteriorates into porn, of course. I’d also like to see him roughed up by Zak Spears please then finished by Chris Wide. Thank you have a nice day.
cute angel, please go away…back to heaven with you.
This paragraph should enter the smackdown hall of fame. I couldn’t breathe from laughing so hard. Spectacular Shawn!
“Tune in and feel the depth as Mike joins a cast of models, aspiring models, Models/Actors/Whatevers, starfuckers, hairdressers, modeling agents, high-priced escorts, gold diggers, mercenary arm candy, former models, one of Marc Jacobs’s hit-it-and-forget-it-five-minutes-later himbos, and the Lost Smoke Monster for an odyssey of self-discovery and exfoliation. What could be better than watching actual grown men fill in for the materialistic drag queen manqués of the soul-salting Sex & The City 2 or the Real Housewives franchise?”
Thank you, Shawn. This needed so badly to be said.
Yes, kudos. Brimming with linguistic energy. Seriously, one of the one or two best essays I’ve read this year anywhere. Thanks, Shawn. As a writer who some days struggles to put a simple sentence together, reading your work often helps pull me out my torpor.
He is kind of an aging vapid old queen but I can respect that. He’s still hot, but he talks like a twenty year old twink, he is a prime example of gay that doesn’t know the meaning of aging gracefully