Events - Part 85

 Christopher Street Day 2024, Berlin

Christopher Street Day or CSD is a European version of Gay Pride, held in several European cities.  The name commemorates Christopher Street in New York City, the site of the Stonewall riots in 1969, the first gay uprising against police brutality.  CSD Berlin draws hundreds of thousands of people.  The main event is a huge parade through the streets of Berlin.

In preparation for CSD in 2024, some guys are getting painted in Berlin's Leipziger Platz park with patterns of colored rectangles ...

to look like a Piet Mondrian painting.

Here are a couple of them and two other guys with different painted designs.

Here they are in the parade.  Most of the parade marchers are not naked.  There are thousands in the parade supporting LGBTQ rights, and almost all are clothed.

But the group we're looking at is naked.  Here's a rear view.

And here's another front view.

Three of them posing in the street.  The guy at right calls himself NinjaAndi on the Flickr photo sharing site.

Here's the whole group posing on the street.

The CSD parade ends at Berlin's famous Brandenburg Gate, which we see see here from the back side.  There are thousands of parade marchers, and as you can see, they're not naked.  Our naked guys are tolerated in the parade – even by the Berlin police – but we can't really call this a naked event.

Ads - Part 83

Directory Assistance, Belgium

Above, we see some people waiting for a bus in Brussels, Belgium in 2008.  Behind them is a huge poster advertising telephone directory assistance.  It says (in French) "Another fan of 13 13".  That's the number to call in Belgium for directory assistance in French.

Of course, the ad grabs your attention with a guy who has 13 13 painted on his butt showing himself to a crowd of people in the background.

Another version of the ad, above, says "Another fan of 12 12" in Dutch.  That's the number to call for directory assistance in Dutch, because both French and Dutch are spoken in Belgium.  And if you call 14 14, you get directory assistance in English.  They cover all the bases in Belgium.

Now he has 12 12 painted on his butt.  What gives?

It turns out he had nothing painted on his butt.  The guy was a streaker who ran onto the field at the Wimbledon tennis tournament in London, England on July 4, 2006, above.  European Directory Assistance, a Belgian company, used a photo of him with the crowd in the background, added their phone numbers on his butt, and used it in their ads.

He didn't just stand there at Wimbledon.  He ran around and did a cartwheel for the crowd.  The crowd was delighted.

And here's a frontal view of him.  His name is Sander Lantinga, and he was a 29-year-old Dutch disc jockey who did the streak as a challenge for the Dutch TV program Try Before You Die.

Then Wimbledon security came onto the field, took him away, and had him arrested.  The police released him after cautioning him about causing a minor public disorder.

Here's how it was shown on BNN, the Dutch TV network that runs the show Try Before You Die.  Unfortunately, they censored his nudity, but luckily for us, other photographers had captured the scene.

Hiking - Part 84

Badlands

Badlands are a type of terrain where rocks and soil have been extensively eroded.  Today we look at some badlands in the central and western U.S.  Above, Badlands National Park, South Dakota.

A hiker looking over some badlands in North Dakota.

Little Jerusalem Badlands in Kansas.

Castle Rock Badlands in western Kansas.

Badlands in Texas near Study Butte, west of Big Bend National Park.

Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona.

We end with a hiker in some unidentified badlands.

Weighing In - Part 85

Rey Trujillo

Reynaldo (Rey) Trujillo, born in 1982 and nicknamed "The Warrior", is an American MMA fighter based in Houston.  On Jan. 25, 2019 he fought Colin Wright for the featherweight title in the Fury Fighting Championship, an MMA event held in Houston.

Above, Rey weighs in for the fight.  He stripped behind a modesty cloth, but this video was taken from the side, and Rey's penis was visible.  It seems that didn't matter, because the video was apparently used to promote the event, as seen by the promotional wording at the bottom.

Here's a screen shot from the video.  I edited it to remove the annoying promotional wording, but I did not edit Rey's endowment.

And here's a slightly expanded view.

Rey Trujillo lost the fight.  He has won 21 fights and lost 28.

Poem of the Day - Part 85

 Eggs Rated
by Shel Silverstein

Here's Shel Silverstein's poem Eggs Rated.  It features clever wordplay.  I have accompanied it with some photos to make it not just eggs-rated, but X-rated.

These eggs

Are eggscellent.

I'm not eggsaggerating.

You can tell by my eggspression

They're eggceptional –

Eggstra fluffy,

Eggstremely tasty,

Cooked eggactly right

By an eggspert

with lots of eggsperience.

Now I'll eggsamine the bill ...

Ooh – much more eggspensive

Than I eggspected.

I gotta get out of here.

Where's the eggxit?

Art - Part 3

Moche Pottery

The Moche lived in northern Peru from about 100 to 800 AD, before the Inca Empire.  Their graves have been excavated by archaeologists.  These graves contained pottery.  What the Moche considered appropriate subjects for their pottery was very different from what we're used to from European art.  Above, this naked man is a tame example.  Now, the Greeks and Romans created a lot of sculptures of nude men, so what's different about Moche pottery?

The Greeks and Romans didn't focus on the penis, but the Moche did, like the spout of this Moche pot.

A drinking vessel.  The upper rim is perforated, so you can't drink from the rim.  You have to drink from the penis spout.

Some pots depicted sex.  What was unacceptable in Western art seems to have been a standard subject for the Moche, like this blowjob.

Another blowjob.

Surprisingly, vaginal sex is almost never depicted, but many of the pots depict anal sex.  Was gay sex another standard subject for the Moche?  Apparently so.

Another pot depicting anal sex.

A pottery figure pleasuring himself with a dildo.  We have to wonder whether public blowjobs, gay sex and dildos were commonplace in Moche society.

Finally, some of the pots depicted dead men masturbating.  Apparently, in Moche religion, after you died you could still jerk off in the afterlife.

We end with another dead man jerking off.  That sounds like a very comforting religion.

Beach Bums - Part 82

Kehena Beach, part 3

We've seen Kehena Beach before, but it's worth another look.  It's located on the south side of the "Big Island" of Hawaii, where I live.  After parking on the road, you have to take a rocky trail (above) that descends a 40-foot seaside cliff to get to the beach.

Here's an overall view of the beach.  It has beautiful black sand, and most of the beachgoers are clothed, as seen above.  Actually, nude beaches are illegal in Hawaii, but officials tolerate nudity on certain beaches, including this one, as long as there's no drug trafficking or sexual activity on the beach.

A nude beach-goer at the base of the cliff that backs the beach.

Some more nude beach-goers.

Sitting on the rocks.

A nice view, perhaps from the trail coming down.

The water is fine.

In fact, spinner dolphins are often seen right off this beach (above).  They have been known to swim up right next to people in the water off the beach.

You may also see sea turtles here.  They love the warmth of the black sand.  If you see one, leave it alone.  All sea turtle species in Hawaii are endangered or threatened, so let them enjoy the beach in their own way.