Boys and their Balls - Part 49

Baseball Cards

Here's another in my series of real and fake baseball cards.  I've taken the real cards and, with a bit of Photoshop legerdemain, I've substituted a different real photo of the player.  It's just not the type that you'd normally see on a baseball card.

A real card.  Bob Allison (above) was a rookie for the Washington Senators in 1959.

My fake card, using a real photo of Allison in 1959 with Hal Griggs and Harmon Killebrew off to the right.  (I confess I colorized the image.)   And what's that peeking out of Allison's shirt down there?

Hanley Ramirez played for the Miami Marlins in 2010.

My fake card shows a 2010 photo of him, discreet compared to some other players you'll see later.

Jose Bautista played for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2012.

And the ESPN Body Issue featured him that year.

Jose Reyes played for the Mets in 2011.

And he made the 2011 ESPN Body Issue.

In 2014, Prince Fielder was with the Texas Rangers.

And he was in the ESPN Body Issue that year.

Delino Deshields played for the Cleveland Indians.

And he took this selfie.

Matt Festa was a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.

But he's pitching something else in this selfie.

We end with Aroldis Chapman, relief pitcher for the New York Yankees.  His pitches were very high velocity, known in baseball as "heat."

And here he is working up some heat.  You can't see all of his face, but that's him – positively identified by his tattoos.

I never collected baseball cards as a kid, but I would have if they looked like this.

Weighing In - Part 51

 Billy Joe Saunders

Billy Joe Saunders, born in 1989, is a British middleweight and super-middleweight boxer.  Above, he weighs in for a fight against Matthew Hall in 2013 to defend the British & Commonwealth middleweight title.  Saunders won.  Apparently a modesty towel was not needed at the weigh-in, though he does cover up with his hands.

Above, he weights in for a fight in 2014.  An official takes off his jacket and holds it up as a screen, but he does so well after Saunders strips, and in any case, the photographer is off to the side.

Here he strips to weigh in for a 2017 fight against David Lemieux defending his WBO World Middleweight title.  Again, he covers up with his hands, but there's a brief instant ...

and thanks to the magic of digital phototography, here's the view of that instant.  By the way, Saunders won the fight.

Saunders is noted for bad behavior.  In 2018, he pulled over another car on the highway and, impersonating a cop (though he wasn't dressed as one and wasn't driving a police car), tells the driver to pull down his trousers, then remove his shirt, and then pull down his underpants (called pants in Britain) on the pretext that the man may have a concealed weapon, while he or a friend takes a video of the whole thing.  When he finally tells the man to turn around and bend over, the man refuses, and Saunders laughs and drives away, treating the whole thing as a big joke and posting the video on social media.  Above is a clip from that video.

Another video surfaced of Saunders in his car offering to sell £150 of crack cocaine to a female drug addict if she will punch a passer-by in the face.  She does, and Saunders then laughs and drives off.  Another big joke.

The British Boxing Board of Control did not see the humor in either of these incidents.  They found Saunders guilty of "bringing the sport into disrepute" and fined him £100,000.

Poem of the Day - Part 50

Ozymandias

Ozymandias is the best known poem by English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818.  I have made one slight change to the wording (the name), but I think it fits, since this poem is all about colossal ego.

                                        I met a traveller from an antique land,

                                        Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

                                        Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

                                        Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

                                        And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

                                        Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

                                        Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

                                        The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

                                        And on the pedestal, these words appear:

                                        My name is Ozymandias Donald Trumpias, King of Kings;

                                        Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

                                        Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

                                        Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

                                        The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Photographers - Part 51

J. Wayne Higgs

J. Wayne Higgs (1939-2023) was a photographer and graphic artist in the Washington, DC area.  Born John Wayne Higgs, he dropped "John" and went by Wayne Higgs.

He is remarkable for the number of nude self-portrait photos that he made during a long life.  His book "naked i" contains a selection of them.  Literally hundreds of them can be seen on his Flickr page.  All of today's photos except the last one are his self-portraits.

Above, Nude male, self-portrait, taken in 1965 in Washington DC.

Self-portrait, 1966 shows that he was well-hung.

And Self-portrait, 1967 shows even more.

Squatting self-portrait, 1967, shows a good-looking young man.

Here he is in 1974.  He was taking nude photos of a female subject, and she wanted to take one of him.

Toot, a self-portrait was taken in 1976 in Washington DC.

The Interview ... a self-portrait melodrama dates from 1978.

Is it cocked? was used in a set of notecards with male nude photos that he published in 1980-1981 to be sold in gay boutique shops nationwide.  It was not explicitly identified as a self-portrait, but I'm almost certain that it is.

Self-portrait in the yard, 1987.

Art reference self-portrait, 1988.

Art reference self-portrait, 1988.

After a gap of some years, we see Those Who Wait, a self-portrait with some obvious photo-manipulation, taken in 2009 on Assateague Island, Maryland.

This 2010 self-portrait was untitled.  In 2010 he was 70 years old, but still very unashamed.

74th birthday suit self-portrait was taken on Nov. 14, 2013.

This is Fourth of July selfie, taken in 2020.

Our last photo of him is 82nd birthday self-portrait, taken on Nov. 14, 2021.

We end with this photo, not a self-portrait.  It's Higgs' photo of another man's cock.  As a professional photographer, he photographed all sorts of things, but his Flickr site is full of nude photo sessions, some of women, but mostly of men.  Was he straight?  His obituary said that he got married when he was 21 years old, and he and his wife had six children.

However, consider this.  When he posted the photo above on his Flickr page, someone commented "mmm".

J. Wayne Higgs replied, "That's what I always say every time he slides that big bare uncut head into my tight little hole."

Artists - Part 54

Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud (1922-2011) was a major 20th century painter.  Born in Berlin, he was the grandson of Sigmund Freud.  His Jewish family moved to England when he was 10 years old to escape the rise of Nazi Germany.

He painted a large number of portraits, but he is also noted for his nudes, both male and female.  Of course I'm concentrating on the males.  In the photo above, taken in his studio in 1992, he is painting Leigh Bowery, one of his favorite models.

The finished painting, Naked Man Back View, now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  The painting of the obese Bowery challenges our traditional idea of the nude.  The museum calls it a "still life of skin."

Naked Man with Rat, 1977, Art Gallery of Western Australia.  Freud's subjects were never strangers. They were always people in his life – friends, lovers, family and fellow painters.  The subject here is Raymond Jones, who loaned money to Freud to support his gambling debts.  Freud gave him paintings to repay the loans.  The rat was borrowed from one of Freud's girlfriends at the time and it was drugged to keep it docile for the portrait.

Freud was bisexual.  He fathered children with several women, but also had intense relationships with other male artists when he was young.  In Naked Man and his Friend, 1978 (above), the sexual element is implicit.  I haven't seen the model identified, but it looks like Raymond Jones again.

Naked Man on a Bed, 1987.  The strange mishmash at upper right is a mountain of rags that Freud kept in his studio to wipe his paintbrushes.

Two Men, 1987-1988, National Galleries of Scotland.  Sex is only faintly implied by the clothed man resting his hand on the naked man's leg.

Two Men in the Studio, 1987-1988 shows the same two men, but this time the sexual implication is stronger, with one man sleeping in bed while the other has gotten up to stretch.  Again, there's a mountain of rags in the background, along with another painting, this one a female nude, that Freud was presumably working on at the same time.

Leigh Bowery (Seated), 1990.  Bowery, a performance artist, was one of Freud's favorite models.

Nude with Leg Up, 1992, shows Bowery fully exposed to us, resting on the mountain of painter's rags.

And the Bridegroom, 1993, shows Bowery and his new wife Nicola Bateman.  She loved him and married him even though Bowery was gay.  He died of AIDS a year later.

David Dawson was Freud's assistant in the studio, and he also became Freud's model.  In Sunny Morning - Eight Legs, 1997, we see two of Dawson's legs, four legs of Freud's whippet, and two unknown legs under the bed.

David and Eli, 2003-2004, shows David Dawson with another of Freud's dogs.

I have to show you this female nude, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995.  The model, Sue Tilley, worked at the Jobs Centre and was known as "fat Sue".  This painting holds the world record for highest price paid for a painting by a living artist.  It sold at Christie's New York in 2008 for 33.6 million dollars.

We end with this 1993 self-portrait called Painter Working, Reflection.  Lucien Freud died in 2011 at age 88.

Beach Bums - Part 48

 Tambaba Open 2022

Praia Tambaba, or Tambaba Beach, is a beautiful beach in the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraiba.  There is a clothed beach and a nude beach, but unlike American and European nude beaches, which are clothing optional, clothing is forbidden on this nude beach.  You have to be naked.

This beach is the site of the Tambaba Open, one of the world's biggest nude surfing competitions, sponsored by SONATA, the Sociedade Naturista de Tambaba (Tambaba Naturist Society) and the Brazilian Federation of Naturism.  Today we look at the 13th Tambaba Open, held in September 2022.

They require nudity on this beach, so even the photographers of the surfing contest have to be naked (above).

Before the main event, surfing contestants are allowed to do some practice surfing to get a feel for the site, which they do, naked.  Above, surfer Douglas Andrade.

Another surfer practicing.

And another.

A tent is set up for the judges and officials.  Everyone on the beach has to be naked, so they're naked, too.

For the actual competition, contestants put on colored "Tambaba Open" T-shirts, which would normally be forbidden on the nude beach, to help the judges distinguish who's who out in the waves.  This open space next to the officials' tent is the "locker room" for changing T-shirts.

But that's all they wear.  Their bottom half is still bare.

The surfing competition begins.

This is competitor William Meira.

Another view of William Meira.

Camaraderie between competitors.

The winners pose for a photograph.  Hey, guys, there's no need to be modest ...

That's better!  After, all, it's a nude beach.