Halloween 2022

 Halloween

This year we're looking at some Halloween costumes.  Shhh, just between us, some of them are a little bit risqué.

The Roman legionnaire costume is always popular.

And here's a more recent equivalent, the Imperial Storm Troopers.

Don't have a costume?  There's always the old standby of covering yourself with a sheet to be a ghost.

Just be sure to cut some holes where needed.

Feeling devilish?  Just get a pair of horns and you're all set.

Here's Rob Gronkowski, New England Patriots football player, wearing a similar costume.  Sportswriters call him one of the greatest tight ends of all time.  OK, I can believe that.

Whatever you wear (or don't), Happy Halloween to all of you!

Poem of the Day - Part 29

 The Firefly

by Odgen Nash

                The firefly's fame

                Is something for which science has no name

                I can think of nothing eerier

                Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a person's posteerier

This gif is from a video where our human firefly removes a lightbulb from an overhead light and sticks it into his ass, then puts his finger into the empty lightbulb socket, and when he switches on the electricity, the bulb lights.  Note: don't try this at home!  Of course, it's a trick, because that can't really happen, but I think it fits this poem pretty well.

Boys and Their Balls - Part 26

Football

We continue our look at American pro football players.

Here's another example that if you do an interview in a men's locker room, there might be naked men there.  This is the locker room of the Atlanta Falcons football team.  In the background, quarterback Luke McCown can be seen stripping at left, and at the very end he walks naked across the room.  For some reason I wasn't paying much attention to what the guy being interviewed was saying.

Of course, the ESPN Body Issues have featured lots of football players over the years, though they're never frontally naked.  Above is Anthony Costanzo of the Indianapolis Colts.

However, the ESPN photos sometimes show some butt, like Denver Broncos player Von Miller, above ...

Or New England Patriots player Julian Edelman.

Although it's not nude, I couldn't resist including this clip from an interview that Edelman did during the ESPN Body Issue photoshoot.  "My body is my temple," he said.  "That's why I like to feed it burgers."  Now that's a man after my own heart!

4-year-old Forrest Decker, son of former Denver Broncos player Eric Decker, learned how to take photos and post them on Instagram.  Here's a photo he posted.  Oh, that's his dad naked in the shower in the background.

But I don't think Eric Decker was embarrassed over a little Instagram nudity.  Here he is promoting a cookbook by his wife Jessie James Decker.

And here's a photo that his wife posted of him on vacation in Cabo San Lucas.

Washington Redskins player Chris Cooley posted this photo on his blog of himself reading a playbook called "Tight Ends Test."  Did he not notice that his penis was visible at the bottom of the photo, or did he not care?

Sometimes the naked photo is quite deliberate, but not intended to be shared.  New England Patriots player Brandon Spikes sent this naked selfie to a girl who later posted it on Twitter.  Well, that's the risk you take when you send naked selfies.

And sometimes the sharing is very deliberate.  In 1977, former Green Bay Packers player Morley Rolhaeuser followed in Jim Brown's footsteps by posing for Playgirl.  Smile!

Weighing In - Part 29

 Dominic Mazzotta

Dominic Mazzotta, nicknamed "The Honey Badger," is an American Mixed Martial Arts fighter.  In this video, he's weighing in at the Bellator 197 MMA event in 2018, and as he steps up to the scale, he gives us a little towel flash.

Was the flash deliberate?  I don't know.  Did he care if people saw him?  Like the meme says, Honey Badger don't care.

Beach Bums - Part 25

 Wreck Beach, Vancouver

The sign says "Welcome to Wreck Beach."  Located in Vancouver, British Columbia, it's the oldest and largest nude beach in Canada.

I was not able to find out why it's called Wreck Beach.  Presumably there had been one or more shipwrecks nearby.  I think this photo was taken on another beach, but I couldn't resist posting it here, because it was labeled "Old wreck."  You decide which one is the old wreck.

The beach is adjacent to the campus of the University of British Columbia (UBC).  Not surprisingly, a large percentage of the beachgoers are UBC students.  It must be nice for the students to have a nude beach right next door.

The beach is sandy, as evidenced by this guy who seems to have forgotten to bring a beach blanket or towel to lie on.

There are even vendor kiosks on the beach like this one where you can buy food and drink without concern about being naked, because the vendors are naked, too.

The beach is very large (nearly 5 miles long) and much of it looks unspoiled.  You'd never know you were next to a major city.  The beach is at the bottom of a forested cliff, with long stairways descending from the UBC campus just above.

This headline could have been worded better.  Nudists had no problem with erections.  In 2004, the university proposed building four 20-story residential towers on the edge of the campus above the beach.  The tops of the towers would have been visible from the beach above the trees, and the nude beach would have been visible from the upper stories of the towers.

An organization called the Wreck Beach Preservation Society conducted naked protest demonstrations against the building of the towers.  Above, society members on the beach raise their fists in protest.  They weren't worried about students spying on the nude beach from the upper floors of the towers.  What they objected to was the visibility of the towers from the beach.  Previously, on the beach you were completely removed from any sight of the city and had the feeling of being out in nature.

Despite the protests, the towers ended up getting built.  The height was reduced from 20 stories to 17 and 18 stories, but the tops of the towers are visible from the beach.

The Wreck Beach Preservation Society continues to maintain the beach.  It's very much a community organization.  To raise money, it holds an annual Bare Buns Run on the beach, a 5K race.  Here are some of the runners gathering before the race in 2011.

And they're off!

This guy, Bradley Gates from Seattle, won the Bare Buns Run in 2015.

The beach faces west.  And so we bid farewell to Wreck Beach with this scenic sunset view.

Photographers - Part 28

 Paul Blanca

Paul Blanca (1958-2021) was a Dutch photographer.  Born Paul Vlaswinkel, he had a chance encounter with Robert Mapplethorpe in 1979 and followed him to the U.S.  In the 1980s, he made a name for himself with a series of self-portraits.  Above is Self Portrait With Roses, 1980.

Some of the self-portraits featured extreme body abuse.  In one, an arrow has pierced his cheek; another shows a picture of Mickey Mouse carved on his back with a razor.  Above is Self Portrait Lost Love, 1982, in which I think the heart shape is his own blood.

Others were more sexual.  This is Self Portrait Thailand, 1982.

Self Portrait Bull, 1983.

Back in Amsterdam in 1994, someone planted a bomb in the car of another Dutch artist, Rob Scholte.  Scholte lost both legs.  He named three artists close to him as possible perpetrators.  One of them was Paul Blanca.  Shortly before, Blanca had done a piece for a magazine showing how easy it was to obtain illegal guns and hand grenades.  Despite the fact that the car bomb had nothing to do with a hand grenade, in the public mind, Blanca was guilty of the bombing.  The police did not agree and closed the case without finding the culprit.  Today, the prevailing theory is that the artist was car-bombed by mistake, and the real target was a lawyer who owned a similar car.

Nevertheless, at the time, people accused Blanca.  Galleries refused to carry Blanca's photos, and museums and collectors stopped buying his work.  Blanca turned to drugs and alcohol and fell into a negative spiral.

This is Self Portrait Go Fuck Yourself, 1996, from the period following the bombing.  Both men in the photo are Blanca.

This is Self Portrait Suck Your Own Cock from the same period.  Again, both men are Blanca.

I don't think Blanca was gay.  He took many photos of nude women, which I have not shown, and he was married and had a son.  Here is an earlier photo, Self Portrait Father and Son, 1984, showing Blanca with his infant son.

Another earlier photo, Self Portrait Mother and Son, 1982, shows Blanca with his mother in a tender pose.

In an echo of that photo, Blanca made another photo Self Portrait Mother and Son in 2014.  He said "This photo is a self portrait where I carry my mother, just like I had carried her to bed for 4 years because she couldn't walk.  It was taken 32 years after the first Self Portrait Mother and Son."

Addicted to drugs and alcohol, Paul Blanca died in 2021 at the age of 62.

Calendars - Part 27

 Red Hot 2019

Last time, we saw the 2018 calendar Red Hot Cocks that British photographer Thomas Knights produced to try to fight British prejudice against gingers by presenting redheaded men as positive and desirable.  In 2019 he made another Red Hot Cocks calendar, showing frontal views of redheads.  Here's Mr. April, Dillon North.

But he also made a 2019 calendar called Red Hot Butts, showing the same models from a different angle.  Here's Dillon North in the Red Hot Butts calendar.

Mr. May is Aarron LeBlanc.  The overall theme was sports, with each month's model featuring a different sport.  April was cricket; May was football (which Americans call soccer).

And here's Aarron's barely visible butt.

Mr. August is James Marshall as a golfer.

James addresses the ball.  "Hey, there.  Do you come here often?"

Mr. November is Anthony Currie as an ice hockey player. 

I think the Red Hot Butts viewers got shortchanged by this side view of Anthony's butt.

December is Jake Hold with a baseball bat.

Baseball isn't really a British sport.  It seems Jake is confused about what to do with the bat.

We end with the cover of the Red Hot Butts calendar.  Got milk?

Thomas Knights continued producing Red Hot calendars, so we may see more of them.  Stay tuned.