Performers - Part 78

Mozart - Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) is a lighthearted opera in which the hero rescues his beloved, who has been kidnapped and is being held in a Turkish harem.

In 2004, at the Komische Oper in Berlin, director Calixto Bieito transformed the setting from a Turkish harem to a Berlin brothel with fetishism, masturbation, urinating (singer on singer) and nipple-slicing. Subscribers and sponsors were outraged.

One of the characters, Osmin, who manages the seraglio, appeared completely naked, as seen above.  Osmin was played by bass singer Jens Larsen.

And you thought classical music was boring!

Photographers - Part 78

 George Dureau, part 2

Earlier this month we saw some photographs by New Orleans photographer George Dureau (1930-2014).  Today we look at some more of his work.  He took many photos of black men, many of them nude.  Above, Jonas Williams, 1979.

This photo of Jordan Page, Emmitt Johnson and Gloria Johnson, 1983, is unusual for including a woman.  Almost all of Dureau's nudes were men.

Raymond Maxwell Hall.

Rico Fortune.

Dureau is unique in that he took many photos of dwarfs and amputees.  Above, Sonny Singleton.

Another little person, Stanley Hurd, 1983.

Wing Ding Crest, an amputee.

We end with another amputee, Wilbert Hines.

Dureau taught Robert Mapplethorpe, who is said to have been inspired by Dureau's amputee and dwarf photos, which showed the figures as "exposed and vulnerable, playful and needy, complex and entirely human individuals."

George Dureau died in 2014 of Alzheimer's, aged 83.

Calendars - Part 78

Barefoot Man 2025

Last time we saw the Barefoot Man 2024 calendar.  It's the successor to the long-running Warwick Rowing calendar put out by the rowing team at Warwick University, England.  The calendar is not only a fundraiser, but it promotes a gay/straight alliance to challenge homophobia.

Today we look at their 2025 calendar.  The cover features Eric.

January features Stewart, Francis, Jamie, and Olly by the Zambezi River in Mozambique.

February features Tommy and Tyler on the Santa Teresa Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.

March features Javi, Alex, and Manu in Toledo, Spain.

April features Francis at Cahorra Bassa Lake in Mozambique.

May features Eric in the Diamante Valley in Costa Rica.

June features Tommy and Tyler on the Santa Teresa Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.

July features Jose in the Diamante Valley in Costa Rica.

August features Tommy on the Santa Teresa Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.

September features Tommy on the Santa Teresa Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.

October features Jose, Nic, and Shelby in the Diamante Valley in Costa Rica.

November features Alex and Brian in Toledo, Spain.

We end in December with Olly, Stewart, Francis, and Jamie by the Zambezi River in Mozambique.

Protests - Part 78

Naked Handstander, part 3

We continue our mini-series on the Naked Handstander, Jonathan Scholes from Australia.  He has been doing naked handstands all over the world as a form of protest.  All of today's handstands were done in Norway.  Above, Festplassen, Norway.

What is he protesting?  Planned obsolescence – products that are deliberately designed to have a short lifespan so consumers have to buy or upgrade them over and over again.  He hopes that his naked handstands will help draw attention to this issue.

Above, he does a naked handstand in Bryggen Bergen, Norway.

At Mogen Sognefjord, Norway.

At More og Romsdal, Norway.

In Oslo, Norway in 2011.

In Preikestolen, Norway in 2011.

On Trolltunga, the "troll's tongue".  We saw this image in an earlier post about hiking to Trolltunga.

Yes, Norway gets cold and snowy, but that doesn't stop our intrepid Australian.

Next time: more naked handstands in other countries.

Thanksgiving 2025

Thanksgiving

Today we look at a Thanksgiving tradition, pumpkin pie.  Above are excerpts from an episode of This Dude Cooks in the Nude, where host Mitch London shows us how to make homemade pumpkin pie.  In the episode, he makes the whole thing from scratch, including making the crust and mixing all the ingredients, including pumpkins that he chopped up and put through the blender, but I edited it down to the pie going into the oven and the delicious finished result.

And speaking of pumpkin pie, look what's on the table, above.  Mouth-watering!

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Note: yesterday, Blogger "unpublished" my blog post on Ivy League posture photos part 57, claiming that it violated their community guidelines (which it didn't – it was no different than my previous 56 posts of Ivy League posture photos). 

I asked for yesterday's post to be re-evaluated (hopefully by a human), which took all day, but they finally approved and reinstated the post.  So if you missed seeing my "Ivy League" post yesterday, it's there now.

Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 57

Ivy League Posture Photos

Yale started taking nude photos of incoming freshmen in 1919 as part of a program to detect and correct posture problems.  The Yale photos have erroneously been associated with William Sheldon, a psychologist at Harvard and author of Nazi-like eugenic theories who used Harvard nude posture photos to illustrate his theory of somatypes.  The Yale program predates Sheldon, and, as far as I can tell, the Yale photos were never connected to Sheldon's work.

Here are posture photos of eight more Yale students that I had the opportunity to acquire.

This is Yale freshman M. P. on Oct. 21, 1958.

In 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to photograph the front, rear, side and top view.

This is Yale freshman D. N. on Oct. 27, 1958.

Note the strange pins stuck to each student's back and chest.

This is Yale freshman John Peet Nutting on Oct. 21, 1958.

The pins were stuck on at specific points for later posture analysis.

This is Yale freshman R. R. on Oct. 27, 1958.

Supposedly, by examining the angles formed by connecting the points where the pins touched the body, certain posture problems could be detected.

This is Yale freshman Robert Blair Reynolds on Oct. 23, 1958.

If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions, and a second posture photo was taken.

This is Yale freshman walter Leo Schiff on Sept. 27, 1951.

Photos taken before 1952 show only a side view.

This is Yale freshman R. H. on Sept. 28, 1951.

The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium.  Nobody outside the gymnasium staff saw the photos, and the photos were not published for other students to see.

This is Yale freshman A. K. on Oct. 1, 1951.

The posture photo program was discontinued in the 1960s, and later, most of the photos were burned.  However, some of the photos escaped burning, including the photos that I have been showing in this series.

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Note: some of my followers consider these photos an invasion of privacy for the students.  To protect the privacy of the students, I only publish the names of students who have died.  Legally, the right to privacy does not extend beyond death, i.e. it does not extend to spouses and relatives of the deceased person.

I consider these photos to be a historical record of the time.  Almost all of the Ivy League posture photos were burned when their existence became widely known.  In my opinion, that was akin to book-burning of books that someone claimed were obscene.  These photos are not obscene.  They should be celebrated, not hidden away.

Ads - Part 76

 Elave

Elave is a brand of skin care products made by Irish company Ovelle Pharmaceuticals.  In 2007 they produced this commercial, a deliberate satire of their rivals' commercials, purporting to show their workers creating and testing products behind the scenes – except every single person in the commercial is naked, with plenty of frontal views.  The commercial touts how they have no unsafe ingredients, and it ends with the catch phrase "We have nothing to hide."

The commercial was shown online on the website www.nothing-to-hide.co.uk, which has since been discontinued, and it was also posted on YouTube, where it became a hit.  It was apparently not actually shown on TV.