Weighing In - Part 94

 Antonio Escalante

Antonio Escalante, born in 1985, is a Mexican professional boxer.  Above, he weighs in for a fight with Roberto Marroquin in Oklahoma in 2013.    The guy holding the modesty cloth lowers it, allowing us to catch a glimpse.

The glimpse in the video is brief, so I captured it in this gif.

Escalante lost that fight, but his overall record is 29 wins, 11 losses.

Hiking - Part 94

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Poem of the Day - Part 94

 Seven Ages of Man
by Robert Conquest

This is a limerick written by Robert Conquest as a humorous summary of Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man from the famous passage beginning "All the world's a stage" in the play As You Like It.  To appreciate how clever the limerick is, you can read Shakespeare's original at the end of this post.

I've taken the limerick one step further by adding illustrations, though they may not be exactly what Robert Conquest (or Shakespeare) had in mind.

Seven ages: first puking and mewling;

Then very pissed off with his schooling;

Then fucks

and then fights;

Then judging men's rights;

Then sitting in slippers;

then drooling.

*          *          *

To compare, here is Shakespeare's original from As You Like It:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Artists - Part 96

Paul Cadmus

Paul Cadmus (1904-1999) was an American artist.  He became part of the photographic collective PaJaMa, which stood for Paul, Jared, Margaret.  Jared French was Paul's lover, and Margaret French was Jared's wife, who was apparently OK with the arrangement.

Above, a 1935 photo taken by Jared French showing (front to back) Paul Cadmus, Bernard Perlin (a friend), and Margaret French.

Almost all photos of Paul Cadmus are rear views, but this photo by George Platt Lynes of Cadmus in a torn T-shirt shows a rare frontal view.

But it's Cadmus' art that we're interested in.  This 1935 painting called YMCA Locker Room was published in the March 29, 1937 issue of LIFE magazine in an article on Cadmus' art.  LIFE would publish rear nudity, but not frontal nudity.

Gilding the Acrobats, published in the same 1937 issue of LIFE.

The Shower, 1943, depicts the PaJaMa trio: Margaret French, Jared French (seated) and Paul Cadmus (in the shower).

The Bath, 1951.  Cadmus painted and drew many male nudes, more than I can show here, using many different models. The models for The Bath were Jack Fontan and Jensen Yow.

The Nap, 1952.

Male Nude, 1955, model Ted Starkowski.

Male Nude, 1965.

We end with Sleeping Beauty, which dates from the 1950s.

Beach Bums - Part 91

 Tambaba Open 2024

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, on this beach clothing is forbidden, as this sign says: "Nudity is mandatory beyond this point."

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.

We've seen some of these competitions before.  Today we look at the 15th Tambaba Open, held in September 2024.

Normally, total nudity is mandatory on this beach, but surfers wear T-shirts of different colors for the competition to help the judges keep track of who's who (above).  But their bottom half is still nude.

Another surfer.

The competition judges are naked, like everyone else on the beach.

Two of the competitors.

Above is a photo of the winners posing behind their surfboards to hide the nudity for a publicly acceptable view.  From left to right, they are the 4th, 3rd, 1st, and 2nd place winners.  The 1st place winner was William Meira, and 4th place was his brother Ulysses Meira.

But in this video, showing the winners lining up for the previous photo, we get to see a bit more of them.

Gods, Myths and Heroes - Part 88

Pluto/Hades

Pluto was the Greek and Roman god of the underworld.  Do not confuse him with the Christian concept of Satan.  Pluto was not evil, and the afterlife was not divided into Heaven and Hell; everyone went to the same underworld after they died, with the exception of a few heroes chosen by the gods who went to the Elysian Fields.  Pluto ruled the underworld.

Early on, he was called Hades by the Greeks, but later he became known as Pluto, and Hades referred to his realm.  The Romans adopted the name Pluto.

Above, Pluto by Hendrik Goltzius, 1588.

The most well-known myth involving Hades/Pluto was his abduction of the goddess Persephone to be his wife.  Above, The Rape of Proserpina by Vincenzo di Rossi, c. 1565.  Proserpina is the Italian name for Persephone.  Rape refers here to abduction, not sexual rape, although sex undoubtedly followed.

Above is a rear view of that same statue, The Rape of Proserpina.  In Greek myth, after he abducted Persephone, Pluto married her, and they ruled the underworld together.

Here's another statue of The Rape of Proserpina.  This one is by Bernini in 1621.  Note that Pluto is accompanied by his three-headed dog Cerberus.

Cerberus guarded the gates of the underworld – he let you in, but you couldn't go back out again.  One of the mythical Labors of Hercules was to capture Cerberus.  Above, Hercules and Cerberus by Franco de Zurbaran, c. 1634.

Pluto and Cerberus by Maerten van Heemskerck, c. 1555.  It turns out that the name Cerberus comes from the proto-Indo-European word kerberos, meaning spotted.  So, in effect, the fearsome three-headed dog was named Spot.

A sixteenth century print of Pluto holding a bident with Cerberus.  What's a bident?  You've heard of a trident, a three-pronged spear.  Well, a bident is a two-pronged spear.

We end with a modern representation – a 1994 painting of Robert Lucy as Pluto by Sylvia Sleigh.

World Naked Bike Ride - Part 97

Portland, Oregon 2025

There were two World Naked Bike Rides in Portland in 2025.  The first was the usual ride in the summer.  Then in September, in response to protests being held outside the ICE facility (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in Portland, President Donald Trump announced that he would send in National Guard troops, claiming that Portland was "war-ravaged" by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.  Of course he lied; the protests were peaceful and Antifa is not a terrorist group.

The people of Oregon, including the Governor, were outraged by Trump's decision to send troops into Portland.  The organizers of the World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) decided to hold a second "emergency" WNBR on October 12 to protest ICE.

The ride staged a "die in" on Portland's Burnside Bridge (above).

Then the ride continued.

Many of the riders were not naked.  Nudity in WNBRs is always optional ("as bare as you dare"), and this ride was in October, and it was chilly – the temperature was in the mid 50s.  To make it worse, it started to rain.

But the riders forged on.  They were accompanied by these two naked runners.

A rear view of the runners.

And a side view.  One runner had a variety of signs, including this sassy one.

The WNBR route led to the ICE headquarters.  The video above show some of the WNBR riders passing ICE.

The naked bike riders were not the only ones protesting ICE on Oct. 12.  We end with a photo of some of the other protesters.

The City of Portland and the State of Oregon fought Trump's deployment of National Guard troops in court.  On Nov. 7, after a three-day trial, a U.S. District Judge barred the deployment.  On Dec. 23, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to overturn the ruling, and on Dec. 31, Trump abandoned his plan to send troops to Portland.

Protests against ICE have continued in Portland in 2026, including a No Kings protest in March.