Performers - Part 89

Christopher Meloni

Christopher Meloni, born in 1961, is an American actor who, among other roles, played the murderer Chris Keller in the HBO prison drama Oz from 1998 to 2003.  All of today's photos and videos are from Oz.

In Oz, he has a gay affair with inmate Tobias Beecher, played by Lee Tergesen.  Above, they share a shower, with Meloni in the background and Tergesen in the foreground.

A shower with another inmate.  Meloni is at right.

And he gives us a frontal view.  This series was on HBO, so it did not have to be as prudish as network TV.

They showed things that would never appear on network TV, like Meloni pissing into a bucket.

We end with the concluding episode of series 5 of Oz, where Meloni, after being convicted of another murder, talks to Sister Pete.  He strips (above) and says that all his life his penis has led him where it wanted to go.  Now that he wants to share his love with someone, he can't.  He is then moved to Death Row.

Performers - Part 88

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were a comedy team in the early 1950s, featuring singer Dean Martin and nutty comic Jerry Lewis.  They started as a nightclub act but then did some TV appearances and made a number of movies together.

Some nude photos have surfaced of them at the Mirador Hotel in Palm Springs in 1952.  Above, Dean (at left) and Jerry (next to him) in a sauna or steam room.  The man at right is Mack Gray, Dean's assistant and close friend.

The rest of the photos were taken in a shower room.  Here are Jerry and Dean, semi-modest.

Here they are with Dean not modest at all, aside from someone's inept attempt to censor the photo.

Finally, Dean and Jerry, with Dean again totally exposed.  Although it looks like Jerry is jerking off, he's probably holding his hand like that as a joke.

Performers - Part 87

 Zachary Stains in
Ercole su'l Termodonte

Vivaldi wrote the opera Ercole su'l Termodonte (Hercules on Thermodon) in 1723.  It's about one of the labors of Hercules in which he has to fight a tribe of Amazon women.  The opera was revived in 2006 at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.  See the opening of the opera above.

The music is rather repetitious (there's a reason this opera hadn't been revived in almost 300 years), but keep watching, because after around 20 seconds, Hercules appears, played by American tenor Zachary Stains wearing the legendary lion skin of the lion that Hercules killed, and almost nothing else.

The set, featuring large marble broken phalluses, has been called the gayest thing ever.

Hercules' lion skin does not cover his nudity, and Stains does not try to hide it.

In fact, later, he doffs the lion skin entirely for a while.

Here's the aria in which he gets completely naked.  Before that, we see him kissing another guy.  What's up with that?  The other guy is his male companion Theseus, whose part was written for a female voice but originally played in 1723 by a castrato (a castrated male singer with a high voice) because a papal edict forbade women to sing in Rome.  In the 2006 revival, Theseus was played by a woman in a male costume.

It's interesting that the Church viewed the idea of a woman singing as so awful that it needed to be banned, but the Church had no problem with the idea of castrating a boy to preserve his high voice.

In any case, Hercules kisses Theseus, which seems rather gay, and then proceeds to take off what little clothes he has on.  Enjoy.

Performers - Part 86

Antioquia

Antioquia was a band that started in Antioquia, Colombia, then moved to San Francisco and Oakland, California.  They were most active from about 2008 to 2012.  Above, an official band photo taken on Feb. 18, 2008 at Kirby Cove with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.  The band members are, from left: Craig Miller, Paul Martin, Maddy Streicek and Adley Penner.

Another photo from the Feb. 18, 2008 photo shoot, with a peekaboo view of Adley Penner.

And another photo from the same photo shoot.

The official band photo made it into this poster for the band playing on Oct. 7, 2008.

We end with another photo shoot on June 26, 2009.  This one is called "interpretive swimming", whatever that is.

Performers - Part 85

Jesse Rutherford

Jesse Rutherford, born in 1991, is an American singer, songwriter and former actor.  He is the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band The Neighborhood.  This photo was taken early in his career, before he was covered with tattoos.

A rear view with only one tattoo.

A later shot, with his chest and arms covered with tattoos.

A butt shot.

We end with a video clip of him pissing, which he obviously arranged and approved.

Performers - Part 84

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Performers - Part 83

 Patrick (Paddy) Costello

Dillinger Four is a punk rock band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1994.  One of the band members, Paddy Costello, occasionally strips naked onstage.  Above, playing at The Fest music festival in Gainesville, Florida in 2005.

Here he is again at The Fest in 2006.

At the Insubordination Fest punk rock music festival in Baltimore, Maryland in 2009.

Another view of him at the 2009 Insubordination Fest.

At the Now That's Class music bar in Cleveland, Ohio in 2009, a fan seems to be stuffing a piece of paper into his butt.

We end with this undated photo.  Paddy is certainly not a muscle god; in fact, he's a bit on the chubby side, but he's unashamed and he doesn't care.  His tattoo says "How much art can you take?"

Performers - Part 82

 The Beatles

The Beatles were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.  Of the four, John was the most willing to be photographed nude.  Above, he posed with his girlfriend Yoko Ono for the cover of the November 23, 1968 issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

Years later, he and Yoko graced the cover of Rolling Stone again on the January 22, 1981 issue.

In 1968, John and Yoko put out the album Two Virgins, with this full-frontal photo on the cover.

How could they sell the album with that naked cover?  In stores, the album was covered with brown paper with a cutout for John and Yoko's faces and the album name Two Virgins.

John was even photographed sporting an erection in this photo with Yoko.

What about the other Beatles?  I don't know if this nude photo of Paul McCartney is real or fake.

But this photo of Paul in the bathtub, taken by his wife, is real, including a peekaboo view.

There are apparently no unfaked nude photos of George or Ringo.  We end with this 1968 pop art poster of all four Beatles by Richard Bernstein.  It's art, not a photo, and it shows them all circumcised.  In actual fact, Paul was circumcised, but John certainly wasn't.  I don't know about George and Ringo.  Oh, well.

Performers - Part 81

Dave Navarro

Dave Navarro, born in 1967, is a rock musician.  From 1986 to 1993 he was lead guitarist for Jane's Addiction and from 1993 to 1998 he was with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Since then he has done solo work.  He is known for his tattoos.  Above, an early photo in the shower where he is relatively tattoo-free.

In 2010 he posed for this PETA ad advocating "Ink, not mink."

Another PETA ad, this one from 2013, opposing animal testing.

I don't know the occasion for this photo of him naked in a coffin.

He has posed for some pretty explicit photos, like the one above.

And this is said to be his cumshot.  It's too blurry to verify whether the tattoo matches his belly tattoo saying "Trust No One."

But in any case, here are the paper towels to clean up!

Performers - Part 80

 RITE by Florence Peake

Igor Stravinsky was a Russian composer.  In his 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring, the plot involves primitive rituals celebrating the advent of spring in which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim and dances herself to death.  The music is very avant-garde compared to classical music by previous composers such as Tchaikovsky.  The premiere performance of the ballet in 1913 caused a near-riot.  There was no nudity involved – it was the music and the choreography (which involved stomping) that the audience objected to.

Above is Igor Stravinsky in 1912.  He sent this photo to French composer Florent Schmitt with the comment "I send you my nude body, which is not to be seen elsewhere."

In 2018, Florence Peake created a "performance work" partly based on The Rite of Spring called RITE, which critics described as "a primal, erotically charged mud fest."  The mud fest was staged in the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, England.  Three naked women and two naked men performed on a landscape of wet clay.

First the clothed dancers made things out of the clay.  The dancers became naked and the clay became waterlogged.

The dancers flung clay in fistfuls at the wall while the audience cowered.

It was only during the last ten minutes that a recording of part of the Sacrificial Dance from The Rite of Spring was played.

At the end, Florence Peake (dressed, at center) posed with the performers.  Perhaps it was not a deathless work like The Rite of Spring, which is now considered a masterpiece, but almost anything goes in the name of art.