Paul Wynter, "L'Ercule Noir"

Handsome, symmetrical Antiguan-born Paul Wynter was, along with Serge Nubret (from Hercules and the Rebel Slave), one of the few black bodybuilders in Sword n' Sandal pictures. Paul Wynter's trademark outfit was his leopard-print bathing suit that called attention to his ethnicity...a gimmick that Scary Spice would later borrow during her pop years in the gay nineties.

Like his fellow Italian Sword & Sandal muscle star Alan Steel, Paul Wynter was also pretty short and it got downright unintentionally funny how the directors and others went out of their way to avoid demonstrating his average height. What Paul Wynter lacked in height he made up for with what is easily one of the most devastatingly chiseled and symmetrical physiques ever.

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, Paul Wynter played Maciste's brawny sidekick and ally in what was quite possibly the weirdest and campiest of the Maciste films, "Son of Hercules Against the Mole Men."

He was also the very dramatic heavy against Gordon Scott in "Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops," which incidentally, also featured scenes with a baby that would later grow up to be Fabio. Yes, that Fabio.

As an aside, I always wondered why more Peplum films didn't have muscular enemies for the heroes to fight on equal terms, like Godzilla vs. Mothra. As with Westerns made in the same era, one of the problems with Peplum as a genre is that the villains were never as compelling or interesting, and they are very seldom threatening or powerful, especially compared to the handsome muscle hero downright assured of victory against scheming, craven and downright bad foes. At least Paul Wynter's physique gave Maciste a credible, villainous threat.

Typically, it's good storytelling advice that if you want to be a slacker, ignore your hero and concentrate all your industriousness on your villain.

There are some counterexamples to this. For instance, Paul Wynter's leopardskin baddie was more interesting than the hero, and there was the vampiric, shapechanging Kobrak from Goliath Against the Vampires, and the race of identical Atlantean clones made from the blood of Uranus (don't ask) in classic MST3K fodder in Hercules and the Captive Women, who were at least powerful and credible enemies that could mop the floor with Herc. Perhaps it was the power and shock of their introduction, a surprise in an otherwise predictable movie.

Incidentally, Paul Wynter recently received a major award in his native Antigua from the Governor-General. Being of Cuban descent, I know exactly what that's like: little countries do everything in their power to honor anyone that makes it in the bigger world. Us Cubans for instance, never shut our traps about Dr. Carlos Finlay, who cured Malaria during the Spanish-American War.

WBF - World Bodybuilding Federation

The single most brilliant musician friend that I ever knew wanted to be a pianist, but she loathed the very idea of being a concert pianist, with the two-tailed coat and the white gloves. She wanted to play in t-shirts and jeans and show how piano and classical music could mean something to ordinary people without all the forced, phony conventions that come along with concert music, that it could be something fun and for everybody.

The mentality of a lot of classical concert fans can best be summarized by the sentence "hey, stop having fun, guys!" In fact, come to think of it that could also apply to the dull and stodgy world of bodybuilding.

I was reminded a little of that when I heard about the WBF - World Bodybuilding Federation, a bodybuilding league and competition created by Vince MacMahon, the panache filled huckster and showman responsible for the WWF (and more applicably, the XFL - a better metaphor for this bodybuilding league). A detailed history of the league, and one of the best blog reads in some time, can be found here.

The WBF was an insanely surreal carnival version of broadcast bodybuilding with bodybuilders adopting weird personas. For example, Tony Pearson had been an actual pilot and so his "character" came out with pilot goggles and gloves and so on as he did the usual bodybuilding flex and grind. There were catwalks that glowed, lots of arm candy girls, fireworks, and smoke bombs detonated in the background. Everyone had a "persona." The professional wrestling school applied to the WBF, where lots of effort was made to turn bodybuilders into not just athletes but superstars. And then there was the narration, which can best be described as YELLING, the kind of color commentary expected of Professional Wrestling. It's so different from the two stodgy dweebs in a booth prattling about "symmetry."

Tony Pearson I must admit, was something of a sensation. The narration insisted that he was "drug free," a claim that is usually worth a belly laugh and not much more. Though I am inclined to believe it in the case of the WBF for the same reason I believe it in American Gladiators: they're under far too much scrutiny to not play conservatively.

I hate to admit it, but I kind of like it all. I've often admired bodybuilding in other cultures like Korea because they don't just do the usual, graveyard-boring "stage where people flex to speed metal."

The WBF had a grand total of two competitions, in 1991 and 1992 and Gary Strydom won both. Here's an area where professional bodybuilding and this bizarre carnival converge: people win not so much because they are necessarily the best but because they have the connections. Gary Strydom was approached to wrestle by MacMahon, who had charisma, but Strydom turned him dwn. This is not too different really from the situation in "real" bodybuilding. Cory Everson is a great athlete but she only really won all those times because she was in the Weider's back pocket, after all. In that sense WBF is more like "real" bodybuilding than anyone would care to admit.

Statue criticized for having an enormous penis

In Jamaica, the "Redemption Song" statue is dedicated to the end of slavery. Instead of chain-breaking and other cliche imagery, the statue chose to show the awe and relief of freedom.

But the guy has a gigantic dick.

Reporters have really filthy minds when they dedicate themselves to it, and they really like to play games...even in the super-serious British press. The first time I realized this was way back with discarded Senator Rick Santorum, who because of his famous anti-gay sentiments received the honor of a gross sex fluid named after him. Man, it was downright hilarious to see newspaper articles work hard to slip in double-entendre phrases like "frothy" and "worked into a froth." It was like the reporters were playing a game with each other: who could put in the most sex references to Santorum without actually getting caught.

The coverage of the statue, when it was unveiled, focused entirely on the immense penis. It was like the reporter was constantly having to hide a giggle.

The thing that makes this so beautiful is that the statue's prudish critics can be accused of penis envy. Count the number of times the word "inadequacy" is used.

"Mutty [a critic of the statue] has an aversion to large penises, and I must say, the penis on the statue is large," wrote Mark Wignall a columnist for the Daily Observer newspaper.

For the most part, the controversy surrounding the statue at its opening has died down and it's a regular part of the city, on every tourist brochure. No one really cares anymore.

Despite the laid-back reputation of Jamaicans for sex, sun and pot-smoking, according to the Guinness Book of World's Records, Jamaica has more churches per mile than any other nation. It doesn't surprise me that the most sexy and interesting monument would come from a culture that at its heart is conservative. There is such a thing as being too casual about sex and bodies, so that all the fun is taken out of it. Ever seen Norway's Vigeland Sculpture Park? There's a nation that is comfortable about sex and nudity that its art is entirely boring, unidealized and straight-up square, with old women and fragile old men.

Visit a Photomanip Blog

I generally don't like photomanips for the same reason that I don't like most muscle growth themed art: a lot of artists don't quite understand that the best kind of photomanips, the most believable sort, are small, subtle twists for more pleasing proportions, and "extreme" level photomanips fall into the "uncanny valley," where something is obviously fake and your mind rebels against the idea.

Also, with the near-universal availability of programs like photoshop, there are a lot more bad photomanipulators than good ones.

With the blog BigDudes, the very best photomanips are the most recent ones where he just tweaks them for masculine dimensions instead of inflating them grotesquely. It's actually possible to see him improve: the first few images are unrecognizable masses of grunting overstuffed bulges, whereas the recent ones are sleek, unbelievably massive and well proportioned. Perhaps I don't "get" photomanips as well as others do, but I like to think for a woman I'm more visual about sexuality and attraction than normal. However, it is true that with any celebrity or photographed figure, the more they're airbrushed the worse things get.

Visit his work here.

Special emphasis should be paid to some of his more robust muscle posteriors and backs. This blog is definitely one to watch for.

"Weird Science" Muscle Growth Episode on Hulu

The muscle growth episode of the "Weird Science" TV series is right now on Hulu (first season, "One Size Fits All" if you're looking for it)...as is, for that matter, the entire series. Watch this episode here.

I didn't remember the "Weird Science" TV series...but Vanessa Angel is, surprisingly, a really great comedian with great timing. She's not as spellbinding as Kelly LeBrock, but she is a lot funnier. Supposedly, Vanessa Angel was the original choice for Xena, Warrior Princess, but Lucy Lawless was the last-minute replacement when she became unavailable...which I find hard to believe.

What I find amusing is the choice to play Wyatt's amazonian girlfriend. If she's an athlete and weightlifter, then I'm a Viking Princess.

Here's one of the more choice sequences for all you beefcake pervs:

A friend of mine that understood men as nearly as possible as it is to understand men, once said that every single guy's favorite movie was almost always one of three films: The Big Lewbowski, The Usual Suspects, and Pulp Fiction. If you've seen all three, you can talk with men about nearly any movie. While I liked all three of those films I'd hardly consider them my favorite movies ever, but then again, I'm not the target audience so it doesn't matter what I think.

If there's a female equivalent of the Pulp Fiction/Usual Suspects/Big Lebowski trio, it would probably be the John Hughes high school films. I always operated under the assumption that the John Hughes movies were all set in the same continuity, and that Anthony Michael Hall's character in Weird Science was the exact same guy as the Freshman in Sixteen Candles. After all, he pretty much played the exact same character in both films: a spastic, immature, yet sweet nerd who was totally unaware he was a geek and thought of himself as a cocky, sophisticated ladies man that understands romance and women.

I always thought Weird Science was John Hughes's Return of the Jedi, the weakest of his movies, kept watchable only because of adorable supercutie Ilan Michael Smith as Wyatt, and the absolutely cool and mesmerizing Kelly LeBrock. Add these two to another lengthy list of actors that I'm astonished never really became very big stars.

Bodybuilding in Al Capp's Lil' Abner

Amazing how some things in pop culture can be totally everywhere one minute and then totally vanish forever the next. Most people that know something about "Li'l Abner" know about it from the Broadway musical, but at one point it was a pop cultural phenomenon.

Essentially, the jokes are all about laughing at the dumb, hick ways of rural poor people - a now radioactively politically incorrect style of humor, which may explain why this isn't paid attention much these days.

This strip is from 1956 and features "Tiny" Yokum, an overdeveloped 15 1/2 year old muscular kid that gets bamboozled by some Charles Atlas type, who exploits him for his overdeveloped hick muscles.

"There's only room for one Toby MacGwire in Hollywood...and that's me...Jake Gyllenhaal!"

My question is this: who does Jake Gyllenhaal think he's fooling with that goofy "macho" stubble, anyway? It reminds me a little of my grandfather wearing sunglasses, a clear-cut case of trying too hard.

Jake Gyllenhaal gets me juiced like a cranapple (as opposed to his dopier and considerably less sexy doppleganger, Toby MacGwire), so imagine my great delight to hear that a huge chunk of the promotional materials for the movie "Prince of Persia" centers around him bulking up, doing his own stunts and being shirtless a lot. At first I was all prepared to be sarcastic and catty...after all, Hollywood tends to do this a lot with varying degrees of sincerity. Remember how part of Terminator 2's publicity was centered around Linda Hamilton getting "buff?" (That level of muscle wouldn't even get her in a bikini contest, much less Fitness-class.)

But the truth is, all sarcasm aside, the guy does look good! I've never seen anyone get this built for a role, with the possible exception of Harrison Ford preparing for "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."

Apparently, "Prince of Persia" is a real thing. I actually didn't know that. The first place I ever heard of "Prince of Persia" was in Russian author Victor Pelevin's short story "Prince of Central Planning," which showed the life of a Soviet-era drone in a slothful bureaucracy where all everybody does is play computer games all the time, with bureaucrats that live vicariously through their game characters. I thought "Prince of Persia" was as made up as the TV show "Galaxy Quest" until I saw the trailers for the movie and wondered for a minute if I had slipped into an alternate universe.

By the look of things, the film seems like Pirates of the Caribbean 4: an action romantic comedy with rapid-fire dialogue, and even has the Pirates trademark of awkward, totally inappropriate and out of place fantasy elements. For the record, I never liked the Pirates of the Caribbean films after the first: the "ghost story" horror elements were handled so broadly after the first film that they just became awkward and inappropriate, like an episode of Melrose Place that involves time travel. The Jim Henson Creature Shop ship of the dead was especially inappropriate; it felt like something that Guillermo del Toro would have Hellboy encounter instead of Captain Jack.

New York's Own: Javier Datiz

Lots of muscle guys live in my hometown (second only to L.A., San Diego and Miami as the body capital of the United States), but only a few are from here. Allow me to present the gorgeous Javier Datiz!

What got my attention is that even without his muscles he could be a model. And not a pretty boy model either: look at that square jaw of his, high cheekbones.

I've often found it interesting that men really, really hate it when women like a certain kind of movie star: Leonardo di Caprio comes to mind, as does the massive hate for Rudolph Valentino way back when in the silent era.

On the other hand, men don't mind it when women like men that are very much like how men see themselves: Harrison Ford and Clark Gable come to mind, very masculine, tough and heroic sorts.

I have a feeling that most guys wouldn't object to a girl with a crush on Javier Datiz. He's got a little Harrison Ford by way of Newyorican in him.

Michiko Nishiwaki, the Avenging Angel

A few people have wanted to hear about some great, sexy bodybuilders of the female sex, and I'm more than happy to oblige as I'm a real muscle omnivore. Especially with someone like Michiko Nishiwaki, who was sort of like Grace Jones, if Grace Jones was a great martial artist and athlete, and wasn't quite so terrifying. Michiko Nishiwaki was not the stereotype of the Asian woman, demure and petite. She was a champion lifter and bodybuilder.

You know, it's a funny thing about Steve Reeves: if anyone knows him at all, it's for his role as Hercules.

Yet, the amazing thing is, Reeves had a career of fifty films and he only played Hercules twice. It's the same thing with bodybuilder, powerlifting champion and martial artist Michiko Nishiwaki. In Hong Kong, she did over 40 movies all through the 1980s and 1990s, but the one movie everybody remembers her from is the Kung Fu cop film My Lucky Stars.

Everybody remembers that one scene where she takes her robe off and it's revealed she's built like a tank. They built to that reveal incredibly well, of course. All throughout the film she was in a kimono as a subservient, stereotypical, petite Asian woman, so when she throws her duds off it's a real shock. She must have the same tailor as Groundskeeper Willie and Ned Flanders.

I just know her from that one movie, so imagine my great surprise to discover that she has a filmography nearly a mile long. She always played the same kind of character: the bodybuilder assassin femme fatale. There were entire scripts were she was menacing and quiet and didn't deliver a single line of dialogue.

One crucial but interesting difference between male bodybuilders and female bodybuilders at the movies is that male bodybuilders are usually leading men and action heroes, whereas female bodybuilders usually are stuntwomen. The list of female bodybuilders in movies is almost entirely a list of stuntwomen: Spice Williams, Faith Minton, and yes, Michiko Nishiwaki: when she came to America, she did stunt work. She was Lucy Liu's stunt double for four movies, and Kelly Hu's for one. Come to think of it, the only female bodybuilder I can think of that didn't work as a stuntwoman was Rachel McLish.

(Rachel McLish is one of those people - like Dave Draper - that I sometimes wonder why they didn't make it as a movie star.)

1968 Mr. America Jim Haislop

When it comes to impressive mass and proportions, who could possibly top Jim Haislop? What a dramatic v-shape. With that narrow waist, he had a back so wide he could glide with it. His stomach was flat and hard, and he lacks the pregnant belly look of many modern bodybuilders.

You know what I miss about vintage bodybuilders? The fact that they have normal-looking thighs. Sure, they're massive and deeply cut, but his look normal, instead of an enlarged bag with cats keg like Ronnie Coleman's.

Here's my question: why didn't Jim Haislop become a big actor or something, like Steve Reeves did? He was certainly good looking enough. The answer is that he came around in the late sixties and so missed his window to be a bodybuilding movie star - by the late 1960s, the era of Dustin Hoffman, the muscle movie star was already passe, even more so for parody. There was a scene in "Beach Blanket Bingo" that had two men that were objects of fun: a leather jacket wearing, rebellious beatnik, and a bodybuilder. By the late sixties, these symbols of rebellion and virility were just objects of fun.

Periodically, our culture goes through phases of extreme redefinition of hipness, where cultures that were previously cool vanish. One major era of this was the early to mid 1990s, when Seattle grunge rock culture came in.

Here's something interesting: when was the last time you saw any Goths? It seems that a previously ubiquitous hipster subculture is starting to die out.

By the way, check out the old-school issue of muscular development. Obviously it was aimed at a different demographic than bodybuilding mags today, emphasizing great physical attractiveness. "A Greek God" indeed. What, he didn't want to be BIGGERSTRONGERLARGER?

And now a word from our sponsor...

Is it a requirement that all bodybuilding-themed commercials be either kitschy and dated-looking, or unbelievably weird?

In the second category, I offer up this vid. For those of us that are real connoisseurs of the handsome, crystal blue-eyed Dennis Newman, it's actually quite startling to see him here, because he actually does look like a superhero ought. That hadn't occurred to me before but it makes sense.

Though it is disappointing in one sense: that voice of his makes the Christian Bale Batman voice sound downright underplayed and subtle.



This gym commercial actually played in Staten Island theaters along with Star Wars. What I find interesting is that its' target audience is mainly male: its implicit message is that bodybuilding will help you get laid!

This is downright amazing, considering how these days both men and women go to the gym - though for different exercises and different purposes.



This next one isn't a commercial, but while we're on the subject of youtube vids, I put it up because it illustrates what I've always liked about Asian bodybuilding culture: the slowness, the quiet classical music and so on. I always hated the use of discordant speed metal in posing routines.

Flex, Pecs and Sex: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel

"Muscles have really made a comeback in the movies." - Gene Siskel

Ah, if only it lasted!

Absolutely fascinating 1986 documentary that examined muscles at the movies.

Misleading Advertising in Cover Art

Oh my God!

Do I ever need to say that Gladiator, a novel by Phillip Wylie, a social critic, cynic and misanthrope best known for When Worlds Collide, had absolutely zilch in the way of sex in it? It was, incidentally, a mournful story about how a person with great strength couldn't fit into ordinary society, a story about the way our culture crushes superior people under its heel and mediocrity is the accepted norm. I could hear the tinkly and melancholic piano music from the "Incredible Hulk" in the background. There also was absolutely no sex either.

For those of us that are fans of that controversial pastime, man-on-man love, the cover to "Gay Love" was a...little strange.