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.