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.
After all, 6' and 245 pounds is far too big to squeeze into just one post, isn't it?
This one, for some reason, I find amusing. I've seen lots and lots of pics of artificially tanned bodybuilders. Heck, I think I've seen more orange skin than Tropicana. But for some reason this one stands out. I mean, was skin bronzer technology significantly less advanced in 1992? He looks like he's cosplaying as the carrot monster from Lost In Space.
If you've ever seen a bodybuilding mag in the past five years or so, you can probably recognize Morris Mendez. There's nothing sexier than a bald guy. And best of all, he's as aerodynamic as a car hood ornament! What's even more impressive about Morris Mendez is that he's a true Renaissance Man, with successes not just in natural bodybuilding and modeling, but also in other fields: he's a clinical psychologist that works with disabled kids. You go, boy!
Anyway, he's got the most intense, soulful look ever. He's one of the few bodybuilders you could just look at his face.
I can't think of a bodybuilder as sensational as Dennis Newman was in the early 1990s, and he was the first bodybuilder I ever knew by name as opposed to image. It was like he was custom-designed for bodybuilding magazine covers: soulful, crystalline blue eyes, he had a masculine and handsome chiseled face like a movie star, youthful and virile with a body like a classical Greek sculpture of a deity. He was so flawless he almost didn't seem real, exemplifying the ultimate male specimen.
His proportions were sensational: an incredible 6' and 245 pounds. No wonder he was often approached to be the "face" of the sport in muscle magazine covers, with one of the greatest physiques of all time. He was a rising star, and had nowhere to go but up...
...until he was diagnosed with leukemia, only ten weeks after getting his pro card and winning the Mr. USA.
Since then, we haven't heard much from Dennis. Nonetheless, I am very, very pleased to announce that Dennis won his battle with Leukemia and is with us today! There is a type of strength that trascends and is far more all-encompassing than just how much you can bench.
For many years when I thought of the perfect good looking guy I thought of "Inhuman Newman." In fact, the first time I read Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame I thought of Newman at every loving description of the ultra-beautiful Pheobus. But as often happens I forgot about him until recently when a reader reminded me of him.
Part of the reason that teenage girls often have their objects of adoration be pop stars that look like teenaged girls is that, as girls are initially discovering sexuality, men, who are often very aggressive, come off as extremely threatening. This is part of the reason for the fascination with pop stars, and is one of the reasons (though not the only one) for the fascination with male homosexuality. I always thought someone like "Inhuman" Newman would be what male idols are like in an alternate universe where there's a lot less anxiety about men.
I've always felt like laughing bitterly at movies that show awkward young guys stumbling as they try to talk to girls. Guys are such crybabies, I tell you. I assure you, nothing could be greater than the real fear women have of boys in early days!
From here on I'll let his photos and videos speak for themselves. What an object of adoration!
Considering his future illness, this video, which talks about his promise as a young 23 year old, is actually unintentionally bittersweet.
Well, what do you know? He was "the captain of the football team," the biggest High School movie cliche of all. Sort of like...(dare I say it)...Jake Ryan?
Also: I got through this entire blog post without a single Seinfeld reference! Woohoo!
Some of the greatest bodybuilders are short guys, who look very impressive when they get massive: they have a certain quality of thickness and mass that is truly astonishing as opposed to more elongated and spread-out, slimmer bodies. But there's something to be said for really BIG guys. Like the above Nate Christianson, who is 6'2". Or Steve Reeves, who is 6'1", or Mike O'Hearn, who is 6'3".
Then there's Zeb Atlas, who is one of those guys you admire but can't help but make fun of a little. Depending on where you look he's either 6'3" or 6'4", and when it comes to men, especially those in the entertainment industry, it's good to usually assume the lower estimate is more truthful. On the one hand, he's a hairy chested, virile thick-pec alpha male weighing in at an incredible 250 pounds. His measurements are unreal: 21" biceps, 52" chest.
Look at the stubble in the above pic. Doesn't it look like he just crash landed on that weird island from "Lost" where for some (no doubt supernatural) reason, men are never able to grow full beards, but are never clean-shaven either?
Something stops Zeb Atlas from just being a pure object of desire. Mostly it's the fact he's a gay club go-go dancer (!) and porn star. For men, I think porn star is an occupation temporarily used by bad-boy types like Colin Farrell for bad-boy cred. It's hard to take seriously a guy that does that all the time...even though real porn stars don't have the cheeseball eighties porn 'stache anymore, they have it in spirit...and it's really hard to take them seriously. Especially when they're described as a "club go-go dancer." That's like a code-word for a professional himbo. Still, as far as Man Candy goes he's a big, sensational beast.
What is it with natural bodybuilders, and why do they generally look so much better off (healthier, less bloat, sleeker, better proportioned) and have much more attractive bodies than, er, the other kind? The examples include Mike O'Hearn, Cleveland Thomas and Ulisses Williams Jr. In fact come to think of it, most of my favorites are naturals.
It may be due to the fact they train differently and is more about proportions, hard work and dedication as opposed to who can blow up like a sponge the fastest thanks to genetics.
Tuan Tran is a powerful, attractive looking bronzed guy that has a certain sort of spunky, working-class quality. He's got a lean, hard and sleek frame that looks like he could be a great acrobat. He's a lightweight, but I can't hold that against him because he's powerful and sleek, like a jungle cat. Besides, I'm a lightweight myself too... :-)
I can't imagine him as Beowulf, but I have a real feeling he'd be a great casting choice for a future film version of the Thief of Baghdad.
Clint Walker, that roguish, solid frontier He-Man, personified hairy chested American virility and manhood, a big six-foot-six baritone voiced love god of the West. He was a clear-eyed Frontiersman, shy with women, with a big, shirtless frame. Like Shatner, he always found a way to get his shirt off, but unlike Shatner, it wasn't horrible beyond belief to have that happen!
The first thing I ever saw Clint Walker in was not his work with Westerns like the TV series Cheyenne, but a version of the Theodore Sturgeon story Killdozer! Or as I like to say it out loud, Killdozer Exclamation Point. The story of Killdozer Exclamation Point featured a mysterious alien object that possessed a bulldozer and turned it into a killing machine, using cunning to ambush and murder a construction crew. Believe or not, this was considered one of the best stories of science fiction's golden age. And in defense, I can say that it didn't feature the same wisecracking, cigar-chomping badass solving the problem with engineering.
Startlingly, Clint Walker actually did have a pretty good singing voice: he released an album, and to my great astonishment it wasn't terrible. He has a very deep singing voice that emerges from his big chest, turns his whole body into a wind instrument.
I was born into the first generation to grow up without the Western playing any role in our lives. An America in love with the West seems to me, almost like a totally alien planet.
And yet, somehow, this isn't even the most embarrassing moment for MTV veejay Kennedy. Remember when she admitted to having a crush on Dan Quayle? Yes, that Dan Quayle, the intellectual furnace of the American political system.
Was it a rule, or were every single MTV veejay required to have been totally annoying? Remember, Pauly Shore also got his start as a veejay. Not to mention "Downtown" Julie Brown, the high point of her career seemed to coincide with sleeping with Vanilla Ice.
In the vid, Kennedy clutches Mike's pecs and basically feels him up. It's actually kind of hilarious. Even Mike himself is a little confused and tells her to FOCUS!
I suppose part of the reason for my hostility to Kennedy is, women with dark hair and glasses are generally assumed to be smart, and I don't want Kennedy to wreck that idea for the rest of us!
Bodybuilding is a worldwide sport, and it's interesting to see what countries are represented and over-represented. Gunnar Rosbo is the best product of Norway's bodybuilding culture. He has one of the most startling set of big cannons I've seen, and very impressive triceps. The biceps may get all the attention, but it is the tricep that gives the arm its mass. Gunnar has a very surprising look, like a Norwegian fairytale knight or something.
Unfortunately, Gunnar Rosbo's tale doesn't have a happy ending: last I heard he suffered a nerve injury that meant he couldn't train half of his body that heavily and he left the sport.
I hear politicians all the time say things like, "if we keep these reforms up, we'll turn the United States into Norway!"
Actually, in the case of Iowa and Minnesota, America pretty much IS Norway. If you ever wanted to visit Norway, let me save you a few grand right here: visit Minnesota and I guarantee you won't know the difference.
Despite it all, I respect the Norwegians and Norwegian culture. I like their unpretentiousness, non-showiness, and humility, their "you're not special" attitude. During World War II, King Olaf was known for riding the buses like any other ordinary citizen.
I had an "Iowegian" room-mate in my undergrad years, and I think she was from another planet. One thing she liked to do was have one of those fish oil capsule geltabs each morning. She actually liked to bite down on them and savor the fish juice inside. Being an adventurous type that'd do anything once, I tried doing that myself. It took days, despite my best efforts, to get rid of the taste from my tongue.
There was a great news article about the prevalence of gyms in the new Iraq, for two reasons: previously, only higher-level members of the regime had access to gyms, and disturbingly enough, because a built physique would let them get jobs in Iraq's sunniest and most up-and-coming industry, security and bodyguard work.
Likewise, my friends that are New Zealanders tell me that with Maori, everything is about sports and muscular development. Maori women find muscular Maori men the most attractive, and top athletes and rugby players often have freedom on their schools unbelievable to imagine. Supposedly, they can even enter and use the teacher's lounge at will. It's interesting to note that on "first contact" and e'er after, the British never failed to describe what big, strong bastards the Maori are; early illustrations had them as big, muscular and healthy.
Despite my interest in that kind of drama, I've never watched daytime soaps, since I actually, generally have had to work for a living. So the first place I ever saw the extraordinarily sensitive, "thinking man" strongman Keith Hamilton Cobb was in the potboiler science fiction drama Andromeda.
Here's what I thought was absolutely genius about that series: every TV show from Dynasty to 90210 has a regular cast and guest-stars that are "beautiful people" in stunning clothes, both male and (usually) female. Yet Andromeda was the first series to actually have a built-in reason for explaining exactly why that was: since it was the future and genetic engineering was widespread, attractive people were relatively commonplace. I wonder what Isaac Asimov's notoriously plain, prim creation Susan Calvin would say to that.
Keith Hamilton Cobb's character was something very common in science fiction: a sidekick that was more interesting and compelling than the main hero. His character, Tyr Anasazi, was a smart and selfish Nietzchian superman, cunning, cynical and loyal only to himself, with a deep love of philosophy, especially Ayn Rand and Nietzche. Tyr also has the distinction of being the only person in the cast whose name and character I actually remember. Andromeda wasn't a great series, after all, and my friends that continued to watch it after the first season tell me that afterwards it got exponentially worse. In all honesty, the only reason I watched it for a very long time was for KHC in a mesh muscle-shirt.
I have absolutely no idea why Keith Hamilton Cobb isn't more famous than he currently is. Physically impressive and imposing, he's not just another muscleboy: he usually plays cultured, intelligent men. He has a startling deep voice that is naturally commanding. Maybe that's the reason that KHC hasn't been seen much: thinking men are very much out of fashoin in the action world.
Kirk Morris is one of the most spectacular profiled, muscular actors to ever play Hercules. For one thing, he looks exactly like friggin' Jake Ryan from SIXTEEN CANDLES. Seriously!
Interestingly enough, Kirk Morris was, along with Alan Steel, one of the few homegrown (and we mean grown!) Italian actors to star in the sixties peplum boom. His real name is Adriano Bellini, and he was a gondolier in Venice when he was discovered by Cinecitta. Presumably, some producer's wife saw him with his shirt off in the Venice canals or something.
His movie, THE WITCH'S CURSE, was a remake of MACISTE AL'INFERNO (which I've written about before, remember?), which was supposedly Federico Fellini's favorite childhood movie.
The first place I ever heard of Kirk Morris was in his film COLOSSUS AND THE HEADHUNTERS, which is only made watchable because it was on Mystery Science Theater 3000, lampooned by Mike and the 'bots with their usual panache. The most interesting scenes are the ones where it's obvious they used extremely short, skinny actors to make Adriano look downright gigantic.
If they're ever going to do a schmaltzy, triumphant sports movie about bodybuilding, there'd be no better story than that of the devastatingly handsome Bob Paris. He was a homeless teenager that emerged from absolutely nowhere to win the Mr. Olympia at age 23.
Alas, ladies, Bob Paris is one of the few openly gay bodybuilders...as in actually gay, instead of having a gay-for-pay biz on the side to keep them in soy powder and Brazilian horse steroids. Bob Paris fights for civil rights and dignity for homosexuals, which is admirable and makes him one of those "role model" types that "overcome adversity," like Colin Powell and so forth.
There are a few openly gay bodybuilders, natch. Most of them work for Cher.
Here's something I've noticed about people that like brawny, studly muscle hunks, whether male or female: it's lifelong. I've never met anybody that was "turned" to muscle guys, the way Janet was in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW - it's a lot more hardwired than that.
Most muscle carnivores can't identify a time they didn't like muscle guys, even going back into early childhood. Depending on the age and generation, they can identify responding sexually to a whole variety of things. For me it was cartoons: I remember having a big crush on Lion-O and He-Man from saturday morning television.
Members of the previous generation have similar stories, watching muscleman movies on television: Sword n' Sandal pictures, Tarzan and gladiator pictures, and so forth.
There's a commonly held fallacy in our culture that awareness of and interest in sexuality starts at a certain age, and I think this is intriguing.
I don't much care for nice guys. I love baaaaad boys, however.
A dashing, rakish rogue, with smooth cinnamon dark skin and gypsy-light eyes, Sandokan is a pirate called "the Tiger of Malaysia," a sort of uberman for whom morality doesn't apply. Sandokan's stories were set against the backdrop of India, Malaysia, and Borneo in the sail age, where he was a hoop-earring wearing native chief that fought against the British and imperialism. Sandokan was always bigger than life: he had a secret cavern and pirate city filled with treasure, and when we first see him it's as a dark silouette shown only by the momentary flare of a lightning bolt.
He's dark, scary, and loves to ravage female prisoners in his power. That last part I just made up, but I always imagined he would. Though Sandokan is a studly Asian guy that always seemed to get together with these blonde women, which makes me wonder why this series wasn't voted the greatest of all time among every Pakistani math major I've ever known.
I had to read Emilio Salgari in a Spanish language translation of the original Italian, however, because he's pretty much unknown in the English speaking world. By the way, here's a fun fact: I'm actually fully bilingual. People that watch me do mathematics are often startled to see me switch between the languages when counting, one number in English and another in Spanish. Part of the reason Sandokan isn't as well known in the English speaking world is because of the anti-Imperialism and anti-British message of his stories, whereas adventure writers like Kipling and H. Rider Haggard that specialized in telling Americans and British the lies they liked to hear about themselves. Che Guevara read all 50 of Salgari's novels, and so did Isabel Allende and Umberto Eco. Just like it's cool for intellectuals to find cool, ironic appreciation in non-literary adventure novels - think Gore Vidal (who always looked like a real-life Fred from Scooby-Doo that got old along with the rest of us) and his introduction to ERB's Tarzan - Emilio Salgari is the same for Spanish-language writers.
In a wonderful bit of synchronicity, Steve Reeves played Sandokan in several movies, and I've always thought he was at his best doing Thief of Baghdad orientalist stuff, as opposed to the sword n' sandal stuff he always did.
Lion-O
Now this one I'm sort of embarassed to admit, but I've had a crush on him since, oh, about age 4. I loved the bizarre and exotic color of his catseyes, the masculine swell of his chin (again with the chins, but I think it's the secret to a masculine look: a strong lower face). He was brawny and muscular, but in a way I think is the secret to a good physique: a small waisted way that implies sleekness, low body fat, immense speed, and grace.
I also always liked that Lion-O was a sweet guy. He wasn't the gutsy, macho hero of other adventure stories, but somebody for whom all the stories were something of a learning experience, and the other characters his teachers.
He could stand to get a haircut, of course. No way he's ever going to beat Jayce's skunk hair for the sexiest hair on Saturday morning.
I'm sure none of the male watchers of that show had a problem with this, but it always bugged me that none of the Thundercats ever had any real relationships or love. Now, I'm not saying my heroine Cheetara should shack up with somebody...I'm kind of glad that Cheetara was there as a heroine in her own right and not as one of their "girlfriends." But still.
Also: am I the only one that thinks Wiley-Kit is going to be hot when he grows up?
Just me? Okay.
Tarzan
What can I say about the gloriously godlike Tarzan, a flawless muscle stud in a loincloth, with long hair and a beardless strong jaw? There's nothing more gloriously sexy and masculine than a dark tanned, nut-brown wild man that will wrestle a tiger for you with his iron muscles and bare hands, wearing a wispy scrap of a loincloth.
I always thought that I would make a better mate for Tarzan than Jane, who was a more than a bit of a twit. Apparently, I'm not the only one: Jane Goodall thought very much the same thing when she was growing up.
Here's my all-time favorite story about the jaw-droppingly handsome, masculine, flawless and symmetrical Steve Reeves:
Steve was filming this or that Spaghetti Hercules movie in rural, small town Italy, and he decided to leave the location for a while to go into town to buy some milk and bananas. Steve was in partial Hercules costume. When he entered a store, an Italian woman's eyes popped out, and she started screaming hysterically, "Oh my God, he's the Son of Zeus! You can tell my his arms! Oh my God, he's the Son of Zeus!" Naturally this started to gather a crowd of people in the town, and they mobbed Reeves and refused to let him go until he flexed his brawny, all-meat cannons for them, which set out a round of applause and awe.
I guess the reason I always liked this story was because it just goes to show how Steve was so godlike, brawny and blue-eyed that he didn't seem real at all, he was a mythic and heroic character.
One thing I've always noticed about the great fictional muscular adventure characters of the 20th Century is, I've never seen a real-life actor that was as believeable or buyable as a Tarzan, Conan or Hercules, as a painting of said character. This, incidentally, also goes for the ladies as well: Linda Carter was my she-ro when I was watching her in reruns as a girl, but I was depressed to discover years later how flat of an ass she actually had.
Steve Reeves seems to be the exception. He looked every inch the flawless, Greco-Roman sculpture of the male figure, handsome and strong. He's also the only guy I know that could pull off a well-groomed beard - and I'm well known for being anti-facial hair.
My all-time favorite Steve Reeves movie would not be any of his Hercules pictures, but actually WHITE WARRIOR (1959) where Reeves plays a chiseled, clean-limbed honorable Muslim warrior from the Caucasus that fights the Tsar in the 1850s. It was based on Leo Tolstoy's last novel, HADJI MURAT, and since I'm a big Tolstoy geek, when I read about Reeves's filmography I gravitated to this movie right away. Whereas Tolstoy's novel was about the horror of war and the conflict between religious and secular society very much like his famous WAR AND PEACE, the movie HADJI MURAT was an adventure movie with white horses and 1850s Russian opulence, a spectacle movie with daring escapes. Unlike a lot of Sword n' Sandal movies, this one was actually pretty unpredictable, as opposed to the by-the-numbers Sword n' Sandal films, and is definitely a cut above the rest of this genre. Reeves plays a Caucasus horse-riding nomad with a love of freedom and a hatred for Mother Russia.
The highlight of the movie was when Steve Reeves peeled his shirt off his rockhard, tanned body to impress some captive Russian girl with his prowess at wrestling. The shock of seeing Reeves's articulated, glistening male torso is a little like that of getting slapped in the face.
There is one Steve Reeves movie that I've never seen, and that's the one he did where he fought Gordon "Tarzan" Scott. DUEL OF THE TITANS features the two as Romulus and Remus. Though if I was director, it would involve a whole lot less of the two (ahem) twins fighting, and a heck of a lot more of them competing for me.
He’s got abs you could smash your hand on if you tried to belly punch him, and he’s got the smouldering hunk heat of a male soap opera star. Which, come to think of it, he is: he was on Young and the Restless. He was also an Israeli military officer, so he’s also “a guy in uniform.”
Check him out!
Nick Manzoni
You know, I just realized exactly what it is I like about Nick Manzoni: he’s basically a sexy version of the Karate Kid. Except he never met Mr. Miyagi and turned to the gym instead for help in beating up those asshole California blonde guys.
