Wednesday, December 30, 2009

For those that love muscles and science together...


Check it out, an anatomy chart.

For those that like this kind of thing, check out my science blog, Daughter of Hypatia. (Shameless plug!)

Incidentally, "triceps" and "biceps" refer to the entire muscle group, not to just one arm. The correct usage is "biceps muscle."

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

King of the Stone Age, Part 1

I haven't written any real muscle growth fiction since a few false starts in the summer of '08, busy as I am with grad school. But I wanted to try my hand at it again.

King of the Stone Age, Part 1 (The Muscle Growth History of the World)

(Note: you have to be registered with musclegrowth.org to see. Don't worry, it's free.)

Essentially, the story is about a girl that flees from her tribe to be rescued by a superhandsome giant cave stud. The basic theory is that in the ancient past, bisexuality was more the norm for men and women. The story has a degree of sexual omnivorousness for that reason: guy on guy, girl on girl, and guy-girl. There isn't any outright sex in the first part, but just wait.

One of the characters is what today we would call "gay," who wears women's clothing. This is a social role found in many societies, notably Native American (Hopi) who have the role of the berdache.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Twilight Phenomenon




Every time some guy (and here the term isn’t gender-neutral, it always does, in fact mean men) slams the Twilight phenomenon, I always felt like wincing just a little bit.

Not because I like the books, or it expresses an inmost fantasy of mine or something…in all honesty I read the first book on a plane to Toronto and I was amazed at how fast I forgot it afterward, like most mystery paperbacks. It was harmless, and expressed a common fantasy: the desire to be won over by someone with a possessive and slightly sinister affection. If you get your self-worth from other people adoring you, that’s very powerful.

As readers of this blog will probably know, Edward is too femmie for my tastes anyway, humorless, cynical and vain, he reminds me of a particularly (in retrospect) assholish boyfriend from Williamsburg. While some may see my dating a psedointellectual hipster from Brooklyn as the height of crappy judgment, all I have to say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Rather, the reason I wince when men slam Twilight is because of the “unfortunate implications” in slamming a mostly female fantasy. I save any and all accusations of sexism for very rare occasions, for when I’m absolutely sure. Here, I’m absolutely sure: there’s a double-standard at work. A goofy female fantasy is seen as fluffy and embarrassing, but goofy male fantasies of virility and macho fighting do not receive criticism for precisely this reason.

Twilight is intimately associated with the female gender. I remember reading a few articles on computer science that bemoaned how few women were going into the field. The article sarcastically asked, “hey, why not put up a few Twilight posters in comp labs?”

(Incidentally, I always thought the problem with comp sci departments is their inability to creatively rebrand. Most biochemistry and genetics departments have been reborn with sexier-sounding names like “systems biology” and “molecular genetics and microbiology.” I can understand trying to get away from reminding people of the nightmarish Organic Chemistry, but still. And don’t ever call an MLS a degree in Library Science – they prefer Information Science, which considering the emphasis on database management over a physical building, that’s not a bad idea.)

You hate Twilight? Okay, fine, I hate James Bond. (Well, except maybe Pierce Brosnan. What a good looking piece of man.) The James Bond movies are the male version of Twilight: an embarrassingly immature fantasy.

Incidentally, it’s worth noting I was actually quite surprised to see a picture of Stephanie Meyer, who was considerably less fat than I was expecting. I guess her soul is fat.


There was one incredible element of the Twilight phenom: the gift of Taylor Lautner, who is one of the most beautiful men at the movies in a very, very long time, and who the directors have the good sense to keep shirtless all the time. Bella says, on first seeing him, “wow, you got buff!”

I can’t seriously believe she’d choose anybody over him. Just sayin’ is all.

Sex in real life is not like sex in pornos

I love TED talks, the video lecture series by intellectuals and scientists and others.

One of the best argues that, since hardcore porn is widely available and responsible and mature sex education isn't, a whole generation of men have grown up only knowing about sex from porn - specifically, internet porn. This is also dangerous to women as well, who grow up with the expectation that certain sex acts that aren't pleasurable (she uses the example of facials, for instance) are something men demand that must be provided, that she should pretend to enjoy.



She's right; somebody has to set the record straight.

Monday, November 23, 2009

I (Heart) Muscles!


A swell piece of merchandise from Polyvore.com. Visit the page here to buy!

The Hulk ripping out of clothes is still sexy years later. My one regret about the film versions was they went with a computer animated monster. All it needed was a few Oiliphants and the Hulk would be a particularly deadly agent of Sauron, albeit one that looks like a lime-colored Gummi Bear.

Sure, I know guys with bods like Ferrigno don't grow on trees, but couldn't they have at least made an effort to find some guy that could be a body for the Hulk?

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Mario Lopez: please, please, please don't be gay!



If you're like me, Saved By the Bell was a big part of your childhood. The big question was whether you preferred Zack Morris or A.C. Slater. At the time, I liked Zack, who was so fantastically cool, smart alecky and always trying to get away with something, even if he was a clone of Ferris Bueller and Parker Louis Can't Lose.

I may have to rethink that, considering how cute and dimpled A.C. Slater was, even if he did sport that ridiculous Meximullet. There was this bizarre, hooty, awed audience noise whenever he flexed, which on average was once per episode.

What about Mario Lopez? Frankly, he could go either way: if he turned out either to be gay or straight I'd find either possibility astonishing.

Still, something does definitely set off my gaydar. Perhaps it's that he goes on about how being in Chorusline is his lifelong dream, or the fact he has a superhot girlfriend that he doesn't actually live with.


Every time I watch Saved by the Bell now, I think of that Harlan Ellison story where the sound editor was set to "sweeten" the laugh track of a television series, and used the sound waves to have a conversation with a long dead woman. In the end, the sound track was actually booing and hissing the series!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Jayne Mansfield on her love of muscle guys



Taken from "The Wide World of Jayne Mansfield." Jayne, with her usual husky, breathy whisper of a voice, talks about how much she loves muscle guys and sexually fantasizes about gladiators.

This campy, frivolous documentary about Jayne's world tour is actually unintentionally bittersweet because it was made a few months before her death.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Hercules Returns!

For heaping helpings of muscle guys, not to mention that Australian sense of humor that we've all come to know and tolerate, try "Hercules Returns," an Aussie dub of a Sword n' Sandal picture done for comic effect, a la "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist."









I will admit to a love of goofy dubbing effects and their comic value. True story: I saw "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" the same day I saw the unbearable "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," easily the worst movie ever nominated for Best Picture (at least until The Aviator and Benjamin Button came along!). Perhaps it was high expectations, but I was led to believe by a friend that it was the Martial Arts equivalent of Errol Flynn in Adventures of Robin Hood or Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Boy, was it a disappointment. I had to see another film to wash the taste from my mouth. So I snuck into "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist." And boy, did that film do the trick. It was weird, screwy and funny. What I find most amazing is how almost every scene in the trailer was quite literally the least funny scenes in the film. Predictably enough, the critics didn't "get it." Apparently, none of them played with dubbing equipment when they were growing up.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

So, you think you can't be manipulated by advertising, eh?


Good! That's exactly what advertisers want you to think! The savviest consumers are aware that they can be manipulated and understand how that is possible.

Everyone knows about the test where the exact same detergent was placed into two different boxes, one a single color and one with two colors, and consumers preferred the one in the two-color box as it was better to look at. But what about novel cover art?

The typical formula for it is something like this: there is usually a monstrous threat in the image for the consumer to fear. There is also something that the threat is threatening, usually, sexistly enough, an attractive woman. The third element is a figure for the reader to project themselves into, usually a muscular, good looking and heroic Tarzan type.

Here's the amazing part: this cover art formula actually is proven to work just as well on women as on men!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A real Clash of the Titans


This incredible photograph came from Clint Walker's own personal website at www.clintwalker.com, featuring Steve Reeves meeting up with Clint Walker. I would kill to know the circumstances and story. There definitely has to be one!

Now for the big question: which would I prefer, Clint Walker or Steve Reeves?

Well, Steve Reeves was the world's most perfectly developed man, but Clint Walker had a deep baritone voice and a masculine chest. Both have startling blue eyes.

I would have to give the prize to Clint Walker at least for right now, because apparently he isn't half-bad a singer. Yes, that sounds silly, but anything to break the tie.

Friday, October 2, 2009

The Original Muscle Growth Lovin' Femme


I love any response or appreciation to this blog that I can get, but the letters I most appreciate are from fellow femmes with a tooth for beefcake. I guess part of the reason I started this blog in the first place was to get in touch with a few and then say, "hey, I'm not crazy!"

I would estimate that any given time, at least 5 to 20 or so regular readers of muscle growth story websites like www.musclegrowth.org at any given time are women. Some of them keep their gender vague and others out-and-out pretend to be gay men, which has a libidinous element in and of itself for some, I suppose, the "yaoi" factor at work.


I speak from personal experience here because I used to do that very thing! Come to think of it (and this sounds like such a silly thing to be proud of) I was much, much better at pretending to be a guy than anything, as opposed to the usual "chick with a dick" gaypersonator. I suppose it's my brassy personality, or the little bit of the male brain in me thanks to my bisexuality.

At any rate, I really don't have much in the way of a right to call myself the Muscle Lovin' Femme. Why, compared to Jayne Mansfield, I'm a downright poser!

At any rate, in terms of femmes with a tooth for beefcake, the greatest has to be Jayne Mansfield, the only person that in real life that already looks like a zaftig drag queen version of herself.


Supposedly she had an IQ of 163, but our only source on that is Jayne herself. In showbiz, the most misleading of all statistics are the kind provided by stars themselves.

(I'm a little shy on giving any kind of statistic for myself, but I personally was a MENSA member for a few months. At least until I realized that I was basically paying dues to allow socially awkward older men to hit on me.)

After seeing a few of her movies and interviews, I find it a little ridiculous Jayne is that smart, which means one of two things: she either exaggerated her intelligence to be taken seriously...or she's so darn good at playing the ditzy blonde that a genius level intelligence would actually be underestimating her!

Incidentally, I was in fact a fifties blond bombshell for Halloween a few years ago, and the shade of blonde haircolor necessary to get the Jayne Mansfield/van Doren/Marylin look is actually called (I swear I am not making this up) "Playful Minx."


Anyway, Jayne Mansfield made it no secret that she was crazy for muscle guys. She always purred that she loved "big, strong men" and in real life was a regular at Mae West's bump n' grind physique revues. It was at one of these that she met and married former Mr. Universe and Mr. America Mickey Hargitay. Here was one of the trio of 50s blonde Bombshells that had the world at their feet, and she could have gone with any guy in the world, and she went with a good looking former Mr. Universe.

Ha ha! You go, Jayne!

It's no wonder Jayne found him irresistable. He was tall, good looking, and had that craaazy Danny Kaye style wavy hair.

Their offspring is Mariska Hargitay, of Law and Order: SVU fame. She became neither a sex symbol or a bodybuilder, so I guess that's one big strike against nature over nurture right there.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Come visit my new science blog, "Daughter of Hypatia"


If there's one thing that I love, it's science and science blogging!

Visit Daughter of Hypatia, my new science-themed blog. It's pro-science and anti-bullshit. (Oooh, that's good! I've got to make that a header or something...)

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Daniel Dae Kim



I've made no secret on this blog that I'm a big, big fan of Daniel Dae Kim from Lost, even though the show itself lost my interest with this recent season.

Personally, I find the emphasis on time travel to be absolutely goofy and made a monkey out of what I always thought was the series's best and most unique characteristic, the Twin Peaks subtlety with which the supernatural and fantasy elements were handled.

"That's what all of them had been building towards? Time travel? Seriously?"



My critiques of the show aside, Daniel Dae Kim is a male Selma Hayek, an actor that Hollywood just doesn't know what to do with. I think he has the potential to be a great villain or hero.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Bodybuilders in Good Korea

One thing that's always interested me is how muscle revues in other countries involve a lot of state-trained athletes who have a lot of skill with agility, flexibility, acrobatics and dance...witness the Las Vegas beefcake show that featured Russian muscle hunk Denis Sergovisky that showed a lot more than just the usual bump and grind but also had tumbling and other displays of astonishing athleticism.



One thing that's always fascinated me is the view of bodybuilding and body image in other parts of the world, and this great vid of a pair of bodybuilders on a variety show in "Good Korea" is absolutely fascinating and sexy, and a direction the sport of bodybuilding should go: bodies as living artwork, to the point their very movements become a thing a beauty indistinguishable from dance, combined with displays of athleticism, agility and strength.

I say all this despite the fact the kitschy production makes Sabado Gigante look like a paragon of dignity and restraint, and the bright colors and loud pop-up text gave me a gigantic migraine after watching it for more than five minutes. Despite all of this, I don't think I've ever seen muscular physiques presented quite so attractively as here. The uninteresting to watch "slab of meat" bodybuilding competitions have a lot to answer for.

It's easy to look at the Koreans as less sophisticated than us in the West because they're obviously blown away by muscles of any kind, ooohing and ahhhing over the muscled couple. But I doubt a reaction on a Western series would be any different, either. Comic books aside, we're just no more used to huge physiques than the Good Koreans are. Come to think of it, even Beowulf's CGI bod was pretty subdued compared to those of the sixties real-life musclemen, and in 1949, Steve Reeves was refused the part of Samson in Samson and Delilah because he was so big the audience just wasn't used to his kind of bod.

One of the more interesting moments (in addition to a neat leverage trick shown near the end) is when they ask our male bodybuilder to slip a piece of paper and grip it between his pecs. Audience members, particularly female ones, looked on in fascination and what was funniest to me (blink and you miss it!) was one older sister or mother who tried to cover the eyes of the young teen next to her when our guy did his feat of strength! It reminds me of why 19th Century carnival strongmen started to wear their distinctive posing costumes, as it was believed the sight of flexing male bodies might cause women viewers to faint.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

I Don't Remember Lemuria!

The John Cleves Symmes post got a good response, and so I thought I might devote some words to another idea at the fringe that time has discarded, as well as an interesting piece of forgotten Americana.

What was the Shaver Mystery? Oh brother, where to even begin…it was a mass movement that was one of the great controversies in the early days of science fiction fandom.

William Shaver was an indigent construction worker with what today looks like a clear-cut case of late-onset paranoid schizophrenia. While at a construction site he claimed the magnetic coil of a drill caused him to experience a vivid hallucination of a torture session at the center of the earth, and periodically he received hidden telepathic messages and even claimed that other mentalities, including one from 24,000 years ago, took control of his body periodically.

The jist of what Shaver came up with was that, thousands of years ago, the Titans, a superhuman race of giants, came to earth and created humans as a ro-race, “ro” meaning designed for work. Because of contamination from our sun, which causes aging and death, the Titans left the earth, leaving behind both their human creations and their wondrous cavern civilizations filled with machinery. The beings that remained in the caverns, the dero (short for destructive robots) took control of the Titans’ machinery because the solar poisons in their brains made them insane, and then used them to destroy all other life. Because of machines like telaugs and telepathy spy-rays, they periodically observe our thoughts from their secret caverns and place in us evil compulsions and aberrant behavior. They also spoke a hidden language called Mantong, evidence of which can be found everywhere as a root language spoken at the dawn of time.

Right here with William Shaver, we have almost all the elements of classic, almost textbook-precise schizophrenia:


  • Irrational terror of poisons and contamination, especially in food and water;
  • Themes of paranoia about hidden evil and conspiracy;
  • Vivid hallucinations;
  • Enemies that can observe a person’s thoughts and place evil compulsions;
  • An obsession with identification of patterns;
  • Figures that periodically take over a person’s body.

Because he had a little more panache than the average schizophrenic, apparently Ray Palmer, for reasons we can never understand, published “I Remember Lemuria!” in Astounding after rewriting Shaver’s crazed, energetic prose.

Read “I Remember Lemuria!” here.


Now here’s where it gets really weird.

Apparently, the publication of this story in 1940 started a wave of mass-hysteria, where dozens wrote in to confirm elements of Shaver’s story and to say they had similar experiences! What. The. Hell.

As a Psychology masters student, I took a special course exclusively on the identification and treatment of schizophrenia. One of the things we’re taught to identify are “ray” delusions. In many neighborhoods there is usually a person that has the typical profile of being isolated and elderly who experiences the delusion that someone, usually a neighbor, is observing their activities with a spy beam and hitting them with a ray that causes hair and teeth to fall out, food to be poisoned, milk to sour and meat to rot. No wonder something like the Shaver Mystery would really resonate.

Shaver Mystery clubs started to spring up all over the country, and Ray Palmer devoted much of Amazing Stories just to Shaver Mystery content. In other words, the Shaver Mystery became a mass hysteria that would eventually only be eclipsed by the UFO phenomenon, for which the Shaver Mystery paved the way. Worse, because Mystery-related stories were profitable, everybody was pushing Shaver for more Mystery content, especially his publisher, Ray Palmer.

Of all the people involved in the Shaver Mystery, Ray Palmer comes off as the least sympathetic. Harlan Ellison once backed Ray Palmer into a corner and got the editor to admit that he personally never believed a lick of it but it sold magazines. Palmer wanted Shaver to continually revisit his hallucinations so his magazine could make money, an “enabler” that exploited a crazy person and prevented him from getting healthy. Worse, there were all these fervent cultists of the Shaver Mystery that defend him unto death. Because of that, Shaver never had anyone in his life that told him how things really were, and there’s something sad about that.

In the meantime you get prose that’s just awkward and sloppy, like this…

They understood concept, and I came to realize that concept had become a frozen thing on Mu by comparison. The Nortans used the truth, for it was the right conceptual attack. Evil has no concept; it is a mad robot to detrimental force. When Evil has power and men must obey or die, then only is it to be feared. But sometimes men fight for Evil unknowingly.

I read the book, and I still have no idea what this means.

Or, looks obviously repetitive and insane to the point of meaninglessness, like this…

The direct need for a greater future for man is strengthening of the general mind by T forces, the growth of a better brain. No progress is truly progress unless man grows a better brain to grow a better brain. That is the pattern of progress—to grow a growth to grow, etc.

…and that’s just what we could read after Palmer edited them extensively!

In fact, I remember reading that Palmer cut out particularly weird and sexually deviant elements from Shaver’s manuscripts, like the obvious S&M of the Dero slave lairs, not to mention uncomfortable, weird stuff like (supposedly) the life machines that cause a woman’s pubic hair to grow three feet long. Palmer once had to excise a 50-page sex scene!

Not only that, but Shaver might have been one of history’s first recorded furries, in the pre-Don Bluth era. The hero’s girlfriend, “Jane” to his “Tarzan,” is a half-human girl with hooves and a luxurious tail that Shaver’s hero thinks is the sexiest feature on earth.

To his credit, however, Shaver was an apt pupil under Palmer with a sincere desire to improve, and the later Shaver Mystery stories were considerably more polished and professional. He did get better, but brother, this stuff was bad.

Having actually read the Shaver Mystery stories, the thing that jumps at me immediately is that they seem like perfectly serviceable, space opera stories where, like many other works of science fiction in the period, you can identify the geneology of its ideas (for instance the race of blonde telepathic giants and cave civilizations with secret knowledge comes from Bulwer-Lytton). Claiming that they’re true or once happened is as laughable as slapping “BASED ON A TRUE STORY” tag on the Star Wars movies.

There’s nothing in there that wouldn’t be able to be produced by someone working in the pulp magazines of the 1940s. It’s almost like reading the always-wrong Immanuel Velikovsky: there’s nowhere I can point to something and say, “a-ha, he anticipated something that someone from that era shouldn’t have been able to predict.”

Besides, this stuff is all too “fifties” to be a real look at an actual culture of the distant past. I mean, God help me…every time I pictured the characters, I imagined them dressed very much like Zap Brannigan from Futurama. The worst is the villain Lord Sathanas, who is too much of a cackling cartoon character, too much of a low-rent Ming the Merciless, to ever make anyone entertain the notion he ever really lived. Ultimately, I think that’s what ended the Shaver Mystery and its various clubs: it was far too "fifties" to be taken seriously, and crank theories are required to keep up with the times. Eventually, it was eclipsed by the UFO phenomenon that ironically, the Shaver Mystery played a role in creating.

Incidentally, Richard Shaver is often given credit for being the “inventor” of the UFO, just like Raymond L. Wallace is the creator of Bigfoot. I simply don’t see it. Much ado has been made of the “rollats” used as travel in the cave world as the prototype flying saucer, but my reading of the story shows them as nothing more than a glorified future space-car of the sort the Jetsons use; to compare vehicles of this sort to "flying saucers" is like calling Chinese "dragons" after their Western brethren: despite the nonexistent similarities, they're both called by the same name erroneously. In fact, in I Remember Lemuria! the actual means for interplanetary travel are the usual forties Flash Gordon-esque penisrockets.

Friday, September 18, 2009

More Dennis Newman


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.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Un-Swayziest Day in History



Someone I had a crush on as a teenager is dead, which means that once again, all of you have to hear about it!

Dirty Dancing is the ultimate slumber party movie and its role in the culture can't be denied. Patrick Swayze was a dirty, intense beast, and my Dad, like nearly every Dad I know, hated him and was extremely upset I got into that movie all the while Mom looked on knowingly (she "got it" and Dad didn't). What's amazing is, with the death of John Hughes a month ago, it's like everyone associated with the slumber party film is dying off. I hope that the lady from Flashdance or Anthony Michael Hall are aware the Icy Scythe of Death is inexorably heading their way.

While writing this entry I was surprised to see he wasn't in Big Trouble in Little China, also called Big Redneck in Little China. It was such an utterly Swayzesque part I was amazed it wasn't him, as I remember, and I'll bet anything the script was written for him.

Some mention should be made of Roadhouse, which was so dead-on that it's totally sincere. The catch phrases from that movie have to be heard to be believed like "It's my way or the highway" or "You're my new Saturday night babe!"

I've wondered why it is that a lot of the movies my generation considers important such as the Hughes teenager movies, Dirty Dancing, Footloose, Flashdance, etc. and on the boys' aisle, Back to the Future, Terminator and Raiders of the Lost Ark, were made in the late seventies and early to mid-eighties.


Then it occurred to me: this was the beginning of the current era of movies, centered on the idea of the blockbuster and the big opening weekend. No wonder people of my generation have never heard of any movie before Jaws; Jaws was the beginning of the current moviegoing experience.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Welcome to America: Speak Spanish or Go Home!




First, a little about me: I speak six languages, and I am fully bilingual in English and Spanish. Some people have remarked how interesting they find it when they see me do mathematics and I jump and alternate between the two tongues!

As a multilingual person, I always found the "English language only" movement to be a meaningless inflexibility that transforms ignorance and provincialism into a point of pride. Sure, English is a great equalizer and lingua franca and all that, and it is certainly important for for new immigrants to speak English well for no other reason than upward mobility, a fact I can support with family experience! Still, that ideal doesn't always match the "facts on the ground," and people that want to meaningfully participate in their communities should do what intelligent and mature adults always do: adjust to their circumstances instead of instead of insisting everyone adjust to them.

I lived for a number of years, while on full scholarship as an undergrad, in Astoria, Queens, a neigborhood that is mostly Greek to the point some restaurants publish menus in Greek only. So, guess what I learned to do? Speak Greek! I can still do it, too. In fact, after a few months with my looks, lots of people I regularly interacted with assumed I was Greek myself! I swear, only in America could lack of knowledge, xenophobia and thickheaded obstinacy become virtues instead of obvious liabilities.

Obviously some may take exception to that characterization, and to that I have two responses.

The first is that the stereotype of the "Ugly American," monolingual and hidebound, is a stereotype that has real longevity because it is unfortunately often true. Before anyone has the right to get offended about a stereotype, they should ask themselves this question: what have you, personally done to contradict that stereotype?

My fellow women: if you don't want men to stereotype us as incompetent and dependent...don't be incompetent and dependent! If you don't already know, learn how to change a tire. Take a higher level math and science course. Jars can be a pain in the ass, but I use a mechanical jar opening kitchen gizmo, and I have a stepladder in the apartment.

Second, there is indeed inarguably a segment of the American population that revels in ignorance and obstinacy. I do not agree with President Obama on everything, but when he said that every American child should learn a second language, it struck me as a totally true, noncontroversial common-sense statement. No one, anywhere, should just speak one language, and the fact that many do is indeed shameful. But lo and behold, some pundits took exception to the idea Americans should have to learn a language other than English! I just couldn't believe it!

Read them here. These links are work-safe but sanity-unsafe.

Obama: Americans who aren't bilingual are an embarassment
(Well, it is an embarrassment!)

Neil Cavuto: Obama wants U.S. Kids to Speak Spanish?


ALIPAC - Voters reject Obama's call for bilingualism


All of this is a part of a greater trend in our culture I find troubling, one so masterfully lampooned on the Simpsons: the demonization of intellectuals, specifically, the manipulation of the doubt that drives science into claiming there is a dispute in areas where in reality there is a universal consensus. Of course I'm talking about anti-science positions like creationism and global warming denial. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to deny physical reality.

The most embarassing moment in recent political history was in Bobby Jinda's response to a recent State of the Union address. He complained about stimulus but singled in on the single worst aspect of the entire bill, support to fund volcano research and early warning. The kicker here is that a few days afterward, one of the volcanoes so monitored erupted!

This reminds me of a great Simpsons episode where a giant comet headed for the town but was narrowly averted. An angry mob formed, with the rallying cry "Let's burn down the observatory...so this never happens again!"

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Renaissance Man: Morris Mendez




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.

"Mathematics Illuminated"


For those of us with a love and curiosity about mathematics, check out the 13-episode series, available entirely online,"Mathematics Illuminated."

Visit the Series Website

Series like this, that really explored and laid out mathematical functions, are part of what made me a fan of math in the first place. Well, that, and the art of M.C. Escher.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

That’s NOT Funny! Review of “Young Hercules”


Booooooo!

Thanks to Hulu, you can see all the episodes of Young Hercules for free, and they’re worth that, too. The humor reaches near-Battletoads levels of terrible. Just check out the titles like “Lyre, Liar.”

Hey, I can do some Greek-themed puns too:

“A Pita the Action”
“Olive You Very Much”
“Juno What I Mean?”
“The Feta All Mankind”

HILARIOUS!

The jokes in this series are like a mighty Cyclops of myth: you see it coming from a mile away and don’t laugh at all.

QUESTION: where was hunky Jerry O’Connell during all of this? He was big during the nineties, right? He would be my first, second, third and only choice to ever play a young Hercules. He has incredible heart-melting blue eyes and a likeable gee-whiz quality.

I did a double-take when I saw the credits. That couldn’t really be quirky, indie character actor and Academy Award nominee Ryan Gosling as Young Hercules, could it? The star of Lars and the Real Girl, which was easily the best movie of 2008, far and away superior to any other film that year? (I am still outraged that it wasn’t nominated.)


Ryan Gosling plays Hercules as a likeable yet quiet loner. Gee, what a stretch for him.

Also, it seems the actor playing the god Aries is named Kevin Smith, same as the stoner-movie director, and I had to double-check to make sure they weren’t the same guy. I’ve had friends that swear by him (the director, that is), but I’ve never understood the appeal of his obtuse and dimwitted stoner-comedies (actually, I understand perfectly since there’s a segment of the audience that finds jokes about the Ice Planet Hoth to be the height of wit, and since my mother may one day read this blog I’m not going to say whether I’ve taken my share of puffs from the giggle-sticks). His films seem custom made for people that enjoy Family Guy, but wish it was more subtle.

Anyway, Kevin Smith’s Aries is the only guy in the series that’s sporting a little beefcake arms. He has triceps of downright Jamie Bamberian proportions.

The episode I immediately went to was “Girl Trouble,” because contrary to my reputation as an ice-queen with a withered black heart, I do enjoy love stories as much as I enjoy CGI monsters. So why not have them together? And the good-natured, macho joshing between three guys that have trouble getting laid who compete over a woman seems believable. At least until you see the girl they’re fighting over, who, in the words of the movie “Spinal Tap,” looks like an Australian’s nightmare.



Speaking of the antipodes, the best part of this series is the constant struggle of the talent pool to hide their Kiwi accents. To his credit, Sam Raimi thought of filming a cheapie fantasy series in New Zealand long before anyone else, and certainly before Peter Jackson stole the credit for that particular idea in the eyes of the world.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

John Cleves Symmes's Globe


If there's one peeve of mine, it's cranks.

All cranks, whether they insist 9/11 was an inside job, or we never reached the Moon, or there are UFOs that kidnap people, irritate me to no end.

There is one theory that actually is pretty interesting to me, the idea the earth is in fact hollow and there are gigantic openings at the poles. There's something so outlandish and 19th Century and improbable about this theory that it's actually a little charming.

The biggest booster for this crank theory was a guy named John Cleves Symmes, who in the 1850s petitioned Congress for three ships (like Columbus!) to head to what he thought were the openings at the polar regions into the center of the earth. He actually was about to get it, too, until the Civil War happened, which put an end to the whole thing.

Symmes's father was actually a great man, a signer of the Declaration of Independence for New Jersey (which to my mind, explains everything!) and his first cousin was the wife of President William Henry Harrison. Further proof that in Washington, it's possible to fail upwards really spectacularly.

Still, Symmes had made a fabulous one-of-a-kind globe detailing his crank view of what the earth looks like. Perfect for the crazy collectors among us.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Dennis "Inhuman" Newman



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!

Arnold vs. Bear: Hercules Goes to New York


After my look at Pumping Iron, a friend recommended I give Hercules Goes to New York another glance, a cheapie starring the current leader of the world's 5th largest economy.

The general effect of the movie is actually kind of depressing. Let me explain that. The movie was made is 1970, a full half-decade after the peplum boom ended and the only way that Hercules and other muscle heroes would be relevant is by poking fun at them. It's sort of like how Shatner and Adam West and other irrelevant actors past their expiration date reinvent themselves as self-parodies living up to their campy image.

I don't find this funny...I find it tragic. For that reason, as heretical as it sounds, I never much liked Blazing Saddles. Just look when it came out: 1974, a year after the last truly relevant Western, the sentimental Sam Pekinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was the Hollywood Western's funeral, eulogy and last cry of defiance in one. In that context, Blazing Saddles is like a prop comedian seltzer-squirting a widow at her husband's wake.

When parodies are bigger than the actual thing it parodies, it's a sure sign something is no longer relevant. What I find amazing is that Blazing Saddles is often the only Western that people of my generation have ever seen!

I always thought the moment America stopped taking newspaper science fiction strips with any seriousness was with the Mad Magazine parody of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon went from a strip with characters people love, to being an irreverent way for magazine writers to talk about an architectural style.

If you need another example, look at the hilarious Rent parody in Team America: World Police, "Everybody Has AIDS." There's such a thing as a parody that is so spot-on, it torpedoes the effectiveness of its target forever, and I'd definitely put "Everybody has AIDS" in that category. No wonder the ten years too late movie version with Rosario Dawson tanked.

Maybe I'm just not getting the joke of movies like Hercules in New York that reinvent their genre as parody, and instead I'm spending my time mourning the end of the peplum. A Norwegian friend of mine told me that there's much more of the Nordic character in me than the Latin, as Latins are a culture that enjoy life whereas I cry much more easily than I can laugh.

Then again, this movie is so weirdly done that with almost all the jokes you're not sure whether to laugh or not, if something is intentionally funny or just an elaborate translation mistake.

There is one bit of humor in the movie, though it's entirely unintentional. This has to go down in history as the most dated-looking film I've ever seen in my life. The best part has to be Arnold's tan cordoroy jacket/turtleneck sweater combo. Most people can guess when a movie is made (give or take three years) just based on how a movie looks, and this is one of the few films I've seen you can guess it to within the actual year.

Believe it or not, the most effective scenes in the film are actually ones where Arnold and his girlfriend are just walking around New York, enjoying each other. They're simple, quiet little scenes where the character of the city of New York is the star, and they're much to be preferred over Arnold stopping a forklift and going "a fine chariot, but where are the horses?" (THAT'S NOT FUNNY!)

The all-time winner has to be this scene:




I can't even identify the best part: the meat-smacking sounds when Arnold pounds that bear (only Harrison Ford has a more distinctive sounding punch) or the fact that, come the midway point, it's obvious the bear is down for the count and Arnold is just whacking it out of sadism. The merry bazouki music is a very weird, whimsical touch.

There was one scene where some New Yorker friends of Hercules got together and suggested that Hercules was just a demented guy that thought he was Hercules. For some reason, this struck me as a much more entertaining premise than the actual movie itself.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Unbelievable Epic Fabio Movie: I suffered for my art, and now it's your turn!

Fabio, he of the Afghan hound tresses and solid square profile known for his endorsement of love and romance the world over, actually produced a supercheesy direct to video film back in 1993 called "A Time For Romance." My favorite is the place on the box art where it calls the Fabster "every woman's perfect man." (Hahahahahaha.)

I know that it's always unwise to link to copywritten material on YouTube because it doesn't last very long up there, but my gut tells me that nobody's going to be challenging this particular infringement anytime soon...except for maybe an embarassed Fabio himself.

Remember a while back when I said Zeb Atlas is the kind of guy you admire but can't help but laugh at? Fabio would be "Exhibit A" when it comes to that definition. I wrote my thoughts on his bizarre fame and my one meeting with him here.

But I have to say, at least he's got a pretty striking profile and at least in this particular movie was built at least as big as most of the Herculeses.

"A Time For Romance" is pretty hilariously bad and unintentionally funny at every point. It's great to see when drunk and with your friends. I swear, at no point does this movie ever ratchet back a notch from "11."

As a side note to amuse my fellow Millennials (or Generation Y, whatever we're called now), the heroine in the first Viking scenario is played by Raja Baroudi, the leader of the Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers. What I find even more amazing is this movie isn't even listed on her IMDB page.



A few things to notice:

Fabio, dressed as a Viking, looks like a young version of Vigo the Carpathian.

6:30 - There's no way to ever possibly do a realistic romance story of this type, because actually being a captive of a Viking or pirate reaver...would actually be pretty horrifying.

6:45 - This shot of our heroine's plunging cleavage is pretty bizarre, especially considering the target audience for this film.



1:08 - Why? Why is Fabio shirtless at this point? The only person that compulsively took his shirt off with this much gusto was Shatner.

3:55 - Is that the same dress Karen Allen wore in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

4:20 - You know, I feel kinda bad even saying this because of my own regional accent and I know firsthand how terrible it is to have your intelligence judged on the basis of how you speak, but still...it's almost laughably funny to hear Fabio speak English. Arnold had an accent, but at least it was obvious he knew the words he was saying meant.

8:12 - The matter-of-fact way rape is discussed in this film is one of the most amusing things about it.



My favorite part about all this is the obvious way they're using public domain music like Pachibel to cut down costs.

0:20 - Is he wearing some sort of wizard's robe? Anyway, it's a vast improvement over his previous outfits, which look like he got them by raiding Liberace's closet.

1:53 - Fabio gets beaten at Chess by some random person. How unintentionally realistic!

2:55- Jesus Christ, that is some horny, angry kissing. It's like watching two Klingons mate.

4:25 - You can just see what Fabio is thinking here. "Hey, where's the Power Ranger chick? You know, the one that's considerably less dumpy looking?"

4:40 - Yeah, I can't believe it either, lady.



0:15 - That is one comically huge rose. It's like something Krusty the Klown would give you during courtship.


Final Fun Fact: according to IMDB, Fabio, as a baby, was the infant in "Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops." Apparently, Fabio was selected by DESTINY to be a supercheesy beefcake star!

Black Fantasies for Gays and Ladies



There's a well known phenomenon among straight women (especially Caucasian and Latina women) and gay men who love black men, and as of yet there is no term to describe that social trend ("Jungle Fever" is more associated with black men that love white women). I have a theory why this is. If you give a name for something, it's an acknowledgment something is going on and exists.

One great contribution by the playwright David Henry Hwang to the language was the term "Yellow Fever" to describe white men that have a thing for Asian women. I remember I burst out laughing the first time I heard the term, because it was something I saw going on around me. For instance, when I first read the ultimate "airport" paperback, "Meg" by Steve Alten, the moment he described his heroine with the magic word "Asian" I knew just what was going to happen next!

I was always amused by Yellow Fever because it seems to happen with men that are unfamiliar with or have close contact with actual Asians. As astonishing as it seems to me at times, not everybody is from New York City. I remember once meeting a guy cousin of mine from Arizona that had a bad case of Yellow Fever, and it came up that I had a Vietnamese friend that had acne.

He was a little astonished. "I didn't know Asians had acne."

I couldn't stop laughing. "Of course they can get acne. They're not some kind of magical elf."

The website Stuff White People Like, in addition to painfully unfunny humor about Starbucks Coffee and the TV show "Friends," has a few gags about Asian women. You know, I can't stand that website. It's a funny thing about self-deprecating parody: it very quickly becomes a coy kind of self-admiration.

Likewise, I'm startled by how many of my gay friends have an extreme (dare I say it?) blackfantasy. I don't even pretend I have enough readers to possibly do something like make a contribution to the English language, but hey, who knows, I just put it out there! In fact, it seems shockingly all-but universal, but almost no one is talking about this phenomenon.

What I find interesting is that, despite the fascination for black men among white gay males, there seems to be a lot of conflict between the two groups. African-American culture, even more so than Latino culture, is notorious for homophobia. Likewise, there's a lot of conflict in New York City between middle and upper class homosexuals and blacks as a result of the "gentrification" of many traditionally black neighborhoods. Many black residents of these neighborhoods see the loss of their neighborhood's identity, and find themselves pushed out by higher housing prices.


Unexpectedly, female sex tourism is a big market, especially in places like the Caribbean, where you have institutions like the so-called "Rent-a-Rasta." Because female sex tourism is practiced by women on men, it shouldn't receive a free pass from criticism as a fundamentally exploitative relationship. It happens in any third-world or developing country there are beaches and lots and lots of underemployed men.

A good place to start for anyone interested in the phenomenon of female sex tourism is with the movie Heading South with Charlotte Rampling, about female sex tourism in Haiti in the 1970s. If you want a double-bill, follow this up with Wes Craven's best movie, The Serpent and the Rainbow, about Haiti in the 1980s, where apparently secret police officers were regularly moonlighting as zombie-creating voodoo priests.

Another good choice would be How Stella Got Her Groove Back, which did for the tourism industry of Jamaica what "Crocodile" Dundee did for Australia. Stella was almost the Disneyfied version of sex tourism.

Read this Reuters article, written about older white women tourists to Africa:


Some choice quotes:

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls."

Many of the visitors are on the lookout for men like Joseph. Flashing a dazzling smile and built like an Olympic basketball star, the 22-year-old said he has slept with more than 100 white women, most of them 30 years his senior.


Incidentally, I hope everyone forgives me for the totally gratuitous images of the hunky Brazilian Orso Orfeo. But jeez, I'm a size queen, I can't help myself!

Pumping Iron: A Review


Periodically, a list comes up of the greatest film villains of all time, which contain the usual suspects like Hannibal Lecter, Cruella de Ville and Darth Vader. I'm astonished that Arnold Schwarzenegger never made these lists.

Like any good movie, the reason to see it is for the villain, and Pumping Iron makes you truly hate Arnold. His personality dominates the film, Arnold is goal-focused and very intelligent, a guy that you're not sure whether to be frightened of or admire. When asked what he thought he'd do if he thought the other competitors might be better than him, he says "I'd just talk them into losing."

There was also the detail, the one that almost everyone remembers from this film, that Arnold missed his own father's funeral so as to not lose focus on a contest. There have been debates about whether this was actually staged for the film, but considering Arnold's near-fanatic dedication and general coldbloodedness, it's perfectly in character. Additionally, Arnold talking about how a good pump at the gym is better than sex is the kind of grandiose thing a James Bond villain would say in an over-the-top soliloquy, if a James Bond villain was into bodybuilding.



It doesn't surprise me that of all the personalities in the film that Arnold was the one to go on to fame and fortune. He was clearly the smartest person there, and the most driven to the point of scary ruthlessness. It doesn't surprise me at all, after seeing this film, that Arnold went into politics, either. Arnold running for political office is only surprising to people that don't know him. He is a "great" man, the kind that makes other men seem little in comparison besides him, along with Julius Caesar, Teddy Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin.

What's more, it doesn't surprise me that Arnold got his big break as a ruthless and implacable villain, either. The Terminator was the scariest new movie monster since Boris Karloff played the Mummy. What does surprise me, though, is that Arnold got work afterward as a heroic figure.

If you're someone that's never been a bodybuilder, the movie is recommended as a great insight into what this niche sport is all about...which I think was the original purpose of the old Max Rep Astrotitan comics in M&F. The one thing you're left with is the incredible level of fanatacism needed to compete, the minimal rewards, and overpowering sense these guys are doing something very strange.

At times, us fans of muscular guys are so immersed in our interest that at times we lose perspective, and fail to see that, to a lot of people that "don't get it," the devotion to muscularity comes off as very weird. In that sense, while many people point to Pumping Iron as one of the big exposures of bodybuilding to a wider audience, it probably discouraged and turned away more people to the gym than brought in.

I'd be curious to see a followup. I'm sure the modern sport of bodybuilding is as different as an alien planet to the world of 1975.

Anyway, it was worth it to see a few shots of Serge Nubret near his peak!