Wednesday Wetness #9

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Nude Dudes

Sweat trail or treasure trail, it’s your choice of path.

Then Was David Right Or Left Handed?

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And More!

Now that we’ve solved the question of the significance of placement of a horse’s hooves in statuary (see what ya miss by not reading the comments?), the even more important question of the significance the weight a man’s balls has in statues needs to be addressed. Or if you are puritanical, just dressed. Does the side a man made of marble dresses on have a meaning? Are a statue’s marbles just a chip off the old block, or nothing more than a case of window dressing?

Fortunately, unlike the horse hoof thingy this one has a concrete answer. Thanks to Dr. Chis McManus of the University College London and his seminal tomb Scrotal Asymmetry In Man and In Ancient Sculpture. Dr. McManus took it upon himself to settle four of the great mysteries of the world: Which testicle hangs lower? Which testicle is bigger? Does it matter? And did David practice manscaping?

It would take a Scot’s overly analytical mind and parsimonious soul to care enough to research the lack of symmetry in the human male nut sack, but since he did we all may as well benefit from his findings. Dr. McManus – with no preconceived notions other than what he’d observed by checking under his own kilt – set off for the European continent in the early 1970s to study ancient statues and Renaissance reproductions and the reproductive organs thereof, carefully detailing his observations of the number of statues in which one ball hung lower than the other.

Right, right?

From his study of 107 classical statues McManus determined that early sculpture invariably captured mans’ most precious jewels exhibiting a strong leftist leaning. Yes, I know. Sounds like Nobel Peace Prize worthy research to me too. Don’t scoff. In 2002 McManus was awarded the prestigious, or perhaps that’s prodigious, Ignobel Prize for Medicine in biology.

But Dr. McManus was not the first scholar to study this weighty issue. A previous testes tester, J.J. Wincklemann published an essay in 1764 that found in statues from antiquity, “The left testicle is always the larger, as it is in nature, and therefore hangs lower.” Using his trusty orchidometer McManus’s travels found that Wincklemann got it right (which was left) about what Greek artists intended: Classical sculpture dangled to the left. But that while both Wincklemann and Michelangelo got placement right, uh, to the left, they erred on the size thingy. Which is wrong. Because we all know that size is what really matters.

Equally underworked scientists have since compared McManus’ findings with real human anatomy. In their studies they noted that testicle size favors the subject’s dominant side. Since most men are right-handed then the predominate arrangement would be a larger right ball, which would dangle lower. Right? Wrong.

The heft should not be to the left.

While from a gravitational viewpoint it would make sense that the larger ball hangs lower, in fact, the dominant ball rides higher, closer to the action. His mini me, of lesser stature, wins the dangle prize and hangs lower. So the status of stature in ancient statues is anatomically correct, while the size of the statues’ stones is wrong because the heft would not hang left.

According to Dr. McManus popular theories of the significance of the improper positioning in classical sculpture of that part of the body man has always been nuts about is a bunch of balls. However, there is significance to a statue’s stone stead’s scrotum. At least there is if you are Hungarian.

The statue of Hussar general András Hadik at Castle Hill on the western side of the Danube River in Budapest is well known to local students. The beautifully green patinaed statue, designed by György Vastagh Jr. was presented to the public in 1937. The general is on horseback. And under the horse’s back there hangs a large shiny yellow pair of horse testicles.

Hungarian hangers.

For decades, engineering students have polished the horse’s balls on the morning of difficult exams to bring them good luck. Some would say that cracking a few books might be a more intelligent route than following a horse statue’s crack to its lucky hangers because doing so is just nuts. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, New Yorkers are bear for lucky balls too. But there the golden statuary orbs of good fortune belong to a bull.

Charging Bull, which is sometimes referred to as the Wall Street Bull, is a 11 foot tall bronze sculpture that stands in Bowling Green Park near Wall Street in Manhattan. The oversize sculpture depicts a bull, the symbol of aggressive financial optimism , leaning back on its haunches with its head lowered as if ready to charge. One of the most iconic images of Wall Street, the statue is visited by thousands of people each day. And according to a 2004 New York Times article, “Passers-by have rubbed — to a bright gleam — its nose, horns and a part of its anatomy that separates the bull from the steer.”

The peculiar ritual of handling the shining orbs of the statue’s scrotum has developed into a tradition. In Asia, they rub a Buddha’s belly for good luck, in the U.S. we fondle a bronze bull’s balls. Or do worse. A souvenir vendor whose stand is in the park was interviewed for the Times’ article and reported, “At night sometimes, when people have been drinking, I’ve seen them do stuff to that bull that you couldn’t print in a newspaper.”

Never Mind The Bull Bullocks

But fate is a fickle mistress, and luck runs in streaks. Visitors to New York can no longer press the flesh of Charging Bull. Following the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests, the statue was placed under police guard and is generally off-limits to tourists today. But never mind the bull bullocks, art thieves in the know realize it’s sculpted bison balls, not bull cojones that are the true plums.

Leave it to our Canadian neighbors to come up with their own twist on testicles of stone. Recently, the city of Edmonton has been all balls up over a rash of anatomical art thefts; someone has been gelding the city’s bison statues. Yup, sounds like statuary rape to me too. The gonad heist that has been going on revolves around the city’s colorfully painted bison statues that are used by charities to raise money by getting people with more money than brains to ‘adopt’ them.

Local Mounties are baffled by the snatching of over 19 pairs of bison sacks but believe it is the city’s youth, a demographic well known for a fondness for playing with their balls, who are responsible for the castration of the pubic pieces of art. According to a police spokesman the value of the statues will drop considerably if they are not anatomically correct.

. . . and someone finally got the anatomical postioning of mans’ brain correct.

That should end any further discussion about statues and the significance of appendages thereon so that we can get back to more important subject matters. Like the significance of placement in Ubiquitous Plastic Stools Shots.

Happy Bissextile Day!

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And More!

I’d like to leap on that . . .

Since it will be several years before I have the opportunity of doing so again, I just wanted to take a minute and wish all my readers the very happiest Bissextile Day ever.

( and Google in three, two, one . . .)

Tighty Whitey Tuesday #9

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Nude Dudes

Ah, memories . . .

A hot guy in tighty whiteys always looks better up close and personal.

Related Posts You Might Enjoy:

Tighty Whitey Tuesday #14

Tighty Whitey Tuesday #2

Tighty Whitey Tuesday #7

Winning The Airplane Seatmate Lottery

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That's Gay, Transportation

Sometimes you can just look at someone and tell there’s something a bit off about them. It’s not something specific that sets the alarms ringing. Just an air they have about them. Normally, you keep an eye on peeled and get out of their way. It’s not so much that they may be dangerous, but no one wants to deal with crazy either. On an airplane you don’t have that ability. Air travel today forces you to deal with crazies. In a confined space. Possibly even in your personal space.

Airlines have become buses. And attract the people who used to only ride Greyhound. Airlines continue to add draconian rules about conduct of passengers because of the low class of clientele they’ve marketed to. I think that’s wrong. It’s their fault and they should suffer the consequences. Instead you don’t dare even look at a flight attendant these days. If you incur their wrath, federal marshals will be waiting for you when you arrive at your destination. But fellow passengers are fair game.

Not flying in steerage is a good step toward avoiding the mentally unkempt. It’s not that you necessarily are flying with a better group in the font of the plane, just that the truly disgusting tend to be cheap or poor and can only afford to ride in the back with the masses. So on a recent flight, when the odd looking blonde with the slightly crazed eyes came trundling down the aisle I breathed a sigh of relief and momentarily felt bad for whatever poor sucker would end up being that particular lunatic’s seatmate for the next thirteen hours. And then got a bit concerned when instead of passing by she started struggling with her 500 pound suitcase, an oversized piece of baggage she was trying to cram into an overhead bin. That her bag was large enough to hide a body in did not help to lower my concerns.

A cute flight attendant doesn’t really make up for the presence of the gross person you won in the seatmate lottery.

Crazy lady not only held up boarding while she attempted to make her suitcase obey, but once she almost got it squeezed into a space designed for half a dozen pieces of carry on luggage, she unzipped it and began pulling out what ended up being a human-sized pillow and enough food to feed a small country. I quickly said a prayer to every god I could think of. They laughed. She plopped herself down into the seat next to mine.

I enjoy flying. Especially on long flights. Or used to. I don’t so much anymore, but my conscious mind hasn’t yet filed that little fact away and so every flight I get on I’m happy and ready for what once used to be a pleasurable experience. Thanks to code-share flights, it’s been years since there was any chance of nabbing an entire row of empty seats. Planes these days are always packed. No problemo, if they have not yet upgraded me to the front of the plane, before take off I’ll get moved there. Flying solo helps qualify you as the passenger who gets the free first-class seat. Evidently, not being sane and barely qualifying as a human being does too.

Belonging to the top tier of the airline’s loyalty program means I get to board the plane first. On long flights, with some twenty hours of travel still to go, being allowed to stake out your claim to a seat ten to twenty minutes early isn’t much of a prize. But I’ve learned that too many flyers are greedy little pigs and pack their entire household in their carry-on luggage. Wait too long to board and the hoarders will have already filled up all available overhead storage.

Women bring on even more luggage than men. They make sure they have enough baggage to fill a few overhead storage compartments plus the required amount to fill all available below-seating space and any other open area within ten feet of them. It’s that womb thing. They all have a need to cocoon themselves in a fuzzy little space of protection. Even when that means taking up the space of their fellow passengers.

The best seatmate on an airplane is the absent one.

Believe it or not, I’m actually a polite person. Usually. I’ve learned to not be when it comes to air travel. When some piggish fish has stored her crap under the seat in front of me, I pick it up and stick it out in the middle of the aisle. And then ignore the sputtering coming from the seat next to me. Then when the flight attendant comes by and asks who the bag belongs to, I roll my eyes toward Miss Piggy and let the flight attendant abuse her first passenger of the flight.

And don’t even think you are going to claim more than 50% of the arm rest if you are seated next to me.

I should know better, but I start every flight with high hopes of landing some hot hunk – preferably gay – as a seatmate. I never do. That is not my brand of luck. I don’t bother wasting money playing the lottery either. My numbers are never gonna come up. And my seat number is never going to win in the seatmate lottery either. At best, my seatmate will be someone easy to ignore. Who isn’t too intrusive or who doesn’t smell too badly.

I used to book the aisle seat but after too many flights of having to get up every twenty minutes to let the old lady with the bladder infection out to hit the head yet again, I now book my ticket early enough to claim a window seat. And then hope that old lady hasn’t advanced to the point in her medical needs to be fitted with a colostomy bag. Nothing is worse than a fifteen hour flight with someone’s piss bag squeezed up against your leg. Well, okay the 6-month-old who has been fed a steady diet of Doritos and will spend the flight filling a succession of diapers is worse. But if that looks like it will be my flight experience I grab a flight attendant and demand a new seat before leaving the ground.

Optiontown allows you to reserve empty seats next to yours on your AirAsia X flights.

Airlines nickel and dime you to death these days and do little to live up to their claim of flying the friendly skies. Several, however, have recently introduced new programs that help you to win in the seatmate lottery. No longer do you have to use your barf bag to express your opinion of your seatmate.

The best seatmate is no seatmate and Air Asia – the airline I love to hate – will now allow you in-flight solitude for a price. Operating in conjunction with Optiontown (https://www.optiontown.com) its Empty Seat option (ESo) allows you to reserve seats next to yours on flights that are not fully booked. After booking your seat with Air Asia X – the long-haul, low-fare affiliate of Malaysia’ AirAsia – you can ‘reserve’ empty seats in your row by paying a fee which varies by flight time and destination but can be as low as $6.

If you are travelling alone, you may claim the two additional seats in your row, if flying with a buddy you can reserve the remaining empty seat. If your reservation is successful (meaning the flight is not full) you then have the exclusive right to use the assigned empty seat(s) for the entire duration of the flight. It’s not guaranteed, however.

If empty seats are available, you’ll get a confirmation message four to 72 hours before your flight. If no seats are available, the empty seat reservation price you paid is refunded a few days after the flight departs. A few other airlines offer a similar product. At check-in, Air New Zealand’s Twin Seat option gives passengers the chance to buy the seat next to them for a significantly reduced price. Spain’s Vueling offers a second-seat option, called Duo, as well. And Optiontown also offers an Upgrade Travel Option – a program to get you a paid upgrade that is usually cheaper than those offered directly by the airlines – on 10 airlines, including AirAsia X, Aeromexico, SAS, Air India, and others.

Malaysia Airlines and KLM now allow you to choose seatmates from Facebook profiles.

Malaysia Airlines won’t let you get away with not having to deal with a seatmate, but does allow you to call dibbs on the hottest guy on your flight through its MHbuudy program, which integrates Facebook into its ticket booking program. Consider it the Grindr app for flying.

The way MH buddy works is that after booking your ticket via Malaysia Airlines Facebook page, and up until boarding, you can revisit their page to check out the Facebook profiles of your fellow passengers. Skim though and find the hottest hunk and you can then reserve the seat next to him. Better yet, locate the obnoxious parents flying with their brood of devil spawn and you can pick a seat the furthest away as possible from that little bit of hell. MHbuddy also tells passengers if any of their Facebook friends are planning on traveling to their destination in case they want to meet during the trip.

KLM recently introduced a similar program, Meet & Seat, which allows ticketed passengers to review other traveller’s Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. For now, the program is only available on the airline’s flights between Amsterdam and New York, San Francisco, and Sao Paulo. The program is available 90 days until 48 hours before departure. And if you have already used it to choose the fellow passenger you plan on molesting during your flight, as new passengers add their profiles KLM will email them to you. You never know when a hotter stud will show up. Alaska Airlines’ Flying Social program also integrates Facebook in its seat selection process.

KLM‘s Meet & Seat is an easy way to choose the guy you’d most like to join the Mile High Club with on your flight.

This new service connects passengers and aims to give them a more inspirational journey,” said KLM managing director Erik Varwijk in a statement announcing the new “Meet & Seat” program which will eventually be available on all KLM intercontinental flights. Anyone using the word ‘inspirational’ when discussing air travel today has got to be employed by an airline. Or on some serious drugs. While the idea of picking your seatmate sounds good at first, obvious concerns should immediately spring to mind. Sometimes it’s the stalker who is stalked. Your inspirational journey could just as easily become a quick trip to hell.

You know fat, desperate straight women on the prowl for a husband will be big fans of the service. If your LinkedIn profile suggests a high salary, you can bet financial advisors, insurance agents, and timeshare salespeople will all be fighting for a seat next to you. The problem with these programs is that while it is great that you can select which hottie you want as a seatmate, you too can become someone’s obsession. And you can not ‘unlike’ someone once in the air.

On the other hand, there is a lot of potential for helping to make sure your flight is an enjoyable one beyond the stud you line up to sit next to. A fake newspaper story about the airline’s recent record of large numbers of unexplainable infant deaths emailed to anyone whose profile lists a ton of kids may help convince them to take a different flight. Picking out the profiles of those you really don’t want on your flight and then slipping a suspicious bag of white powder into their carry-on just before they go through security could easily improve your pool of potential seatmates. Buh Bye!

Keep in mind that choosing a seatmate via Facebook is a lot like on-line dating. That profile photo might be two decades old. Or worse.

You may also be able to pull off scoring an empty seat next to yours without using Optiontown. Post a Facebook profile showing you are a 500 pound 80-year-old with bad bladder control whose favorite pastime is watching bestiality porn on his personal DVD player while flying, and that seat – if not the entire row – should remain empty. And for the sheer fun of it you could post a fake profile showing yourself as a scrawny bar boy working in Pattaya who loves old fat guys – the sex tourists will be putting up a fierce fight to nab you as a seatmate (uh, but remember that after the initial enjoyment of punking someone, you will have to endure sitting next to those guys for your entire flight).

Since you can only use the Facebook program by including your profile in the airline’s database, you might be better off sticking to Grindr. Log on just before take-off and you may be pleasantly surprised by the number of hot guys, and potential partners, looking to book in some frequent flyer miles in the Mile High Club during your flight. Now that’s a use of social media for airline travel I can get behind!

Monday Muscle #9

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Nude Dudes

Built, not muscle bound, and incredibly cute.

Happy Birthday To Me!

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Blogs

Uh, not me personally, my blog. One year ago this week I started this endeavor and now look where we are. Scary, huh?

So by Thai counting, this blog is now two years old. That’s the problem with numbers, it’s too easy to tweak them to provide the results that will make you happy. And that’s why I don’t use a hit counter on the site. It really doesn’t tell you much; the older versions still count a ‘hit’ for every graphic that loads, meaning one page with 15 pictures on it with a single visitor racks up 15 ‘hits’. Even the better ones don’t differentiate between someone who drops in and immediately flees and someone who stumbles upon the site and then spends the next three days reading every post you’ve ever written.

But people seem to love numbers, and though the only ones that ever concern me are those that tally length, I thought ‘d share some of mine with you.

Thanks to some not too shabby SEO efforts and keywords designed to attract those who I’d tend to think would enjoy my musings, my daily visitor averages now hover around 1,300. That number represents unique visitors (as opposed to a sum of all pages they clicked over to) both new and returning.

On average, of those visiting on any given day, 575 are returning visitors – those of you who like any good masochist return to the scene of the crime again and again. I’m sure that would be a higher number if I didn’t offend people so often; which is a lot easier to do than you’d think. I’m still debating whether my goal for this next year is to increase the returning visitor count or to offend a great number of people. But them knowing me I’m sure it’ll be the latter. In my book the easier road is always the better choice.

And speaking of offending people, some of you really need to get a life. 32% of visitors stay on my blog for over an hour. I’d have said ‘stay on my blog reading posts for over an hour’ but I have a strong feeling a majority of those visitors are lubed up and stroking away so it’s not so much about reading prose as indulging in fantasy. A laugh, an orgasm, if I brought you either I’m good with that.

I started this blog intending it to be primarily about Thailand. That slowly evolved and branched out to include subject matter of general interest to gay men. That’s still pretty much where it’s at, but I’ve allowed for room to post any stray thought that pops into my brain too. That’s the nice thing about a personal blog. It’s personal. There are no rules about what you can and can not write about. And I’ve learned as long as I post enough pictures of hotties, no one complains about the other content.

I’ve also learned there is an entire community of gay men who enjoy Thailand beyond the crazies, disenfranchised, and made-up characters who routinely post on the gay Thailand message boards. That has been a nice benefit. I’d thought this blog would be a source of amusement for me (and hopefully for you too but then since that’s not about me, I don’t really care). It has been. But it has also introduced me to many of you and I have to tell ya, I’m impressed.

Witty, intelligent, often insightful, those of you who post comments frequently make whatever point I was attempting much more eloquently than I. More so, it’s that you guys are normal sane people who speak with a refreshing honesty that far too often gets lost among the dementia that clutters the message boards. It’s nice to learn that there is a large group of guys who love SE Asia as much as I do who are not creepy or crazy. But have enough of a sense of humor to not take anything I post too seriously.

A year ago I made my introductory splash with a snarky post about Boo Hoo and his blog which resulted in his spending the following month desperately posting from one board to the next in an attempt to remind people of what a nice guy he thinks he is. And perfectly illustrated the points I’d made in my post in doing so. That post introduced my blog to the gay Thailand message board community, and quickly rid me of the pretentious fools, posers, perverts, and pedophiles who might otherwise have infected my little corner of the internet. And brought my initial core group of readers to my blog too. Sometimes it’s a win-win and you get both sides of the win.

Like many, my initial foray into the gay Thailand world on the internet, to fill the gap between visits, was with the message boards. I always assumed that is where the majority of my visitors would come from. Nice to finally have been wrong about something, people have been warning me about that for years. A mention on one of the forums is good for a few dozen visitors at best. Unless the poster had something really negative to say, then the number doubles. (Thanks guys!) Channing Tatum’s penis has done more for my visitor count than anyone else. Though Joe Manganiello’s ass comes in a close second. And any post that mentions Tawan drives a swell of visitors this way. Guys who visit Thailand and appreciate beefy, masculine men are sorely under represented on the internet. I’ve not run the numbers but suspect the recent upswing in people dropping by my blog is thanks to the universal interest in my Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot! series.

Noom has a legion of fans on the internet. He’d be thrilled to hear how many people click in weekly to read about him because he loves himself almost as much as I do. But that warm fuzzy feeling would quickly fade when he realizes that adoration doesn’t transcend into baht. Because he always has his priorities straight, I can easily imagine him asking, with his forehead scrunched in confusion, “Why you not make money?”

The internet is responsible for adding many new words to our vocabulary; one of the most stupid is ‘monetizing.’ The sheep of the world have picked up on the term, which really only is used by hucksters trying to convince people who have no real hope of doing so that they can become filthy rich by learning the secrets of how to make money off of your internet site. For a mere $39.95. When I started this blog I had numerous choices of hosting sites to choose from, many that offer blog space at no charge. I went with WordPress because they do not allow you to get rich quick via Google Adsense or blog ad placement. I have a nasty habit of making money off of my hobbies. I thought I’d keep this pastime a pastime for a change. Which is a benefit to you. Otherwise, in the best tradition of drug dealers the world over, now that ya’ll are hooked on Noom I’d be forcing you to pay for the privilege of feeding your Noom joneses. And Noom would be good with that.

I’ve made quite a few changes to the blog over the last year and there are several still to be made. That’ll take a while because I procrastibate a lot. The additional content and subject matter stems from my little twisted brain, formatting and layout improvements have come via suggestions and complaints from readers. I do listen, I’m just slow to react. So, please, keep those type of comments coming. But don’t take that as an open-ended request to dump on me.

With both the Golden Globes and Academy Awards having recently aired maybe it’s not surprising that this is starting to sound like an acceptance speech. So in the best tradition of bad turns at the microphone I’ll leave you with: “You tolerate me! You really tolerate me!”

Thanks for having stuck around. Thanks for providing me with more laughs than I’ve provided to you. And mahalos for being part of my wolf pack.

Hope ya’ll stick around for another year.

Stay In Bed Sunday #9

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Nude Dudes

An award worthy snuggle bunny.

I’m sticking to my red carpet salute today, and this hottie would be the perfect reason to stay cuddled up in bed until the ceremonies are over. I’d have switched over to a salute to the All-Stars instead but couldn’t find any suitable hot nude Asians in bed with a basketball. Sorry, but Jeremy Lin fails to qualify in the hot department.

Yahel Castillo: Mexico’s Golden Boy Of Diving

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Olympics

Yo también creo que Yahel Castillo es demasiado sexy!!

So many hot Olympic athletes, so little time. I hate to double up on one sport, but will use the FINA Diving World Cup that just concluded in London this week as an excuse. Or the more honest one that divers always grab my attention thanks to their perfect physiques and skimpy suits. With Mitcham out, Louganis having made a big splash with his announcement that he was gay, and 70% of the spectators at any meet being gay men, it must be a bitch to be a straight male diver. This week’s profiled athlete, Yahel Castillo, doesn’t have that concern. He’s ready to go for a diving gold medal, and if you are not Chinese that means you better be gay.

My mastery of the Spanish language is iffy at best. Fortunately, Google’s predictive search results speaks all languages and has a tendency to want to add ‘gay’ to searches about Yahel. Actually Google wants to add ‘es gay’ but I do speak enough of the lingo to decipher that. Nice thing about gay Olympic divers is that besides looking hot on the diving board, they often pose for beefcake shots. The bad thing for gay Olympic Divers who are not officially out is that those beefcake shots almost always give the game away.

Yahel has a fine body, and evidently is a grower, not a shower.

Mexico is not a big medal winner, but the athletes who compete on the country’s behalf are definitely muy caliente. 24-year-old diver Yahel Castillo has a good chance at upping Mexico’s medal take in London this year. And an even better chance of upping viewers’ libidos. With thighs almost as massive as hottie He Chong’s, his appearance at the Olympic Games will be just that much more interesting.

Yahel made his Olympic debut at the 2008 Games in Beijing, placing seventh in the Men’s 3m Springboard competition. Since then the 5’6” Latino hottie has seen a meteoric rise in his career culminating with his bronze metal win at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships held in Shanghai, China last July. That win qualified him for a spot in the 2012 London Games where it is expected he will medal.

Yahel strikes a pose and shows he’s a fan of manscaping.

Yahel followed up his World Aquatics Championships win with a gold medal finish in the same event at the Pan American Games late last October where he also won gold partnered with Julian Sanchez in the 3m Synchronized Springboard competition which gives him a second berth at the 30th Olympiad.

There is probably nothing gayer at the Summer Olympics than the Men’s Gymnastics Floor Exercises. But men’s sychronized diving comes damn close. But that’s only because they don’t have a synchronized swimming event for men. I think. Please tell me they don’t. Now don’t be hating me for stating the obvious; yes, both events take skill and athletic ability beyond anything I posses and the competitors deserve recognition for their skill. But I’d never last on RuPaul’s Drag Race either. Gay is gay no matter how you call it. Even Olympic officials thought it was something else until 2000 when synchronized diving was adopted as an Olympic sport. Looking a lot like two dolphins mating, synchronized diving is all about team work. It’s a quick but beautiful aerial ballet of two supremely toned men, their contrasting skin tones and matching muscular physiques fusing their individual talents in perfect union. I’m sure Rick Santorum thinks sychronized diving is the work of Satan. But I digress . . .

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Huh. Well, this picture lisps.

At the Pan American Games, Yahel teamed with Julián Sánchez at the last minute when his usual partner, Daniel Islas, was injured after hitting his right leg on the board in the final of the 1-meter at the Aquatic World Championships. The duo finished 6th during the preliminaries, but managed to capture the bronze in the final event. Though rivals in the individual 3m springboard event, the two have combined their talents for synchronized diving.

Though Castillo has already qualified for two spots in the Olympic diving events, he competed in both the individual and sychronized 3m springboard events this week at the World Cup in London. The meet was an Olympic test event and had Yahel not yet qualified, his performance would have landed him a place at the Olympics in the individual events.

I’d always thought this was called the spike position. I’ve been corrected.

At the World Cup, the top 18 semifinalists in the Individual events and the final top four teams in the synchronized events qualify for an Olympic berth. Yahel, diving with his old partner Daniel Islas again, came in 7th. (Both the U.S. and Canadian diving teams finished out of the money in the 6th and 5th spots respectively but since the Chinese divers already qualified for Olympic spots they too managed to earn a spot on the card. The team of Bryan Lomas and Huang Qiang from Malaysia surprisingly won the bronze and not surprisingly, the Chinese men took the gold.)

With 59 athletes competing in the individual 3m event, Yahel disappointingly finished in the 13th spot. He Chong and his Chinese team mate took home the gold and silver, and Canadian Alexandre Despatie won the bronze. Divers from the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and Japan all finished within the top 14 spots and earned places at the 2012 Olympics.

Castillo wants to celebrate the win, while Islas does his best to keep little Daniel away from little Yahel.

Back home in Mexico, the handsome Guadalajara native was awarded his country’s 2011 National Sports Award, the highest honor Mexico bestows on its athletes. Yahel was also selected by Gillette as one of its 24 world-class athletes who will represent the brand at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The selected athletes exemplify Gillette’s conviction that in athletics, and in life, a great start can make all the difference. The key to success in many sports can be linked to proper preparation and an athlete’s action in the first milliseconds, not necessarily the final moments of the contest. Uh, yeah, a stretch and a bit of hype but nice for Yahel to gain an endorsement. Gillette might have helped him a bit by telling him he didn’t need to shave his armpits though.

Hopes are high for Castillo to medal at the Olympic Games. He is the only other diver who can consistently pull off He Chong’s signature forward two-and-a-half somersaults with 3 twists pike dive. Hopefully he will pull off that dive better than he pulls off trying to pass as a straight boy.

[‘The XXX Games’ are a series of posts about hot Olympians, gay competitors - both present and past - and general articles about the 2012 London Olympics of interest to gay men. So, yeah, lots of hot male eye candy. Click the XXX Games graphic below for additional news, stories, and pictures.]

End Of The Week #27

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Movies & Television, Nude Dudes

Tomorrow the Oscars will be handed out in Hollywood. I thought I’d honor the event with a bit of the red carpet myself. Granted, while the red is there, there is no carpet in sight. But who’s to complain? Besides that ass is award worthy in its own right. And of far more interest than the celebrities who will be lining up to walk the red carpet tomorrow on their way into the ceremonies; most of whom will discover that they aren’t quite as good as they thought they were. If more of the actors with their beard du jour would dress like this, we wouldn’t have to listen to Joan Rivers ask from behind the mask she’s paid thousands for, “And who are you wearing?”

That could become a new Hollywood tradition. Finding out who Tom Cruise is wearing on his ass each year is something we all could look forward to. As for the fish, who cares? If you ever thought gay men don’t really hate women, the gowns they create for Hollywood’s hottest should dissuade you of that belief. I don’t find Nicole Kidman the least bit attractive, but do have to admit she is statuesque and might have a nice body. Designers evidently think differently. Or maybe they are just pissed at her for giving Tom an excuse for so many years. Regardless, whatever she’ll be wearing tomorrow will make her look worse than Courtney Love on crack. Or maybe that’s Courtney Love when she’s hasn’t had a hit of crack within the last 15 minutes.

The ladies all try to outdo each other for the Oscars, and most fail miserably at the job. Except Helen Mirren. Amazing that someone in her 80s can pull off looking beautiful and sensual while the starlets in their 20s all end up looking like skanks. I guess you can take the girl off of the casting couch, but can’t take the casting couch out of the girl.

Joan Rivers will handle the red carpet duties at this year’s Oscars once again.

Last year the Academy decided to reinvent itself and attempted a make-over to appear to be young and hip. I think they went to Joan for advice; they were no more successful than her latest face lift. But to give her credit, she is starting to look an awfully like Oscar himself. Both the little gold statute and Walter Matthau. So we got James Franco and some fish as hosts and James was too stoned to do much other than grin throughout the show. But grinning is what James does best. That and trying to make everyone think he’s straight and just acts gay. The Academy’s attempt at the young and hip thingy didn’t work, and it was embarrassing listening to the fish host repeatedly tell everyone how young and hip the ceremony had become. Someone should have clued the writers into the fact that ‘hip’ went out of use in the late 60s.

Billy Crystal is hosting this year. Nice to know he is, presumably, still alive. Even if his career isn’t. And nice to know the Academy has gone back to old and staid. They evidently went back to Billy because of his cutting edge humor. The dude is so hip. I don’t understand how an award show that honors the best and brightest of Hollywood can be so bad, but they do it well. That fat freak who writes the show hasn’t managed to come up with a funny line in all the years he has been doing it, but they keep giving him the job anyway. His jokes are not funny, watching the stars who have to mouth them, and their reaction to the bad material can be though.

The Oscars want to be edgy like the Golden Globes. I’m not sure just how edgy the Golden Globes are considering they bleeped Meryl Streep this year for saying, “Oh, shit I forgot my glasses.” I mean, really? Meryl Streep could fart in the microphone and they should just hand her another award. She is, of course, up for an Oscar again this year. She usually wins, but not always. When she doesn’t, I feel bad for whatever actress wins instead because her achievement is quickly forgotten and those who did remember she won walk around saying, “Yeah, but you know Meryl should have won.”

If he was my brother I’d slip him some tongue too.

Angelina Jolie will win this year fro best performance by an anorexic. Good for Angie. The Academy has treated her badly in the past. She won once for Girl Interrupted, and then since no one did, decided to indulge in a bit of incest with her brother on camera. Since then she only gets to be a bridesmaid. And that’s only because the voters know how badly that pisses off Jennifer Aniston. If the Academy would embrace it’s bitchiness instead of trying to be what it ain’t, the show would be more enjoyable to watch. When Angie is up for something, they shouldn’t throw the camera to her, they should throw it to Jen so we can all laugh.

For years now when someone makes a slightly racist joke, all in good fun of course, the camera zooms in on a black actor or actress who has been cued to laugh so the audience knows it’s okay. I was watching some black comedian on TV recently and he told some white jokes. And sure enough, the camera zoomed in on a few white faces to show that they thought his racism was funny too. Equality between the races may not be here yet, but that Hollywood feels the need to show that white people are not offended over jokes about them shows you how far we’ve come. They’ve even done the same with gay jokes, though it is more difficult for the director to cut to gay guys laughing because he has to remember which are out and which are not officially gay yet. I think they should always cut to Tom, regardless. Unless Taylor Lautner is in the audience.

Even though they have been televising the Academy Awards for 58 years now, every year the show runs long. There is no excuse for that. There is also no excuse for a three and a half hour show, or for making us sit through the presentation of awards for crap we don’t care about. Like cinematography and art direction. The opening numbers always suck; they should have quit with Rob Lowe’s molestation of Snow White ‘cuz they’ll never top that. Elton John doing a duet with that little gay white rapper was interesting a few years ago, but otherwise the songs all suck too, so cut them.

We don’t need to hear jack about the accounting firm who tallies the votes, and we all get the importance of sound editing so quit with the cute little ‘world without sound’ skits too. In fact, no one is interested in anything other than the top acting and best movie awards. Since everything else is filler they could get rid of most of it. Then the winners could give whatever speech they want instead of the music being cued 45 seconds later.

Last year James Franco’s Black Swan skit outfit looked disturbingly reminiscent of Jennifer Lopez walking the red carpet.

Prior to 2010, they let the winners ramble on. They devised the sound cue because they said ‘the single most hated thing on the show’ were overly long and embarrassing displays of emotion. Wrong. The embarrassing moments are what we tune in to see. Jack Palance doing one-arm pushups, Sally Fields demonstration of how utterly uncool she is, Tom Hanks outing his high school acting teacher, James Cameron thinking he was Leo DiCaprio . . . these are what we live to see. And Gwyneth Paltrow teary, snot running down her face speech was not only stomach churning but should have tipped us all off to that she was in fact the only person on the planet smarmy enough to enjoy Cold Play.

Nothing will clear a room quicker than, “Oh, Gwyneth and Chris are dropping by.” Except perhaps for “Oh, Gwyneth and Chris are dropping by to sing tonight.”

I can’t tell you who will be the worst dressed at the Academy Awards this year but can tell you the competition will be fierce. As for the actual statues, I’ll save you from having to watch and tell you who will win now:

Best Actor:
This award should go to George Clooney because he is better looking than Brad Pitt. And all the others up for that award are foreigners. They have a category for non-Americans, they don’t need to waste a little gold guy on someone from beyond our borders.

Best Actress:
Uh, duh: Meryl. But they may give it to Michelle Williams in an sympathetic nod to Whitney by honoring some other dead drugged out celebrity.

The movie scene has been dull this year and can’t compare to the humor, drama, and bloodsport being offered by Republican Presidential candidate hopefuls.

Best Supporting Actress:
No one has ever heard of any of the actresses up for the ‘wasn’t the star’ award, so they’ll give it to one of the two from The Help. Doesn’t matter which, it’s the annual give-me to a black person and no one knows which which of them is. In fact, they could give it to that fat kid who won for Precious and no one would be any wiser.

Best Supporting Actor:
This is the annual ‘never will be a star’ award that has been won by some of Hollywood’s most forgettable actors in the past. It should go to Jonah Hill because he’s the only nominee under 90. But I’ll go with Christopher Plummer ‘cuz its become fashionable to give an Oscar to any actor brave enough to take on a gay role. Unless he is gay. Then it’s not acting.

Best Director:
With Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen both nominated in this category, the rest of the filed can skip the ceremony and watch from the comfort of their homes. I’m not really a Woody fan, but Martin needs to be sent a clear message that his milieu is blood and death and we won’t stand for any more of this animated kiddie flick crap. If De Niro can’t be worked into your movie Martin, just don’t do it.

Best Picture:
I’m torn between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. But neither got the Oscar nod because they had to limit nominations to only 10% of the movies made last year. So they came up with nine flicks to choose from, three feel-good movies, three tear-jerkers, one ‘black’ film (‘cuz you have to nominate any film filled with black characters that isn’t a Tyler Perry flick), and two movies no one has ever heard of much less seen. The Artist will win. Because nothing shows the Academy is young and hip like giving the Best Picture award to a movie filmed in black and white.