My Favorite Sport

Men's diving, of course! And here's Olympic hopeful Thomas Finchum, just 17 years old. So, remember, if you can't be an athlete, be an athletic supporter!

What If You Published a Blog and No One Read It?

You may have noticed from the little box on the right side of your screen, the other day, in an act of hubris, I subscribed to Feedburner. There are a few benefits offered by Feedburner. First, they allow you, the faithful reader, to subscribe to a feed so you will never have to miss one of my scintillating posts ever again. Secondly, they promise to help promote traffic, how I don't know. And finally, and most intriguingly to me, they compile statistics about your site so you can see how many people are visiting your site, what they are looking at, etc.

Here's what I found out. No one is reading my blog. Well, not "no one." Out of the One and a half Billion people who use the internet, three of them visited my site in the last two days. And I think that at least one of these people is me looking at my own blog from work. Yee haw. I have one subscriber (whoever you are, thank you). On an average I have zero hits per day. Zero.

Now, I admit that I have never been very good at self-promotion. My own lack of self-confidence is profound, and usually well-founded. But I have made a few attempts to get the word out on this blog. Granted, I've only been doing this for a few months, but criminey! Zero hits per day- did I mention that?

So, then, that leads to the question at the top of my post. What is the point of a blog that nobody reads? Is this just some kind of cyber-masturbation? Because it would be much easier for me to look at pictures online and make snarky comments on them to myself without posting them online. Decisions, decisions.

Giving In To My Obsessions

Yeah, that's right, it's been, what, a week since I've posted anything about Alex Pettyfer. I tried not to, but I can't help it. Here's pictures from his upcoming movie Wild Child, which sounds horrible but I'm going anyway. The North American release date has been postponed several times, but it is due to start rolling out in Europe in August.

Model of the Moment

From Germany: long, lean and lovely Ingo Franz. I tried to find some pictures of him with clothes on, honestly I did, but these are the best I could do. Oh well.

Hell's Record Collection

I can't even imagine what it sounds like, but at least the cover's nice. I don't know about you, but I always giggle inwardly when I hear the song Ballin' the Jack. Sounds like a great title for a porn movie.

Random Shirtless Guy of the Day

Styles That Might Not Catch On

High-waisted lederhosen as underwear.

R.I.P. Tasha Tudor

When I was a child my very favorite book was the Tasha Tudor Book of Fairy Tales. My brother and I used to make my parents read it to us over and over again, to the point that if one of them made a reading error we would correct them. I used to stare at her drawings for hours. I still have my tattered copy of that book, I still occasionally take it out and look at it, and it still seems a little bit like magic to me. Tasha Tudor died last week at the age of 92. If the interview with her I read recently is any indication she was one crazy old lady, my favorite kind.

The Stuff You Find On The Internet

After I posted pictures of Ben Mills last night I did a Google search to see what I could find out about him. I was hoping to find some smoking gun evidence to support my ordinary-in-real-life-hot-in-the-studio theory. Well, I didn't (and again, let me state: my theory could be completely wrong), but what i did find was this blog by an artist named Terry Blas. Terry has drawn two lovely portraits of Ben, as well as a very beautiful picture of (here we go!) Alex Pettyfer and one of Zac Efron. Terry, who is a student, draws in many styles, from very realistic to manga-like. I don't know if Terry is a boy or a girl, but I think he/she is very talented and you should check out the blog.

Model of the Moment: Ben Mills

I have a feeling that in real life Ben Mills is not the kind of guy who turns heads. I may be wrong, but he strikes me as skinny, pale, kind of funny looking; like a much younger Steve Buscemi. But in a photo studio, all groomed and dressed (and undressed) to the nines he is a stunner. Check out that tight little bod (at 5'11'' he is on the short side for a male model), that clear porcelain skin, those big sad eyes, and that sensuous mouth curled into a half snarl. I look at him and think of classic portraiture of the nineteenth century, like a Bacchus painted by Simeon Solomon.

Styles That Might Not Catch On

The freakishly long-billed baseball cap. With underwear.

Random Shirtless Guy of the Day

Random Shirtless Guy of the Day

How Time Flies Dept.

Remember the pudgy, funny-looking kid with the bad haircut in About A Boy? Nicholas Hoult is his name, and puberty has been kind. He has had a recent success on U.K. TV playing the role of bad boy Tony on Skins.

Random Shirtless Guy of the Day

Random Shirtless Guy of the Day

Just because I had this picture of Joe Harvey. He's a model and that's all I know about him.

Styles That Might Not Catch on

Rhoda Morgenstern circa 1971 head gear as last spotted on Axel Rose in 1991. But, as model Joe Harvey demonstrates in this picture, if you have the right bone structure (and eyelashes!) you can pull off anything.

Aimes-tu la bande dessinée?

While the rest of the world was busy going ga-ga over Japanese manga I have been developing an appreciation of comic books in the Franco-Belgian tradition known as bande dessinée. In America the most famous BD characters are Tintin, Asterix and the dreaded Smurfs, but there are many great BD that have never been translated to English.
Unlike American comics which are dominated by super heroes, BD come in a wide variety of styles and topics. Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Erotica, Humor, Romance, Detective and Espionage stories, you name it, are all popular topics for BD, sometimes in bizare hybrids: For instance, Thorgal, now in its 28th year and 30th volume, is a historical adventure/mystical fantasy/sci-fi epic.

Stay tuned. More BD coming soon...

Model of the Moment: Christopher Gloc

My random shirtless guy the other day was Christopher Gloc, about whom I know nothing except that he used to be the guy you saw on the giant photo when you walked in to an Abercrombie & Fitch store and right now he is the face of Hollister (which, in case you didn't know, is really Abercrombie). He is a typical Bruce Webber wet dream, which means that he's kind of old school, but I like him.

Book of the Day!

Sing with me now: When I was just a little girl, I asked my Mother, what will I be.......

Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door

Not My Original Plan

My original plan for today was to post anything but a picture of Alex Pettyfer, but I ran across this photo and couldn't resist. This photo is from his upcoming movie Wild Child.

Random Shirtless Guy of the Day

More Alex Pettyfer. Yes, I know.

Allow me to address my obsession with Alex Pettyfer. As much I hate to admit it, when it comes to sexual fantasy figures I am a twelve year old girl. This was not a problem when I, myself, was twelve and constantly falling head over heals for inaccessible older men. Donny Osmond! David Cassidy! Well, it was a problem, but for completely different reasons. The problem now is that as I get older (and I'm not sure how many more 29th birthdays I can celebrate) the guys I'm attracted to stay the same age, which just happens to hover somewhere around the age of consent. Alex Pettyfer, though his deportment is that of an adult, is a mere eighteen years old. Not that it should matter, really. It's not like I'm some crazed stalker. I'm not going to fly to London and haunt the streets of Notting Hill in hopes of encountering him. I'm never going to meet him, nor would I particularly want to. And I know that eventually some hot young thing from some movie or magazine will catch my attention and will supercede him as the first person I google when I'm surfing the web. In the meantime, what harm does it do for me to admire Alex from afar, to thrill to his youthfulness, to be captivated by his beauty? He is beautiful, is he not? So please, don't judge me until you've asked yourself, "What unreasonable demands have I made on the world?"