Model Of The Year!

Just a few days ago Lucky Blue Smith was busy having his wisdom teeth removed.  

Today he has been crowned by Models. com, the online authority on all things modeling, as Male Model of the Year, winning both the Industry poll and the Reader's Choice poll.  Not surprisingly, he also won both polls for Male Social Media Star. So how does it feel, Lucky Blue?

A Blog Of Note

Joel McCrae and Dolores Del Rio in "Bird of Paradise" (1932)

Among the many pleasures to be found at Poseidon's Underworld is a look at the history of men wearing sarongs in movies.  See it here.  

"The Pagan" (1929) starring Ramon Novarro

羽生結弦 = 神

After becoming the Olympic champion in men's figure skating at Sochi, the rest of Yuzuru Hanyu's 2014 was a bit chaotic. I won't go into it all here, but it was scary bad. He has more than made up for it in 2015.  Two weeks ago at the NKH Trophy he smashed the existing scoring records for short program, free skate, and overall competition, and not by a little, by a lot. This past weekend he went to the Grand Prix finales in Barcelona and broke two of those records.  Not a bad way to celebrate his 21st birthday.

Models Are The New Porn Stars: Lucky Blue Edition

Let's get this out of the way: Lucky Blue is still only seventeen years old,  and this is definitely not porn. Still, if you compare these photos from a recent shoot for Paper Magazine with your typical photo set from a Eurotwink porn site, there's not much difference, is there? In fact, one might be excused for thinking that these are, in some ways, even more sexed up than the average porn set, or at least the pictures at the beginning where the boys still have some of their clothes on. 

You will find more from this photo shoot here.

Lucky Blue Smith Wears Bandana Vintage

I love it when fashion magazines / websites publish clothing credits for pictures of people who are, for all intents and purposes, naked. What joy then when i-D published the photo above (by Matt Jones) and captioned it, "Lucky wears Bandana vintage. Bracelets (worn throughout) Luis Morais."   Yes, when I look at that picture it is the bandana I'm looking at.  Are there even bracelets? Oh yeah, there they are.

Into The Bathlands

Say what you will about Into The Badlands, the kungfuiest show on American TV,  but it delivers on two fronts: #1 Action, action, action, and #2 half-naked Aramis Knight. Viewers of last week's episode saw a shirtless (and barefoot, if that's your groove) Aramis in about 70% of his screen time, and last night's episode had him strip down for a nice hot bath under the ministrations of the evil (or nah?) Widow, and her not-at-all evil, but equally bad-ass daughter.  And it was totally not gratuitous! Totally! (This post, however? Gratuitous as Hell.)

Side note- Into The Badlands' lead actor, Daniel Wu is 41years old, but doesn't seem to have aged a bit since the first time I saw him, in 1999's Hong Kong action flick Gen-X Cops. He has a very pleasing body, and he does manage to get his shirt off, although not nearly as often as Aramis does, and even then he is seldom as blatantly on display. Why is that?

The Gorgeousness Of Gregg

I waited for years for gorgeous Gregg Sulkin to do a proper shirtless photo shoot to no avail, and now at the age of 23 he can barely keep his clothes on.  Not that I'm complaining. Better late than never.  My only regret is that now he is a tad bulkier and a bit hairier than my preferred torso, and I wish we had seen a bit more of him a few years ago when he was as smooth as a porpoise.  These photos are by Justin Campbell for Flaunt.

 P.S. In case you doubt that Gregg is Jewish, please refer to picture number one.

Gilded Lilly

Korean model Yongsoo Jeong  정용수, a survivor winner of Korea's Next Top Model, has lots of things going for him that I really dig.  He's long, lean, lanky, has cheekbones that would cut diamonds, and as icing on the cake, he's Asian. So why is it that after looking at photos in which top fashion professionals have primped him, preened him, painted, plucked, and photoshopped him to a fair-thee-well, my favorite ones of him are the simple un-retouched Polaroids that show him standing there without special grooming,make-up or camera tricks?  And it is not because he's shirtless in those, although, va va voom.

Below, as an example, you will see a before and after make-over shoot from his Top Model days? Which do you prefer?  I'll have the before, please. No contest.

Halloweenie

From Hakucosplay at Deviant Art.

Is This The Handsomest White Boy Alive?

Surely it's a matter of opinion,  and I will posit that words like pretty, cute, hot, beautiful, handsome etc. have very different meanings, but young Sergey Brisyuk, pictured here, is all of those things and more, and while he may not be the loveliest creature alive, he is certainly right up there.  I don't have much information about Sergey except that he's very likely from The Ukraine. These pictures are by a Kiev-based photographer named Vic Bakin.

Meanwhile, On The Disney Channel...

Bunk'd is The Disney Channel's sequel to the insufferable, yet popular show Jessie, with 100% less Debby Ryan and (sad to report) Cameron Boyce. Bunk'd, who'd have guessed it, is not much better, but it does add cutie-pie Kevin Quinn into the mix, and the show's summer camp setting gives us plenty of Kevin Quinn to enjoy. Kevin is eighteen years old, and cut his teeth as an actor at Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theater, and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. (His glowing reviews as "Boy" in Henry V suggest to me that he's slumming right now.) He was also a contestant on American Idol a few years ago, in the annus horribilis of Mariah and Nicki,  making it as far as the Hollywood group round. Here's hoping there are better things for him in the future, but there's a good chance that he'll be stuck at Disney for the next three years.