HIGHLAND FLING YOUR POO

This week, some stand-up from other lands, including some mockery of Scotland, my other ancestral homeland. (Dad's grandparents were Scot. Mom's the Austrian)

Y'know, y'all, these here ferners laff jess like reg'lar fokes. Doan that beat awl?

EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE Airport comedy without roasted peanuts 3 mins 45 SFW
And now A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
KANGAROO THE DAY This Aussie does a respectable Billy Connelly (who is still my first choice to play Mad-Eye Moody) 3 mins 10 SFW

Hits as of now: 50,084
It seems that in the night, as I slept,
the Hairbrush broke 50 thousand hits.
Thanks, guys.

DIAPER MAN

Somebody please tell me if this is hot or creepy.

I can't make up my mind.

COUNTY JAIL BAIT

Another Boy from Brazil: seventeen-year-old model Francisco Lachowski, whom I discovered just now thanks to 5 Star Men.

(I have a feeling Vera might like this one.)

Enlarge that lower-right picture: it's my favourite.
Reminds me somewhat of Dana Ashbrook on Twin Peaks
(it's probably the haircut), if anyone else remembers him.

Views as of now: 49,831

_____________________

Update: I think someone's made a mistake.

Look at those two smaller pictures. There's no way that those two faces could be the same guy.

SEA HORSE RACING

The Real Tuesday Weld with Nick Phelps and Geert Chatrou Brazil Music set to award-winning animation by budovskiy 4 mins 5 SFW (but a notorious earworm)

SWIM FAN CLUB

Edilson isn't the only tasty dish from Brazil.

Here's another, competitive swimmer-turned-model-turned-actor,Romulo Arantes-Neto.

I learned about this guy today, when I watched
a little tribuclip that Joshua made for him. Here it is:

Hits as of now: 49, 209

Colour Me Bad Manners

AAAAARRGGHH! I simply cannot understand why people would make a phone call to ask questions then not shut up long enough to hear the answer! The people occupy a sort of grey area when it comes to grey matter: they're smart enough to place a phone call, but not smart enough to know how to act on the phone.

THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL TWINS

Who are you people?

According to the counter, this place gets hit about 200 times a day, but I very seldom get any kind of comments. Please, somebody say something! It's starting to feel like there's a big party in my house while I'm gone.

...which may have actually happened. It'd be nice to blame some of the mess on someone else.

GUYS LIKE THIS SHOULD BE STRAIGHT 2 mins 15 SFW
And now A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR Y'know, funny commercials that aren't attached to others are getting harder to find. I'd appreciate people letting me know when they find one..
SHAKE DANCING The name is "POUND" and it calls itself "a short film," but I suspect there's a couple of sociology papers in here. 2 mins 10 SFW

Hits as of now: 48,011

MAKE IT SO WHAT

Uh, you got 5 seconds
to watch something...?

Views as of now: 47,470

REAR WINDOW CLEANER

Gilberto Gil Esperando na Janela (Waiting in the Window) Another slideshow set to a cool Brazilian song. This time the song style is called forro, a very old dance style from Northern Brazil that is supposed to be sensuous yet relaxing. You decide.

OATH OF OFFICE DEPOT

How to Speak English, Lesson #417

Happy New Year

Happy New Day

At least, many of us are hoping that today marks the beginning of a new period in USAmerica.

That worries me a bit. When that many people get their hopes up so high, there's bound to be some disappointment ahead.

I want to remind people that this guy is an elected official, and we should treat him like any other elected official: vote for the best candidate you can get, then watch them as closely as if they were an overweight employee in your candy store.

But please don't think I'm being totally negative here. The characteristics of government that I hate the most are the secrecy, the greed, and the arbitrary and self-serving abuse of power; and after eight years one had to be truly delusional to not think that all three of those things were rampant in the administration of Bush the Lesser. Any change from him is a chance for improvement.

Beyond critiquing the last guy, I'm optimistic about the new guy as well. On merely superficial grounds, I like listening to him. Obama was the most eloquent and well-spoken candidate I've heard in my lifetime, second only to Jeb Bartlett's run for re-election. And there are strong reasons to hope that his priorities will be good for the progressives who want to raise all boats rather than giving bigger yachts to some and swamping and sinking many of the others.

Views as of now: 47,166

THE LONG AND WINDING RODERS

This week's morsel is Tym Roders (or possibly just Tim - sources differ).

I first saw him on Jan 2 at Alexsander, but then during my weekend traipse of various 'blogs I found him again at Beauty and the Bum, modeling some rather ugly shoes. However, the fact that he wasn't wearing anything else made them more interesting.

He's got a great mouth and an incredible physique,
but I think I prefer him with his hair a bit longer.
That almost-shaved head makes him seem
a bit too much like a serial killer.

Hits as of now: 46,896

100% COTTON MOUTH

Trying to Get Rid of the Taste of Last Night

SIDE EFFECTS INCLUDE SLEEPNESS NIGHTS

Here's another swig of Edilson Nascimento, our Man of the Month, this time in photographs by Brazilian photographer Joao Arraes.

It's important that you get your regular dosage of this boy.
After all, I prescribed him for you, and we don't want you going through any withdrawal, now do we?

GAY RIGHTS AND WRONGS

BIGGER WHAT? SHOES? A YouTube subscriber who calls himself yolandawizardsleeves sent me this bit of animation, and I'm sharing it with you. Enjoy. 2 mins 15 SFW (except possibly for the title)
And now A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
COMING ATTRACTION (Yeah, I could make a pun out of that, but it just too easy. 4 mins 30 SFW

Hits as of now: 45,879

RIFLEMAN, O, MAN

When I was a young kid, my television diet was pretty restricted. Kids, it was thought by my family, should be outside every chance they had, not sitting in front of the television.

One thing I was allowed to watch were the black-and-white Westerns that ran all day long on some channel called the Christian Broadcasting Network (which was, because of these shows, rated the most violent network in the country for years). My family thought that it might be good for little me to watch manly shows like The Rifleman and Wagon Train.

If they'd known how I felt about The Rifleman's son Mark, they'd have snatched me away from that television faster than William Conrad could inhale a Twinkie.

Mark McCain was played by Johnny Crawford, who'd been one of the original Mouseketeers beginning in 1953. Crawford was only 12 when the series began in 1958, and during the five years the show was on the air, he grew into a beautiful seventeen-year-old. He seemed to have a good rapport with the star Chuck Connors, but I always thought he seemed a bit short and way too pretty to be that man's son.
After The Rifleman, he had parts in other series like Branded, Mr. Novak, Mr. Ed, and my favourite of the Western series, The Big Valley. In Indian Paint, he was an Indian boy becoming a man. In El Dorado, John Wayne shot him, but then John Wayne was shooting a lot of people in those days. As he got older, he just got better looking. Check him and Kim Darby out here in The Restless Ones.
What I didn't know, though, was that the boy could sing, that he actually had an additional career recording five Top 40 pop songs to give the teenage girls who bought fan magazines one more reason to want him. With one grandfather a former concertmaster and the other a jockey turned music publisher, music was part of his family heritage.
He left acting after more years of working, but he never lost his love for music. In 1998, he began two years of singing with someone else's group, but in 1990 he formed his own, the Johnny Crawford Dance Orchestra, playing the music of the 20s. Now that orchestra is among the most successful dance orchestras in Los Angeles.

Hits as of now: 45,698

BEWARE OF DOGMA

"I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me.

"If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men. "

- Robert Ingersoll

Views as of now: 45,340

GOOD GOLLY, MISS MOLLY IVINS

Senator West, meet Jenny Craig.

Today, no one's personal property is safe in Texas. That's because it's the second Tuesday of an odd-numbered year, and like litigious swallows returning to a bird shit-covered Capistrano, the members of the Texas Legislature have returned to Austin.

I've moved my wallet to an inside jacket pocket.

ORDEM E PROGRESSO SOUP

Gal Costa Wave This one really is just for the song, because there's no video, just a slideshow of people and place I don't recognize. But get past the 20 second introduction and it is a cool song. Enjoy.

Views as of now: 45,062

BABY GOT BACKPACK

Some months ago, I found the photograph below and saved a copy of it, without knowing who the guy was.

Now, thanks to Just Beautiful Men, I know that he is Eric Boviono, a Seattle boy who appeared on the cover of Tetu back in June 2008. He was gorgeous before I learned this, but it's nice to have a name to go with the face. Not that the face wasn't nice on its own, mind you... On mystery though: The biography I read of him said he was quite an athlete - cycling, lacrosse, and rock climbing are among his sports - but no matter how talented a jock he may be, I still don't see how he can skateboard on sand.

Hits as of now: 44,735

What a Waste Management

Hanging around Some Bar

As usual on Sunday, that's a lie.

But at least this time, the truth is more productive. I spent most of today cleaning the apartment (and I've realized that the only way to have a clean kitchen is to stop eating!) and getting rid of things I don't need.

When I moved my RAOS* into this place, I vowed to start getting rid of what I could and this weekend I made a dent in that. I sorted through four boxes of papers for the filing cabinet and then hauled about half of it to work to be tossed into the recycling bin. I'm pretty sure I could have just tossed them all without missing them much, but I'm not that ruthless yet.

I also visited the used book store again -- the year is 11 days old, and I've been there 8 times already; honestly, it's like a disease with me -- but this time I was selling instead of buying. I got 75 books and 17 DVDs off the shelves and cashed them in. As usual, I got paid next to nothing - the average was less than 50 cents per book - but at least those books are gone. I went through all 1500 books looking for things to eliminate, but somehow I just couldn't bring myself to part with more of them. I look at an unread book and just know that I'll read it eventually.

My fear lately is that I won't live long enough to read all the unread books I own.

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By the way, I just added a list of my Man of the Month clips to the sidebar.

It was time-consuming because I had to find new music for four of those clips because of copyright claims that kept them from being seen. So now all the clips ought to be public again, though four of them have songs they weren't designed to accompany or they have silence (which means I did something incorrectly).

In the process of making that list of links, I got to listen to all the original songs again in a sort of mini concert, and I realized that I have really good taste in songs sometimes. I wish you could hear the original songs for them.

Ever since I stopped using that Maroon 5 song every month, my choices have been as much about bringing attention to cool songs as it has been to showing you beautiful men.


* Ridiculous Amounts Of Stuff

The Winds of Warmer

I haven't put our Man of the Month up here since I posted the video, so I think his reappearance is overdue.

After all, the wind is cold outside, and looking at Edilson Nascimento makes me feel all warm inside.

Views as of now: 44,435

NOT VERY IMPRESSIVE CLERGYMAN

WHAT DOES GAY MARRIAGE MEAN TO YOU I confess too strong an interest in acrobatics. ...ok, just acrobats. 2 mins 45 SFW
And now A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
AH, BUT WHAT KIND OF JOYSTICK DO I NEED? I told you: I'm not ready! 2 mins 30 SFW

Hits as of now: 43,975

All's Fair Well Now

	I just had an email from a friend of mine that he's uploaded this thing he's been working on for the last month: his review of notable people who died in 2008. I liked it, and I'm putting it here because you might like it too. It did make me tear up a bit here and there, but that was mostly the music. These songs get to me, even if I did suggest a couple of them.

Friend Ship of Fools

I have this guy that I've known for twenty-two years.

We suffered through band together. He was my roommate for a long while in college. I was a groomsman at his wedding, and when I was unemployed for such a long time, he and his wife let me live in their house for a while.

THAT is a friend.

But some total stranger who sees a clip I uploaded to YouTube, likes it, and wants to initiate some kind of connection is not a "friend," and to use the word in that superficial, frivolous way seems like an insult to my actual friends and a denegration of the word itself.

I know that I take words more seriously than do most people, but surely I'm not the only one who wishes YouTube and MySpace and all those other "virtual networking sites" would find another word to use.

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By the way, I've been spending more time beating this re-design into shape, and I've almost got it where I want it.

The downside is that I've been spending so much time on how it looks that I've been neglecting the content somewhat. I'll do better soon, 'promise.

Hits as of now: 43,642