'Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary'

So ... Yuri, Yuri, ... how does YOUR 'garden' grow?


"Very nicely, thanks mate!" ...




... "How bout yours?"


"Prove it!"

Striped Icebergs!

Different coloured stripes can be formed in icebergs.

When melt water fills a crevice in a glacier and freezes so quickly that it contains a lot of air bubbles, a blue stripe results.




When as iceberg crashes into the sea, a salt-water layer can form on the underside. If this layer contains enough algae, a green stripe is created.

And when sediment is collected as an ice sheet moves down towards the sea, brown, black or yellow stripes occur.

My immediate reaction to these photos was that someone had been seriously experimenting with their Photoshop software!

Nick's 'Animal Planet' - Did You Know ... ?

Did you know that ...

1. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough (sound) energy to heat a cup of tea.
2. The orgasm of a pig lasts 30 minutes.
3. Lions can mate over 50 times a day.
4. The strongest muscle in the human body is ... the tongue!
5. A cockroach lives 9 days without its head - before it starves to death.
6. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
7. Butterflies taste with their feet.
8. Banging your head against the wall for an hour will expend 150 calories.

Come on guys - confess!

Which ones surprised you!

Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) - A Pictorial Tribute

"To be beautiful, all a woman needs is a black pullover and a black skirt and to be arm in arm with a man she loves"

Saint Laurent holds drawing of cocktail dress design that won him first prize 1953 in a fashion drawing competition sponsored by the International Wool Secratariat, in Paris


Famous 1971 Nude Saint Laurent Advertising Poster

Final Paris Show - 2002

Born in Oran, Algeria of French parents ... well, you can imagine how the post would go!

Much better to show a collection of classic Yves Saint Laurent dresses ... as the couturier did throughout his collections.

1960's

'Mondrian' Day Dress, Autumn 1965


'African-Style' Creation, New York, 1967

1970's


Evening Slav Inspired Ensemble, Fall/Winter 1976-77



1980's

'Ruffle Dress', Rive Gauche


'Casta Diva' Fall/Winter 1983–84


1990's

With Claudia Schiffer, 1997

2000's


Belarusian supermodel Olga Sherer 200o's

Former top model Carla Bruni in an Yves Saint Laurent dress during his final show in 2002

Laurent's daring is epitomised in this great bit of homoerotic advertising.


Bravo!

Talismans and Nostalgia

Rover, 1907

Apres party this morning, I found myself in a happily reflective and nostagic mood.

And I began thinking of a time, when I was 9 or 10, and a friend of my father took me for a ride in his 1907 Rover. It was not over-restored and so still, to my mind, felt like something really of the past - brought into contact with now by some magical and unknowable process. The intensity of the experience was overwhelmingly strong.

And I remembered this feeling of 'being in the past in the present' not so long ago when saw some old photos of carriages in use.




I could so easily put myself there. Imagine the texture and smell of the leather seats. The oil on the harness to keep it supple. The dust of the road on the rubber rims of the wheels. The springiness of the horse-hair padding of the seats ... .

A sensation which, for me, is not really excited by over-restored vehicles out in the modern world ...


... but can be, as I found out a couple of years, by old carriages in museums. Which I discovered ago when I saw this unrestored beauty in an old house in Vigan, in Luzon (Philippines).


The bonus was seeing similar carriages in the streets - for hire ...


... and flagging one down ...



... and fully indulging this intoxicating past-present experience.

Happiness can be finding such talisman conduits for then and now!

Dancing Till Dawn - A Survival Update

Survived dancing till dawn and beyond, and even managed to get home without looking too much like our friend here ...


... who is probably still wondering who the 'artist' was.

Went with the ideal husband and kissed and cuddled and talked and danced. And kissed and ... you get the idea. In a word - 'perfect'.

Cruised into the ideal home bout 10am. Slept 5 hours and had some fellow-reveller friends over to do serious spa work and 'de-pressurize'. So many stories to tell - for so few hours of activity!

About to dig into some congee ...


... a kind of rice porridge base to which you add whatever - we threw in fish and some veg. Good - actually great - as post-party comfort food!

As everyone knows, there is now a point at which you have to decide whether to go on to a post-party party ... or, the unthinkable, go to bed early. To better survive the coming week, you rationalize.

So just before I hit the sack (:<), I thought I'd better tell you that, while this guy was not at the party, ...




... curiously enough, plenty of his identical brothers were - with, even more curiously for identical siblings, MUCH bigger dicks!

Dancing All Night - 'Inquisition Party'

'The Spanish Inquisition' Pedro Berrugete, 1475, Prado Museum, Madrid

The Spanish Inquisition was given great impetus in 1478 by a grant from Pope Sixtus IV to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to investigate baptized converts to Christianity suspected of remaining true to their original faiths. And things got out of hand.

In this context, I'm preparing to go to the Gay and Lesbian 'Inquisition Party' tonight - it'll be dancing and inquisiting behaviours till dawn and beyond. And hoping things will get well and truly out of control.

I've been in training the past few days - lots of sleep and pigging out so lots of energy on the night.

And now the biggest issue is getting the absolutely right outfit together - think it'll be a leather jacket and boots and an army tee-shirt I bought in Berlin.

Sadly, I'm hoping to dance to such un-Inquisition-like music as Carol Douglas's 'Doctor's Orders':

Don't Think You're Cured Yet - Open up for Another Dose (Pun Intended!)

A guy emerged from the bathroom naked and was climbing into bed when his boyfriend complained 'I have a headache'.

'Perfect' the guy said 'I was just in the bathroom powdering my dick with aspirin. You can take it orally, or as a suppository. It's up to you'.

Open Your Mouth! Another Dose of Levity

Compliments of My Generous Friend, Alan

Mitch Hewer Plays a Gay Character in 'Skins'

I've just become aware of a new-ish British TV show - 'Skin's' - with a gay character Maxxie, played by Mitch Hewer ...


Mitch Hewer in his Centrefold for 'Cosmopolitan' Magazine - He posed naked to raise awareness for the Everyman male cancer campaign.


... who, at one point in the series, gets it on with Tony, played by Nicholas Hoult (from 'About a Boy' (2002) and other more recent films) ...

Nicholas Hoult in 'About a Boy' (2002)

... when Tony becomes bored with his girlfriend and wants to try something new.

I realized how great it was to see a young gay character so confidently and actively sorting out sexuality, his relationships with other and the world at large, and so on. In such a C21 NOW way!

Now Guys, I'm not passing over and this is certainly no sad apology for pedophilia - but I'm not going to pretend Mitch is not cute - super cute - just to meet an unthinking, absolute and knee-jerk slavery to ideological correctness. I'm simply saying it's great to see images of such beautiful young gay characters out there - particularly when the actor in question is in the 24-carat-gold adorable category.


A great site for tons photos and videos and music tracks of the various episodes of the series is ...

http://upload.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=4570758224

... but you need to cut and paste the link.

Some other video clips.

Blogger has had a stroke, caliption, whatever, so the formatting in this post (and some of the following ones) is fucked ... but the links and the videos work!

The first link is to a behind-the-scenes look at Mitch's 'Cosmopolitan' centerfold shoot. Where the actor-dancer repeatedly and relentlessly unleashes his 500-watt killer smile - putting anything Tom Cruise can manage in the C-Grade category!

The second two compilations revolve around the series, and have great music clip backgrounds. The first of these has some fab dance sequences with Mitch, and the second has a kiss between Maxxie and Tony.

Mitch Hewer Cosmopolitan June 2008