Santa with Butt Plug

Paul McCarthy 
Los Angeles CA 
2007 - 2014

 Rotterdam, cast bronze, 2008

Also known as Santa with Inflatable Xmas Tree and as the Butt Plug Gnome, a related inflatable sculpture,Tree, that was displayed in Paris’s Place Vendôme caused the artist to be slapped very forcefully in the face and the piece itself to be vandalized and removed well before it was due.  The chocolate version was of course fabricated with the finest Belgian chocolate.

 Paris, cast chocolate, 2014 

 Middelheim Museum Anterp, inflated vinyl coated nylon, 2007

Sonnet for Charles Stuart

Beheaded for Treason 1649
Dale Wittig
San Francisco CA
19 December 2016

He had to tuck his Hair up under his Cap

For the stout Axe Man to make a clean Cut,

As they needed his uncrowned Head to jut

Just visibly to the Crowd above the Trap.

It wasn’t what he expected, this huge Flap,

As if his Kingdom itself was stuck in a Rut,

And its only Remedy was to make him strut

Across their rude Stage to a Drum’s stark Tap.

It took the Round Heads seven great Years

To strap him to this most singular Fate,

Though not to expected popular Cheers.

The Puritan dictating this change of State

Proved even less patient of Parliament’s Gears,

And the Public Fears that would never abate.

Vuillard Self Portraits & related Work

Paris circa 1889 - 1899 
oil on canvas, panel & card
Jean-Édouard Vuillard 
11 November 1868 – 21 June 1940

1 Octagonal Self Portrait  

2 Lilacs  

3 Self Portrait 

4 Toulouse Lautrec  

5 Madame Bonnard  

6 Self Portrait in Straw Hat  

7 Toulouse Lautrec setting Table  

8 Self Portrait with Sister  

9 Bois de Boulogne  

10 Dressmakers

Kirk turns a hundred

The Bad and the Beautiful 
Vincente Minnelli 
Hollywood 1952
The first of three major collaborations between Minnelli and Douglas.   There was something in the often hysterical pitch of Kirk’s performances that suited Vincente’s style perfectly.

 Maybe I like to be cheap once in a while. Maybe everybody does, or don’t you remember?

Today is Kirk Douglas’s one hundredth birthday.

Burt Lancaster modeling nude

Manhattan circa 1933

Along with his gymnastic and circus work Burt Lancaster did a little beefcake and art modeling.  I wish I could find more than these variable printings from the same few negatives.

Mario Romo as Elder Gonzalez

recorded by Mormonboyz

Mario Romo, aka Rick Romo or merely Romo, was one of my favorite porn models of the last decade or so. He appeared early on fairly frequently with another favorite, Joey Rico, and beyond his rather remarkable physical beauty he seemed to possess an unusually genial character. Though he claimed to be essentially straight, he also showed a very healthy disregard for rigid roles in his sexual performances, by which I mean that he was enthusiastically versatile.  About a year ago, in “real life” and under his given name, David Enrique Meza, with the help of his girlfriend, Taylor Marie Langston (who was pregnant with their child at the time,) he appears to have murdered his primary personal sponsor, or sugar daddy, Jake Clyde Merendino. I’ve read that they were due to appear in court in Texas recently, but haven’t heard the result of what occurred there.  The details of the murder, as reported, were brutal and bloody, and Meza comes off as pretty naive in all of his machinations (especially in trying to claim an inheritance based on a last will and testament written on a paper napkin,) which is sadly disappointing from every perspective.  It sounds like he’ll end up imprisoned for the remainder of his life.

Naked Self Portraits by a Thai Boxer

Zenzai J (H Danialz) 
Thailand 2016

I discovered this guy’s pictures on Twitter last year and have been collecting the more striking of them to a folder devoted to him.  He appears to be trained in Thai Boxing, and is an admirer of Buakaw Banchamek.  He also appears to be bisexual, married to a lovely young woman and with a couple of kids (who sometimes appear in his nonsexual photos.)  His nickname (or screen name,) Zenzai J, is derived from a quick Japanese language course.  I’ve no idea why.