How to Distinguish Heroes from Villians

HINT: The Rich Pretty One Who Spits at Cameramen When He Loses is the Hero

The photograph below, which I found on flickr user chris.huggin’s photostream, blew me away so completely that I felt compelled to break my own image format rule in order to do it justice. I guess technically it’s a detail of the original, since I cropped it drastically. The original’s here. Hopefully this won’t get yanked (I think I’m good, under the whole creative commons license thing), ’cause I needn’t point out how totally perfect it is both for this blog in general and this juxtaposition in particular.

Toronto, 26 June, 2010. Butchering the beef window.

South Africa, 29 June, 2010. What’s not to love.

This Blog Needs More Orange

I Know Just the Thing

Pauly D uploaded another picture of himself on Guys with iPhones. More than a few not-quite-household names have been self-commodifying on that shallow, filthy site of late. A recent Gawker article speculates on this gay-for-display phenomenon, so I won’t launch into any theories here. But yes, I do think that the placement of his pics on GWIP is as cold and calculated as the stony stare in the picture itself, and in this case no, I don’t think that Pauly D is the one doing the calculating.

I love the design of this website but hate that this website exists.

3 Things I Really Like About Pauly D

1. Despite (or perhaps in part because of) the narcissism and the posturing, he oozes hypermasculinity. I realize a lot of that’s the pecs and the guns—but it’s also, for some reason, the idiolect. I loves me a good old-fashioned colossal ego, especially when it’s often-voiced. It’s like watching a cartoon.
2. The bulletproof blowout (may or may not be an extension of #1). Oh, like you’re not stuck at one place in time with something? His hairstyle is a talking point that detractors revisit time and time again, but I’d be surprised if he ditched it. It’s become a part of his brand. Personally, I think excessive product is hot in guys’ hair. Pauly D’s blowout is amazing.
3. His motorcycle’s wheels have spinners. Enough said.

Precedent. Oh, did you think there was none?

3 Things I Find Regrettable About Pauly D

1. The excessive grooming and preening. The orange tan I don’t mind at all because his hair, eyes and complexion are all dark enough for him to get away with it. But unless they’re so hirsute that their eyebrows connect over the nose, dudes should not tweeze. At all. You can always tell, and it makes them seem girly.
2. The Cadillac tattoo. Does Cadillac own him? Are they afraid he’ll get cattle-rustled and re-sold to another ranch, like the Lazy Kia or the Double Hyundai? If we’re going to be totally honest (and we are), getting a reality television personality to tattoo a brand logo on their body in exchange for a large check would probably net somebody a promotion. It would also be less disturbing than somebody voluntarily wearing an enormous car logo on their skin forever. I think tattoos of any kind betray an incredible insecurity, but this one is particularly egregious.
3. In one of  the back-to-back series premiere episodes—I think it was the second of the two—he casually mused on the fact that it “only takes nine pounds of pressure to break a nose”. I mean, testosterone is hot and all, but I don’t care to have people who keep track of things like that anywhere near me.

Everything is connected to everything else.

Headless Clotheshorseman Gives Carlos Freire the A|X

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Everyone’s been wondering where Brazilian model Carlos Freire’s head is in the new A|X ad campaign (which you’ve seen by now unless you’re one of those people who doesn’t believe in magazines).

Say what you will about over-defined abs (I’m not a fan; I think they make people look like insects), Freire has the most impressive—if hypertrophied—external obliques in the business. My God. They’re gourd-shaped.

It is kinda weird. There’re, like, twenty different proofs featuring Freire that made their way, in some incarnation, into this campaign, and he’s headless in every single one of them (to be fair, I think I remember seeing one in which, like, one-third of Freire’s mouth is visible).

The commodification of the male torso continues. Heads just get in the way.

Quiz time! Without typing his name into an image search (or having a gear fetish, which gives you an unfair advantage), do you know which of the Brazilian male model heads below belongs to Carlos Freire?

Once you’ve made your selection, hold your computer up to a mirror to see if you were right!