Each year in the lead up to the Mardi Gras parade, I’m reminded that there are very different forms of fitness and body awareness. Our float is full of relatively fit people, we are lifesavers, we can swim out into the surf or paddle out through a big surf to rescue people.
The routines we have done over the last four parades have been fairly simple and a lot of fun, but I’m constantly amazed that a few people cannot even march in time to music. Each year there are one or two people that while they get the arm movements correct their feet are completely out of time. I cannot claim to be any kind of spectacular dancer but for me it makes it much easier if your feet and arms are both in time to the same beat, not one to the real beat and the other to some imaginary beat. Yet those same people can race a triathlon or get a drowning victim to shore easily.
None of this is in any way a criticism. I’m constantly fascinated by how different people are. Aerialists for example, are renowned for being clumsy on the ground, yet dangle them 8 metres off the ground and they’ll astound you with spectacular agility and grace. I’m not including myself in that statement either. I still run into things on the ground and trip over a shadow, but I’m not graceful up in the air.
Hudson Taylor is a champion for gay rights despite being a 23 year old straight college wrestler. The young man, who has political aspirations, proposed to his fiance after seeing Milk and has even worn an equality sticker during competition.
Taylor is very vocal about gay rights and also feminism and takes every opportunity to drop his cause into conversation and interviews. Enlightened athletes and straight men in general are an amazing addition to our movement towards equality. If Hudson is considering a political career or even a professional sporting career, being so vocal about such a controversial subject could definitely hamper his efforts yet he continues supporting us. Thank you Hudson.
Previously I’ve shown you the photos of the Dieux Du Stade calendar guys and the annual nude rugby match on the beach in New Zealand. Now I bring you this bunch of photos of a very real looking match of Rugby. I don’t have any details on where it is but judging by the dirt and grass stains on the guys bodies, they are playing for real. They certainly aren’t shy about physical contact with another nude man. Liberated footballers? It’s a rare thing, but a nice one.
I know a couple of bodybuilders and I would say, it has to be one of the most vain sports around. It is a sport solely and entirely devoted to how you look. I would also hazard a guess that, even for the straight guys, it’s about as gay as you can get. Sure it’s devoted to muscles and a perceived ideal of masculinity but it’s so waxed, fake tanned and preened it’s beyond belief. How many “straight” sports actually encourage straight men to wear very little and to look at other straight men and their bodies with a very keen eye.
This photo above made me laugh. Just how close to another man’s crotch can you get with fake tan before you feel a little gay?
For a few years a while back, I rowed surf boats. I have never been as fit as I was then. 250 kilograms of boat, with four rowers and a sweep (the guy at the back steering) piloting the boat through the unpredictable surf with their speedos wedged up their arse never knowing if you are going to make it back to the beach intact. SO much fun. The explanation of the wedgie thing is here.
Last night I sat down to watch “Tan Lines” on DVD. I’d bought it on impulse a couple of years ago now and hadn’t watched it in a while. I didn’t get very far into it before I remembered just how awful the movie is. The acting, script, story and photography are all bad. When you are filming a surfing movie, please invest in cameras that can get wet so you don’t have to put the actors in a rockpool pretending they are sitting in the surf. It’s easy to spot.
So instead I watched “Shelter” again. It’s a good movie that I think nearly everyone who has come out after their teens can identify with. My favourite surfing movie that doesn’t have as obvious a gay sub plot, is “Newcastle”. The cast are beautiful but very believable in their roles, the story is good and visually the film just nails it and the surfers are sitting in the surf, not in a rockpool.
A friend of mine had friends involved in “Tanlines” and when they were doing pre-production, a senior executive at a major surfing company said “Why are you making a gay surfing movie? There are no gay surfers.” That’s bullshit. While in sydney there are no gay surfing groups like there are for almost every other sport, surfing is a solitary sport and also fairly macho. Gay surfers are out there, quietly riding the waves and watching the swells come in, right beside the straight ones.
It’s very rare for a top level sportsman to come out during his career. So it’s a great day when Gareth Thomas, a Welsh National Rugby player has come out saying “I’m not going on a crusade, but I’m proud of who I am. I feel I have achieved everything I could ever possibly have hoped to achieve out of rugby, and I did it being gay. I want to send a positive message to other gay people that they can do it, too.”
Top level sport needs more athletes to be open about who they are, just as we need movie stars and business men and politicians to come out too. Why? To prove that we are capable, successful, intelligent people and not second rate citizens who don’t deserve equality.
Congratulations to Gareth and I wish him all the best and thanks. As he says, young kids need role models to know they aren’t the only ones out there.
So, you find yourself in Scotland at the Windsurfing Championships, competition is fierce, but you and a couple of mates have some spare time and the beach is pretty empty (as a windy beach in Scotland often would be I suspect). What do you do? That’s right, take off all your clothes and go nude windsurfing. And in the case of one of them, sail one handed while protectively cupping your nether regions the whole time so no one gets a photo of your icicle doodle.
I would hazard a guess that even if he wasn’t cupping his genitals, they wouldn’t be visible so much to the photographers. Scottish waters are cold enough at the best of times but in October on a windy, cloudy day? Damn near freezing I’d guess. Good on them for having a go. They are a hell of a lot tougher than I am.
A largely Muslim football team has been kicked out of a Paris football league because they made discriminatory remarks about and refused to play a gay team, citing “Our convictions are stronger than a game of football.”
It’s taken some time but I finally understand the appeal of the new full length speed suits that competitive swimmers are using. They have to be worn tight. Really tight. Ricky Berens on the U.S. team at the FINA World Championships in Rome was wearing his moments prior to racing in a relay and bent over for a drink of water. Suddenly he felt a draught. Thankfully for all of us, his team mate urged him to ignore the tear and just swim as there wasn’t time to change. Oh to have been his team mates or an official standing behind the blocks as he stood ready to dive.
Apparently the suits are tearing quite frequently because of how tight they are being worn. Now I’m just trying to picture someone doing one of those amazing backstroke starts, arching out of the water and…. RIP!
These students in Otago New Zealand decided to honour the French National touring Rugby side’s nude pedigree in the Dieux Du Stade calendars before the French battled the famous All Blacks team. How did they do this? They had a nude rugby match in Logan Park. I love that it was still a full contact game even though the guys are all nude and I’m assuming straight. Looks like the crowd enjoyed the show too.
Skydiving is one of those sports that enthusiasts seem prone to doing nude. We love it, although it would have to be cold up that high and moving that fast. That wouldn’t make for good photos once you hit the ground. Check out the photo below. At first I didn’t know what was going on but apparently the guy is doing quite well for himself and his cock, flapping around in the wind, was slapping himself in the butt!
Now this is how to train. I don’t know how these were used and I imagine it’s probably part of an online viral campaign rather than something that would be aired on television. While the idea of running nude appeals, surely bits bouncing around a lot might chafe and get sore?
The first video is what I think is the full spot and the second is an extended segment with the hot blondie. Shame about the pixellation dammit.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve seen the video footage that went with these photos and would hazard a guess that it probably preceeded an all in orgy in some Euro porn, but I could be wrong.
Who ever thought of playing slip-n-slide nude soccer was a genius. Firstly, I am rubbish at soccer so to have everyone else sliding around the place and falling over is a nice leveller for me. It’s what I do on a normal grass field. Doing it nude would be even more hilarious, but potentially dangerous.
I grew up as a very active child. My sister and I swam nearly every day (through summer) of our school lives and along the way we had tennis lessons, I did years of gymnastics, dabbled in hockey (terrible at it) and others. Team sports usually leave me a bit cold. There’s too much pressure not to let the others down. Waterpolo was fun but the team sport that I did love was surf boat rowing. That was insane amounts of fun, adrenaline, terror and fitness. Sadly it just takes more time commitment than I can offer to one thing.
If team sports were run like the one above then I might have shown more aptitude. I’m guessing that these shots are from Europe somewhere, given the number of foreskins on display. That means it must have been a bit cooler than here, so I’m pretty impressed with the display I have to say.
