In Which We Act Our Age

 Okay, so I will be 70 years old next month. Seventy. Seven tee.  How is that possible?  This was not part of my plan, but is creeping decrepitude really part of anybody's plan?  Winston Churchill left office the day I was born, a bit of trivia which sounds like ancient history these days.  I am exactly as old as Disneyland and McDonald's.  Eisenhower was president and I'm sure there are plenty of Americans now who have never heard of him.  Baby boomers are generally defined as having been born between 1945 and 1965 which puts me smack dab in the middle of that demographic bulge.  The plague years of the AIDS crisis, Y2K, Elton John's wandering hairline: I've seen it all.

This is most certainly not going to be one of those tirades people make about how "I still feel young inside" because I don't.  I am old and I am okay with that.  I used to be fearless (foolishly so) and with a great deal more energy; now I am stodgy, cynical, and oh-so cranky.  I refuse to apologize for any of it, I have earned it all.  If I choose to be irritated by The Youth of Today (and the vantage point of my advanced years allows me to realize The Youth of Today are always irritating, regardless of what day today is) that is my privilege. 

Social media is littered with tales of my contemporaries who foolishly try to emulate the actors in commercials from all sorts of snake oil selling that "age is just a state of mind" bullshit.  Denial is not going to protect you from being old.  Age is your back hurting and all the cartilage in your joints shot to hell and the energy level of an unwound clock and trying to take up hang gliding is not going to change that.  I genuinely have a friend who will get up before dawn to go cross country skiing and I think "What the fuck is wrong with you?  Just calm down, bitch."  And then I have to go lay down because his example exhausts me.  You can struggle against the tide all you want, but when you have to fill in your birth date online and you need to scroll and scroll down through the years to get to yours, it just reminds you, there is no fighting the march of time.

Youth in all its taut-skinned glory:

Nekkid guys this week will all be "vintage" which is code for "old".  Seen here, the beautiful buttchops of Tom LeDuc.

Tim Kramer, who exemplified the Big Dick, Dumb Looks phenotype so dear to the hearts of many.

The beefy glory of Brett Mycles.

Of course, I can't wander down nude memory land without bumping into Colt Studios, Kyle Jessup. 

The superior ass stylings of Billy Herrington, also courtesy Colt Studios.

Steve Cort is an long time favorite around here, and he cranked out smutty pictures by the thousand, but it's hard to find any good ones of him online these days.

Ed Dinakos, prime beef.

Vintage always brings with it hairy dudes, in this case, Al Parker, on the left, Steve Taylor, Parker's real life boyfriend in the middle (little piggy that reportedly he was), and the charming Will Seagers, right.

Lastly, one of my favorite pictures from back in the day, Aiden Shaw, by Pierre et Gilles.

In Which We Speak in Tongues

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In Which We Wrestle with Technology

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In Which We Rock Out

 

As a proud little baby hippie, back in the late '60s during the waning days of both the Nixon administration and the age of Aquarius, I was a passionate lover of loud rock and roll and I have the tinnitus to prove it.  So when our good friend Drumstick asked if we wanted to go see the new documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin, my answer was an enthusiastic "OH HELL YEAH".

And that's how you would have found Drumstick, Hotfoot and me downtown, after dark, for a very amusing evening, helped in no small part by the excellent Mexican food we had for dinner beforehand.  The movie was pretty darn entertaining, even if it did lean sort of towards hagiography.  But I suppose if you want the Led Zeppelin seal of approval, you have to kiss a little Led Zeppelin ass.  The timeline of the film is pretty fine-grained; it's more than 2 hours long and it only covers between when they first meet as a band in 1968 and when when they become the number one group in the world in 1970.  There were times when I felt like we were watching those 18 months in real time.

The only speaking roles are the three surviving members of the band (drummer John Bonham died in 1980).  They're photographed seated in sort of throne-like chairs, beaming and nodding, modest and genial as all get out as befits the elder sages of rock and roll.  Nobody actually calls themselves "genius" but it's pretty clearly understood.  Movies about bands like this typically would examine the "sex and drugs and rock 'n roll" triumvirate, but if that's what you're looking for, you can just take your sordid little business elsewhere.  The words "heroin" and "cocaine" are never mentioned, and groupies are thoroughly ignored.  This is all about the Music. 

I suppose that's the way it should be, and certainly the presentation of the music is outstanding.  Instead of just clips of different songs to illustrate the points being made, entire songs are presented from various concerts.  The first two albums they put out, which are what the movie covers, have some great songs in them, like Dazed and Confused and Ramble On, so the producers couldn't really miss.  Like the title says, this is the Becoming part of their story.   Probably the biggest problem I had was there's no sense of struggle; the boys meet each other, they're geniuses, and everything falls in place.  But man, do they ever have great hair.  All four of them consistently looked like they have just escaped from a shampoo commercial.

Maybe I am just not whom this was made for.  I was a fan of the band, but really more of their stuff from the mid-70s like Immigrant Song or Kashmir, and even then, I was always more of a Bowie/Pink Floyd/the Who fan.  Certainly, I was never the kind of Led head as most of the crowd in the theater was.

Drumstick and I had disagreed about what the audience would be like, I predicted it would be an Old Hippie Festival.  Once again, I was right, of course.  I always am.  Drumstick is only in his early 50s so he wasn't even born during the period the movie covers.  But I was a teenager in that era and remember it vividly, as did most of the rest of the audience.  When I looked out over that crowd in the dim lights, the gray hair was gleaming everywhere.  It looked like an outing from every old folks home in town.  The crowd was very enthusiastic, clapping and singing and just a-hootin' and a-hollerin' in general.  Yuck.  Calm down, pappy.  If they have to stop this movie for your coronary, I'm going to be mad. 

Boys who put the sex in sex, drugs, and rock and roll:

Skinny boys in shabby jeans, it's a look.

It's been cold and gray for much too long.

Charles Paquette, professional beauty.

I heard one of the cats puking last night, and now I can't find the relevant puke, which makes me uneasy

Speaking of dazed and confused.

Beefy goodness.

Kirill Dowidoff.  I know you can't see his dick.  Use your imagination.