Category Archives: Shirtless Male Celebrities

Last night I finally got around to seeing Steve McQueen’s devastating masterpiece ‘Shame’, and Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan gave two hypnotic and gut-wrenching performances. It was easily the best movie I’ve seen in a very long time, and it will haunt me for a while. Though my straight-date Skip ended up not going, I was lucky enough to be joined by my friend Vinny, so I didn’t have to go it alone. At the end, it turned out our friend Albert was in the theater as well.

That said, once it began, I sat mesmerized by the film, lulled in by its eerie quietness, and raw, often-literally, naked tone. It wasn’t always easy to watch, but you absolutely cannot stop. This is a harrowing view of modern-life, a seering, stark, unflinching glimpse at the way we live today.

Many of us, well, some of us, have been through what I affectionately term a ‘slutty’ period. It happens for different reasons – some chalk it up to youth, others to pain, some to abandonment, others to abuse – and for me it was a little of everything, coming at a time when I the first man I truly loved broke up with me.

Going into the movie, and knowing a brief synopsis of its sex-addict plot, I feared a triggering of unhappy memories. No matter how far-removed we may be from our past, it’s really just right behind us, still in our heads, still in our hearts, waiting for the right moment to re-appear and daunt us again in its power to remind and resonate.

Yet ‘Shame’ is not at all a treatise on sex. None of the romps depicted here are the least bit erotic or enjoyable. None of the nudity is arousing. If you’re only going to ogle Mr. Fassbender’s impressive appendage, you’ll be sorely tricked into feeling things not in your nether regions, but in the deep recesses of any hurt or pain that you’ve ever experienced. ‘Shame’ brings up the emptiness of our dimmest souls, the ones who have been so damaged they’ve seemingly gone beyond the point of redemption.

That the protagonists of this film seem doomed to never forget their atrocious pasts is little consolation, yet the glimmer of hope may be in that very fact. The only path through this life is a painful one. We are foolish to think there is any other way. Faith, in its dwindling, limited supply, gives us little to go on, and love is but a bond only waiting to unravel, to entrap.

The only way out is to stop feeling. The only way to survive is to calm the quivering heart, quell the firing synapses of the brain. When you can’t count on your own family, when you can’t count on love, what are we left? Or to paraphrase one hopeful character, Why are we here if we don’t mean anything to each other?

Yet even in the sad, awful, disturbing way we sexually conquer one another, in the sadistic, heartless, cruel manner in which we abuse ourselves, there is the slightest sliver of grace. It might come in the form of sadness and angst, sorrow and the absence of laughter, regret and loneliness, but it still comes.

It is a quiet grace, a stilled grace, a grace that weeps at the moment of ejaculation, a grace that cries silently into the rain. It haunts the heart and pierces the mind. It hurts like hell and then recedes into nothingness. It is the grace of being human, and being in this world. It is, I think, the saddest grace, and for that I will always be a little sorry. And thankful.

“We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place…”

For the most part I’ve always refrained from saying bad things about Kim Kardashian because she never really registered on my radar. I figured if she was living her life and making her own money, why should it concern me? But even I couldn’t escape the hyped-to-high-hell extravaganza that was her wedding, and though I skipped out on the hours of coverage, I was aware of it. The only time she raised my ire was when I discovered that this was her second wedding. Even then I figured if she was happy, and her husband-to-be was happy, then why should I care?

When she filed for divorce 72 days later, however, I took a little offense. Some of us still can’t get married once in most of this country, much less twice – and for her to so flagrantly throw the vows of marriage away flies in the face of everyone who so honors that tradition. I would think anyone that valued love would find it offensive, particularly in light of all the money she and her family made off the whole thing. All of those millions of dollars just wasted… I think of all the people in this world who could have been substantially helped with that money – good people who are doing good things to help others – and I think of what Kim Kardashian did with it and it makes me sick. But again, that was her right, her money, and if someone is willing to spend it and watch her foolish antics on television or buy her stupid perfume, then more power to her. The offense comes in the way she hyped it, hawked it, and ultimately divorced it.

(As for her hapless neanderthal of a husband Kris Humphries, I only hope he got a nice cut of everything too. Seems a waste to give up your integrity, honor, and public image for anything less than a couple million.)

PS – Anyone who Tweets with exclamation points on the day of their divorce is fucked up.

This is exactly what I don’t want my body to be (not that it would ever come close…) It’s just too built, too hairless, too… perfect. Perfection is a lofty goal, but an unattainable one – and I never go for the impossible. Not that there’s anything wrong with Joe Manganiello (who is the man in the above photo) – he’s just not my cup of tea. However, allowing for all tastes and preferences, I’m putting this popular gentleman up front and shirtless for all of his fans to see (though if you’ve been on the internet at all in the last month you’ve already seen it).

Personally, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. I’ve never seen ‘True Blood’ (gasp if you must), nor do I intend to see the new male stripper movie he’s currently filming, so Mr. Manganiello doesn’t score high on my list of interests. Maybe you can tell me what I’m missing…