Summer 1992. Ryan Phillippe in his first professional role, plays Billy Douglas, the first gay teenager in an American soap opera on ABC's One Life To Live. Your Auntie Vera was riveted. Watch below as Billy comes out to Father Andrew Carpenter (Andrew Krimmer) while devious Marty (Susan Haskell) eavesdrops.
The oily Swedish boy on the bed of bananas pictured above is Michael Westlund, the cutie-pie star of Dildorado's new video United Fruit. Yes, you read that right, Dildorado. The song is a catchy, bouncy earworm, and the video is the kind of thing that you expected to see in 1994, but not so much in 2015. In other words, it embraces many of the things that are awesome about gay culture, and many things that are slightly embarrassing. In a world where there are gay people wringing their hands and worrying about gay marriage destroying gay culture, and other homosexual people debating the the very validity of gay identification, I'm glad that things like this still exist. And frankly, I'm always happy to see hot, nearly naked guys dancing around with drag queens. It's just how I roll.
Behold 17-year-old LoveRönnlund, a skinny young thing so new to modeling that his agency still only has Polaroids of him on their site. But that didn't stop him from making a big splash at the recent menswear shows. It seems that fashion may not be Love's great passion. He's a singer. And a good one too! Here he is a few years ago on Talang 2001, aka Sweden's Got Talent.
And here is a much more recent performance.
You can also find him acting like a teenage goofball on Vine, plus he has a nice Soundcloud, if you would like to hear more of his music.
Big doings in The Republic of Korea as a much hyped boy band releases its first single and mini-album. Those of us who are secretly twelve-year-old girls and followed the progress of One Direction on The X Factor may recall the excitement leading up to the premiere of their long-awaited single. (Full disclosure, I set an alarm for the middle of the night so I could be awake to listen to the live BBC broadcast of What Makes You Beautiful's unveiling. I didn't regret it.) That excitement is exactly what millions of K-Pop fans must have felt when a group called Seventeen burst forth into the world in the past week. That's mostly where the similarity ends. Mostly.
Whereas American and European boy bands usually top on at about five members, Seventeen (세븐틴) consists of thirteen young men (thirteen!) from Korea, China, and America between the ages of seventeen and twentyone . They are Josua, Dino, Jun, Seungkwan, Wonwoo, DK, Mingyu, Woozi (who wrote and produced the song), The8 (really), Vernon, Jeonghan, Hoshi (who also their in-house choreographer) and S. Coups. Sneezey, Grumpy and Doc can't be too far off. Believe it or not, at one point the band had fifteen members. For all I know they may have had seventeen members; it would just make sense.
Seventeen has been in developement for three years, but not just that, they have been promoted to the public for three years. They have videos on their YouTube chanel dating from December of 2012. Most recently they have been the subject of a TV series called The Seventeen Project. Putting that into perspective, it was almost only a year between the time 1D as individiuals showed up on The X Factor and when their first record was released.
So here's their first official music video, Adore U, and I have to say it has everything one could ask for from a K-Pop video: matching outfits, bleach blond hair, hot nerd glasses, tight choreography, slo-mo horseplay, random use of English (in fact, completely random everything) boys who weigh no more than ninety-eight pounds trying to appear badass and urban while wearing more makeup than a pageant contestant. All these things make me happy. The song is a real earworm. And the boys are beautiful. And there are a lot of them. Who could ask for anything more?
Loïc Nottet, a 19-year-old singer from Belgium, wasn't the only hotty on last night's Eurovision Song Contest semi-final last night, but he's the only one who advanced to the finals. I don't think his number, which was very Dieter from Sprocketts, will win, but I like him. Video below.
If anybody has learned how to leverage the power of dewy good looks and the global forum of the Internet, it is Cameron Dallas, who has gone from being a shining light of YouTube and Vine, to lucrative personal appearance tours and a charmless but financially successful movie (Expelled, now available on Netflix). Now Cameron has decided to try his hand at music and has released his first rap song, which briefly, very briefly, entered the top ten on the iTunes chart. I confess that I am not exactly a hip-hop kind of guy, but even I can tell you that Cameron's song, She Bad, is not good. I'm not going to say that it is the worst thing I have ever heard, but it's right up there. But why take my word of it when you can hear for yourself?
Back in the far off 1970s, Kristoffer Tabori was a person I saw on TV a lot. He guest starred on tons of TV dramas and mini-series, and showed up in an occasional movie. I didn't know much about him at the time, but I really liked him, even though he was so much older than me. It was his eyes mostly. He had great eyes. Sometime when I was in high school I was flipping through a catalog of films that where available to rent on 16mm for film societies, school activities, children's parties, etc. I came upon an illustrated page devoted to Making It, the 1971 film that marked 19-year-old Tabori' s first starring role.The pictures in that catalog were like catnip to me. I wanted to see that movie so very badly!
Today, after approximately 38 years of waiting, I finally saw Making It. As it turns out, the whole movie is on YouTube. Is it good movie, you may ask. Well... no. Frankly it is a bizarre movie, just all over the place, with a tonal shift in the last act that will give you whiplash. "Is it a drama? Is it a comedy? Is it a... oh shit, did that really just happen?" But where else can you see Bob Balaban, already in his mid-twenties, but looking much older, playing a high school student? What other movie features actor Dick Van Patton and his real life sisterJoyce Van Patton playing an engaged couple who share a hot grope and on-the-mouth kiss? And how often does a film take the time to offer a long debate on the merits of Catcher In The Rye between two characters who have obviously never read Salinger? Despite all this, Kristoffer Tabori is just amazingly, scorchingly hot in Making It; just as hot as I always imagined he would be.
Kristoffer Tabori, if you were wondering, is still working, mostly as a voice actor, which is a shame, because I'm sure, at 62 years of age, that he still has great eyes.
I know I'm repeating myself, but I just love this little videos that Jordan Ver Hoeve puts up on YouTube to help and motivate people in their fitness goals. Not only is he gorgeous, but he seems like the nicest boy imaginable. Here's his latest:
Well, maybe you can't look like Jordan Ver Hoeve, but that doesn't mean that he isn't going to help you try. 18-year-old Jordan, who is now living in New York City pursuing his modeling career, is also studying to become a personal trainer, and he has also launched an Instagram page and a YouTube channel to give you fitness tips.
Here is Jordan's very first video, which he suggests may have low entertainment value. We'll be the judge of that.
Here is a drawing from the great comic book artist P. Craig Russell's adaption of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. I'd like to see more of this kind of thing.
If you want to know more about Wagner's Ring Cycle, but you don't have access to Russell's comics, which, after all, were published twelve years ago, and don't have sixteen hours to devote to the operas, I suggests that you have a listen to Anna Russell's 1953 explanation of it. She sums things up quite nicely.
16-year old, Jacob Whitesides is one of scores of boys who are trying to follow in the footsteps of The BiebsHe Whose Name Shall Remain Unspoken by using social media to try to propel themselves into careers as legit pop stars. Jacob, from Memphis TN, has been more successful than some and less successful than others. His career trajectory has included a very brief, mostly unaired stint on the second season of the X Factor US, and participating in the "talent not required" MAGCON tour. (Apparently, Jacob had a rather public falling out with some of the MAGCON boys, which is a big point in his favor.) Jacob released his first EP over the summer, all covers, all ballads, all rather bland, I'm afraid. In August he released his first original song, You'rePerfect, a bouncy, uptempo track with some country flavor . Here is the slightly awkward music video he made to go with it. He has a pleasant, if unremarkable voice, but the real reason for his following is that he is freakin' adorable. I'm not sure that he has a bright musical career ahead of him- I can't see myself actually paying for his music- but I sure don't mind looking at him. And who knows? Maybe he will mature into a fine musician and a great singer, and change the face of pop music. For now though, I'll just appreciate his face and hope for the best.
I can't tell you much about Benji Staker except that he's from Washington state, he recently relocated to NYC to study with The Joffrey Ballet, and that he sure is pretty. He's the boy in this artsy music video by a group called Baby Alpaca. Also, he has no qualms about posting a picture of himself on Instagram sharing a very serious looking kiss with another guy (who seems to be Chris Kittrell, the lead singer of Baby Alpaca), which makes me inordinately happy.
