Federer And His “Tweener”

Paleo Retiree writes:

Greatest stunt shot in the history of professional tennis?

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Nine Years of Alya

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

One of the interesting upshots of internet nude modeling is the ability to follow particular models from youth (18 or 19) through to the end of their careers, which tend to occur in the models’ early 30s if not earlier. This was more or less impossible prior to the advent of internet porn. Sure, “Playboy” would sometimes publish “where are they now?” photo sets (usually heavily airbrushed) of models who had first become popular in their teens or early twenties. But that left all the middle years unaccounted for. And if you’re as big a pervert as I am, you’re bothered by that lack of total coverage.

I got to thinking about this the other day while taking a look at Petter Hegre’s excellent artcore site, Hegre-Art, which has been publishing first-rate nude photographs of stupendous-looking models for ten years or more. While perusing the site I noticed that the Ukrainian model known as Alya had recently made a comeback. I remembered her well!

According to the info on Hegre-Art, Alya, who is sometimes known as Alena, started working in 2005. Maybe you need to have a thing for extremely leggy, string-bean-bodied girls with angelic faces to fully appreciate a model like Alya. Lord knows, she’s unlikely to pique the interest of the guy who’s primarily interested in big butts and breasts.  Yet I think most will have no problem agreeing that she’s a fairly stunning creature. Those green eyes! That adorably weak non-chin! That mole!

Anyway, this got me interested in comparing photos of Alya from different years. So I pulled examples from each year of her career off the net. Though she’s worked for a variety of sites, most come from either Hegre or MetArt, which is another upscale nude site specializing in stunning European women. It’s intriguing — not to mention fairly stimulating — to watch her mature before your eyes. Inevitably, the youthful bloom fades and is replaced by a still-very-appealing gravitas. I can’t imagine a lovelier memento mori.

According to her page on Hegre-Art, Alya has begun working as a nude photographer. Good for her. Her stuff looks fun and classy. Here she is talking about her work:

Thank you everybody for fantastic comments.) I think its my destiny to be here again with Petter. He saw me growing from a child. I was always trying to put my nose in to his photo shootings with me as stylist. Couple of years ago I have decided that my passion is photography. But not only this I am artist inside and I always try to torn useful things into my way. You can look my autoportraits later and you will see what I mean) With Love from Alya!

Here’s hoping she’s a success at her new career. I certainly wouldn’t mind another nine years of Alya.

Naturally, these photos are all low-res sample versions. The ones available through the official sites are of much better quality.

Below content is of course NSFW.

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Posted in Photography, Sex, The Good Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Publicity Archives

Sherbrooke writes:

Peter O’Toole and Audrey Hepburn, posing for “How to Steal a Million” (1966). On the face of it, it seems like strange casting, but to me, they are magic in this film. Ethereal male and ethereal female, both up to no good.

Image

Posted in Movies, Performers | 2 Comments

Architecture Du Jour

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Click on the image to enlarge.

colonialantiguaColonial architecture in Antigua, Guatemala. I was going to recommend the rest of this guy’s set from Antigua, but you’ll probably want to also check out his entire Flickr page.

Posted in Architecture, Photography, Travel | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

This is Our 1,000th Post

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

expodesarts1937kollar“Exposition internationale des art et techniques à Paris” (1937) by François Kollar.

Thanks for reading and dropping by.

Posted in Architecture, Art, Photography | Tagged | 3 Comments

Sunday Stroll

Atypical Neurotic writes:

20131222-122511.jpg

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How Blue is My Valley?

Fenster writes:

The Uncanny Valley is a neat cognitive trick, occurring when “human features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural human beings.”  In that valley, what results is a “response of revulsion among human observers.”

So on the one side of the valley: lovable real humans.

rita

On the other, lovable unreal cartoons

cart

or robots.

r2

and, in the valley, Beowulf.

Beowulf

OK, that’s the process when building up from non-human to human.  What of the process of stripping away human features from real humans?

Well, for sure it is the case that if you strip away enough human features from real humans, you arrive at a different kind of abstract lovability.  Take the Blue Man Group.  Kids love ’em.  They are obviously not cartoons or robots, but the overall idea is to strip away certain human cues.  The all-blue color.  Lack of ears.  And the odd affect.

It is almost as though they are miming a reptilian way of moving and looking.

So we know that there is another side to the Uncanny Valley when removing human features from real humans.  But is there a Valley there, too?  A place where the removal of a slighter number of human cues produces a “response of revulsion”?  Why, yes indeed.

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Duck a la Paglia

Fenster writes:

It is awfully easy to make light of dust-ups like the one over Phil Robertson.  Does it matter what a reality show celeb says and whether he stays on the air?  Narrowly speaking, no.  I didn’t know Robertson except for seeing him a while back on the cover of a People Magazine knock-off in a check out line, and I don’t give a rat’s ass about duck hunting.  I’m urban.

But these kinds of escapades do present interesting morality tales for the people to chew on, me included.  In a way, it is how the populi find their vox on important cultural questions. Some bread, some circus, some philosophizing about things that matter.  And while I don’t care about Robertson, there are some interesting issues that underlie the fight he is in.

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Posted in Philosophy and Religion, Sex | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

A Playpen for Adults?

Paleo Retiree writes:

During a cross-country trip the other day I found myself killing time at the Dallas airport. I looked up from my book and found that I was sitting by the side of a kind of central courtyard that … Well, here’s a collage impression of what the area looked like:

dallas_courtI was mainly reminded of two things by this courtyard. One was the kiddie-play areas featured by some McDonald’s restaurants; the other was co-blogger Eddie Pensier’s recent posting about some awful contempo buildings in Melbourne. Corporate/governmental  postmodernism … Zaniness and playfulness every which way you look … The blight of public art-style creativity … The “We’re being treated like children!” angle of it all really knocked me on the head.

Questions Du Jour: Is it a great thing that our elites supply distractions and amenities a-plenty to us to provide us with pep, calories and cheeriness? Or is it an outrage that our betters are as determined as they are to treat us like cranky babies? Is transforming our environment into a giant playpen making us happier by reinforcing our connection with the child within? Or is it an infantilizing force that needs to be resisted?

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Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

A Potent Cocktail You Won’t Soon Forget

Fenster writes:

Consider those six glasses at the top of the UR page.

One part The Odyssey

One part Memento

One part Twilight Zone (A Stop at Willoughby preferred)

One part Waiting for Godot

One part Groundhog Day (extra dry)

One part Dark Victory 

Add to shaker.  No ice.

memory

Shake.

The result:

Memory, by Donald Westlake.

westl

Written in the sixties and published just recently, posthumously.  It is a different kind of Westlake.  It’s got a little of the potboiler in it, as the cover image suggests.  But it is a potboiler that slips in and out of profundity with ease.  And it is pretty damn disquieting, too.  What does it mean to go home?  What is your identity, anyway?

No plot revealers here.  I will say the book puts me in the mind of the tragic aspects of Spielberg (& Kubrick’s) A.I.

(W)e start by feeling the tragedy of David–that he feels from the inside out that his love is authentically his when it is “merely” a function of his program.  But we then move on to the tragedy of us–that we are not much different.

And also a little of Andre Gregory’s last words in My Dinner With Andre:

(P)eople hold on to these images: father, mother, husband, wife, again for the same reason: ’cause they seem to provide some firm ground. But there’s no wife there. What does that mean, a wife? A husband? A son? A baby holds your hands and then suddenly there’s this huge man lifting you off the ground, and then he’s gone. Where’s that son?

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments