12 Things to Like About Autumn

1. Everything is new.  New jobs, new classes, new students, new books, new clothes, new shows on tv, new theater and symphony seasons.  New muscular physiques and bulges to gawk at.

2. Everything is busy. The mind-numbing boredom of summer is replaced by days packed with activity.  Every moment  is vibrant and alive.














3. It gets crowded.  The mind-numbing loneliness of summer is replaced by crowds of people, returning from their conferences, vacations, visits to relatives, and various excursions, ready to hang out with you again.

4. It gets cool, so you can jog a few miles without getting soaked.

5. You can stay inside.  People stop longer pressuring you to spend every waking moment outside.  No more hot, fly-infested, uncomfortable picnics, no more sitting on lawn chairs and swatting mosquitos. It's cold out --- go ahead, stay inside and watch tv.

6. Football.  I don't like watching football, but I like watching football fans.

7. A regular gym schedule. The disruptions of summer are over, so you can get back into a regular gym schedule.  And so can dozens of other gym rats for you to sneak peaks at in the locker room.

8. The trees change.  After two decades in Los Angeles and Florida, where they didn't, it's quite a spectacle.


















9. The days get shorter. The sun sets at a normal time, instead of that ungodly 8:00 or 9:00 pm.

10. The best holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving.  Not to mention my birthday.

11. You can eat again without worry.  Have an apple cider donut or piece of pumpkin pie.  Your cute sweaters and lumberjack shirts will cover it up, anyway.

12. Snow is coming soon.

See also: 10 Things I Hated About Summer and Playing Outside.

Stan Brock: Man-Mountain, Adventurer, and Philanthropist

When I was a kid, we were in church ever Sunday from 9:30 to 12:00, and again from 6:30 to 9:00, with exceptions only during our annual family vacation or when we were sick. And don't try that "stomach ache" routine, or your parents will decide to fix fried chicken while bringing you a bowl of chicken broth.

It didn't make much sense to stay home anyway, since there was nothing good on tv.  Totalitarian cartoons like Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo.  Heretical Lutheran programs like Davy and Goliath. 

And that horrible nature program, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (1963-1971), with grandfatherly Marlin Perkins showing us five minutes of footage of lions followed by five minutes of  "Just as lions take care of their families, you should take care of your family with life insurance. Mutual of Omaha..."

He had a couple of cute co-hosts, though: Jim Fowler, obviously his boyfriend (#9 on my list of Top 10 Nature Show Hunks), and the British-accented Stan Brock.

Neither showed substantial muscle on camera, so I was surprised to discover that Stan Brock had a superlative bodybuilder's physique (top photo)






Born in England in 1936, Brock spent his young adulthood working as a cowboy in British Guyana (he wrote about his experiences in All the Cowboys were Indians).  He got the gig on Wild Kingdom through his personal connection with Marlon Perkins, and stayed on through 1971.

During the 1970s, he tried his hand in two man-mountain movies:

Escape from Angola (1976); A zoologist and his family (Steven, Peter, and David Tors, sons of famous undersea director Ivan Tors) must flee from war-torn Angola and take off their shirts.

Galyon (1980): He's not a barbarian or a superhero, in spite of stealing the graphics from the 1979 Superman movie on the poster.  He's a man-mountain hired to rescue a couple from the South American jungle.

In 1985 and 1986, he and Peter Tors (left) starred in a fictionalized reality series, Stan Brock's Expedition: Danger.  A sort of Brazilian Tarzan, he ventured into the jungle to save people and animals from raging rivers, anacondas, poachers, and terrorists.  You can see it on youtube.

Later in the 1980s, he founded Remote Air Medical (RAM), a charitable organization that provides free medical care to people in isolated areas, originally the Brazilian jungle, but now mostly Appalachia.  He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, and still follows a strict regiment of diet and exercise.

No wife mentioned, and a lot of time spent in the company of men.  Maybe he's gay.

See also: Mark Trail, a Substandard Tarzan.

SOTUS: Thai Pretty Boys in Love at Engineering School

Thai tv shows are coming out all over.  The latest on Netflix is SOTUS: The Series, which is based on a Thai web novel of the same name. SOTUS  really does appear in the Latin alphabet, with the subtitle พี่ว้ากตัวร้ายกับนายปีหนึ่ง, which Google translates as "The Evil Wok and Mr. Year."

The novel falls into the category of yaoi or "boy love": stories aimed at an audience of young girls about pretty, feminine teenage boys falling in love with each other, with sighs, moonlit strolls, and maybe a kiss but no sex.

It's a traditional like teen idols in the West: non-threatening "dreamy" boys with all of the mythology of "true love," but no competition from another girl.

I knew about yaoi, but I didn't know that there were popular yaoi-based tv series and movies.

On to SOTUS:

At a strange totalitarian Faculty of Engineering (university engineering school), hundreds of white-clad freshman undergo intensive hazing by evil red-robed seniors.  The head haze-master, snarling martinet Arthit (Perawat Sangpotirat), singles out fresh-faced Kongpop (Prachaya Ruangroj) for special abuse because he can't acknowledge his attraction.

These photos come from a photo shoot the two did for the gay magazine Attitude.  In the series, they don't go out on a date until the 10th episode, and don't kiss until the last episode (in the second season, they finally spend the night).

Arthit is busy subjecting Kongpop to so many hazing pranks that one wonders when either of them have time to go to class: find 10 guys to sign on to be his lovers; run 54 laps; get drunk; do squats; eat a plate of rice loaded down with hot peppers.

Meanwhile there's a basketball tournament, a capture-the-flag contest, and a Mr. Engineering School contest, and some shenanigans involving missing class notes.

Eventually Kongpop manages to turn the tables and become dominant, forcing forcing Arthit to recognize their mutual attraction and agree to a date.  Afterwards, there's no homophobia in this world (or gay culture either), so all they have to worry about are competitors trying to break them up.

Other characters include

1. Arthit's gang, Bright, Knot (left), Tutah, and Prem.

What's up with the names? "Bright" and "Knot" are English words, but not English names.  Nor are they literal translations of Thai names.

2. Kongpop's posse, Wad, Oak, and Tew (left).

More single-syllable names that are (or sound like) English words.  "Wad" is not exactly complementary.

3. May, who wants Kongpop for herself.

4. Em (left), who wants May, and mistakenly believes Kongpop to be a rival.

Apparently they've all starred in yaoi-based dramas before.

 SOTUS, by the way, is explained as the hazing credo, Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity, Spirit, but Kongpop tells Arthit that it really refers to the Story of True Love between Us.

The romance is standard romcom, bickering couples who grudgingly admit their attraction, just with two pretty boys instead of Sam and Diane.  But there's enough Thai culture to keep you occupied between the shirtless scenes (hint: displays of casual physical affection between friends).

My grade: B-.  A- if you are into Asian twinks.

"American Princess": My New Favorite TV Show

Entitled, detached-from-reality Jewish American Princess Amanda (Georgia Flood, who looks exactly like Kristen Ritter of Don't Trust the B__ in Apartment 23) is planning a "fairy tale wedding" in the wilds of upstate New York.  Minutes before she is scheduled to walk down the aisle, she stumbles upon her fiancé, Brett (Max Ehrich), having sex with last night's hookup.  Still in her wedding dress, she rushes away.

Isn't that how Friends started?

 Amanda runs into the wilderness and stumbles upon a Renaissance Faire, one of those summertime celebrations of all things Elizabethan -- well, the fun things anyway.  There's boozing, dancing, craft booths, jousts, swordplay.  Workers and many of the guests wear Elizabethan costumes and stay strictly in character.  There are classes in how to speak, wave, bow, and pretend not to be aware of modern technology.

At first Amanda is dismissive of the daffy, reality deprived weirdos, but soon she realizes that her world is equally reality deprived.  Besides, she was an English major, and likes this Renaissance stuff.  When her mother and sister show up to take her home, she refuses.  She gets a job at the Faire, and immerses herselves in the lives and problems of other "rennies" (faire professionals).

I'm surprised that there are so many of them, considering that they work only on weekends during the summer.  It can't be a full time gig.  But:

David (Lucas Neff, left,  unrecognizable from Raising Hope) has an act involving getting splattered with mud and pretending to pee on people.  A German and art history major, he wonders if this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life.

Delilah (Mary Hollis Inboden) has an act involving doing laundry and making sexual innuendos.

Maggie (Seanna Kofoed) has been playing Queen Elizabeth for over 20 years, and is worried about aging and losing her power.

Brian (Rory O'Malley), who plays William Shakespeare, has been her gay bff for many years, but he longs to be accepted by the other performers.  After some false starts, he begins dating Juan Andres (Juan Alfonso), who runs a craft booth.

Leaf (Brock Harris, left) is a jouster, and spends his off time flirting with guests of all genders.

The female sexual empowerment stuff gets a little distasteful at times. I fast-forwarded through some discussions of vaginas.  Did you know that they come in different sizes and shapes?  I do, now.

But the colorful interactions among the characters, both in the Faire and back home on the Upper East Side, are worth sitting through some "boob and bush" discussions.

Besides, just about everyone on the show is gay, bisexual, or pansexual.  There's even a three-way relationship between Natasha (Sophie von Hasselberg), Stephen (Ross Bryant), and Phil (Edgar Blackmon).

And there's a lot of beefcake.  Most of the shirtless actors are playing scruffy, unwashed Elizabethan underlings, but there are also some buffed physiques about.

The first season is up on Vudu and Amazon Prime.  I'm watching slowly, an episode every few days.   I don't want it to end.