Studs from the Steppes: Twelve Mongolian musclemen, Uzbek boyfriends, and Kyrgyz cocks

  

Link to the cocks

When I was in about sixth grade, I bought an atlas of world history in the gift shop of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. One of the maps showed the Khanate of the Golden Horde covering most of Eurasia, from Mongolia to Poland.  Who wouldn't be fascinated by that?

Later I read The Empire of the Steppes, with Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Tamerlane shaping world history, and did a research project on gay personal ads in Central Asia.  I got my M.A. from Indiana University, where you can study Central Asian languages, but I decided on Mandarin instead.  I don't want to actually visit these places: endless steppes sound a little boring, and they have some of the most homophobic governments on the planet.  But a quick look at some Central Asian hunks might be fun.

1. Mongolian wrestler, top photo.

 Mongolia is not all nomads living in yurts. Check out the skyline of modern UlaanBataar.  

2. Ulaanbataar fitness trainer.

3. Kazakh guy from Almaty. previously Alma-Ata, previously the capital.

4-7. Shirtless dinner in Koshetau, Kazakhstan

More after the break

Karol Krauser, the First Superman

The first Superman cartoons appeared in 1941, only three years after the Man of Steel first appeared in Action Comics.  They were produced by the Fleischer Studio, which also gave us Betty Boop and Popeye.  The Fleischers liked to work with real models, rotoscoping their movements to guide the animators, but for many years the model for the 17 Superman cartoons was unknown.

He turns out to be Karol Krauser, real name Karol Piwoworczyk, a young bodybuilder and wrestler.  The Superman website and wikipedia give few other details, but I managed to find some newspaper articles about him.

He was born in Krakow, Poland in 1912, attended the Polish Cadet School in Gniezne and the University of Krakow, and then worked as a physical education instructor at the Zwiazek Strzelecki, Polish military academy.

 At the beginning of World War II, he moved to New York and became a professional wrestler, dubbed the "Polish Apollo."   His first recorded match is in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on February 24, 1939.  By 1941, a newpaper article calls him the "popular Polish heavyweight champion.




He worked as a model for the Fleischers in 1939 and 1940, posing whenever they needed a muscleman, as in the Superman cartoons.

In 1945, Karol married female wrestler Zosia or Zoska Burska.   The best man at his wedding was none other than Stan Laurel of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy.

Most professional wrestlers retire in their 30s, but in 1953, at age 42, Karol and Edward Bogucki began a tag-team act as the Mad Russians, Karol and Ivan Kalmikoff.  During the Cold War, they became popular villains, winning several NWA competitions.

In 1962, Karol split from  Ivan and teamed up with Eric Pomeroy, billed as Stan or Igor Kalmikoff.  They appeared in several matches.

Karol died of a heart attack on September 12, 1964, after a match in Salt Lake City.

Max Brumberg: Slovakian flute crafter, drag theologian, Russian-Austrian-Uzbek actor. With Uzbek dicks.

   Link to the Uzbek dicks

I don't know what led me to the 2021 movie Play it Cool, with someone named Reggiemolo (Alex Jason Lee King) on a cross-country trip where he's mistaken for a criminal and meets The Girl -- the trailer shows them kissing a thousand times, so it's definitely a "no way!"  But far down the cast list was a cute guy named Max Brumbaugh.

The name resonated because when I was a kid, there was a "haunted house" on my grandfather's property that belonged to the Brumbaugh family.  So I decided to research him.

Rather a difficult task.  First, his last name isn't Brumbaugh, it's Brunberg.  No, it's Brumberg, with an "m," and there are a lot of Max Brumbergs out there. 

1. Max Brumberg who makes flutes in the traditional manner, with traditional materials: "Each one is produced on an individual basis, just as in nature each branch grows as a perfect individual, it acquires its own voice by the craft of my hand."  He makes Slovakian fujaras, Moldavian kavals, overtone flutes, double flutes, and many other types, out of his store in Sainte-Croix-Vallée-Français, about two hours north of Montpellier.

Another Max Brumberg is Max Brumberg-Kraus, he/him or they/them.  They are the co-founder of the House of Larva Drag Co-operative, performing as drag persona Çicada L’Amour, producing both small acts and full-length queer peformance art, and a member of the ARC community: "a creative collaboration for theopoetics."

They graduated from the United Theological Seminary in 2020 with a M.A. in theology and the arts, and research interests in queer temporality, queer and feminist theology, cosmology, mythopoetics, ancient tragedy, midrash, embodiment, and reception theory.   They're the author of The(y)-ology: Mythopoetics for Gay/Trans Liberation.

Then there's the grad student at the Institute of Russian History in Moscow, and his aroused cucumber.

From Linkedin, IMDB, and an article in Voyager, I've pieced together the life of Max Brumberg, actor.  Of Uzbek and Russian Jewish ancestry.

Top photo: Uzbek guy

Fluent in English, French, German, and Russian.  Not Uzbek?

 Grew up in Vienna got a M.S. in real estate from Newcastle University in Britain and took a job in Real Estate Structured Finance Sales, traveling between Vienna, Belgrade, and Bucharest while acting in commercials and doing stand-up comedy. 

While he was working as a manager at Saxon Bank in Zurich, Max realized that "something was missing...there was a void in my life." So he moved to L.A. and enrolled at the Stella Adler School of Acting. 

So far he has only six acting credits on the IMDB:

More after the break