Well this is about as random as my posts get. So since the beginning of the year my family has been watching an episode per day of the teenage-Superman soap opera Smallville. Go Netflix. For some reason the combination of angst, adventure, intrigue, romance, danger, lust, and parental modeling has just worked to keep us in all-ages conversation about all sorts of things. We’re currently toward the end of season seven, which is probably more episodes of anything I’ve ever watched. Go figure. But I digress…

Today for some reason I decided I wanted to know what Michael Rosenbaum looks like with hair. He’s the guy who plays the perpetually, almost delightfully complex Lex Luthor character.

Anyway (yeah, yeah, I’m getting to the point) I found a bunch of photos on Google Images (the link, again) and randomly clicked on a thumbnail, expecting to get a better look.

What I didn’t expect, but what I instead got, was a link to page “M” of a blog called Ticklish Male Celebrities, hosted by Lady, evidently from Bulgaria (judging from her email domain’s country code) who’s description reads

I’m a woman of art, who has one weird… weakness – ticklish guys :)

The side description says

The blog’s besically an alphabetical list of famous actors/musicians/writers/footballers, etc, who’ve admitted they’re ticklish. You can check the “Tickling Media Forum” to see their list of male celebs, so you’d know where I got most of the information from. Myspace mesaging also helped LOL :) I’d also upload photos of the guys in question, barefoot if possible.

That’s pretty much exactly what the blog is about. It’s been around since September, 2008, which makes it fairly venerable in blog years. And though the unusual method of just adding new entries to one of 26 “alphabetical” posts makes it hard to tell, Lady keeps it active and up to date.

Anyway, if you’re into very, very soft-core “man candy” images, or if you’re into mostly-barefoot men, or if you’re into ticklish men, or you’re just looking for unusual celebrity trivia the site could be just the ticket.

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Doh! While researching fetishes (there’s this persistent but obviously mistaken belief, going back to Freud no less, that only men have fetishes) I discovered that, according to The Manual of International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10 version 2005), something is technically a fetish if and only if it involves a fixation on or use of inanimate objects for sexual gratification. If one is instead attached to activities instead of inanimate objects then the technical vocabulary is “paraphilia.” I think most people have probably heard the term paraphlia. What I didn’t know was that when one is erotically fascinated by specific body parts like feet or hair it’s called “partialism.” Since most people’s sexual attachments to objects, activities, or body parts aren’t obsessive enough to count as “diseases and related health problems,” though, it’s fine to lump them all together or to mix or match them. Or you could just call it all “kink.” Or, as long as it really isn’t interferingly obsessive, since appreciation for sexual variation is actually pretty common you could do what I do and call it “normal.”

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Getting back to my original obscure intention, the photos of Michael Rosenbaum didn’t really show what he looks like with hair so my search continues. But just for the record here’s her entry on Rosenbaum, bare feet and ticklishness quotes included.

Michael Rosenbaum (plays Lex Luthor on “Smallville”) This is how his AOL Live interview went (9/02)..
Hi Michael! Are you a ticklish guy? If so, where?

MichaelRLive: “Sure. Where am I not, that’s the question.”
http://www.michaelrosenbaum.com/aol.html

Scroll way down to find the entry.

Cool and completely unexpected discovery.

You know those stories where someone notices that, if you squint just right, and turn your head a little, and ignore that little bulge on the top, a rust stain on a wall or a scorch mark on a tortilla looks exactly like [your favorite deity or rockstar here]? And then sometimes hundreds or thousands of people do pilgrimages to go see it, either in real life or, more often, on Ebay?

And you may remember, or at least might have heard, that back in the 1990s about prolonged outrage over alleged hidden phalluses on The Little Mermaid covers? (Just think how that would have been handled by today’s 24/7 noise machines!?!?!)

Anyway, (via AAG) Melissa McEwan of has uncovered sort of the opposite effect: Church officials in Oklahoma wearing up and down there’s nothing to see at all, nope, nothing at all to… well, here’s how McEwan puts it

Source: Photobucket via Shakesville

If you can’t view the image, it’s of a ten-foot-tall crucifix hanging in St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Oklahoma, in which Jesus’ abs (I ain’t gonna mince words) look like a huge cock and balls.

The controversial crucifix has caused a deep divide among members of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, where it hangs above the main altar.

“There are a couple people who have left the parish,” said the Rev. Philip Seeton, the church’s pastor. “There are people in the parish who don’t like it and have stayed.”

Critics of the crucifix take issue with what appears to be a large penis covering Jesus’ abdominal area. Seeton said the portion of the crucifix in question is meant to be Jesus’ abdomen “showing distension” — not a penis.

Via Andy, who notes: “The crucifix is based on the San Damiano Crucifix. As you can see, it has distended abs too.”

Read the quote, and lively (and pretty hilarious) commentarey, here.

Despite McEwen’s warning for those triggered by associations with priest abuse the comments are perhaps-uncharacteristically light-hearted for Shakesville. For instance a commenter named Rehmeyer said “Seek immediate medical attention if your distended abs last longer than four hours.”

The pastor’s response reminds me a lot of Mississippi John Hurt’s reaction to criticism of the lyrics of his Candy Man Blues. Claiming to be surprised he said he couldn’t help it if some people have dirty minds.

The lyrics, by the way…

Well all you ladies gather ‘round
That good sweet candy man’s in town
It’s the candy man
It’s the candy man

He likes a stick of candy just nine inch long
He sells as fast a hog can chew his corn
It’s the candy man
It’s the candy man

All heard what sister Johnson said
She always takes a candy stick to bed
It’s the candy man
It’s the candy man

...

His stick candy don’t melt away
It just gets better, so the ladies say
It’s the candy man
It’s the candy man

Lyrics found here by random Google.

I’m sure Rev. Seeton knew exactly how he felt.

Erotica author Kristina Lloyd of Erotica Cover Watch reflects on the cover of a new fetish/erotica anthology and muses on the seeming inviolability of Rule #2. (Emphasis hers.)

The various blurbs to Best Fetish Erotica add to the book’s list of fetishes the phrase ‘ – nothing is off limits!’ or describe the stories as ‘taboo yet tantalizing‘. Well, clearly something is off limits: men! The desire for a male body is a taboo too far for erotica covers.

She said it here.

She reflects as well on the formal meaning of the word of “fetish.”

The word ‘fetish’ is frequently used to mean ‘kinky sex’ rather than obsessive devotion to an object or activity. However, this anthology (out next month), does seem to be true to its word with stories featuring ‘corsets, girdles, high-heeled feet, cross-dressing, rubber balls, spanking, fast cars, voyeurism, masochism, knives and plushies’. So it’s a book about desire for weird things but, as per usual, the cover falls into the idea of desire being solely represented by desire for women’s bodies meaning once again, we get a cover image of a woman, irrespective of the book’s content.

...

[D]oesn’t it look like a paraphilia when there are two sexes and the focus is entirely on one?

I’m trying out a new scheme for making the “Continue reading if…” photos even more optional. My old scheme kept them off the main pages but showed them on the click-through-to-comments page. This displays them in an entirely separate window. I keep meaning to stop posting them altogether but dang it, but I started posting them in the first place in part out of the same frustration Kristina Lloyd expresses at Erotica Cover Watch: despite considerable interest, erotic representations of heterosexual men are… well… poorly represented.

If you’re an adult you can click here to see a possibly not-work-safe image.

Let me know if the new scheme works for you.

Erotica author Mathilde Madden of Erotica Cover Watch reflects on why one of the covers (below, right) is not like the other one (below, left.)

Because – of course – this [the cover on the left —fl] fits into a whole I can see no menz tradition of erotica covers.

Because of that, because of the culture that surrounds it, this is just another insult. Another case where the need to never ever show a man on the cover of an erotica book seems to just be going to desperate measures.

I mean, really, there is a guy there, but he’s hiding!

Now, look at this. This is another cover [on the right —fl] where we see some sex through a half open door. The difference here is that this is an erotic romance book. And as we have discussed before erotic romance is different. In fact, erotic romance does some really lovely covers with men on them. But only because straight men are not the consumers of erotic romance.

Read the quote in context here.

And yet publishers claim they never put men on the covers of porn and erotica by and for heterosexual women because women would rather look at other women.

Because hey, why admit you’re just catering to your homophobic male customers when you can just reinforce empty stereotypes about women, narcissm and their squeamishness about men’s bodies instead?