Worlds & Time

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Hot Guys on the Men's Gymnastics Team

So here I am sitting and watching the Men's Gymnastics Trials in the 2008 Olympics, and I can't help but to notice that they guys are phenomenally hot. All new, too, and most of them seem to be around my age. Can't wait to see them on Tuesday. I've got a huge crush on Michael Phelps, but it's nice to know that I've got some fallback events to watch for attractive male athletes.

Raj Bhavsar, the first alternate, in one of my favorites so far. I'm not used to the really built Indian guys, but I could definitely get used to them if they all looked like Raj. The arms are especially nice and I loved him on the rings, but for some reason it's the profile views that are most attractive. He's just got a really shapely head, which great on a gymnast because it's completely not necessary. I mean they all have hot bodies but Raj is cute and nice looking even beyond that. I wish there was an actor other than Kal Penn that I could compare him with because Raj is much, much cuter than Kal Penn. Here's a cute pic, and another, and a bonus older final one. (Update: How's I miss this one?)

Alexander Artemev, the other alternate is also hot stuff in a Russian looking sort of way. Apparently his horse routine was what put him below the bar, but watching him just now he was pretty impressive to my layman eye. All sorts of fun flips and spins and almost falls. The commentators were gasping. My favorite pic of him is this one. Here's another good one, and here's a profile pic that doesn't make him look like a zombie.

Kevin Tan is of Chinese descent, and the commentators had a bit of a field day pointing out that he's of Chinese descent in Beijing. Of all the hot guys on the men's gymnastics team, I think I'm least interested in Kevin. Granted, he is still incredibly hot, and he's the team captain. Here are two pictures of him that I think are good (one, two).

Joe Haggerty is actually from not that far away from me, so I'll give this guy the chops for being hot and from the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. It's hard to find pictures of him as "Joe" though, unless you expand it to Joseph. Here's a few of his best pics (one, two, three).

Jonathan Horton on the high bar was really impressive. He's the white bread short spikey hair replacement for the Hamm twins that I've been looking for. He's so adorable. I want to rub his ears for some reason, possibly because he's all of 5'1". Apparently he's the USA all around threat, which means that I should be enjoying plenty more of him. Here are the pics that I like of him (one, two, three, four)

Justin Spring is the cute blond boy. You can see some pictures of him in the articles about him at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign school newspaper here and here. I gotta love the blond spiky hair and all of the shirtless pictures that come up when you Google Image search his name don't hurt either. He's the son of an astronaut too, and here is another DailyIllini article. Definitely another of my favorites. Here are some more pretty pictures of him (one, two, three, four).

Now, I only have one issue with the team so far: Why can't anyone stick a landing? I mean, I realize that the Japanese and Chinese aren't sticking it either, but we're Americans. You're better and cuter than everyone else, and you should be sticking the landings.

Ah, okay, the Russians are coming on. More cuteness, but there's no way I'm going to try to figure out all of their names and spend hours searching them on Google.

Update: Yeah, the last alternate is David Durante, the hot guy that they occasionally flash to in the stands. He's smoking hot, as evidenced by various pictures of him. His profile link is from those in this story.

The team is doing much better now that they're in medal contention . . .

. . . and they get Bronze, I guess. Awesome.

Update 2: I guess it was Silver. And here's a bonus pic. Nice.

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A Symbol of Sadness

I consider myself pretty jaded. I can handle discussions about a lot of different things without flinching. Living in this world, being a user of Fark, and dealing with the discussions at IIDB have illustrated that.

Today there was a follow-up to a story on Fark that I missed the first time around. The original story was about a girl, Dani Lierow, who grew up feral in a home in Florida. She grew up alone surrounded by people.

If you missed it, the title of the story was "The girl in the window."

I cried reading that. Unbelievable. And I donated money to her new family. That's the power of those simple words in that article.

I'm sort of shocked that the mother is free. Seriously, sometimes I can't believe what the justice system is forced to do to make deals.

A Symbol of Happiness

Today while I was driving on the highway I was passed by a brand new silvery sky blue Mustang convertible with two cute guys in it. The guy driving was clean cut with olive skin and dark hair and the guy in the passenger seat had long curly blond hair and his head was tilted to the side. Above them the sun was illuminating the tops of the curly clouds and making them burn in the bright light and casting rays of light everywhere.

Both looked utterly peaceful and happy.

Granted, there's a fair bent of consumerism inherent in that statement of happiness but to a certain extent I think that to be happy in our current culture requires the security that money can provide. I'm not happy about that, but I accept it as a kind of inarguable truth in this day and age.

I realize there's a gap through July. I did go to London and Ireland. I'll have to fill that in.

Also: Happy 08/08/08. The Olympic opening ceremonies were pretty impressive, eh?