A Meditation on Colton Haynes

There's usually some actor or artist that I've fixated on for some reason or another.  I've certainly posted enough about Erik Rhodes and Fredrik Eklund to imply that, but sometimes it's a more mainstream actor as well (and I'm not going to pretend that it's an actor OR actress because while I am loving every moment of Jennifer Lawrence's celebrity, I'm talking about another level of desire).

For a long time, for example, it was Jonathan Taylor Thomas, or JTT as he was known in the teen beat magazines.  Huh, have I ever actually said that before publicly?  To anyone?  I don't know, I don't think so.

The picture that I had of Jonathan was so nice and familiar and uh, . . . cute.  I had such a big crush on him that I couldn't imagine that people didn't think that he was the prettiest most-beautiful most-special . . . yeah, you get the picture.  There are still characters that live in my head that started off their fictional lives as Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Perhaps some of them as already fictional characters as portrayed by JTT that were further ficitonalized and adapted into the worlds in my head.

There are lots of guys living in there like that.  Who else?  I've had crushes on so many actors . . . all the way from A-listers like Ryan Reynolds, Taylor Lautner, Chris Evans and Josh Hutcherson to guys whose names you'll likely not recognize at all like Alexander Ludwig and Dan Wells.  And athletes like Alexi Nemov and *cough* Tom Daley and Matthew Mitcham.

So, anyway.  My current pop-culture crush is on Colton Haynes who, aside from being just about the most gorgeous guy that has ever lived, was on the show Teen Wolf and is now on Arrow.  Teen Wolf was/is my guilty pleasure.  For a show that should be crap though, it seems really well written and many of the side characters are just as lovable as the main characters.  In that it reminds me of Veronica Mars, I suppose.

When I first started watching Teen Wolf I found Colton Haynes to be rather shallow in the character of Jackson.  Jackson's the white, athletic, captain of the lacrosse team and he's dating a cheerleader. He's basically the epitome of shallowness, actually, and the guys that they usually get to play the shallow white male characters are themselves shallow white males.  Funny how that works out, yeah?  So at the beginning I gave more love to Tyler Posey (werewolf), Tyler Hochtlin, (werewolf), and Dylan O'Brien (brilliant comedic sidekick).

Anyway, there aren't that many guys in the age range that are could convincingly play teenagers in high school that are great actors, especially the ones that are selected to play characters that fit those good looking popular kid roles.  So I saw Colton Haynes playing such a character and didn't give him much of the benefit of the doubt.  To be clear, even though he was an actor in a show, I presumed that he was likely as superficial, conceited and bitchy as the character that he played.  I assumed that he was just as pretty in real life as he was in television land, but that's just television for you.

And then the character had additional characterization, as is the wont for characters in well written television series, and all of the sudden I found that I was actually feeling for this rich, gorgeous jock that was supposed to be the major high school (re: "normal life") antagonist.  Because I had, unwittingly, granted Colton Haynes a powerful version of suspension of disbelief: that he was the character that he played.

So when the character showed off fear and anger and confusion and pain I was surprised because I believed it.  It was acting, I know that, but it was excellent acting.  It was a powerful and professional and amazing performance given by someone that had to have really worked at it, thought about it, and then made the role his own in a way that few great actors can.

Or perhaps not.  Maybe Colton Haynes really was afraid, angry, confused and deeply hurt when those scenes were filmed and he and the director used them to get a good performance.  But he's pretty and a television star and honestly I doubt his life has held enough fear, anger, confusion and emotional pain to draw on them so brilliantly, so I'm just going to have to chalk it up to being a very good actor and playing a character.

Here's where I have to complain for a moment.  Jackson was the focus of the second season of Teen Wolf.  It was around his character that a lot of the mystery and action takes place, and it leads up into a grand reveal and a hint at the following season and then . . .

Colton Haynes leaves Teen Wolf and moves over to the show Arrow.  Well, crap.  It was hard to watch Teen Wolf stumble over that, because it was clear that they'd written Jackson into way too much of the third season and they didn't want to change all of the plans that they'd laid out so carefully.  So they had to force some of the characters into awkward positions and do some things that were sloppy before (and I hope this is true) being able to settle back into the flow of things.

I have to say that at first I had a bit of nasty feelings toward Arrow for poaching one of my favorite things about Teen Wolf.  Arrow does have a lot going for it.  Stephen Amell, the male lead, is very attractive (albeit not as hot as Colton Haynes), and it has both John Barrowman and Summer Glau in it, both of whom I like.

But it's not as well written.  It has some issues with how tightly plotted it is, and there are also some serious characterization problems where characters vacillate on what should be core beliefs and principles.  It has some opacity on moral questions: is it wrong to kill someone as a vigilante or not?  The show hasn't decided, and so the characters don't know what to think about it either.

The other issue is that Colton Haynes is woefully underused in his role as Roy Harper.  Roy has an interesting story line, with his life as a poor mugger/thief conflicting with dating one of the richest women in the city and his obsession with following "the Hood" changing what his life means.  But he's on the second rung of supporting characters, being a supporting character's significant other in a show with a surprisingly large cast.  So he doesn't have enough screen time.

I will say though, Colton is a good enough actor to add some great detail to his limited screen time.  In one of the most recent episodes of Arrow that I watched he walked into his girlfriend's mansion with her so that she could interact with her mother (does it still count as passing the Betchdel test if one of the women's male partners is present but nearly silent as they talk about non-men related issues?) and he stares around, wide eyed, because the character has never been there before, and honestly the character has probably never been in such an expensive home in his life.

As I've said, Colton is a good actor, perhaps even a great actor.  And he's got the movie star looks to back up his actual skills (although I can't decide whether that will help him or hurt him in the future).  And we get to see the occasional snippet of him behind the scenes in the social media presence that actors are required to keep these days.  And I've pretty much fallen for what I see of him.  That doesn't mean that he wouldn't absolutely hate me if he ever met me, but I've crushes on plenty of guys that didn't return the feelings before.

Speaking of which, I will say that I wish he was gay. It doesn't matter to his attractiveness whether he is or not, but it's harder to have a crush on a guy when you know for a fact that they can't return those feelings.  Not impossible, just harder.

Anyway, in the meantime, I wish him a good life.  Happiness, privacy, and moments of fun and peace.  

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.

The End of the World Sucks

There is a giant asteroid headed toward earth. What do you do?

I'd probably complain about the impending destruction of the Earth for a while and then go check some S.M. Stirling books out of the library.

I mean, seriously, if it's about the size of Texas, we're basically all doomed. Some people may be able to survive if they're:

1. In the right place at the right time (i.e. where the asteroid doesn't impact the earth)
2. Capable of finding the mythical twinkie factory to feed them.
   
3. Unaffected by Seasonal Affective Disorder.
4. Important enough that people who can arrange for 1 and 2, and find a psychologist that specializes in 3 (i.e. the government) wants you to survive.

I'm not one of the above people, but if I check the S.M. Stirling books out of the library I can probably fake 2 for a while. I'm certainly not a member of 4.

Seriously though, both of the movies on the subject suggest that nuclear weapons are the solution to this scenario. They're not. By the time we detected the asteroid (granting that we detected it before it hit us) it would be much to late to blow it up or change its course substantially. Do you remember how the asteroid split and went just around the Earth in Armageddon? Unfortunately there's this thing called gravity, which means that an asteroid that big and a planet the size of Earth are unlikely to just drift away from each other, especially when they're so freaking close together.

And that's not even counting the momentum of a Texas sized object.

The funny thing is that I'm not a math guy. I can't prove any of this mathematically but it isn't even logical to the most unsophisticated rational mind.

I think the worst thing is when writers (or editors, or producers) say something that sounds good but doesn't make the least bit of sense. There was an episode of Star Trek: Voyager that included a throwaway line about how a certain species' technology allowed them to exist on the surface of a neutron star. Then they fought them with hand phasers. I don't care what the hell the premise behind a phaser is, if these guys can stand on the surface of a neutron star, then no Federation technology is going to be anything more than a pretty light. As I understand it, the energy present on the surface of a neutron star is like standing in the middle of a series of nuclear explosions at the rate of a million megatons per second. Or something like that. As I said, I can't do math, but no one is going to convince me that phasers output more energy than a million nuclear weapons a second.

A neutron star is so powerful that there is no such thing as atomic structure on it. No iron. No lead. No oxygen. A thimble full of neutron star material would be enough to poach the planet Earth. And probably all of the other planets in the solar system too.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Star Trek: Voyager, but when I watch episodes like that one, I just have to cringe. Mistakes like that force anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge out of a willing suspension of disbelief, and the whole episode or movie is completely ruined.

Don't even get me started on "The Core." Some movie executive must have turned to a producer and said "Hey, end of the world movies are popular! Come up with another situation in which the world ends that involves nuclear weapons!" and then they must have hired a hack writer to churn it out in two days.

Good Omens is the best Armageddon story that I've ever read. I desperately wish that I could write something that funny, but I'm more of a dark writer. I fear for the presumed upcoming movie, because it doesn't involve nuclear weapons or hellfire, just a lot of really funny, quirky characters, and I'm worried some idiotic producer is going to demand a Keanu Reeves playing the part of the mindless American savior of the world. You know, like the Matrix. Or Constantine. Or Little Buddha.

The point is, that things that are engaging and well written do better. It's not a sure fire way to make money, but the better that a movie or a television show or a book is, the better the chance it has of making a lot of money. Remember, having a Keanu Reeves style actor isn't a surefire way to make money any more, either.

That's why the Star Wars prequels sucked, incidentally. They were horribly, horribly written, but unfortunately none of the movie executives cared. They knew they were going to make fist fulls of money anyway, so they thought it didn't matter. And, in that specific situation, it didn't.

It saddens me that there isn't a lot more effort put into narrowly averted catastrophic destruction, but today America seems to be infused with the idea that if something is sufficient it is good enough. Really though, we should be reaching and doing our best on every single ounce of demolition, destruction, and apocalyptic horror that we produce.

And that's why I'm voting for Obama.

(Yeah, I'm in a really strange mood today.)

Arthur C. Clarke & Queens

Having read the Rama series straight through, I couldn't really understand why people considered Arthur C.Clarke one of the great masters of science fiction. The first one was good, after all, but the subsequent three books went way too far and subverting some of the most interesting premises of the first book. It turns out that the alien race doesn't believe in triple redundancy. Oh, and God is a museum collector. And God exists, obviously, in a mindbogglingly weird way.

I just finished Childhood's End, and now I can sort of see why he's so warmly regarded. That book was sort of like Rendezvous with Rama, but with a slightly longer perspective and some brilliant characterization of the "Overlord" creatures and some of the notable characters.

There's still a lot of myth thrown in, but then again, I tend to like to use myth as well, so I can't really complain about that.

This book was originally published in 1953, but the prescience about some modern technology is quite impressive. For example, I couldn't get over the fact that some of the things that they use computers for are things that we use computers for. It was hard to imagine that this was written before the advent of the modern microchip.

There was one other brilliant prophecy that's been fulfilled. Quoting from page 141 of my version (Ballantine 1969):

Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that's available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges [...]

Reading that, isn't it amazing to think that there was no cable and satellite television? There were really only the Big Three television networks in operation at that time. Fox wouldn't be around for more than 30 years after the writing of this book.

Yeah, I know that probably isn't that big of a deal, but it's still amazing to me, especially the part about people becoming passive sponges in front of television sets.

Also, I saw a Spanish movie called "Queens" which also predicted the future: the legalization of gay marriage in Spain. The movie was released in April 2005, and gay marriage was legalized in July 2005. It was cute and certainly very well presented, but I can't get over the cool name of one of the actors: Unax Ugalde. That's an awesome name, and it belongs to a really, really hot guy too. Great movie.

Bad TV

I get a guilty pleasure in watching bad television sometimes. Normally I'm a Law & Order, Heroes, House kind of guy, but sometimes, when I don't think that anyone is around, I'll turn on something really bad from MTV or VH1.

I've been tuning into America's Most Smartest Model on VH1 because it fulfills both of the two basic requirements for what I consider excellent bad television: It features extremely attractive men that parade around in little clothing and it doesn't take itself too seriously. Janice Dickinson's Modeling Agency, Kathy Griffin's My Life on the D-List, and some seasons of the Real World all fit these requirements as well.

Watching the episode tonight entertained me in another cool way. During the "edge" challenge that happens in the beginning of the episode and is the basis for the "Most Smartest" part of the show's title, they had to do science projects. Two of the groups did fairly well (and the two incredibly hot guys came up with a creative presentation), but some of the other models had trouble with exceedingly simple science projects.

I'm not brilliant. My time at the University of Rochester proved that, but at least I have a basic understanding of simple concepts in science. The people on this show don't even have that.

I know that it's stereotypical to consider models stupid, but Janice Dickinson has a model that's got her doctorate. I'm sure it wouldn't have been that hard to find a slew of want-to-be models that don't have trouble with large words.

Or more men with six-pack abs.

Still, some of the people on the show have personality, especially the Russian guy, which makes it relatively worth watching.

Wham!

So I'm down again. I'm not quite sure why, besides the chemical reasons, because things aren't actually that bad at the moment.

Living back at home sucks. I'm so calm and collected in the rest of my life now, compared to what I am at home. My mother can say two things and have me frothing at the mouth, when it's almost impossible for anyone else to get a rise out of me. If I still saw my father on a regular basis, he'd be doing the same thing.

Which is so odd, because I really try to remain as emotionally detached to them as possible. It's impossible to consider one's own morality when your parents are looking out over your shoulder.

Just for reference, not too long ago I saw a L&O: Criminal Intent that revolved around a girl getting treatment for bipolar. She ended up being swayed by a formerly depressed rockstar that'd had electroshock treatments. At the end of the show, the prosecutor goes up to the rockstar, asks him some questions about his depression, and then says something to the effect of "Don't you think the shock treatment worked? You're a rockstar now."

Sometimes I wish they still tortured us. This gray blanket suffocating me shouldn't be able to hold me down.

But it does. And when she says, "It's just a choice that you've made," I want to go f'ing ballistic. You don't think being gay is a choice, why do you think that being depressed is a choice.

And maybe it is my life, but if that makes you think that I'm in control you're more crazy than I am.

When Gay Streetwalkers Attack

I watched Cold Case last night. I'd never seen the show before, and I don't particularly like the format of constant flashbacks. The only reason that I watched it was that I thought the victim was kinda cute.

Well, I'm actually really glad that I saw this particular episode, entitled "One Night" because it featured something that's come up before, and that is a couple of street hustlers in love.

The first time I ran across this was in the movie "Twist" featuring Nick Stahl. For some reason, the movie tore me emotionally to shreds. It effected me so much that I wrote a poem for a class about it, which has since become one of my best received works, and can still make me upset just by reading it.

"Twist" is a tragedy. It's one of the films that led me to believe that most media representations of gay people are tragic, and I was an emotional wreck after seeing it. It's a particularly dark portrayal, as one boy pulls the other into the world of the drug addicted hustler in what might become and endless vicious circle. I personally happen to think that it's very well done.

"One Night" is different, happier. One of the boys is kidnapped by a murderer, and is buried alive, only to be rescued at the end to find his almost love waiting for him. The performances by Shiloh Fernandez and particularly by Cole Williams (who also was in North Country, which is how I found his name because Cold Case files does a miserable crediting job) were excellent and three dimensional for all of their 8 minutes total air time. It's also unusual to me, because the person that dies is the straight boy and the gay boys are together in the end.

Why do these stories resonate so strongly with me? I'm an emotional wreck afterward, although with the happy ending not as much as with the sad.

The only thing that I can think of is that I'm so alone. I can't help but to identify with the boys that have no emotional connection to anyone or anything . . . and then find love despite that.

Which is odd, because you think that someone that has never lived on the streets, who still has a family and friends, and works full time in a customer service industry where I don't service the customers would be hard pressed to identify with four boys that live on the streets.

Maybe I'm just crazy, but something about their situation just clicked with me. I can't understand it, but I can't get past it either. What does it say when four teenage prostitutes are less lonely and almost as well adjusted as I am?

Anyway, kudos to all of the actors involved.

Olympics

So, no Bode or Apollo tonight.

But The Flying Tomato takes a Gold in a pretty impressive snowboarding competition, which was cool to watch.

I was watching a few tapes that I have of the 2004 games, and I got some good moments on tape, like the Nemov riots and the Men's Overall, both in gymnastics. The Nemov thing is probably one of the greatest moments that I've seen in sports. Here is the former all around gold medalist, older and not doing so well. He gets on the High Bar and does a simple but phenomenally impressive routine. And the judges murder him on the score.

The crowd goes absolutely crazy. Here's a Russian in Greece, but everyone in the room knows who this guy is. Four years ago, this was the best athlete in the world, and now he's on the bottom of the rankings. People are screaming and yelling and the judges stop the competition. The head of the judging committee comes does, confers with judges who gave the two lowest scores, and they change the scores, which is basically unheard of. The crowd precipitated a score change, which is pretty amazing.

Still, he's at the bottom, and people are still pissed. Finally Nemov has to stand up, get back on the floor. He gestures thanks to the people, and then asks them to quiet down. They haven't shut up by the time the next competitor starts though, although once it's in progress they shift to cheering for him. That was Paul Hamm, who won the gold with that routine.

I love the Olympics, which is odd because, as I think I've already pointed out that I'm not a sports person. But the Olympics are inspiring me. Ever since I've been a little kid, I've watched them, and I've imagined. Now that almost all of the competitors are younger than I, I've pretty much had to give up dreams.

If I could have, I would be a lot more physical than I am. I'm really intellectual, but I don't want to be. There's stuff that I want to do with that, true, but it's the athleticism that I admire.

It's like there's a part of me that's missing. You look at Ohno, or Miller, or Hamm, or Michael Phelps or Nemov, and they all have this ability to do the work. It's not the concentration. I can concentrate for a few minutes just fine. It's the ability to get the hell out of the door in the morning.

Is it fear? It might be.

Well, so no Olympics for me, ever. But I can still watch, and with enough suspension of disbelief, maybe even dream.

Super Bowl

I'm pretty sure that I've now managed to miss the Super Bowl. I was planning on being asleep for most of it, but that didn't work out so well.

Regardless, the television hasn't been turned on. I don't remember which teams were playing, and until I go into work tonight I won't find out out. Once I'm there, I'll have to know, because people will ask me, because I'm a guy. Previously, I've thought about wearing a badge that screams "I'm gay!" on days like this, but I suspect that my bosses won't take that well.

It's not a gay thing, I don't think, this dislike of organized American sports. I think it's a by product of growing up gay. I'm not saying that it's like this for all gay men, but for me, being gay meant having a certain fear of interacting with guys on their turf. That fear led to separation, and separation leads to an aversion to group sports.

So, I guess that I'm just not interested now because I wasn't interested then.

And of course, I'm conveniently forgetting the geek thing at the moment. If you're an in a situation where forward momentum is stymied by an equal and opposite force, you're in a situation where the intelligent thing to do is redefine the rules of the game, if you can. Football makes no sense.

On the upside, tonight's my Friday. Working 3 days a week is cool, as long as you can live on 24 hours worth of work. My father offered me a job, but since he can't actually pay me, I'm not really sure that I want to put myself through the pain of taking it. But my last visit with him was actually really nice.

Still, I'm not used to having so much free time. For the last three and a half years I've been working somewhere around 60 hours a week. In Miami, I held down two full time jobs, and here I've been going to school full time, and then working weekends. Without cable television and a desktop computer, it's bizarre how much time I spend doing nothing.