Sunday 3 October 2010

All change! Again.

That's it. Reciprocating Motion is dead -- once again, I have reached the maximum storage limit for images.



So it's time to get the Hell out of Dodge and over to my exciting all-new blog at, er...

Top Scoff

...where all the same tired old crap you're used to is being recycled in the same faintly amusing ways.

Now get out of here!

Thursday 30 September 2010

Tony RIP

Sad news of the death of Tony Curtis, aged 85.



He was a bit of a looker back in the day (this was before it was compulsory for male slebs to have a prominent abdominal six-pack).



He worked with many of the 20th century's Screen Greats, including Marilyn Monroe and, of course, Larry Olivier in 1960's Spartacus, where Tony played the slavish object of lust for Larry's predatory homosexual.

But even if he had made no other movies, Tony Curtis would be celebrated on here for his role in a film made the year before:



Some Like it Hot is a deleriously funny film, thanks in no small measure to Tony Curtis' wonderful pout. And he had pretty decent legs, too.

Pubic shock

Can I just say, once and for all, that this pubic shaving nonsense has gotten completely out of hand.



A perfectly delightful composition ruined by the weirdness of their mostly bald Mons.

It's an utter travesty.

Wednesday 29 September 2010

On the tiles

A very jolly-looking chap features in this short sequence.


But... it's those goddamn bathroom tiles that keep dragging my focus away from him.


I like tiling as a decorative effect, actually. Even big, plain surfaces of white tiles. Very crisp.


But these... these are an abomination.


I just can't conceive of anyone standing in the tile shop, surveying all the wares and saying, "no, these are the ones for me. They'll be perfect in the bathroom".


What sort of a fucked-up world is it where people make decisions like that?

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Awakening

Just this one single image, but I love it:


There's something about that that I completely identify with. Delightful.

Take 5

I think this series of images is something to do with raising publicity for some sort of musical combo:



I know nothing else about the so-called band, but I do like the imagery.



There's something about it which is just the right (or do I mean wrong?) side of weird.



The group in one image seem to be bestest buddies, while in the next they seem intent on killing each other.



I love the theatricality of it all.



And the bodies, too, of course.

Yes, let's not forget them.

Vernon, o-Kay?

I know this is sick and unnatural, but I harbour lustful thoughts for Vernon Kay.



I know, I know. Believe me, no-one is more appalled than me.



It's just... that rolling Lancashire accent. It gets me every time.



And there's also something about that cheesy game-show host bonhomie...



So imagine my surprise and delight on stumbling across a small cache of small photos showing the object of my lust engaged in some sort of sporting event which, naturally, required him to remove his top:



Alas, that's the most of Vernon's fleshy goodness that we get to see:



But for those of you who are aroused by the sight of sweaty man-flesh, I have included a larger sample.



I know, my lust is utterly inexplicable. You don't have to tell me.



I'm just confessing to you, hoping to lighten my burden by doing so.



Think of this as a plea for understanding, for you to exercise your compassion.



And can I just say that images like this final one are well out-of-order:



Vernon is lovely. Let's just leave it at that.

Joe 90

I've banged-on before about British Rail's Class 90, an electric Bo-Bo express locomotive designed for Inter-City passenger use and fast freight -- here it is brand-new in 1987 in its original livery, one of the first BR locomotives never to wear all-over Rail Blue:


In 1992, three locomotives were repainted as part of the Freightconnection celebration, an event to raise awareness of the possibilities for freight traffic which would open up two years later with the Channel Tunnel.


The Class 90s were painted in the liveries of the state railway companies of Germany (above), and France (below)...


... and of Belgium:


They wore these liveries for a surprisingly long time, although after the privatisation of British Rail many of their class-mates appeared in a range of more-or-less hideously garish colours -- such as this for the stupidly-named "one" company on the former Great Eastern London-Norwich route:


And don't get me started on the utterly dreadful livery they are forced to wear for Scotrail, to haul the heaviest passenger train operating in the UK -- the Anglo-Scottish Caledonian Sleeper service:



The most recent livery is this, for Freightliner, which replaces their old (and really rather good livery) with something that features a Victorian gentleman's mad, twirly moustache:


It's an undignified position for such a capable locomotive to find itself in.

Segue

Tragic/farcical news that the man whose company manufactures the Segway has died after accidentally sliding off a cliff while, er, riding a Segway.


I must say, I like the idea of the Segway.


I've never tried one (in the ludicrously over-regulated UK, they are illegal when used anywhere other than on your own private property).


But I've seen them in action, in the US and in the saner parts of Europe, and they make me smile.


There's now some new, 4-wheel version that looks like a giant pram.


This strikes me as missing the point -- much of the pleasure comes from the contradiction of a two-wheeled vehicle being stable. Although I concede that in this next shot it does appear to be fun:


Segway didn't sell as many models as they thought they would to domestic consumers, so they have been trying to target other markets -- this next one doesn't really convince me, though:


Whereas this last shot looks right to me.


Almost makes me want to be a policeman again, something I've not wished for since about the age of 7.

Wrassle

Assorted 1950s beefcake, largely (but not exclusively) on a wrestling theme.


Who am I kidding? It's an entirely random assortment.


It just so happens that wrestling was a popular theme in the 1950s.


It enabled proto-pornographers to claim they were producing "Classical" images for use as models by painters.


It was, of course, the closest they could get to man-on-man action.


To this day, there is (if gaydar and similar sites are to be believed) a sizeable number of gay men who fetishise wrestling.


Although maybe that has something to do with US high schools which persist in the pretence that "Greco-Roman wrestling" is a sport rather than an excuse for homoerotic bonding and a festival of sneaky touching-up.


Sailors always seemed to figure a lot in these photo-sequences, too.


I can't begin to imagine what that's all about.