News Round-Up: The Muscle Mania Edition
Mark Wolff Billy Herrington
In this week's edition of our semi-regular news round-up we take a look at one of the standard-bearers of gay erotica -the muscle genre. It's probably safe to say that if you've got a muscular bod your career in gay erotica has more longetivity than other physical types. It's fairly likely too that a muscular type has more international appeal than other types. After all the use of muscular male figure in art and erotica has been around forever and its appeal never seems to waver. That leads us into the stories of the week.
Mark Wolff has been involved in the muscle worship & wrestling genre for several years and has had a steady following since he first started. He started his own website which featured himself and other muscular men in galleries and online videos, live shows, etc. Recently Mark Wolff went through a site re-design with very good results. The site is much easier to navigate and browse and the content is regularly updated. There's also a VOD page and a DVD store so that if you're a muscle fan, Mark Wolff pretty much has you covered. It would be nice if Mark Wolff himself was still working because as we mentioned above, his "shelf-life" wasn't over.
That leads us into the newest update at Mark Wolff featuring former Falcon star Matthew Rush! As of this writing the site has only posted Matthew's gallery photos--his video for Mark Wolff is coming in March. It makes us very happy to report this kind of news because we felt that several other websites and blogs were diminishing Matthew Rush's chances of a successful post-Falcon career. It's not surprising that there are lots of bitchy naysayers out there who have nothing better to do than that, but Matthew certainly didn't deserve it. We're glad he's proving them wrong--he's already done pics and videos at Mighty Men as well as an upcoming video for Hot Older Male, Brief Encounters (which you can pre-order now).
Matthew Rush at Mighty Men Matthew at Mark Wolff
As we mentioned on a previously blog entry, Matthew Rush has another appearance lined up and it happens next week. He's going to appear LIVE at Manifest Men when the site presents another series of shows broadcast from their studio loft. It's essentially video & photo shoot broadcast live as it happens. The finished pics and videos will be posted later but as with all these "Studio 1010" shoots, viewers get to watch it all as though being on set. With Rush on board, Manifest Men is talking MAJOR muscle.
Kicking off the live shows at Manifest Men starting Thursday February 26 will be another muscle superstar--Zeb Atlas! He has already done two videos for the site and several galleries of photos but this marks his first live appearance. Like Rush, viewers will see his photo and video shoots as they happen. Because these are solo videos you won't see a reunion of with Matthew & Zeb, although there will be another on-set reunion-- Manifest Men videographer Adam Killian was Zeb Atlas' scene partner in Best Men 2 (after Matthew dropped out). The irony doesn't end there since Zeb has been nominated for TWO GayVN awards! ONE is a best supporting nom for Best Men Pt 1 & 2, while he and Matthew are nominated in the Best Oral Scene for Best Men Part 1!
Finally, the other news this week proves that sometimes even if you're out of the spotlight fame doesn't go away--it merely shifts locations. Billy Herrington started out in print for Playgirl & Colt, then went on to wrestling/muscle worship videos and made a transition into a few full-fledged gay porn flicks where he went all the way. He hasn't done any flicks in over 5 years but he's become something of a cult personality ----in Japan! He's received the nickname Big Brother (it's a compliment) from an online community and an action figure has been created in his likeness. He's even made personal appearances Japan to adoring crowds.
How did Billy Herrington gain this newfound celebrity? He can thank a Japanese video-sharing site called Nico Nico Douga where a clip from one of his films Workout was posted. It spurred some industrious and creative minds to come up with over 3000 parodies featuring the muscular star. Some of the videos use what's known as soramini, mispronunciations of lines, for comedic effect. There are strange little animated figures sprinkled in the videos, some of which have equally bizarre titles like Forest Fairy. Here are just a few samples:
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