Step out of the cow, Sir

Did you hear about the Wisconsin man who is charged with having sex with a dead deer that he found in a ditch? His defense was that the deer was already dead, so it wasn’t technically an “animal” when the sex happened. The judge disagreed and ruled that a dead deer is still an animal.

This decision sets a dangerous precedent. By the judge’s reasoning, any guy who gets aroused while wearing leather pants has – in the strictest legal terms – his wiener in a cow.

Scot Adams in the Dilbert Blog

Does my bum look big in this memorabilia?

What do you call a guy who owns one hundred and ten motorcycling suits of leather?

No, I thought so, too, but that’s not the right answer.

The correct answer is a road-racing memorabilia collector.

Leather on the loose

Many leather lovers seem to think that leather trousers look sexy only if they are form-fitting. I challenge them to test the firmness of their conviction by looking at photographs of a Russian dance group Udi (ЮДИ).

The members of Udi are Denis, Igor, Sergey and Yuri. If I understand the automatically translated introduction of Igor correctly, he is the one who designs the look of the group.

I wonder whether there is some clever idea behind wearing a shirt that has a drawing of the face of the wearer. Each member of Udi is the biggest fan of himself, perhaps? I’d prefer the shirts without embellishments. I’m not particularly fond of the necklaces either. I do like the trousers and the attention-seeking belt buckles.

I rather liked the choreographies that could be viewed in YouTube. Much of the action is b-boying but not all. If the men of Udi ever came to Finland, I’d definitely want to see them perform – regardless of costume.

Career development

The votes are in, the jury has spoken and contestants of 100.5 The Peak and Music B.C.’s Peak Performance Project have been painstakingly whittled down to three lucky bands–Langley’s The Left, Kelowna’s We Are the City and local Supertramp fans Bend Sinister. All three acts perform Jan. 22 at The Commodore with the first place winner receiving $150,000, second place $75,000 and third place $50,000. That’s a lot of leather pants. Oh wait, it’s for “career development.” Still, leather pants surely help develop a band’s career.

A snippet from Vancouver Courier

Jesus wore leather pants

Jesus wore leather pants. I mean Jesus Luz, the former boy toy of Madonna. (Who did you think? Jesus of Nazareth, the imaginary friend of millions?)

Luz wore leather pants in photographs related to an interview in the Interview magazine. His appearance does not appeal to me that much but it is always nice to see fit men in RufSkin leathers.

Ten don’ts of leather videos

Thank you for making a leather video and publishing it in the Internet! If you tagged the video with “leather pants” or “leather trousers”, I will probably encounter it sooner or later and begin watching it.

I probably won’t sit through your video if you are a female (or look like one) or if you are very obese or if I find you unattractive for some other reason. Don’t let that keep you from making leather videos, though. Somebody else will probably find you beautiful, especially in leather clothes.

I also probably won’t sit through your video if it is a slide show of still photographs. You see, making a slide show of a guy in leathers adds absolutely no value to the set of photographs that the slide show is made of. No, the annoying music and the “cool” transition effects do not add value. Distribute photographs as photographs and let people decide for themselves which photos to look at and for how long.

Now, if I find you reasonably attractive and your video is not a slide show of still photographs, I will probably watch your video at least once. Here’s a list of advice to heed if you wish to increase the chances that I will watch your videos more than once or even jerk off while watching them.

Don’t pose

Posing is what you do when still photographs are taken of you. You assume a posture, a photo gets taken, you assume another posture, another photo gets taken, and so on. Here’s a news flash: a video camera takes tens of photographs per second, not one photograph every five seconds. I find it comical to watch a guy pose for a video camera. It makes me wonder whether he understands the difference between a video camera and a still camera.

Don’t rotate

Sure, it’s nice to watch you in your leathers from different angles but I’d appreciate if you made the process a bit less mechanical. I’m not a laser scanner creating a three-dimensional model of you.

Don’t slap yourself

I have never understood what the point of slapping oneself in leathers is. Do some men like the sound? Is it some kind of a sadomasochistic signal? I enjoy watching guys getting slapped as much as any other sadist does. However, slapping oneself while wearing leather does not qualify. Take off your leathers and make a video of some guy slapping your naked skin with a force great enough to actually cause pain. That would qualify as sadomasochistic act in my book. I’ll give the guy extra credit if he makes you cry.

Don’t deposit human secretory products on your leathers

That’s just not my cup of tea. ‘Nuff said.

Don’t caress your leathers for ages

Yeah, I too like the feel of a leather garment. But you know what, a video recording cannot transmit the feel of leather, only the sight of leather. It is nice to see that you enjoy wearing your leathers, but after a while it gets a bit boring to watch you just rub your leathers. Especially if you are silly enough to wear gloves so that you don’t actually feel the leather you’re rubbing.

Don’t masturbate

“Don’t masturbate” falls partly in the same category as “don’t caress your leathers for ages”: the fact that you enjoy doing it does not automatically guarantee that I will enjoy watching you do it. I’m not into watching you eat cup cakes either.

I might feel differently if somebody else was caressing your leathered body or rubbing your leathered crotch in the video. I could then imagine myself in his place. There is a difference between the thought of you enjoying yourself in leathers and the thought of somebody else enjoying you in your leathers.

Don’t strip

There are men who enjoy striptease and there are men who enjoy dresstease. I am of the latter kind. If you want your video to appeal to leather fetishists, then for Zeus’ sake don’t take the leather pants off.

Don’t smoke

To me, intelligence is sexy and stupidity is not. Smoking is really, really stupid. As a consequence, it is hard for me to enjoy the sight of you killing yourself slowly.

There are many videos that portray a leathered man smoking and not much else. I see a couple of reasons for this. There are men who like to create a leather video but have hard time coming up with something to do in the video. So they smoke. Then there are men for whom smoking is a fetish. The fact that they are leather-clad while smoking may be secondary to them.

There was a time when even I thought that the sight of a man smoking a cigarette in a “manly way” was kinda titillating. However, as time has passed, the association to masculinity has weakened and the association to stupidity has grown stronger. It may have something to do with the fact that I have lost a grandparent to cigarettes and in the next ten years I will probably lose a parent to cigarettes too.

I have sometimes wondered whether I could enjoy videos of smoking men if smoking was not unhealthy. I have my doubts. In the videos, smoking is a highly polished routine. It does not feel natural. I get the feeling that the way the men smoke in the videos have little to do with the way they’d smoke if nobody was watching. They’re playing the part of a masculine smoker and I am not prone to enjoy acting unless the acting is good. Which brings us nicely to the next piece of advice…

Don’t act (unless you are good at it)

Chances are that you are not a particularly good actor. As a consequence, it is not very probable that I can even for a moment imagine that your video really is footage from a hidden camera that has captured your roommate secretly trying on your leathers (or whatever your story is). Now that we’re in the subject of not being good at something…

Don’t simulate fucking (unless you are good at it)

I guess most people are conditioned to enjoy seeing pelvic thrusts or other similar hip movements. But please leave them to the Latin dancers unless you’re good at them. Alternatively, put your video in the “Comedy” category.

* * *

So there you have it: what not to do if you wish to show off your leathers in a way that pleases this audience of one. Regardless of whether you heed my advice or not, there will always be somebody who appreciates your videos. So keep making them, please.

Another theme song for leather lovers

Cody Chesnutt’s “Look good in leather” isn’t the only available theme song for leather lovers any more. The new candidate comes from a Canadian psychobilly rock band Cadillac Bill & The Creeping Bent and is aptly called “Leather pants”. (John from Toronto, thanks for the tip!)

You can enjoy the track at the band’s MySpace page and Facebook page . I could not make out the lyrics completely – any native speaker out there willing to transcribe them? – but I could make out many amusing bits like “everyone’s trying to touch my pants”, “yeah it’s my pants making that sound” and “I never could dance till I bought these leather pants”.

Out of the closet

A friend of mine has suggested that my clothes came out of the closet before I did.

Phil comments old photos of himself.

Chick magnet

When wearing leather pants, you have to get used to the girls throwing themselves at you.

David comments a photo taken of him at a Valentine’s Day date night. More photos at www.officepansy.net.

The best pants ever

Photo: Leia Jospe

I’d had the leather pants for a long time from a band called Scorpion Sting that I was in when I lived in Washington State, and I just found them in the closet and decided to bring them up to CMJ and ended up wearing them like every day, lived in them for a week. And I can’t take ‘em off now, because they’re lined with silk. They’re like, the best pants ever. And in the winter, they cut the wind, so you never get cold.

Jake Orrall, the guitarist and singer of JEFF The Brotherhood, in an interview with The Village Voice blog Sound of the City. Check out photos of JEFF The Brotherhood by Leia Jospe , Lance Conzett and Helena Peixoto.