Tom of Finland Exhibition in Helsinki

Helsinki City Art Museum displays an exhibition with 90 original drawings, posters and uniforms of Tom of Finland. The exhibition is at Kluuvin Galleria in the center of Helsinki until August 27 2006.
Opening hours:
Tuesday-Saturday 11AM-5PM,
Sundays noon-4PM,
Mondays closed,
Fridays free entrance.

Markus Pöyhönen - playing with girls

Sprinter Markus Pöyhönen participated in the Finnish version of Dancing with the Stars.
The following is a video of his rehearsal sessions for the show. He seemed to have a lot of fun, as did the whole crew...

New Fashion Photography

At least it makes you wonder, what is actually happening here. Is it gay-bashing, a jealousy drama or just a petit genre?

More fashion at Dolce&Gabbana.

Peter Berlin

In the early to mid-1970's, Peter Berlin created some of the most recognizable gay male erotic imagery of that time. Serving as his own photographer, model, and fashion designer, Peter redefined self-portraiture and became an international sensation.

His self-portraits were widely published and sold, making Peter a gay household name and an international celebrity. He was also the subject of several Robert Mapplethorpe photographs and six drawings by Tom of Finland.

From Berlin to San Francisco

In the early 1970s, Peter moved to San Francisco and became a fixture on the streets, famous for his highly suggestive clothing and constant cruising. He collaborated with friend Richard Abel on a 16mm hard-core porn film entitled Nights in Black Leather (1972) in which he played the lead role. Peter's poster for the film was a sensation and helped make Nights in Black Leather an enormous underground hit.

That Man: Peter Berlin

With his trademark Dutchboy haircut, Tom of Finland physique, and oh-so-tight trousers, Peter Berlin was the poster boy for the hedonistic and sexually-liberated 1970s. Jim Tushinski’s fascinating, sexy, and ultimately touching portrait, That Man: Peter Berlin, traces Berlin's story over the past 40 years, from his birth in wartime Germany to his current life in San Francisco, and shows the human being behind the icon.

THAT MAN: PETER BERLIN
a documentary
directed by Jim Tushinski
produced by Lawrence Helman & Jim Tushinski

Kevin Rans, Part Two

Kevin competed in February with the other pole vaulting stars in Donetsk, Ukraine, where he improved his personal best and became the Belgian record holder.

Some pics and a video from that event but first I have added three more from last summer in Helsinki.

Mad about Kevin Rans

Kevin Rans is a Flemish pole vaulter living in Merksem (Antwerp), Belgium. He represents the Vlaamse Atletiekliga and has his 24th birthday on August 19 this year. Currently Kevin works for the Belgian Armed Forces.




Kevin is 1.87 m tall and weighs 80 kg. He cleared the Belgian polevault record 5.70 on February 12, 2006 in Donetsk, Ukraine.


He also represented Belgium at the Helsinki World Championships in Athletics last summer. Two pics from the rainy Thrsday evening on August 11 2005.

A video of his impressive performance at the KBC Indoor Meeting in Gent last February 12 is below. Would a little smile be too much to ask…

President Halonen inaugurated for her second term

Finnish President Tarja Halonen began yesterday March 1 her second and last six-year term in office by emphasizing the importance of social fairness and shared responsibility.

In the inauguration speech in Parliament she said that thanks to the two core values, Finland of today was wealthier and more competitive than ever before.
"Yet we also have our problems. Income differentials are again growing, and new poverty has emerged in Finland. The pay for a full-time job is not enough to support a family," she said.
"Women still earn about 80 per cent of what men earn on average. There are problems with the system of welfare services, and employees have difficulty coping at work. Social inequality takes many forms."

Halonen is unique among heads of state in that she has been the chairwoman of a national LGBT organisation, the Finnish National organization for Sexual Equality, SETA.

A summary of her work with SETA was compiled six year ago when she was elected for the first time, and can be found here.

Tom of Finland

A long overdue coming-out

Finnish singer Jari Sillanpaa who was in the late 90's for several years the most wanted male artist touring around the country in the summertime, who a couple of years back represented Finland at the annual Eurovision Song contest ("It Takes Two to Tango"), and whose most enthusiastic fans are women ranging from 35 to eternity, has finally flung the doors of his closet wide open.

The past two weeks or so the media has been filled with rumors about a secret companion he told he had recently broken up with, a tragedy which caused him enormous heartaches. After all, this had been the very first time someone actually dumped him and not vice versa.

The peculiar thing about all the fuss was that the gender of the mysterious dumper never actually came up. This is quite easy in Finnish, as we do not separate between "him" or "her", its just the same word all along in our language.

Anyway, yesterday he finally decided to stop playing hide and seek and gave a straight (well...) answer to a straight question in a live TV talkshow: the person that dumped him was indeed a man. This hardly came as a surprise to anyone even remotely interested in Jari's personality, but some of his lady admirers might still have had some fragile hopes about him...

An interesting fact in his interview was that he had actually outed himself to Helsingin Sanomat, the leading daily newspaper in Finland, as early as 1995. But, back then the paper chose not to print the news.
Today it is all over the tabloids: "I was dumped by a MAN" Shoud you be fluent in Finnish, here is yesterday's interview from Tuomas & Juuso, TV4.

The times they are a-changin'. Thank God for that.