Monday, March 25, 2013

Magic Shirtlessness


A kind IMS member recently sent me a link to a list entitled, "33 Hottest Guys on Broadway" which I eagerly opened today in hopes of finding someone new to post.  In spite of this Broadway season being among the most shirtless in recent memory, I have not been to a Broadway show in a while and wanted to catch up on who is hot.  The list contained quite a few shirtless men.  What the list did not include was very much ethnicity.  There were two African American men on the list. Since Broadway is located in New York City, fabled melting pot of many cultures and races, I found this list rather shocking in its homogeneity.  But I shouldn't be surprised since I've read the report on Diversity on Broadway that the Asian American Performers Action Committee published a few months ago.  Sigh.

So then why is Adam Rodriguez at the top of this post, you may ask?  Well there is a rumor that "Magic Mike" is going to be turned into a Broadway musical, following the formula of so many recent musicals, and I am posting Mr. Rodriguez in hopes that when the transformation from film to stage happens, they will at least keep one ethnic character in the show.  I'll be happy to see a musical in which all the numbers are sung shirtless and happier still if they keep it sexy by featuring shirtlessness of many races.  When the Weather Girls sang "It's Raining Men," they did specify "Every specimen: Tall, blonde, dark and lean, rough and tough and strong and mean!" Let it rain all kinds of men on Broadway soon.

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS

Friday, March 22, 2013

Muay Thai Shirtlessness


This morning as I scrolled through status updates on Facebook, I noticed this man staring out at me from the comments section of one my friend's statuses.  He was commenting on a Top 50 Rabbis list, and his friend posted a Top 50 Hottest Jewish Guys list.  I couldn't help but click on it.  I went to middle school with so many Jewish kids that I begged my parents to let me get bat mitzvahed.  They did not.  In any case, the list is quite good and includes my favorite bad boy, Adam Levine.   This guy, Ilya Grad, came in at number 1.  He is apparently a top ranked Muay Thai boxer, ranked in the top 8 worldwide.  Now I have no idea what Muay Thai boxing is, but I suspect I wouldn't mind finding out more about it.  Mr. Grad seems not to wear a shirt very often which of course recommends him to the blog.  So in honor of the coming Jewish holiday of Passover, I give you Mr. Ilya Grad, a 24 year old Muay Thai boxing champion who is poised to give some good shirtlessness all over the world.

In other news, it is still winter here in New York.  This is not good for the live shirtlessness front which usually starts showing up around this time.  It snowed yesterday, and so I suspect another long, shirted weekend for me.  I wish you, gentle readers, better weather in the days ahead.  Until then, I continue to be...

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS

Monday, March 18, 2013

Shirtlessness by Any Other Name


Lucky for me, there are some really active IMS members out there keeping me up to date on good shirtlessness in many other forums.  Recently, I was alerted to this Asian hottie, Eddie Peng/Peng Yu Yan, who seems to be all the rage in China.  Given his amazing shirtlessness, why shouldn't he be?  I'll admit the fact that his arteries appear to be leaping off his abdomen scares me a little, but his 6 or 12 pack is really phenomenal.  I hope this Chinese-Canadian actor will make the leap to English language films soon so that he can take his shirt off in a language that I understand.  Of course, we shouldn't forget that shirtlessness is a universal language.  So here's to you, Eddie Peng, for your international shirtlessness!

Until the next time, I am...

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

At the End of the Day


If the blog has felt lackluster of late, gentle readers, please know it is due to a crisis of faith in the President of IMS.  Seeing the sitemeter ratings go down each week, knowing that my posts about racial diversity in the media are turning my readers off, has certainly added to my malaise, but the truth is that it has been a long and hard winter for this President.  In spite of finding that there is more shirtlessness on Broadway than ever before, sometimes the work of a leader seems useless and ineffective.  Perhaps everyone goes through these moments of self-doubt.  I find myself turning to the J Lo "I'm Into You" video for solace these days, imagining that hunky William Levy is running, running, running towards me in all his shirtless glory and that I am wearing a dress made out of coins and designer shades looking amazing at 43.  This is my fantasy.  Because today I wrote an application for a playwriting fellowship in which I answered the question as to how I was pushing the boundaries of the American theater with the sentence "I have multiple people of color on stage at the same time speaking."  How this has become boundary pushing in 2013 is beyond me, and yet I am reminded of how revolutionary it is two or three times a week when I actually sit in the American theater.  I feel discouraged, gentle IMS members, when I find that I have to push in order to be seen for a role as an Indian woman.  I feel disappointed when even the companies formed to combat racial prejudice practice their own prejudices.  And then I have to cradle my iPad and watch the JLo video over and over to make myself feel better.  But then I think about how this blog started in 2007, inspired by one scene in one movie, and how now shirtlessness abounds in movies and stage appearances.  Maybe this is just a bump in the road.  Maybe things can change.  I don't know.  I just have to work on one torso at a time.  And so I continue...

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS

Friday, March 8, 2013

Special Request Shirtlessness



Recently a certain IMS member suggested to me that Theo James was worth returning to on this blog.  Some of you may remember Mr. James as the sultry if weak-hearted Mr. Pamuk on Season 1 of "Downton Abbey" where he provided one of the rare yet delightful instances of shirtlessness in that program.  Clearly, from the photo above, he is no stranger to taking his shirt off, nor should he be.  Now he's shooting a new show in New York called "Golden Boy" sporting a cute haircut and an American accent.  The thought of running into him somewhere in the city is really too much for this IMS President to imagine.  I once ran into another hunky actor from a cop show, Chris Meloni, in an elevator and was pretty much reduced to an idiotically smiling and nodding weirdo for our entire 60 floor ride.  But it does put a spring in my step to think that around any corner, Theo James may be shooting a scene, and if CBS knows anything about ratings, it will make sure that he is shirtless in as many of these scenes as possible.  Even though it snowed in New York today (and yes, it is March), I feel hopeful that some outdoor shirtless scenes could be in the air.

I won't say which IMS member requested Mr. James, but I will say that this photo is an homage to a time when this person and I looked at other bathtub photos together.  Since that episode was actually the moment when I realized that I was a Gay Icon, I hold the memory dear.  And I raise my glass to you, IMS member, for all the work you do to promote the cause.  More shirtlessness for all!

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS

Monday, March 4, 2013

Shirtless in Shakespeare


Over the weekend, I went to see Theatre for a New Audience's production of "Much Ado About Nothing" with some of my fellow actors and IMS members who did the show with me a few seasons ago.  We all love the play, not just because we did it, but because we have a soft spot for the verbal jousting of Beatrice and Benedick which in my mind is the pre-cursor to all the rom-coms that we watch on film now.  And the person whose verbal gymnastics made us swoon was Jonathan Cake in the leading role of Benedick.  Now some of you may remember him from DH as the evil cop who briefly dated Bree.  He freaked me out in that show, and so I was feeling a little bit apprehensive before the show.  One of my seat mates remembered him from Lincoln Center's production of "Cymbeline" in which he had a prolonged shirtless scene.  He won me over in the first scene of Much Ado, and I spent the rest of the show wishing he would take his shirt off, even though I knew he wouldn't.  The chemistry in Much Ado comes from its witty banter, not from nudity.  It did make me think that a man who can both speak the language of the Bard and take his shirt off is one sexy man indeed!

Wishing you witty banter or good shirtlessness in the week to come, if not both!

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS