Couple of days of hubba hubba.

[Picture by Jean-Francois Jonvelle]

Meow.

[Picture via Jhalal Drut]

I always have been partial to collar bones myself. That and an elegant neck line. Oh, and hands, feet, eyes, lips. Hell, there ain’t much on a lady that I don’t admire.

Drink it in. Loveliness is, well, lovely.

Don’t cry. There’s more baseball tomorrow.

Lo Hud’s got the post game notes.

Baby got back.

[Picture by Horst P. Horst]

Over at Low Hud Brian Heyman’s got Kevin Long talking Jeter, Posada and Gardner.

[Photograph by Hellen van Meene]

[Picture by Patricio Suarez]

Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep…Yeah!

Is it summer yet?

[Picture by Hugues Erre]

On the subway this morning…A shirty voice on the loud speaker. “Attention passengers. Please do not leave…Your Arm…Your Leg…or…Your Bag…in the door. Step all-the-way into the car so we don’t delay the train behind us.”

And then, as cold as ice: “Thank You and Have a Nice Day.”

Ah, some good, old fashioned New York irritation to greet the day.

[Picture by Edi Weitz]

[Photo Credit: Photocurious]

I’ve always found it fascinating that women–who examine each other from head-to-toe without mercy–are also comfortable saying, “Oh, she’s gorgeous.” They can appreciate their beauty without shame. But it’s rare to hear men say, “Damn, that guy is a stud, what beautiful lips.” Unless of course it’s done with a wink and a nudge and one-liner. It’s not that you’ll never hear men appreciating each other, but it’s not common and you certainly don’t see many straight men at ease with it. We’ll say, “That dude is ripped,” admiringly about an athlete but that’s usually as close as most guys get to overt appreciation of male beauty.

Which is funny because we spend a disproportionate amount of time oogling men’s bodies. There is an undercurrent of homoeroticism at play in our sports lust, which doesn’t necessarily mean that straight men are privately Gay. But let’s face it, athletes are sex symbols, or at least sex objects (which is why “Bull Durham” was so good; it wasn’t just a decent baseball movie, it was a funny sex comedy). And if our attraction to them isn’t literal in a sexual way, we are drawn to their confidence, to the beauty of their physical abilities.

So at the risk of making you dudes uncomfortable, here is some male eye candy for the ladies, and some men, to dig. From Bruce Weber, whose favorite subject was, of course: men.

Steve Lopez, one of the last big time, big city newspaper columnists left, has a new collection out. Here’s a review by David Kipen in the Los Angeles Times:

The other thing every columnist needs, and that a Los Angeles columnist circa 2011 needs maybe most of all, is the ability to mix clarity with outrage. If things don’t break just right in Sacramento, California may just careen over its own lovely cliffs this year and L.A. right along with it. The invaluable, angry service Lopez continues to perform is spelling out the fateful connections between the lofty characters he mocks and the exploited, defenseless ones he sticks up for.

…The career of a columnist like Lopez can have three distinct phases: first, when he still nervously re-reads his work every morning to make sure it turned out right; later, when he hits his stride and makes do with reading it onscreen the night before; and, last, when he doesn’t even read it himself before filing on deadline.

It’s tricky to gauge where Lopez falls on this continuum, since the new collection is arranged thematically instead of temporally. Lopez’s kickers can get a little lazy, but the specter of burnout — when even the best tend to pull a few too many columns out of the mailbag — still looks to be safely down the road. One hopes Lopez may yet scrape together the time to write some book-length L.A. fiction, to join his three well-received crime novels set in Philly and Jersey.

[Picture by Edi Weitz]

Breakfast…

Lunch…

And more (from the Full Moon Bakery)…

(more…)

Okay, maybe not beach hot, but still, it’s awfully warm today, ain’t it?

[Photo Credit: Unknown]

Over at The Yankee Analysts, EJ Fagan thinks it is time for Jesus Montero to replace Jorge Posada as the Yankees’ regular DH.

[Picture by François-Marie Banier]

New York:  We Get the Money All Day Every Day.

[Photo Credit: Utopia Archive]

Listen to this…

[Picture by Hugues Erre]

Here kitty, kitty…

What does catwoman have to do with the slumping Chicago White Sox? You got me. I just wanted an excuse to post this picture.

Over at PB, Cliff has the series preview. Lo-Hud has the latest not-so-good news on Phil Hughes.

Here at the Banter, we root, root, root for the home team.

Never mind the Meow Mix, forget the rain: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Christina Ricci by Gas Station]

The New York Times Book Review has a good piece on Alexandra Styron’s family memoir:

Rose Styron [William’s wife] emerges from this memoir as a good and heroic presence, erring only on the side of excessive tolerance. There is something touching in the picture of her following her husband to Martha’s Vineyard, having been “forbidden to show up before June,” with “a mountain of summer Martha’s Vineyard dresses poised on their hangers for another season’s whirl of festivities.” Before long, deprived not only of his temper but of all self-esteem, Styron would be pleading like a child to be spared the ordeal of appearing before guests at the dinner table.

“Avoiding my father’s wrath was a complicated business,” Alexandra writes. Her memoir is part of that process. William Styron’s illness may have prevented his making an appropriate response to her novel, “All the Finest Girls” (2001). Before then, however, she wrote some stories that he did read. “Dear Al,” he told her in a fax, “you really are a very good writer. More! More!” He got more — this is it — and he was right.

[Photograph by Saul Leiter]