BSR

Holy sh!t, I can’t believe it. Malinin was the overwhelming favorite! But the ice is so damn slippery, and pressure can get the best of even the strongest competitors. To think, Ilya won 12 international competitions in a row, yet his nerves betrayed him in the biggest one. I’m with @BuffaloKyle, I pray Malinin can bounce back in 2030 à la Nathan Chen because he is far and away the best figure skater in the world.

In Mr. Boston’s case, I stand corrected. Nonetheless, I stand by the general truth of my argument, even if it doesn’t apply to one specific case. That is, I bet some escorts do charge $1000/hour yet still get as many clients as they want. If you’re super-rich, and a fair number of gay men are, a $G is no big whoop.

While I don’t move in such circles, I am reasonably certain that plenty of gay men have plenty of disposable income, such that $1K per hour (who knows how much more for a 5-hour evening or a full-day travel rate) is no big whoop. Yes, there are plenty of other escorts available for (much) less; but if you have that kind of money and Mr. Boston tickles your ivories in a way others don’t, then your time is much more valuable to you than any “savings” gained by hiring someone else. My guess is that Mr. Boston has plenty of clients, or at least as many as he wants, at his rates. Make hay while the sun shines! PS: please note this is the “wisdom” (LOL) from someone who decided he was spending too much on escorts ($200-250 for 2-3 hours) and so cut back from 2 hires a week to just 1.

Even during the depths of the Great Recession (2010-11), I recall $200/hour as the Mendoza Line for escorts. 15 years later, there are escorts charging $150? in the US??

The Pomeranian toward the end is the best …

I used to see beavers all the time as a young Canuck (my parents said I spoke with a Toronto accent so thick you could cut it with a knife) because my dad was an avid fisherman. Yes, a beaver’s tail-slap is incredibly loud, even from 50 yards (closest I ever heard one). Dad fished plenty in the US as well, but I’ve never seen a beaver on this side of the border. While the species is recovering, the beaver population is nowhere near the number that flourished before the fur trade: 100-200 million pre-European settlement, reduced to just ~100K at its lowest point, ~6 million during my childhood (1970s to early 80s), an estimated 10-15 million today.

An interesting variation of the sport of curling. I love how the baby’s face is like, “Dad, get me out of here!”

I discovered a new favorite at Starbucks, the Shakerato Bianco, 4 shots of espresso shaken with ice then topped with sweetened vanilla half & half. I hate that I’ve discovered yet another addictive liquid dessert variation for my morning caffeine fix, but it is delicious!

LOL, reminds me of what Boy George said, “I want to be reincarnated as Matt Dillon’s bicycle seat.”

One of the Manila guys who has become a regular, a straight 21yo, was a bit freaked out the first time I rimmed him. First time anyone had rimmed him, he didn’t know such a thing as rimming even existed. Although he’s since gotten used to it, he remains a bit baffled. Last meet when he asked why I love it so much, I responded, “I don’t know. Why am I gay?”

Please, prior to RentMen his first escorting ad was painted on a cave wall in southwest France.

Yes, but at the same time it could have been so much worse. Plenty of those stories as well, unfortunately. @purplekow, I’m glad you got out of that situation safe & sound, albeit rattled.

I did some googling because your post made me curious. About 1 in every 20,000 eggs is contaminated by salmonella, but it is usually either a multistate outbreak from a single producer or eggs from backyard coops. Nonetheless, salmonella is still a concern — especially if you’re high-risk: young children, elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised — and it causes ~450 deaths a year. With the OP recipe, I wonder if the hot espresso is enough to kill off any possible salmonella. For homemade Caesar dressing, the lemon juice and vinegar in the recipe should be enough to kill it off. No guarantee, unfortunately. When I get back to the US, I really want to try this recipe — basically a blend of eggnog, liqueur, and espresso — except I’ll try a Spanish version using 43 instead of Frangelico.

LOL, you do realize that you totally contradicted yourself, don’t you? You dismiss political correctness — “I didn't know some care so much about political correctness” — but then critique the “white trash” because “he thought he could push his white privilege.” Anyone who accuses someone of pushing his white privilege worships at the altar of political correctness. Back on topic, I’ve never been on a Carnival cruise, but my parents went with all my mom’s siblings. Eek! they were horrified! The food was awful, everything was done on the cheap, and the passengers were Trashy McTrash (of all races and ethnicities). The only things they enjoyed were finding some good restaurants while at port and befriending some Filipino crew members. So the first mistake these (alleged) drug dealers made was going on a Carnival cruise in the first place. That was almost as stupid as thinking they could deal drugs and get away with it.

I couldn’t swear to it, but I think he changed the text of his ad. Whereas it did sound awfully AI-ish before, now it reads like an honest-to-God human being wrote it.

Of the many chaperos I hooked up with at Sauna Thermas, two of the best kissers were straight. Holy sh!t, did they make my toes curl! I couldn’t care less if they were gay, straight, or Martian as long as their tongues turned me on. When I hired one of them for a 5-hour evening, it was fantastic. I knew his limits beforehand, was fine with them, and we both managed to have a great time. Funny, I wouldn’t call it a boyfriend experience, more like a friends-with-benefits experience. Conversation was so easy with him, like we were best friends from high school, with the fuckbuddy angle thrown in. Like you, I’ve hired some real duds who were gay. I didn’t hire the straight Thermas guy because he was straight but because we clicked so well on the premises that I wanted to see him offsite. Whaddya know, he turned out to be one of my best hires ever.

Newly crowned Australian Open men’s doubles champion Christian Harrison …

I just heard about this record-breaking sale from last August: an $87.5 million penthouse in the West Village, the highest price ever for a downtown property. Wow, I’m almost old enough to remember when Jane St, especially that far west, was a dicey neighborhood.

Alas, Kubler & Polmans couldn’t quite get over the finish line. Didn’t watch the match but heard that the American Christian Harrison played out of his skull. Maybe he got a boost from the small but very loud US contingent in the crowd, countering some of the Aussie fans’ enthusiasm. Maybe this will become a thing now at the Australian Open, wild card Aussie doubles teams making a deep run.

… not to mention a dick to crack coconuts.

I doubt Melania much cares how the documentary does at the box office because she already received $28 million of the $40 million paid for the rights to the project. Total budget: $40 million for rights, $5 million production costs, $35 million marketing. Even though that adds up to $80 million, $75 million is the figure everyone is citing for total project cost. Don’t ask me. While it’s doubtful that Amazon MGM Studios will make its money back at the box office, I’m sure Jeff Bezos has great motivation to maintain a warm & fuzzy relationship with Melania’s husband, who I shan’t name because of the forum’s no politics rule.

This doesn’t merit an entire new thread, so I’ll just put it here … the Australian wild card team of Jason Kubler & Marc Polmans are in the men’s doubles final at the Australian Open. For the 3rd time in 5 years, a wild card team has a chance of winning a Slam title. Kokkinakis & Kyrgios entered as wild cards and won the title in 2022, a freak occurrence because since 1977 when Wimbledon first allowed wild cards (a player ranked too low for direct entry gets a slot in the main draw without going through qualifying) no men’s doubles team had ever won a Slam title. The only singles wild card to win a Slam was Goran Ivanisevic in 2001. Given that Goran was a dangerous player, particularly on the old Wimbledon grass where serve & volley reined supreme, whose ranking had dropped due to injury, his win, while unusual, wasn’t that crazy. The same could be said for Kokks & Kyrgios, that they were far better than their rankings at the time, injuries the culprit. So maybe the Special Ks winning the 2022 doubles title wasn’t that crazy either. But then another wild card pair of Aussies, Hijikata & Kubler, won the doubles title the next year! And their rankings were low not because of injury but because, frankly, they’re not that good. Both are talented but short (for tennis players), just 5’8” and 5’10” respectively, which means weak serves (for a strong serve, you gotta be at least 6’1”). A wild card team winning a Slam doubles title should never happen. In fact, it’s never happened at any of the other Slams. The odds of 2 wild card teams doing it 2 years in a row are lotteryesque. It must be something about Aussie teams at the Australian Open that makes a little magic. If Kubler & Polmans manage to pull off a win on Saturday, my eyeballs will pop clear out of their sockets.

Although I haven’t toured much of Manila because the infernal traffic makes it so hard to get around, we took advantage of the light traffic on New Year’s Day to head over to Intramuros, the oldest part of Manila, a walled city built by the Spanish. As interesting as it sounds, the reality is dingy and disappointing. The most historic buildings in Manila are unfortunately covered by layers of grime that look like no one has ever bothered to clean and that make it hard to appreciate the history and architecture. In the underrated category, I’ll say Manila weather and Spanish restaurants. When I got here, the high hit 94 with of course sweltering humidity. When the temps stayed high for 2 more days, I thought, “Welcome to the tropics!” As it so turns out, that was a heat wave, and the weather is better than I expected. Most days the high is in the mid 80s, bearable if you stay out of the sun, and evenings are downright pleasant. Mind you, this is in cool dry season, December to February. Temperatures climb during warm dry season, March to May. It cools down during rainy season because of heavy cloud cover, but who wants to deal with all that rain? So if you ever plan a trip to the Philippines, try to come during cool dry season. Since the Spanish evacuated more than a century ago, I was convinced the Spanish restaurants here had to be tourist traps. Maybe some are, but I found two — Manduca and Terraza Martínez, both in BGC (Bonifacio Global City, a planned community east of Makati) — that are stellar. Manduca was surprisingly good, and Terraza Martínez (the pricier of the two) was so good that I’ve been 3 times in 3 weeks. While both make some accommodations for the Filipino palate, most of the menu is cocina castiza, authentic Spanish cuisine.

No, it was my lame attempt at humor, a cutesy insinuation that the handsome, fit Ryan Walker had a hidden source of income, like escorting, OnlyFans, etc. Unfunny jokes aside, I do wonder where he gets the budget for all his posh travel experiences since he claims to pay everything out of his own pocket for the sake of objectivity. Not only does he stay in ultraluxury properties, he eats several meals in each property’s different venues. The budget to do all that is astronomical, and there’s no way he’s making enough from a channel with 52.5K followers to cover those expenses.