PeterRS

I have written several times before that there have always been plenty of guys in Bangkok happy to meet up with westerners on a no MB basis. The problem with some is that they are students or work and so hook-ups might have to wait til the evenings or days off. in my wandering days pre-covid, I only ever met one who was considerably older than his photo and I did not particularly enjoy the coffee with him - best always to meet first outside hotel or apartment. That particular assignation ended there with my giving him his transport money. On the other hand, I fully accept that some visitors believe an MB experience gives greater satisfaction and at a time suitable to them. One does not rule out the other.

With respect to @khaolakguy, I first read this - and its succeeding sentence "a compensation for not being able to walk the streets of Silom himself"- not about me as a tourist but about me as one who in fact does live here but has chosen after decades of visiting most bars, saunas and spas not to do so after entering a long-term relationship. Now I am not so sure. I can walk down Silom any day of the week! I think some version with a little less filtering might be more pertinent.

First, let me congratulate @jason1975 on this deeply considered analyses of various members of this Board. Although I think my post itself is a little over the top, I feel honoured to be part of this select group. As for @jimmie50's request, my input can only be extremely limited as I believe @jason1975 has captured much of the essence of both my posting style and my personality. Yes, I do love history and in particular the history of gay Thailand, especially of the 46 years in which I have had the pleasure and the joy of experiencing it. The only slight correction I would suggest is that this part in paragraph 5 "a world he clearly loves but may not be able to visit as frequently as he would like" is only partially accurate. It is certainly true that over the past few years I do not visit the gay scene. I certainly regret the passing of the 'days of old', but having lived in Bangkok for 24 years my recent absence from the gay scene is a conscious decision based largely on account of my being in a long-term relationship. On the other hand, as I have stated elsewhere, I am let off the hook, as it were, when I travel and I have written quite a lot about my sexual escapades, especially in my many visits to Taipei and Tokyo. But then I believe the above analysis was based on Thailand posts and so that comment is probably irrelevant!

I've never linked golf with contact sports. After all, the only contact should be with that little white ball. But one non-contact sport athlete seems to have had more sports-related injuries than most. Now recovering from a disc replacement in his back, golfer Tiger Woods is again hoping to recover and play serious golf again. Yet how many injuries has this man had? Sure, he crashed his vehicle when driving well over the limit in February 2021 and he blames his latest surgery on that accident. Hmmm! But that does not entirely explain why this is his 7th back medical procedure in the last 10 years. Nor why he needed more surgery earlier this year in March when he ruptured an Achilles tendon when training at his home. He has been suffering health problems ever since his multitude of steamy sexual meanderings were made public and he crashed his car into a fire hydrant leaving his home in some hurry around 2:30 am in 2009. Injuries to his knees, neck, ankles and back have plagued him for the last 18 years. He was an amazing golfer, no question. He was in line to become the greatest of all time. But did he try too hard? Did he believe he could keep secret his powerful sex drive? What was his manager doing all this time to explain how precarious his life as a world public figure had become? Who knows other than Woods himself? Watching him play 20 years ago, he was almost a miracle on a golf course. Now after 15 majors wins and a huge fortune in the bank, his body has clearly given out. I do not think we will ever see him again driving those drives and sinking those putts.

It's only my personal view, but i do not think this vdo should appear on this Board.

Faint hope - alas!

Tomorrow the great Luciano Pavarotti would have been 90 years old, had pancreatic cancer not ended his life in 2017. As one major conductor claimed, Pavarotti's was a voice you might chance to come along once in a century. At the start of his career he was hailed as a new superstar of the opera world. Every opera house wanted him. But two men changed all that. As a new book points out Backstage With Pavarotti And Other Egos: Disasters On The High Cs, his manager, a New York agent named Herbert Breslin, was one of the most loathed men in the music business. One conductor called him "the biggest barracuda in the fish tank." But he was street smart and knew how to make stars. He knew he had to get Pavarotti out of the opera houses where seating capacities were limited to 2,000 - 3,000 and consequently singers' and agents' fees were low. Besides, an opera required about 3 weeks rehearsal. On the other hand, a recital often paid the same but required only two days work. But Pavarotti's huge income came largely from another man, a Hungarian who had been a survivor of the Nazi's Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp. Tibor Rudas loved opera. He had been a member of the boys chorus at the Hungarian State Opera before the war. By the early 1980s he was entertainment director for a number of US casinos, working regularly with artists like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Dolly Parton. But he wanted an involvement in opera and he wanted only the best. Over three years he tried to get Breslin to agree to his putting Pavarotti into his Atlantic City casino theatre. The answer was always no. But Rudas never gave up. When the fee he offered reached a staggerfing US$100,000 for one night's work, Breslin caved in. Instead of the theatre, an 8,000 seat marquee was erected in the grounds. And in April 1983 Luciano Pavarotti began his journey to being the wealthiest mega-world opera star the world had ever seen. While the cognoscenti of the opera word scoffed, Pavarotti, Rudas and Breslin laughed al the way to the bank. With an annual income now in the many millions, Pavarotti sang less opera, appeared more on TV and concentrated on his arena concerts seating from 10,000 to 20,000. The audiences adored him. Then at the World Cup in Rome in 1990, the other two great tenors Domingo and Carreras joined him for a concert that changed all their lives. The Three Tenors became an entertainment sensation of the 1990s. For the 1998 concert at the Paris World Cup, their fees started at US$5 million - each. They even appeared in Beijing's Forbidden City at the start of the century as part of Beijing's bid to host the summer Olympics in 2008. But by then, the always overweight Pavarotti had started to have big health problems. Even after operations, his hips and knees were giving out. In 2005 he started a worldwide Farewell Tour. But he only made it as far as Asia. The final three concerts he ever sang before a paying public were in Shanghai, Beijing and Taiwan. That Taiwan concert before a crowd of 20,000 on 14 December 2005 was his last. None of us will ever again hear the likes of the amazingly bright and radiant Italianate quality of that voice, coupled with his extraordinary clear high notes and his massive on-stage charisma. I feel we are all so lucky to have heard him in our lifetimes. I don't know where his soul rests, but I wish it a very Happy Birthday on Sunday. Pavarotti was known as the King of the High Cs, a result of his performance of this Donizetti opera at the Metropolitan Opera in 1973. This short pirate video made backstage captures the moment when he earned this nickname (visual quality is poor). And below is the poster for his last ever performance (No, he did not thereafter sing at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Turin 6 weeks later - both sound and vision of that "performance" were precorded more than a week in advance since he was ill. At the event, he mimed).

I have seen a rash of negative youtube headlines along the lines of "What Happened to Dimash Qudaibergen?" These all appear to me ridiculous considering he is arguably the best singer on the planet just now. And then if you actually watch the vdos, the headlines are merely clickbait. Most have nothing negative to say at all, other than why isn't he better known in the USA? Well, my response to that is simple. Why would he want to be better-known in the USA? For a start his English is still poor so hauling himself onto inane US chat shows and endless PR events would be a waste. Besides, he is so huge in so many countries, why bother with the USA? Some complain that he should sing more. Perhaps understandable, but that is also nonsense. Every major voice - like a Pavarotti or Domingo - requires rest between performances. Our vocal chords are a major part of vocal production but they do suffer from wear and tear like other parts of the body. That's why opera singers need 2 or 3 days break between performances. Dimash's voice is a truly extraordinary instrument. He doesn't dance and prance around on stage like Michael Jackson. He gives everything through the voice and his emotions. If he does not take care of that voice, he will lose it. Plain and simple. He has recently been in the company of opera 'royalty'. He has appeared with Placido Domingo, Andrea Bocelli and Jose Carreras. This famous duet from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers was recorded with Domingo in Budapest 2 years ago. Domingo had only heard him a few months earlier and insisted they sing together. Extraordinary to think that in this vdo Domingo was 82 years old and Dimash was just 29. He was given just one day and one rehearsal to learn the duet! Some youtube vdos have professional voice teachers give their opinions. All are amazed at how good he and his amazing voice are.

Magnitude 7.4 is a huge earthquake and, as worse, it triggered a second 6.9 quake later that day. I wonder if double quakes might be a thing of the future? I recall when Nepal was devastated by its late April 7.8-7.9 quake ten years ago destroying much of the historic centre of the cities in the Kathmandhu valley and so many villages in the hills. Just as the aftershocks were subsiding, a second quake magnitude 7.3 hit in mid-May. The total effect on such a poor country was disastrous. Sichuan Province in China also had two quakes in 2002 - 5.9 in June and 6.6 in September. Earlier Sichuan had also experienced the country's largest quake - 7.9 in May 2008. Hopefully the Philippines might have been better prepared, as much as anyone can for an earthquake.

I agree that all firework displays are fun, but is the one in Pattaya really a major fireworks event? Every year Hong Kong has 20 minutes of the most amazing - and no doubt the most expensive costing an average of US$2.67 million - firework displays you have ever seen at the lunar New Year. I think I am right in saying Pattaya's budget is about one tenth of that. Macao also has some fantastic displays at its annual Fireworks Festival spread over various weekends around the mid-Autumn Festival. Mind you, I'd love to be in Sydney to see their annual New Year's Day pyrotechnics. They may not be the most expensive in the world, but they are certainly amongst the most spectacular.

We're all now on tenterhooks! At what level will Trump pitch his sanctions on Norway? He's just upped China sanctions again by an additional 100% because they will not sell him more rare earth. 250% for Norway do you reckon?

Ichiro Suzuki was the same, even after an even longer period in the US.

I can still climb stairs. The electricity was being maintained in my condo last Sunday and I climbed up 8 floors - although whether I would have had the energy for some heady sexual activity after that is perhaps questionable.

Another bit of culture! One art form that has never really interested me much is ballet. I have seen not more than half a dozen in a lifetime of theatre going, but to be fair each has been rather special. At university I had to spend two months studying in Vienna. The legendary pairing of Rudolph Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn were dancing the ballet Giselle at the Opera House. I managed to get a standing ticket. I was never a Nureyev fan, but the way he used the stage as virtually his home and had the audience in the palm of his hand was remarkable. At the start of my career I went to see a short ballet/dance at the Royal Ballet choreographed by one of the great choreographers of the day, Jerome Robbins. His Dances At A Gathering has no story. It is just pure dance with six couples dancing to the piano music of Chopin. I loved it. Robbins, of course, is arguably best known as the choreographer of the original West Side Story. John Cranko was unquestionably one of the finest of all choreographers. Gay and based at London's Royal Opera House before the law was changed, he was arrested and prosecuted. He moved to Stuttgart where he literally became a star in the world of ballet. His Romeo And Juliet was amazing, as was a ballet he created for his four top stars which he named Initials R.B.M.E. each being the first initial of their first names. Perhaps surprisingly, he used not ballet music but the Second Piano Concerto of Brahms. Fabulous evening. It has became one of his most famous ballets. My last ballet experience was a major work by another great choreographer, the American John Neumeier. who headed the company in Hamburg for 51 years till last year. Beforehand, he had worked with Cranko in Stuttgart. Also gay, he created a Swan Lake which he titled Illusions Like Swan Lake in which he changed much of the story and had the principal character loosely based on mad King Ludwig of Bavaria who built all the Bavarian castles like Neuschwanstein. I saw this way back in 1977. The company just had to take it to Munich because everyone in Bavaria in the south was desperate to see it! In my time, I have known a handful of ballet dancers and am always amazed at their dedication and hard work for what for most is a relatively short career. I have been having some email exchanges with a Hong Kong dancer who is now a Principal with the Paris Opera Ballet, the first Asian ever to be awarded such an honour. But I have also seen on youtube a rather fascinating vdo featuring two 16-year old identical twins from Berne, both of whom have been studying ballet for years and will shortly attend the John Cranko Ballet School. The vdo was filmed at a short summer school in the USA. It has some clips from ballet class where the stretching always amazes me - as do the young guys cute asses (oops!) I have a feeling that we will be hearing a lot more about these twins in the world of dance some years into the future.

I once wrote a piece about the gay novelist Christopher Isherwood whose best known work today must be his Berlin Stories which form the basis for the play I Am A Camera which in turn forms the basis for the musical Cabaret! An Englishman, Isherwood had emigrated to California at the outset of war. Enjoying Valentine's Day on the beach in 1953 he struck up a conversation with a particularly handsome young man, Don Bachardy. Isherwood then was 48: Bachardy 18. This was an era when being gay was against the law in California. But the law had never meant much to Isherwood, one of the century's most famous gay icons. Another gay icon and eventual California neighbour quickly became a friend, the English painter David Hockney. Hockney was a frequent visitor to the home of Isherwood and Bachardy. In 1968 he decided to paint them. That painting is now arguably his most famous painting after A Bigger Splash showing a man diving into a swimming pool. Although in the Splash painting we do not see a near naked man after the dive, unlike another Hockney painting more or less on the same subject. At the time, that man was Peter Schlesinger, Hockney's lover. What makes the Isherwood/Bachardy painting so different is its basic middle-class homeliness. Although Christopher died almost 40 years ago, Bachardy at 91 remains alive and active as a painter himself. A vast canvas, for the past 40 years the painting of the two of them has been in private hands. Now it is being put up for sale by Christie's Auction House in New York next month. Expected sale price? Up to US$45 million! That's a huge price for a modern painting. But A Bigger Splash rather set the stage, as it were. Sold for £2.9 million to a private buyer in 2006, it was then a record for a Hockney painting. The buyer then resold it in 2020 for £23.1 million! Photo: Christie's Auction House

There surely comes a time in life when having lied so often to so many about so much that you have to believe you are in fact telling the truth. As we all know, the ghastly Roy Cohn was Trump's mentor. Cohn believed that you could lie your way through life. When called to account, you sued. And you continued to sue until people realised that as with your lies, law suits would be coming if you crossed him. And so countering the lies with facts becomes a rather dangerous business. But with Trump it is not just the lies and law suits. It's revenge! He inhabits a Hadean world where everyone apart from him will always be wrong and like Nemesis he will strike them down.

Vietnam is a rather appropriate analogy, barely noticed until suddenly it was front page news. A start unknown to almost all during the Eisenhower years, continued almost unobtrusively by Kennedy before being brazenly and illegally augmented by Johnson and again by Nixon. Thai censorship may not be illegal - but much of what is censored in Thailand should not be. It's a sort of fantasy. We start small and so what we censor does not exist. But as we increase censorship, the wider Thai community begins to notice and trouble starts. But the powers-that-be continue to pretend they are doing good.

I know precious little about US baseball. Before True Visions quit Star Sports and instead linked up with the cheaper Bein Sports from somewhere in the Gulf Region, we used to get regular mens baseball programmes from Japan. Some of those players were so cute. Same is true of the teams in Taiwan. Not sure about South Korea, but as True Visions is an Asian company you'd think they'd be happy to show Asian baseball. Same is true of many mens sports - like Asian volleyball. Star Sports regularly had mens volleyball from Japan. Bein clearly can not afford the mens licence fees and so we have women's volleyball instead. In my book True Visions programming has gone way downhill ever since it dropped the excellent HBO1 programme years ago.

I would go to see a good play whoever is in the cast. I would definitely not go to see a play only because a Hollywood star is in the cast. Re Good Night And Good Luck, this obviously was a project very close to Clooney's heart. After all, he produced, financed and directed the 2005 movie and the recent theatrical production was just the movie scaled down for the stage. I would not have paid even for the cheapest seat because I thought David Strathairn gave the performance of his career in the same part in the movie. I do like Clooney as an actor, but I cannot believe he would have been as good as Strathairn.

Yes, I did realise. I was just pulling your leg LOL

Can it really be that the stage musical Les Miserables opened in London 40 years ago? And that it has been running in London, New York and many other cities around the world. This is a show that has now been seen by more than 130 million people, has played in 57 countries and been sung in 22 different languages. And that is before we look at the numbers from the successful movie version. The extraordinary thing is that the show almost closed after its first few weeks in London. When the large envelope landed on London producer Cameron Mackintosh's desk, he was somewhat dismayed to see it contained some cassette tapes of another musical - yet another musical. As a successful producer with CATS and a mcuh lauded revival of My Fair Lady under his belt, he was used to being bombarded with eldless cassettes from a line of seemingly endless composers and lyricists. He almost did not listen to this one since he had heard it had opened in Paris (a city that for whatever reason is death to musicals) even though this show had been quite a success. Yet some instinct made him listen to those cassettes and read about this show. Based on Victo Hugo's massive novel, Les Miserables, he heard something which he thought he could re-fashion into a commercial musical. After discussion with its creators Claude Michel Schoenberg and Alain Boublil, he set to work. Requiring such a huge cast and scenery, Mackintosh realised his regular investors (called "angels" in show biz) could not alone finance a production. So he went into a joint venture with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Its directors were keen and the show opened on October 8 1985. Originally planned for a run of around 12 weeks, all hoped it would run for considerably longer. But when the first night newspaper reviews bordered on the disastrous, everyone prepared for a financial disaster. All except one man, Cameron Mackintosh. Having been in love with musicals since a small child, he believed passionately that what he was seeing and hearing from audiences was not what the critics had written. Audiences seemed to love the show. So he found more cash, blitzed the media with more ads and arranged a short extension to the season. Short? Les Miserables has become the longest-running most successful musical of all time. I have always wondered what it is that has attracted so many millions to see the show. Is it just a love story set against a state of revolution? Triumph over tragedy? Mackintosh himself believes that the power of the show is in its appeal to youth - audiences are inspired by young people fighting for their beliefs and a better world. This is why some of the songs have become anthems of freedom and revolution around the world. We all hope for a brighter tomorrow. Les Mis is now taking bookings in London through till 3 October 2026.

I thought for a moment that you meant I do not have far in terms of age! But you are much too polite for that!

I remember reading some years ago that Thailand is the most censored Asian country after China and Pakistan. In 2011 the government opened a dedicated censorship department covering a variety of issues including a certain family, porn and generally anti-government protests. Yet even a year earlier, in 2010 under the Internal Security Act 74,686 sites had been blocked. Although I can find no figures, I assume the number of blocked porn sites just continues to grow. For those who might not have noticed, international television news like the BBC and CNN is subject to a 5-minute delay. This is to allow censors to pick up and block anything to do wtih - well, we all know what and who. The official reason for so many porn sites being banned, despite increasing protests, is always that they undermine Thailand's traditional cultural and social values. Typical government b/s.

I am sure this is correct, but take away the resident expats (agreed, they are foreigners) and how many visiting tourists ever know about them? A tiny fraction at most is my guess. For example, a quick check using the Search engine comes up with none of those bar/club names. I for one do not recall any being mentioned in these forums (but accept I may just not have noticed - has any visitor?). And if people do not write about them or read about them, how are they to know that tourists are welcome?

The Toronto team has been part of MLB since the mid-1970s. Originally the San Francisco Giants planned to move to Toronto but were stopped from doing so by a court order. Since the League has 15 teams in the east and 15 in the west, when Seatlle was awarded a team, there was a need to balance this with a team in the east. No idea why but the Toronto team got the franchise. Presumably no other team was available! Expediency!