No Swelled Head Yet

The people at Wordpress, who host this blog: they try to give us bloggers a boost. They wrote me a report on Exit Only for 2012 saying that - get this:

"9,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform and this blog was viewed about 110,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it!"

Well, they try to buck you up . But I know very well that

most of the visitors to my posts were probably only here looking for all my pictures of near-naked people.

Like this photo I once posted of Susan Sarandon, showing what 60 can look like if the ligaments hold up:

Or this nice one, of Marilyn, that I found for one of the times I wrote about her.Or this great shot where Sophia Loren is seen looking over at Jayne Mansfield.

Or even this one of.... well, I don't know just WHO these two are but you could have a lot of fun thinking up a caption for this pic:

But really what brings them here, according to their analysis ? Searches for the word "Speedo," the term "wardrobe malfunction" and fascinating phrase "the head of Jeremy Bentham," that particular item being on display in a museum in London

(The head on the dummy is fake; the one under 'his' chair is real.)

.

So there it is.Like I say, no swelled head yet!

Abe Called

To round out our talk of mirrors let me end with these two photos of Abe Lincoln which do show what a marked difference it makes to flip your image, right to left.In this first photo with his dry and difficult hair and that sensual lower lip he looks as we ‘remember’  him: noble, generous, broken hearted.In the second picture you get a whole different impression . Here he looks really rumpled,  almost deranged, and those spots on his cheek look almost cartoonish, as if they were drawn on by somebody.I remember reading somewhere that more words have been written about this man than any other figure in the world with the exception of Jesus of Nazareth. The shock we feel on seeing him in an unfamiliar way proves that he is 'in' us all right, an iconic figure if ever there was one.  And now let's end with this tuneful song by someone whose perceived image of himself seemed to torture him all his life. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgpEg3tu01I&feature=related]