GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE November 23, 2007

keeping score

Pool standings

Cleveland-These are the standings for the Shooters Pool League after the November 12 matches.

This is the fifth season of an annual pool league which shoots on Monday nights from October through March. Although it is a semi-competitive league, all skill levels may compete as matches are based on individual handicaps. A team is made up of 4 to 7 players. Play begins at 7:30 pm at the home team's bar, where four matches are played each week consisting of as many games as necessary for one player to win as many games as their handicap. For more information, contact the league by calling Dave at 440-871-4699 or buteohawk1@att.net.

2. The Big Shooters

3. Who is Team 16?

4. BFTS

Team

1. Married With Children

Won Lost 43 20

Friday bowling standings

Cleveland-These are the standings of the North Coast Bowling Association's Friday night bowling league at the end of play November 16.

The Friday night league is a fun social league with plenty of openings. No experience is necessary. Bowling begins at 7 pm Fridays (except November 23 for Thanksgiving break) at Ambassador Superior Lanes, 1500 Superior Ave. in downtown Cleveland, and finishes by 9:30 pm. For more information, contact the league at 216-228-6966 or 216-481-4417.

Team

12. The Dreamettes

Won Lost

33 30

41 22

13. Alley Katz

32 31

40 23

14. Gimme 10

31 32

15. Spare Me the Details

30 33

5. Balls 2 Spare

38 25

16. Alternative Pins

30 33

Matches

Games

6. Wicked Twistas

37 26

Team

Won

Lost

Win Pct.

Won

Lost

Win Pct.

7. Cheap 'n' Easy

Cocktails

67%

58%

8. Beyond a Mess

Grid-Orbit

65%

61%

9. Zen-Tini

Tool Shed

65%

53%

10. Mines in the Gutter

67 00 00 0

222G

17. Tied Up & Twisted

26 37

18. Ball Busters

19. SwordFish

20. Cock-Tails

21. The Ten Pins

20 43

Apex

55%

53%

11. Oh Spare Me

22. Mikey's Misfits

11 52

Leather Stallion

54%

50%

Grid-Basement

50%

56%

Twist

40%

47%

Union Station

25%

36%

Hamilton's

25%

28%

Upcoming matches

Monday, November 26

Monday, December 3

Grid-Orbit at Twist Apex at Grid-Basement Tool Shed at Stallion

Hamilton's at Union Station Cocktails (bye)

Apex at Tool Shed

Twist at Hamilton's

Leather Stallion (bye)

Union Station at Grid-Basement

Grid-Orbit at Cocktails

December 3 is the

end of the first half.

Second half begins January 7

Sunday bowling standings

Cleveland-These are the standings of the North Coast Bowling Association's Sunday night bowling league at the end of play November 18.

The league is comprised of four-person teams with the opportunity for anyone to join in on the fun. Bowling is at Freeway Lanes of Parma, 12859 Brookpark Road starting at pm and ending by 3:30.

For more information, contact the league at 440-3426516 or e-mail ussdouglass@aol.com.

1st

Body Language 2nd Petite Rotunds 3rd Apex

Division B Place Team

Division A Place Team

1st

Riding the Edge

2nd 3 Divas & 1 Divo

3rd

Behind the 8 Ball

4th Flame Throwers 5th Lighthouse Cruisers

4th

Deadwood

5th

Buns of Fun

Volleyball standings

Cleveland-These are the standings of North Coast Athletics Volleyball after the eleventh week's games on November 18. The league is the Cleveland and Akron governing body for LGBT volleyball. It is a social group with over 200 players ranging from novice to competitive, with divisions for each skill level.

Games are played on Sundays from 11:30 am to 5 pm at the Cuyahoga Community College Metro Campus gym, on East 30th St. between Community College and Woodland Aves. in Cleveland.

For more information, see www.North CoastAthletics.org or contact league commissioner Todd Saporito at 216-905-8005 or vice-commissioner Doug Anderson at 216-440-7411.

Competitive Division

Team

Total

Won

Lost

Percent

1. North Coast Twist

77%

2. Crushers

73%

3. Flowerville Nice P-Asses

68%

4. Grid Boomerangers

59%

5. Huntington Hitters

55%

6. Union Jacks

41%

7. Hollaback Spikers

23%

8. Argos Argonauts

Advanced Division

1. Four Seasons

75%

2. Bounce Bumpin Uglies

61%

3. Twisted Out

57%

4. Tater's Tots

55%

5. Itsy Bitsy Spikers

52%

6. Icarogallery.com

45%

7. Apex Night Club

32%

8. Volley of the Balls

23%

Intermediate Division

1. Remax Renegades

84%

2. Pet-tique Pouncers

57%

3. Club Cleveland Fighting Cocks

55%

4. Bounce Bombers

52%

5. Twisted Results

48%

6. Diner on Clifton Diggers

45%

7. Union Vikings

36%

8. Menner's Men

23%

•

Estate Planning

Wills

Living Wills and Trusts

Powers of Attorney

Probate Administration

Domestic Partnership Agreements

Personal Injury

Motor Vehicle Accidents Work Injuries Wrongful Death

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Ascherman

Continued from page

AIDS over the decades, making the photographs tributes as well as artifacts.

"Portraiture deals in ghosts," Ascherman notes. "It deals in immortality."

He points to another photo, his first using a male model.

"This is not Paul, this is my interpretation of Paul," he said. "I preserve my interpretations of them."

Medcalf, who recently left CCDT, was "one of the two finest models I've ever had," Ascherman said. He certainly is one of the best built.

One of the most striking things about the people he photographs is the fact that they are so very real. They are not, as Ascherman calls them, "superbodies."

One almost achingly intimate piece shows two men lying naked on their bedroom floor, heads propped up on hands, with their dogs lounging next to them. There is a pot belly, a bit of flab. These are real people in their own environment, as exotic in the world of photography as a Siberian tiger or a Galapagos tortoise.

Ascherman has been asked many times how he is able, as a heterosexual man, to photograph a male nude. Most of the notable male nudes have been done by gay men, ranging from Michelangelo to Robert Mapplethorpe.

For Ascherman, however, when he is confronted with a naked body to be photographed, it becomes a purely intellectual pursuit-in other words, with a camera in hand, his heart disconnects.

"At my level, it's not a tool for sexual inducement, it's a tool for study," he said, "not a way to get someone naked, it's the reason for them being naked."

He said that he is "coldly calculating" in his photography, taking only a dozen or so shots per session at most, generally using available light and long exposures on the

camera.

"Whenever you show a naked man, the code is you must be homosexual to do it or homosexual to enjoy it," he lamented.

It is far more difficult to interpret his work in as harsh a manner as so many have interpreted Mapplethorpe's.

"Our show has some evocative and provocative images, but it is not designed to be shut down by local censors," he said.

He explained the line between nakedness and nudity.

"Naked is your boyfriend coming out of the shower," he said. "Nude is with a towel draped over him, light streaming through the window."

He agreed that part of what got Mapplethorpe's Cincinnati show in trouble was the context and perceived connections between photographs. Two otherwise innocent-looking photographs of small children in varying states of nudity take on a

completely different meaning when presented scant feet away from a picture of Mapplethorpe with a whip handle shoved up his ass.

However, in the end, the curator of the Cincinnati exhibit was exonerated.

"If today I had the 12 righteous men and women on that jury, I would kiss them on the mouth," Ascherman noted.

In addition to the Corcoran Gallery show, Ascherman has donated 400 signed photographs to the Kinsey Institute, and his work now constitutes the largest body of work by a single contemporary photographer in their extensive art collection. He has deeded his negatives and reproduction rights to the institute, who will have a massive exhibit of his work in 2009, concurrent with publishing a monograph of his photography.

work will, undoubtedly, outlive him. While incredibly active at 60 years old, his time-consuming platinum prints will actually last longer than the paper on which they're printed.

Mixing four chemicals, platinum and palladium together, the platinum printing process takes two hours to turn out a single photograph, compared to one hour for a normal silver photograph, or 15 minutes for a simple photo.

Ascherman founded the Cleveland Society of Alternative Photographers, a group of people who use 19th-century technologies to take pictures.

To explain the appeal, he brings out three or four photos, each around 150 years old. A couple are daguerreotypes, where the image is exposed directly onto silver treated with chemicals. They are as crisp as they were when Rutherford B. Hayes was president.

Digital photography, which has democratized the process of taking pictures, lacks that permanence. Ascherman questioned whether any of the photos taken today and stored on computers will exist in a century.

"Nothing digital will last 100 years," he said. "The computer blows up, platforms change. Digital photography has become the great equalizer. It has destroyed commercial photography, portrait photography.

But, of course, much of the craftsmanship is lost in the digital photography world. Much of the art there is in the manipulation, not the original creation.

"Altruistically speaking, the more people taking pictures, the better I look," he said with a grin.

•

There will be two openings for "Bodies: 1967-2007." The first, on Wednesday, November 28, has a $20 admission fee and benefits Plexus, the Northeast Ohio LGBT Chamber of Commerce. A portion of all sales that evening will also benefit the organization. The general opening will be on Friday, November 30. Corcoran Fine Arts Gallery is located at 13210 Shaker Square, Cleveland. For more information, call 216-767-0770 or go to www.corcoranfinearts.com.