It’s never easy for performers to head out on their own. For every Tina Fey leaving behind Saturday Night Live to create 30 Rock, there’s a Rob Schneider, content to play second fiddle to Adam Sandler in farting fat-suit. On the flip side, an inability to progress leaves you rehashing the same old schtick until you’re stuck in your own Arrested Development. (I’m looking right at you, Horatio Sanz.)
Which is why I have to give credit to Austin Wilde and Anthony Romero. After stints performing for Raging Stallion and CockyBoys, the long-time boyfriends turned their brainchild, guysinsweatpants.com, from a niche photo-sharing site to a full-blown porn site. Admittedly, sweatpants are a weirdly specific niche fetish to base a site on, but all in all, it comes together pretty well.
First and foremost, the scenes are beautifully shot. Considering they’ve been dating for years now, the two have a natural chemistry, and their experience as performers has given them a pretty good understanding of how to frame a scene. They’re all shot, performed and edited wonderfully, and as a package, it shows real attentiveness and polish. The only critique I have here is, oddly enough, that the sweatpants in question aren’t present enough. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d nitpick over a lack of sweatpants, but for the most part, the guys start off wearing them and then quickly doff them in favour of going nude. The scenes are hot, but a pair of crotchless/assless sweatpants would make them even better.
The site itself is crisp, clean and streamlined and looks beautifully minimalistic. Navigation flows pretty well, save for one omission: there’s no button for new members to join up on the front page. I had to go to one of the video previews before I found the page where new members are supposed to sign up. I can kind of understand why they would choose to put it there – nothing sells a porn site like a quick glimpse at what it’s selling — but it would be more intuitive to include a sign-up link on the front page.
The only real problems I found with Guys in Sweatpants basically stem from how new the site is. (Full disclosure: this review was written a week after the site went live, so it’s still in its infancy.) For the time being, the fan section, where viewers can send in pictures of themselves wearing sweatpants, and the live-cam section were still inactive, but those aspects, as well as any of the nits I picked, can be easily fixed as the site matures. Guys in Sweatpants has tons of potential, and all it needs is the time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
Think of Austin and Anthony’s site as Parks and Recreation: yes, it had a bit of a rocky start, but once it got running, it became one of the best shows around. Likewise, despite a few starting kinks, Guys in Sweatpants is a great site that will get better with age.
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