The TV shows that we watched in the heart of the gay world: a gay brother, some "confused" guys, squabbling drag queens, Seinfeld, and Mario Lopez (sigh)

I lived in the heart of the Gay World, West Hollywood, San Francisco, and the East Village, from 1985 to 2001.  There wasn't much time for television, with our part time jobs, classes, AIDS volunteer activities, church activities, and endless nights of cruising, but a few shows were not to be missed.  They had strong gay subtexts, actual gay characters, or lots of muscular men.

1. The Golden Girls. Everybody watched the Girls before heading out to the bars on Saturday night, but you had to be careful.  Usually they were relatively gay-friendly, but suddenly, without warning, Blanche would reject her gay brother, or Rose would be horrified to discover that lesbians exist.

2. Mama's Family.   Another pre-bar show, with Vickie Lawrence as the elderly, crotchety Mama, Ken Berry as her dimwitted son, and Allan Kayser as her grandson, cast for obvious reasons.

2. Brothers.  We had to go to a friend's house to watch this Showtime sitcom about three grown-up brothers, two macho, grunting types, and one gay.

3. Dynasty.  Squabbling rich ladies with drag queen hair, some beefcake,  and a "confused" guy who veers between gay and straight.

4. Murder, She Wrote.   My friend Alan forced me to watch Jessica Fletcher solve murders every Sunday night.  One episode had a gay-light character: a fellow mystery writer whose whodunits are filled with "Greek boys mincing about."

5. Pee-Wee's Playhouse.  Man-child Pee-Wee has hunky and drag queen friends, plus a genie who lives in a jewelry box. "Swish?  Did somebody say swish?"

6. Saved by the Bell.  Saturday morning teencom with Mario Lopez taking his shirt off.  'Nuff said.

6. Married...with Children.  A raunchy send-up of the heterosexual nuclear family, with occasional only-slightly-homophobic references.  Ed O'Neill would go on to play the patriarch of Modern Family, and David Faustino would bulk up and become a gay ally.

7. Eerie, Indiana.  I dig shows about quirky small towns, and Omri Katz, who would go on to star in gay films, had a gay-subtext buddy-bond with fellow paranormal investigator Justin Shenkarow.

7.  Mystery Science Theater 3000: Joel and the Bots riffed on cheesy movies every Saturday morning, and all day on Thanksgiving.

8. Ir's Gary Shandling's Show.  I remember it a standard late-80s show featuring the life of a stand-up comic, like Seinfeld and Roseanne, with gay-subtext buddy-bonds and an obviously gay kid. 

9. Just Shoot  Me.  Maya wants to do serious journalism, but is forced to write fluff pieces for an...ugh....fashion magazine. With Nina Van Horne: "Sorry I'm late, I was interviewing a Bulgarian pole vaulter, and his pole kept getting in the way."

10. Suddenly Susan.  Same premise as #9, but this one had a gay character, Pete the Mailboy.

11. Throb.  Same premise as #9 and #10, with incredibly cute Short Guy Jonathan Prince as the boss.

7.   My Secret Identity: High schooler Jerry O'Connell is zapped with a science ray that gives him chaotic superpowers.  We all had secret identities in West Hollywood, as a matter of survival, plus there were buddy-bonds, and we could watch Jerry bulking up.

8. The Nanny.  The "flashy girl from Flushing" becomes the nanny to a rich theater producer's kids. Every Broadway actor you ever heard of dropped by.

10. Roseanne;  A working-class family in small-town Lanford, Illinois. Roseanne gets a gay sister, mom, and boss before the show crashed and burned.  Husband Dan headed the family in the 2010s reboot, plus became Eli Gemstone.

11. Seinfeld.  Of course we're going to watch the "show about nothing."  Each episode multiple times, usually while on the treadmill at the gym.  Its portrayal of LGBT people was problematic: Kramer turns a lesbian straight, and Elaine tries unsuccessfully with a gay man. And there were some cringy episodes; I'm still mad about that execrable series finale.  But it was Seinfeld.

Mr. Bigstuff: Short guy with big stuff isn't into ladies, has a gay boss and a psycho brother. With six big reveals and lots of backsides

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I don't have a lot of  luck with Britcoms.  The references have me scurrying to the internet, the jokes a little too droll, and I can never tell if the actions are meant to be sitcom exaggerations or over-the-top bizarre.  But I'm checking out Mr. Bigstuff, which just dropped on Hulu, because it stars Ryan Sampson, gay in real life and 5'4". 

"Bigstuff" is one of those culturally specific references.  There's no definition online. Does it mean that the guy is important, a "big shot," or that he's a "big dog," gifted beneath the belt?

Episode 1, Scene 1: Glen (Ryan Sampson) and his girlfriend parking in the car outside a horribly decrepit office building.  She consoles him for being unable to do stuff.  It's been a long time.  Maybe he's not into you, lady.  Or not into ladies at all.  But they're still getting married in 100 days.  

Scene 2:  Glen at his horrible, soul-destroying job as a carpet salesman.  He's pointing out some boring heterosexual stuff to a boy-girl couple, when the Manager comes by.  He asks for a promotion.  In response, the Manager pretends to shoot him.  He falls to the ground, "dead."  I guess that's a no?  

Left: The Manager is played by Adrian Scarborough (backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), who I thought was in The Thursday Murder Club.  He's not, and I deleted my review due to low pageviews.

Meanwhile, a hand smokes cigarettes and drinks beer.  Eventually it turns into a burly bloke, who bursts into the carpet store and asks the receptionist if she's seen "this geezer," displaying a photo of a schoolboy. In the U.S. a "geezer" is old. She calls the Manager.  The situation escalates to Burly Guy choking him and demanding to know where the "geezer" is.

Glen hides behind some display cases, then runs out and drives home.  

Left: Burly Guy is played by Danny Dyer, who is straight but played a gay character in Borstal Boy (2000) and the father of a gay teen on East Enders.

Scene 3: At home, the Girlfriend from Scene 1 is lying in bed.  She explains that there was a gas leak at work, so everyone had to leave, and he explains that he just popped in to get his sandwiches.  I expect that there's a man hiding in the closet. 

Nope: "Get in here, you c*nt."  In the U.S., that term is extremely offensive, and it refers only to ladies, but I think here it's just a mild expletive, like "dope." 

Glenn backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends..

They discuss boring heterosexual stuff as Glen undresses (no beefcake).  She tries to get him to do stuff, but he refuses.  You're in bed with your lady at 10:00 on a workday.  Why wouldn't you want to, unless you're not into ladies?

Next Glen drinks something from a water glass by the bedside, then starts to gag.  Girlfriend apologizes -- she didn't expect him to drink it (then why was it on his side of the bed?).  They're both very upset.  

We never learn what it was.  Maybe Metamucil, or a lady supplement?

She rushes downstairs to fetch him some tea -- and finds the Burly Guy sitting on the couch!

Scene 4:  Glen throws the disgusting liquid at him, and Girlfriend runs for the pepper spray.  "You can't be here!  Get out of my house!"

"I just want to talk, Glen!" he exclaims.  

Girlfriend; "You know each other?"  Big Reveal #1

"No.  Not really...I mean, I used to."  This upsets Burly Guy, and he leaves.

Burly Guy's backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Scene 5: Back at work, everyone is gossiping about what happened earlier "with that geezer and the Manager."  Is that a common phrase in Britain for someone under age 80?   

A woman is upset that she wasn't around to see him "get shanked."  In the U.S., "shanked" means being stabbed.  

The Manager calls Glen, crying: "You need to get here immediately! I'm sorry -- I didn't know!  I can't do this!"  Burly Guy comes onto the phone and tells him: "Dagenham, by the water, where he passed away.  You know the spot."  Darn, I thought they were old boyfriends.

Scene 6: The subtitles say Dagenheim, which sounds Norwegian, but it's actually Dagenham, a terrible industrial suburb of London, right on the Thames.  

Glen arrives and yells "Don't do this!  Don't kill the Manager!"

"Kill him?  I've just given him a cheese twist and a flapjack." Big Reveal #2.

More after the break

Gage L.: South Dakota wrestler poses in singlets a lot, posts nothing else. But they are really nice singlets, plus n*de guys named Gage

 

Link to the n*de photos

Another day, another Instagram recommendation.  This time it's a guy named Gage, from Kasson, Minnesota, near Rochester in the southeast part of the state.  He doesn't say anything in his tagline except that he's in the class of 2027, so just starting his senior year in college as of this writing. 

He attends the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where he is on the wrestling team -- go Cornhuskers!

Wait -- also the  University of Minnesota, Minneapolis -- go Golden Gophers?  

 

And now South Dakota State University, Brookings.  Go Jackrabbits?

You fill out those wrestling singlets nicely, buddy, but why do you keep changing schools?

More research reveals that Gage is a high school student being recruited by college teams, where he gets to pose in their singlets.   He chose South Dakota State, where he'll be wrestling (and presumably taking classes) in the fall of 2027.

More Gage singlet photos and a n*de SDSU student are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Gage lives in Watertown, South Dakota, a tiny town about 100 miles west of Sioux Falls -- the Minnesota photo must have been for a competition.

He wrestles for Watertown High School -- go Arrows!  And he has gone to the nationals four times, making him one of the greatest high school wrestlers of his generation.

More after the break.  

The 20 Gayest TV Programs of My Childhood

 

These are the tv shows that helped me figure it out in the silence of my childhood and teen years (roughly 1965 to 1978), through gay-vague characters, buddy-bonding subtexts, queer codes, or beefcake.

1. Gilligan's Island.  None of the male castaways displayed the slightest interest in girls, Gilligan and the Skipper were obviously boyfriends, and there was a lot of beefcake.

2. The Beverly Hillbillies.  Jethro Bodine (sigh) plus a lot of Hollywood heartthrobs who weren't particularly into girls, and the nearly-out lesbian Miss Jane.

3. Dark Shadows.  I ran across the schoolyard every day to catch the last 10-15 minutes of the Gothic soap opera, with Willie Loomis in love with the vampire Barnabas.

4. Run, Buddy, Run.  Buddy is on the run from the mob after he overhears them discussing...um...in the steam room...um...sorry, I was distracted by Buddy's chest.

5. Bewitched.  Samantha gave up the witch world for suburban heteronormativity, but she couldn't suppress her queer desires forever.  Plus a gay-in-plain-sight Uncle Arthur.

 6. H.R. Pufnstuf.  The Dragon and the Witch fight for control of Jimmy's...um...flute.  But there's really no question: he likes dudes.

7. The Mighty Hercules.  "Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs."  That's still the way I like my men.

8. Lost in Space.  Every other boy on the block wanted to be Will Robinson.  I wanted to date him.

9. Star Trek, the Original Series.  I swear, I remember Sulu (top photo) and Chekhov sharing a room.

10. Spin and Marty.  The summer camp boyfriends aired during the 1950s, but I saw them in after-school reruns during the 1970s.

More after the break