Oct 24, 2026

Masterplan: French boy and Italian girl thieves plot to steal the...Mona Lisa. And don't fall in love. With n*de Ivanir and French dudes

   


Link to the n*de dudes


Masterplan (2026), on Amazon Prime: Two strangers, a man and a woman, are charged with breaking into the Louvre and stealing...the Mona Lisa!  Sounds from the plot description that they'll be falling in love, but plot twist: they're siblings!   

Scene 1: A party in Rome, with muscular guys gyrating.  A young lady, probably Chiara, goes to the kitchen, grabs a tray of flaming drinks, and offers one to a sleazy guy sitting on a throne surrounded by ladies. She clicks a cell phone.  He reads his text: "Buy now!"  So it's spam?

He returns to his hotel room and checks out the investments on his computer, with Chiara on the balcony, hacked in.  He hears someone out there, and looks around.  Dude, she's standing right next to you. But he gets a text from one of his girlfriends,  and leaves.

Chiara goes downstairs, gets on her scooter, and drives off.

Cut to the Place Vendôme in Paris. A heavilly disguised guy, probably Jay (Victor Belmondo), enters a hotel, sets a timer, and heads up to the Presidential Suite.  He breaks in, grabs some jewelry and stuff from the dressing room, but security is at the door!  He breaks through the wall, heads downstairs, and drives off.




Scene 2
: Chiara in her elegant bedroom, eating an elegant breakfast and texting, Jay in his dumpy apartment, eating junk food and texting.  They get job offers simultaneously: a private residence break-in, paying 25,000 euros.

Cut to Lake Como, in the Italian Alps, on the Swiss border. They both show up for the break-in job, and exchange flirty banter. 

Jay works with explosives: "A little boom, sixty seconds in and out.  What do you say?"

Chiara: "Isn't that your Tinder profile?"  

Jay: "No, it's just Jay from Paris."  Hetero identity established at Minute 5.  

They continue to flirt as he tries to cut the power.   She bets him that it won't work; it doesn't, so he has to remove some clothes.  That's your brother, girl.

On into the house, and the safe with the stuff they're supposed to steal.  But it's empty.

"You passed the test," an English voice says.  "Bravo.  And bare-chested.  Interesting."  

"What do you care?" Jay asks angrily.  Hey, don't be homophobic.  Accept the femme gay guy's interest as a complement.


Scene 3:
The femme guy is Roger, played by Stanley Tucci, a super-femme dude who you'll instantly tag as gay.  He's actually straight, but he's capitalized on his "obviously gay" presentation by playing a string of gay characters, so maybe Roger....

Rog tells them that Chiara is the best hacking thief in the world, and Jay is the best explosives thief. If he's so great, why does he live in a dump?  But he wanted to see if they could work together. 

They can, in spite of the constant flirting, so he wants to hire them for "the job of a lifetime," that will make them both billionaires.

Oh, by the way, he also wanted to hire them because he's their father.  He stole their toothbrushes and got DNA samples.  Here are the test results.

Cut to Jay calling his mother.  "So...um...did you hook up with an extremely feminine straight guy played by Stanley Tucci?"

"Oh, right, we met in Mumbai in 1995, and hooked up, but I lost his number, so I couldn't tell him when I got pregnant.  I didn't want to tell you, so I made up a story about a dead Greek sailor."


Scene 4:
  Back in the parlor, Chiara is furious. She was abandoned at birth, and raised by horribly abusive foster parents, so if he's her Dad, he's got some explaining to do.

Roger explains that he was stealing something on the island of Capri, and he met the private detective hired to track the person who stole a valuable Picasso.  It wasn't him, so they hooked up, and didn't see each other again. 

Left: This review was a little beefcake-light, so I included a random French guy.

Scene 4: So, what's the job?  Stealing the Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world.  Don't bother looking for it in the Louvre -- it's disappointingly small, and impossible to see from behind the scores of selfie-taking tourists.  And if you do -- it looks like the 300,000 reproductions you'll see over your lifetime.

He shows them a map of a forgotten tunnel leading from the Louvre 300 m across the Seine to the basement of Academie Francaise. 

He asks them to spend the night, and decide in the morning.


Scene 5:
Chiara in her room, on her laptop, making sure that the DNA test isn't a fake.  Then she stops by Jay's room to tell him that everything checks out, and "I wasn't checking out your butt." "Yes, you were."  Since you now know that you're siblings, maybe cut down on the flirting?  A brother and sister really shouldn't have a "will they or won't they?" plotline.

Cut to the crowds milling around the Mona Lisa.  The Louvre has other exhibits, you know.


After complaints and "It's impossible," they agree, and he explains the plan. "Let's do this...as a family!" Are they really the best in the world, or did you hire them to connect with your kids?

More after the break

Iain Armitage: Young Sheldon grows up, hugs guys, celebrates Pride. With n*de Galecki, Fisher, and Simon Rex

Link to the n*de dudes



I didn't like The Big Bang Theory (2007-19), featuring Johnny Galecki as the (relatively) stable center of a group of wacky nerd scientists who can't get any  "big bangs."  The hetero-horniness was incessant, and there were so many homophobic statements -- mostly asserting that all gay men wear dresses and prance  --- that I was more amazed than offended  Wasn't Jim Parsons, who played the neurotic physics savant Sheldon Cooper, gay?  Why didn't he protest?  (Apparently he was closeted until around the fifth season.) 

But I liked Young Sheldon (2017-24), about Sheldon Cooper's childhood, growing up in East Texas in the 1990s with a conservative Baptist Mom, a macho football-coach Dad, a macho muscle-building brother, and...you get the idea.

I grew up in the Nazarene Church, which taught that Baptists were much too liberal.  I could relate.



Plus there were lots of cute guys.  Sheldon's older brother Georgie (Montana Jordan) had musclebuilding plotlines before they switched to a "getting a girl pregnant" story arc.




If you're into chubs (and who isn't?), Dad Lance Barber had it all.




Next door neighbor Billy (Wyatt McClure) was too young to be hot, of course, but he had that puppy-dog cuteness that makes you say "Aww, how adorable!"  I figured that he would eventually come out, but instead the writers decided to give him a crush on Sheldon's sister.

And how about Rex Linn as Tom Peters, the longsuffering principal at Sheldon's high school. Wait, this is Simon Rex (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

There were no gay characters -- with or without Jim Parsons as executive producer, this was still a "family friendly" (non gay) show.  But also no casual homophobia.  Just a few references suggesting homophobia, as when someone asks if Sheldon is...you know, and Dad angrily yells "NO!"





And in Season 5, Sheldon tells his roommate Evan (Motoki Maxten) that he doesn't want to date girls because they are a distraction. 

"So you're into guys?" Evan asks nonchalantly.

"No, they're a distraction, too."

Actually, he turns out to be asexual hetero-romantic, although this is never specified on The Big Bang Theory.

But I'm pretty sure that Iain Armitage (Young Sheldon) is gay.

More after the break

Oct 23, 2026

Erik Hesse: Immensely hot Short Guy from Reading, PA, with bad fashion taste, a job hugging athletes, and an eight inch tripod


 Link to the n*de photos


The celebrity p*nis site posted a video,  reputedly of ice hockey player Blake E. in the locker room, shoving his stuff at his teammates (photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends). Very impressive, and sort of gay-adjacent. So I researched him.

No social media presence, just his stats: Born 1998 in Macomb, Michigan, 5'9", 181 lbs, a hockey player for the Royals in Reading, Pennsylvania (the one with the railroad in Monopoly).

The n*de dude looks nothing like the real Blake E.  I think he was identified as a prank.  

But who is the hunky short guy with the farmboy innocence and a 1950s haircut?  If Blake is 5'9", he must be 5'8".  


He's journalist Erik J.  I don't like to give the last names of non-actors, but it's German, for an inhabitant of Jesburg, Hesse.  So I'll call him Erik Hesse. 






Erik grew up in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, a commuter town about 25 miles from Philadelphia. In high school, he played baseball until an injury forced him off the team.  He was also a sports reporter for the Knight-Crier. 








He attended Temple University in Philadelphia, graduating a year early, in 2023,  with a BA in Media Studies and Production.

Left: Temple University Campus Recreation.  Do you choose one, or take all four, or...





While at university, Erik worked as a server at the Texas Roadhouse and an anchor for OwlSports, and apparently won two Emmies.

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: I couldn't find any n*de Temple students in my files, so I posted one from. 








More after the break

Oct 22, 2026

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium


I saw If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969) on tv sometime in junior high.  It was advertised as a hilarious comedy about a group of Ugly Americans on a whirlwind tour of Europe, but I recall it as heartbreaking.   In fact, I was hesitant about revisiting it, for fear that it would bring back the intense feelings of longing and loss that had me almost in  tears as a kid.

When you find something heartbreaking that the rest of the world thinks is hilarious, there must be some symbolism.






The theme song, performed by pop star Donovan, is jarringly melancholic for the introduction to a comedy:

If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium
If it's Wednesday this must be Rome
If it's Thursday this must be Montreux
I fear I never wanna go home

If this is London why ain't it raining?
The sun is shining on St. Paul's dome
If this is real then I must be dreaming
Can't wait to tell the folks back home


But after that, there's beefcake.  Lots of it.  Ian McShane, the Swinging Sixties Bachelor who herds the tourists around Europe, displays his body frequently as he falls for and loses prim librarian Suzanne Pleshette.









Luke Halpin, formerly a teenage hunk on Flipper (1964-67), wanders around Europe as a hippie in painted-on jeans as he falls for and loses apathetic teen Hilary Thompson.














Even the hunky Sandy Baron, fresh from his odd-couple sitcom Hey, Landlord (1966-67), displays a toned hairy chest as he rips his shirt off and dives into a Venetian canal to avoid a marriage-crazy relative.  (Incidentally, Sandy Baron would become famous thirty years later on Seinfeld, as the doddering oldster Jack Klompus).

But beefcake doesn't make for poignancy.

Sandy Baron's character doesn't seem to be interested in girls, but otherwise I find no significant gay content.  No male bonding, no same-sex rescues.

So why was it heartbreaking?

Maybe it was the metaphor of escape. Dozens of Boomer movies and tv programs were about people trapped in a dangerous alien world -- Gilligan's Island, My Favorite Martian, Danger Island,  H.R. Pufnstuf, Lost in Space.  They are desperate to get home, to return to their conventional lives, to their jobs and houses and husbands and wives and stark heterosexist conformity.  But If It's Tuesday has it backwards -- the alien world is a Paradise, an escape from their conventional lives to a world of light and color and infinite possibility.


At the end of the movie they all go home -- you can't stay in Oz forever.  Yo have to return to your dull factory towns, abandon your same-sex loves for the doom of job, house, wife, kids.

I wrote a poem changing the lyrics:

If this is love, then why am I crying?
These tears are falling too fast to be from joy.
If there's no hope, then why am I trying?
I wish I'd never heard of  Rome







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