Rick Gomez: What has Endless Mike of "Pete & Pete" been doing lately? Is Steve Zahn his boyfriend? Is he really endless?

Link to the n*de photos

Remember this?

Hey smiin' strange
You're lookin' happily deranged
Can you settle to shoot me?
Or have you picked your target yet

It's the theme to The Adventures of Pete and Pete (1991-95), the first of the Nickelodeon "adults are insane" teencoms.  Two brothers, both named Pete, negotite the weirdness of the city of Wellsvill, where no one is really well. 

A bowling ball has mystical powers.

A garage band vanishes overnight.

Little Pete accidentally erases baseball from existence.

I liked Rick Gomez as Endless Mike, who knows more about the town's weirdness than he lets on.  He sometimes bullies and humiliates Big Pete, and sometimes acts as his ally and protector. You might even find a gay subtext in their interaction.

No one ever explains why his name is Endless.  Maybe the teenage boy is a manifestation of a transdimensional being who exists beyond time and space as we perceive it.

Or maybe he's endless where it counts (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

When Pete & Pete ended, I moved on to other things, and thought about Endless Mike rarely, if at all.  And the years passed.

Recently we started watching Silo (2023-), a dystopian science fiction series where 10,000 people, all of surviving humanity (that they know of) live in a huge underground helix.  They can't go outside, or ever open the single door, because the air is poisonous (or so they are told). 

And there in the cast list was Rick Gomez!

He plays Patrick Kennedy, a maintenance worker with a dead wife (of course) who sells strictly-forbidden relics from the Before Time.  He starts to suspect that they are being lied to (they are, sort of), and joins the Resistance. 

Right: Steve Zahn plays Solo, who survived a rebellion in his own silo, where everyone went outside and died.  They buddy bond in Season 3.

A few years have passed, but you can still see that insoucient, all-knowing smile.  

I wanted to check what Rick has been doing since 1995, whether he is actually gay in real life, and if he is really endless.

Searching for "Rick Gomez," "actor," and "n*de" yields a lot of photos of Rick kissing guys (top photo) and showing his backside (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), but it turns out to be a Google Images misdirection.  The gay/backside actor is Ricardo Gomez.

Our Rick starred in five tv series between Pete & Pete and Silo.

1. Hitz (1997), about workers at a record company (remember records?)

2. Band of Brothers (2001), about World War II soldiers. Rick plays George Luz, who does some buddy-bonding during the War, but then returns to Rhode Island for the married-with-children bit.

Not much of gay interest so far.

More after the break

Ben Lewis Doherty: Doc Martin's Plus One, a gay journalist, and the son of a gay gangster. All by age ten. With Smith and Pelphrey p*nis

 

Link to the n*de photos

 I've been watching Best Medicine (2026), about a curmudgeonly doctor in small-town Maine, where there are at least three gay characters: Greg and George, who run the only restaurant in town; and sarcastic high school student Liam.  But could there be four?  How about 10-year old Peter Cronk, played by Ben Lewis Doherty? 

Kids are usually presented as straight by default, to promote the myth that boys are born longing for feminine smiles, and "turn" gay as as teenagers or adults.  But you never know.

Peter appeared in eight episodes in Season 1, and displays queer codes in most:.  

Episode 5:  He wants to stay after class to help teacher Louisa, so the other kids make fun of him, thinking that he has a crush on her.  He denies it: he's actually interested in the astronomy presentation she's preparing. A denial of hetero interest.

Later he tries to "fit in" by putting a whole apple in his mouth, and can't get it back out again.  Doc Martin cuts it out, and tells him don't bother trying to fit in, just be yourself. The oral stuff and the "be yourself."

Episode 7: On Halloween, the townsfolk put on a haunted house called the Blood Factory.  Peter hates it: he gets so scared that he wets his bed.  Doc Martin suggests that he face his fears, so he dresses as a vampire. And bonds with a buddy.

Episode 8: Peter is rather swishy as he criticizes Elaine's true crime podcast. (Femme behavior).  

Afterwards, her cameraman Al (Carter Shimp, right) calls her his girlfriend, and she shoots him down: "We're frisky friends, that's all."  Hurt, he quits.

 "What's a frisky friend?" Peter asks.  Lack of awareness of hetero-romance terminology.

Episode 10: Trying to spend time with Doc Martin, Peter comes in every day with invented symptoms, and invites himself along on his birdwatching date with Louisa.  Are you looking for a father figure, or do you have a little crush on the Doc? 

Later, he complains of a stomach ache, but Doc Martin thinks he's faking -- until the pain spreads to his shoulder, and his spleen ruptures!  Tense scenes in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Episode 12: Peter asks Doc Martin to come to his school presentation on Norway, since his mom works and his dad doesn't care about him. Doc Martin says he's too busy, but shows up anyway.  Peter is overjoyed, and hugs him.  More crush potential.

Episode 13: Peter is the ring bearer at the wedding of Greg and George. The teenagers attend the weddding, but he's the only child, suggesting a special affinity with the gay guys.

 At the reception, he sits at Doc Martin's table as if he's the Doc's Plus One.  

It's probably not canonical, but it's enough to check out the other work of the 11-year old actor.

Ben Lewis Doherty lives in Massachusetts, where he began modeling and acting at age six (five years ago).  His first role was in the short Weighted (2020): Macauley (Hudson Koonce) longs for the times when he lifted weights with his dad, before MS took its toll, so he strives for one last bench press.  Ben plays the young Macauley, and the cast includes bodybuilders George Sandalakis (left), Ismail Bronson, and David Arquilla (top photo).

Nice company for your first acting role, kid.

Next Ben appeared in Haze (2024): Joe, a young journalist (Cole Dolman),  returns home after rehab, uncovers the secrets of the town's psychiatric center, and gets a boyfriend (Brian J. Smith, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  Ben plays the young Joe.

A gay character, already!  Things are looking good for you, buddy.  Plus you're already buddying up to hot guys like Cameron Matheson.

More after the break. 

Nathan Kress, Freddie from "ICarly," grown up. Is he still homophobic? Is he still shy about showing his beneath-the-belt stuff?

 

Link to the not fully clothed photos

Many Nickelodeon shows of the 2000s had strong homophobic subtexts, and  ICarly (2007-2012) was one of the worst.  Miranda Cosgrove starred as Carly, who hosts an internet comedy show with her butch-but-straight buddy Sam (a girl) and nerd-next-door-with-a- stereotyped crush on her, Freddie (Nathan Kress).  

They are supervised by her wacky bi-subtext older brother, Spencer. 

 On the way, the contempt for gay men, or as Sam alls them, prancies, oozes out in joke after joke.  The most egregious is Spencer being chased down and arrested for appearing in public in a dress; cross-dressing has not been a crime in any American city since the 1970s.

I especially disliked Nathan Kress, amd not only for the horribly cliched "unrequited crush" plotlines.  As he bulked up, he steadfastly refused to permit beefcake photos.  To an extent, that's his choice: his body, his rules.  But when you choose a career that depends on displaying that body, and further set yourself up as a teen idol, you have a sort of obligation to your fans.

More annoying was his reason for failing to post beefcake: he was a way, way conservative fundamentalist of the "hating ten gays before breakfast" variety, and he didn't want girls and prancies getting ideas.

Today Nathan's instagram is full of wife-and-children pictures. 

Still hardly any beefcake, unless incorporated into the wife-and-kid pictures.

And he's still ultra-fundamentalist.

More Nathan after the break

"Lost Boys": Music video by Phoebe Bridgers, with Skyler Gisondo escaping to Middle Earth, or not, plus some not fully clothed dudes

  The censors are becoming extremely picky lately.  There was nothing inappropriate for a five-year old in the previous version, but they still slapped a "sensitive content" thing on it. I wouldn't mind, except they yell at you for it every time you go to the edit page.  

Link to the not fully clothed dudes

I'm not happy with the Gemstone guys since the show ended in 2025.  Both Adam Devine (Kelvin) and Tony Cavalero (Keefe) were married to women, but they played a lot of gay-subtext roles, and in their social media, they minimized their hetero interests, even pretending to be into guys.  

When the show ended, it suddenly became wife and kids, marriage and family, all through their social media, and their productions are entirely gay-free, even gay-subtext free.

Gavin Munn filled his social media with buddies and grown-up beefcake guys, until the Gemstones ended.  Then it was "I'm not doing this anymore, I'm taking a girl to junior prom!"

Skyler Gisondo is the worst of the lot.  His social media was full of gay buddy-bonds, with girls rarely if ever mentioned -- until the show ended.  Then it was "Here's my girlfriend!  Have you met my girlfriend?  I have a girlfriend!"  And his Superman (2025) involved blatant, slap-in-the-face queerbaiting: "I'm going to pretend I'm gay for two hours, then pull the rug out from under you in the last scene, har har!"

Skyler's latest work is in the music video "Lost Boys" (2026), by Phoebe Bridgers, an American singer/songwriter who has won four Grammies for her "melancholy" songs with complex lyrics mirroring personal issues. 

Left: Phoebe's partner, Bo Burnham (not fully clothed on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

 Phoebe is bi and an advocate for LGBTQ rights, and "Lost Boys" has a strong gay connotation: the boys are "lost" beause they have rejected the heteros*xist trajectory into job, house, wife, and kids in favor of the infinite joy of the world of men.

We stop the fight right now, we got to be who we are.

So doubtless the song is about that joy.  

Right?

Scene 1: Phoebe, dressed as the Elf Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings,, drives with her knight on a motorcycle to a LARP battle in an auto graveyard.  The players are dressed as Medieval warriors. But it's a real battle, with people hurting each other.

The first stanza seems to be about joining the army, "Where they make you remove your hair/ Impatient with a rifle and your papers." 

Scene 2: They have dinner in a Japanese restaurant, looking not entirely happy.

More after the break