Michael Lembeck: The "One Day at a Time" and "Gorp" hunk takes off his shirt, directs gay tv

Speaking of One Day at a Time (1975-84),  the biggest hunk who entered the lives of the single mom Ann Romano and her two daughters (Barbara and Julie) was not William Kirby Cullen or Scott Colomby, but Michael Lembeck as the smiling, bearded, hairy-chested, tight-jeans wearing Max Horvath.

He first appears on October 14th, 1979, as the best man at  elder daughter Julie's wedding -- who falls in love with Julie himself.  She calls the wedding off to date him, and eventually they marry and have a child.  

By the last season, Julie has run away, leaving Max a single dad. In an interesting triangulation, he is sharing a house with Barbara and her husband Mark (Boyd Gaines).

I wasn't watching One Day at a Time by that point -- it was suffering from "we're out of ideas, so let's change the entire premise" syndrome -- so I don't know if Anne's adopted son Alex (Glenn Scarpelli) lived there, too.

Born in 1948, Michael Lembeck was the son of Harvey Lembeck, famous as the juvenile delinquent foil in the Frankie-and-Annette beach movies.  He was visible through the 1970s, with guest spots on The Partridge Family, Happy Days, Love American Style, and Room 222, and a recurring role on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976), as newcaster Clete Mizenheimer.  Plus several important movie appearances.

In Blood Sport (1973), mooning over high-school football star Gary Busey.

In the war drama The Boys in Company C (1978), as the wise-guy Vinnie Fazio, who buddy-bonds with Billy Ray (Andrew Pike).

More after the break

"Everybody Loves Greg": Vincent Martella grows up, plays Phineas, dates some guys. With some d*cks and Skyler Gisondo

 Link to the n*de dudes

We've been watching Everybody Hates Chris (2005-2009) on Hulu: a nostalgia sitcom featuring the  childhood adventures of comedian Chris Rock, who provided the commentary.  Young Chris (Tyler James Williams) attended an all-white middle school, where everyone hated him, except his teacher, who pitied him for..stereotype of the week.  

He had a bully with an endless supply of racist terms (Travis Flory), a white best friend (Vincent Martella), and at home, Dad with about 35 jobs (Terry Crews), way overbearing Mom (Tichina Arnold), bratty little sister (Imani Hakim), and a little brother (Tequan Richmond), who was bigger, and far more attractive: everybody was in love with him, which was usually fine,but a problem around Valentine's Day, when the truckloads of cards, candy, and wedding proposals arrived. 

It was quite homophobic, even for the 2000s.  Chris Rock's commentary displayed revulsion and disgust whenever he could: "Hey, this ain't Brokeback!"  One episode featured Chris befriending a gay student, but they called him "androgynous."

Nearly 20 years later, the cast varies on their level of homophobia, from Terry Crewes and Tyler James Williams (ugh!).

To Tequan Richmond and Imani Hakim (allies)

 To Vincent Martella, seen here at a Clippers game with Mikey Reid.

After Chris, he became the voice of Phineas in the animated Phineas and Ferb, which is endless: 140 episodes from 2007-2025, plus thousands of movies: Christmas Vacation, Across the Second Dimension, Mission Marvel....

Vincent has also done other animation work, like the video game Final Fantasy XIII, Batman: Death in the Family, and Disney Infinity

Left: Vincent and Mikey have fun during the COVID quarantine.

Vincent's live-action work includes Patrick in three episodes of The Walking Dead: he is a member of a zombie holocaust survivor community in an abandoned prison. Then he get sick, dies, zombifies, and creates a new zombie infestation.

I have a question about this Cupid costume.  

More after the break. 

The indexes are updated

 I've been running this website (under several names) since August 15, 2012, when I posted my first review: about the gay subtext between Arlo and Chad in Orange County (2002). 15 years later, I have over 2,700 posts and 23 million page views.  But I haven't revised the indexes for a long time, and they were a mess.  

So I have spent the last two days going through every index, fixing the layout and fonts, fixing broken links, removing outdated posts, and removing words that get censored under the new "don't say d*ck" policy.  I still need to add or delete a lot of posts from 2021-2025, but otherwise they are pristine.  I invite you to check them out:

Kids/Teen TV: Reviews of tv shows for children and teenagers with gay, gay-subtext, or homophobic content, from Aaron Stone to Zoey 101.

TV: Reviews of all other tv shows with gay, gay-subtext, or homophobic content, from Absolutely Fabulous to The Young Rebels.

Movies: Reviews of movies with gay, gay-subtext, or homophobic content, from African Journey to Zachariah.

Books/Comics: Authors, books, comic strips, and comic books with gay, gay-subtext, or homophobic content

Music/Dance: Bands, performers, individual songs, and a few ballets and operas with gay, gay subtext, or homophobic content.  

Art: Gay and beefcake art, artists who captured same-sex intimacy or the male form, and a few museums and festivals of gay interest.

Toys/Ghosts/Ads: Childhood toys, games, tv commercials, and magazine ads with gay and gay-subtext content. I'm also putting some paranormal and historical posts here, because where else would they go?

Actors A-L

Actors M-Z

"In the Hand of Dante": Film noir about an original Dante manuscript, set in a 1950s-era 2001. And it gets more confusing. And homophobic.

 Link to the n*de dudes

I love the Divine Comedy, at least the Inferno, where Virgil guides Dante through the stages of hell.  He puts the sodomites in the Seventh Circle, where fire rains down on those who "do violence against nature," but at least it permitted me to mention LGBT people in an Italian class in the 1980s, when otherwise the rule was "Don't mention them, they don't exist."  

So I'm going to watch the new movie In the Hands of Dante, about the discovery of an original Divine Comedy manuscript.  Maybe there will be gay characters, probably not, but I'll still get to hear that beginning phrase again: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura (at the midpoint of life's journey, I found myself lost in a dark forest).

We've all been there.

Scene 1: Dante climbs a rocky cliff.  Meanwhile, sometime in the 1940s or 1950s, an obnoxious novelist (Oscar Isaacs) complains to his friend that his books are too brilliant to be edited. "I'd rather the stableboy f*ck my wife than see my work edited." Heterosexual identity established immediately after his obnoxiousness.

Oscar Isaacs' backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

"So, what's your book about?"

"It's a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. I've been working on it for ten years." 

Friend squeezes his shoulder.  "You're still hot after ten years."  Wait -- are you flirting with him?

" By the way, who is Dante?"  Say what?  Who doesn't know Dante?

"An old dead guy.  But he got trapped in the cage of rhyme and meter.  I'm breaking out, so my translation will be far superior to the original."  The greatest work in Italian literature?  You planning to improve on "Hamlet" next?

Scene 2:  Newark, 1969.  A young boy enters a middle-class house and tells his Uncle, "I just killed some kid."  He explains that the boy (Gavin Weingarten) had a big knife, and asked if he wanted to die.  He tried to defend himself, they struggled, and he managed to stab Knife Boy.  

Since he doesn't know who the boy was, and no one saw them, Uncle says that he should forget about it.  But don't make "malarkey" a habit in the future.  Are you going to grow up to be Our Hero? But you're way too young. That would make the "I'm a better writer than Dante" conversation sometime in the 2000s, and it was obviously in the 1950s.  Maybe Uncle is Our Hero?

Scene 3: Bora Bora, seaside, 2001. Our Hero on a hammock, writing in his notebook about "creamy white gardenia blossoms" and "faded petroglyphs."  So you must be the Boy who killed someone, now middle aged, but it's a parallel world with the look and feel of the 1950s: no computers or cell phones, men wear hats and smoke constantly, writers use pencils. 

Our Hero tells us that the Nine Heavens of the Paradiso is a bad translation; It's really Nine Skies.  The last and rarest of them is the Sky of Illimitibleness.  Or you could say "Endless," if you weren't a pretentious jerk.

Cut to the Young Dante sitting under a tree, looking at the Illimitible Sky.  

Scene 4:  New York, 2001, "That time when the daylight sky was an oppressive, low-lying glare of white, and the dark of night was..."  So, summer.  Is this one of your stories, or really happening in-universe?    A greasy-haired guy named Louie (Gerard Butler, but blond and greasy) saunters into a closed bar and orders a Dewars and water.  He criticizes the bartender's moustache: "You see a guy with a moustache, he's either a cop or a (homophobic slur)."

I expected L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle, the love that moves the sun and the stars, and I'm getting Charles Bukowski, homophobia, and a parallel world where the 1950s never ended. 

"By the way, you ever take it up the *ss?" Louie asks.  "Might make a man out of you."  But then he calls him a c*cksucker.  Twice.  Are you homophobic or not, buddy?  

He criticizes the Bartender and his wife for being excessively ugly, and threatens his nine-year old daughter.

Next topic of conversation: the Bartender's Uncle, "a real fuckup," who opened the bar, but pissed his money away gambling.  Wait, is that the Uncle from 1969?  So the Bartender is Our Hero?  But he's supposed to be in Bora Bora, writing pretentious crap.  And the Uncle was elderly in 1969. No way he's alive in 2001.  

Unc owes the gang a lot of money, so his nephew the Bartender is going to provide it.  Louie takes tonight's proceeds, $1,200, then orders the Bartender to go downtown.  But he shoots him as soon as he gets on his knees.

What does this have to do with Dante?

Scene 4: Our Hero crying as he looks at the picture of a little girl.  Is this the Bartender's daughter, who was just threatened?

 He tells us that a young adult lady called him Nick, and then "Daddy."  So you were dating the Bartender's daughter -- but she was nine years old in 2001.  Have we jumped ahead to 2026?  Or is she a different person, and you were looking at a photo of the bartender's daughter to confuse viewers?  He kisses her goodbye as she is crying.  I'm crying, too, in  frustration over this nonsensical plot.

 Cut to the EMTs taking her body away. 

Cut to Our Hero, drunk and injured (a bloody bandage on his leg), climbing the rocks of Bora Bora.  He falls into the water, delighted: "I feel nothing of these open rocks."

More after the break.  Caution: It gets even more confusing, but there are d*cks