Fill Your Beefcake Quota with "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul"

Fans are upset because the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie, The Long Hall (2017), doesn't star Zachary Gordon or Devon Bostick.

Come on, the guy is 19 years old and buffed.  Do you really want him playing the 11-year old wimp Greg Heffley?

Jason Drucker, seen here with "Rowley" Owen Aztalos, is really 11 years old.  A better choice.

And actor/model Charlie Wright as sarcastic older brother Rodrick has some beefcake potential that Devon Bostick didn't.

Plus there are many other opportunities for physique-watching.  Hot tubs, showers, swimming pools.  Check out Tom Everett Scott, who played Johnny Galecki's boyfriend on stage, as Dad.

It's a road movie, so the usual junior high nightmares take a back seat to hotel and roadside-amusement nightmares and Greg's quest to meet Mac Digby, the creator of his favorite video game, plus an ongoing antagonist, Mr. Beardo (Chris Coppola).  He gets a shower AND a hot tub scene.

No heteronormative "boy meets girl" preteen romance, only minimal homophobic anxiety-jokes -- in that regard, it's far superior to its predecessors.

Unfortunately, it eschews plot development for scatological jokes and seeing how much abuse Greg's body can take -- it takes a lot. I suggest renting the DVD and going through on fast forward.

See also: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Extreme Bodybuilding: When Your Biceps are Bigger than Your Head

There are many theories about why most people find muscular male bodies beautiful.

1. They represent health and vitality.

2. Their strength suggests sexual potency.

3. They are able to protect us from a dangerous world.

4. They suggest the wealth necessary to spend hours at the gym.

The ideal male physique displays symmetry and definition, with every muscle group visible.  The muscles should be big, but not so big that they stand out, calling attention to themselves and ruining the symmetry.

Some guys, however, prefer size to symmetry.  A combination of genetics, over-training, and steroids lead to huge over-development of some muscle groups.














The biceps and triceps are particularly easy to over-train.  When your bicep is bigger than your head and your triceps look like goiters, the symmetry of your physique is ruined.

Where does the tricep end and the chest begin?

If this isn't photoshopped, this guy has over-developed his trapezius, biceps, triceps, and calves.

That's got to be photoshopped.

Why do they do it?  According to extreme bodybuilder Greg Valentino, it's about the challenge, about getting as big as they possibly can.

Who cares about symmetry? Who cares about physical attractiveness?  Who cares about what other bodybuilders think?

Size is all that matters.

The Kid Named Moosie

How could you not like a kid named Moosie?

Born in 1964, Moosie Drier was a force to be reckoned with during the 1970s and 1980s.

1. He appeared everywhere.  He had recurring roles a kid-regular on the hip variety show Laugh-In (1971-73) and as Howard Borden's son on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-77).   Plus guest shots on The Waltons, Adam-12, Police Story, Chips, the A-Team, and Hunter. Plus movies: American Hot Wax, Homeward Bound, Hollywood Knights.

2. He was well-known to kids, due to his string of after-school specials, weekend specials, school break specials, and special treats (short, "relevant" dramas aimed at a preteen or early teen audience).  Unfortunately, though sometimes his characters are gay-vague, more often they are paired with a girl..

 Runaway (1974): a streetwise boy assists a runaway teenage girl.
Hewitt's Just Different (1977): a teenage boy befriends a mentally retarded peer.
 If I'm Lost, How Come I Found You? (1978): a runaway orphan finds a surrogate Dad.
The House at 12 Rose Avenue (1980), with Chris Petersen: a white boy befriends a black family.
Student Court (1985): a student court tries a shoplifter.

3. He was especially well-known to gay kids, because of cute smile, cool hair, and total inability to keep his shirt on.

4. He was well-known to adults because he worked with nearly every comedy legend in the business, including George Burns, Tim Conway, Cloris Leachman, Jay Leno, and Dean Jones. And those he didn't work with, he played: Mickey Rooney in Rainbow (1978).

5. He remains especially well known to gay adults, because of his frequent voice over and dialogue work on gay-friendly projects such as American Beauty (1999) and 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002).

Some of his recent work includes The Book of Life (which sounds like a fundamentalist Christian tract, but is actually a heroic fantasy), The Comeback Kids (about former child stars), and The Fur is Gone (behind the scenes at the Actors Co-Op in Hollywood).

He's also been doing theater, including Tennessee Williams' gay-subtext Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Here's a 2016 photo.  He's with Erin Murphy of Bewitched at a Christmas tree decorating benefit for A Minor Consideration.

I don't know if Moosie is gay or not, but there's no wife listed on imdb or wikipedia.

Joe Dempsie: From Gay Skin to Gladiator

The two boys checking out each others' packages are Chris and Max (Joe Dempsie, Mitch Hewer) of the British teen drama Skin (2004-2007), which was controversial for its portrayal of teenage nudity, and sex.  Max is gay, and Chis is straight, but a sexual opportunist, up for anything that will help him accomplish his devious plans.

The actors are friends in real life, both Straight but Not Narrow.  Mitch Hewer has played gay characters several times, and Joe has played a gay teenager in the British radio play Once Upon a Time (2010), and several gay-subtext characters.

1. Clive on an episode of Doctor Who.

2. Will, an old friend of Merlin's














The villain John in The Fades is heterosexual, but at least he gets naked.

From 2010 to 2013 he played Gendry in the heroic fantasy series Game of Thrones.   He didn't expressed any romantic interest in anyone for many episodes, giving gay fans the opportunity to "read" him as gay.  But it was a "tease."  Gendry eventually fell in love with a woman.

Philipp Danne: Teen Horror Hunk

Born in 1985, Philipp Danne is well-known in Germany as a hunk with a chiseled physique who specializes in horror movies: his characters encounter zombies and monsters, a virus that turns you into a zombie, and a few psycho-slashers.

  Hunks in horror movies usually spend so much time falling in love with women before, during, and after the crisis that men are either irrelevant or competitors, but Philipp seems to be surrounded by male friends instead.  And he's had time for a few especially intense gay subtexts in his non-horror related roles:

Klaus, best friend of class bully Diego (Martin Dimant) in The School Trip (2004).

Robert Greinier, the high school swimmer who competes with Rico (Fredrick Lau) and is killed in Freischwimmer (2007).

I haven't seen the Finnish film Black Ice (2007), about a heterosexual romantic triangle, but rumor has it that Philipp plays a gay-vague character (not one of the triangle participants).

Der Mann auf dem Baum (2011): about unmarried father Hans (Jan Josef Liefers) buddy-bonding with the college student Martin (Philipp) after they collide in a skateboarding accident.  They team up to prevent Hans' son from being taken away to Denmark.

And that's not including his tv work.

Lion Boy's Incredible Changing Age

Not the boy from L'Enfant Lion (1993), a movie directed by  Patrick Grandperret.  This is a weird Tarzan clone from the Golden Age of comic books.  He appeared in 16 issues of Hit Comics between 1940 and 1942, but never got a cover.




Lion Boy has a traditional Tarzan back story: parents killed when their plane crashed in the jungle, raised by lions. Ok, he was raised by lions -- that's why he wears a leopard skin loincloth (sometimes).

How long ago was that plane crash, exactly?  Lion Boy varies tremendously in size.  Sometimes he stands waist-high to the adults, and sometimes he's taller.

And in muscularity: sometimes he's buffed, sometimes not.

And in hair and loincloth-color.

Not just betwen stories: between panels.  Here he seems to have aged from about 6 to about 16 in ten seconds.

Now he is a tall, slim young adult, and his loincloth has changed into yellow shorts.

George Tuska (1916-2009) wrote the script under the pen name Merton Holmes.  He worked on many classic books, including Crime Does Not Pay, Captain Marvel, The Incredible Hulk, Ka-Za, Superboy, The Teen Titans, and Iron Man.

Guess he was too busy to use a model sheet.