"Don't Feed the Humans": "Big Brother" with Anal Probes

Don't Feed the Humans, on Mondo Media and Youtube, is a 5-minute long webseries created by Jeff Shorkey.  It is set in an alien zoo, where a disparate group of abductees is forced to live together in a "human habitat."  Sort of like Big Brother with anal probes:

Jack, the central character, the voice of reason.

From left to right:
A Roman gladiator
Jack
A 1950s housewife
A professor of gender studies
A 1920s silent movie star
A redneck
The Girl

Episodes involve zookeeper Horf's misunderstandings of human culture and his attempts to increase patronage with tie-in merchandising, "human mating day," and so on.  There are also escape attempts, flashbacks to life before abduction, and some hetero-romantic entanglements.

The animation is cut-out, like South Park, with few changes of position or perspective, but the characters are pleasant, with a surprising amount of depth for animated paper dolls.

Almost everyone has past or present heterosexual interests, but the professor of gender studies is a lesbian, and there is extensive male bonding, even an occasional hint of homoerotic activity.  For instance, when Horf invites the aliens to his house for dinner, the redneck bonds with his teenage son, and the two go off to the bedroom together, ostensibly to get high.

Plus we get to see a lot of Jack.

Definitely worth an hour-long youtube binge.

Rod Stewart: Gay Rumors, Heterosexual Songs

This song has been going through my head for two days:

It's late September and I really should be back at school
I know I keep you amused, but I feel I'm being used
You led me away from home, just to save you from being alone

You stole my heart, and that's what really hurts

"Maggie Mae" (1971) is about a college boy who hooks up with an older woman, and finds that she has taken control of his life.  I had a similar experience with my first boyfriend Fred -- an older man (well, 28) who convinced me to leave home, drop out of college, and follow him cross-country to Omaha. I lasted five miserable weeks.

Rod Stewart's songs are overwhelmingly infused with "girls! girls! girls!" heterosexism, but when you are growing up in a world where gay people are assumed not to exist, you find meaning where you can. 

"Twisting the Night Away" (1972)
Here's a fellow in blue jeans, who's dancing with an older queen
dolled up in her diamond rings, twistin' the night away
Man you ought to see her go, twistin' to the rock and roll
Here you'll find the young and the old twistin' the night away

I didn't realize, at age 11, what a "queen" was, but by the time I got to West Hollywood, I did.

"Tonight's the Night" (1975):

Come on angel my hearts on fire
Don't deny your man's desire
You'd be a fool to stop this tide
Spread your wings and let me come inside

I didn't realize, at age 14, that this was a graphic image of heterosexual sex. I thought he was trying to get someone to "open up" metaphorically, to find an emotional connection.  During my first year in high school, I was trying, with little success, to find something "real," a boy I could actually care about, amid the incessant "date girls!  have sex with girls!" rhetoric.

"You're in my Heart" (1977).

I didn't know what day it was 
When you walked into the room
I said hello unnoticed
You said goodbye too soon

During my junior year in high school, I was depressed because I had never experienced this jaw-dropping, forget-your-name attraction.  Well, I had, but I didn't recognize it, because I thought that boys could only ever be attracted to girls.

"If Loving You is Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right" (1977)
Your mama and daddy say it's a shame
It's a downright disgrace
Long as I got you by my side
I don't care what your people say

The song is about a girl in love with a married man, but it could easily be applied to "the love that dare not speak its name."

Back in the 1970s, Rod Stewart had the androgynous air of a drag queen in training, and his highly publicized friendship with "bisexual" Elton John raised some rumors.  But closeted gay performers are usually homophobic, just to be on the safe side, and Stewart has always been gay-positive. 

His "Killing of Georgie" (1977), about a gay guy who leaves his small town for New York, and then is murdered (not in a homophobic hate crime), was the first pop song to talk about gay rights. In 2016, he noted that his youngest son Aiden, age five, liked dressing up like a lady. so he might be gay (most likely transgender, or just having fun).

Netflix's "Tales of the City": Not Your Grandfather's San Francisco

I thoroughy dislike the Tales of the City series of maudlin angst-ridden melodramatic novels, so watching the Netflix tv series wasn't near the top of my list.  But when I found out that the series was set in 2019, I was curious.  Mary Ann Singleton was in her mid-twenties when she moved to San Francisco in 1976, and got an apartment in the building of "feisty old broad" Anna Madrigal.  43 years later, Mary Ann would be in her 60s, and Anna Madrigal over 100.  How would they handle that?

So I sat down to watch two episodes.

They retconned all of the characters' ages and streamlined the melodramatic plot complications. Now Mary Ann (Laura Linney) moved to San Francisco in the 1990s, met Anna Madrigal and gay man Michael rather than a cast of thousands, married Brian, adopted a daughter, Shawna, and vanished in 1999 to pursue a career in tv journalism.  20 years later, she and her horrible estranged husband return for Anna's 90th birthday party.  Things have changed.

In the San Francisco of the 1970s (or I guess the 1990s), you were gay or straight, mostly straight.  Anna is a transwoman, but it was a deep secret, a big reveal far into the series.  Now San Francisco is a glittering, rainbow-flashing collage of nonchalant gender fluidity and pansexual queerness that make cisgender masculine-presenting gay men like Michael seem quaintly old-fashioned. 

And the old-guard residents of Barbary Lane are mostly there to provide advice and problems for the new generation.

The San Francisco of the novels was as white as a 1950s sitcom.  Now black people exist.   And East Asian, South Asian, Hispanic.  Actually, all of the new generation except Shawna are nonwhite post-racial "um...I guess my ancestors came from...IDK who cares?"

1. Shawna (Ellen Page), now 25 and working as a bartender in an eclectic queer bar, is so traumatized by her mother's disappearance that she can't commit to a relationship, but doesn't mind going out to the back alley for hookups with various gender-fluid people (Ida Best, her laid-back drag queen boss doesn't mind her leaving in mid-shift).  Eventually she starts dating the polyamorous couple Eli (Benjamin Thys) and Inka (Samantha Soule)

2. Wren (Michelle Buteau) is the neighbor/bff of Shawna's dad, Brian (Paul Gross, left, photo from when he was part of the new generation).

Paul is having trouble getting over Mary Ann (after 20 years?).  He has a Tinder full of women who are Mary Ann lookalikes, but he never swipes any of them, so Wren takes matters into her own hands.

3. Ben (Charlie Barnett of Russian Doll) is dating the much older Michael (Murray Bartlett), who no one ever calls Mouse.  He has to deal with the implications that he is a "boy toy," as well as the fact that Michael doesn't understand twentiesh culture.

Michael, meanwhile, finds in Ben a constant reminder of his own mortality.

I've dated a lot of guys 20-30 years younger than me, and never once did I get upset over the fact that they would probably outlive me.

4. Jake (nonbinary actor Garcia) has just transitioned, which bothers his partner Margot (May Hong) because now everyone mistakes them for a heterosexual couple, and what's the point of being queer if no one knows that you're queer? 

Margot also misses being in a lesbian relationship, while Jake, exploring an interest in guys, begins dating Flaco (Juan Castano).

5. Twins Ani (Ashley Park) and Raven (Christopher Larkin, left) are Instagram performance artists who change their identities regularly.

There are many other members of the new generation, some of whom are masculine-presenting, so beefcake is not a problem.  lots of bare chests and bare butts.  The sex scenes are mostly same-sex.

And the things I hate about the novels are mostly absent: no convoluted interconnections, no existential angst, no gloom-and-doom. At least in the new generation.  The old guard has secrets to be revealed.

Still, I'm not sure I find the new generation engaging enough to want to know more about their lives.  Maybe if there are more bare chests and butts.

My grade: B.

See also: Tales of the City, Gay San Francisco, Who Cares?