8 Things I Like and 8 Things Hate about Macaulay Culkin

 

First, things I hate about Mac:

1.My Girl.  Actually this should be counted twice, since it has two things that get me running from the theater: "Heterosexual romance is the meaning of life" and movies about dying children. 

2. The Good Son. Homicidal preteen.  It's not nurture, it's nature.  Plus incest and preteen hetero-romance.

3. His cringy relationship with Michael Jackson. Although he said later that there was no inappropriate behavior, it's still cringy.

4. Party Monster: Guy leading a decadent gay "lifestyle" gets saved by the Love of a Woman, but backslides and turns gay again.  

5. American Horror Story: gay hustler spends all of his time buddying up to women and having sex with women.

6. He's got extra-femme mannerisms, so everyone thinks that he's gay, but he's actually straight.

7. He almost never shows off his physique on screen, or even on his Instagram page.

8. Some of his comments about girlfriend Brenda Song and their child have been criticized as racist: "You know how I can tell she's Asian?  The shape of her eyes!" 

Things that I like:

1. Home Alone, of course.

2. Saved, about a "gay conversion" camp, although it's actually a heterosexual romance, with the gay characters just there to justify the "gay conversion" angle.

3. His role in The Righteous Gemstones as Harmon, a special needs adult who was abandoned by his father in a shopping mall --at Christmas.  

4. Although Mac appeared in only two scenes and never interacted with Tony Cavalero's Keefe, they became friends. 

5. I met him once.  He seemed nice.

6. He looks good in a winter parka

7. He does a Bunny Ears podcast, parodying celebrity gossip podcasts.

8. His middle name is "Macaulay Culkin"

See also: Gay Characters with Girlfriends

Andrew Rannells and Adam Devine: Can a straight guy and a gay guy find true love? With bonus bulge, butt, and dick pics

  

Looking for Adam Devine content, I came across a Reddit post stating that he and Andrew Rannells were bromantic partners.  Plus a 2015 interview in PopSuger proclaiming that they are "Your New Favorite Comedy Duo," 

First question: wasn't Adam already involved with Zac Efron?  How many men can a straight guy be in love with, and still identify as straight?

Second question: Andrew is gay, and has a boyfriend.  Can a straight guy and a gay guy have a bromance?  Regular platonic friendship, sure, but wouldn't an intense, passionate, physical relationship get weird?  Surely the "we might be having gay sex, har har" jokes would be ruined if one of the guys was really having gay sex. 

Third question: In what way were they a comedy duo?  The PopSugar interview was about them starring together in The Intern (2015), featuring Robert DeNiro as an oldster who becomes a "senior intern" at an online women's clothing company.  Andrew plays Cameron, the Vice President, who pitches the senior intern idea, and Adam plays Josh, an employee whom DeNiro helps with his (heterosexual) love life.  They don't interact.

They also appeared together in Why Him (2015), known as The Boyfriend in French.  Andrew plays Blaine Pederman, owner of an online greeting company (like greeting cards without the stamps), one of the guys hanging out with app billionaire and gay sex aficionado Tyson Modell (Adam); but they barely interact.  Tyson spends more time falling in love with Scotty Fleming, son of the focus character.

Extensive research has yielded no evidence that Adam and Andrew had an off-screen frienddship.  I think it was just an advertising stunt that some Reddit-ers took seriously.

Oh, well, at least it gives me an excuse to post some nude pics of the guys on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends.

See also: My review of Why Him?

Saturday Morning with Joel and the Bots

During the 1990s, when I was living in West Hollywood, we watched a show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 every Saturday morning, before gong off to buy groceries or go to the gym or do whatever errands needed doing.

I remember a thousand Saturday mornings, eternal, brightly-colored, golden like Lewis Carroll's "golden afternoons," except in my memory  it wasn't summertime.  It was always those magical few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

MST3K was about a grown-up kid lost far from home: the smiling, laconic Joel (Joel Hodgson) has been zapped into space, onto the phallic-looking "Satellite of Love,"  where two mad scientists torture him by forcing him to watch horribly inept "cheesy movies."

 
After five seasons (1989-1994), Joel escaped to Earth, and the mad scientists abducted the hunkier Mike  (Mike Nelson above), who stayed on for ten seasons, until the series ended in 2004.

Joel, Mike and the "bots" (their robot chums, Tom Servo and Crow) stayed sane through the worst of bad-movie torture by making fun of the artifice and ineptness -- jokes, pop culture references, and sarcastic comments came fast and furious.  There were also interstitial sketches and comedy bits, often with guest stars from the movies being riffed.

The riffs and interstitials often made homoerotic subtexts visible, and many of the movies featured extensive beefcake, but that's not enough to make my memory of the basic-cable farce "golden."

Maybe MST3K was a metaphor.  Most gay people are trapped far from home.  The overlords are constantly torturing them with heterosexist statements and scenes, proclaiming over and over again that no gay people exist, hoping that eventually they will cease to exist.  The only way to stay sane is to laugh, to riff on the ineptness and artifice of the heterosexist myth.

It is no wonder that the slow, ponderous final theme, played over the ending credits, always filled me with a profound sadness.

10 Things You Should Know about Noah Schnapp. Most do not involve hazelnut spread

1. He plays Will Byers: a shy, artistic boy who gets zapped into a scary alternative universe in Season 1 of Stranger Things.   In later seasons, he becomes upset when his friend Mike gets a girlfriend and doesn't want to hang out as much.  Mike tries to explain that every boy becomes interested in girls; it's part of growing up.  But Will isn't having it. Fans began speculating that Will was gay.  The showrunners confirmed that he is, but he has not yet come out on the show.

2. He has been criticized for his long, slow coming out process, but he counters that the show is set in the 1980s, where teachers and parents generally pretended that same-sex desire and practice did not exist.  So Will is unlikely to realize that being gay is even possible, or else he'll think that he is the only gay person on Earth.

3. He has 14 credits on the IMDB, including Hubie Halloween and The Tutor.

4.  In January 2023, Noah came out to his family and friends.   He then came out to his fans on TikTok, saying "I'm more similar to Will than I thought."  His first Gay Pride was in New York in 2023.

5. He has a Facebook page, but it seems to be just dozens of ads for TBH.  He doesn't say what it is: he just shows the jar and assure you that it's the most incredbily amazing, fantastic thing that ever existed.  You have to click on the link to the company website to find out that it's hazelnut spread (like an incredibly nutritious peanut butter).

Sorry if I sound sarcastic, but I was expecting pictures of Noah hugging a boyfriend, and instead I get commercials.

6.. Noah's favorite social media site for non-hazelnut posts is TikTok.  One of his TikTok posts accidentally showed his penis, but he deleted it right away.  He was over 18 at the time, so technically it was legal, just embarrassisng.

More after the break

"Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts": Specifically, Literally, Audibly, and Canonically Gay

Kipo (Karen Fukuhara), a cheerful, adventurous 13-year old girl living in a post-Apocalyptic "burrow," is swept onto the surface by an  underground earthquake.  It's forbidden for burrow dwellers to go "above," and she is horrified by the tales she has heard.  But she has to travel through a ruined city to get home.

A lot of the script is Korean, so I'm thinking Seoul.

The surface is occupied by many mutated animals, some sentient, some not.

Mod Frogs, concerned with fashion and world domination, appear to be the dominant species.  But there are also tribes of Timbercats, Snäkes with umlauts, Newton Wolves, and Fitness Raccoons.  It reminds me of Kamandi, the last boy in the world, in 1970s DC comics.

The big bad, a mutated mandrill named Scarlemagne (Dan Stevens), is particularly interested in Kipo, and keeps sending his agents to capture her.

 Fortunately, Kipo's father Lio (Sterling K. Brown, who played a gay character on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) has been to the surface before -- for reasons of his own --  and left clues about how to get back down below.

Kipo hooks up with:
1. Wolf (Sydney Mikayla), a warrior-girl who grew up on the surface

2. Benson (Coy Stewart, seen here playing a gay teen opposite Nolan Gould in a music video).  He's a fun-loving, carefree 13-year old who has spent several years on the surface.

3. Dave (Deon Cole), a sentient bug about the size of a human baby, who turns into a muscular superhero, but never when it would be useful.

A lot of beefcake and gay connections in the voice cast.  On the show, it seems obvious that  Benson and Kipa are going to fall in lo-ooo-oove.  But I skipped to the last episode to make sure:

They get back to the burrow.   It is ruled by Hoag, an over-fastidious, micro-managing type.   And...and...

Benson has a meet-cute with a boy.  A boy with pink hair and twin earrings yet.  "I think I'm falling in love with you" plays in the background.

Um...um...Benson is gay.

The episode ends with the four friends starting out on a new adventure, so Benson won't have time to do much dating, but...

It's not just subtext.

More research reveals that in one episode, when a monster makes them live their "biggest dreams" so it can live on their brain energy, Benson dreams of a rad party with dozens of cute boys.

And his plot arc involves looking for a boyfriend.

And he specifically, literally, audibly, and canonically says:  "I'm gay."

"Merry Happy Something": Watch it with the Family Bigot

Spending Christmas with The Relatives on the other side of the world is always stressful: stuck in a house for two weeks with no exercise unless it's nice enough to jog outside, forced to watch...ugh...sports and eat...ugh...meals prepared by people who think potato chips are vegetables, all the while deflecting conversations about religion, politics, Muslims, and homa-sekshuls (you don't want the Family Bigot to start screaming).

Spending Christmas with the boyfriend's relatives is even worse, since you have to switch instantly from boyfriend to "roommate" depending on which member of the extended family knows. And sometimes you aren't informed in advance.  I once spent an entire afternoon being "the roommate" for my boyfriend's aunt, only to hear "Oh, she's known since I was 12."

So when I saw that Netflix released Merry Happy Whatever, an entire eight-episode tv series about the horrors of meeting The Relatives at Christmas, I planned to watch.  No doubt it would be infinitely heterosexist.  So what?  It would still be a good cure for the Day After Thanksgiving malaise, with The Visit looming.

It's a traditional multi-camera sound-stage sitcom, with a couch downstage center facing what is supposed to be a tv set.  With a laugh-track yet.  How retro!

L.A. hipster and aspiring musician Matt (Brent Morin, below) agrees to fly cross country to small-town Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to spend a 10-day Christmas vacation visiting the Family of his girlfriend Emmy.

10 days?  That was his first mistake.

Family Patriarch Don Quinn (1980s hunk Dennis Quaid), a small-town Sheriff, seems to be channeling Tim Allen on Home Improvement, or maybe William Shatner on S* My Dad Says.  Sports, tools, cars, grunting, flee from anything feminine.

He's got ancient gender-based hangups on everything from women working to men wearing the wrong kind of shoes, plus a few that I never even heard of, like "only women should decorate the Christmas tree."

And he has three children (not counting Emmy) who are totally on board with his cave man machismo, and three in-laws who are trying hard to avoid his wrath by pretending to be:

1.Dimwitted jock son Sean (Hayes MacArthur, top photo) is generally a success: wife, house, job, kids, the litany of male accomplishments that I heard incessantly while growing up.  Then he loses his job, and is afraid to tell his wife, Joy (Elizabeth Ho), because a man who can't support his family is not a real man.

And their 12-year old son, Sean Jr. (Mason Davis), ha a heart-to-heart about "feelings" that he's been "trying to hide."  They brace themselves for a coming-out, but Sean Jr. means that he's an atheist.  Almost as bad for this conservative Catholic family!

2. Chirpy housewife Patsy is married, but has been unable to conceive a child.It must  be due to the less-than-manly sperm of her husband  Todd (Adam Rose). Also he's Jewish, but terrified of suggesting the most innocuous dreidel to augment the Birth of Baby Jesus.   

3. Aggressive, controlling Kayla (Ashley Tinsdale)  is married to mild-mannered Alan (Tyler Ritter, left). But when they arrive for the first of 10 traditional holiday gatherings with the Family, he announces that he wants a divorce. They're arguing all the time, and they haven't had sex in a year.

Kayla begins dropping broad hints that the reason they broke up is: she is not attracted to men. In fact, she likes women -- a lot.  She comes out as a lesbian to Matt, but is afraid to tell the Family. Wouldn't you be?

When Matt falls into this maelstrom, Dad immediately labels him "a woman" because he is a musician, doesn't like sports, faints at the sight of a needle, and is from California.  Aren't they all sort of iffy out there?   The rest of the Family, sensing that he' the weakest member of the pack, fall in line:

Matt: Where is everybody?
Patsy:  The men all went out to get a Christmas tree.
Matt:  Well, not all the men.
Patsy:  All the real men.

At first Matt tries to macho up and bond with Dad, but then he changes his tactics, pushing back against Dad's gender-role malarky.  Men can be sensitive, artistic, intellectual, non-sports enthusiasts.

Energized, the others start pushing back, too.  Todd gets the nerve to suggest adding some Jewish traditions to the household.

Sean gets the nerve to tell Dad that he lost his job, AND that his son is an atheist.

In the last episode, set on New Year's Eve, Kayla comes out.  The Family gathers for a group hug, and Dad gives her a rainbow-flag keychain.  Matt's intervention has worked wonders.

I think I'll watch this show again in a couple of weeks, when I'm back home visiting The Relatives.