"The Summer I Turned Pretty," Season 2: As God is my witness, I heard Spike say he was dating a boy

 

I reviewed The Summer I Turned Pretty last summer, and said it had a lot of gay potential.  The second season just dropped on Amazon Prime, so I'll see if any of that potential was realized.  The premise: a poor girl (actually upper-upper middle classt and her famous-writer mother spend the summer with Mom's ultra-rich ex-girlfriend and her two hot teenage sons, both of whom are in love with her.  

Season One Recap: Not promising.  I lost track of the number of boy-girl smooches.  It looks like both brothers and a third guy are in love with her.  For a girl named "Belly," she gets a lot of action. The only other plot point appears to be either Mom or her ex-girlfriend dying of cancer.  

Scene 1: It's the second summer that Belly's been pretty.  She lounges by the pool, the two brothers.  Psych!  It was a daydream!  She's actually in class, she's broken up with Conrad, and the lady with cancer has died.  "Escaping to your dreams is easier than living with your memories," she muses. But not to worry, Corey (Louis Tomeo, left), the hot guy who sits in front of her picked this moment to flirt. Except we never see him again.  He's just there to signify that everyone is intensely attracted to Belly.

Switch to Belly smooching with Conrad (Christopher Briney, top photo), the first of the brothers  "This almost doesn't seem real."  Psych!  This one isn't a dream -- it's a memory from last summer.  

The memory continues:  Conrad tells her how much he loves her, Belly drops a bombshell: "Your brother and I have been dating, too.  He's got a bigger cock than you, but you are better looking.  I don't know which to choose."  Ok, I may have edited the dialogue slightly. 

Conrad talks her into breaking up with Cock Boy.  They sneak into the house and talk to Cancer Mom, who is delighted to see that her son is heterosexual.  They grin and giggle for a long time, enjoying their shared heterosexual privilege. 

Scene 2: Back in the present, the teacher dismisses the class for the summer.  Despondent, Belly starts unloading her locker.  A clump of girls tries to talk  her into volleyball camp, and Steven (Sean Kaufman, left) whoops and hollers about going to Princeton in the fall.  He just found out now?  

His friend, a long-haired boy named Spike (Colby Burton),  rushes up, exuberant about the upcoming graduation party: "I'm dating the singer."  One of the girls complains that his boyfriend is a  "Machine Gun Kelly wannabe." 

Since when do 1930s gangsters sing?  Oh, he's actually an alternative rock/hip hop singer. So unless I misunderstood the dialogue, Spike is dating a boy.

Next Belly's counselor tells her that  her grades took a nosedive, and she dropped out of volleyball, so her chances of getting into a good college are nil.  That's not true.  I got a D in chemistry and still got into a...um...college.  "Have you thought of Finch Blockhead Academy?  They let in anyone with money."

More Cock Boy after the break

"Soap": The First Gay Human on TV

During the 1970s, gay characters were rare on tv. Maybe three or four times a year, there would be a killer transvestite on a drama or a "visiting friend comes out"on a sitcom.  But even those three or four would be invisible, described in TV Guide as "a shocking killer" or "a visiting friend has a secret."

That all changed on September 13, 1977, a Tuesday night, at 8:30 pm, the end of a night of blockbuster must-see tv: Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Three's Company.  Then, while sprightly music played, an announcer said:  ""This is the story of two sisters—Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell".

Later episodes would give a brief plot synopsis, followed by "Confused? You won't be after this episode of...Soap."

You needed the plot synopsis!  Soap was a soap opera spoof, with plotlines as over-the-top as anything General Hospital or One Life to Live could throw at you.

The two families were:

The wealthy Tates

1. Ditzy, horny Jessica Tate (Katherine Helmond,  later known as the ditzy, horny Mona on Who's the Boss).  She has affairs, goes on trial for murder, and ends up in a coma in South America (but still butting in).

2. Stick-in-the mud husband Chester (Robert Mandan), who mostly just has affairs and goes to prison

3. Teenage Billy (Jimmy Baio, left), who joins a cult and is seduced by his teacher (then, when he dumps her, she keeps trying to kill him).

4.  Twenty-something Corinne (Diana Canova), who has various boyfriends, including the priest Father Tim (Sal Viscuso) and the criminal Dutch (Donnelly Rhodes).

5. The sarcastic butler (Robert Guillaume).

The working-class Campbells

1. Stable, sane Mary (Cathryn Damon), Jessica's sister.

2. Her dopey husband Burt (Richard Mulligan), who accidentally killed some people, thinks he's invisible, and gets abducted by aliens and replaced by a clone.

3. Their "sons," Chuck and Bob (Jay Johnson, right).  Chuck is the living one, Bob the ventriloquist's dummy...um, I mean assistant, who everyone treats as real.

4. Danny (Ted Wass, top photo), another son, a gangster who has a variety of girlfriends who die or get kidnapped or reject him.

5. Jodie (Billy Crystal), who is gay.

You heard me.

The first gay regular character on network television!

The writers didn't quite know what "gay" meant.  Jodie starts off planning a sex-change operation so he can be with his closeted boyfriend.  Then he's gay.  Then he falls in love with a lesbian, so I guess he's bi?  Then he's gay again.

But he has no swishy mannerisms.

And his family is completely supportive, even if they don't understand (which gives him an opportunity for several Gay 101 lessons):

Jessica:  You know, Jodie, in my day there were no such thing as homosexuals.
Jodie:  Aunt Jessica, there have been homosexuals since ancient times.
Jessica: Who?
Jodie:  Aristotle, Plato.
Jessica: Plato????  Mickey Mouse's dog was gay?

Plus Jodie was a full participant in plotlines that weren't about him.  He wasn't there just for the Gay 101 lessons.  He lived an everyday life (as everyday as the Tates and Campbells got, anyway), discussing the day's crisis along with everyone else.  An equal.

For the first time in television history, we could tune in every week to watch a gay person being human.

"Big CIty Greens": Disney Channel Cartoon with Gay Characters (If You Freeze Frame and Use a Magnifying Glass)

 

Big City Greens is a Disney Channel animated series about a family of hillbillies -- Dad Bill, tween son Cricket, preteen daughter Tilly, Grandma -- who move to the big city (named Big City), where they start a farm.  Sounds like the Beverly Hillbillies so far.  It's reputed to have a gay character, so I watched the season 1 episode "Valentine Dance."

Scene 1: Cricket complains as the family (plus Bill's lady friend) go to a "mushy Valentine's Dance."  Tilly supports "love in its many forms," but Grandma disapproves: "in my day, you didn't dance until you were married."

Inside -- two male-female couples dancing -- Tilly vows to be like Cupid and "make someone fall in love tonight."  Cricket meets his friends, who ask if he's going to "ask a girl to dance."  He says no, since "dancing with a girl is the gateway to falling in love.  Love takes away your freedom. Better to just do dude stuff, like those two guys."  

We see a blue-purple gay couple dancing together.  So there are gay people in Big City, but Cricket, being from the country, is unaware that they exist.

Scene 2:  The adults get their assignments: Dad Bill mans the snack table, and Lady Friend and Grandma will work as a chaperones.  Wait -- is this a kids' dance?  Looks like mostly adults on the dance floor.

Meanwhile, Cricket and his friends are reveling in their freedom from girls, yelling: "Boys! Boys! Boys!"  That's my motto, too.   Suddenly a girl interrupts to ask Cricket to dance.  Gasp!  It's the Girl of His Dreams, all glittery in slow motion!  Heterosexist cliche, but I guess if you're five years old, it's new to you.  

Uh-oh, now Cricket is torn between loyalty to his friends and his libido.  He runs away, only to bump into the teenage Gloria. He reveals his conflicting emotion, and she diagnoses: "You have a crush on this girl!"  

Scene 3:  Tilly has taken the bow and arrow from a statue of Cupid, and is shooting people at random: Gloria, plus the male half of three male-female couples.  But no one is falling in love, so she prays to Cupid for guidance.  

She shoots her last arrow at the blue half of the gay couple, saying "You poor pitiful creature, you're about to fall in love!" (he has a boyfriend!  But I guess that doesn't count).  He bends over at the last moment, and the arrow boomerangs and hits Tilly.  She falls in love with a statue of a muscular man.

Meanwhile, Cricket is horrified by flashes of visions about marrying The Girl, feeding her grapes, kissing her, and so on.  He rushes into the gym and climbs into the swimming pool, hoping that the water will keep his heterosexual feelings at bay.  But The Girl is there, for some reason, so he runs back to the dance. 

Scene 4: If he can just surround himself with guys, Cricket won't fall in love (that never worked for me).   But all of his guy friends are now dancing with girls!  His last defense has fallen!  Wait -- maybe if he turns on the sprinklers, he can dampen the boys' ardour and save them.

Lady Friend stops him before he can dampen the party, and wants to know why he's so averse to falling in love.  "Because love creates nothing but pain."  She says that love creates joy, too, so Cricket decides to face his destiny.  He finds the Girl of His Dreams and tells her that he's ready to embrace his love.  But he was acting so weird that she asked another boy to dance instead.  

Scene 4: Cricket ends up dancing with the teenage girl (whose boyfriend never showed up), Dad dances with Lady Friend (actually his ex-wife, Nancy), Tilly dances with the statue.  We pan out to a dance floor occupied by eight boy-girl couples, and if you freeze frame and look carefully, the bottom halves of the gay couple from Scene 1.  

By the way, the gay couple is Alexander (the blue one) and Terry (the purple one, who never speaks).  They appear in six episodes.  According to series creator Chris Houghton, they are intended to be a gay couple, but no one ever identifies them as such, to provide deniability: "They could just be best friends." Just in case Mom and Dad don't want Junior to know that gay people exist until he turns 21. If then.

But that tiny bit of representation is drowned out by incessant heteronormative "love means boys and girls!"  

"Asteroid City": Bleak 1950s play within a play within a play, with one tiny gay kiss and some bonus butts and dicks

Movie night was Asteroid City (2023), which I thought would be about atomic testing in Nevada in the 1950s.  Instead, I was watching the Theater of the Absurd.  Maybe Ionesco, where your mother turns into a giraffe and offers you brownies,  or a Monte Python episode where one sketch bleeds into another, so Vikings are suddenly talking to the Minister of Finance about the hippodrome tariff. 

Link to NSFW version

As far as I can tell, there are two plays with plays.

1. In an old-fashioned black and white tv studio, a narrator tells us that what we are witnessing is a story, not real. The curtain opens to reveal:

2. The Playwright (Edward Norton, top) auditioning an actor for the lead in his play (Jason Schwartzman), who brings him ice cream, changes into a different costume, and delivers a nonsequiter monologue.  They kiss.  But don't get excited: it's in the distance, and never referenced again, while there are three or four heterosexual romances coming up. We cut to the main story:

A lot of people arrive for the Junior Stargazers' Convention in Asteroid City, Nevada, where an asteroid crashed a long time ago (they mean a meteor).  During the opening speeches, an alien descends from a spaceship and grabs the asteroid.  Everyone is put under quarantine, while the government tries to convince them that nothing happened.  After a week, the government is about to lift the quarantine, but the alien returns and gives the asteroid back.  The quarantine is on again, but everyone riots, and the next day they are gone.  Maybe it was all a dream.

While all this is going on, there are several soap opera stories.  Steinbeck (Jason Schwartzman again, I think) arrives with his son and three young daughters.  He was going to leave the son and go on to his wealthy father-in-law's house to bury his wife's ashes, but his car broke down.  During the quarantine his three daughters, who are witches, bury the ashes in the desert and perform a spell to resurrect her.  She isn't actually resurrected, but she apparently appears in a flashback or flash-sideways scene.

Left: This is Jason Schwartzman's penis.  It is not Jason Schwartzman's penis, it is a salami.  It is not a salami, it is the diary of a 17th century French poet who wrote about salamis.

I figured that Steinbeck must be the famous novelist and nude model, who was active in Hollywood at the time, so I went scurrying to wikipedia for his biography.  It doesn't match.

Matt Dillon plays a mechanic who is examining Steinbeck's car, when a part he has never seen before falls out and starts sputtering. He never appears again. 

More nonsequiters after the break.

Jak and Kelton visit the Citadel: Beach Day, Dick Day, wrestling, modeling, dating, and a tour of the campus

  

Jak Kristowski is a South Carolina-based media influencer, actor, producer, model, Disney fan, Baptist, missionary, and surfer.  His stage credits include  Aladdin: the Musical, David vs. Goliath, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jr., and Anastasia, and he is the executive producer of the fan-based movie Spider-Man: The Dark Age.

Link to NSFW version

In Episode 3.9 of The Righteous Gemstones, Jesse sends his wayward son Pontius to The Citadel, the South Carolina military college.  Jak was cast as one of Pontius's classmates. 

His scene was cut. but he got to meet Jody Hill, Danny McBride, and Kelton Dumont, he got a free lunch and a campus tour, and of course he still was paid.  He posted some pics of his experience on his instagram, and I added some of my own.

The Citadel enrolls  2,300 cadets who want the military-style education they might receive at West Point or Annapolis, but without the obligation of entering the military after graduating.  No Battle Logistics: you major in one of the standard academic subjects, like English or history.

The library and student union don't look much different from those of other colleges, except for the uniforms

More cadets after the break

Peter Parros: Hookups with the Hunk of "Knightrider"

I never saw Knight Rider (1982-1986), with 1980s hunk David Hasselhoff as a secret agent with a magic talking car. I had other things to do on Friday nights, and besides, the premise made me uncomfortable:
The title is a pun on "night riders," the Ku Klux Klan.
Michael Knight works for the Foundation for Law and Government, which sounds right-wing reactionary.
And the car, KITT, is voiced by William Daniels, who played a disgusting homophobe on St. Elsewhere.

But I did like Peter Parros, who played Michael's sidekick in Season 4. A scene where they are tied up side-by-side in muscle shirts got saved to a VHS tape, and made the rounds of West Hollywood parties, along with frequent stories of hookups.  (But usually in a three-way with David Hasselhoff, which made the veracity of the stories suspect.)

Is there anything else you need to know about him?

How about: Knight Rider was his first starring role.  He moved on to play a variety of soap opera hunks, on One Life to Live, The Young and the Restless, and As the World Turns.

In The Haves and the Have Nots (2013-), a soap opera with a primarily African-American cast, Peter plays David Harrington (nice soap opera name!), who is supportive of his gay son in spite of his wife's homophobia.

Peter has never made any public coming-out statements, but I know several guys in West Hollywood who claim to have seen his beneath -the-belt attributes  (in a word, spectacular).

Watching Monty Python's Flying Circus

When PBS came to Rock Island, it brought us a full-fledged British invasion. Sitcoms (Father Dear Father, Good Neighbors), science fiction (The Prisoner, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), costume drama (Upstairs Downstairs) -- and since they were on PBS, they were all educational, approved even by teachers who derided all other tv as "mindless trash."

Monty Python's Flying Circus was the most bizarre of the lot.  Ostensibly a comedy-sketch show with a regular troupe of performers, like Saturday Night Live, it had sketches that bled into other sketches, or stopped halfway through, weird semi-animated characters commenting on the action, visual puns, in-jokes, moments of sudden chaos.  In Britain, there were antecedents in The Goon Show  and This Was the Week That Was, but in America we had never seen anything like it.

And we loved it.  We repeated catch phrases over and over (I still use "Nudge nudge, wink wink!").

We discussed the inner significance of sketches with the zeal of literature scholars.

We sang "The Lumberjack Song.": "I like to put on lady's clothes and hang around in bars.."

We went to the movies, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979).

In retrospect, we didn't like Monty Python very often.  Many sketches were incomprehensible, too bizarre, too busy savaging British programming conventions that we had never heard of.  And why are men in drag portraying elderly women with Yorkshire accents by definition hilarious?

But some of the sketches were -- and still are --anarchic gems.

Dead Parrot ("This is an ex-parrot!")

Hungarian Translation ("My hovercraft is full of eels.")

Nudge Nudge Wink Wink ("Is your wife...into photographs?")

Spam ("No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!")

There was a fair amount of nudity, many more exposed chests and abs than you would ever see on American tv.  Eric Idle (left) was particularly likely to be displayed in the altogether.

And  there were few swishy stereotyped gay characters, After Graham Chapman came out to the other troupe members in 1967, they were careful to avoid overt stereotyping of gay men, although their distaste for drag queens is often apparent.

In fact, a number of sketches skewered homophobia, as when one character suspects that another is a "poof," and casually shoots him.  Or a "Prejudice Game," in which anti-gay prejudice is placed on equal footing with racial and religious prejudice.

See also: Saturday Night Live.

Gemstones Episode 2.1 Review: Junior likes dicks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f*k yeah, we got both!

 

Link to NSFW review

Season 2 of The Righteous Gemstones began over two years after the Season 1 finale, and the back stories, personalities, and even the genre has changed.  Remember, Danny McBride likes his seasons to be complete stories, with no or few call-backs, so new viewers easily understand what's going on.  In fact, it may be fun for us to start afresh, watch as if we have never seen or heard of these people before.  

Memphis Soul Stew: Memphis, 1968. Teenage Eli Gemstone, the Maniac Kid (Jake Kelley), is playing a heel, a pro wrestling villain: "from the wrong side of the tracks, a newcomer to the League, all muscle, all attitude."  He fights dirty, pretending to reconcile with opponent Kyle Hawk, then throwing him out of the ring.  

As he fights, his manager Glendon Marsh (Wayne Duvall) cheers. Glendon's teenage son Junior (Tommy Nelson) watches, sometimes happy but usually disturbed.  Is he jealous of the attention Eli is getting?  Is he a rebellious teenager during the era of the Generation Gap?.

Nice Cock:  In the locker room, Glendon offers Eli "some bonus pay on the South Side," while Junior looks on, smoking a cigarette, still either jealous or angry. As they leave, they pass a naked guy. "That's a nice cock, Ernie," Glendon says.  Junior is so busy looking that he trips, and then looks back again.  The boy is definitely into cocks and butts.

Jim Crow Must Go:  As they drive through a black neighborhood on the South Side of Memphis, near where Martin Luther King, Jr. will be assassinated on April 4th.  Junior looks out at the townsfolk in disgust. 

Suddenly they are surrounded civil rights protestors: "Jim Crow must go!" "We protest injustice."  Junior calls them "bums," which was usually applied to hippies, not African-Americans, leading me to believe that something changed between writing the script and hiring the background actors.  Glendon punches him: "they just want what everybody wants, a piece of the fucking pie."

Ok, Junior is racist, and Glendon is abusive, but why this scene? Hiring background players, costume, and staging must have been very time-consuming, with no payoff: civil rights are never mentioned again.  

The Loan Enforcer: Glendon is a loan shark as well as a wrestling manager: the job involves beating up a deadbeat.  Eli and Junior both go, squabbling over who's the boss.  

"Kill 'em!" we hear.  Psych!  It's the tv.  We meet a slovenly, drunken, foul-mouthed, abusive jackass of a husband.  While Junor subdues his wife and baby, Eli punches him a few times and asks for the money, and when he doesn't have it, breaks his thumbs. Junior laughs "derangedly" (according to the subtitles).

Afterwards Glendon drops Eli off, hands him some money, and tells him, "Buy yourself something nice." This is a feminizing statement. 

As Eli drives off on his motorcycle, we hear Buck Owens' "Tall Dark Stranger":

 They say a tall dark stranger is a demon, and  that a devil rides closely by his side.

 So if Junior is the demon, Eli must be the devil riding beside him.  How long will they ride together?

Abusive Daddies all the way down:  Eli drives to the Gemstone residence (it's not a stage name, apparently), where his abusive dad chastises him for being late for dinner. So they're eating after Eli's wrestling match?  Like at 11 or 12 pm?   There's also a mousy, skittish mom and a little sister, May-May (important in Season 3). 

Ordered to say grace, Eli jokes: "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," which makes May-May laugh.  Dad slaps him.  End of flashback.

We're fine with the faggots:  In 2022, elderly Eli Gemstone is a megachurch pastor and televangelist.  He and the satellite church ministers are discussing the case of Pastor Butterfield (Victor Williams), caught videotaping his wife and another woman having sex in a dance club restroom, while they were all high on Molly ("we thought they were Sweetarts").  The story made the front page of The New York Times, thanks to reporter Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman), who has made a career of publicizing ministerial sex scandals.  Eli wants to be lenient, but the others object.  (Left: random pecs)

A Spanish speaking pastor explains: "My church is ok with the maricones (roughly faggots), but we're not ready for swinging and tropus."     Pastor Diane translates: "His church is really cool with the gays and the queers, but not so much about the swingers and the thruples."  They fire Pastor Butterfield; he tries to commit suicide.

 Why did Pastor Diane translate maricones with two words, gays and queers?  Why queers, doubtless with the old pejorative meaning rather than the contemporary reclamation? I get the impression that the pastors are not really ok with maricones, so any gay ministers might want to stay in the closet, especially with the reporter snooping around.  Since this is the first scene in the present day, it is doubtless setting up one of the main conflicts of the season.  But who is the gay minister  Eli, Junior, or someone not yet introduced?  

The full review, with dicks and pecs, is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

The Goldenboy in the Attic: Jeb Stuart Adams

There are lots of threatened gay-vague kids in movies and tv, but not many are threatened by their own parents.  Flowers in the Attic (1987) is an exception.  It was based on a 1979 novel by Virginia Andrews, about four children who go to live with their grandmother because their mother doesn't like them.  But Grandma doesn't like them either; she locks them in the attic for several years, and finally tries to poison them.  The eldest two, Chris and Cathy, develop an incestuous romance.

The movie omits the incest, thus omitting any hint of heterosexual interest, transforming Chris (Jeb Stuart Adams) into a gay-vague teenager.  Grandma (Louise Fletcher) struts around with a Bible, accusing Chris and the other kids of "sin," which of course adds to the gay symbolism.

The incest angle, murderous relatives, and some nasty plot elements made the film controversial, but it didn't help Jeb's career.

Blond goldenboy Jeb Stuart Adam looked like he sprang up from the Appalachia of the Dukes of Hazzard, but he was actually the son of gay actor Nick Adams and his wife, Carol Nugent, and he grew up among the Hollywood glitterati.

His angelic smile and a smooth, firm but not muscular chest, making him perfect for roles as threatened kids: threatened by drug dealers on Quincy ME (1982),  a bad father in His Mistress (1984), and a hippie cult on Airwolf (1985).


He also had significant supporting roles in The Goonies and Once Bitten, plus a 7-episode story arc (1977-78) on Baa Baa Black Sheep, about World War II fighter pilots led by Pappy Boyington (Robert Conrad).

After Flowers in the Attic, Jeb was threatened a few more times, in They Live (1988), Dragnet (1990), and Sworn to Vengeance (1993), but you can't play threatened kids forever. He retired from acting and moved into production design and stuntwork.

Today Jeb has a successful real estate business in Ventura, California, specializing in the million-plus market.

Peter Kaasa: The hottest man in professional wrestling. With a nude wrestler bonus

The Greco-Roman wrestling of American high schools and colleges, the masked lucha libre of Latin American countries,  and performance-art professional wrestling have one thing in common:

Those blatant bulges in the wrestling singlets. 

Peter Kaasa has been wrestling -- and bulging  -- since college.

Link to the NSFW version

 He was born in James Island, a suburb of Charleston, South Carolina, and received a degree in Exercise Science from the College of Charleston in 2008.  Along the way, he excelled not only in wrestling, but in gymnastics, surfing, and Brazilian jiu-gitsu. Finally he decided to train at the prestigious Funking Wrestling Academy in Ocala, Florida. 

In 2012, Peter began pro wrestling as a heel character, Peter Kaasanova (soon changed back to Kaasa).  Less than a year later, he won the TSW Heavyweight Championship.

His professional wrestling career lasted from 2012 to 2017, but during those years he was very busy, competing in WrestleForce, America's Most Liked Wrestling, Dragon Gate, and Evolve.  He drew a huge following, even becoming the subject of fan art and fiction.

 He was named the "The Hottest Man in Professional Wrestling" and "The Most Liked Man in Professional Wrestling"  

Several major injuries, including torn ligaments and a torn groin, forced Peter to retire in 2017, but he drew on his talents to move into an acting career.

In 2017, he appeared in Danny McBride's Vice Principals as Shiloh, a member of a paramilitary team hired to push the high school teachers into shape.  

He had a recurring role in Season 2 of The Righteous Gemstones (2022) as Liam, a member of the "strength above all" God Squad.  He is injured during a human pyramid stunt and sues, leading to the downfall of Kelvin's muscle dynasty.

Today Peter is a firefighter in his home town of James River.  But he stays in shape, looking forward to the gym every day.  And he may be willing to do an occasional wrestling exhibition.

Peter bulging and bonus wrestler dicks on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Suddenly Susan: Biceps, Brooke Shields, and Pete the Gay Mail Boy

In the fall of 1997, you had four main tv choices on Monday nights: America's Funniest Home Videos, the hundredth series starring Bill Cosby, the uber-religious Seventh Heaven, and Suddenly Susan (1996-2000).  Guess which won?

It was one of many workplace sitcoms about Young Female Journalists with Big Ideas who butt heads with stick-in-the-mud magazine or newspaper editors, in this case Susan (Brooke Shields, best known for Blue Lagoon nearly twenty years before) and Jack (Judd Nelson, the homophobic bigot best known for Breakfast Club nearly twenty years before).

Suddenly single after a long engagement, Susan is assigned to write a column about what it's like to be...um...single in contemporary San Francisco.  But she, naturally, wants to do more.  And, of course, she and Jack have a "You're so arrogant!" Sam-and-Diane romance going on.

Her main coworkers included:

1. Photographer Luis (Nestor Carbonell, top photo), a Latino hunk ("Today is the day I work on my biceps.")
2. Sardonic restaurant critic Vickie (gay-positive comedian Kathy Griffin, right)
3. Susan's arch-nemesis, tough-as-nails reporter Maddy (Andrea Bendewald).
4. Pete (Billy Stevenson), the mail boy.

5. Hip music reporter Todd (David Strickland, left).

Two things made Suddenly Susan memorable (excluding Nestor Carbonell's biceps).

1. On March 22, 1999, David Strickland committed suicide.  Instead of replacing him without comment, the producers decided to incorporate his death into the series.

When Todd fails to report for work and doesn't respond to his pager, his coworkers spend the day searching for him and worrying.  Finally they congregate in his apartment.  The episode ends with the telephone ringing.  Everyone looks around, afraid to answer, knowing what news is coming.  It gave me goosebumps. Very effective.

2. Pete the Mail Boy.  Although he appeared in only 15 of the 93 episodes, he was still memorable as just about the only gay character on television who wasn't portrayed as a swishy stereotype.  In fact, he was dimwitted and rather a nerd.

When he married his boyfriend, the equally nerdish Hank (Fred Stoller, left), he talked the homophobic Jack into participating -- quite a memorable accomplishment for the 1990s.

See also: Just Shoot Me

Autobiographical story: I pray through to vic-trah, with Phil's hand on my...

 

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church,  most church services ended with an altar call: an invitation (or exhortation) to come down to the front of the sanctuary, kneel at the long, low wooden rail, and Pray Through to Victory (all preachers had a Southern accent, so they said "Vic-trah). 

 It was similar to Catholic confession, with no priest: you asked God to forgive all the sins you could think of, and if He decided to, you became a Christian or got saved (from an eternity in hell).

Praying through to Vic-trah  wasn't easy -- you had to work, sobbing and begging and moaning, for at least ten minutes, sometimes more.  And afterwards, the most trivial of sins -- an angry word, a lustful thought, a glance at the Sunday newspaper -- would negate your salvation, so you'd have to start all over again.  It was not unusual to go down several times a year, and some especially sensitive types went down at almost every service.

Usually just adults went down -- kids were excused, and teens had regular invitations to "bow your head right here and ask God to forgive you" in Sunday School (just before the morning service) and NYPS (just before the evening service), so we were usually saved by the time the altar call came around.

But in ninth grade, the first year that I was officially a teenager, I discovered a benefit to going down to the altar (other than the not going to hell thing).

The full story, with NSFW illustrations, is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends