Beefcake, gay subtexts, and queer representation in mass media from the 1950s to the present
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Jun 8, 2024
Gavin Munn's Cute/Cool Photos, Part 3: A boy and his monkeys, a boy and his fish, nude bikers, and bodybuilder buds
Jun 7, 2024
Hank Strong: Bodybuilder, firefighter, enforcer, leatherman, gay daddy. With some butts and dicks
The Brooklyn-born Hank Strong (Henry Akinsaya) graduated from Xaverian Brothers High School in Westfield, Massachustts in 1998, then studied pre-law at NYU.
He competed in some amateur bodybuilding competitions, worked as a bodyguard, and did some modeling where he had to show his abs.
As a firefighter in The King of Staten Island, he takes his clothes off, of course, to bond with Pete Davidson.
In 2020, Hank played Jericho, a member of Kelvin's God Squad in Righteous Gemstones Season 2. When they threaten Keefe, he defends himself by swatting Jericho's nipple. (Actually a courageous act, since Jericho is nearly a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than Keefe).
More Hank after the break
Jun 6, 2024
"Difficult People": Billy pretends to be straight, Julie pretends to be Italian, and the son of the guest star takes his shirt off
Yesterday on the treadmill, I watched Difficult People, a two season sitcom about two jerks, the Jewish Julie and the gay Billy (Julie Klausner, Billy Eichner. below). I've had a file of photos for a long time, so why not write a review?
Julie and Billy are trying to break into stand-up comedy as a pair. We only see snippets of their act, but it seems to involve insulting people. Plots often involve pop-culture name dropping or the pairs' crazy relatives. Among the famous guest stars are Amy Sedaris, Lucy Liu, Tina Fey, Mark Consuelos, and Kathy Lee Gifford.
Rounding out the cast are James Urbaniak as Julie's business suit-wearing husband, who works for PBS; Andrea Martin as her yenta mother; and Cole Escola, left, as the swishy queen who works with Billy at his coffee shop gig.
This episode, "Italian Piñata" begins with the pair walking past the Stonewall Tavern, where the Gay Rights Movement began: queens upset over the death of Judy Garland weren't going to take the police harassment anymore, and fought back. The Judy Garland angle has been completely discredited. These were young adults in the 60s. They were into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, not some singer from their grandparents' generation.
Billy notes that it's National Coming Out Day, when super-hot A-gays who spend the rest of the year snubbing everyone who isn't a Greek god do their public duty by offering to introduce newly-out guys to the culture. It doesn't even matter if they're ugly or have a horrible personality -- or both, like Billy -- if you're newly out, you're in.
Julie Turns Italian: On their way to a horrible party that Julie's husband had to plan for his PBS job, in Hoboken, the pair drops into an Italian meat shop, where some ladies like Julie's jokes about "meat in my mouth." They have big hair, eat everything in sight, carry purses that "fell off a truck," and discuss what they'll do to the penises of boyfriends who betray them. Julie is in love! She announces to her mother and husband that she's coming out -- she now identifies as Italian! The two are horrified.
Mom works as a therapist whose client -- the famous Mink Stole -- has a daughter in a cult. They discuss deprogramming -- kidnapping the brainwashed girl and yelling at her until she "believes what I want her to believe." Mom thinks this would work on Julie.
Billy Turns Straight: Meanwhile, Billy and Julie go to a New Jersey gay bar, where he gets the idea of pretending to come out. He announces that he was straight until today, and Julie is actually his soon-to-be ex-wife. The gay guys, including bartender Pasha Pelosie, left, all want to welcome him into the gay community.Left: The guy with Mark in the top photo is his son Joaquin, now attending Michigan State University, where he is a wrestler.
When the two groups get together, Julie and Billy are outed -- he knows who Liza Minelli is -- and they are dumped by the Italians and the gays, respectively. At that moment, Mom and the Husband shove a bag over Julie's head to kidnap her for deprogramming. The Italian ladies think that she's getting an "Italian piñata." Use your imagination.
Subplots involve Mink Stole, bad hair resulting from getting it styled by students; and the husband's PBS party, which ends up with an office full of kids and a scary clown chasing his boss down the hall.Beefcake: A split-second of Mark with his shirt off. When you have to depend on the son of the guest star and guys far down on the cast list, you know there's something wrong.
Left: Ben Bauer plays a Gay Rights Activist in one episode.
Heterosexism: Not much. Julie and her husband don't seem to like each other. The swishy queen at the coffee shop notes that he came out a year ago and left his wife, but he still thinks about her all the time, so maybe he should give her a call. Maybe you're a swishy bi guy?
Homophobia: Billy's boss at the coffee shop, who is trans, calls him a "fag": "I can say it because I used to be one." One of the Italian ladies suggests that they go to the gay bar next door and hang out with her "fag" brother: "I can say it because he is one."
Left: Sean Martin Hingston shows the pair his penis in another episode.
My Grade: I liked the episode construction, with the various subplots linked together, but the humor was outdated and trite. Jewish mothers, har har. A swishy straight guy, har har.
Some dicks and butts from far down the cast list on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends
Jun 5, 2024
Gavin Munn's Cute/Cool Photos, Part 2: Splashing in puddles, diving in Tulum, eating a banana. With some nude grown-ups
2. Interesting mural at the Charleston airport.
Jun 2, 2024
Warm Bodies: A zombified Nicholas Hoult meets a girl. With a nekkid Rob Conddrey
Link to the nekkid Rob, and maybe some Nicholas Hoult
Stand by Me: Same-sex love among homophobic kids vanishes when they grow up and get married. Geez.
Bad Hair: A horror movie about hair care products?
All of Us Strangers: Bereaved gay gay falls in love with a ghost? F*k the Sadness.
Warm Bodies. Nicholas Hoult, on the icon, was cute, and how could a movie about zombies go wrong?
A zombie (Nicholas) narrates. He can't remember his name, but later his human girlfriend names him R, as in Romeo or ARRR! His limited cognitive ability means that he doesn't remembr what happened, sparing us scenes about the origin of the zombie Apocalypse.
R spends most of his time plodding around the Montreal-Trudeau airport with the other zombies, hanging out with his friend MMM (Rob Conddry) -- all they do is grunt at each other, but isn't that what living guys do, har har -- and filling his airplane-lair with knicknacks that he scavenged.
Next door, behind a wall much too high to be even slightly believable, the humans live in a refugee camp and scrounge for food. Except for the evil President, who lives in a palace.
Some of the town teenagers, including the President's daughter Julie -- Juliet, get it? -- and her boyfried Perry -- go beyond the wall to scrounge for medical supplies, and the zombies attack. R sees Julie, and gets the most exaggeratedly corny "love at first sight" look that they ever taught you not to do in acting school. He notices Perry, and gets rid of the competition by eating him.
But in this world, when you eat someone, even a tiny piece, you absorb their memories. R absorbs Perry's memories, all of which involve Julie: falling in love when they are toddlers, their first kiss, their first sexual experience, their declaration of love, and so on ad infinitum.
Through the entire movie, I thought Perry was being played by Zac Efron. No, it's someone named Dave Franco, who could be Zac's identical twin. Seriously, they look exactly alike.
The other teens just hide until the zombies leave, but R tricks Julie into thinking that he has to save her. He takes her to his airplan, and they proceed to fall in love.
Eventually Julie wants to return to human society, mainly because there's almost nothing left to eat at the airport, so R tries to sneak her out. The other zombies want to attack,but he holds her hand and -- get this -- they instantly calm down. "Oh, you're in love. Why didn't you say so? Even brain-dead zombies understand that heterosexual romance is the most important thing in the universe. Go on through."
More heterosexism after the break