Jonathan Chase and Skyler Gisondo: What's the gay connection?

  

Link to the nude photos

I wanted to know if Skyler Gisondo was a gay ally or, growing up in Conservative Judaism, not so much, so I googled "Skyler Gisondo" and "nude."  Ok,  I do that every day.

Then "Skyler Gisondo" and "gay," and this search screen popped up:

Someone named Jonathan Chase about to kiss a guy, who doesn't look anything like Skyler Gisondo.

It's supposed to be on  his X, but I can't find it there. 

Skyler fills his social media with pictures of his male friends, but Jonathan Chase is not among them.  So what's their gay connection? 

According to the IMDB, Jonathan Chase grew up in Plantation, Florida, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale.  He has 64 acting credits, including Another Gay Movie, 2006, which explains the numerous nude photos.  It features four gay friends who are trying to "lose their virginity," that is, have anal sex.  Here Jonathan's character, Jarod, is losing his.

The surprised guy bursting in on them is Griff, played by Mitch Morris, second from the left, who is also the one about to  be kissed in the "gay Skyler Gisondo" photo.

Jarod tops him after they realize that they've been in love the whole time.  I cropped out the faces because Griff has his finger in his mouth, which I find disgusting.

More Jonathan and Skyler after the break

The top 12 guys with penises in "The Boys," an Amazon Prime superhero spoof

 

  Link to the nude photos

I really don't want to review an episode of The Boys.  First, I heard it was homophobic, with a swishy gay villain, two bisexuals turned straight, "bury your gays" violence, and gay sex portrayed not only as disgusting and vile, but downright dangerous.

Second, Amazon keeps pushing it as the most amazing, remarkable, incredible tv series of all time, or rather the greatest artistic achievement of all time.  Forget Shakespeare and the Sistine Chapel -- future generations will fill libraries with analyses of why The Boys is so wonderful.  I hate that absurdly over-zealous hyperbole.

But viewers on Reddit are expressing horror, disgust, and dismay over the rampant male nudity.  Which I can understand -- if you're aiming your program at an audience of homophobic men, you shouldn't be surprised if they don't like to look at penises. 

But I like to look at penises, so do you mind if I post 12 of them instead of summarizing an episode?

1. The Boys features a team of corrupt vigilante superheroes led by Billy Butcher, played by Karl Urban, top photo.   He blames Highlander, #3 below, for the death of his wife. Hey, the guy was in Bent.  Isn't that about gay men sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust?  Weird project for someone who's homophobic.

2. Hughie, played by Jack Quaid, here covers his penis in a room full of lady BDSM tops. He's got a dead girlfriend, so their cliche motives are equal.

3.Antony Starr as Homelander, the leader of the Seven, an even more corrupt superhero group.  He's one of the two guys who got straightwashed for tv.

4. Jesse Usher, left, as A-Train, a member of the Seven.  Hey, I was promised a plethora of penises.  Could the homophobes mean just a bulge?

5. Chace Crawford as the Deep, another member of the Seven, shows his butt with his octopus-sex partner coiled around him.

6. The next seven people in the cast list are women, and the eighth is a young boy. It takes a lot of scrolling down to get to Matthew Edison, who appears as mortal journalist Cameron Coleman for ten episodes in Season 3.  Here he is tied up naked, with his butt sort of visible.

Maybe it's the one-shot swishy villains and bury-your-gays expendables that show their dicks.  I'll check them after the break.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Nude photos of Trench, Mr. Freeze, The Terminator, Conan, and an Austrian fitness model

Link to the nude photos

Arnold needs no last name.  He almost single-handedly took bodybuilding out the realm of  Muscle Beach physical culturists and Italian sword-and-sandal movies and created the genre of Man-Mountains. His superlative physique and distinctive Austrian growl have been parodied innumerable times, on Saturday Night Live, on Seinfeld, on Tiny Toon Adventures).    It's hard to leave a room temporarily without being tempted to use his signature line from The Terminator, "I'll be back," or Terminator 2, "Come with me if you want to live."

Already a Mr. Universe and nearly a Mr. Olympia, the 21 year old Mr. Schwarzenegger moved to the United States in 1968 with his best friend Franco Columbu, to become an actor.  He posed for a lot of fitness magazines, including the gay-coded Tomorrow's Man.  In the 1970s he was the subject of more conventional semi-nude paintings by Jamie Wyeth.  In the 1980s, photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.

I had a friend in the 1980s whose bathroom featured what looked very much like a nude photo of Arnold, clipped from a fitness magazine.  It's not the black and white flexing photo that's available everywhere; this one was in color, and showed Arnold standing on a hillside.

His first starring role was in Hercules in New York (1969), which nobody saw.  His accent was so bad that his lines were dubbed.

He starred in Stay Hungry (1976), about a young man, drawn into the world of bodybuilding, and in The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980), asMansfield's muscular husband, Mickey Hargitay.

More Arnold after the break

Midnight Gospel: A Gay Teenager Ruminates on Death

Pendleton Ward's Midnight Gospel, on Netflix, is advertised as an adult Adventure Time.  There are certainly similarities in animation style and tone, but Clancy is no Finn.  Or Jake.

An amiable young man with pink skin and anime-eyes, shirtless, usually wearing a purple wizard's hat, Clancy (Duncan Trussell) lives in self-imposed exile in a virtual world called the Ribbon. We don't learn why, although there are a few hints:

His friends and older brother call to say how much they miss him. 

He encounters abusive fathers everywhere.

One friend ominously warns Clancy that someone is coming to kill him. .

His sister calls and begs him to come home, and he angrily hangs up.

He orders a pie online, but when it arrives, it is horribly decayed.

His mother visits, and we learn that she is dying of cancer.  She takes him through his whole life, from birth to death, and then he gives birth to her and goes through her life, from birth to death again.

I'm guessing that Clancy is dead, or else is so traumatized by abuse and his mom's imminent death that he has retreated into an inner world.  Clancy himself doesn't seem to know which it is.  

He passes the time by visiting various virtual worlds and interviewing the inhabitants for his "spacecast" (like a podcast, but beamed into space).  The dialogue consists primarily of the interviews, laconic late-night-talk-show discussions of conspiracy theories and wacko holistic healing techniques.  Meanwhile, on screen, Clancy and his friends are having bizarre, trippy adventures. 

For instance, he visits a world overrun by zombies, and must help the President of the U.S. escape from a besieged White House.  Meanwhile they discuss the merits of medicinal marijuana (for cancer patients, Clancy?). 

In a Medieval world, he helps a warrior re-animate her murdered boyfriend, and learns about forgiveness.  

In another episode, Clancy interviews Death  (he's not a ghost: his avatar is made of cream).  She talks about how the funeral industry makes us spend thousands of dollars to embalm our dead loved ones and make them look nice, when it is absolutely unnecessary: corpses are usually safe, and if you have the funeral within a few days, they won't decay enough to notice.  Death advocates washing and dressing your dead loved one at home, as a way of saying goodbye. 

Meanwhile, they travel across a weird Bosch-inspired landscape, fighting various monsters, including ghouls who jump out of mirrors. Death tells him that they are Regrets, and he can vanquish them by forgiving himself.  The Archangel Michael and a chubby demon join the team.

Watch with the sound turned off, and again with dialogue only, and you get two completely different shows.

I've never made it through an entire episode without fast-forwarding.  The interviews are bizarre, and we never get a sense that Clancy needs to hear them in order to move on.   We really don't learn much about what he wants or needs.

But we do learn something very important. Clancy experiences sexual desire -- he tries to visit a planet of orgies (and water slides) -- but he is not interested in women.  He never gets a girlfriend, or expresses an interest in getting one.  However, he does buddy bond with several of the male being he interviews, and all of the friends who call him are male.  

My verdict:  Clancy is gay.

See also: Adventure Time

"Love and Anarchy": A prank war at a Stockholm publishing house, with two gay teases and male nudity

 Love and Anarchy appeared on my Netflix recommendations.  I clicked to see what it was about, forgetting that on Netflix, "click" means "start."  And since I was eating a bowl of Cheerios, I let it continue.

Link to the NSFW version

Scene 1: A harried middle-aged man and woman in a fancy house coordinating their calendars and telling their preteen son "No gaming at the breakfast table."  Dad is played by Johannes Bah Kuhnke, sweating below.

The woman chugs some espresso, talking about how this is her first day on the job. Teenage daughter comes in, not wearing the coat Dad bought for her.  This causes a crisis. Nuclear family squabbles.  Yawn. 

The woman goes upstairs, locks herself in the bathroom, and masturbates to porn on her cell phone.  Are we supposed to be titilated or judgmental, or are we to assume that she's having marital problems?  Everybody masturbates, but nobody admits that they do.

Scene 2: She is walking through a square in downtown Stockholm, at dusk or pre-dawn, checking her cell phone.  An older guy welcomes her to his publishing house.   He shows her to her new office, which is a disaster-area of books and manuscripts: the former senior editor was a bit of a hoarder.  

The older guy may be Ronni, the Publishing Company CEO, played by Bjorn Kjellman. He didn't have much of a physique in the 1990s, but he was rather well hung.

Scene 3: The woman -- Sofie -- giving a speech to the staff.  She's an independent consultant who saves publishing companies from bankruptcy by pushing them into the digital age, whether they like it or not. As she is ignoring a question about layoffs, a hot young guy comes in late and accidentally spills his drink over his crotch.  While he is dabbing at his bulge with a napkin, Sofie stares, mesmerized.

Scene 4: Sofie in her office, grimacing at the clutter.  Books --- ugh -- they might as well be stone tablets! As someone with a library of about 4,000 books, I am not amused.

 She piles some armloads of the relics outside her door to be trashed, and sees the hot young guy (Bjorn Mosten, top photo, left, and below) on a ladder drilling (and drilling...and drilling).  Receptionist tells her that he's Max, the IT Guy.  

"He doesn't usually do much drilling." 

 "Well, tell him to drill quietly!"

Max scoffs.  "How am I supposed to do my job?"  Receptionist doesn't answer; she's staring at his butt.  He storms out.

Scene 5: A publication meeting.  We are introduced to the Literary Drector (elderly guy) and the PR director (young woman), plus the intern who handles the social media presence (5000 followers on Instagram!).  PR Director wants to publish a novel "full of gay sex and drugs at an ayahuasca retreat," while Literary Director wants to publish a book of poetry about fir trees.   

Sofie suggests skipping the fir tree poems and tweaking the "gay sex and drugs" novel to draw the interest of heterosexual men. Heterosexist enabler!

Scene 5:  Dinner with the family.  Sofie complaining about how old-fashioned her clients are.  They don't even have digital book contracts!   Suddenly she gets a phone call and rushes upstairs, annoying her husband: "We're eating!"

It's a subplot about her elderly father, complaining about the working class unionizing.  She tells him to stop watching the news; it's upsetting and useless.

Scene 6:  Sofie in bed, reading a book while Husband snores.  Hey, I thought she hated books!  She sneaks into the bathroom to masturbate. 

Scene 7:  At work, they are signing the contract with the woman who wrote the "gay sex and drugs" novel. they just want some final revisions.  While Literary Director is trying to figure out how to take her photo with one of those newfangled cell phones, a Famous Author walks by, and he rushes out to hun: "I didn't see you at the club!"  Is Literary Director gay? 

Nope -- it was just a gay tease. 

It appears that the Famos Author sent the Gay-Sex-and-Drugs Author a dick pic (how did they even meet?), so PR Director wants to dump him, even though he's been their biggest moneymaker for 30 years. Literary Director asks what his dick has to do with his writing talent.  All literary geniuses have scandals.

Scene 8: Sofie reading reports.  Max starts drilling again. Drilling, drilling...She rushes out in a huff and demands that he not drill during work hours.  He says "What a bitch!" and storms off.  They'll be screwing by Episode 3. 

Scene 9:  Night.  Sofie still in the office, working.  Husband Johan is filming, so she calls the sitter to say that she'll be late, and please put the kids to bed.

Everyone's gone, so why not masturbate?   In an office with the blinds open, so anyone who comes into the main suite can see her?  At least close the blinds!

At that moment Max comes in -- she said don't drill during working hours -- and sees her.  He snaps a photo and leaves.

More Max after the break

Adam Devine's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 4: A sex party, a phallic symbol doobie, two birthdays, and a tight butthole

  

Link to the nude photos

This is a collection of hot or humorous photos of Adam Devine.  I've already posted almost all of his dick and butt shots available, but not to worry, there are some dicks and butts of other guys. 

1. "Oh no, the wind blew over the sign.  Now how will guys know where the Blow Buddies party is?"

2. "Sorry to crop you out of the photo, Chloe, but it's the only way I can get profile views on Grindr."

3. "My friends try to kill me on my birthday."

4. Well, let them go down on you once in a while.

5. "No, this is not a phallic symbol.  Sometimes a doobie is just a doobie."

6. Although sometimes doobies can lead to phalluses.

More Adam after the break

Summertime Car Washes

One of the joys of summer is the car wash fundraiser.  Check your local event calendar, and you'll find one or two per week: a club, class, team, or church group is raising money by washing cars.

The attraction, of course, is that they're washing with their shirts off, allowing you to gawk at their spectacular physiques.

They know it.  They plan on it.  It's the one time in the Straight World where everyone acknowledges the existence of same sex desire.

Well, not really.  Everyone is supposed to pretend that it's all about the cars.

A lot of the car wash fundraisers feature women instead of men, so you have to be careful.  Is it a male team or club?  Is it being advertised by men?  Especially men who wrap the signs around their waists, implying that they are naked.

You also have to worry about the age of the guys.  They are typically in high school or college, but occasionally younger groups host car washes.  No point in gawking at a group of 12 year olds.

If you're lucky, they'll be even older than college age.

I stay away from car washes with both male and female participants.  They invariably try to steer male drivers toward the females, and female drivers toward the male.  If you insist on the "male" group, they act as if they have never heard of anything so outrageous.

And what's up with the car washers who leave their shirts on?  I understand that when you're out in the sun for hours, you can get burnt, but that's what sunscreen is for.

You're not allowed to just stand and watch the workers. That would make the real reason for the car wash fundraisers too obvious.

But nobody says you can't bring your car in to be washed several times.

Gemstones Episode 1.5: Baby Billy and Eli compete for Aimee-Leigh. Plus water sports and donkey ___

 

Just moving this review into its proper sequence

Link to the nude photos

Title: "Interlude."  The interludes, set halfway through each season, are designed to clarify the conflicts and back stories, and to keep you in suspense after a major crisis. Here we flash back to 1989. when Eli and Aimee-Leigh were rich but not mega-rich, Baby Billy was hoping for a come-back after his child-star career, and young Jesse was jealous of his soon-to-be-born brother Kelvin. 

A Hot Piece of Tail:  This is the golden age of televangelism, with Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and Jerry Falwell eating up the airwaves -- and blaming homa-sekshuls for everything from teen pregnancy to hurricanes/  They were especially eager to proclaim that homa-sekshuls were trying to destroy society by infecting straight people with AIDS.  In 1989, the number of new cases peaked at 80,000. 

Before the broadcast,  Aimee-Leigh walks around, being friendly to the crew.  Very diverse crew: -- old and young, black and white, women in jobs traditionally held by men, probably gay people.  She compliments Eli as "a hot piece of tail," and he agrees: "I'm sizzling hot."This seems a little gender-transgressive.  Men aren't typically referred to in this way.  Just before the curtain rises, Aimee-Leigh tells Eli, "I'm pregnant."  How playful, and borderline mean!

Family Dinner:  Lots of gross closeups of 1980s food.  When Aimee-Leigh says that she has news to share, Jesse guesses that Judy has been put up for adoption, and she guesses that he has AIDS. In 1989 evangelicals -- and most of the general public -- thought that only gay men contracted AIDS, so she is "accusing" him of being gay. 

No, Aimee-Leigh says without disciplining them, she is actually having a baby. Jesse wishes that she has a miscarriage, again without discipline, then backtracks: : "I will never like them.  They will never be my friend."  This is a call-back to the Episode 1.1 scene where Jesse is upset with Kelvin because "we used to be friends."  

Judy hopes that it's a boy, so she can teach him how to pee standing up.  Is she accusing Jesse of being a woman?

The Misbehavin' Tour: At the office, Baby Billy tells the Gemstones about his idea for a Misbehavin' Comeback Tour this spring.  But she can't do it: she is pregnant, due in July (in Season 2, Kelvin says that his birthday is near Christmas, but never mind).

Baby Billy insists that they go on the tour anyway, but she insists that she can't.  How about waiting until after the birth?  Nope.

The screenshot shows Baby Billy in pain, behind window slats that look like bars. He is trapped, unable to move beyond his child-star days, blaming Eli for ruining his life. In Season 3, Eli's other brother-in-law will blame him too, with more violent results.  

The Birthday Party:  After scenes where Jesse is caught arranging little-kid fights and complains that his parents are never around, a we cut to Judy's birthday party.  Kids eating food in disgusting ways (a regular trope in this episode); riding a slip-and-slide; riding ponies.  

What Jesse is looking at after the break. Warning: Explicit.

"My Fake Boyfriend": Entitled guy in a gay mecca can't find a boyfriend in spite of his huge cock

 

My Fake Boyfriend, on Amazon Prime: After Andrew is dumped, he concocts a plan to get even.  The "my" in the title suggests that Andrew has been dumped by a boyfriend, but you never know: I've been fooled before.  The icon shows a man, two women, and a male-male duo, so no help.  I'll have to watch to find out.

Opening credits: While a guy raps about how many women he has sex with, videos, pictures, and cartoon-character versions of the cast slide in and out of the screen at breakneck speed, from all directions, sometimes colliding with each other, along with multiple emojis and social media comments.  None stick around long enough to see clearly, but I think I can make out laughing, dancing, and hugging, men with women, men with men, trios, groups. 

Scene 1: Two shirtless guys, black and white, both muscular but quite ugly, trying to dance in front of a tropical backdrop.  Ugly #1 berates Ugly #2 for his poor choreography, but Ugly #2 insists that it will be fine: a few mistakes make you seem real and get you more "likes" on your social media page.  

He then fills in his name: Andrew, played by Kenan Lonsdale, top photo.  It's actually spelled another way, but the i and y ar in such unexpected places that it's impossible to get right. Keiyinan?  Keyinan?  Keiyyinan?

Anyhow, the RG website has a nude photo, at least according to ShyGuy22 -- Live Journal.  LeakedMeat also offers an "exclusive jerk-off video."  

More about Ugly #2: He's a Stuntman working on the soap opera  Hampton Bay, the soap starring Ugly #1 (Nico, played by Marcus Rosner, left).

They have been hooking up on the down low, but now The Star wants to be monogamous and announce their love to the world.

Whoops, Stuntman sees The Star's phone.  Another guy is texting him!   "Dessert at my place? Eggplant emoji." Cheating already!  No, the Star claims that it's just a random fan having a fantasy.

Scene 2: At a fancy-healthy eatery, Stuntman complains to his buddy Jake.

Jake is played by Dylan Sprouse of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, not the twin who posted dick pics online.  It's impossible to find any shirtless pics of this guy except for "before and after" illustrations in articles that gush "look, Dylan was a pile of disgusting flab, and now he's the hottest stud in the universe!"  Actually, I can't tell the difference.  Which is supposed to be "before"?

Back to the movie: the close friends who have known each other for years decide that this is a good time to answer the question "what do you do?"  We already know about the Stuntman .   Buddy Jake is an award-winning graphic designer relegated to grunt work.  

Buddy Jake has been watching the show, and reveals a "tell" so the Stuntman will know when the Star is lying.  We see it during a montage: "I didn't send anyone a dick pic";   "Got to go meet my personal trainer at 2:00 am."  "I didn't fart."

Just as the guys' quinoa-arugula wraps arrive, their third friend (Sarah Hyland of Modern Family) bursts in and kisses Buddy Jake.  So Andrew has only straight friends? So much for gay community.

The straight couple lays down the law:   "Nico keeps cheating, and you keep going back to him.  Dump him, or we'll unleash the nuclear option.  No more Nico!"

Scene 3: As days pass, Stuntman continually recites "No more Nico!" at the gym, on the set, while painting his apartment.  But when the Star invites him over for a hookup, he accepts.

Buddy Jake tries to keep him from backsliding, but the Stuntman tricks him into playing chess with an inscrutable Asian stereotype.  While they are playing, he rushes over for the hookup and rushes back. 

Scene 4:  On the set, choreographing a fight, Stuntman tells his opponent that the Star has changed.  She doesn't buy it: he's "hot garbage."  

The director interrupts them: it's time to shoot the scene.  This time Stuntman is kicked through a window -- to a room where the Star and Troy, the guy he is stunting for, are kissing!  

Angry, Stuntman tracks down Buddy Jake and his girlfriend or wife, who has not yet been named (IMDB calls her Kelly).   Buddy Jake suggests "Let's go suck some dicks."  So Jake is bi, and the girlfriend/wife doesn't expect monogamy.  Why should Stuntman?

They head to a gay bar in the Village.  Buddy Jake points out the bears, twinks, daddies, and otters.  A very inclusive establishment!  Stuntman doesn't like it. Next up: a leather disco. Stuntman doesn't like this one, either.  Then a cowboy bar on Christopher Street with no dancing. Wait -- this is a 30-year old gay guy who grew up in New York, and he has never been to a gay bar?  

"It's hard to find a boyfriend in New York," he moans.  Are you kidding?  Try some gay political, social, or religious groups.  Join the Gay Man's Chorus.  Join the Gay Gardening Club.  Or is this the standard movie gay community, where only gay bars exist?      

Scene 5:   Buddy Jake announces a new plan: he signs them onto a dating app as a couple looking for a third.  Then, when they meet the guy, they can "break up," leaving him for Andrew. So Jake is the fake ex-boyfriend?  

They immediately get a "ping" from Leo, who's only 20 feet away, so they chat for a moment, and then Buddy Jake pretends to break up with Stuntman.  I wouldn't be into a hookup after all that drama

Leo turns out to be a fruity sort who orders a vieux carré in a cowboy bar.  He also criticizes bi guys, Stuntman's profile pic, and his t-shirt ("Unicorns are fake.  God is real.")   Then he accuses Stuntman of using a date rape drug, and starts screaming.  Apparently this is a common act; the bartender (Matt Willis) kicks him out, then starts flirting with Stuntman.  He's not too bright, but he has a physique, so they decide to hook up.  He can just leave his job anytime he wants? 

Scene 6: But when the get back to the apartment, Stuntman freaks out and hides in the bathroom.  There's a muscular guy with a gigantic bulge waiting for you to go down on him. What is the problem?  Do you have residual guilt from growing up in a fundamentalist church?

Buddy Jake, who has him under surveillance, calls, annoyed: "Just get in there and beat it off." "Why would I beat him up?"  Bartender overhears and thinks that Stuntman likes fetish-wrestling, and won't listen when he says no.  Stuntman is forced to defend himself.  

I'm out of space, so I'll stop there.  We haven't even gotten to the fake boyfriend yet, or the second half of the movie, where the fake Cristiano, as well as the real ex-boyfriend, impede the Stuntman's blooming relationship with Rafi 

Beefcake: Shirtless guys and bulges, no frontal or rear nudity. 

Other Sights: Generic New York shot in Canada.

Gay Characters: Several.

My Grade:  Really entitled guys, and I'm sick of these movies where only bars exist, like it's 1956.  Wait -- even back then, they had the Mattachine Society.  B

Red Queen: If you like father-daughter incest, dead horses, gay cops, and psychotic smart people

 

Two tv shows and a movie called The Red Queen came out in 2024.  I watched the first episode of the Spanish one -- well, most of it anyway -- because I heard that it had a gay character, the Gay Basque Cop.  We know that he's gay because people keep telling him that he's gay.

Scene 1: A young woman sits forlornly on the windowsill of a youth hostel in Spain, looking down at the milling crowd.  The Gay Basque Cop, Hovik Keuchkerian, middle aged, with a red beard -- looks up her apartment number...it's on the millionth floor!  He begins laboriously climbing the staircase.  It takes a long time.  She is considering other methods: slitting her wrists, shooting herself, hanging herself, and so on.  Finally he arrives, and she does everything at once!  This must be a parallel-world story.

Scene 2: While she lies dead on the ground, she also turns and tells red-beard "You're not like the others."  Maybe she repeats this over and over, with a different method each time.

"Of course not, honey -- I'm a weirdo."  In Spanish, rarito. Does he mean "honey," "caro," like they're related or like he's a femme queen?

She tells him no.  He complains that he hasn't said what he wants yet.  "You're a Basque gay policeman, and you're in trouble."  She can tell that by looking?  Maybe he has a femme Basque accent?

They discuss several people that haven't been mentioned before , so the viewer is completely lost -- who are Amina, the Man Who Smokes, and Mentor -- by the way, she looks destitute, but she is actually obscenely wealthy, and owns the entire block -- and she refuses to help because of a mind game about a tanker headed for your oil platform.  There are 25 people on your platform, but you don't know how many are on the tanker.  Which should you save? 

On his way down the stairs, she zaps in and asks what he did wrong, that he needs saving from?

Scene 2: 24 hours before, he's trying to get a girl to set up her abusive pimp, so he'll be arrested and stay away from her.  He puts some heroin in the guy's car, then drops her off at her house, with some drugs for the pain; she invites him up: "Haven't you ever done it with a girl?"  No -- "I'm a weirdo." 

The next morning, he's arrested.  The girl taped him planting the drugs!  He's up for ten years in prison.  The Commissioner can't understand: "At least if you were screwing her..."  Some guys aren't into it, lady.  Get used to it.

Scene 3: He waits for a long time, and finally is interviewed by Mentor, Alex Brendemuhl, who offers him an out: help me with my problem, and I'll make yours go away.

The problem: make Antonia Scott, the smartest person in Europe, come back to work for me again.

Back to Basque Gay Cop interrupting Antonia's suicide.  She agrees, and they walk out to the car that Mentor provided.

Scene 4: Cut to an elderly guy in a high-rise office hearing about the new clothing line from his daughter, a Fashion Designer. He doesn't like it.  Who cares if the company is dying?  "And by the way, how's my grandson Mario?"  I assume that these people will become important.

Cut to Basque Gay Cop and Smart Girl on their way to the Finca District. "Holy crap! THE Finca District?"  To the home of Laura Treumble.  "Holy Crap! THE Laura Treumble?"  By the way, "finca" means "district" in Spanish, so they're going to the District District.

Scene 5: The Fashion Designer, who is not THE Laura Treumble, leads her horse out of its stable, says some smarmy, saccharine things, and loads it into a van. They drive away. I'll bet the horse is on its way to be killed.

Cut to Basque Gay Cop and Smart Girl arriving at Holy Crap! La Finca!  

It gets exclusiver and exclusiver until they reach Holy Crap! Laura's House!, the size of a small city. Mentor meets them.  "So, I hated every moment of this assignment, but it's over, right?" "No, I still need you."

Meanwhile, Smart Girl, back in the car, has a panic attack.  Mentor calms her down with a pill and the question: "What did your face look like before you were born?"  That's a Buddhist conundrum.

Mentor and Smart Girl have a conversation about her past traumas, that the Basque Gay Cop and the audience know nothing about.  It's like walking into a meeting, and listening to a conversation like: "Have you seen Tommy?  I saw him with Brad the other day at the BKRND.  I heard they're working on the RTDGR, but then Sheila said that Bob told her that the other BRD3a was going to involve Tommy, so.,,,"

They check the living room of the house where Something Awful Happened. I thought it was a mannikin, but it's a woman, the top half of her head sliced off and dipped in liquid nitrogen, along with her eyeballs and some brain tissue. 

Dr. Aguado from Red Queen Forensics  is on the case.  Aha, the Red Queen!

Basque Gay Cop examines a photo of Alvaro, THE Laura Treumble's teenage son, at a fencing match.  Alvaro is played by Alberto Luna. There are lots of them, but it may be this guy.

Smart Girl uses her top-secret super-smart powers to examine eventualities and causal chains. He died of his blood being drained into a jar.  Sorry, I thought it was THE Laura Treumble, but it's actually her son.  He was anointed with oil, like in the Psalm. 

Scene 6: Out by the pool, Basque Gay Cop wants to know why this has been kept from the police.  Mentor won't answer.

Meanwhile, the Fashion Designer is still driving with her horse through the countryside. She has a saccharine bedtime conversation with her son.  Uh-oh, road closed; Driver says that they need to take a detour. That horse is a goner.

Scene 7:  Smart Girl has more intel: Alvaro was not killed here, so how did the killer get the body in past all of the security checks?  

Mentor tells Basque Gay Cop that his job is over, so he can go home.

Scene 8: Basque Gay Cop goes home.  Someone with big hands fell asleep with a book.  I thought it would be his hubby, but no, it's a  misdirection, his grotesquely big-handed mother.  She thinks that he stayed out late because he's in love, but he assures her that he's only in love with her.  Hopefully he just means in a Freudian sense, not that he's actually having sex with his mother.

Meanwhile, the horse lady is completely lost.  I can't write about what happens next, too disturbing.  

Let's shift to Smart Girl, remembering when she was a baby, and her dad, Bruno Sevilla, of whom this is the only photo, told her that the moon is Swedish.   She puts on some nice clothes and goes to the hospital to talk to her father, who is comatose.  He looks the same, so he's been there for a long time.

She kisses him right on the mouth -- a long, passionate kiss that lasts at least 30 seconds.  They're lovers!  But if he's been in a coma since she was a little girl, that means they started having sex when she was a little girl.  I wonder if this means that the Basque Gay Cop was being literal about being in love with his mother. 

The end.

Beefcake: None.  Not even on the internet.

Gay Characters:  The Basque Gay Cop, but he doesn't really do anything except refuse to have sex with a drugged-out prostitute and be in love with his mother. 

My Grade: Too much gross stuff.  F.

Trevor LaPaglia: Tom of Finland, Trunks, a trunk penis, a gay three-way, and Pepito's "mamadas"

  

Link to the nude photos

Thiago Alves lookalike: Trevor LaPaglia has 21 acting credits on the IMDB.  I'm not sure I want to see Suicide Letters or The Ethical Slut, but maybe Voodoo Macbeth or Pepito's Mamadas.

The webseries takes Pepito, the popular animated joke-telling kid, into a life-action adulthood.  A mamada is a blowjob, from the verb "mamar," "to suck," or something stupid. In this case, it means "stupid."  I think.

Trevor also does erotic shows, this one at Trunks in Chelsea, New York.  I used to go there.

I'm getting nostalgic.  I remember parties with only gay guys.  We didn't actually know any straight people, at least none that we were out to, and besides, who wanted to invite someone that you couldn't bring home afterwards?

Trevor is in a three-way relationship, and often gets interviewed on polyamory.

But he's in touch with his gay roots, also.  Here he sells vodka as a Tom of Finland drawing.

Trevor's dick and butt is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Gemstones Episode 1.4, Continued: Dot drives Kelvin crazy, Keefe refuses sex, and Gideon and Scotty date. With bonus Daedalus dick

 

I revised the Dot/Kelvin and Scotty/Gideon sections of this review.

Link to the nude photos and explicit sexual discussions

Earlier in Episode 1.4, we learned that Keefe is gay, and Kelvin is afraid of sex, or maybe just the phallus. Next we see a normalization of the Gideon-Scotty relationship.  Instead of being terrorized by Scotty, Gideon seems to actually like and care about him. This suggests disagreements among the showrunners about where the characters should go, similar to seeing Kelvin and Keefe as good buddies in one episode and romantic partners in another.

I'll let you buy me dinner: At the campground, Gideon gives Scotty the intel he learned from Martin: they receive an offering of over $1,000,000 on normal Sundays, but on big holidays, $3,000,000.  It's counted and placed in the vault overnight Sunday. On Monday it's deposited into the bank.  Wait -- is that all in cash?  Don't people just throw a few bucks in the offering plate?  If they're going to donate a lot of money, they'll write a check, or just have it deducted automatically from their bank account.

Scotty "goes dark" for a moment, brags about his own stuntwork, and criticizes Gideon's.  Then he becomes downright friendly and says "I'll let you buy me dinner."

You Shine: Cut to Kelvin appearing at Dot's lacrosse practice at North Jackson High School (in-joke: this is where Danny McBride's character worked in his earlier series, Vice Principals).  Like her boyfriend, Dot's friends think that Kelvin has a sexual interest.  The background music, Sweet Cheater's "Summer," supports them:

It's driving me crazy, making me wild in the summer,

Spending my time alone with you

Take a ride, baby, to the stars, in the backseat of my car

Ooh yeah, it feels so right, you belong with me tonight

 Her friend concurs: “Who’s that creepy man?”, “man” instead of “guy” highlighting Kelvin’s inappropriate age, but Dot assures her that he’s harmless, “just an asshole from church.”  He swishes down from the bleachers and squeals “What’s up, girl!” like the flamboyant gay friend in a romcom, a queer code that signifies his utter lack of romantic or sexual intent.

He apologizes for the Satanic Sweep, oddly characterizing it as a “hang” between friends, and invites her to a teen trampoline party at the Sky Zone tonight: “No presh, just come by. If you like it, great.  If not, you’ll never see me again.”  This is the rhetoric of someone who wants to make a friend, not find a girlfriend. 

When she agrees, Kelvin adds: “What if we go no boyfriend tonight. Just you.  You sparkle without him – know that.”  Austin is too old for the teen group, so he wouldn’t be permitted anyway; Kelvin is simply stressing that Dot doesn’t need an older boyfriend, or “semen loads,” He skips off, still the flamboyant gay friend: “It’s gonna be fun, girl!”   

When the episode first aired, some very desperate fans thought that Kelvin was straight, and interested in Dot, but what straight guy makes a date, then skips off with "It's gonna be fun, girl!"?

Dot at the Youth Group:  We cut to the youth group meeting at the Sky Zone, an indoor trampoline park on Wando Park Boulevard in Mt. Pleasant, a suburb of Charleston with many Gemstone sites. Lots of kids somersaulting on bouncy-walls, and Keefe stretching Kelvin from behind as he groans "Harder. Harder.   Yeah, oh, that's good."  Acting like they're having sex, har har.

Notice that they're both wearing "Faith Factory" T-shirts, but none of the kids are. Keefe is now Kelvin's assistant youth minister. 

Dot appears.  Kelvin is "super-pumped that you didn't bring your idiot boyfriend."  Do you still think he's straight, after the sex joke?

He clears a space.  Keefe says: "These feats of physical strength are amazing."  Yeah, Kelvin is hot.   He performs some professional-looking acrobatic stunts.

Gideon and Scotty's Date: Dinner is pizza and beer at the Shem Creek Restaurant in Mount Pleasant, to the rather suggestively sexual song “You Knock Me Out.”

 

The way you talk when you say what you see

Your smile breaking my words – you knock me out.

The way you shake it, baby -- what’s on your mind?

The way you get when you get down – you knock me out. 

Apparently Scotty or Gideon, or both, are overwhelmed by the intensity of their passion.

 Scotty calls Gideon "Little Lord Fauntleroy,” a rather archaic phrase for a fragile, polite, feminine-coded “sissy,” named after a character in the 1886 novel by Francis Hodgson Burnett.  In the 1936 movie version, Freddie Bartholomew’s Ceddie is redeemed through a homoromantic bond with the tough Mickey Rooney    Likewise, here Scotty seems to be trying to masculinize Gideon, complimenting him on his ability to smoke, drink, and swear:  "I like this side of you, man."  They smile at each other, caring boyfriends far removed from the toxicity of Scotty’s earlier rant.

Knowing what comes after, I wonder if presenting Gideon and Scotty as romantic partners is a holdover from an early draft, in which Gideon is the gay character, and Kelvin begins dating Dot.  Or it may be a misdirection, to draw attention from the Kelvin/Keefe romance and keep viewers guessing which will turn out to be gay. 

ner is pizza and beer  at the Shem Creek Restaurant, while in the background we hear "You Knock Me Out," by the Chuck Hall Band -- apparently Scotty and Gideon are immersed in an overwhelming passion.

Gideon explains how he came to make the video: things were tense between him and Jesse, so his mom made him go to a prayer convention.  Jesse had his friends in his hotel room, and didn't want Gideon around. "Dude wanted to fuck," Scotty says.  So Gideon left, but on his way out, he hid  hid his phone with the video on, in case anything interesting happened.  He ended up taping Jesse's sex-and-drugs party, and decided to blackmail Jesse to "get even."

Scotty envisions their new life in Thailand, after stealing the money from the vault. He mentioned the ladyboys earlier, but it's worth repeating that Thailand is a well-known destination for gay tourism.  He also wants to repair the hard drive containing the sex-and-drugs party video, so "we f*k your Daddy again."  Very graphic way of putting it, with an incest-subtext. 

Then he recalls their first meeting.  Gideon was wearing a wig to be the stunt double for a woman (wigging," remember?), and Scotty was attracted: he came up behind him and grabbed "like you were a little piece." He means a potential sexual partner.  Apparently he likes people who are androgynous or nonbinary.  

Left: Gideon's butt.  Not  Skyler Gisondo's

He continues: "But you weren't.  You were a friend."  Gideon didn't mind being grabbed; apparently he liked it, since he accepted being drawn into a relationship.

 "And I get you.  I know you way better than your family does."  He sounds like an abusive boyfriend: "No one understand you but me." 

We cut to another scene on this busy Friday night: Jesse and Amber counseling Chad and his wife Mandy about the aberrant emails ("we were just fooling around").  Of course they mention cum again ("Water squirt emoji does not mean 'cum' -- it means ejaculation"),  And we're off to Club Sinister.

Satanist cock after the break