Nathan Kress, Freddie from "ICarly," grown up. Is he still homophobic? Is he still shy about showing his dick?

 

Link to the nude photos

Many Nickelodeon shows of the 2000s had strong homophobic subtexts, and  ICarly (2007-2012).  Miranda Cosgrove starred as Carly, who hosts an internet comedy show with her butch-but-straight buddy Sam (a girl) and nerd-next-door-with-a- stereotyped crush on her Freddie (Nathan Kress).  

They are supervised by her wacky bi-subtext older brother, Spencer. 

 On the way, the contempt for gay men, or as Sam alls them, prancies, oozes out in joke after joke.  The most egregious is Spencer being chased down and arrested for appearing in public in a dress; cross-dressing has not been a crime in any American city since the 1970s.

I especially disliked Nathan Kress, not only for the horribly cliched "unrequited crush" plotlines.  As he bulked up, he steadfastly refused to permit beefcake photos.  To an extent, that's his choice: his body, his rules.  But when you choose a career that depends only displaying that body, and further set yourself up as a teen idol, you have a sort of obligation to your fans.

More annoying was his reason for failing to post beefcake: he was a way, way conservative fundamentalist of the "hating ten gays before breakfast" variety, and he didn't want girls and prancies getting ideas.

Today Nathan's instagram is full of wife-and-children pictures. 

Still hardly any beefcake, unless incorporated into the wife-and-kid pictures.

And he's still ultra-fundamentalist.

More Nathan after the break

Maxton Hall: Where the rich take their shirts off, the poor are obscenely happy, and the only dark secret is snogging

  

Amazon Prime drew me in to a tv series called Maxton Hall by displaying this guy on the icon.  I had no idea what it was about, but the "Hall" suggested a soap opera about rich people with dark secrets.

Scene 1: The Hunk, James Beaufort, played by Damian Hardung, wakes up in bed and shows his chest and abs. Hard what?  There's a lady next to him, hidden under the covers.  

He stumbles out of bed, drinks some booze, stumbles over things, shows us his butt as he gets dressed. 

Message from his sister Lid: "I fucked up bad. I don't know what to do."

Scene 2: Out to the pool, where his friends make fun of him: "The man of the hour.  Every woman's dream."  It's all boy-girl couples except for one single guy

They want to know if she was good in bed, but her brother protests.   Into the pool for play-fighting.  Suddenly Sister Lyd shows up, crying, mascara running. She explains: "Ruby Bell burst in without warning.  The press will destroy me, and Dad won't forgive another scandal!"  So, did you kill this Ruby Bell, or did she kill your boyfriend or girlfriend?

Scene 3: Flashback to four hours earlier, with the prim Ruby Bell reading a book on the bus on the way to Maxton Hall.  Wait -- Hunk James just got up.  It's early in the morning.  Is Ruby Bell on a bus at 4:00 am?  

She greets her teacher, Eidin Jalali.  Background note: She's a scholarship girl, in her last year, and she wants a recommendation to Oxford. 

Scene 4: Oh, I thought he would be a major character.  The Prim Ruby Bell gets off the bus.  An establishing shot of the incredible Maxton Hall, like Eton on steroids, actually Marienburg Castle. 

Ruby Bell is splashed by the evil, entitled Lyd. 

Ruby Bell and her also-poor friend Lin sneak past the elites, British royals and the son of the head coach at Manchester United, being ignored or glared at, and take their place in the incredible, works-of-art-studded classroom to discuss Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.  I didn't even understand that in grad school. 

"Maybe Kant's categorical imperative tells us to ignore the consequences of our action if it feels right."  Another hot fudge sundae over here, and tell the waiter to take his pants off. 

Scene 5: Uh-oh, Ruby Bell forgot to give the recommendation form to the teacher.  It doesn't have to be today, does it?  She rushes back to the classroom. Prediction: she'll find him screwing Sister Lyd, and end up being murdered.

Ok, they're kissing.  Close enough.  Ruby Bell screams in agony and drops her stuff.  "I can explain, Teacher says."  She runs out.  That's all?  When does Sister Lyd kill her?

Scene 6:  Hunk James arrives at Maxwell Hall and leaves his driver Percy, Hyun Wanner, in the car,  Meanwhile Ruby tries to pay attention to the Welcome Committee meeting, led by Kieran, Frederic Balonier, who appeared nearly nude in the Little Queer Review.  He appears to have a crush on Ruby.

Hunk James barges in.  Ruby hates him: he embodies everything wrong with the rich: privilege, entitlement, arrogance.  Oh, no, they're going to fall in love.  I was expecting a lot of scheming and skulduggery, not rich boy-poor girl romance. 

Out in the -- um, a sitting room that Frederick the Great would find too elegant -- James tries to bribe Ruby to forget the kissing, but she is insulted. I predict kissing of their own in about 15 minutes.

Scene 7: In town, Ruby is waiting tables for the rich kids who eat at Manos.  Afterwards she hangs out with her sister, so Sis can discuss how horny she is and do double-takes at cute guys.  

They go home.  Dad, Martin Neuhaus, is ridiculously thrilled to see them. Important plot point: he is in a wheelchair.  

They go into a ridiculously exaggerated bacchanal  over cooking dinner, laughing, giggling, dancing, pretending to stab each other.    Apparently being poor means living in constant ecstasy.

Then they settle down to dinner and a discussion of how much they love each other. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker,  "This marks the first place in this episode at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.”

They're rushing around, hugging, dancing, pretending to stab each other so much that I didn't notice: there's a mom in the household, too.

Background note: The stair lift broke, so Dad hasn't been upstairs in years.  Ruby is secretly saving up to buy a new one.  

Scene 8: Ruby is so upset over the Teacher's malfeasance that is none of her business that she refuses his letter of recommendation.  So you're jeopardizing your chance of getting admitted to Oxford  because....you're a judgmental jerk?

Left: Eidin Jalali kisses his boyfriend in the movie I wish I was watching right now.

More Maxton after the break

Joseph Cali: Nude model before Stonewall, John Travolta's disco buddy, soap opera hunk, Adonis Male

  

Link to the nude photos

In 1968, a year before Stonewall, 18-year old Joseph Cali was playing chess and cruising in Washington Square Park in Manhattan when he was approached by George Haimsohn, author of Stories of the Homosexual Life, The Gay Psychedelic Sex Book, The Gay Coloring Book, A Summer on Fire Island, and the book and libretto for the musical Dames at Sea, which was currently playing off-Broadway.

Haimsohn was also a photographer, working under the name Plato, and invited Joe to model. 

His first full frontal photo appears in a 1968 issue of Go Guys.  The text says that Joe is a "fast shooting star on the physique horizon....well equipped to handle himself in any tight spot." Tell me more, tell me more, did he get very far?

  

The photo set and magazine work paid for Joe's tuition at Siena College, where he led anti-war protests, starred in the play Drunkard, and worked as a stage manager for The Gingham Dog. 

 

He moved to Los Angeles in 1973, and continued to pose for the Model of the Month Club and Photozique, while making the rounds of auditions.

Joe's big break came in 1977, when he was cast as Joey, best buddy of John Travolta's Tony in the disco drama Saturday Night Fever

More Brooklyn-disco roles followed, including Flatbush, a tv series about a gang called the Fungos.  Joe starred as Presto opposite Adrian Zmed as Socks.  It only lasted for six episodes.

He got 19 episodes of Today's FBI in 1981-82 as Nick, the "Ethnic" member of the team according to Wikipedia.  I'm not sure what his ethnicity was.

More Joseph Cali after the break. 

"Muscle & Fitness": Searching for the Kelvin cover, with Weatherford's butt and Lesner's dick

  

In Righteous Gemstones Episode 2.5, the flashback to 1993, four-year old Kelvin has a cover of Muscle & Fitness on the wall of his room.  

Not this one featuring Steve Weatherford, top photo, who shows his butt on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

I never heard of him before, but apparently he's famous. 

You can only see it for a second before Judy turns off the light. Notice that it's positioned very low, at Kelvin's height.  

Being a research fan, I looked through the entire Muscle & Fitness cover gallery to find the issue chosen by the set dresser.  Notice that it shows a man with very short hair, arms akimbo.

I worked at Muscle & Fitness in the 1990s.  Joe Weider was extremely homophobic, worried about gay men reading our magazine, so almost every cover featured a man and a woman together.  A number featured just women.  The only male-only covers during my four years at Muscle and Fitness featured a celebrity, usually Arnold Schwarzenegger, but sometimes Lou Ferrigno or a sports figure.

There were a few non-celebrity male covers later, like this one from October 1997, too late for the 1993 flashback, and not the right cover anyway.

More after the break

Eight Halifax hunks, bulging Bluenoses, and naked New Brunswickers

  

Link to the nude photos

I don't remember the last time I posted on a Canadian tv series, but there were a lot of naked guys from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland left over that have been sitting in my "to post" file for ages.  

We'll start with a  New Brunswicker from St. Johns,   

Ginger violinist from Antigonish, on the Celtic coast of Nova Scotia

Antigonish selfie

Celtic church 

A statue of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo that fans have been rubbing "for luck."  It's in Portugal, so why am I posting it in a collection of photos from Canada?

Um...have you seen the bulge?

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 1.7: Keefe is in love, Scotty is...um, aroused and everybody has sex...

  

Link to the nude photos 

In Episode 1.6, after the blackmail plot fell through, Gideon and Scotty came up with a plan to steal the $3,000,000 in offerings that the church receives during the Easter service.  Gideon had doubts, but then Scotty showed up at his parents' house, pretending to be a friend visiting from California! 

Title: "And yet one of you is a devil."  From John 6.70. Jesus is complaining that he chose 12 disciplines, and one will betray him.  I guess we know who the devil is.

Prayer Power: A flashback to the Prayer Power Convention in Atlanta.  Gideon comes into the hotel room, upset: he was planning to have dinner with his Dad, but Jesse ditched him to play drinking games with his crew.  Jesse insults him, ridicules his upcoming internship and "California dreams," and orders him out.  On the way, Gideon sets his camera to take the video he would use for blackmailing.  So he didn't run away; the family knew that he had an intership set up. Why did Jesse act as if it was a big mystery.

Gideon the soul-winner: In the present, Scotty is having dinner with the family.  He explains that he came to South Carolina for a stunt job, but he "got banged up" and had to drop out.  Then he says that he came to see Gideon, who brought him to Christ. The family is so overjoyed that the "prodigal son" has become a soul-winner that no one notices the contradictions.

Uh-oh, Jesse recognizes Scotty from somewhere!  His cover is almost blown, but Scotty claims that he had a recurring role as a rapist on CSI Miami.  Rapist -- interesting choice, since CSI is about murder (you gather forensic evidence from the crime scene).  Scotty is painting himself as a sexual predator.  I wonder if Gideon is his latest victim.

Amber insists that he stay with them. Gideon protests, but Scotty touches his hand, and he consents.  So, Scotty, do you want a guest room, or would you prefer to share Gideon's bed?

We cut to a scene of Eli giving the siblings their Easter assignments; Judy will sing during the collection, Jesse will preach the sermon, and Kelvin has to lead a youth group song and dance number, which angers him (he's the youth minister; what did he expect?)

Shirt on, shirt off:  In the morning, Scotty and Gideon stop at the security station on their way out of the compound.  Hey, Scotty has his arm on Gideon's shoulder.   Everybody who sees them will think that they are a romantic couple.   Scotty flirts with security guard  Brock: "If you get to L.A., I'll get you an agent."  But he needs head shots, shirtless shots, and so on.  This is way more than Scotty needs to get access to the compound.  He just wants to see Brock naked.  

I'm gonna be...um, aroused: Cut to the guys having dinner (score: three dinners for Scotty/Gideon, none for Kelvin/Keefe).  They discuss the plan: on Sunday morning, after the offering is counted, Gideon and Martin will take it down the service elevator to the vault.  Scotty will be waiting, wearing his devil's mask, and rob them.  How will he get out of the church, with thousands of people milling about?

"As soon as the elevator door opens," he promises, "I'm gonna be..."  He'll be aroused  

"Nothing too big," Gideon cautions.  He can't help his size, dude.

To make it believable and not implicate Gideon, Scotty suggests tying him up, and using a few P-whips. This term is not defined online.  Could it mean penis-whip?

Scotty has more news: He got the sex tape fixed, so he can do the original blackmail plan in addition to robbing the church. "This is what you always wanted," he says. "We destroy your old man."  Gideon is not so sure that he wants Jesse destroyed.

Tell TJ to walk out: Cut to Judy announcing to Baby Billy that they will be performing during the Easter service. But Baby Billy doesn't want to: "too little, too late."  BJ protests, and Billy orders him to leave.  Judy agrees: "You're making me look like an idiot.  Go outside!"  Uh-oh, disrespecting your boyfriend.  Since the Kelvin/Keefe plot runs parallel, we should be expecting some discord in their relationship soon.

Billy continues: "Your Daddy is a fame whore.  He'd suck a man's cock in the middle of town square if he thought it would make him famous forever. He'd suck ten men's cocks."  Being outed as gay or bi is the most embarrassing thing Billy can think of. This may suggest a general attitude of homophobia that will make Kelvin's coming out difficult.

Part of the Family: Jesse takes everyone  out on his yacht.  Scotty complements the family on how close they are,  His own dad is in prison.  Jesse offers to be his Daddy, and hugs him.  Eli never once hugged Keefe.  Of course, it's just an act; Scotty waggles his tongue at Gideon over Jesse's shoulder, a vulgar gesture similar to what Keefe experienced at the sports bar.  Wait -- is he teasing Gideon, or offering to have oral sex with him?

Is it all an act?  Scotty seems to like being part of the family.  The background song tells him: 

The days are getting brighter – the sunlight feels like gin.

Juices punch and cider shiver deep within

You don’t have to be alone, when we’re having so much fun.

Don’t be alone

The Prayer Circle: Just before the Easter service (17,000 people in the Salvation Center, six million world wide), Eli, the siblings, their partners, and Martin have a prayer circle, Kelvin/Keefe are holding hands and praying.  Scotty is holding Keefe's hand and glaring.  Why isn't he standing next to Gideon, his "friend"? 

I Have to Be a Man:  We see a few moments of Levi's Christian rock number, then switch to Kelvin leading the teens in their song-and-dance.    Keefe, working security in the bleachers, seems to be making an "I love you" gesture. 

Meanwhile, Gideon is in the bathroom, throwing up, and Judy rejects Eli's offer of singing during the offertory.

Cut to Judy's dressing room.  She criticizes BJ for asking if she's ok.  He counters that he is not even religious, but he has always been there for her.  She continues to berate him for attempting emotional support until he's had enough and leaves: "I have to stand up for myself.  I have to be a man." He starts crying and runs away. Judy throws her engagement ring after him.  .

"What is a man?" is an ongoing question of the season.  It was discussed in Gideon's "welcome home" dinner.  Kelvin declares that he is "a man" frequently.  The definitions are contradictory: being muscular; controlling your emotions; being in charge; standing up for yourself; being heterosexual.  Maybe we'll get a resolution when the episode continues.

Guys doing it after the break.  Warning: explicit.

Fred with Tires: The Iconic West Hollywood Photograph

This is one of the iconic photos of West Hollywood.  Nearly everyone I knew had a print in their living room or bedroom.  It was a fixture in our homes, like the family photos that heterosexuals keep on their mantles:

A buffed young man carrying tires through an auto shop, his male-model face and expensive hairstyle contrasting with his working-class surroundings, a sweaty, macho, implicitly heterosexual grease monkey emerging from his closet, transformed into an object of homoerotic desire.

He represented all of small-town joys that we left behind in the Straight World, and the much greater joys we found with our friends and lovers in our new home.

I didn't know where it came from until yesterday: it's "Fred with Tires" by fashion photographer Herb Ritts (1952-2002).

He grew up in a wealthy household in Los Angeles (his next door neighbor was Steve McQueen), and attended Bard College.  His photography career began in 1978, when he and buddy Richard Gere had car trouble on a road trip, and he began photographing the future star in front of their jalopy -- not shirtless but sultry, bulging, a canny evocation of working class machismo combined with pretty boy sensitivity.

The next year, a photo of John Voight made it to Newsweek.

Pleased with the critical reaction, Ritts began photographing other celebrities, such as Brooke Shields and Olivia Newton-John.  He specialized in female supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford.  He published a number of books on fashion photography, and became a renowned expert in the field.

He was also a well-known commercial photographer, with work for Levis, Revlon, Brut, Chanel, Maybelline.

Although he was gay, out since college, in a committed relationship with partner Erik Hyman, his artistic emphasis was always on the feminine.  There are only a few male celebrities in his archive, and those few are rarely shirtless, displaying a sensuality but not overt eroticism.  This color photo of Justin Timberlake is an exception.

So how did we get "Fred, with Tires"?  In 1984, Herb hired a UCLA undergrad named Fred for a raincoat ad in the Italian magazine Per Lui.

 He hated the raincoats, so he had Fred pose in jeans instead.  The editor hated the photos -- too sultry, too erotic, too gay -- but ran them anyway.  And the last, taken when Fred was tired, sweaty, and little annoyed, anxious to finish up and go home -- perfectly captured the West Hollywood moment.

The original hangs in the Getty Museum, and prints became fixtures in our apartments, emblematic of home.

Miles Burris: Footballer/bodybuilder/family man. "Retribution will come onto you, and I'll do the coming."

  

Link to the nude photos

Former football player Miles Burris broke into acting with roles as football players in Starwood and Safety, and a lot of buffed guys: Rip Hardcore in The Really Loud House,  Triple H in Young Rock, Huge Guy #1 in Gym Rat and Mr. America in Federation.

He played Lucifer's dudebro brother Jophiel in a 3-episode story arc on Lucifer.

Link to NSFW site

In Season 2 of The Righteous Gemstones, he plays, God Squad bodybuilder Titus, who begins the decline and fall of Kelvin's God Squad cult.  He'd rather exercise than listen to a Bible story. When he is sentenced to a week in the tiger cage as punishment, he exclaims: "Retribution will come upon you, and I'll do the coming."

Sounds ok, dude, but I prefer oral

Miles discusses how he prepared for the role: by watching a lot of youtube videos about Christian muscle groups.  "They would lift their brothers and rip phone books."

Miles' instagram features lots of humorous reels poking fun at the buffed-guy experience.  They tend to be entirely heterosexist, assuming that the only reason guys work out is to get girls, but some of them are funny.

Miles of Miles after the break

"Clickbait": Misdirections, hidden agendas, dark secrets, and a nude Adam Grenier. But no Faly Rakotohavana

 

Link to the nude Adam Grenier

 The TV series is called Clickbait, which is ironic, because I clicked on the title to see what it was about, without remembering that Netflix tries to trick you: clicking on the icon starts the darn thing playing, instead of linking to more information, like every other streaming service.  

But it showed a birthday party, and a guy who I thought was Faly Rakotohavana of Unprisoned saying "This present is from me and Eric."  Obviously a gay couple.  So I kept watching

Scene 1:  It's an old lady's birthday, so the gift-givers are her adult children.  The only other male at the table is a middle-aged man, so Eric may be Faly's father rather than his boyfriend.  The short-blond-haired Pia gets very upset because the siblings were supposed to go together and buy Mom a bread maker, but they went behind her back and bought her a planter instead.  

Mom says that it's ok, she loves the planter, but Pia starts yelling at Eric and the young lady on the other side of the table, probably her sister: "You always do this!  You try everything in your power to destroy me!  This is the worst night of my life, and it's all your fault!"

"The planter is fine, dear..."

"This isn't about you!  It's about how those two hate me so much that they've sabotaged every plan I've ever made!"   She runs outside and screams in the middle of the street as a car pulls up.  Uh-oh, she's going to be kidnapped.

Cut to Pia walking through downtown Oakland, past a kissing gay couple.  Eric texts to see if she's ok: "Sure, I just need to get drunk and hook up to try to forget this awful night!"  She drops into a nightclub to dance crazily. 

Eric and Faly appear to see if she's ok.  Then they dance together.

Update: according to the IMDB, they are new characters played by Enzo Nazario and Kashmir Sinnamon.  The director just thought it was a good idea to cast lookalikes of Eric and Faly, and have them ask if she's ok minutes after Eric asks if she's ok.

 Scene 2:  Drunkenness accomplished, Pia goes into the nightclub restroom, sits on the toilet, and looks at a dating app -- with both men and women as possible matches.  She chooses Woody, age 36, .6 miles away.  Uh-oh, he's going to stalk her.

They make a date to get a drink right now.  She gets up, and -- splash! 

Scene 3: Home to bury the cell phone in rice.  She then takes some pills, eats yogurt marked "Elli," masturbates to porn, watches cute-cat videos....

Morning: driving to work, more pills, having to take over the phlebotomy for a nurse who can't find a vein: "Pia always gets me the first time," the cute patient Vincent, played by Jack Walton, tells her. I definitely don't want someone as unstable as Pia drawing my blood.  He offers her some crazy youtube videos, like "Ghost Dog Caught on Camera." 

Then a Vlogger shows a video she received of a guy holding a sign, "I Abuse Women."  If it gets 5,000,000 views, he's going to die.  Wait -- it's Eric, the guy from the head of the table last night!  I thought this was going to be about Pia being stalked by a hookup.

Scene 4: Pia tries to call Nick -- who the heck is Nick? -- but he's not picking up.  Then Sophie, either her mother or her sister, but she's in class all morning.  So she drives to the University of Oakland, where Nick works, and shows the video to Matt the Volleyball Coach.  "Did he come in this morning?"  Matt  checks: nope. 

Next stop: the Balfour school, where Sophie works.  Chased by the security guard, into the classroom where Sophie -- who was at the birthday party -- is lecturing on same-sex attraction in Twelfth Night.  

Sophie sees the video. "But I saw him leave for work this morning."  Ok, Nick is the one they were calling Eric last night, married to the sister, Sophie, with the teen or young adult as their son.  

More misdirection after the break