Adam Devine's Also-Rans: 8 sitcom guest spots, with Jason Bateman, Andrew Santino, and some costar cocks

 

Link to the costar cocks

After Workaholics, The Righteous Gemstones, Bumper in Berlin, House Party, Bad Ideas, and twelve movies, are you getting tired of Adam Devine? 

I didn't think so.

The guy is prolific. Between 2006, when he started filming Mail Order Comedy shorts with his buds Ders and Blake, and 2015, when he was too busy with starring roles, Adam guest-starred on eight tv series, not including animation and sketch comedy.  Let's see if there's any gay subtexts...or even texts.

1. The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, 2007, about two women film producers, appeared on the IFC.  

Left: Giuseppe Andrews as an aspiring writer who steals one of their scripts.

Adam played Toby in the episode "Dykes Like Us," the standard sitcom plot where two straight people pretend to be a gay couple in order to get some of the incredible privileges that gay people enjoy.  Like being called a "freak" at an academic conference?  Get real.

2. The Wife and Times of Teddy Berman, 2008, about a family man "struggling to make sense of a world where his father suddenly has a ponytail and an earring, his best friend is a stay at home dad, and his kids will only speak to him through Skype."  Sounds super old-fashioned.

Adam plays a Teenage Caveman who tells his parents about two problems: a rampaging bison that needs to be hunted, and a baby with a diaper that needs changing.  Thus a gendered division of labor is instituted for all time and eternity.  An anti-Women's Lib series in 2011?

3. Better Off Ted, 2009, starring Jay Harrington as a research developer at a soulless corporation. In Episode 1.5, "Win Some, Dose Some," a woman getting tested for a new experimental drug goes haywire, and Ted sabotages his daughter's wrapping-paper competition so she won't win and he won't have to go on a man-date with a general who has a man-crush on him.  Gay panic, anyone? 

Adam appears as Josh. The show is not available to stream, so I don't know anything about his character. 

4. Samantha Who?, 2009 stars Christina Applegate as a real estate hotshot who gets amnesia and tries to fix the horrid messes she made in her old life. 

Adam appears in two episodes as temp Tyler Banks.  I purchased Episode 2.19, "The Other Woman": Samantha tries to be nice to the girlfriend of her ex, Winston Funk -- Billy Zane, left -- but ends up sleeping with him.

At the office, Samantha asks Tyler the Temp to call Mr. Funk and tell him that she will have dinner with him tonight, but it's not a date: she's setting him up with his ex.

Tyler is happy with this news, and exclaims "I'm still in the game!"  He must have a crush on Samantha.

The morning after the clandestine sex, the girlfriend complains to Samantha that Winston is not returning her calls.  Just then Tyler brings in flowers that he sent...to Samantha. Uh-oh, her cover is blown.

5. Traffic Light, 2011, a short-lived Fox series, featured three best friends in different stages of the heterosexist trajectory: single, living with a girlfriend, and married. 

In Episode 1.7, "Stealth Bomber," Adam, Ders, and Blake appear as Tobey, Howard, and Tad.  The show is not available for streaming, but I assume they're doing a Mail Order Comedy riff.

More Adam after the break

The top 10 "Little House on the Prairie" hunks face fire, flood, disease, disaster, murder, and angst

When I was in high school, if I was home on Monday night at all, I was watching a hip sitcom like The Jeffersons or WKRP in Cincinnati, certainly not Little House on the Prairie (1974-83).  But my sister loved it. The historical drama, based on the autobiographical novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder, was about a farm family in frontier Minnesota in the 19th century: Charles and Caroline Ingalls and their daughters Laura, Mary, and Carrie. Other relatives come and go, the daughters grow up, and so on.

I always thought it was a family-friendly drama, like a TGIF sitcom, but my research reveals that it was quite angst-ridden, more "what shall we cry about this week?" than humorous anecdotes.  Episodes featured drug addiction, leukemia, child abuse, alcoholism, prejudice, diseases, accidents, murder, robbery, and rape, not to mention an ongoing story arc about Mary's blindness and a series finale that has the whole town of Walnut Grove blowing up!

This was the 1970s, when the top songs on the radio were about people and horses dying and the top "sitcom" was about soldiers being blown to bits in the Korean War.  Still, the pain and anguish seems a bit excessive.

With all the sobbing going on, you wouldn't expect much beefcake and buddy bonding, but apparently producer and star Michael Landon went out of his way to appeal to gay men and boys (and maybe heterosexual girls).  Dozens of 1970s musclemen and androgynous teen idol-types crossed the screen to have accidents, lose loved ones, die of diseases, and take their shirts off.  Here are the top candidates.

1. Michael himself, Charles Ingalls, previously Little Joe on Bonanza, with a famous body and bulge.  Where to begin?  He loses family members and friends to a variety of diseases, accidents, and murders, loses multiple houses to fires, loses jobs, deals with infinite pain and sorrow, yet still believes that there is a Divine plan behind all the misery (it's actually the writers, wondering "what horrible thing can happen to the Ingalls this week?")    And he has plenty of time to work out.

2. Jonathan Gilbert as Willie Oleson, the spoiled son of the town shopkeepers (his sister Nellie was the snooty, bullying antagonist to the girls).  He is mostly comedic relief, but he helps out during blizzards, fires, and illnesses.

He grew up, but this is the only shirtless shot I could find.

3. Matthew Laborteaux as Albert, an orphan adopted into the Ingalls family.  Subsequently his girlfriend is raped, and he takes to stealing, gets an incurable disease, and becomes addicted to morphine.  He should have stayed in the orphanage.

4. His brother Patrick as Andy, one of Laura's friends.  His mother is killed, and his father (played by Merlin Olsen) becomes an alcoholic.





5. Linwood Boomer (love that name) as Adam Kendall, one of Mary's colleagues at the School for the Blind.  They get married and lose their infant son in a fire.  Eventually he gets his sight back and becomes a lawyer.

More beefcake and angst after the break

Braxton Alexander: Three heterosexual boyfriends, three serial killers, one saxophone, and five bare butts

Born in 2007, actor and model Braxton Alexander had a busy child star career. Strangely, although of course he had no control over the scripts at age eight or nine, his movies and tv shows seem overwhelmingly heteronormative, if not downright homophobic.

Link to the bare butts

Four episodes of Mr. Mercedes (2017) as the young Brady Hartsfield, living through the horrific childhood that would turn him into a homophobic mass murderer with psychic powers.

 

(Left: Harry Treadaway, who plays the adult Brady)

The young Callahan in Tag (2018), about a group of friends who play an elaborate game of tag every year, while not making homophobic jokes and fielding gay panic.  

The young Callahan kisses a girl. So you can have boys and girls sparking at each other from the womb, but heaven forbid depicting a gay kid.

(Left: Jon Hamm, who playes the adult Callahan).

Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square (2020) is intensely heteronormative: the meaning of life is boys and girls gazing at each other forever. Brax (bottom) plays a singer.

The Black Phone (2021) is about a gay predator who kidnaps young boys (I'm not kidding).  Brax plays a bully, not one of the victims.

In I Want You Back (2022), a dumped boyfriend and girlfriend try to sabotage their exes' new relationships and get them back.  Brax plays a "middle school boyfriend."

The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022-4) features two brothers in love with a girl named Belly. Brax plays the young Conrad, falling for Belly at the age of 13.

More Brax after the break

"School Spirits": Ghost girl, her ghost gay bff, and their living buds solve the mystery. Plus the boyfriend desnudo

 

I'm a sucker for teenage ghost stories, as long as they are comedies, so I reviewed the first episode of School Spirits on Netflix:

Link to NSFW review,

Maddie (Peyton List) wakes up in the boiler room of her high school.  Her blood is splattered around.  But that's not the worst part: she's dead!  She can't touch or move anything.  She can see and hear the living but they can't see or hear her.  And she can't leave the campus!  

Her self-appointed guide is Charlie (Nick Pugliese, center), a gay kid who died in the school during the 1990s (peanut allergy, not hate crime).  He advises her to not try to remember how she died, since she can't change anything: no communication with the living is possible. But don't ghosts communicate with people all the time?  Maybe in the next episode.  And becoming fixated on the past is dangerous: some band members who died in a bus crash many years ago are obsessively performing the school fight song, over and over.

Charlie introduces Maddie to some other ghosts from various decades, notably Wally (Milo Mannheim, top photo and right), who died on the football field, and wishes that he had managed to shower first;  and the Goth Kirsten, who was murdered by her guidance counselor.  

Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman), a teacher who died in the school, offers regular group therapy, with regular homework ("write your obituary").  This doesn't get boring after 20 years because ghosts don't experience time in the same way that the living do.  He also advises Maddie to resist checking up on her living friends, as they will gradually forget her and move on.

Of course, Maddie doesn't listen.  She tries to recall events leading up to her death: she made plans to with her BFFs, Simon (Kristian Ventura) and Nicole, to see Carrie that night.  

Her boyfriend Xavier (Spencer MacPherson) was skipping class, and texted her to join him for a smooch session in his car.  She talked him into going to the movie.  They met the others after class with the tickets.  And that's it.

Out in the living world, Maddie's body has not been found, so she gets "missing person" posters and "thoughts and prayers" in class.  The BFFs think that this is ridiculous: they should be out looking for her.  Suddenly Xavier's bag flies open: he has Maddie's cell phone!  Why didn't he tell anyone for the last three days?  This makes him the prime suspect in her murder. The sheriff (Ian Tracey, left), who also happens to be his Dad, arrests him.

Beefcake: Charlie's "office" is the shower room in the boy's gym, where he can watch an endless parade of butts and cocks (just butts are shown).  Otherwise none.

Gay Characters: Charlie, and maybe Maddie's living bff, Simon. A future episode shows us Simon's high school boyfriend, Emilio, who is now all grown up, married to another guy, and teaching at the school (played as an adult by Andres Soto, seen here doing...um...)

To be on the safe side, I posted what he is doing to RG Beefcake and Boyfriends,  along with a lot of other Andres desnudo photos.  

Heterosexism: Maddie and her boyfriend kiss about 1,000 times. Of course, they won't be able to in future episodes, but Xavier has been seeing another girl on the side, so doubtless Maddie will be seeing some smooching.

The Mystery:  "Who killed Maddie, and why?"  It's obviously not Xavier or one of her bffs, and those are the major living characters introduced to date.  I also hope that we have some subplots involving the other ghosts.

My Grade: A-

See also: Is There Sex After Death: A Gideon/Scotty story

Dead Boy Detectives: Ghost buddies, one gay, one bi, solve crimes

Peder Lindell: Vampire, magician, pilot, gay skater, gay Catholic school boy. With possible Peder penis

Ok, this time I checked in advance, so I don't get tricked by another interloper on the red carpet. 

Link to the nude photos

The Disney wiki lists Peder Lindell in the cast of  The Rise of the Red as Morgie, the teenage son of Morgan Le Fay from the Arthurian mythos.

The character does not appear in earlier "Descendants" movies or tv shows, but he looks like he might be gay.

Peder grew up in Northfield, Minnesota, and began acting at age 11. with a role in a stage version of On Golden Pond at the Minnesota Jungle Theater.  He went on to star in Gypsy, and then as Jason, a closeted gay student at a homophobic Catholic school, in Bare: A Pop Opera. 

Jordan Luke Gage played Jason in the West End revival.  Spoiler alert: the gay dude dies.

Peder is currently a theater arts major at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.  

He has his pilot's license and certification as an Advanced Rescue Diver and Emergency First Responder.

 And he has a boyfriend and a little dog.

Of his six acting credits on the IMDB, three are shorts: 

Out of My Hands, about a boy and a gun, aired at the Catalina Film Festival.

Leak seems to be about a boy in a jar.

Scraps depicts a gay romance between skateboarders in Montana in the homophobic early 2000s.  It's the "first Montana LGBTQ skate film."

More Peder after the break

Freshman year at Augustana College: Newly out, I ask Jack Kerouac for a date, unaware that.....

 

  Link to the version with nude photos

Ok, this isn't really Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road.  It's Peter Orlovsky, the lover of Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsburg.  

I didn't really have a date with Jack Kerouac, either.  But Jurgen came close.

During my freshman year at Augustana,  I often saw him sitting by himself in the Student Union lounge -- in his twenties, tall, husky, bearded, with wavy brown hair and brown chest hair sneaking up over his lumberjack shirt.  He would smoke a pipe, of all things, drink coffee, and read a book or scribble into a little spiral notebook.  Too old to be a student -- we didn't have any "nontraditional" students at Augie -- but certainly not a professor.  Was he a townie who for some reason liked the ambience of the Student Union at a small Lutheran college?



I had just come out, but I had only told two people: my brother, who was fine with it, and my best friend, who slammed the door in my face and never spoke to me again.  If the college administration found out, I would be expelled.  So I couldn't walk up to him and say "Hi, are you gay?"  I had to use deduction: he's not with a woman, he dresses oddly, must be gay.  

One Tuesday afternoon I got a cup of coffee myself -- even though I hated the stuff -- and sat down in the chair across from him.

"What are you writing?"

He looked up and smiled.  "Just a poem I'm working on.  'Tucumcari Two-Step: Heat in the Year of the Drought.'"

"Cool.  I want to be a writer, too."  Actually, my career goals were up in the air at the moment.  Through high school I planned on becoming a missionary-linguist, translating the Word of God for isolated tribes, but that was impossible now.

Left: Jack Huston, who played Keroauc in Kill Your Darlings

"Who are your favorite authors?" he asked.

"Oh...um...Isaac Asimov, of course. Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton,..."

"Sci fi -- that's for Adam's Bookstore Babies!"  He gestured at the bookstore where my friend Adam sold science fiction and comic books.  "You need a real man's literature.  Hemingway, Kerouac, Henry Miller.  Here -- try Wallace Stevens."

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds

I had no idea what the poem was about, but a muscular guy with a big...um...cigar was far superior to anything we had studied so far in my stupid English class.

Jurgen was a student after all, an English major, 28 years old -- after high school he had "bummed around" Europe for a couple of years, then moved to California, then hitchhiked to Rock Island (where his parents lived) for college.

All gay men moved to California, and in his life history, he didn't mention women. He must be gay!

The next day I had to work, but on Thursday I hung out with Jurgen again  Neither of us came out, or said anything about gay people; it was the Student Union, after all, crowded with students who might overhear us.

But we didn't mention liking girls, either.

More after the break

Kelvin/Keefe memes: Cooking, honeymooning, testifying, sinking. With Jack from "Will and Grace" and some random nude dudes

 

I've had nothing but trouble with this post with memes -- jokes -- featuring Kelvin and Keefe of The Righteous Gemstones and friends.  First the G-rated version gets slapped with a "sensitive content warning," and then I accidentally save the G-rated version on the explicit site.  I hope these memes are worth it. 

Link to the explicit photos

1. I like my coffee hot and black, like my...

Wait, that won't work for the G-rated photos.  Go back in the bedroom; I'll think of a joke later.

2. BJ and Keefe go to church

BJ: Praise Jesus!  Testify!  I got the Spirit of God in me!

Keefe: When will this be over so Kelvin and I can go home and make out?

3. The Men's Room

Keefe: During my Satanist days, I spent a lot of time in the men's room of that truck stop off Highway17. Want to give it a try?

Kelvin: You always have the best ideas for Date Night.

4. The honeymoon

Kelvin: You want to go sightseeing?  But Keefe, this is only the fifth day of our honeymoon.  The Eiffel Tower can wait.

5. I got your Eiffel Tower right here.

More memes after the break

The Subtext in Casper the Friendly Ghost

When I was a kid, my favorite comic book title was Harvey, with its odd jack-in-the-box logo and its fantasy characters (Casper the Friendly Ghost, Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, Hot Stuff the Little Devil)

Harvey also produced comics about human kids, like Richie Rich, Little Dot, and Little Lotta.  Casper the Friendly Ghost was about a ghost boy who lives with three nameless adult guardians in the Enchanted Forest (Not to be confused with the inferior Charlton knockoff Timmy the Timid Ghost).

In Casper’s world, ghosts were not dead people, but beings in their own right, who are born, grow up, take jobs and houses, and eventually grow old and die.  Their main pastime and means to social prestige is scaring, but Casper refuses to scare. 

Gay-coded, but no sissy or milquetoast, Casper is a strong-willed nonconformist, a Vietnam-Era pacifist who refuses to follow the hawkish status quo of ghost society. So strong are his principles that even when his life is in danger, he refuses to “boo” his way to safety.

Casper has an ally and confidant in Wendy, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed witch girl in a red jumpsuit who lives with three guardians of her own. They are not romantically involved; they are merely friends and comrades, thrown together by their common disdain for the social institutions that tell them they must scare. Neither expresses any heterosexual interest. (The 1995 movie starring Devon Sawa turned Casper heterosexual.)

But occasionally Casper moves beyond a simple lack of heterosexual desire to offer a glimpse of that other world. His efforts to bond with other beings (almost always male) sometimes transcend the merely friendly, especially whe the objects of his attention are perfect strangers whose struggles may cost him his life.

He accompanies Oliver Ogre on a perilous journey to the moon (Casper 113, January 1968), and helps an ancient Egyptian pharaoh regain his throne from a villainous usurper in (Casper 117, August 1968).

 When his new friends are adult humans, pixies, or Greek gods, drawn with the hard tight chests and rippling biceps more commonly associated with the DC and Marvel lines, it is easy to locate romantic attraction among his motives.

We see similar gay subtexts in “The Evil Planet” (Casper in Space 6, June 1973): Casper dreams that he has joined the deep space expedition of Crash Hammerfist, a Buck Rogers-type adventurer drawn as a brawny muscleman. They land on The Evil Planet, where flying bird-men abduct Crash’s female companion, Gale. While Casper calmly evaluates their options, Crash goes to pieces:

Crash: This is a disaster! Look – my cape is ruined! I can’t explore this evil planet looking like this!

Casper: [Trying to keep him focused on the crisis.] Is Gale your girlfriend?

Crash: No. . .she’s my seamstress. She made this entire outfit. [Hand swishily on hip.] Do you like it?

Casper: [Looking decidedly suspicious.] Er. . .yes.

At Casper’s urging, they ignore the soiled cape and set out to rescue Gail. They discover that she is being forced to compete in a beauty contest; the winner will become the wife of Emperor Zinzang, a young, slim Castro Clone. 

 When Crash bursts in, flexing his muscles and issuing taunts, the Emperor seems quite impressed, if not downright attracted; he forgets all about the beauty contest and challenges the superhero to single combat. They spend several panels lunging, grabbing, and jumping on top of each other, in the process accidentally shredding their outfits so the interplay of their muscles becomes even more evident.

During a lull in the battle, the Emperor explains to Casper that he really likes Crash, and he’s not evil, he’s just crazed with power – he received a year’s worth of invulnerability for his 27th birthday, and he’s been behaving rudely ever since. But in a few minutes he’ll be 28, normal again, and Crash will annihilate him.

Casper suggests that he call a truce and apologize for abducting Gail, and then he and Crash could start over as friends. The Emperor agrees.

 Then, abruptly, Casper wakes up. We never find out if the Emperor selects a wife, or if Crash and Gail ever leave the Evil Planet. Should we attribute this sudden jerk into “reality” to the writer’ incompetence, to running out of space in the issue, or to the realization that the only logical conclusion to the story as portrayed involves Crash and the Emperor arm in arm, watching the sun set on the Evil Planet?

What's Gay about Beany and Cecil?

Beany, a grinning 10-year old boy with blond hair, freckles, and a magic beanie that allowed him to fly, first appeared as a puppet on the local Los Angeles tv series Time for Beany (1949-1954). 

 A 26-episode animated version appeared on prime time (1962-63), and on Saturday mornings (1962-67). There were also books, toys, games, and comics.

This screencapt is from the short-lived 1988 remake, drawn by John Kricfalusi, implying that the two are boyfriends.

The animators had fun speculating on what was going on underwater, in the parts of Cecil that we don't see.

The plots involved Beany; his adult companion "Uncle Captain" Horatio Huffenpuff; and the giant green phallic symbol Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent.  There were a lot of puns which I didn't understand at the time: Hungry I-Land, "Malice in Wonderland," "Phantom of the Horse Opera," Cyrano de Bugs-R-Back (ok, that one is a bit of a stretch).

And a lot of heterosexist puns which I didn't understand: "We're headed for No Bikini Atoll."

Their main antagonist was Dishonest John, a silent movie melodrama villain with a handlebar moustache and a sinister "Nya-ha-ha" catchphrase.  He often captured and threatened to torture or kill Beany, whereupon Beany would cry "Help, Cecil, help!" and Cecil would rush to the rescue.

When I was a kid, I didn't notice the heterosexism.  It was far more pervasive than in the Hanna Barbera cartoons (Yogi Bear, The Flintstones).  The crew explores No Bikini Atoll, an island that looks like a reclining woman.  The Captain is in love with a husky woman named Ida, Cecil is dating a female sea serpent named Cecilia, and even Beany has a girlfriend, Baby Ruth. 

I just noticed a boy who needed lots of rescues.  Beany and Cecil didn't have a romantic bond, but the inversion of the standard female damsel-in-distress plotline paved the way for more overt gay partners, boys who faded-out in each other's arms -- Jonny and Hadji, the Hardy Boys, the Adventure Boys in the Green Library.

The first childhood toy that I remember is a huge, cuddly Beany doll wearing a red turtleneck sweater and blue overalls. When you pulled the string in back, he said random things:  "I'm Beany Boy!"; "Let's go explore!"; "Gee, this is fun!"; and "Help, Cecil, help!" 

I'm not sure that he should be encouraging five-year olds to go exploring.

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

Michael Bishop: Gemstone, Sinatra, Aladdin, Princess, fundamentalist. With twink and cub cock bonus

 

    Link to the twink and cub cocks

One of the guys I follow on Instagram posted a picture of Michael H. Bishop, who played young Karl Montgomery in Episode 3.5 of The Righteous Gemstones.   

Michael with Steve Zahn and Ian Winningkoff, Peter and Young Chuck Montgomery. He says:  "Montgomery by birth, Gemstone by choice."

Who would choose to join that crazy family? 

  Michael was wearing a cool femme outfit, so I conducted some research to see if he is gay.

Not much info out there, even on his Instagram.  I gather that he grew up in Valdosta, Georgia, where he starred in Aladdin and We Will Rock You at Valdosta Middle School.  

Nothing in high school except the Righteous Gemstones guest spot and a commercial for Bojangles Chicken. He seemed to be concentrating on voice: he sang as Sinatra for the Valdosta High School Jazz Band. 

He graduated from high school in 2024, and now lives in a small town about 20 miles from Jacksonville, Florida.  Not a college town. 

More Michael after the break

"The Seminarian": Hung gay evangelical looks for love, annoys his friends and the viewer. Three penises, no waiting.

The Seminarian 2011: "A seminarian saves a lady's life. They fall in love."  And "A closeted gay seminarian struggles..."  Well, which is it?  It can't be both.  The only way to find out is to watch on Roku.

Link to the penises

Scene 1: Whoa, the first scene shows a very well hung naked guy changing clothes in his kitchen!  Now we know the audience they're going after.  

He's Ryan Goodman (Goodman, har har) (Mark Cirillo), who lives in an incredible decadent-red apartment with his "when will you find a girl and get married" mother.  He is about to graduate from a conservative evangelical seminary, but he doesn't want to become a preacher: he's applying to a Ph.D. program at Yale.   

Scene 2: Meeting with his thesis advisor. Ryan is writing on how "love and desire" encourage procreation, protection, and socialization, "which enable us to survive and persist as a species."  The point of life is reproduction?  That's the house, job, wife, kids trajectory that my parents were always pushing on me.  I thought a gay guy would come up with something less oppressive.  Besides, he forgot the theology. "Oh, right...um...when we love each other, we reflect God's love." .

Scene 3: A restroom hookup leads to a heart-to-heart.  The guy had a bad breakup six years ago, and hasn't dated anyone since.  "So you're content without love?" Mark asks, horrified.  Some people are aromantic, and some are asexual.

Scene 4: Mark has only one gay friend on campus, Gerald (Matthew Hanon), who has just been dumped by his boyfriend, and doesn't have the energy to listen to his "love is bollocks" moaning.  Also a sraight friend, Eugene, who plasters the campus with "Protect Traditional Marriage" fliers. 

Although he has a girlfriend, Straight Eugene argues that you don't need to be in a relationship -- God's love is enough.  If you disagree, you don't understand God, and what are you doing in seminary?  Judgmental, aren't you?  Oh, right, you're training to become a preacher, and hate gays for a living.

Scene 5:  Mark working on his thesis: "When you love another human being, you love God."  He pauses for cybersex with Bradley, his online boyfriend, who lives too far away to meet. 

Scene 6: Mark decides to busybody into his gay friend Gerald's relationship, but  they have reconciled and don't want him nosing around.

Cut to the gym, where Mark is talking to his other gay friend about the Online Boyfriend. "So he lives far away.  You have to go see him, or you will never find love."  Dude, you live in Los Angeles.  Just walk into any bar and say "I have 8 inches.  Who wants to buy me dinner?"

Cut to Mark sitting on a bench, looking morose while Straight Eugene flirts with his girlfriend.

Scene 7: Mark bites the bullet and drives all the way down to Irvine to meet his Online Boyfriend. Ugh, bare apartment.  Ever hear of paintings?  Cut to the next day, with Mark gushing about the date to his gay friend Gerald.  Gerald isn't interested. 

Scene 8: Uh-oh, Online Boyfriend ghosts Mark. The various intertwining relationships are getting complicated. I'd better stop the scene-by-scene here.

The Online Boyfriend has some problems with drinking and depression, and keeps jerking Mark around, so Mark goes after his gay friend Gerald.  But Gerald isn't into it. 

Mark changes his thesis: "How can love be a gift from God, when it causes so much pain? The pain we feel is the pain God feels when we reject His love." 

He goes farther down the rabbit hole of disbelief: Didn't God know in advance about Adam and Eve's fall, which created this world of misery?  How could a good God allow it?  "This is what I hate about theology. It's justifying senseless beliefs with elaborate pontifications."  His friends wonder why he's still in seminary, and if he's still saved.  "You've backslidden, man."

He comes out to his friend's girlfriend, who respons about as you would expect: "You chose to sin!  You have to repent, and return to God!"  And to his thesis advisor, who advises: Don't tell anyone else, You don't want to be expelled a few months before graduation.  

Finally, we watch Mark sitting on a bench, staring into space, for about five minutes. Then he goes home and stares into space some more, and starts crying.  Mom asks what's wrong.  "Do you really want to know?" he asks.  "I'll tell you." Cut to black.

Beefcake:  Three penises. None of the other actors have any beefcake photos available. Left: more of Mark's penis.

Angst: I thought the crisis would be about "can you be gay and Christian," but it's really "why is love so painful?"  Being gay makes it more painful only because Ryan can't talk to many people about it. Just Gerald, Anthony, and Anthony's new boyfriend Jeff. 

My Grade: Too slow -- we spend 20 seconds staring at a curb, waiting for Ryan to walk by.  Rather wooden performances -- Ryan has one facial expression.  And I hate it when movies end abruptly,without a plot resol.... 

The penises are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends