Jason Marsden: Second hottest of the Short Guy Brigade, Steve Smith, Max Goof, and the Pocket Gay. With Marsden d*cks

Link to the d*ck pics

No, I don't mean James Marsden.  I don't care that he has a nice physique and a big d*ck  This profile is about Jason Marsden.

You know, Steve on American Dad, Max Goof on the Disney Channel, that cat on Hocus Pocus,  Chester McBadBat on Fairly Oddparents, Nermal in the Garfield movies, and at 5'3", a bona fide member of the Short Guy Brigade.

Born in 1975,  Jason got his start at age 11, playing A. J. Quartermaine on General Hospital (1986-88) and werewolf Eddie Munster on the remake of the classic 1960s tv series The Munsters (1988-91).

As a teenager and young adult, he occasionally played a girl's boyfriend, but more often, a homoromantic best buddy: his characters bonded with Omri Katz in the paranormal-investigator series Eerie Indiana (1992), Perry King in Almost Home (1993), Brandon Call on Step by Step (1993-98), and Robert Downey Jr. on Allie McBeal (1997).

White Squall, 1996, sends Jeff Bridges and a group of teenagers onto a boat threatened by a mega-storm.  Some of them die.

Jason appears on a 2002 episode of Will and Grace.  Rejected by Will for being too short, the Pocket Gay eventually wins him over, and they head into the bedroom together.  No kissing -- guys didn't kiss on camera in 2002.

He returned to beefcake in Return to the Batcave (2003), an adventure involving the real life Adam West and Burt Ward, Batman and Robin from the 1960s tv series.  As the young Burt Ward, Jason displayed an impressive muscular physique.

Only a few live-action roles after that.  He wrote, directed, and starred in Locker 13, 2014, based on the R. Stine novel, about "making the right choices."   It gets a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Well, back to voice work.  

More after the break. 

Beast Boy in love with Robin, Aqualad, Cyborg...

I have never seen Teen Titans (2003-2006, 2012-), the cartoon series based on the DC comic books, so I don't know much about the shapeshifting Beast Boy.  But according to Wikipedia, he is portrayed as a lighthearted jokester (voiced by Greg Cipes, left).  He is best friends with Cyborg, and has a love-hate romance going on with a female titan named Raven.

Fan artists usually limit the Beast Boy -Cyborg bond to depictions of friendship.  For sex and romance, they prefer pairing him with Robin and Aqualad.

Robin gets the more explicit sexual acts, sometimes unwillingly.  Here they're being pushed together and assaulted by purple tentacles (a Japanese erotic tradition).

Fan artists like envisioning Beast Boy and Robin in intimate situations. This is about as G-rated as their pairings get.

For more romantic relationships, Beast Boy is usually paired with Aqualad, who appeared in the first season as his rival (another pair of antagonists in love).

Even while he's in love, Beast Boy's irreverent, fun-loving nature shines throughout.  Here, dressed up for the Old West, he makes a risque joke about "poking dogies," while embarrassed boyfriend Aqualad, asks him to put on pants under his chaps (so his bare backside doesn't show).

(Original pictures from the artists on deviantart.com.)

"Human Discoveries": Paleolithic hunks invent underwear, fire, and relationships. But are any of them gay?

 

Link to the n*de photos

Human Discoveries (2019) is an animated series (available on Facebook) about a group of Paleolithic humans who discover things like fire, relationships, and underwear.  Zac Efron stars as Gary, a loveable nebbish looking for love, community, and a way to avoid getting his butt bitten.  I reviewed the first episode to check for gay characters or subtexts. 

Scene 1:  Ugg (Paul Scheer), a bare-chested caveman, comes running out of some bushes. I'm a fan already. 

He and several other muscle guys run through the jungle, chased by a giant sabre-toothed tiger. They reach a cliff, and have to jungle-vine over it.  Bart, doesn't make it; the tiger starts eating him.  The guys make excuses to not save him.

Scene 2: Jane complains about the gender-inequality of their society: the women have to weave baskets and gather fruit, while the men get to fight the tiger that's been preying on them.

At a community meeting, Ugh admits that the tiger is still out there.  Jane raises her concerns about gender equality; Gary (Zac Efron) agrees -- why not have everyone do the job they're best at?  His  roommate Trog (Lamorne Morris, left) thinks that he just wants to impress Jane. 

More after the break

Jesse Bradford: The gay and gay-subtext roles of his teen idol days are long gone, but his physique remains

 

 

Link to the n*de photos.

Born in 1979, Jesse Bradford made his acting debut at the age of 8 months, in a Q-Tips commercial (it was a non-speaking role).  He was busy as a child, playing the son of a screenwriter with lung cancer in The Boys (1991) and brother of a psychotic gay kid (Harley Cross) in The Boy Who Cried Bitch (1991).

But he first made an impression on gay teens with Far from Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (1995), where his Angus is lost in the Canadian wilderness with a dog named Yellow, fights for survival, and takes his shirt off, revealing a firm but not muscular chest.

Unfortunately, Jesse's later projects involved a lot of girls.

In Hackers (1995), teenage computer whizzes Joey (Jesse) and The Girl try to save the world from a dangerous computer virus.  At least we see his rear.

In Clockstoppers (2002), Jesse and The Girl find a device that allows them to move super-fast, in effect stopping time.

But his darkly handsome teen idol face was sure to elicit swoons from gay teens.

The thriller Swimfan (2002) is about a psychotic girl who stalks Jesse, a high school swimmer.  Though he is heterosexual, the disdain he feels as the girl becomes more and more insistent in her desire to be with him can be read as a gay subtext.  And  fans got to see Jesse in a revealing swimsuit.

Some buddy bonding: his character  Balthazar likes Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Romeo+Juliet (1996).

He bonds with the gay male cheerleader Wes (Huntley Ritter) in Bring it On (2000). 

 In Flags of Our Fathers (2006), his Rene Gagnon storms the beach at Iwo Jima while mooning over Doc Bradley (Ryan Philippe).

After playing a gay hustler in Speedway Junky (1999), with Jonathan Taylor Thomas as his bi colleague, Jesse turned down a gay role in The Rule of Attraction (2002). Back then guys worried that playing gay would destroy their career.

More after the break

Airplane!: Convincing Bob that "Surely you can't be serious!" is funny

For Thanksgiving this year, Bob cooked a turkey -- but I couldn't get him out of bed until 9:00, so the turkey went into the oven at 11:00, and we didn't eat until 6:00 pm.  We passed the time by watching "Thanksgiving" movies, such as Airplane! (1980).

A parody of 1970s disaster movies like the Airport series (1970, 1976, 1977, 1979), it holds up surprisingly well -- for me, anyway.  Probably because there is a real plot, with characterization and suspense: when the cockpit crew and many of the passengers are disabled with food poisoning, traumatized pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays), who hasn't been able to fly since the War, is forced to land the plane.

Many of the jokes still made me laugh, although Bob was annoyed by my habit of laughing before the punchline: 

"Surely you can't be serious!"

"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley!"

"The hospital called."

"The hospital!  What is it?"

"It's a big building with patients in it, but that's not important now."

Other jokes were still funny to me, but I had to explain them to Bob, who wasn't born yet in 1980:

The stewardess gives a passenger a second cup of coffee, and his wife muses "He never asks for a second cup of coffee at home": a popular tv commercial.

Robert Stack as Captain Rex Kramer: a parody of his 1970s tough-guy roles.

An elderly white woman can "speak jive" to communicate with black passengers: she was Barbera Billingsley, the button-down conservative Mom on Leave It to Beaver.  Interestingly the team of Abrams, Zucker, and Zuker was also responsible for Kentucky Fried Movie, a sketch-parody movie starring both Wally and the Beaver.

Bob had never hears of any o fhtem.

Other jokes made him glare at me and say "You liked this?"

Racist jokes are everywhere.

1. The two black guys speaking jive, with subtitles translating into English.

2.  A isolated African tribe who "have never seen white people before" are instinctively good at basketball.

3. Striker's life history is so boring that everyone he tells it to tries to kill themselves: a Japanese guy commits seppuku, and an Indian guy tries self-immolation.

4. We could do without Captain Oveur's pedophilia jokes: "Billy, have you ever seen a grown man naked?  Do you like gladiator movies?"

5. Striker sees his future girlfriend Elaine for the first time in a sleazy bar during the War.  He is so oeverwhelmed by her beauty that he thinks he is dreaming, and asks the guy sitting next to him to "pinch me."  The guy glares and moves away. thinking that he is gay.

6.  We were torn about the character of Johnny, who seems to be an assistant ("How about some coffee?"  "No, thank you"), but is listed in the credits as Air Traffic Controller Johnny Henshaw-Jacobs.  Sometimes he evokes gay stereotypes: he criticizes a woman's outfit, respnds to "What do you make of this?" with "Oh, I could make a lovely hat," and calls his Auntie Em during the crisis like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.  

But at other times he comes across as just wacko.  While the plane is landing, he umplugs the lights on the runway, then says "Just kidding" and laughs maniacally.

Compared to the uber-swishy gay characters of other movies of the era, such as Lamar in Revenge of the Nerds (1984), we see a much more nuanced performance.  We wondered if the actor tweaked his performance to cut down on the swish: Stephen Stucker was something of an activist.  He was one of the first performers to publicly announce that he had been diagnosed with AIDS, a  few months before his death in 1986.

Verdict:  Me, A-.  Bob: C.  I guess you had to be there. 

"Christmas on Cherry Lane": A gay couple starts a family, and there's a plot twist you won't see coming

  

Link to the n*de photos

Christmas on Cherry Lane (2023) stars Vincent Rodriguez III, the muscular, bulging actor who specializes in family-friendly gay guys.  I figured I would watch in the background while doing other things on my laptop, but no, it requires you to pay attention.  There's a major plot twist.  I'm giving only the character names, not the actors' names.

There are three families on Cherry Lane on Christmas Eve

Family 1: John and Lizzie, who is due in two weeks,  just moved into the house, and are planning a quiet Christmas alone. They put up the tree and sing "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful," with a Hallmark Tree Trimmer ornament.  This will become important later.

Suddenly Lizzie's Mom and Dad arrive, and announce that they invited her brother and his family, too!  But John and Lizzie haven't even unpacked. Where will they put all those people?  

Dad Frank's d*ck is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Family 2: Regina and her friend Daisy, not shown, unpack Christmas decorations.  Her back story: she's a widow with adult children, and a boyfriend named Nelson.    

The adult kids, Winnie and Conrad, arrive in a horrible car.  Why does he keep it, now that he's making a ton of money?  Because his Uncle Ham gave it to him after Dad died. This will be important later.  

Sister Winnie doesn't have a job, except singing at open-mike nights for tips, but she'll be a famous singer one day, she says.  Mom wants her to try business school.

Mom announces that she's getting married to her Boyfriend, and she's selling the house and moving to Florida.  The adult children do not like this at all, and plot to break them up.

Family #3: Zian, left, and Mike, who works as a chef at a restaurant called Repair. They just moved into their house, too, and they're planning a Christmas Eve party tonight with twelve people.  Except contractor Quinn and his crew haven't finished remodeling the kitchen yet.  He brings them a plate of Christmas cookies, complements them on what a cute couple they are, and asks if "that famous singer" is coming to the party.  This will be important later.

Mike is freaking out.  Maybe they could move the party to the restaurant?  No, this is the first Christmas in their new house, where they're going to raise their family, so it's important to hold it here.  They walk outside and sit on lawn chairs in the cold and sing "Silent Night."  All of it.

Speaking of starting a family, the lady from the adoption agency tells them that the foster family they were placing a girl with backed out, so they're getting a child tonight -- on Christmas Eve.  With twelve people coming for a party.  Hopefully a family-friendly party.  How are they going to get a bedroom ready?

More plot complications after the break.  Spoiler alert: it's a big plot twist.

Dominick Togyela: Fitness model, photographer, gay film star from Budapest or Barcelona, or Vietnam

   

Link to the n*de photos 

You're probably wondering why Dominik Togyela appeared in the Kelton Dumont's Photos, Part 3 collection.  He popped up in a search for Kelton photos, so I figured that the two knew each other or had appeared in a movie together.  But Dominik is not listed on the IMDB or Broadway database.

According to his Facebook page, Dominik lives in Barcelona and attended the Grisart Ecola Internacional de Fotografia. 

Or he may live in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, where he attended the Bánki Donát Műszaki Technikum és Kollégium  

How about the gyógymasszőr, therapeutic massage therapist, from Budapest? 

Enough with Facebook.  I tried Instagram, and found a Dominik with two accounts, private with 97,000 followers and professional with 836 followers.   

He modeled Pump Underwear, appeared in Boylicious and Adonis Male, and got a Playgirl spread in September 2023.

30 videos on Youtube, with 279 subscribers.  They are mostly humorous POVs.  Here he's saying "When the priest says Mass and stabs you"?  

An OnlyFans page where he shows his d*ck.

There are videos on several gay sites,  some with a partner -- he's a bottom -- but he's also hugging a woman for Valentine's Day.

Unless that's a different Dominik.

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 1.3: Kelvin outs himself, Baby Billy get n*de, and Scotty shoves his wiener into Gideon's face

 

 Link to the n*de photos

In Episode 2, we saw problems in the developing Kelvin/Keefe and Judy/BJ relationships: Kelvin is too hesitant, and BJ too eager.  But the main takeaway was Gideon: Jesse's estranged son is one of the blackmailers!  Episode 3 will develop the Gideon/Scotty plot arc further, postponing Kelvin/Keefe to their centric episode, "Wicked Lips."  But first we need Kelvin to out himself a few times.

Title: "They are weak, but He is strong."  From "Jesus Loves Me," a hymn by Anna Bartlett Warner published in 1862, but based on 2 Corinthians 12:10, NIV: "When I am weak, then I am strong."  You can't get much weaker than these guys.

Baby Billy is n*de:  The childhood home of Eli's late wife, famous Gospel singer Aimee-Leigh. A poster advertises the "Sing for Joy" concert tour, featuring the Freeman's Gap duo, Aimee-Leigh and Baby Billy.  Two children on the cover of a single album, "Misbehavin'."  They must have been a brother-sister act as children, before Aimee-Leigh became a serious gospel singer.  A young woman yells that Baby Billy's hot milk is ready; she brings it to him as he bathes outside.

We see the back of his head -- now white-haired -- as he describes the satellite church his brother-in-law Eli is giving him -- "in the middle of everything -- fun chain restaurants, name-brand clothing stores."  We see his face -- fans of Danny McBride's work will recognize him as Walton Goggins of Vice Principals in old-age makeup. 

He stands -- he's huge!

Although Walton Goggins has been n*de on camera before, in this case they hired a stunt cock belonging to an unidentified 80-year old man from town.

Trivia note: Baby Billy is actually 66 or 67 in this scene, and Walton Goggins is 51.  

Baby Billy promises Tiffany, his new wife -- Number Four, plus a number of boyfriends -- a world of "riches and glamour" with the Gemstones. 

Eyes on the Prize: Gideon meditates on the Tao te Ching as the family prepares for church: "Eyes on the prize. To the still mind, the entire universe surrenders."   He's actually quoting the Tao te Ching wrong.

On the way to the Salvation Center, his brothers ask about the celebrities he met in Hollywood.  Well Vin Diesel (left). Jesse tries to one-up him by claiming to have met Telly Savalas, star of Kojak (1973-78). Jesse was not born until 1981, so he couldn't have watched in real time.

The Satellite Church: Judy, BJ, and Kelvin are scoping out the dying shopping mall where they opened the satellite church: "All around America, capitalism is dying," Kelvin points out. "That's when we step in."  He will never display this insightful knowledge of economics, or anything other than muscles, again.  

Queer code: First Kelvin does a little femme flutter and hand-on-waist.  Then a hot girl walks past: an opportunity for him to demonstrate that he is heterosexual with a double-take?  No,he  looks the other way. 

Baby Billy is greeting the congregants in front of gigantic photos of himself and Kelvin.  Why Kelvin, in particular?  Maybe to indicate that they're both outsiders, struggling to be taken seriously by the family.  Or because they both have huge cocks.

As Baby Billy begins the service, the siblings watch from offstage.  Gideon tunes up his guitar.  Judy comments that he's "looking tasty. Staying in shape." Kelvin agrees; "He is. That's showbiz, right?  You to to keep a tight physique."  You just outed yourself to your sister, Kelv Baby.

Jesse disagrees: lots of people who work behind the scenes are "fat as fuck,."  But, Kelvin insists, if you want to be a star, you have to be a "specimen...a straight unit." According to the Urban Dictionary, a "straight unit" is a guy who is tall, strong, muscular, and well-hung. How much farther out can Kelvin get?

Afterwards the siblings meet Tiffany.  They disapprove of her countrified lack of refinement, her teeth, and her insistance that they call her Aunt Tiffany, even though she is younger than 

More wieners after the break

Male Nudity in Italian Class

The only good thing about Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, where I taught at a horrible state college after getting my M.A., was the free tuition for faculty.  There wasn't a lot at that I wanted to take, but the did offer Italian.

It didn't start out well:
Roger e un ragazzo americano. Maria e una ragazza italiana. Roger e Maria sono amici. . .

Roger is an American boy visiting Italy. He goes to a café and tries to pick up a local girl. In the first lesson we learned “What is your name?”, "Your country is beautiful," and "How old are you."

Roger learns the time so he won’t be late for the cinema, learns the names of food so he can order in the restaurant, gets an overview of national history as they tour the museums.  In Chapter 10, we learn the Italian word for "kiss" (bacio).

Why do even language-learning dialogues have to be about a boy and a girl?  No men in Italy?

I never thought of Italy as a "good place."  The only fiction about Italian boys in love was The Little World of Don Camillo, and movies set in Italy seemed to involve mostly horny heterosexuals: Roman Holiday (1953), La Dolce Vita (1960),  Island of Love (1963), Avanti (1972).  Pasolini was entirely heterosexist. I had never seen Ernesto (1979).

I knew about Thomas Mann's gay obsession in Death in Venice, and about Wilhelm Van Gloeden's homoerotic photographs of Sicilian youth, but they were German.

But one weekend I drove two hours into Houston, to the Wilde-and-Stein Bookstore, and bought Ganymede in the Renaissance, about how Renaissance artists used the myth of Ganymede, a mortal boy swept up by Zeus to become his catamite.

And I discovered a whole gay world in Renaissance Italy, artists, writers, statesmen.

1. Leonardo Da Vinci. He got a girlfriend on Rocky and Bullwinkle.

2. Michelangelo.  As portrayed by Charleton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), he got a girlfriend.

3. Donatello, who sculpted the famously effeminate David, a counterpart to Michelangelo's more macho version.

4. Benvenuto Cellini.  His Autobiography was on the list of recommended readings in my class in Renaissance History in college.  But not a word in class.

5. Caravaggio, played by Dexter Fletcher and Nigel Terry in the 1986 movie.

6. Aretino, who wrote Il Marescalco, about a gay man forced to marry a woman, but she turns out to be a man.

7. Ariosto.  I bought his Orlando Furioso in a Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, but had no idea.

8. Matteo Bandello, who wrote 12 Novelle, one about a gay man.

9. Dante.  Ok, he was probably heterosexual, and from the Middle Ages, but he wrote the beefcake and bonding classic, The Inferno.

10. The painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, nicknamed "Il Sodoma"

11. Giovanni, the foreign exchange student I had a crush on at Rocky High.

"Bad Ideas with Adam Devine": When you need to f*k the Sadness in a hurry. With bonus buddy bulges and butts

 

Link to the buddy butts and bulges

Sometimes you need to f*k the Sadness in a hurry, and your best bet is Adam Devine.  Not (just) because of his hotness, because his stuff is always upbeat, with no hatred, no tragedy, no angst, not a lot of heteronormative mishegas, just whimsical problems, humorous braggadoccio, and homoerotic bonds. 

But you don't have time for a whole movie, or an episode of  Workaholicsor   The Righteous Gemstones. What do you do?

The reality series Bad Ideas with Adam Devine, streaming on Roku, is a perfect solution. In each episode, Adam. "the world's greatest movie star, the world's greatest lover, the guy who clearly writes his own intros," teams up with one of his comedian buddies to do something dangerous:

1. Compete in the World's Hottest Pepper Eating Contest, in the Bahamas. With Thomas Middleditch of Solar Opposites

2. Compete in a demolition derby, the Night of Destruction, at Perris Auto Speedway, near Riverside, California. With Blake Anderson from Workaholics

3. Become stunt performers in a Western movie (after seven minutes of training). With Rebel Wilson from Pitch Perfect

4. Drive an ice cream truck up highway P3 in Peru, called "the Death Road" for its hairpin turns and 1000 foot drops. With Anders Holm from Workaholics

More after the break

"The Whale": Chub and fundy debate whether "God hates gays." With chub and fundy d*ck

Link to the chub and fundy d*ck

I accidentally clicked on The Whale on Netflix, forgetting that when you click, you don't get more information, it starts.  And I was eating a bagel, so I kept watching.

Scene 1: A bus drives through a wilderness of fields, with mountains in the background.  It stops to let someone out -- with no houses or buildings for miles around?

Cut to someone teaching "persuasive writing" in a Zoom room.  The students wonder why his camera isn't on.  No icon, either, just a black square that gets bigger and bigger.  Maybe he's a ghost.

Scene 2: The teacher, Charlie, at home.  He's a super-chub plus who needs a walker to get around, now watching gay porn! Wheezing, clutching at his left arm, he begins grading a paper on Moby Dick. I thought he was having a heart attack.

A stranger played by Ty Simpkins, top photo, walks in, says "Oh my God," and asks if he need an ambulance.  No, still wheezing and clutching, he wants the stranger to read the Moby Dick essay to him.

Many people don't know that there is a gay couple in Moby Dick: Ishmael and Queequeg.  And a whale, ergo the title of the movie.

Reading it calms Charlie down.  He asks the stranger -- there to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- to retrieve his cell phone from beneath the couch.  Oh no, he's going to bash the guy to death.

Nope.  Just asks him to stick around while he calls his friend Liz, a nurse. 

Scene 3: Liz shows up, checks Charlie out, and complains that he should have gone to the hospital.  He has congestive heart failure. His blood pressure is 238/134.  Is that even possible?   

While he's in the bathroom, Liz talks to the God guy, Thomas.   He's from New Life; her father is on the church board.  She went when she was young, but she "fucking hated" the end-of-the-world bull*.  I get it; I grew up terrified that the Rapture would come at any moment, and I'd be left behind.  

By the way, Charlie hates New Life, too, because it killed his boyfriend -- her brother.  No doubt a suicide due to being indoctrinated into "God hates fags" ideology. So he doesn't need Thomas quoting the Book of Leviticus when he is about to die.  

They kick Thomas out.  Darn, I thought he would be a major character, and we'd get some people combating religious homophobia.  Maybe Charlie would help him come out. 

Scene 4: They argue about going to the hospital some more. Charlie still refuses.  They watch tv: The Idaho GOP presidential primary is tomorrow, with Ted Cruz leading, so this is March 7, 2016.

So, is there going to be any paranormal here at all?  Or at least a murder?  

I'm fast-forwarding.

Very limited setting -- everything takes place in Charlie's house, and there are only two more characters -- Charlie's estranged daughter, and the pizza delivery guy.  

Wait -- Thomas returns at minute 41.   Charlie is in the bathroom. The Estranged Daughter answers the door.

He says that Charlie wanted to hear about the New Life Church -- he kicked you out, dummy -- and brought some literature. 

"Oh, the end time cult thing.  All religion is bullshit. By the way, have some juice, and please come back again tomorrow."  Huh?  Does she like him?  Well, I guess he won't be coming out.

Daughter leaves, and Thomas starts badgering Charlie about the End Times.  Hey, maybe it will happen in the movie.  A Left Behind kind of thing.  

"There are a lot of clues in Scripture that suggest Christ is returning soon. I can't wait.  Everything bad in the world will be wiped clean." Like the gay people, right?

Then: "God brought me here for a reason. He wants me to save your soul." Being saved means not being gay anymore, of course.  

"There's something you can do for me," Charlie says.  Thomas thinks he means s*x, and starts stuttering "I'm not...I mean..."  At least he doesn't start screaming. 

Charlie explains that he is not interested in that.  He likes big guys.

Liz comes in. "What the f*ck is he doing here?"  

This is too problematic.  I'm getting triggered by evangelical homophobia.  I'll check wikipedia to see if Ty ends up coming out.

The answer, and Ty's d*ck, after the break. 

Jamie McGuire: The Smiley Creature from "From," with Halifax hunks and a nude Dylan Sprouse

Link to the nude photos

From, on MGM+, is set in the ruins of a small town, with a diner, a police station, a hotel, a farm, and some houses, where stranded travelers from various parts of the U.S. get stuck.  Every night humanoid creatures appear, dressed in 1950s costumes -- mechanic, nurse, librarian, tv cowboy.  They try to lure you outside, or trick you into letting them in, whereupon they turn into monsters and kill you.  

The Creatures are the main threat, and one of the biggest mysteries, in From. They are impervious to most weapons, but they don't have paranormal powers.  Their physiology is human, but dessicated, as if they've been mummified.  They were once regular humans: a Creature named Jasmine says "I didn't ask to be this way."  My theory is that some sort of dark magic went wrong during the 1950s, zapping the town into a pocket universe and transforming some of the townsfolk into Creatures.

Jamie McGuire's Smiley Creature has become a fan favorite, due to his especially huge, creepy grin and his quirky personality: he  seems delighted to be part of the world again.  He feels furniture, picks up objects.  He climbs aboard a stalled bus and plays at driving it.   

He was killed in Season 2, but Creatures never really die, so chances are he'll be back in Season 3.

Without the creepy grin, Jamie is quite handsome, so I wanted to know more about him.  

He's been interviewed a dozen times, but mostly about the Smiley Creature -- and he doesn't know any more than we do.  He just puts on a creepy grin and follows the director's instructions.

Researching Jamie McGuire turns out to be extremely difficult.  A Google search yields 3,000 entries about a romance novelist named Jamie McGuire, mostly reviewing two of her books that have been made into movies, Beautiful Disaster and Beautiful Wedding.    Dylan Sprouse, top photo, stars as an inked bad boy boxer. 

More Jamie after the break

"Time Cut": Girl travels into the past to prevent a murder, with Griffin Gluck's boyfriend and Zane Phillips n*de

Link to the n*de photos 

Netflix recommended Time Cut, 2024.  I'm a sucker for time travel/time paradox science fiction stories, so why not a movie?

Scene 1: 2003. Sweetly, Minnesota, har har.  Summer Fling -- her real name, har har!  -- goes to a barn dance-themed party.  Quinn (Griffin Gluck), the nerd with the unrequited crush on her, didn't think she would come, due to the serial killer targeting teens in the area.  He tries to give her a card confessing his love, but before he has a chance, Ethan (Samuel Braun, below), the obnoxious jock whom she is dating,  drags her off.

Cut to the dance.  Jock Ethan suggests that they raise their cups in memorial to the three dead teens, while a Michael Myers-masked killer stalks outside, and a police car zooms over the bridge. 

Uh-oh, Summer fling spills something, and goes to the empy bathroom to clean up.  The state police arrive to break up the party, but Summer doesn't hear them.  The killer arrives, chases her around, and finally grim-reaps her to death. So he was going to wait until the party emptied out except for one person?

Scene 2: April 18, 2024. Lucy awakens in her bed, goes out to a porch swing to mourn her dead sister, who she couldn't possibly have known -- and checks on the status of her application to a 3-month internship with NASA -- she got in!  

She scooters through town , which is in decay -- graffiti everywhere, town clock smashed, stores closed.   20 years ago the Slasher killed four teens, and the town went into its downward spiral.  Turn the slasher barn into a tourist attraction, like Lizzie Borden's house.

In school, she tells her science teacher that she got in.  He's ecstatic.  But she can't tell her parents because this is the anniversary of their daughter's murder.

Out in the hallway, the students are all talking about the murders -- the biggest event in the town's history. Two were killed in the mall.  "What the heck is a mall?", someone asks. Another at the Marine Museum, and the fourth at the big dance.

Scene 4: At home, Lucy visits her sister's old room, kept up as a shrine.  Overwhelmingly pink, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer poster, a landline phone, a creaking floorboard...wait, there's something under there -- notes. "Summer, now I'll be free, but you'll never be.  You'll regret this."  Girlfriend had lots of secrets.

Scene 5: Dinner at the Olive Garden  The server brings the "Field Family Special," and announces "You look so much like her." Come on, it's been 20 years.  How does a casual acquaintance even remember?

Mom and Dad (Michael Shanks, left) are walking shells, immersed in their grief like Miss Haversham moaning over that 30-year old wedding cake in Great Expectations.  They had Lucy as a substitute, but they ignore her individuality and accomplishments and just treat her as a  reminder of her dead sister.

Lucy comes clean about her internship offer.  "WHAT?  Go to DC for 3 months?  It's full of serial killers!   You can get a job at the tech company like me."  My Dad assumed that I would be going to work in the factory.  He only agreed to college when I got a full scholarship -- he figured I would go to work in the factory afterwards.

Next stop: The abandoned barn where Summer was murdered.  They've built a shrine full of photos, ceramic horses, Barbie dolls, and teddy bears.  Way more than 20.  They must come here every week. 

This week's offering: a pair of flip-flops that Mom carefully engraved.  Your living daughter is standing right there, idjit..

Uh-oh, Lucy forgot the offering she was going to leave.  As she fetches it, she hears a machine beeping and thrumming from inside the barn!   It's a weird techno-thing with a "start" button.  Do not push "start" on a strange machine girl!  She pushes it. Two lasers pop out and start thrumming, and zap!  Her parents aren't around, and the barn is brand new.  No bars on her cell phone -- no network!  It's 2003!

Who put a time machine in the barn?  This makes no sense.

More after the break