James Stockdale: Disability advocate, solicitor, Caliban, gay guy who refused to make out with Dylan Llewellyn

  

Link to the n*de dudes

I was interested in James Stockdale, the Caliban Boy from Wednesday (as well as the hunkoid he's arguing with, below). He has no social media presence, but we can get a bio from some articles and interviews.  

He was born in 2002 in Dungannon, Northern Ireland, about an hour's drive west of Belfast.  While attending the Royal Schol Dungannon, he appeared in a number of plays at the Bardic Theater:  Joseph & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Wicked, Grease, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

James made his film film debut in A Christmas Star (2016) as the best friend of a girl who thinks she can perform Christmas magic (of course, she can).  It also stars Robert James-Collier. 

Next came Delicate Things (2017), alongside famous Northern Ireland actor Ciarán McMenamin as a man with a dead wife...yawn

Zoo (2017) is not to be confused with We Bought a Zoo (2011), starring Matt Damon: during the bombing of Belfast in 1941, Tom (Art Parkinson), the Girl of His Dreams, and his "misfit friends" (including James) try to save a baby elephant at the zoo.  Stephen Hagen appears also.

Here's Looking at You, Kid (2018): Hubert (James) deals with tragedy by pretending to be a private detective.

More after the break

Derrick Burbage: Stunt driver, soldier, cop, realtor, hombre muy hombre -- or not.

When I was in college, I brought a friend home for spring break, and pointed out my father's flower garden.

Friend: Your father is not a man.

He was not defining man as someone with a d*ck.  He meant man as someone who meets the expectations of hegemonic masculinity: 

Muscular, hairy chest, beard or five o'clock shadow.

Aggressive, assertive.

A fan of sports, Tool Time, huntin', fishin', and classic cars.

Experiencing no emotion except anger.

Ok with his kid being gay. to an extent.

Fleeing from any hint of anything feminine-coded, from flowers to flowery adjectives. 

In Spanish, we say un hombre muy hombre. 

When I first noticed Derrick Burbage, he struck me as a perfect example of an Hombre Muy Hombre

He appears in Righteous Gemstones Episode 1.1 as Jesse's driver, taking him from the private airfield through our first glimpse of the Gemstone Compound, with its private police force and security guards.  How hombre muy hombre can you get?

Derrick returned several times during Seasons 1 and 2 as a stunt driver and Danny McBride's stunt double.  He was honored to crash "a classic 1970 Cadillac."

And in Season 3 as a stunt driver.

His IMDB biography talks about military convoys, Afghanistan, light and heavy weapons training, tactical combat vehicle operations, and "real-life high-speed vehicle pursuits." 

I'm getting a testosterone overdose just writing those words.

Derrick's stunting and acting work begins in 2014, when he was 38 or 39.  I pieced together his early life with LinkedIn, Facebook, his stunting resume, and speculation.

Baseball: He was born in 1974 or 1975.  No information on high school, but he's a baseball fan today, so I imagine that he was on the baseball team.  After graduation, he probably joined the army. 

Policing:  Derrick graduated from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy in 1998.  

He worked as a South Carolina State Trooper (1998-2009) and Charleson County Deputy Sheriff (2009-2010).

Back to school: Troy University, in Troy, Alabama, which is not as bad as it sounds -- they have a LGBTQ group on campus.  

He graduated in 2011 with a B.S. in Computer Science and Criminal Justice (3.95 GPA, Phi Beta Kappa).  I imagine anyone would do well after working for 13 years as a criminal justice professional.

Geek Squad:  For the next few years, Derrick worked as a regional manager at Geek Squad, plus  manager of a liquor store and a private investigator.  It's a gig economy.  Everybody has three jobs.

Realtor: He got a MBA in 2016 and became a licensed realtor in 2017.  

Acting: Derrick started acting as the cop who arrests Terry (Shawn Hatosy) on a 2014 episode of Reckless.

Next came Office Don in the short Lucky Luke (2018), about two beach pals (Michael James Daly, Rodney Smith) reminiscing.

Some guest spots on The Righteous Gemstones (2019).

Stunting:  The Righteous Gemstones was his first stunting gig.  Next came: 

Black Adam (2022), with Dwayne Johnson as the Marvel superhero.

The Walking Dead (2022, where he doubled for Season 4 antagonist Jason Butler Harner, left)

Echo (2023-24), with Alaqua Cox as the Marvel superhero.

And Suncoast (2024), about a teenage girl who befriends an activist.

 

See also: Austin Seifert: Cycle Ninja, Gisondo double, stuntman

Shane Gray: Stunt performer, pole vaulter, boy scout, man's man

Shane Michael Parker: Soldier, stuntman, wolf fan

Eight simple rules for determining if Martin Spanjers is gay

  

Link to the n*de photos

Rule 1: Does his character gawk at guys in the shower?

This is a still from Epiosde 3.1 of the  TGIF sitcom Eight Simple Rules (2002-2005).  It was originally Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, about an overprotective Dad played by John Ritter, but when Ritter died, it became a general family-angst dramedy.  I never watched, but in 2004 you could hardly turn on your computer without seeing Martin Spanjers as the teenage Rory gawking at Sam Horrigan.  

Only Seasons 1-2 are available to stream on Disney Plus, so I don't know what's going on in the scene, except that Rory doesn't want to shower after gym class due to his less than adequate package.  Maybe Sam Horrigan is a high school jock?  

2. Does he play a gay-vague teenager?

Fan consensus is that Rory is one of those gay-vague sitcom kids, soft, shy, pretty, and struggling valiantly to act girl-crazy because on American sitcoms, all teenage boys must be girl-crazy.

3. Does he show his stuff on screen?

The next time I saw Martin Spanjers, he was still naked, playing the teenage shapeshifter Sam Merlotte in a 2009 episode of True Blood, about vampires, werewolves, and various other magical beings in rural Louisiana.  When you shift back to human form, you lose your clothes, so he's n*ked when he breaks into a house looking for food or something to steal.

4. Does he have a gay-subtext role?

The house happens to belong to a maenid (minor goddess) named Maryanne, who naturally wants to have sex with him.  He steals $10,000 on his way out, which causes the adult Sam Merlotte a lot of headaches.  

Although the encounter is heterosexual, we can still see a gay subtext. Sam was thrown out of the house when his parents discovered his "secret," like gay kids ejected by homophobic parents. About 40% of homeless youth are LGBT.

5. Does he avoid roles involving hetero-romance?

After Eight Simple Rules, Martin did the usual guest star bit, appearing on as a barista 90210, a chicken restaurant employee on Good Luck Charlie, a kid accused of killing cows on Saving Grace, a rich boy who the Griffins eat on Family Guy,  Well, he had already frozen to death while trying to climb Mount Everest.

He had minor roles in Just Peck, about teen angst, and Little Fish, Strange Pond, about existential angst.

More after the break

M. Emmet Walsh: Daddy who didn't mind showing his dick. With bonus old dude hotness

  

Link to NSFW version.

 M. Emmet Walsh enjoyed one of the longest and most acclaimed careers in Hollywood.  On screen since 1968, Walsh appeared in some of the most iconic films of the 20th century,  including Midnight Cowboy, Alice's Restaurant, and Little Big Man, as well as some of the most beloved tv programs: The Waltons, The Rockford Files, All in the Family, Bonanza.

He grew up in Swanton, Vermont, a few miles from the Canadian border and graduated from Tilton High School in 1954.  His page in the yearbook says that his nickname is "Creep," he "lives with the Gus," and he played football and basketball.  So who is this Gus, a boyfriend?

 After studying business administration at Clarkson University (where he roomed with William Devane) and some military service, he hit Hollywood.  

And stayed there for the next 50 years, playing gangsters, beset-upon bureaucrats, cranky businessmen, clueless dads, cops, inventors, workmen of various sorts, bus drivers, and on and on.  His obituary in the  Washington Post praises his work as a sports writer in Slap Shot (1977), a swim coach in Ordinary People (1980), a police chief in Blade Runner (1982), and a "boogie-woogie pianist" in Cannery Row (1982).

No gay roles that I could find by googling, but Emmet never married, so there is a lot of  speculation that he was gay in real life.  (Gay men of his generation would always stay closeted).

He regularly appeared on websites devoted to hot older guys, not only because of his attractiveness, but because he took his shirt off -- a lot. Unusual for actors of his generation, he even appeared nude, such as a rear shot with balls in Straight Time (1978) and a frontal in Fast Talking (1982)

One of Emmet's last roles was in The Righteous Gemstones, as Roy Gemstone, megachurch pastor Eli's stern Baptist-preacher Daddy.  In Episode 1.5. the flashback to 1989, he advises his son to avoid ostentatious display and stick to the message of the Gospels. 

 In Episode 2.5, the flashback to 1993, Roy is suffering from dementia.  He appears at the family Christmas in his underwear, asks "Are we going hunting?", and fires randomly into the room.  When he appears again, he accidentally saves the day.

Emmet never stopped working. In 2024 he appeared as Catfish in Outlaw Posse with Whoopie Goldberg, John Carroll Lynch, and Mario Van Peebles, and he still has Green & Gold in post-production.  He died on March 20, 2024, at the age of 88.

Bonus old dude dicks on RG Beefcake and Bonding

Everybody's Talking about Jamie: A 16-Year Old Aspires to Drag Stardom

For movie night, we almost always get post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, or Marvel Comics Universe.  But last night, we watched a musical: Everybody's Talking About Jamie on Amazon Prime.  

Newcomer Max Harwood plays Jamie New (great name!), a 16-year old gay boy in Sheffield, England who dreams of becoming a drag queen because performing in drag always means instant fame and fortune.  (Um...no.  Most drag queens perform as a hobby; only a few make a living from it).  

He has the full support of most students, including his best friend Priti (the only Muslim girl in school), plus his Mom and her best friend, a woman named Ray.

His only detractors are a group of homophobic, Islamophobic bullies led by the boorish Dean Paxton (Sam Bottomley, top photo and right, who is 20 years old and a gay and Muslim ally in real life).

Plus the Career Education Teacher, Miss Hedge, who claims that she's opposed to drag because it won't lead to a successful career, but actually just disapproves of feminine boys.  

Also, in a subplot, Jamie's father (Ralph Ineson, but without the scraggly hair and muscular chest) wants nothing to do with him, but Jamie's Mom has been sending him cards and presents under Dad's name.  When the deceit comes out, Jamie has a meltdown and angrily breaks up with his Mom (yes, they have a quasi-romantic relationship, most evident when Mom sings about a "lost love" who broke her heart when he left, and she means Jamie: "my man...my son...my man!").

Turns out that Jamie was traumatized early in childhood, when Dad caught him trying on makeup and called him "disgusting," "a freak," and so on.  Ever after, he's considered himself "nothing," and he thinks that becoming a drag queen will make him "somebody."

Seeking out a dress, Jamie goes to a drag shop in Sheffield (Sheffield, England has drag shops?), where he meets Hugo, aka legendary drag queen Loco Chanelle (Richard E. Grant, who is not a drag queen in real life, but he has starred in Twelfth Night, My Fair Lady, Doctor Who, and some Marvel Comic Universe movies).  Hugo demonstrates that drag is not about being famous, it's about fighting homophobic oppression.  With his mentoring, Jamie performs as Mimi Me at the local drag club (yep, Sheffield has drag clubs, too), and gets a standing ovation.

Now all that remains is to go to the prom in a dress.  Miss Hedge, who apparently has full power to dictate proper prom attire, absolutely forbids it, but gives in when the students rebel en masse.  Even the bully Dean Paxton promises to be nice "just for one night," and he and Jamie go into the prom hand-in-hand.  

Beefcake: None.  

Gay Characters:  Jamie and the drag queens, presumably, although here "gay" really means feminine.  Jamie never expresses any same-sex interest.

Heterosexism:  None.  No one but Ray expresses any heterosexual interest, unless you count Jamie's Mom being in love with "my man."

Implausibility:  A drag store and a drag club in Sheffield, but no other gay kids at Jamie's school.  Are 16-year olds admitted to bars in England?

Soundtrack:  Some of the songs are annoyingly repetitious.  

My Grade: B.