"Troy: Fall of a City": Soap opera version of Homer's "Iliad," with the gay characters turned bi

I went into the Netflix tv series Troy: Fall of a City expecting a vast canvass, a lot of spectacular special effects, and nonstop beefcake.  After all, a new take on one of the most familiar stories in the world has to have something to justify the retelling.

The first episode was promising: Paris Prince of Troy  (Louis Hunter, left) meets a mysterious group of beings who might be gods.  Zeus (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) asks him to choose who is superior: Hera (power), Athena (wisdom), or Aphrodite (beauty).  When he chooses beauty, the others in a rage vow to shatter his world. 

Very interesting, very evocative.  It goes downhill from there.

Troy is the story of a battle between the gods, with humans their unwilling pawns.  Paris (remember him?) kidnaps Helen, Princess of Sparta, to the consternation of her husband Menelaus (Jonas Armstrong, top photo).  The Spartans and their allies lay siege to Troy, a siege that lasts for ten long, gruelling years.  

In the Iliad, Homer covers only a few weeks in the story; his Odyssey focuses on the minor character Odysseus (Joseph Mawle, left) trying to get home.  

Other ancient authors have filled in the rest, explored interesting byways and asides, speculated about the lives of the characters before and after the War, given other minor characterstheir own epics.  You couldn't cover all of it in a hundred tv series.

Troy: Fall of a City tries to.

The result is a jumble of people, name upon name splattering across the stag. Some I recognized from literature or mythology: Ajax, Hector, Priam, Hecuba, Cassandra,Troilus, Odysseus, Aeneas.

Some not: Xanthus (David Avery), Diomedes, Thersites, Harmon, Dolan, Iola.

The main stories are minimized or ignored.  The famous are shuffled off to the side.  

Hesion (who?)  gets as much air time as Hector (Tom Weston-Jones).  

More after the break

Robert Oberst's Hot Photos, Part 2: Beefy boyfriends, helicopter d*ck, and strongman s*x

 

Link to the n*de photos

This is a collection of hot or humorous photos of Robert Oberst, a professional strongman who held the American record for the log press.  He starred in two strongman reality programs, and played Cousin Karl in Righteous Gemstones Season 3.

1. "Want to play with my balls?"

2. "So, Eddie, are you big all over?"

3. Well, now you know.

4. "How do you play the Helicopter P*nis game?"

5. Robert demonstrates

 6. "I don't remember where I left my underwear."

More after the break

Rating Adam Devine's backside, with DJ Nick's and a few d*cks for comparison

Link to the backsides

In August 2019, Adam Devine, star of Workaholics and soon-to-be star of The Righteous Gemstones,  visited the Tap and Grill Lakeside Brew Haus in Gravois Mills, Missouri, in the Lake of the Ozarks, about two hours from Kansas City. 

DJ Nick (I won't use his real last name) got a photo with him, which he posted on Facebook. Fortunately for fanboys, it's on the lakefront so shirts are optional. 

So far, so hot.  But look at the Facebook comments:

"Very tight b*, my friend."

"That is so tight b*!"

"Tight b*!"

Question: whose b* are they talking about, Adam's or Nick's?  Let's find out.

Nick  a professional DJ working out of Kansas City, and the Lake of the Ozarks during the summer.  Here he plays Captain America in an American flag jockstrap.  Nice bulge, dude, but what about your backside?

My usual hookup sites didn't yield a lot of potential n*de photos, but the one posted on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends might.   

For comparison purposes, I included Tyler Labine's front. 

Nick with his brother Todd.  Maybe we could get a photo of Todd's backside?

More after the break

The Chair Company, Episode 1.3: A chair conspiracy, a queer kid, a ginger chub, weirdness for its own sake, and men in suits with d*cks

Link to the n*de dudes

 I am attracted to men in suits, but not at all to the corporate world, the heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, kids that was pushed endlessly through my childhood.  I want a world of art and beauty. 

So at first I wasn't interested in The Chair Company on HBO MAX, starring Tim Robinson as Ron Trosper, a "job, house, wife, and kids" guy whose chair collapses during a Very Important Presentation, leading to more mishaps that threaten to destroy his Very Important Career.   

Trying to track down the Chair Company responsible for the defective chair, he ends up at an empty warehouse.  Later a guy assaults him, telling him to "Forget about the chair company."

He doesn't.  He tracks down his assailant, Mike (Joseph Tudisco), a security guard at a local cafe.  But Mike says "I was hired by a guy I'd never met.  He didn't show his face." 

Maybe they could work together to find him?

Wait -- why is Mike interested in helping?  There must be some gay-subtext buddy-bonding.  I'm reviewing the next episode, 1.3: @BrownDerbyHistoricVids Little Bit of Hollywood? Okayyy.

Try putting that in the Works Cited section of your research paper.

Scene 1: Family Man Ron is at Game Night with his daughter, her fiancee, and her fiancee's parents.  Hey, Daughter is gay.  What a surprise -- I figured this show would be entirely heteronormative.  Ulp, he gets a text: "No way out!", with a photo of him taken at that moment from the hall closet.

He pulls open the closet door, and a little person pushes him aside and runs out.  But he wanted to be found out.  Family Man Ron gives chase, but Partner Mike rushes up and explains "He's my guy, LT (Joe Apelian). I had him watching to make sure you weren't setting me up."  

LT wanted to tell Mike that there was no way out of his hiding place, but he texted the wrong person. 

Scene 2: The enraged Ron wants to end the partnership, but Mike has intel: he tracked down the guy who paid him to scare Ron, but that guy was hired by someone else, and paid $50,000 for the job.  That's quite a lot -- usually scares go for $400. 

LT interrupts, yelling that Partner Mike isn't his friend, he's no good.  He begins kicking boxes.

Left: None of the three have beefcake photos online, so I'm posting 1990s heartthrob Lou Diamond Phillips, who plays the CEO of Family Man Ron's company.

Scene 3: That night, while asleep, Ron keeps imagining LT staring at him.  He checks all the closets. 

In the morning, he asks his wife if they can install a security system today.  A reasonable plan, but he makes it sound crazy by imagining someone with a gun bursting in and forcing them to kill each other.  

Scene 4: At work, Ron is discussing something about square footage with a client (Mike Britt).  A literal bug crawls into Ron's phone.  Now we're getting surreal. 

When he has a spare moment, he tries to find out who owns the empty warehouse -- ulp, you have to make your request in person.  But before he can duck out, he is dragged into the atrium to watch his tv interview about a shopping mall the company is building: "The way you think about Canton, Ohio is about to change: you're about to step into a bit of Hollywood."  Thus the title.

 The whispering is about a Mistakes Party -- where you admit your mistakes -- that Ron isn't invited to, because he's the boss.

More after the break

Fin Burke: A little shop of horrors, a certain school of magic, and a grave in the clouds. With his boyfriend, some artistic d*cks, and Cole Sprouse

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I spend over an hour looking for beefcake photos of cast members of Welcome to Derry, and all I found was a potential Chad Root and two of Fin Burke, in his underwear and hugging his boyfriend. He's definitely getting a profile.

Fin, aka Finley, was born in Toronto around 2006.  His mum Dawn worked in the script and continuity department for 125 episodes of Murdoch Mysteries (2008-25), about a 19th century detective (Yannick Bisson).  She has also worked on Goosebumps, American Psycho, Wind at My Back, The Listener, and Children Ruin Everything.

Fin attended Greenwood College High School in Toronto, where he took classes in acting and musical theater and starred in a lot of plays:

Troy Bolton in High School Musical

Wayne Hopkins in Puffs: an orphan boy who is invited to attend a certain school of magic (not that one).

Seymor in Little Shop of Horrors. Wait, why is he dancing with a dude?

Tyler in Public Enemy, about a family dinner "with a surreal twist."  If I'm reading the French correctly, playwright Olivier Choinière is queer, so I imagine there is some gay content.  

He also starred (as a voice on the telephone) in the 2023 short Clara is Awake: A teenage girl gets texts from someone who claims to have met her last summer; "I really miss you.  I know you better than you think."  Ulp.

She texts back: "Leave me alone. I don't know you, and you're being weird."  He doesn't leave her alone.  

He graduated in 2024, and enrolled in the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal as an acting major.

Two on-screen acting credits since:

The first episode of Welcome to Derry (2025): the snarly, critical older brother of "bury your gays" Teddy.

The short Grave in the Clouds (2025): a Jewish man (Steven Hobé) discovers that his teenage son (Fin) has written an essay denying the Holocaust, and introduces him to a survivor. 

More after the break. 

Ayden Mekus: Croatian tease, star of quirky shorts and "what happens next will shock you" videos, into Jesus, dudes, girls, and tongues.

 

Link to the n*de photos

When Ayden Mekus popped up on the teen idol website, I wanted to do a profile because of his unusual name -- is he Croatian?   

And because a lot of the photos on the site show him with his girlfriend sticking her tongue out.  Either he's way into tongues or he likes to have her insult his fans: "I'm so much better than you, because I have him and you losers don't!" 

I guess the younger generation finds that attractive.  Ayden has over a million followers on TikTok and Instagram, and 14,000 on X.   

There are also a lot of photos of Ayden getting romantic with this blond dude, and earlier with a black guy.  

 It's a clean break, suggesting a change of boyfriends, not making a new friend.

Neither is shown sticking his tongue out, but maybe that's just a girlfriend thing.

Wait -- Ayden is not Croatian.  He was born in Northern California (straight code for San Francisco) and grew up on Coronado Island, where his father is the co-founder of Positive Choice Apparel (the clothes all have slogans like "Spread kindness.").  

Mekus is the Anglicized version of the Southern Slavic Mikuš, "Nicholas."  So maybe his ancestors came from Croatia (see my photo collection of Serbian and Croatian hunks).

Ayden got his start as a child model, dancer, youtube celebrity, and aficionado of tongues sticking out, but  his two older sisters are actors, so it was inevitable that he would start auditioning.  

His on-screen acting began in 2017 with a video game, and in 2018 with a lot of music videos and quirky shorts: 

Chocolate Chip Cookies: A  boy puts laxatives in them to prank his cranky neighbor.

To Smell the Roses: A boy steals his father's cell phone so he will "stop and smell the roses."

Utensils: Everyone at the dinner table is eating soup with a fork.

The Lilac Thief: No plot synopsis available, the film itself is stuck behind a paywall, but the cast list includes SWAT team members and "warrior youth."  So time travel?

Then came a lot of reality shows with internet celebrities: 14 episodes with Piper Rokelle, 16 with Friendzy Friday, 41 with ClaireRockSmith, 2 with Sawyer Sharbino, plus his own Ayden Mekus.

And some fictional series:

13 episodes of P.S. Positive Stories, about people making "positive change." 

One episodes of Sister Rules, about sisters who "finally decide to put family first."

73 of Dhar Mann's "uplifting" clickbait videos: 

 "Dad rejects stepson, then learns shocking truth," 

"This poor kid can't buy school lunch, the end will shock you,"

 "Kid gets humiliated playing ball, what happens next will shock you," 

More after the break.  

"Hollywood Steps Out": Queer Looney Tunes in 1941

 

When I was a kid in Rock Island, Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat on weekday afternoons displayed a lot of old Looney Tunes cartoons.  No matter that they were originally for adults, and full of references to 1940s culture that went over our heads -- if it starred Bugs Bunny, we were interested.

Except not all of the Looney Tunes featured Looney Tunes stars.  There were parodies of travelogues, advertising, and short subjects. I found one particularly memorable: "Hollywood Steps Out" (1941), with caricatures of contemporary Hollywood stars dining and dancing at Ciro's Nightclub.  I had never heard of any of them.  I know who many of them are now, of course: Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Oliver Hardy, Mickey Rooney, Henry Fonda, Groucho Marx.  I've even heard of Jerry Colonna and Kay Kyser.  But to give you the idea of what it was like going in cold:

Establishing shot of Ciro's Nightclub in Hollywood, where dinners start at $50.00 ($940 in today's currency).

1. Soulful Eyes exclaims "What a place!"  Elderly Blond Woman sells him a cigarette, and lights the match with her shoe.

2. Guy with Big Lips talks to a Developmentally Challenged Girl, who responds with a series of "oomphs."  Apparently she can't speak.  Disturbing!

3. Johnny Weissmuller takes off his coat, revealing his muscular physique.  I knew who he was -- Tarzan (top photo). Wow, beefcake!

4. Three Gangsters talk about how risky a job is.  But it turns out to be pitching pennies. 

5. Crazy Guy with Frizzy Hair gives the Elderly Blond Woman a hot foot, but she doesn't respond.

6.  Big Ears swerves his head to gaze at a Lady in Red passing, with a fan over her face.

7. Pipe Smoker takes the stage.  As he introduces the first act, he's interrupted by a horse and jockey, who apparently want to have sex with him, but he shooes them away.  

8. Feminine Old Guy swishes as he conducts the music.  Swishy -- gay hint!

9. Jimmy gets cruised by a woman, who wants to dance with him.  He refuses, and finally runs away, leaving a sign "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."  Not interested in girls -- gay hint!

10. Big Ears from #6 dances across the floor, following the Lady in Red. Some other people are dancing, including an ice skater and Frankenstein.  The Three Stooges slap each other.  Fat Man dances with two women at once. A man with big feet dances.  

11. Andy and his date are getting milkshakes.  He's shocked that they cost $50, and asks his father at the next table for a loan. But Dad doesn't have any money, either, so they both end up washing dishes.

12. Big Ears is still following the Lady in Red, while Pipe Smoker from #7 takes the stage again.  The horse and jockey flirt with him again.  Then a woman dances, naked except for a giant bubble held in front of her (gross!).  A Guy in a Cap and Gown gazes in lust, and yells "Students!"  A table full of men wolf-whistle (Gross!  This isn't fun anymore!).

13. She dances for a long time, while a man comments: "I haven't seen such a beautiful bubble since I was a child." Henry drools, but is called away by his mother. Googly-Eyes says obsessively "Gee!  Gee! Gee!"   A man looks through binoculars and says "Guess who?"  Crazy Guy hits the bubble with a sling shot, and it pops, revealing that she is wearing a barrel.

14. Big Ears finally catches the Lady in Red, and turns her around.  

She turns out to be a guy in drag! 

During my childhood, before I was aware that gay people (or drag queens) existed, I was confused by the revelation.  Why was this man dressed as a lady?  Why had he been flirting with Big Ears all night?  Did he want to hug and kiss? But...boys didn't hug and kiss boys. Did they?

A glimmer of gay potential on Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat

See also: Mickey Rooney: Gay-Vague Teen Hunk of the 1940s

Cary Grant: Hints and Closets in the 1930s

Who is Bradley Cooper, and why is he "ultra-famous"? With his gay/sort of bi characters , backside, and d*ck

The Marx Brothers: Bisexual Groucho and hunky Chico

Andy's Gang: Beefcake and Bonding on 1950s Children's TV

The earliest generation of Boomer kids have fond memories of tv programs that, at least to modern sensibilities, seem outlandish and bizarre.  You Can't Do That On Television in the 1980s can't even begin to compete with the weirdness of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, Pinkie Lane, or Howdy Doody.  

But the weirdest of all was Andy's Gang (1955-60), hosted by long-time Western sidekick Andy Devine (previously a radio and tv series hosted by Ed McConnell, and called Smilin' Ed's Gang)

1. A scary kid with blond page boy curls and one eye perpetually closed announced "I'm Buster Brown...I live in a shoe.  Here's my dog Tige...he lives in there,too."  Whereupon the studio audience went wild with laughter (actually, it was the same clip of a hysterical kid, over and over again).

2. The anarchic Froggy the Gremlin kept popping in to skewer human pretensions and stir things up.  Cue the same clip of a studio audience going into hysterics.

3. A cat named Midnight could talk. But she said only one word: "Nice," and it sounded more like a meow.  Cue the hysterical laughter.

But gay kids in the audience were waiting for the "Story Time" segment about Gunga, an Indian boy (surprisingly buff college student Nino Marcel).  He was supposed to be Indian, but he looked sort of like Jay North on the similarly-Indian themed Maya, or an older version of  Jonny Quest.  I'll bet he had blond hair under that turban.

Although they lived in India, Gunga and his boyfriend, Rama (a surprisingly buff Vito Scotti) got into Bomba the Jungle Boy-style adventures with animal poachers, lost cities, and savage cannibal tribes.

But unlike Bomba, they had no interest in girls, at least not in the episodes I watched. Rama was the one who usually needed rescuing.

They were amazingly physical in their interactions, always hugging, clinging together, touching arms and shoulders.

Afterwards, Andy would end the program by underscoring the buddy-bonding:  "We're pals, and pals stick together!"  Then, to keep Christian fundamentalists happy, "Remember, Sunday school or church tomorrow!"  (No Hindus in the audience, apparently.)

Nino Marcel also played his Gunga Ram character, but with a different premise, in the feature film Sabaka (1954): he is a young elephant trainer who vows revenge against the evil cult that killed his family. His costar was none other than the famous Boris Karloff.

You can watch the full movie here.

See also: Burr Tillstrom, the gay puppeteer behind Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.

Finn Carr: The "Alexa & Katie" kid grows up, swims, flexes, does drag, and plays a gay-subtext soap opera teen.

Link to the n*de dudes

Alexa & Katie (2018-20) was a Netflix sitcom (actually a drama with jokes) about two high school buddies: Alexa, who tries to hide having cancer so no one will treat her differently, and Katie, who is wearing a wig in solidarity.  Plots involve joining the basketball team, studying for math tests, befriending other kids with cancer, and so on.  

Jack Griffo (left) played math whiz Dylan Greene, who dated Alexa for awhile, but broke up with her because he was tired of competing with Katie for her attention.    

This is a profile of the kid, Finn Carr.

A random nude dude to tide you over on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Finn started his career in modeling -- you can see him here in an "Own the School Year Like a Hero" campaign for Wal-Mart. There's also a giant banner over his head.

He  played Wilbur, son of single dad Owen (Michael McMillan) and grandson of single mom Joy (Jane Leeves of Frasier) on Hot in Cleveland (2014)

The young version of special agent and genius Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) on Criminal Minds (2016).

Lewis Gladstone, son of Joey Gladstone (David Coulier) and member of a sibling singing group called Gladstone Four on Fuller House (2016-17).

Katie's little brother on Alexa & Katie: a video game addict, aware of Alexa's secret and fine with kids who have cancer.  

After Alexa, he played Derek Fox-Lubiner, two episode boyfriend of Millicent, dealing with the disapproval of her stepfather Freddie (Nathan Kress)  on ICarly (2022).

Brian,, the debate team opponent, crush, and boyfriend of demonic guardian Scary (a girl) on Pretty Freekin Scary (2023).  

And then he suddenly grew up.

Well, almost.  As of this writing, Finn is a week from his 17th birthday.  

And rather built as you can see from the interplay of muscles in this rock-climbing photo.

More after the break

J. Allen St. John: The Beefcake and Phallic Images of Tarzan

In spite of his aristocratic name, J. Allen St. John was born in Chicago in 1872, when it was still a small town, and lived there throughout his life, except for studying in New York and Paris.


But his imagination went far afield beginning in 1916, when he was offered the cover and interior illustrations for Edgar Rice Burroughs' Beasts of Tarzan

An opportunity to draw muscular, half-naked men?  He had found his dream job!

One that lasted for the next thirty years, through dozens of Tarzan books, plus some of the Venus and Mars series.

St. John's extremely-muscular, mostly-naked men and blatant phallic imagery also enlivened the covers of Weird Tales, The Blue Book, and Amazing Stories.

He influenced a generation of beefcake science fiction and fantasy artists, such as Frank Franzetta.

He only wrote one novel of his own, The Face in the Pool: A Faerie Tale (1905).  It's a standard Medieval "boy meets girl" fantasy: "He came to the tower where the Princess Astrella's golden head at the window served as a gleaming beacon to those who would rescue here."

So her head revolves, or what?

Better stick to illustrations.











St. John always tried to get his male figures as naked as possible, negotiating as many phallic images as possible.  Is this a giant snake or a penis come to life?

More after the break

Johnny Karn: Lost virginity, pretentious straightness, psycho-slashers, and the most incredible d*ck you've ever seen

Link to the n*de photos

I found some very impressive photos belonging to someone named Johnny Karn, actor, with the most incredible d*ck you've every seen.  Even if he's a straight jerk, he's getting a profile.

#1: Is he gay in real life?  This requires checking his Instagram, Facebook, or in a pinch, TikTok.

Gay potential: "Two homies are standing up against bullying."

But Homie #2 is Alex Sola, whose Instagram consists almost entirely of photos establishing his marriage to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.  The Homies were just pretending to be gay.

Plus Johnny poses with a woman and two young girls, saying: "Drinking deep from the chalice of life and holding our loved ones close."

Not only straight, but straight and pretentious.  

I already dislike this guy, but who cares?  His membrum virile is magnificent by every measure: length, width, and so on.  

#2: Has he played any gay characters?  This requires checking the IMDB, and maybe some episode synopses.

Research problem: there's no Johnny Karn.  The IMDB suggests Johnny Carson and John Karn, whose only screen credit is Jinxed (2000).   Our guy ain't Johnny Carson, and he's too young to be John Karn.

Turns out that he goes by John Karna on stage, and Johnny Karn in everyday life. 

Johnny Karn -- I mean John Karna -- was born in 1992 in Harris County, Texas.  Ugh, I spent the worst year of my life in Hell-fer-Sartain, Harris County, as an English instructor at Homophobia U.  

He graduated from Stanford High School in 2011,  and enrolled at the University of Oklahoma as a musical theater major. That's only marginally better. 

During his freshman year, he started his on-screen acting career with Bindlestiffs (2012): three high school guys, including Johnny as John Woo, are desperate to lose their virginity.  

He was also cast in as the lead in Premature, which premiered in 2014 at the SXSW FIlm Festival: A high school boy has to relive losing his virginity over and over until he meets with the right girl. What's with this "losing your virginity" theme? 

Among his misadventures: having to pleasure himself for the men's volleyball team when he calls them homophobic, although they are allies, and one of the team members is gay. 

Johnny's very attractive backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

 IndieWire named Johnny one of the "top 10 breakout stars" of 2014, so he dropped out of college and moved to Los Angele. Much better.  Get a place in West Hollywood.

More after the break