"Of an Age": In a 24-hour Garden of Forking Paths, a Serbian teen hooks up with his girlfriend's brother. With some Serbian d*cks

Link to the n*de dudes

 It's Sunday morning, and I have no tv series or movies waiting to review, so I'm going to click on my Netflix recommendation Of an Age, with a shirtless guy on the icon.  There may not be any gay characters, but at least there will be some beefcake. 

Scene 1: 1999. A scantily clad woman awakens on a deserted beach.  Her bag is gone, so she borrows some coins from a lady exiting a pastie shop and runs to a payphone and calls someone, but gets a busy signal.  This must be Britain or Australia.

Cut to close-ups of the chest, biceps, and face of a sleazy-looking dude as he dances around to "Bandido," a 2003 song by Ana Barbara.  He appears to be working on choreography in his garage, moving too fast to get a good screen shot.  

Knock on the door.  He yells in Serbian, "Don't come in!", then goes out to yell at his little brother (Peter Rayias), but Bro is in his room.  It must have been his  creepy Mom: "I forgot to wash your clothes again, my handsome man, leer, leer."

Finally The Girl gets through: "What the f*ck, Kol!" 

"Sorry, my brother was using the computer."  

She starts stammering.  This guy was going to take her to his boat in Saint Basil (no such town), and she took some speed.  It's very important to know that he was a little older, but not some rando. The next thing she knew, she was waking up on a beach, with no money, her bag gone, no idea what happened, and no idea where she is. And they have the Big Community Center Thing in two hours.  She has obviously been roofied, s*xually assaulted, and robbed, but nothing more is said about it. 

 They use a street sign to deduce that she's in Altoona, an hour's drive away. She wants Kol to go to her friend Tori's house, pick up her dress for the Big Civic Center Thing, then come get her.  

"But I don't have a car."

"Borrow your mom's."

"I can't.  She's being creepy. Can you call someone else with a car to come get you?"

"But if they have a car, they probably have a life, so they won't be home."  Wouldn't people who have lives be out late the night before, so still asleep at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning?  "Wait -- I know a complete loser who everybody hates because he's so lame.  He has no life, so he'll be home at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning -- my brother Adam!"  Har-har.

Scene 2: Kol runs through the neighborhood to his Girlfriend's friend, now named Jaya: "You have to call this complete loser who everybody hates.  I can't do it because if his Mom answers, she'll recognize my voice and ask where The Girl is."

By the way, the Girl is named Ebony, although she's not black.  Another off-kilter directorial choice.

Tori/Jaya calls Brother Adam: "This sleazy gay guy burst in and insisted that I call you."  Wait -- your girlfriend's best friend doesn't know you?  And her brother doesn't, either?  How long have you been dating?

"I'm not gay, but..."  He grabs the phone.  "Adam, you have to drive me to pick up your sister Ebony, an hour away, and then drive us to the Civic Center, another hour, and we have to be there in an hour and a half."  

He grabs the dress, and while waiting, hears more about Brother Adam: "Loser.  Voted most likely to bomb the school.  Some girls tried to f*ck him, but were unsuccessful."

Scene 3: Adam arrives (Thom Green, left, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  He doesn't think they can make it to Altoona and back in time for "your emergency dance class."  The camera moves around too much to get a good screenshot.

"It's the Dance Finals dude!  Super-important!"  Not that important.  The movie is not about Kol's dancing career.

Kol asks him to stop the car so he can throw up.   This illness is not mentioned again.

"Maybe you could go to the finals next year?"

"My Girlfriend Ebony applied to NIDA in Sydney, so she won't be around."  The National Institute of Dramatic Arts.

He laughs.  "You think she's going to NIDA?  She's a terrible actor."  He ridicules her performance as Lady Macbeth.

Their conversation last for 21 minutes.  I can't cover everything they discuss, but the most interesting topics are:

1. Jorge Luis Borges -- one of my favorite writers. 

"The Library of Babel," containing every possible combination of letters in a book. 

 "The Circular Ruins," where a man dreams a world that is dreaming him.  

"The Garden of Forking Paths," a labyrinth where every decision results  in infinite parallel worlds. .   

2. Tomorrow Kol is flying back to Serbia for his birthday, January 1st, 2000,  the day of Y2K fears.  Y2K is never mentioned again.

3. Kol mentions how much he hates his "psycho uncle."    Adam suggests that he could murder the uncle for Kol, as in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Strangers on a Train.  This is never mentioned again.

4. Adam mentions that he's gay. Kol says he doesn't have a problem with gay people, a standard straight guy response in the 1990s.

More after the break

Jake Connelly: Delightful Derek from "Stranger Things" hugs Steve, dates Young Will. With a footballer and some ginger chub d*cks

  

Link to the n*de photos

Luke Kokotec, who I profiled earlier, notes that his date at the Stranger Things premiere in December 2025 was Jake Connelly, who played Derek. I thought I'd check to see if it was an actual date, or just two buddies who attended on-set school together. 

Maybe it depends on who you ask.

Jake was born in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and appeared in commercials like "Two for one windows at Feldco!" and "Don't let your roof ruin your summer!", and a short, Between the Silence, about two elderly ladies becoming friends.

 Showrunner Matt Duffer saw him in a furniture commercial and cast him as one of the next generation of kids who fight the evil Vecna in Stranger Things, Season 5.

He starts out as Dipsh*t Derek, a bully who harasses Holly Wheeler (younger sister of the first generation's Mike, played by Finn Wolfhard).  He trips people, yells at his mother, and tells various kids and adults to "suck my (censored)." 

Left: Finn Wolfhard, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

That was supposed to be the end of his character, but the Duffers were so impressed that they gave him a plot arc: he is being groomed by a mysterious being called Mr. Whatsit.

Mike and his friends discover that Mr. Whatsit is actually Vecna in disguise, and recruit him into the battle.  He becomes a hero and rescues Holly, earning the new name Delightful Derek.  Rescuing a girl is a hetero cliche.

When Vecna is finally defeated, Derek hugs Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) and waves excitedly at Mike, whom he calls his "best friend."  Two queer codes.

In the epilogue, he attends Will and Mike's high school graduation (sitting with Holly), then plays Dungeons and Dragons with the new generation (a boy and two girls). Two hetero codes.

A fan favorite, Delightful Derek  goes to a lot of conventions, and is interviewed on a lot of podcasts. He was a guest on The Tonight Show.  His home town decreed February 17th "Stranger Things Day."  In May 2026, he got to throw out the first pitch at a Cubs game.

 

 

With fitness trainer Chase Bandolik. I thought they were pretending to be a romantic couple, but apparently Chase does the "I got invited," "I didn't" stuff with many people.  I don't know what it means.

More after the break

The Last Boy on Earth: Kamandi and his buddy Ben

In 1972, Marvel began to publish two comic book series about gay-vague teenage boys: Werewolf by Night, about a teenage werewolf, and Kamandi, about the last human boy on Earth.

An attempt to capitalize on the popularity of The Planet of the Apes franchise (1968, 1970, 1971, 1972), it is set an a post-Apocalyptic world where sentient animals rule (everything from apes to rats), and humans are extinct.

Except for Kamandi, the last of the human survivors bunkered in Command-D (thus his name), who is raised by his elderly grandfather and emerges into chaos, hunted for sport, imprisoned in a zoo, experimented on by scientists who want to know how a human could be sentient.

Though described as "a boy" and "a tyke," Kamadi is drawn as an extremely muscular teenage with long blond hippie-hair, naked except for tight cut-off jeans.

He is captured a lot, muscles taught and struggling.  Or he fights with high kicks that display his bulging pecs and 8-pack abs almost as well.

Just as the werewolf, Jack Russell, had a middle-aged boyfriend, Kamandi soon meets other humans (he's the last boy on Earth, not the last man). He is rescued by Ben Boxer, leader of an underground human-resistance movement, and his colleagues, Steve and Renzi, who are not shy about physical displays of affection.

For the next 30 issues, Ben and Kamandi fight together, rescue each other, search the ruined cities for each other.  Kamandi occasionally meets girls, momentary dalliances that mean nothing.  And there is no question for Ben: he has eyes only for the blond muscle god.

See also: Jim Steranko

Not the Marrying Kind: Gay Burns and Allen

Television was introduced in 1949, just in time for the formative years of the first Boomers (the generation officially started in 1945). Radio performers scrambled to make the transition. Some made it, most didn't.  Burns and Allen, a "married couple" sitcom starring comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen, made it. After 20 years on radio, they transitioned to television in 1950 and stayed on until 1958, stopped only by Gracie's passing.

They're shown here with guest star Steve Reeves.

I recently listened to an episode from the end of the radio run, in 1949.

The homophobic silence of Dark Age America was starting to break -- very, very slightly -- as radio sought to compete with television by introducing "racy" content -- hints and innuendos about s*x, and about same-s*x desire. 

The plot: George and Gracie, playing themselves, are trying to find a wife for painfully shy next door neighbor, musician Meredith Willson (who penned The Music Man).

 They recruit singer Eddie Cantor, who was subject to some gay rumors because he and his wife only had daughters. Maybe he could donate one?

So Gracie invites Eddie Canter over, and announces to Meredith, "We've found someone for you to marry!"

Thinking that they mean Eddie, Meredith says:  "Gee, I had my heart set on a woman."

Later Eddie explains to his potential son-in-law how a wedding works:

"The minister says 'I now pronounce you man and wife, and then you kiss."

"Even if you've just met?" Meredith asks, thinking that he means kissing the minister.

Meredith (or at least the character he is playing) is too shy to talk to women, let alone marry one.  He complains: "I can't get married if a woman is [at the wedding]."

Again and again, joke after joke brings up the idea that Meredith is considering marrying a man.

What's going on?

If being gay is really beyond the boundaries of what can be known, then the characters are playing with an absurdity, a play on words like Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First" routine.

But people knew about being gay, even in 1949. The Kinsey Report (1948) revealed its existence to millions.  George Burns and Gracie Allen worked with gay people in Hollywood.

Their television series often implied that teenage son Ronnie Burns (or at least the character he played) preferred the company of men.

Maybe that's why Meredith Wilson's character trips easily over the boundary between "confirmed bachelor" and "gay."

At the end of the episode, everyone agrees that he "should never get married." At least not to a woman.

Even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, there were still hints and innuendos.

In real life, Meredith Wilson was married to women three times.  But there are some queer codes in The Music Man.

See also: Ronnie Burns: Gay Teen of the 1950s

Robert Ellis: Gay Best Friend of the 1950s

Ben Pajak plays the gay kids of Wolverine and Paul Blart, Harvey Milk, Max von Essen's buddy, and a gay Corey Haim.  He was also in The Music Man.

Justin Ellings: Kyle from the awful clown episode of "Modern Family" plays Corey Haim and Sean Giambrone, shows his physique and his d*ck

Kyle Pacek: Satanic bass player, sea monster, Estrada fan, horse-sized mystic. But how much in real life? And is he into dudes?

 

Link to the n*de photos

 In American Horror Story, Episode 13.4, the Satanists have resurrected 13 evil women from history, such as Margaret Thatcher and Eva Braun, as well as some who were just into bedroom stuff. in order to sacrifice them to Satan.  Before the ceremony, they are entertertained y the resurrected Elsa Mars, the 1930s performer from "Freak Show" (Season 4).  She sings the Peggy Lee classic  "Is That all There Is" (which she can't know about, since it came out in 1969), accompanied by her band of sideshow performers.

I didn't notice during "Freak Show," but the bass player, Kyle Pacek, is very muscular.  I need to conduct more research. 

Kyle was born in New Hampshire in 1988, and attended Keane University, graduating with a degree in Occupational Safety and Technology in 2011.  He started a business "selling parts, gear, and accessories for Powersports," which are not actually sports: they're motorized all-terrain vehicles used for zooming up and down mountains and such.

Shortly after graduation, Kyle was spotted by a Disney recruiter, and asked if he would be interested in playing a Munchkin in Oz, The Great and Powerful.  

I reviewed it a few years ago: awful, heterosexist to the max.  Not a good start to a gay-friendly career, buddy.

He was only supposed to work for two weeks, but while filming he was asked to perform in two more movies.  He still does the Power Sports thing, but acting and stuntwork have taken over.  He's been in dozens of commercials and music videos, eight films, and 33 tv shows, including The Middle, The Gilmore Girls, The Last Ship, and Agent Carter. 

And the Sigmund and the Sea Monsters reboot (2016-17). I always thought that the title was a misnomer, since Sigmund (Mark Povinelli) is a sea monster, ejected from his family group for not being scary enough. Kyle's role is not specified.   

He is best known for:

The Romanoffs (2018): An anthology about reputed descendants of the Romanoff dynasty.  In Episode 1.1, Kyle plays the mystic and charlatan Rasputin in a stage show on a cruise ship. Jack Huston (d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) plays Rasputin in a later episode.

By the way, Rasputin's horse size is reputedly on display in a  St. Petersberg Museum, but experts say that it is probably from a real horse.

The I-Land: 10 people, including Kyle Schmidt (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends),  awaken on an island with no memory or who they are or how they got there. As far as I can tell, all are straight. Kyle does stuntwork in seven episodes.

More after the break

Rick Gomez: What has Endless Mike of "Pete & Pete" been doing lately? Is Steve Zahn his boyfriend? Is he really endless? With Rick d*ck

Link to the n*de photos

Remember this?

Hey smiin' strange
You're lookin' happily deranged
Can you settle to shoot me?
Or have you picked your target yet

It's the theme to The Adventures of Pete and Pete (1991-95), the first of the Nickelodeon "adults are insane" teencoms.  Two brothers, both named Pete, negotiate the weirdness of the city of Wellsville, where no one is really well. 

A bowling ball has mystical powers.

A garage band vanishes overnight.

Little Pete accidentally erases baseball from existence.

I liked Rick Gomez as Endless Mike, who knows more about the town's weirdness than he lets on.  He sometimes bullies and humiliates Big Pete, and sometimes acts as his ally and protector. You might even find a gay subtext in their interaction.

No one ever explains why his name is Endless.  Maybe the teenage boy is a manifestation of a transdimensional being who exists beyond time and space as we perceive it.

Or maybe he's endless in the beneath the belt region (example on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

When Pete & Pete ended, I moved on to other things, and thought about Endless Mike rarely, if at all.  And the years passed.

Recently we started watching Silo (2023-), a dystopian science fiction series where 10,000 people, all of surviving humanity (that they know of) live in a huge underground helix.  They can't go outside, or ever open the single door, because the air is poisonous (or so they are told). 

And there in the cast list was Rick Gomez!

He plays Patrick Kennedy, a maintenance worker with a dead wife (of course) who sells strictly-forbidden relics from the Before Time.  He starts to suspect that they are being lied to (they are, sort of), and joins the Resistance. 

Right: Steve Zahn plays Solo, who survived a rebellion in his own silo, where everyone went outside and died.  They buddy bond in Season 3.

A few years have passed, but you can still see that insoucient, all-knowing smile.  

I wanted to check what Rick has been doing since 1995, whether he is actually gay in real life, and if he is really endless.

Searching for "Rick Gomez," "actor," and "n*de" yields a lot of photos of Rick kissing guys (top photo) and showing his backside (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), but it turns out to be a Google Images misdirection.  The gay/backside actor is Ricardo Gomez.

Our Rick starred in five tv series between Pete & Pete and Silo.

1. Hitz (1997), about workers at a record company (remember records?)

2. Band of Brothers (2001), about World War II soldiers. Rick plays George Luz, who does some buddy-bonding during the War, but then returns to Rhode Island for the married-with-children bit.

Not much of gay interest so far.

More after the break

Jett Klyne: The future bisexual superhero spends his teen years bodybuilding and dating guys. With two twink d*cks and an Ecuadorian dude

  

Link to the n*de photos

In Wandavision (2021), the Scarlet Witch, memory-wiped and trapped in a sitcom world, has two sons, Billy and Tommy (Justin Hilliard, Jeff Klyne).  In Agatha All Along (2024), after being adopted by a Jewish family and losing and regaining his memory, Billy Maximoff becomes the gay Jewish superhero Wiccan.  So of course I had to do a profile of Justin.

But what about Tommy Maximoff (Jett Klyne)?  He grows up to become the superhero Speed, who is bisexual in the comics: he dated Kate Bishop in Young Avengers: The Children's Crusade (2010-12), and the male superhero Prodigy in Emperor Hulkling (2020).  He explains "I crushed on who I crushed on."   

Maybe I'd better do a profile of Jett, too.

Jett arguably has a more gay/femme affect.

And he has spent his teen years working out.  

I'll answer the standard two questions: has Jett appeared in any movies or tv shows of gay interest?; and is he gay in real life?

Gay-Themed Movies/TV Shows:

 In 2014, when Jett was seven years old, he was in Writing Kim: Aspiring writer Annie (Jett's Mom) heads off on a road trip seeking inspiration, and meets Kim, who has a husband and son (Jett) but also likes ladies. Kim inspires her to embrace her sexual fluidity (you mean she's bi?)  In 2020, it was selected for qFlix, the Philadelphia LGBTQ film festival.  

According to his IMDB biography, Jett's break-out role was in Z (2019).  So a one-word title was too long?  Joshua (Jett) has an "imaginary" friend, Z, who gets more and more disruptive, sabotaging his relationship with his real life friend Daniel and trying to hurt his father.  Finally we learn that Z is using Joshua to get to his mother. 

I haven't seen it, but the gay subtexts sort of jump out at you, don't they?

Left: Since Jett is 16 as of this writing, I won't be looking for n*de photos, so I put a random twink on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

He has a lot of pre-Wandavision guest appearances, mostly in movies that I never heard of: Devil in the Dark, Manny Dearest, The Humanity Bureau, Skyscraper.  Plus three significant post-Wanda movies:

The Boy in the Woods (2023). During World War II, as the Jewish population of Buczarc is being rounded up for the concentration camps, Max (Jett) is sent to live with Janko (Richard Armitage), a synpathetic non-Jewish farmer.  But Janko fears for his family's safety, so he kicks the boy out.  While hiding in the woods, Max forms a buddy-bond with the sensitive, artistic, gay-coded Yanek (David Kohlsmith, right); they discuss their future living together as artists in Paris, and try to adopt the baby of a dying woman. 

Yanek dies, but the baby grows up, and Max re-unites with her in old age, so symbolically the two had a family.  A definite gay subtext or text.

More after the break

The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie

The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie was an anthology series that grabbed kids and teens (and sometimes adults) from live-action sitcoms and put them into badly-animated adventures:

The kids from The Brady Bunch are trapped on a desert island.

The Nanny and the Professor kids tackle spies.

Gidget (who actually hadn't been on tv for a decade) tackles smugglers.

Ann Marie from That Girl goes to Wonderland.

I watched sometimes -- it was pleasant to see some of my grade school crushes, like Greg Brady (top photo) and David Doremus (left), even in animated form.

And there was plenty of animated beefcake, like this hunk, a cousin of Tabitha and Adam from Bewitched who plays in a pop group in a circus, or something.

Besides, the only other option was Scooby-Doo.

But the stories varied in the quality of their animation, and their level of ridiculousness.

Warner Brothers stars Porky and Daffy clash with The Groovy Ghoulies from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Yogi Bear flies around with Hanna-Barbera characters in a giant ark, ridding the world of bigotry, greed, sloppiness, and lack of niceness (all caused by mad scientists with ray guns).  

Wait -- an ark is for surviving when the world is destroyed in a giant flood.  Why would it need to fly?

The absolute worst was Popeye and the Man Who Hated Laughter, which aired on October 7th, 1972.

I would love to hear the conversation in the board room at ABC:

"Let's do a cartoon special about newspaper comics!  Kids love reading the newspaper, right?"

Um...no, we didn't.

"Great idea!  We can include all of their favorite comic strip characters -- 

The Katzenjammer Kids (1897), two German-accented brats who for some reason were trapped on a tropical island with their mother and Der Captain,.

Jiggs and Maggie, the middle-aged couple from Bringing Up Father (1913)

The nonverbal Little King (1930)

Mandrake the Magician (1934)

The Phantom (1936), who , Tim Tyler, Mandrake the Magician, The Little King, the Katzenjammer Kids, the Phantom..."

Right, comic strips that were last popular 40 years before we were born!  

They added Popeye, another character from ancient days who was having something of a renaissance on Saturday morning cartoons.

The plot: A mad scientist hates laughter, so he kidnaps the source of most of the world's laughter -- characters from doddering, long-forgotten comic strips.  The only way they can escape is to convince him that laughter is not so bad after all.  So they put on an idiotic talent show.

The only song I remember is: "Hi, my name is Iodine, and I'm feeling so fine, doing the comic strip rag."

"Rag" was a dance craze from before World War I.

Well, at least you could see The Phantom and Bluto together, different animation styles and all.

See also: 1970s Saturday Morning Beefcake

Gay Subtexts in "Bringing Up Father."

Nanny and the Professor

Corey Sevier: Dog's best friend, Greek god, Yoga mogul, and shirtless Christmas romcoms. And maybe Peter Brady

Gemstones Episode 2.1: Junior likes d*cks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f*k yeah, we got both!

 

Link to NSFW review

Righteous Gemstones Season 2 is my favorite.  Season 1 muddled the Gideon-Scotty plotline, Season 3 had some infuriating queerbaiting, and Season 4 was rushed and muddled, but Season 2 did the Kelvin/Keefe and Junior/Eli romances exactly right.    

Memphis Soul Stew: Memphis, 1968. Teenage Eli Gemstone, the Maniac Kid (Jake Kelley), is playing a heel, a pro wrestling villain: "from the wrong side of the tracks, a newcomer to the League, all muscle, all attitude."  He fights dirty, pretending to reconcile with opponent Kyle Hawk, then throwing him out of the ring.  

As he fights, his manager Glendon Marsh (Wayne Duvall) cheers. Glendon's teenage son Junior (Tommy Nelson) watches, sometimes happy but usually disturbed.  Is he jealous of the attention Eli is getting?  Is he a rebellious teenager during the era of the Generation Gap?.

Junior is gay: In the locker room, Glendon offers Eli "some bonus pay on the South Side," while Junior looks on, smoking a cigarette, still either jealous or angry. As they leave, they pass a n*de guy.  Junior is so busy looking that he trips, and then looks back again.  The boy is definitely into men.

Jim Crow Must Go:  As they drive through a black neighborhood on the South Side of Memphis, near where Martin Luther King, Jr. will be assassinated on April 4th.  Junior looks out at the townsfolk in disgust. 

Suddenly they are surrounded civil rights protestors: "Jim Crow must go!" "We protest injustice."  Junior calls them "bums," which was usually applied to hippies, not African-Americans, leading me to believe that something changed between writing the script and hiring the background actors.  Glendon punches him: "they just want what everybody wants, a piece of the fucking pie."

Ok, Junior is racist, and Glendon is abusive, but why this scene? Hiring background players, costume, and staging must have been very time-consuming, with no payoff: civil rights are never mentioned again.  

The Loan Enforcer: Glendon is a loan shark as well as a wrestling manager: the job involves beating up a deadbeat.  Eli and Junior both go, squabbling over who's the boss.  

"Kill 'em!" we hear.  Psych!  It's the tv.  We meet a slovenly, drunken, foul-mouthed, abusive jackass of a husband.  While Junor subdues his wife and baby, Eli punches him a few times and asks for the money, and when he doesn't have it, breaks his thumbs. Junior laughs "derangedly" (according to the subtitles).

Afterwards Glendon drops Eli off, hands him some money, and tells him, "Buy yourself something nice." This is a feminizing statement. 

As Eli drives off on his motorcycle, we hear Buck Owens' "Tall Dark Stranger":

 They say a tall dark stranger is a demon, and  that a devil rides closely by his side.

 So if Junior is the demon, Eli must be the devil riding beside him.  How long will they ride together?

Abusive Daddies all the way down:  Eli drives to the Gemstone residence (it's not a stage name, apparently), where his abusive dad chastises him for being late for dinner. So they're eating after Eli's wrestling match?  Like at 11 or 12 pm?   There's also a mousy, skittish mom and a little sister, May-May (important in Season 3). 

Ordered to say grace, Eli jokes: "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," which makes May-May laugh.  Dad slaps him.  End of flashback.

We're fine with the f*ggots:  In 2022, elderly Eli Gemstone is a megachurch pastor and televangelist.  He and the satellite church ministers are discussing the case of Pastor Butterfield (Victor Williams), caught with his wife and another woman in a dance club restroom, while they were all high on Molly ("we thought they were Sweetarts").  The story made the front page of The New York Times, thanks to reporter Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman), who has made a career of publicizing ministerial  scandals.  Eli wants to be lenient, but the others object. 

A Spanish speaking pastor explains: "My church is ok with the maricones, but we're not ready for swinging and tropus."     Pastor Diane translates: "His church is really cool with the gays and the queers, but not so much about the swingers and the thruples."  They fire Pastor Butterfield; he tries to commit suicide.

Left: God Squad pecs

Gideon returns from a job as a stuntman to assist with the Gemstone ministry.  He's going to move into the house that Eli built for his abusive dad.

In other news, Gideon's younger brother Abraham has been leaving "secretions" all over the house, like in the freezer next to the Dreamsicles.  

We cut to a church service with Eli Gemstone and his children, Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin, announcing the start of their streaming service, GODD.  We see Jesse's wife Amber, their kids, and Judy's husband BJ in the audience.  No partner for Kelvin. He must be single

F*ck, yeah:  After the service, the family drives in a caravan to Jason's Steak House.  They get out of their cars in slow motion and walk past the al fresco area, heterosexual couples reveling in their nuclear family conformity, the "job, house, wife, kids" litany of my youth made visible. The background song brags about their heteronormative success:

Turn your head when I walk by -- I got the world at my feet.
All I want out of every day, is to wake up every morning
Sun is shining, smiling, and we've covered every room 

 Wait -- where's Kelvin?

Suddenly the record scratches off. Two vans pull up with a flexing muscle Christ and the logo "Strength above All Else." Twelve muscle men emerge, wearing identical canvas gis: the God Squad! Biceps and pecs, abs, bulging flexing intruding on the smug primness of the nuclear families. Wait -- where are the bulges.  They wear cargo pants that don't show anything.

There is no romance here.  There is no heterosexual desire.  It is raw homoerotic power. The song changes to:

F*ck, yeah!  F*ck, yeah!  F*ck, yeah!

We see their leader from the back of his tiger-splashed leather jacket.  Who is this Messiah of Muscle,  this Pope of the Phallus, demolishing the iron cage of heteronormativity, leading us to homoerotic Eden of masculine power?

He turns around for the big reveal.  

 Kelvin!  The prissy little femme boy from church earlier?  I thought it would be Junior.

 He has changed his jacket: more shiny buttons, a gold bracelet.  And his pants: a porn-star bulge and a bright gold zipper to help guide us to his....   Obviously gay, but hardly closeted.  His life, career, and religion all center on masculine beauty.

A man we haven't met before stands beside him, identified as Keefe.  His relationship to Kelvin is unclear.  Assistant or boyfriend?  Acolyte or lover?   

Kelvin gives his God Squad some micromanaging instructions about "eating light," and starts to walk toward the steakhouse.  Keefe stops him. "Excuse me, sir. Will you be dining with the men and I?"  Sir? Assistant. 

Kelvin says no, he'll be dining "above you" with the family.

Keefe: "Shall I join you?"  Boyfriend.

Kelvin: No. "Upstairs church lunch is only for family...and Daddy's closest work associates." 

This upsets Keefe.  He looks like he's about to cry.  Apparently they have enjoyed intimacy before, so he thinks he should be treated as a boyfriend. Never hook up with your boss, Dude: it only leads to trouble.

Kelvin: "Do not take this personal.  No matter how many disciples we gather, you're still my Number One."  So Kelvin is Jesus, and Keefe is the Beloved Disciple.  Assistant

Keefe still looks upset, so Kelvin says "Let me tickle them meats" and reaches out to squeeze his nipple through his shirt.  Hey, that's inappropriate with an employee. Boyfriend..  

Then he swishes off with a jaunty over-the-shoulder smile, pushing up the gay stereotypic behavior  Boyfriend.

Now we see Kelvin's central conflict: he is closeted after all.  He imagines that being gay is incompatible with the cozy families sitting upstairs in Jason's Steakhouse, so if he wants a career and a family, he must deny Keefe like Peter denied Christ: "Him?  Oh, he's my...um...assistant."  During this season, Keefe will be pushing for a place at the table, recognition as a romantic partner. Will Kelvin find a way to admit him?  

 More after the break

"The Terrors of Jordan Mendoza" mostly involve guys hitting on him. With Marc Maron's backside and a lot of Pinoy dudes

  

Link to the n*de dudes

The Terrors of Jordan Mendoza, written, directed, and starring Jordan Mendoza playing himself, popped up on Hulu.  He mentions pranking a girlfriend so he must be straight or bi, but he's produced episodes of the gay-inclusive Chad Powers, Big Mouth, and Neon, and the gay-themed Overcompensating. There may be some inclusivity.

Scene 1: Jordan calls Steve Buscemi to ask him to be the host of his new sketch show illustrating his nightmares.   Steve refuses, so Jordan guilts him: "This will be the first ever Asian sketch show.  It'd be racist if you didn't do it."  

Is that your boyfriend sitting at the table in your back yard, buddy?

Cut to Steve introducing the show a la Twilight Zone: "You're about to enter a realm of desire, dread, fantasy, dreams, and nightmares, hopes and horrors."

Before starting on the dreams, let's take a look at Jordan's backside (front and a n*de Pinoy dude on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

First Dream: Jordan is a bank robber holding five customers hostage. The police bring in Steve as a hostage negotiator.  

Jordan's demand: "I want to be a famous snake."  Steve tries to clarify what he means, but he gets upset and starts shooting people. They start naming famous snakes, like Kaa from The Jungle Book, but Jordan changes his mind: now he wants to be a hostage negotiator.

Dream 2: A black and white movie.  Jordan is the defendant in a trial.  The judge (Marc Maron, left) tells him that "your crimes represent the darkest strain of moral corruption that this bench has ever observed." In light of the heinousness of his crime, he is sentenced to "15 hugs and kisses from the nearest judge."  

More after the break