Foundation: The top 12 hunks of the tv series based on Isaac Asimov's incredibly boring "classic" science fiction

Link to the n*de dudes

Every three or four years since I was around 15, I've picked up Isaac Asimov's Foundation (1951), lured by assurances that it's a magnificent accomplishment, a classic, essential reading, the book that propelled science fiction from Buck Rogers-style space operas to college literature classrooms.

So I start.  And it's just so darn bo--rrrr--ing that I give up after 10 or 20 pages.  Asimov is obsessed with politics, economics, and business, three of the dullest topics imaginable.  

There's a Foundation tv series on Apple Plus, but from the description it seems to committing an even worse sin: rampant heteronormativity.  So I don't think I'll be watching.  Let's just look at the hunks instead.

We've seen the premise 100 times before, but I suppose that in 1951, it was brand new:  12,000 years after the beginning of the Galactic Empire, it is in decline.  Just like...um...er...the Roman Empire?   Asimov is not good at cultural changes, so people 20,000 or so years from now act exactly the way they did in 1951, smoking cigars, wearing neckties, and filling their offices with men only.  They don't even have automatic elevators.

There are five or six parts, each with different characters.  I've only read the first:  A  young man named Gael travels from the provinces to the galactic hub planet of Trantor.  En route, he explains in detail how the spaceship works, which seems ridiculous.  Do you usually spend your flight thinking about how airplanes work?

1. Alfred Enoch as Raych. There are no women in Foundation except for nondescript wives, so in the tv series Gael becomes a woman, to add gender diversity (and heterosexism).  She gets a boyfriend, Raych, her boss's son.

In the city, Gael befriends a man named Jalen or something (naturally -- there are only male characters).  I'm thinking  "Gay subtext!"  But Jalen turns out to be a spy of the Galactic Empire, trying to get the dirt on his new boss, Hari Seldom or something.

2. Jared Harris as Hari Seldon.

Hairy has invented the field of psychohistory, which can predict societal change.  Asimov obviously doesn't know anything about the social sciences -- societal change is a matter for sociology, not psychology.  He has determined that the Galactic Empire is falling apart, leading to 30,000 years of Dark Ages. 

3. Lee Pace as Brother Day, one of the three emperor clones.  I don't think he appears in the original novels.

Predicting the fall of the Empire doesn't sit well with the Galactic Bigwigs:  They think that Hogwarts is trying to bring about the downfall.  So after an inquisition and trial,  they exile Hungover, Gael, and their workers (plus wives and children) to the planet of Terminus, on the far edge of the galaxy (20,000 years, and they still revere Latin?).

4. Cassion Bilton as Brother Dawn, another of the Emperor Clones.  Don't get excited, he's with a girl.

But it turns out that Hinkley has been manipulating the Galactic Big Wigs behind the scenes.  He wanted to go to Terminus, but he didn't think that his workers would go unless they were forced.  He needs a safe space to work on the vast Encyclopedia Galactica, which will preserve human knowledge and reduce the Dark Ages from 30,000 years to 1,000 years.  

Except it's all a trick.  A distraction.  The narrative switches to many years later, and a man named Salvor Hardin, who I thought was Hari Seldom's great-great grandson, but turns out to be just someone with an equally forgettable four-syllable name.  He discovers that the real goal of the Encyclopedists to start a revolt against...well, I don't know who.  

5. Daniel MacPherson as Hugo Cranst.  In the tv series, Salvor Hardin has become a woman too, so she can fall in love with a Han Solo-type.

By this point, I'm thinking "Life is too short.  I could be reading The Hobbit."  And I understand that the tv series is nothing like the books, anyway.

6. Brandon B. Bell as Han Pritcher, who falls in love with Gael (after her first boyfriend disintegrates) and works for the Foundation, although his real allegiance is to the Second Foundation.  I don't know what that means, either.

More hunks after the break

George MacKay: The time-traveler's buddy chooses movies about endless pain, misery, and despair. Just because he has a small di*ck?

  

Link to the n*de dudes

I've been watching 11.22.63:  Jake (James Franco), disillusioned by how awful his life (and everything in general) is in 2016, takes a time portal to 1960 in an attempt to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy and make life perfect. In Episode 2, he hooks up with Bill (George MacKay), a Kentucky redneck with a standard Stephen King backstory -- abusive father, murdered sister.  

They have to live together for several years while waiting for Lee Harvey Oswald to show up, so they pass themselves off as...um... brothers.  Not much of a gay subtext--  Episode 3 is entitled Other Voices, Other Rooms, but it has nothing to do with the Truman Capote novel about gay awakening, and Bill's heterosexual identity is established very quickly, when the guys relax by going to a gentleman's club.  But at least some people suspect that the two are a gay couple, and Bill is beaten up in what we would call a homophobic hate crime. Later he is institutionalized and given shock therapy, a common experience for gay men in the early 1960s.  And killed.

So, a queer-coded character, displayed in his underwear a lot.   Enough for me to check to see if George MacKay has played any other gay-subtext roles, or is gay in real life.

He was born in 1992, and broke into film as one of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan (2003).  Then he played a gang member in The Thief Lord (2006), which has a gay-subtext romance.

Next came a long string of angst dramas 

The Boys are Back (2009): man with a dying wife and estranged sons.

Private Peaceful (2012): Tommo (George) has a brain-damaged brother, sees his father being crushed by a tree, loses the Girl of His Dreams to his other brother (Jack O'Connell).  They go to war together, and Bro disobeys an order to abandon the wounded Tommo, and is executed.  Sounds delightful.  

How I Live Now (2013): Daisy, who has a dead mother (of course), survives a nuclear war, sees her friends massacred, finds her boyfriend (George) severely injured, and nurses him back to health.  Lovely.

 

The Outcast (2015), a two-part tv movie: Lewis (George) sees his mother drown (of course), and grows up feeling responsible, so he self-harms and sets a church on fire.  He spends time in prison, then confronts his toxic family members (hint: every man is bullying and abusive),  and confesses his love for The Girl of His Dreams before..you guessed it...going to War. Ugh!  Or as one reviewer notes, a "relentlessly emotional, heart-tugging story of tragedy."

Does every single one of George's movie and tv roles involve the endless misery of life?  I'm surprised someone doesn't start singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Let's check his gay and gay-subtext roles:

I  already reviewed 1917 (2019).  The tragedies piled on World War I soldier George and his gay subtext boyfriend (Richard Madden) were laughably unyielding.  The darn thing was too grim even for torture porn.  But the gay subtext lasted until the last scene, with a last-minute tacked-on reference to a girlfriend back home.  I can hear the writers panicking: "Wait, we forgot to establish that he's straight!  Quick, add a line about a girl!"

 On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: Richard Madden is n*de in Sirens. He's playing the gay Ashley Greenwick (stereotyped name, that) caught in the act.  I don't know who the disgusted buddy is. 

Pride (2014): Members of the gay group LGSM are raising money for the families affected by the British Miners' Strike (1984).  Joe (George) is so closeted that his out-and-proud boyfriend dumps him, and dies of AIDS two years later.  Bummer, but at least it's a gay role.

True History of the Kelly Gang (2019): George plays the notorious Australian bushranger (outlaw), who has a gay friend (Nicholas Hoult) and likes to hang out affectionately with his male crew, but also gets a girlfriend.  It ends badly.

In Femme (2023), George plays Preston, a homophobic gang member  who beats up and then starts hooking up with a drag queen.  But she gets revenge by filming their encounters and showing his friends, so they suspect him of being gay.  Preston gets angry and beats her to a pulp, but doesn't kill her.

OMG, George, what is this, Hee-Haw?

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

More after the break

Modern Family, Episode 11.4: A pool full of muscle hunks, a future hunkoid thief, and a gay realtor. With some twinks and 7 d*cks

 

Link to the n*de photos

We've been watching Modern Family from the beginning.  Even at an episode almost every night, sometimes two, it's taken over eight months.  Now we're in Season 11, and continuing just out a sense of duty.  The characters are getting flanderized, there are too many maudlin "misty water-colored memories" scenes, and the plotlines are reeking of desperation from the writers' room.  Haley and Dylan have twins.  Gloria becomes a realtor.  Alex moves to Antartica?  Mitchell and Cam move to Missouri?

Besides, Luke (Nolan Gould) has bulked up, but never takes his shirt off.

Episode 11.4, "The Pool Party," is silly, but offers some excellent beefcake.  In the A Plot, Gloria, wife of family patriarch Jay Pritchett,  suddenly developed an interest in becoming a realtor, so Jay's son-in-law Phil -- who owns a magic store and a parking lot, teaches realty at the community college, runs a food podcast, and still has time to work as a realtor -- has hired her as his intern.  She's pushing to be hired full-time, but Phil isn't sure.

They work on the mystery of who is stealing the "For Sale" signs from the homeowners, to keep people from buying the house (don't they usually search online instead of driving by?).  Phil interrogates his rival Gil Thorpe (Rob Riggle), but he says that he's gay now, so he doesn't have time for a petty vendetta.  

Meanwhile, Gloria attaches the tracker for her husband Jay's dog to the sign, and follows it to catch the thief: Sam, played by Hunter J. Mitchell, now 18 and rather hunky (check the n*de twink on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  The owners' son, he keeps stealing the sign so he won't have to move and leave all his friends.  Gloria gives a maudlin speech about how change is hard, but it leads to new experiences and new people, and Phil is so impressed that he gives her the assistant job. 

In the B Plot, Jay is in charge of housekeeping while Gloria works late and fails to appreciate the dinner he cooked or his new jogging suit. He has become a stereotypic housewife, and feels emasculated. 

In the C Plot, Claire wants to convince her daughters Haley and Alex to go to work in the corporate world, so she claims that being a CEO is wonderfully fulfilling.  Then she has pretend that a major disaster is no problem at all.

The D Plot is the dumbest.  Gay couple Mitch and Cam are invited to a pool party by their friend Longinus (Kevin Daniels).  He says that there will be kids, so they bring their daughter Lily; but he meant "twinks."  

The pool is crowded with musclemen in their 20s and 30s.  How would you respond?  How would any gay guy respond?

Right, he would mingle and cruise, or at least enjoy this paradise of  pecs, abs, and junk. But Cam and Mitchell are horrified. "We can't take off our shirts at this smoke show."  Huh?  Why not? 

I think the guy in the pink hat is adult video star Chris Wolfe (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  Another is Bryce McKinney (left).

More after the break

Blair Jackson's Hot Photos, Part 2: Fitness model, stripper, deputy, blond, brunette. Only his abs and d*ck stay the same

Link to the n*de photos

This is a collection of hot/hung and humorous photos of Blair Jackson, the actor/model who became Kelvin's nemesis in Righteous Gemstones Episode 1.4, "Wicked Lips." 

1. Teenage abs.

2. Grown-up abs.

3. Austin from "Wicked Lips" goes cruising. 

4. Going blond.

5. Blair's Starry Night.

6. You weren't looking at his face, anyhow.

More Blair after the break.