Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg's Last Straw. Cartoon mayhem with a few gay hints, at least one gay actor, and a pleasant absence of The Girl.

 Diary of a Wimpy Kid, with the illustrated adventures of self-centered, accident-prone middle-schooler Greg Heffner, began as a web series in 2004.  It spun into a series of chapter books, 20 to date,  seven movies, and a stage musical.  While author Jeff Kinney is a gay ally, he has kept LGBT characters and most of the gay subtexts out of Greg's life, instead making his buddy Rowley too weird for romance, and giving them both regular crushes on girls.  

The movies were a mixed bag of gay-subtext, heterosexism, and downright homophobia: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) doesn't give the guys girlfriends, but moves into homophobia when Greg and Rowley (Zachary Gordon, left, Robert Capon)  accidentally touch hands and spring away in disgust: "I touched a dude!  Gross!" 

Rodrick Rules (2011) features Greg's attempt to win the Girl of His Dreams, but his brother Rodrick (gay actor Devon Bostick) has no interest in girls.

But in Dog Days (2012), both Greg and Rodrick pursue the Girls of Their Dreams. 

So I'm approaching the latest animated film, Last Straw (2025) on Disney, with some concern. But I'm reviewing it just in case (besides, it's been sitting in my "to review" file since early December).

Scene 1: Unreliable narrator Greg (Aaron Harris)  discusses his problem: Dad (Chris Diamantopoulous) likes everything to be organized, and Greg likes to "go with the flow." On Christmas morning, he takes his time in the shower, making the family late for church.  As they are waiting, Mom and Dad discuss Greg's woeful lack of life skills.  He can't even use the house key to lock the door.  Rodney, however, is fully competent.

Left: Now Rodney is played by gay actor Hunter Dillon.  I wonder if it's significant that they keep casting gay guys to play Rodney, even though nothing can be stated in the movies.

Scene 2: The church has some nondescript stained glass windows, a lot of Christmas trees, but no crosses anywhere, not even on the priest's vestments.  He mentions the Wise Men but not Jesus. There's a medallion of a horned stag, a rabbit and a giant statue of a female angel behind the altar. What religion are these people, Manichean?  (In the novel, it's a regular Christian church, at Easter).

Uh-oh, Greg sat on chocolate in the car.  He tries to keep covered, but everyone can see, and thinks that he pooped his pants.

Scene 3: After the chocolate disaster, Dad worries that he hasn't taught Greg the things he needs to know to become a man. Sounds like you have some old-fashioned ideas about masculinity, buddy. Mom says not to worry, Greg is fine: he and his friend Rowley are starting a snow removal company.

Scene 4: It's Beefcake Snow Removal, with a drawing of the Greg and Rowley as muscular, shirtless grown-ups: "pamper yourself with our service."  

Their first customer expected two grown-up hunks to shove with their shirts off (so he's gay?), and angrily rejects the two kids.  As do others on the block.   When they finally find an old lady willing to hire them, they don't have snow shovels. Rowley scrams, and Greg tries to use a lawn mower, with slapstick mayhem results.

More after the break

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

 

Link to the n*de photos

In Modern Family Episode 11.1 (2019), high school vice principal Cam invites a group of "wayward teens" to his house to gain their trust by being the "cool mentor."  Things go wrong when his beloved, awful clown figurine goes missing, and he accuses them of stealing it, horrifying the viewers and his husband Mitchell with his increasingly vituperative insults: "You're trash! You're garbage!  Everyone has given up on you!"   Finally Mitchell can't stand it anymore, and announces that they are innocent: he threw out the figurine because it was incredibly ugly.  

Then Cam comes clean -- the kids are actually the high school drama club, playing wayward teens to force Mitchell to confess.  

I'm not happy with the plotline.  Seeing Cam lash out was rough.  And why would  you destroy something that your husband valued?  Something that was on prominent display in the living room?  But it was worth it to see  drama club member Kyle, played by Justin Ellings.

19 years old when he filmed the episode.

A Short Guy, 5'6"  Forget the five feet; tell me more about the six inches. 

Endless beefcake photos on his Instagram and Facebook pages. 

Interestingly, Justin's official website shows a map of his location (so you can stalk him?).  He's on Cahuenga just north of Lexington, near my old gym in West Hollywood.  Cue the nostalgic reminiscences of my years in the gay mecca.

Justin grew up in Milwaukee, where he starred in The Music Man (2011) and The Sound of Music (2012) at the Skylight Opera Theatre Center.  He graduated from Arrowhead High School at age 16, then moved to L.A. to pursue his acting career.

His first major acting role was on the Nickelodeon teencom Sam & Cat (2013): he played Jarvis, one of the kids that the former ICarly star and her girlfriend babysit.  According to the fan wiki, Jarvis is gay.

I doubt that a Nickelodeon show would have a canonical gay character, but even if it was subtext, it's a great beginning.  Unfortunately, Justin's characters in other tv programs, on Girl Meets World (2015). Game Shakers (2017), American Housewife (2018), and Wandavision (2021), don't appear in the plot synopses. 

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Justin is primarily interested in stunt work.  He has 33 stunting credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of The Middle, Young Sheldon, 13 Reasons Why (where he was presumably Miles Heizer's b*tt double), 9-1-1, Stranger Things, and The Fabelmans.

 He was Sean Giambrone's stunt double on 19 episodes of The Goldbergs.

More after the break. 

In Bed with Mason Cook

In Speechless, the sitcom about a nonverbal special needs kid and his crazy family, gay people generally do not exist.  I guess you can have only one Special Thing per series.  The only reference to LGBT identities I have seen is, admittedly, a good one:

In a Halloween episode, operator-in-training Ray (Mason Cook) and his sarcastic younger sister Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) change bodies.

Ray in Dylan's body experiences not a hint of macho panic  ("Gross!  I'm a girl!), nor does he spend his time heterosexualizing ("I can see all the boobs I want).  Instead, he enjoys being brainy and popular, and refuses to switch back.

Dylan in Ray's body doesn't enjoy being considered stupid and an outcast, so she seeks advice from their father:  "What do you do when you're trapped in the wrong body?"

Dad, naturally, assumes that "Ray" is coming out as transgender.  "I don't know enough about this to comment," he says, "But your mother and I will always love you no matter..."

Later he tells his wife "I think I'm woke."

The juxtaposition of the old fashioned "trapped in the wrong body" and the contemporary "woke" is jarring, but otherwise the sequence perfectly avoids all of the homophobic and heterosexist jokes one usually finds in "boy turns into a girl" stories.

Naturally, I wanted to know more about Mason Cook, who plays Ray.

18 years old, born in Oklahoma City although he says he's from Arkansas, acting since age 9.    He played the young Jimmy on Raising Hope and Eddie Munster in the Munsters reboot Mockingbird Lane,  guested on a lot of Disney and Nickelodeon teencoms, and had recurring roles on Legends and The Goldbergs.  His movie credits include Spy Kids 4, The Lone Ranger, Spy, and some tv-movie tearjerkers. 

More after the break

Quite a full resume for someone of his age.

Extremely progressive in his politics, anxious to take back the country from the alt-right.

Quick to call out homophobia.  Didn't go to see The Ender's Game because the author of the original novel, Orson Scott Card, hates gay people.

In this picture, he is in bed.  But it doesn't look like  a selfie -- the arms are positioned wrong. Someone else took it.

I wonder who was in bed with Mason Cook?

See also: Speechless, Season 2

Mason Cook: The "Speechless" star grows up, turns bohemian-hipster, and shows his biceps and d*ck

Shayne Topp: Nickelodeon teen, Barry's buddy, bodybuilder, sketch comedian who pretends to be gay and have a massive d*ck. We'll see.

Daryl Sabara: Juni grows up, fights cannibals, bikers, and Satanists, and shows his d*ck

Starfleet Academy: Finally we get to see the fabled space school. But will they explore strange new worlds, or will it be "who's dating who"?

 One of the iconic moments of my childhood was seeing a shirtless Sulu (George Takei) sword-playing his way across the Enterprise while high on alien water on Star Trek (Episode 1.4, "The Naked Time"). I was a big fan of the original series, and occasionally watched The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine: Exploring "strange new worlds" was so intriguing that you could easily ignore the crewmen kissing different alien babes every week, and forgive the utter absence of LGBT persons. 

Sooner or later, viewers were told that every crew member -- without exception -- "graduated at the top of your class at Starfleet Academy."  Apparently the classes were very, very small, and they had ten graduations per year.  

We don't learn much more about the Academy: you have to take a class in "Ancient Mythology and Religion"; they teach the Kobayashi Maru no-win test (save your own ship or a ship full of civilians?); and the entrance exam is staggeringly difficult. Even future space-time voyager Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton, left) and Greatest Captain of All Time Contender Jean-Luc Picard failed on their first try.

So I was excited when I heard that that Paramount Plus would be airing a new tv series, Starfleet Academy.  

The premise: Around 3069, 800 years after the original series, dilithium crystals across the galaxy failed.  That means no faster-than -light travel: everyone was stuck in their solar systems, and Star Fleet (and the United Federation of Planets) collapsed. Now it's around 3300, the crystals have been restored, Star Fleet has returned, and the first class of cadets arrive at Starfleet Academy.  

Maybe we'll see some of those incredibly difficult classes.  There'll be some new species as well as old favorites like Klingons and Romulans, and...

Uh-oh, it looks like we're going to get a major dose of boy-girl romance, and once again the utter absence of LGBT characters. The promo shows three boy-girl couples.

Sam is a Kasquian, a new species: a sort of sentient hologram, only a few weeks old but created as a young adult.  She has to deal with anti-hologram prejudice. The trailer shows her being effervescent and on a date with:

Jay-Den Kraag, a Klingon who wants to become a medical officer. There were evil Klingon villains on Star Trek from the beginning, and allies beginning with Whorf on The Next Generation.

 Jay-Den is played by Karim Diané, who has a femme look here, but is actually straight, bringing the Love of His Life on a vacation to Tulum.

Tarima Sandal, is a Betazoid, the daughter of the president of her planet, who wants to become a starship captain (don't they all).  We've had telepathic Betazoids since Deanna Troi of The Next Generation.

The trailer shows her falling in love with, kissing, on a date with, on a battlefield with, kissing, and kissing:

Caleb Mir: a human outcast/outsider/rebel who hates Starfleet, but the Chancellor promised that if he joined, she would help him find his missing mother.  Why does she care so much?  That appears to be the main mystery of the season.

More after the break