Pretending to be Gay in "Head Count"

Head Count (2018) just showed up on my Netflix recommendations, and I had an hour to kill, so:

College student Evan (Isaac Jay) rejects an invitation to go away for the weekend with his friends.  "I sure wish you were going with us," his boyfriend (Jay Lee) says.   But he has something important to do:

A reconciliation visit with his estranged older brother Peyton (Cooper Rowe), who lives in a trailer in the desert.  Eager to put the past behind them, Peyton has a full weekend of reconciliation activities planned, including a hike in Joshua Tree National Park.

"Are you seeing anyone?" Peyton asks, dropping the pronouns in a way that only gay people do.  "You should get out and try to meet someone.  I'm not seeing anyone.  I'm keeping my options open.

"It's not subtext -- Evan is gay!" I exclaimed.  "A gay star of a horror movie!  The final frontier."

On the hike, they run into a group of gay college students smoking weed:  Camille and Zoe snuggling on one side, another lesbian couple, three gay guys snuggling on the other (I'm pretty sure two of them are holding hands). Evan wants to join them, but Peyton is against it -- he hates drugs, and besides -- brother bonding weekend?

Ok, if Evan wants company: "I'll introduce you to my rock-climing buds.  You'll love them."

Luring him away with the promise of hot guys doesn't work, so Peyton allows Evan to go off with the gay college students to the house they rented.

Where they drink, use drugs, and change positions into four hetero couples around a campfire (Apparently Zoe came without a boyfriend just so she could hook up with Evan).

WTF?  I heard that in the old days, gay people often pretended to be straight in public, going out in boy-girl couples, but this is the first time I've heard of straight couples pretending to be gay in public.

I was so upset that I couldn't continue watching.  Apparently the hetero-couples are menaced by a shape-shifting monster, and you see some of Evan's scrawny body.

Why go through all the trouble of pretending that heterosexual Evan is gay? To place the heterosexual college students deliberately in positions suggesting that they are gay couples?

 I researched Isaac Jay; three thousand instagram photos of him kissing, hugging, and gazing longingly at a woman.

And Elle Callahan, my new most-hated director.  This is her directorial debut, except for some film school shorts, but she was an assistant director on 101 Ways to Get Rejected, about heterosexual high school students negotiating mating rituals.

Centennial HIgh: Home of the Free, Land of the Beefcake

These swimmers are from Centennial High School.  A weird place to store your swimming cap.

Another one of the guy on the far right flexing with whipped cream, from the same Facebook page, "Centennial Swimming and Diving."  But which Centennial?   The page gives no clues, no addresses, no city name, no nothing, and Centennial is standard for high schools built around 100 years after the town was founded.

Like one in Frisco, Texas.

Or Duluth.  Is it my imagination, or does he look exactly like the Frisco guy?  Above the waist, anyway.

Cookeville, Tennessee











Bellevue, Ontario.

Anoka, Minnesota

The University of Hawaii at Manoa.

That's right, Google Images says that the University of Hawaii at Manoa is named Centennial High School.

Finally I found this list of competing schools.  Visalia is in California, but Clovis is in New Mexico.

Whoops, there's one in California, too.  So what Centennial High is near Visalia, Simi Valley, Garces, McMurtrey, and Greenacres (high schools or towns)?

Centennial High School, Bakersfield, in the central valley, opened in 1992.

Wait -- Bakersfield was founded in 1863, and incorporated in 1873.  It disincorporated in 1876 in order to get rid of the Wild West shoot-em-up marshall, and reincorporated in 1896.  It didn't do anything in 1892.

I guess they fudged a bit on the dates, in order to match the theme of town high schools: Liberty, Independence, Frontier.

What, no Freedom?

"Dead to Me": "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," with Plot Twists

C.S. Lewis wrote that when he was a kid, he loved being sick, because he could stay in bed all day and read.  When I'm sick, I lie on the couch all day and watch tv.  And yesterday I binge watched the Netflix drama Dead to Me.

Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) has a perfect life.  A job selling amazing mansions to hot 30-something multimillionaires.  A hot husband named Ted.  Two perfect kids. 

That all changes in an instant when Ted is killed by a hit-and-run driver, who flees the scene.  Jen is too busy trying to track down the murderer to work, so she loses commissions and has trouble paying the mortgage.  Her oldest son starts selling pills, and brings a gun to school.

Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini) had a perfect life, too. She sold her paintings for $30,000 each, had a fulfilling job at a retirement home, a hot fiancee named Steve (the big-handed James Marsden) and one of those amazing mansions that Jen sells.  Until Steve died.

The two meet at a wacky grief support group (the only comedy touch in this drama), bond, and become close friends very quickly.  Before you know it, Judy is moving into Jen's guest house and mothering her kids.

That's when the jaw-dropping plot twists begin.

There's at least one per episode, enough to keep you wondering "What crazy game-changer will they come up with next?"  I'm not going to reveal them all -- I don't think I could even remember all of the twists and turns -- but to tweak your appetite,

Guess whose fiancee isn't actually dead?
Guess who was driving the car that killed Jen's husband?

Of course, Jen gets some plot twists as well:
Her anger issues were causing her to lose sales long before Ted's death.
Ted wasn't actually out on an evening run when he was killed.

The series is beautifully shot.  Every house and public area belongs on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, every character belongs on magazine covers. No such thing as poverty or crime in this world.

Gay characters: Max (Christopher Doyle), Jen's business partner, is gay.  We know because we are told; he doesn't actually do anything gay, like date men.  However, he is deeply involved in the church, which is a welcome change in a tv landscape where gay men are never shown as religious.

It's also nice to see a church that isn't Catholic.  Usually tv writers are not aware that Protestants exist.

Neither of Jen's sons express any heterosexual interest,  and the younger, Henry (Luke Roessler), wants to become a singer, which is usually code for "gay" in tv.  (Pictured: the older, played by Sam McCarthy).

Beefcake: This is a female-buddy movie, so the men are not particularly important except as plot devices, but there are a couple of hotties.

Like Brandon Scott as Nick, the police officer who Judy starts dating, who has secrets of his own.

Face it, in this series, it's secrets all the way down.

See also: The Many Faces of Sam McCarthy

Petaluma: Wrist-Wrestlers and Bare-Chested Full-Body Wrestlers

Remember the Peanuts continuity in which Snoopy goes to the wrist-wrestling championships in Petaluma, California.  Thus giving everyone a chance to say "Peta-luma?" with a quizzical expression, sort of like how the Chicago radio djs said "Ber-wyn?"

Turns out that there really is a Petaluma in California, about 40 miles north of San Francisco, not far from Santa Rosa (where the Peanuts strips were set, sort of).

And it really was home to the World Wrist Wrestling Championships, held every year from 1954 to 2003 (there's talk of bringing it back in 2019). There's a statue downtown of Bill Soberanes, a newspaper columnist started the event and many others in his 50 year career as a town booster.

Petaluma has been called "America's Home Town."  Its iconic downtown is familiar from a dozen movies and tv shows, including American Graffiti, Peggy Sue Got Married, Basic Instinct, Scream, Pleasantville, and Beautiful Boy.


Museums: The Petaluma Historical Libray and Museum, Rancho Obi-Wan (with the world's largest Star Wars collection), and museums of railroads, military history, and wildlife.

Restaurants: Trip Advisor Recommends Sax's Joint, which serves fried chicken and waffles.  On the same plate.  Do you pour syrup on both?

Churches: St. John's Episcopal is the oldest in town, and also gay-welcoming.

Colleges: Santa Rosa Community College, Petaluma Campus.  A list of courses with LGBTQ content: Intro to Sociology, Psychology of Gender, Human Sexuality, Psychology of Prejudice, LGBT Arts and Literature.


High Schools: 2 public, 1 Catholic.

1. Petaluma High, 1300 students.  The sports team is the Fighting Trojans. Cross-country, volleyball, wrestling, swimming, badminton, but no wrist wrestling.

2. St. Vincent de Paul.  No GSA, but it does have a Teens Against Discrimination Club (TAD).  Sports: No wrist wrestling.











3.  Casa Grande, 1200 students.  It is one of the few schools in the country with its own fish hatchery, releasing 20,000 steelheads annually.  That's a lot of steelheads.

Clubs include the Believers, the Eyes Open Club, the Jesus Club, the Interact Club, the Red Nose Club, and a Gay-Straight Alliance.

Sports (The Fighting Gauchos) include wrestling, swimming, badminton, lacrosse, but no wrist wrestling.

But a lot of full-body wrestling.

Why do the wrestlers usually pose with their singlets halfway off? Is the photographer saying  "Come on, show your fans some skin?"

Must be a Petaluma thing.

I'm sure no one objects.

Beach Volleyball

Beach volleyball has a sleazy, heterosexist reputation, all about girls in bikinis jiggling while men leer.  But actually it's a legitimate sport, more difficult than regular volleyball because the sand is so soft. 

It began in the 1920s on the beaches of California as a "family fun" sport.  Tournaments began in the 1940s, spreading out from California to Hawaii, Florida, Europe, and eventually around the world.

Beach Volleyball became an Olympic sport in 1996.  In 1997, world tours began, with prizes up to $400,000.

It's a big deal.


 Beach volleyball is offered by many colleges and high schools in Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina, Kentucky (yes, there are beaches in Kentucky),  and other states.

The Georgia State Panthers


















But of course California is the mainstay.

San Marcos High School.   I don't know why red trunks are so appealing.  Maybe they stand out against the sand better.

Santa Monica High School.

Even Catholic schools get into the act.  Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana.












Private clubs have their own teams.

The uniforms aren't quite as evocative as swimsuits, but you can't beat the beefcake.

Palm Springs: Not Just for Heavily-Tanned 70-Year Olds

Palm Spring is a small, ritzy town in the desert 120 miles east of West Hollywood, too far to go for a day.  Gay men over 50 went there for weekend visits.  Around age 70, they moved there permanently. got a deep tan (who cares about melanoma?), drank a lot, and cruised the cabana boys.

I only visited once, in the company of a Geezer whose name I no longer remember.  It was kind of fun being the youngest guy in the room by at least 20 years, and the hookups were plentiful: once you hit 70, you are no longer concerned about such old-fashioned concepts as marital fidelity.

I had the impression that it consisted entirely of elderly gay men, but in fact only about 10% of the population consists of gay couples, and probably another 20% of single elderly gay men.  There are lots of heterosexuals about, and you can see lots of beefcake (other than heavily tanned 70 year olds).

There are about as many gyms as West Hollywood.





There are three high schools (public, fundamentalist, Catholic).  Strangely, the public school has a water polo team.

Water polo in the middle of the desert?

And of course a wrestling team.  Presumably you have to be 18 to get a job as a cabana boy and get cruised by heavily-tanned 70-year old gay men.

Adjacent Palm Desert has four high schools (two public, two fundamentalist Christian), plus the College of the Desert.  The wrestling teams appear to hold matches in hot desert sun.

And the football team holds meetings in...um...a swimming pool.

Well, I'm in favor of anything that gets cute guys' shirts off. 

Especially if they are not too heavily tanned and under 70.

In Search of Track Team Beefcake

My post on "The Top 12 Track Team Bulges" on Tales of West Hollywood" reveals a lot more of this guy than I can show here, plus his hot friend.  I definitely want to know what college he's running for.

 My clues are WVC and orange/white uniforms.

There are three colleges with the initials WVC in the United States.

1. West Valley College in Saratoga, CA, which has a nice (and very large) water polo team.  But no track team.

2. Wenatchee Valley College in Wenatchee, Washington.  It's adjacent to Central Washington University and the Cascade Christian Academy. 

Wenatchee High School has a track team, but Wenatchee Valley College does not.













3. Wabash Valley College in Mt. Carmel, southern Illinois, near Carbondale.   Not to be confused with Wabash College in Indiana.  Wabash College has a track team, but Wabash Valley does not.

Maybe I should stick with Wabash College.  It's got some muscular wrestlers.

More after the break

Sonora: Beefcake and Rocky Horror in the Sierra Mountains

I'm not sure why you would want to go  away from San Francisco, except maybe to see this guy, but if you do, you could do worse than Sonora, California, an old mining town about 140 miles east, in the Sierra Mountains.

But it's not all about wilderness treks; there's a historic downtown with three used bookstores, five antique shops, and Thai,Japanese, and a lot of Mexican restaurants.  Plus the Sierra Repertory Theater is producing A Chorus Line, Route 66, The Wizard of Oz, Cabaret, and Grease.  

An Art Show on the second Saturday of every month.


Sorry, for gay bars, you have to drive into Modesto.But there's a welcoming church and a Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school.

The high school offers tan wrestling singlets. 

Swimming.

Gymnastics.

A teenage powerlifter who keeps getting in the newspaper for breaking strength records.

More wrestling.


















And the Rocky Horror Picture Show every Halloween.

Are you spaced out on sensation, like you're under sedation, yet?