Jackson Tessmer: From Hebrew School to toga parties, with angst tv, Christian drama, Asa Butterfield, and n*de selfies

 

Link to the n*de photos

Jackson Tessmer was born in Hermosa Beach, California, about 20 miles south of West Hollywood.  When he was a teenager, he moved to Inverness, Florida, where he graduated from Citrus High School in 2022.

He was a swimmer and powerlifter, winning first place in the Orlando Open Championships in 2022 with a bench of 170 and a deadlift of 211.  Sorry, I couldn't find any powerlifting photos.

He was also very busy with Hebrew School and  temple activities.  It's a wonder that he had time to go on auditions.

Jackson's on-screen acting credits begin with a series of shorts: Show and Tell (2013), Birthday Boy (2014),  Table Manners (2015).  He starred with Michael Berthold in Dear Ones (2014), On Your Street (2016), and Ranger Things (2017).

Plus walk-ons in Tomorrowland (2015) with George Clooney, Modern Family (2016) with Mitch dressed as Little Orphan Annie, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), with Asa Butterfield 

Jackson's first starring role came in Schoolbus Diaries (2016-17), with "the everyday lives of children and teenagers" mediated by their surprisingly wise bus driver. 

No Place in the World (2017) is a Christian movie featuring two sisters with problems at home and school, "trying to survive in a disconnected, self-centered world."  I'll bet they find God.  Jackson seems to play a school shooter.

I can't find the tv series Mohawk (2018) streaming anywhere, but Jackson's demo reel shows his father, who has just crucified someone, punching and strangling him.  He's saved by the spirit of a Native American woman.

Paradise Lost (2018) is another show that is impossible to find on streaming services. All I can figure out is a guy (Josh Hartnett) and his wife and kids returning to his home town to confront the demons of his past. Jackson plays his son. Shane McRae plays Dickie Barnett, his enemy.

More after the break

"It's Florida, Man" Episode 1.6: Gay guy gets revenge on his ex by blowing up his trailer. Or not. Plus what BBC means

 

The reality series It's Florida, Man, on MAX, has a format similar to Drunken History.   Real-life Floridians tell about doing really stupid things -- agreeing to fill the fantasy of a toe fetishist, swimming in gator-infested waters, fighting the witch next door.  While they and their family and friends are interviewed along the lines of "What were you thinking?", comedians act out the story.  I reviewed Episode 1.6, which features a gay couple.

Scene 1: Deland, Florida.  Derrick Irving / Echo Kellum wants revenge on his ex, so he comes up with the perfect plan.  Early one morning, when it's still dark out and the ex is at work, he goes to the guy's trailer park, with a getaway driver, wearing a mask so the neighbors wouldn't recognize him, and tries to think of evil stuff to do.  Wouldn't you plan this out in advance?Oh, right, it's Florida, man.

He steals his "good stuff" -- air conditioner, vacuum cleaner, and tv set -- and then blows up the trailer!   

Scene 2: Derrick introduces himself: 42 years old, living in a trailer, but cooking outside.  He wasn't looking to date, but he went online with "BBC and Cooking" in his profile, and Denver pinged him. Wait -- if you didn't want to date, why the BBC?

On to an interview with Denver/ John Gries. He had just gotten out of a 20-year relationship, moved to DeLand, and wanted companionship.  And a BBC, right?

They go on a date to the Waffle House -- Denver wanted to impress the guy with high-end dining, har har.  

Derrick says he was turned off by Denver's disgusting eating habits, but Denver says that romance was in the air.

On their second date, Denver invited him to the beach.  Wait -- if you were turned off, why agree to a second date?  He didn't mention that it was a n*de beach.  Then he kept cajoling Derrick into showing his BBC: "He could not stop staring." So why did you keep seeing this guy?

Next, an interview with Derrick's sister, Sheena: Derrick said he really liked him, but "this guy is old as shit." 

Scene 3: They start hanging out, watching Judge Judy and shit.

Derrick: "We were just friends. No way would I agree to sleep with him."   

Denver: "We were in love."

Sheena: "They was definitely f*cking"

Eventually Derrick moves into The Empire, Denver's name for his horrible trailer, that he paid $2300 for.

More after the break

The 5 Most Horrible DMVs

The DMV is the Department of Motor Vehicles, the most horrifying, soul-destroying institution every invented in the board rooms of hell.  Its sole function is to cause you as much pain and torment as possible.

Every time you move to a new state, you must devote at least one full day, probably more, to being tortured at the DMV.

And I've moved to a lot of new states.

 Here are the worst DMVs, in order:

1. Ohio.  There are two places to go, one to get your new license and the other for your registration, on opposite sides of town, neither with titles that sound like what they are ("Assistant County Examiner" or something).  The registration one is only open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but not if it is raining: "The license examiners will not examine your car in the rain."  Which make sense, I suppose, but if you have only one month from the date you move to the state, finding a free Tuesday or Thursday when it's not raining is difficult.  And finding several (they always send you back for more documents) is almost impossible.

2. Texas.  When I moved to Texas for my horrible year in Hell-fer-Sartain, everybody was brand new at their jobs, having just moved down from the Rust Belt (80% of the population of Hell-fer-Sartain was from Michigan, Ohio, or Indiana. So the clerk filled out the form wrong, and six weeks later my driver's license arrived at a house down the block, with the address wrong and my name spelled wrong.  Six more weeks later, a "replacement" driver's license appeared.

3. Pennsylvania.  At the entrance, there are two lines, with signs stating "With a picture id" and "Without a picture id."  I don't know why I thought they would be telling the truth, after my experiences in California and Ohio, but like a idiot I pulled out my picture id card and waited.  An hour later, I got to the front of the line, and was told "This line is for people who are getting their driver's license for the first time.  That line over there is for people who want to transfer from a new state."  Go wait over there for an hour and a half.

Did I mention that Pennsylvania requires two exhaust emission tests?  From different places on the other side of town from each other.

4. California. Make an appointment in advance, but even then, you are going to be waiting for six hours, until they close and tell everyone to go home and come back in the morning.  Where they say they will take those with appointments yesterday first.  Maybe they do, but it still takes four hours to go through the various lines.  Ten hours altogether.  I hope you packed a lunch.

5. New York.  Don't even think about moving to New York.  The DMV is a nightmare of epic proportions.

Every time I stood in one of the interminable lines, the clerk would invent some other document I needed.

Birth certificate.

The title (it's a leased car, so I don't have the title).

A form sent by the person sitting at a desk in an archive in Vermont who actually has physical access to the title.

My proof of insurance.

No, not proof of insurance coverage that began three months ago; it has to be a form indicating that you have insurance coverage on this exact day.

I went back day after day, talked to different clerks every time, and got different and contradictory information about what forms I would need to fill out.  Finally, after jumping through hoop after hoop,  I was waiting for one last form for Grace from my insurance company to fax the fifth insurance form that they wanted directly to Debbie at the DMV.

"When this one comes in, we'll be done, right?" I asked.  "You'll allow me to register my car in this state?"

"Yes, that's the last document we'll need," Debbie said.  Then: "Well, I'm going home for the day.  Someone else will help you."

"No!  No!" I yelled.  "Someone else will just invent more documents that I need, and I'll have to start all over again."

"Well, my shift is over.  I'm going home."

"Could I come back tomorrow and see you then?  Every DMV clerk has different requirements, so someone else will make me do different things."

"You'd have to step to the back of the line and wait for another hour. Just go to the next person when your form comes in."

I waited.  20 minutes later, Grace faxed over the fifth insurance form .  I wanted in line for the next clerk.

"Oh, you have everything you need, except for the afidavits that you don't have any DUI convictions at any of the previous states that you have lived in.  Just call the local police department at each of the cities you lived in, and have them send you the forms...."

I just noticed that there's no specifically gay content in this post.  So here's a cute guy to tide you over.

See also: DMV: Workplace comedy set in the Department of Motor Vehicles, with Keefe, the guy from "Peacemaker," and a hung archaeologist

Eric Brody: Fashion model from Florida shows his d*ck in his first acting gig

  

Link to the n*de photos

If you've seen Minx, the series that HBO cancelled after one season and STARZ after a second, you know that it's a p*nis paradise, but uncomfortably closeted about the possibility of male viewers.  Ironically, it's about a 1970s Playgirl-type magazine which is also torn between its huge male readership and the need to pretend that it has no male readers.

The "problem" comes to a head in Episode 2.3, "It's Ok to Like It," Eric Brody and Taylor Byron Barr play the models in the proposed centerfold, n*de cowboys tired to railroad tracks. Two men together?  The editor scoffs: "Not playing to our demographic," by which she means "they look gay."

Taylor Barr fills his instagram with pictures of him hugging ladies and a promo for something called the "Ladies' Patrol," so let's do a profile of Eric Brody instead

You can see his junk in the previous shot, but here we see mostly hair. 

Minx was Eric Brody's first acting role. His second, in 2024, was Max the Driver in the short Deuces Wild.  It also starred Jake Locrotondo, who graduated from Centennial High School in Port St. Lucie, Florida, in 2021.  This will become important later in the research. 

More Eric after the break

"Florida Man": Edgar Ramirez solves a murder in a beefcake-free Florida. So I'm including his butt and dick for free

Florida Man: 98% match on Netflix!  That's quite impressive.  There must be a lot of hunks in Speedos, or gay guys who aren't queerbaiting, or something.  Or maybe it's just because I lived in Florida for four years, and I like men. 

Left: Random Florida hunk

Link to NSFW review

Scene 1: A Gambler's Anonymous meeting.  Mike (Edgar Ramirez) notes that his gambling lost him his wife and his job.  Heterosexual identity established, we move on.

Scene 2: Mike is working as an enforcer for a mobster, the Super Hunk Moss Yakov (Emory Cohen) He tracks down Gil (Nick Basta)  at a hardware store, criticizes his weight, and then chases him to the loading dock, whereupon Gil falls and breaks his legs.

Later, Mike meets up with his ex-wife, a standard hot-woman-with-chubby-guy arrangement. He returns the ring that he pawned, but she still won't take him back. Having just been made detective, she asks for his help getting at the gangster Moss Yankov.  He refuses.

Scene 3:  Super Hunk accosts Gil from Scene 2.  Gil offers sunken treasure instead of the money he owes, but Super Hunk says no.  

Cut to a woman with her boobs showing and the hair of a country-western singer sits at her vanity, next to a framed portrait of her boobs.  Apparently boobs are uncommon, so the camera has to give us a good look, in case we've never seen any before.  Gil is getting beat up downstairs, so this must be his house or Super-Hunk's house.

How can she concentrate on her make-up with all that screaming?  I agree; that's what enforcers are for. 

She storms downstairs, as the camera shows us the rest of her body. Ever hear of a bathrobe, lady?  "Super-Hunk, it's my birthday!  When are you going to be done with work so we can go out?"

Scene 4: Mike is now the chauffeur, driving Super-Hunk and Boob Lady to somewhere fancy in downtown Philadelphia. He checks out her butt as she walks past.  

At dinner, Super-Hunk gives Boob Lady her birthday present, a fancy necklace.  But there's a girl's hair in the clasp!  So he got it off a corpse?  Upset, she storms out. Super-Hunk tells Mike to get her home ok.

Scene 5: Mike follows Boob Lady down the street, joking that it looks like he is stalking her.  She's not up for a joke.  He offers to take her to a club instead of going straight home.

Scene 6: A fancy dance club. Boob Lady dances with her hair for about 20 minutes and makes "I want to go down on you" eyes at Mike.  He moves in for a kiss.  She protests: "I thought we said this wasn't going to happen again." Uh-oh, cheating with Super-Hunk's lady!   

Slow dancing ensues (odd, since this is a fast number).  And sex in the car.  Wait -- you prefer Mike to Super Hunk?  No accounting for tastes.

Scene 7: On the way home, Boob Lady tells Mike that Super-Hunk doesn't respect him. Mike's too busy taking side-glances at her boobs to care.  Ten minutes in, and we're not even in Florida yet, and I see no beefcake or gay anything.

She suggests that they run away to Florida together.  "No way -- I'm from Florida.  I'm not going back."  So, Georgia, then?

Scene 8:  The next morning. Mike wakes up in his weird industrial loft (no beefcake). Super-Hunk calls: "on the way home from the birthday, did Boob Lady say anything?  Like she's cheating on me with some jerk that I'm going to have you kill?"  

"No, she didn't say anything."  Just 'do me faster,' 'I love your dick,' that sort of thing."  

"Well, she ran away to Coronado Beach, Florida."  Dumb of her to give him the address, but I guess he wasn't abusive or anything, just clueless about how entitled she was.  "So go get her." 

"No way -- I'm from Florida!  I'm not going back!"  "I'll pay you $50,000."  "I'm on my way!"

Scene 9: Mike finally arrives in Florida, and steals some guns from the luggage carousel at the airport.  

One the way out,  he passes a nuclear family that gains focus: Daddy (Clark Gregg, left) telling the kids that they'll go to Disney World soon "Daddy picks up his gun."  Why do parents talk in the third person?  Don't they think their kids understand personal pronouns?

Finally, some Florida scenery -- and the opening credits!  Wait -- was this all prologue, explaining how Mike got to Florida?  I was ready to call it quits.  Now I'll have to see if any of the colorful characters he meets are gay.

Scene 10: First colorful character: Benny (Isaiah Johnson) the owner of the horrible Palms Hotel (you'd think Super-Hunk would spring for somewhere classy).  Nope -- he's heterosexualized by the little boy doing homework in the next room.

In his room, Mike opens the gun case  -- the gun is extremely ornate, with a naked lady engraved into the handle.  uh-oh, it belongs to the Scene 9 Daddy, aka Durham County Sheriff John Ketcher. 

Scene 11: Mike goes down to the beach.  Darn, every single guy is fully clothed.  Not a bare chest or a Speedo for miles around!  This scene was definitely not blocked for the gay crowd. He flashes back to a traumatic event from his childhood, but the images are too confused to understand what's happening.   

Uh-oh, a naked supermodel is in trouble, and the lifeguard is too busy demonstrating that she's heterosexual to notice.  So it's up to Mike to rip off his shirt (leaving his undershirt --  this ain't Baywatch) -- and rush into the surf.  

Whoops, the naked supermodel is not happy at being saved.  She accuses Mike of sexually assaulting her, because her bikini top is missing.  He rushes back into the ocean to fetch it for her, and a shark bites him on the cock!

Scene 12: He is awakened in the hospital by his sister, who lives in Florida.  His sexual assault-shark bite story is all over the news...and the internet.

I'll just fast forward to see if the sister is married to a woman.  Nope, she has a husband (the intensely cute Michael Esper) and a surly teenage daughter.

Beefcake: Not a pec.

Gay Characters: Not a brunch in sight.

Heterosexism: This is all heteronormative, gay-free, male gaze-infested hetero porn garbage.  I'd rather be queerbaited.

"The Glades": Life without Gay People is Really Boring

 

The Glades, a small-town detective investigating the murder of the week, appeared on my Amazon recommendations, so I checked to see if there were any gay characters.

A comment in an article about the show's cancellation: "The Glades will be missed by all viewers, straight and gay."

Why would gay viewers miss it?

More research: Another commentator praised the show for "Not ridiculing Christians, not having gay characters, reflecting family values."

"Family values" is code for "homophobia."

Wait -- why would gay viewers miss a homophobic show?

Truns out that the original comment was: "I have no problem with alternative lifestyles, but they make some people uncomfortable.  Not every show has to have gay characters.  Why can't you just relax and watch good, wholesome tv?"

It might be fun to go undercover, watch a show by and for heterosexuals, written and conceived with the idea that no gay people exist. Sort of like being a secret agent.

I choose an episode apparently about tearoom trade: Season 1, Episode 5: "Some incidental foot contact in a men's restroom enrages one of the men, who gives the other a piece of his mind.  But what he finds in the next stall is a man beaten to death."  

Scene 1: Scary redneck trucker rushes into a truck stop restroom and sits down to do his business. A foot suddenly slides over and touches him.  He yells "Hey!," but the foot continues to touch him.  "You finish up in there, I'm going to kick your pervert ass!"  He opens the door to find a man beaten to death.

Ok, he thinks that gay people are "perverts.'  I'm sure the writers of the show agree.  But was it a dead gay guy in the next stall?  Someone who got a little too frisky?

Scene 2: Scary redneck being interviewed by the cops. Jim (Matt Passmore, top photo) and Carlos (Carlos Gomez) discuss one's daughters' quinceanera (family man, see?).  Dead guy had a fake Florida driver's license.  He came in on a bus. Robbery wasn't the motive.

Picture #2 is of the wrong Carlos Gomez.

I find no mentions of Matt Passmore or Carlos Gomez being homophobic.

Sophie the "beautiful" forensic pathologist shows up and flirts with Carlos.  Jim is jealous.

Opening Credits: Florida beaches full of women's legs and breasts.  This is a "family friendly" show?  I guess if you're a heterosexual sleazedog.  Then an alligator, Jim flirting with a woman, Carlos dissecting a corpse, and The Glades, created by Clifton Campbell.

Scene 3: The kid Jeff (Uriah Shelton) comes home from visiting Dad.  Mom asks why he's acting so weird: "Didn't you have a good time?"  Turns out he blames Mom for not seeing Dad very often, but it's the fault of Witness Protection.

Meanwhile, Jim and Carlos track down the dead guy, whle discussing whether the "beautiful" forensic pathologist is hot: he was David Zale, a realtor who was convicted of embezzlement and got out of prison four months ago.  Daniel (Jordan Wahl) has dug up more intel: Dead guy called the same number twice every day, and he was on a bus to Maggie, North Carolina. 

Daniel does some swishy hand stuff.  I wonder if he's gay.  

Nothing specific, but I found a 2019 review of the homophobic Hialeah, starring Jordan Wall.

Scene 4: Carlos and Sophie the Forensic Pathologist flirt and dissect the corpse. Jim comes in and suggests that Carlos ask her out.  By the way, no drugs or alcohol in Zale's system, and the call was to his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor. 

Scene 5: They interview the sponsor, Dr. Sloan.  He runs a high-class addiction recovery center, where Zale worked as a peer counselor.  The detectives are extremely rude, accusing Dr. Sloan of profiting from other people's misery.  

Cut to the kid Jeff playing video games.  Mom comes in, wearing a towel or an extremely inappropriate dress cut to the waist.  She wants to talk, but Jeff storms out. (I'd leave, too, if my Mom wanted to talk while wearing a vagina-showing mini-mini-mini skirt).  She follows.  The problem:  he wants to live with Dad, because Mom works two jobs and is always broke (he says as he stands in the rec room of their palatial McMansion).

Scene 6: Back to the forensics lab.  Turns out that Zale wasn't beaten to death; he was killed by a sharp object like an ice pick.  Amd Daniel has new intel: Zale had lost a class-action suit by the clients he defrauded, so why would any of them want him dead?  Then he couldn't pay.

But if he was broke, how did Zale afford the high-end rehab center?

Back to the rehab center.  Dr. Sloan says that Zale lived at the center.  They check his room; it's been cleared out, and there's blood on the curtains.

Suddenly a guy comes in, thinks that Matt is Zale, and attacks, yelling "You're dead, Zale!" 

Commercial break: a phone charger, IMDB TV, a sentient cookie about to be eaten by his human "friends."

Scene 7: The attacker is Connor Burrows (Sam Ball), millionaire tennis coach (just go with it).  Jim, who knows more about drugs than the professionals, tells Dr. Sloan that he is still using.  Zale was probably the supplier.  Then he cut Burrows off, they had an argument, and Burrows killed him. (Then why did Burrows think that Zale was still alive the next day?)

But he takes a blood sample from an argumentative Dr. Sloan, too.  

Matt and Carlos discuss how hot Sophie the Forensic Pathologist is.

Scene 8: Interview with Connor. Jim confronts him with his past: pushing his 12-year old player too hard, so she collapsed and died; 3 months later he attempted suicide.  Three DUIs, but no criminal convictions because he hired a crooked attorney, Andrew Waller. How is being a judgmental jerk going to help your case?

Connor doesn't explain his beef with Zale, but he does reveal that Zale was never an addict.  He was just pretending so he could work there.  

They research the Crooked Attorney, who got lots of people the rehab clinic instead of prison.

Meanwhile Carlos is measured for a suit for the quinceañera (writing it without the tilde was driving me crazy).  

Wait -- a middle aged woman is helping him, and then they kiss.  A wife! Why is he considerig a date with the Forensic Pathologist?

Daniel goes through Zale's luggage.  In a secret compartment, Crooked Attorney's business card, with a meeting written down! (Gee, most people keep those things on their phones).

Scene 9:  They check: Crooked Attorney represented Zale in an extortion case. They had a meeting scheduled the very night Zale was murdered!  And Crooked Attorney is missing!

The Kid is having pizza with Jim, but Jim is not his dad.  Then what is their connection?  I'm confused.

Scene 10: Jim meets with the Kid's Mom, still in her insanely inappropriate outfit.  They discuss the upcoming divorce, while Jim digs up the body of the Crooked Attorney.  How did he know where it was?

Jim pries the Forensic Pathologist away from Carlos and asks if she is taking anyone to the...um...party (finding the tilde is too hard).  But the scene changes before he can ask her out.

Scene 11: They found a hair follicle on the body, and they want to see if Dr. Sloan is a DNA match, but he refuses to give them a sample. (You already have his blood.  Do you know what DNA is?)

Back at the lab, after they gaze at the Forensic Pathologist's butt as she walks away, Daniel tells Jim that he found a cigar wrapper in Zale's room.  A cigar sold only in two stores in Miami.  He called the stores: Zale bought three per week, at $750 each.  Where did he get the money?

Scene 12: Night. Carlos is in bed with his wife, who is wearing a normal outfit, for a change.  He goes downstairs and looks at a picture of his three girls and smiles.  I don't understand the purpose of this scene. To prove that Carlos is heterosexual?

Scene 13: Crooked Attorney had a puncture wound just like Zale had, and there's a follicle of the killer's hair inside!  How did Forensic Pathologist miss it during the autopsy?  She explains that she's doing sloppy work because she doesn't have a boyfriend.  WTF?  Single people can't do competent work?

Uh-oh, the boyfriend she wanted was Carlos!  They were having an extramarital affair!  Adultery -- so much for family values.

I'm getting bored.  There's an excruciatingly detailed plot summary on the fan wiki.

Spoiler alert:

The Forensic Pathologist did it.  She was helping the Crooked Lawyer falsify medical records because she was in love with him.

None of these people were the least bit interesting, especially the judgmental asshole Jim.  The sexism was overwhelming.  The plot was all about money laundering, yawn.  And there were no gay people (the redneck trucker in Scene 1 knew that "perverts" exist).

My verdict: TV shows without gay people are really boring. 

The Top 8 Hunks of "Cougar Town"

 

I'm most of the way through Season 1 of Cougar Town (2009-2015) on Amazon Prime.  Thankfully, the premise of older women dating younger men has long been abandoned (although the title sticks around; it really should be called Wine,  since everyone has a wine glass in their hand at all times). 

Most of the characters have changed dramatically since the pilot.  Now it's Friends, with the friends middle-aged instead of young adults:

From left to right:

Dimwitte hunk Joey: dimwitted hunk Bobby.

Nerdish Ross and aggressive Rachel: nerdish Andy and aggressive Elle.

Micromanaging, anxiety prone Monica: micromanaging, anxiety prone Jules.

Dotty Phoebe: dotty Laurie.

Sarcastic Chandler, who ends up with Monica: sarcastic Grayson, who will end up with Jules.

Plus teeange Travis.

It's pleasant to watch the trivial daily problems of rich white people, especially when they form a close-knit family group (which, come to think of it, was the main draw for Friends).  But the attitude toward gay people is problematic.  

Teenage Travis pretends to come out to the babysitting Grayson (the sarcastic one) so he'll be allowed to have his girlfriend over.  Andy notes that he has fallen for the trick before: "He made me go to two Pride parades."  He says it like it's a humiliation.

Andy has an unrequited crush on Bobby (the nerd), which everybody knows about and plays with:

Elle: Go off with your boyfriends, Bobby and Grayson.

Andy: Only Bobby is my boyfriend.

When Laurie's Mom thinks that she and Jules are a couple, she asks "Which of you is the dude?"  Ok, Mom is ignorant, believing that lesbian relationships are divided into masculine-feminine.  But instead of educating her, they play along, arguing on which would be "the dude" if they were a lesbian couple.

In another episode, the friends play the "Everybody is a little gay" game, which involves getting a guy to admit knowing about or liking a girly thing, then yelling "Caught you!  You're a little gay!"  So being gay means being feminine?  And being "caught" suggests that it's a humiliation.

In the same episode, they discuss whether guys can have women friends without wanting to have sex with them.  Grayson thinks it's impossible; Jules tries to prove him wrong by calling every male friend she's had since junior hig.  They all admit that they wanted to have sex with her (most are still interested_.

But...but..you know about the existence of gay men!  Did you forget?

Not homophobic enough for me to stop watching, but troubling.

I read ahead in the plot synopses.  No gay characters appear, but Elle and Jules pretend to be a lesbian couple to get some of that gay privilege  (a standard plot device in the 1990s), and Grayson gets way upset when someone implies that he is gay (a whole episode devoted to it!).

Maybe I'll stop watching before the show gets more homopbobic.  But I do like beefcake: none of the regulars seem to own shirts, and there's a never-ending smorgasbord of hunks for Jules and Laurie to date or one of the guys to be friends with.  Most appear for just one episode, but here are some who stick around for awhile: 

1. Ryan Devlin as Smith Frank, the sophisticated, wealthy college boy whom decidedly unsophisticated Laurie dates (top photo).

2. Shawn Parikh as Sig, Travis's college roommate.  No beefcake photos, but people of color are so rare on this show that I wanted to include him anyway.

3. Nick Zano as Josh, the young guy whom Jules dates until he says that he loves her.  Then, of course, she has to dump him.

4. Edwin Hodge as Wade, a soldier whom Laurie dates until he becomes too clingy.

5. Scott Foley  as Jeff, an "arrogant" (that is, sexy) real estate client whom Jules dates until he asks for a commitment.  Apparently girls just wanna have fun.

6. Ryan Biegel as Doug.

7.  1980s hunk Lou Diamond Phillips as himself.

8. David Clayton Rogers as Matt, whom Jules hooks up with.

See also: "The Chair Company": A chair conspiracy, a queer kid, a ginger chub, weirdness for its own sake, and corporate dicks.

Cougar Town

"Cougar Town": Can A Rich White Heterosexual Get Laid at Age 40?

Gay men in their 40s and 50s are twink magnets.  By the time you reach your 60s (which I did last month), you are at the pinnacle of hotness; you have to swat them away.  It's considered perfectly normal in gay communities for a couple to differ in age by 20 or even 30 years.  Apparently straight men in their 40s and 50s have sorority girls lining up to have sex with them.  But heterosexual women over 40 are perceived of as "gross."  If they manage to get a younger guy interested, they are ridiculed: "What's wrong with you?  You're not a sexual being!  Act your age!"

That's the premise of Cougar Town (2009-2015), which Bob and I just started watching on Amazon Prime.  Jules (Courtney Coxm who had just finished playing a young adult on Friends) is in her 40s and recently divorced , though I'm not sure why:  her ex-husband Bobby (Brian Van Holt, above) is her best friend, always stopping over to offer advice on the crisis du jour.  

She lives in a palatial McMansion on a cul-de-sac on South Florida with her teenage son Travis (Dan Byrd), who is embarrassed by everything she says or does. 

She has a great job as a high-power realtor, selling McMansions to noveau-riche Florida couples.  

Her best friend (Christa Miller), who lives next door with her husband (Ian Gomez) and new baby, is constantly inviting her over for "wine and Scrabble."  

Sounds like a perfect life.  So, if this were a musical, what would Jules' "I want" song be about?  Sex.

I want to get laid today, or next week, or sometime before May.

But I'm 40 -- yuck!  And gross!  And all the men my age are broken, married, or gay.

So, why not date guys in their 20s?  Because then everybody will make fun of her.  She makes fun of the "cougars," who date guys young enough to be their sons.  

But why the double standard?  Both Bobby and her cul-de-sac neighbor BJ (Chris Zylka, left) bring home a different young girl every night.  Plus she gets encouragement from her party-girl coworker (Busy Phillips), who is in her 30s, and man-hungry boss (Carolyn Hennesy), who is in her 60s; both of them bring home guys in their 20s every night.  

So Jules gets out there and scores a hookup with the hunky Matt (David Clayton Rogers).  

Complications ensue: ex-husband and son catch her giving Matt a blow job by the pool (ex: "Hey, you told me you didn't like that!")..  

So when they begin a relationship, Jules insists that they sneak around: Matt hides until after her son leaves for the night  with his friend Ryan (Lil J McDaniel), and has to leave himself at 5:00 am, before any of the neighbors wake up and see him.

In the second episode, Jules is upset because she has no "war stories" about her wild 20s: she got pregnant and married at age 22 (no wild college days)?  So she goes out for a wild night, only to find that she's too old to stay up until 3:00 am, she gets drunk on two beers, and trying an athletic sexual position throws her back out.  

So, is it ok for people in their 40s to play Scrabble, watch tv, and go to bed by 9:00 pm, or are you supposed to be hanging out at the bars into your 60s?  I don't understand what this show is getting at.

In a subplot, Jules accidentally used a sexy picture for her realtor signs, and a junior high kid (Tyler Steelman) keeps stealing them to masturbate to (why does he need a roomful?).  Jules finds this extremely embarrassing, and tracks him down to yell at him.  What's the problem?  She has no control over who finds her attractive.

Rich People:  These people are all so affluent that their problems seem trivial, but that may be the pandemic talking.

White People:  The map in the opening seems to be zeroing in on Fort Myers, Florida, where 34% of the population is white, but here, Hispanic people do not exist. Two minor characters are black: Travis's best friend and the bouncer at the club (Gregory Hinton), to whom Jules says "Wow, you are really black!"

Gay People:  No. Several cast members have played gay characters in other series, but here, everyone seems obsessed with heterosexual sex except Travis.  But his main job is to be embarrassed by his mother, so he didn't really have time in the two episodes I watched.

Beefcake: Tons.  There are two shots of Courtney Cox in bikini underwear, but other than that, it's all shirtless and underwear-clad men all the time.

My Grade: The problems of rich white heterosexuals in 2009, which seems like ages ago. I would have put up the lack of gay and ethnic minority representation back in the day, but not anymore.   Meh.