Cowboy and Indian Toys

When I was a kid in the 1960s, cowboys and Indians were has-beens.  Older kids watched Western tv and remembered six shooters and Davy Crockett hats, but my friends and I played at being spies, Jonny Quest and Hadji, or space explorers.  Still, Indians had a penchant for nudity, like Johnny Crawford and his brother Bobby in Indian Paint (1965), or the god Wisakeha, who Bill and I saw in real life at the Pow Wow in 1969, so when a clueless adult happened to give me a cowboy-and-Indian toy, I made good use of it.

Indian action figures were usually naked except for loincloths, making them the second most reliable source of beefcake in toys (Tarzan was first).

Books about Indians were always good for beefcake photos.

Rock Island was the site of Saukenauk, where Chief Black Hawk ruled over the Sauk and Fox Indians, so his picture was everywhere.  This statue, with a phallic spear extending from his belly,  looked over Chippianoc Cemetery ("City of the Dead" in the Sauk language).  It was lit up with red and blue neon at night.

I got in trouble in school for drawing it in my notebook.  My teacher called it "smut," thinking that the phallic symbol was a real phallus.

I didn't really know who the Lone Ranger and Tonto were, but the idea of cowboy-Indian boyfriends was appealing.  Their arms could be bent, so they could put their arms around each other and kiss.

Utqiagvik, Alaska: Beefcake in the Most Isolated Town in the U.S.

Utqiagvik, Alaska (previously Barrow) is the most isolated town in the U.S.  You can't drive in or out.  Everything has to be flown in from Fairbanks (a 3 1/2 hour flight). so everything is frightfully expensive ($16 for a chicken sandwich at Artic Pizza.)

4,500 residents, 60% Inupiat (but only a few speak the Inupiaq language).  Although the town hosted the first same-sex wedding in the state, there are only four open lesbian residents and no gay men.

There's not a lot going on. The Inupiat Heritage Center has some exhibits, the Pluraagvik Recreation Center has a gym, and you can go on a tour of the tundra..And you can go physique watching.

There are only 226 students at Barrow High School, home of the Whales, but they are eager to take off their shirts whenever feasible.

When wrestling.

Or at the beach (for looking, not swimming -- the water is below 32 degrees and quite dangerous)

But there are always intrepid tourists who attempt a "Polar Plunge."

Back to the high school.  Powerlifting.

Winning a "school spirit" award.

But, strangely enough, not on a vacation in Hawaii.  Too hot to go shirtless!

Daniel Boone: a Big Man

Daniel Boone was a man --
He was a big man!

Sounds good so far.  When I was seven or eight years old, I was all for watching tv shows about a man, especially a big man.  Especially a big man who was a "dream come-er true-er."  

But Batman was on the other channel.  No kid in his right mind would pick a cowboy over the Dynamic Duo.  I never saw a single episode of Daniel Boone (1965-70) when it originally aired.

I've seen one since, for research purposes. Not a lot of gay content.  Not a lot of cowboy content, either.

1. Daniel Boone (Fess Parker)  is a family man, with wife and kids.  If you have to be a cowboy, at least hang out with other guys.

2. He has a sidekick anyway, Mingo, one of the least convincing Native Americans on tv, actually played by singer Ed Ames (who, although Jewish, became famous for recording the Chrismas song "Do You Hear What I Hear").

3.  It's not even the Old West.  This is Kentucky during the Revolutionary War.

4. While other cowboys were happily displaying monumental physiques, Fess Parker is kept strictly under wraps.  The only cast member to take his shirt off is Darby Hinton, who plays Daniel's preteen son Israel, and his buddy du jour.

Prior to Daniel, Fess Parker had starred in other Disney productions, notably Davy Crockett, Old Yeller, and The Light in the Forest (ignoring the crush of James Mac Arthur).  Afterwards he retired to run a vineyard and give conservative speeches.

Darby Hinton apparently was the first crush of some gay boys of the Boomer Generation, but he didn't have much of a teen idol career (this photo is from Getty Images, not from a teen magazine).

Post-Daniel, he's best known for the sexploitation Malibu Express (1985), as a Magnum P.I. clone who keeps encountering nude women and swishy gay stereotypes while trying to solve a murder.  At least he looks good semi-nude.

10 Reasons Why Thanksgiving is the Gayest Holiday

If you're not from the U.S. you might not be familiar with Thanksgiving, a holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November (it's also celebrated on different dates in Canada, Liberia, and Grenada).

It's my favorite holiday.  And the gayest:

1. It's in November, so it's cold outside, and dark at night like it's supposed to be.  No one is forcing you to go out and "enjoy the outdoors."

2. There are no tv commercials depicting heterosexual couples giving each other gifts or watching in rapt joy as their children unwrap gifts.

3. There's no religious significance, so you won't feel guilty if you accidentally say "Happy Thanksgiving!" to someone who is Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, or atheist.  Although sometimes vegans will lecture you.


4. Gay men spend many extra hours at the gym in anticipation of over-indulging on Thanksgiving.  As a result, at Thanksgiving they're more buffed than at any other time of the year.

5. Everyone gets to demonstrate their culinary skill.

6. You only get Thursday and maybe Friday off work, so there's no time to take a plane ride 2000 miles to the place you grew up.  Thus, "home" is no longer in the past, it's the place you are today, and "family" is what you make of it.

This Advocate cover shows Howard Cruse's character Wendel being served Thanksgiving dinner in bed.  But why is the kid wearing a mask?  Is he the famous Thanksgiving character, Zorro?

7. If you do go home to visit extended family, Thanksgiving dinner is the traditional time for making Big Announcements, like "Guess what?  I'm gay."

8. Most of the bars, clubs, and bathhouses have special Thanksgiving Day events, so you don't have to waste all Thanksgiving afternoon watching football.

9. The origin story, about 17th century Pilgrims and Indians coming together to share a meal, is an imperialist myth, masking a history of conquest and genocide.  But it does lend itself to some interesting ideas for homoerotic revisions (picture from Crow821 on deviantart.com).

10. Gay people have a lot to be thankful for.  They grew up in a culture where they told, over and over, that "discovering the opposite sex" was inevitable and universal, that no gay people existed except for grotesque monsters.  And they survived.

Burt Reynolds Naked on a Bear Skin Rug

The most famous male nude photos in history:
1. Johnny Crawford's full-frontal nude shot advertising The Naked Ape (1973).
2. Burt Reynolds's nude centerfold in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan

The 36-year old actor specialized in serious dramatic roles, mostly Westerns about surly, downtrodden Native Americans (Navajo Joe, 100 Rifles, Sam Whiskey).  He had just finished filming Deliverance (1972), about four big-city businesmen who go camping in rural Appalachia, and encounter slack-jawed, gap-toothed hillbilly savages.  He expected it to get him a best-actor Oscar and acclaim as a serious actor.

Then Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown approached Paul Newman about doing a nude centerfold.  He refused, so she approached Burt.

Burt lay supine on a bearskin rug in a parody of the popular baby photos, grinning mischievously, coyly hiding his sex organs.  It was not an erotic photo.

But it was groundbreaking.  Nude male photography was still in its infancy -- only a few years ago, it was judged de facto obscene.  This was the first time that any man had ever appeared nude in a mainstream publication.

It was a victory for women's liberation.  Helen Gurley Brown reminisced: "Men liked to look at women naked.  Nobody talked about it, but women liked to look at men naked."  A few months later, Douglas Lambert was inspired by the photo to launch Playgirl magazine, featuring pictures of naked men: "It came to me -- that's what women want."

Both of them were disgustingly heterosexist, trying their best to pretend that they were unaware that  some men like to look at men naked, too.   But men were watching.  Burt Reynolds became a gay icon without ever playing a gay character.

The photo made Burt a celebrity, but kept him from being taken seriously as an actor.  Deliverance was snubbed at the Oscars, and he spent the 1970s in Southern-Redneck comedies like White Lightning (1973), Hooper (1978), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and the Smokey and the Bandit series (1977, 1980, 1983), often with his bff Bert Convy.

It has been recreated by  many other celebrities, including Neil Patrick Harris and Mario Lopez.

See also: Bert Convy: Spending the 1970s Nude

Collinsville: Indian Mounds, Wrestling Singlets, and Ghosts

When I was growing up in Rock Island, we visited St. Louis quite often, and Carbondale, in the southern part of the state, once or twice, and on the way there or back we sometimes stopped  Collinsville, Illinois, to see the Cahokia Indian Mounds.

The site of an ancient city built by the Mississippian Culture between 600 and 1200 AD.   At its height it had a population of 40,000, bigger than London at the time, with 120 enormous earthen mounds used for burials, religious rites, and lookouts.

We don't know much about the Mississippians.  They left no written records.  But we know that they occupied all of the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, and traded from as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.

And that they practiced human sacrifices, sometimes decapitating their victims, sometimes burying them alive.





What's going on here?

In those days many people had trouble believing that "backwards" Native Americans built such an advanced civilization, so there was a lot of speculation about who actually lived in Cahokia:  ancient Egyptians? Vikings?  Space aliens?  Refugees from Atlantis?

The mounds were billed as spooky "Mounds of Mystery" rather than as an archaeological site.

And there were other scary things in Collinsville:

1. The Miner's Institute, a public hall for coal miners, with a library and a theater. For 100 years, plays, concerts, conventions, and high school graduations were held there.  It finally closed in 2008.

Over the door, there is a sculpture of two miners holding a medallion.  According to urban legend, they were twin brothers, competing over a girl or over ownership of the institute. One killed the other in a fit of rage, and then committed suicide in remorse.

Their ghosts haunt the theater to this day, slamming doors, dropping things, turning the lights on and off, and intervening when couples get too intimate by tapping their shoulders or roughly shoving them apart.

It's all very heteronormative. I prefer to think of them competing over a guy, and intervening when hetero couples get too intimate because they don't care for that boy-girl stuff.

2. The Gates to Hell, old railroad underpasses off Lebanon Road.  If you go through all seven of them in order, the gates will open.  Of course, the residents of Hell don't want you there, so they will send demonic beings to stand in your way and devil dogs to chase you.

Collinsville is also known for the world's largest bottle of ketchup, for being the horseradish capital of the world, and for its annual Italian Festival, with bocci ball, grape stomping contests, and pasta eating contests.

I found some beefcake at Collinsville High, where the wrestling singlets are impressive.

Not as impressive as the Mississippian sculpture, but impressive.

So are the track uniforms.

  Nearby towns have athletes who are similarly gifted.  Those mounds must have mystical powers after all.

10 Things I Hate about Pasco, Washington

My least favorite state is Texas, followed by South Carolina, and now Washington is a strong third, with Pasco my least favorite city in the annoying state.

I've never actually been there, but I'm still angry with it, for these 10 excellent reasons.

1. This is a photo of the "Chiawana Fantastic Four."  I wanted to know where Chiawana was, and why these guys were so fantastic.

The article from the Tri-City Herald in February 2017 names them as Rey, Riley, Robbie, and Tyson.  They attended different grade schools, but met in middle school, and trained together in one of their parents' garages.

Thus they called themselves the Garage Boyz.

If they were so great, surely there'd be other photos of them.  But no.

All I found was Tyson in action.













2. Onward to look for other sports.  No swimming.  Surely sometime, someone in Chiawana, who was male and aged 15 to 95, put on a swimsuit.  But if he did, no one photographed him doing it.

3. This is a picture of the track team.  But the gigantic picture on Google Images turned into a .jfif when I downloaded it, and when I converted it to a .jpg, it turned out tiny.  I found another copy elsewhere on the internet, but it was really a lot of work to go through.  That's why it's extra-large, out of spite.

4. The page views have been going down on this blog consistently since I started the small town beefcake series, from 4000 per day to about 2000 per day.   I guess no one is interested in hearing about the beefcake of small-town America.  But I've covered literally every tv series, movie, and fictional book that I have ever seen or read with the slightest gay subtext, so unless you want another post on Green Acres, there's not much left.

Besides, I like researching small towns.  It's interesting.  Why would anybody NOT want to know about Shepaug, cute guys or not?

That's not really Pasco's fault,but I came to the conclusion while researching the Pasco post.

5. When I tried to look up the city of Chiawana, I discovered that it was a high school in Pasco, Washington, named after the "Native American" word for "big river" or "father of waters."

Racist much?  There is no single Native American language.  There were hundreds of languages in several different phyla.  Trying to find out which language it was, I found a website that tried to sell me Native American jewelry before telling me about the forced removal of Native Americans from the eastern United States.

I'm guessing Yakama.  Here's a boy from the Yakama tribal high school playing basketball against Pomeroy.

6. The Chiawana High School motto is "See Blue in All You Do," with "blue" meaning "have a strong moral code."  Which sounds homophobic.  When people talk about "morality," they usually mean "being heterosexual."

7. Pasco, Washington is in the southern part of the state, near Walla Walla. It has two high schools and a college.  I could find no sights at all, except for some outdoorsy things.

8. This bridge is sort of scenic, but like everything in Washington, it started as a .jfif, so I had to convert it before posting.








9. I did find this winner of the Pasco All-County Swim Meet, but after I posted it, I discovered that he is actually from Pasco, Florida, on the other side of the country.

Who knew that there were two of the darn things?

10.  I gave up -- Washington, Florida, who cares? So I searched for  "Pasco Bodybuilders," and this popped up (originally much larger, but it had to be converted from an annoying .jfif, naturally).  It actually comes from an old photo archive from 2009.  The guy's name is Papanek.

Surely someone in Pasco, Washington or Florida, has lifted weights.

Shenendehowa Languages and Beefcake

When I saw this photo captioned "Shenendehowa wrestler ranked nationally," of course I had to find out what sort of town was named Shenendehowa.  Related to Shenandoah, perhaps?

It's not a town, it's a high school in Clifton Park, New York, a suburb of Albany, from the Mohawk word for "great plains."

It's often called Shen for short.

Here are the Shen senior swimmers.

Not to be confused with Shen, the common Chinese surname.  This is Parry Shen and Derek Thaler in a scene from the soap opera General Hospital.

Shenendehowa has no connection to the horrible Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, known for its horrific Civil War battles and homophobic small towns.

Other schools in the Shenendehowah district also have Mohawk names: Gowana (great), Koda (friend), Orenda (great spirit), Acadia (place of plenty).

This is a swimmer from Acadia.

No connection to Acadia, the colony of New France that lent its name to Acadia National Park, the Acadia River, and Acadia University.  That's from the French "Acadie," a 16th century misprint of "Arcadie," the region of ancient Greece that inspired so many pastoral romances.

This is Guy Harrison-Murray, a paraplegic swimmer from that other Acadia.

Why so many Mohawk names?

The Mohawk were a tribe in the Iroquois Confederacy, based in upstate New York and southern Ontario.  Today there around 30,000 members of the Mohawk nations in the U.S. and Canada.  The Mohawk language has about 4,000 native speakers.

Scott Grimes: a Band of Brothers

For a few years in the mid-1980s, Scott Grimes was as famous as Scott Baio or Matthew Broderick.

His red hair and boyish smile drew the interest of teen magazines, and his muscles and penchant for nudity made him a fave rave for many gay teens.

Not to mention his cool fashion sense and hard-to-miss bulges.

His body of work is comparatively small, but wide-ranging, from the pedestrian to the masterful to the ridiculous.

The pedestrian: guest spots on all of the standard tv programs of the 1980s, including Charles in Charge, Who's the Boss, My Two Dads, Wings, and 21 Jump Street.  Starring roles in several series, including Goode Behavior, Party of Five, E.R., and American Dad (his current gig, voicing the teenage son Steve Smith).

The masterful:  the miniseries Band of Brothers (2001), about an infantry division during World War II who learn heroism, courage, devotion, and love.  Scott played Technical Sergeant Donald Malarkey, who is deeply affected by the bloodshed around him, and is always looking for someone to love.

In Dreamkeeper (2003), the Lakota Sioux elder Peter Chasing Horse tells his sullen, "modern" grandson, Shane (Eddie Spears), stories about their culture as they travel to a pow wow in Albuquerque.  A Red-Headed Stranger (Scott) joins them.  As the Stranger and Shane grapple with their unstated but strongly articulated homoerotic desire, Grandfather tells them the store of Tehan, a white man who joined the Kiowa. He, too, felt an unstated homoerotic desire.

Even Scott's ridiculous projects have some gay content.

 In the Gremlins clone Critters (1986), an an army of small, round, squish monsters, sort of like tribbles with teeth, eat their way through a small town.  Brad (Scott) combats them, along with two intergalactic bounty hunters. One morphs into an androgynous glam-rocker named Johnny Steele (Terence Mann), who draws the interest of both Scott and town drunk Charlie (Don Opper).  At the end of the movie, Charlie asks for and receives an intergalactic bounty-hunting job, and the three zap off into space together.

In Critters 2 (1988), Brad is still at work stamping out critters, and the three bounty hunters return to Earth. His coworker dies in combat, and Johnny, grief-stricken, "destabilizes" (has an alien nervous breakdown).  Charlie keeps his arm around him, comforting him, saying “I can’t go on without you."  They embrace.  The music swells.  They have found true love.

Scott is also a talented singer, with three albums to his credit: Scott Grimes (1989), Livin' on the Run (2005), and Drive (2010).  His songs are moody and dark, mostly about lost loves and growing old, but most do not specify the gender of his love, making them resonate with both heterosexual and gay audiences.
He is a gay ally, and often contributes to pro-gay causes.