"The Cat and the Moon": An almost-canonical gay couple and a gay-subtext romance on the Mean Streets of New York

 

Link to the N*de Photos

The Cat and the Moon (2019) was advertised as a "coming of age" movie with Alex Wolff (left) playing an updated Holden Caulfield.  So I  went in expecting depression, drugs, suicide, heterosexual machinations, and rampant homophobia. I found lots of drugs, suicidal ideations, insanity, and heterosexual romance, but no homophobia, and so many gay subtexts that I couldn't keep track of who was in love with whom.  

New Guy (Alex Wolff) moves to New York City while his mom is in rehab, stays with his dad's old buddy, and gets involved in a lot stuff.  This review will only cover the gay subtext scenes.

Scene 1: New Guy's first day in school.  Skyler (Giulian Yao Gioello), hot for the new guy, befriends him and shows him around.

Scene 2: In algebra class, two stoner buds are playing a game involving fluttering their hands together. 

Scene 3:  New Guy is in the restroom, trying to get high with a bong made of a toilet paper roll, when the stoner buds come in, bickering like an old married couple and talking like "he got into my motherf*ckin' grill, yo."  

One stands at the urinal; the other doesn't have to go, so he just stands nearby to get a peek at his bud's d*ck

They find New Guy and introduce themselves as Seamus and Russell (I'll call them Gay Guy and Straight Friend).  They invite to a party Friday night.

"Wait -- will your girlfriend be there?"  Gay Guy asks.  

"Yes."

"Fuck!  You never pay attention to me when she's around."  To New Guy: "His balls just evaporate when she's around." That must make sex difficult.

Scene 4; The party was cancelled, so Gay Guy (Tommy Nelson, far left) invites New Guy to go to a club with him and his good buddy Skyler, who cruised Nick in Scene 1.  Straight Friend and his Girlfriend will also be there.  So when they go out, it's Skyler-his girlfriend and Russell-his boyfriend, get it?  

On the way, Gay Guy and Straight Friend argue and break up.  The Girlfriend tells New Guy not to worry: they break up all the time, but get back together again. "Honestly, I think they just secretly want to fuck each other."  Ok, so it's not a subtext.

They end up partying on the roof. Gay Guy and Straight Friend kiss.  Wait, I thought you had other partners.

Later, while the two are dealing with a drug overdose, New Guy and The Girlfriend bond.

Scene 5: New Guy has lunch with Straight Friend (Skyler Gisondo, left), who reveals that he cheated last night, before his overdose: he was with "someone."  He doesn't say who, and neither of the guys use gender pronouns, leaving open the possibility that it was with a boy .

Scene 6:  A roomful of guys hanging out.  Straight Friend asks Gay Guy to rap about buttholes. Apparently everyone knows that he's a butthole expert.  

He starts out: "This my boy Seamus, fucking on an anus."  Tell me more.  

"Young Russ, I'm reckless, I wreck chicks."  He pauses. "No, that's not right."  Of course not.  You meant "wreck dudes."  

Scene 7: The Girlfriend invites them to another party  The four head out, engaging in youthful hijinks.  On the subway, Straight  Friend pretends that he is getting oral s*ex from Gay Guy.  Everyone laughs.

They try to pick up some drugs for the party, but almost get shot when Gay Guy refers to the dealer (Quincy Chad, left) as "My N....."  He tries to explain that it's a rap term, but the dealer pulls a gun and asks if Gay Guy would like it in his mouth. Ok, a reference to oral activity.  Figures that it would be Gay Guy.

 They run away, and divide into two couples to cuddle and recuperate:  Gay Guy/his Boyfriend and New Guy/Straight Friend.  So Russell and Skyler are like canonical boyfriends, and Nick and Seamus have a gay-subtext friendship?  Or are they falling in love?

The Girlfriend and her friend arrive.  Straight Friend tries to kiss her (because he feels bad about doing things with other people?) but she won't let him.  She wonders why he's so interested in kissing, all of a sudden. "Since when do you care about that?"  Yeah, kissing girls, yuck!

More after the break

Here at the New Yorker: homophobia, elitism, long-ago homework assignments, and a scary 18th century dandy

I've spent most of my life on college campuses, as student, grad student, and professor, but still, I often feel out of place.

When I'm not out, there's constant heterosexism:
"Will your wife be coming with you?"
"There will be a lot of single women at the party."
"There's not a man alive who wouldn't want to be with her!"

When I'm out, it changes to homophobia:
"How do you know you're gay if you've never tried it with a woman?"
"Why do gay men act so feminine all the time?"
"Are you the boy or the girl in your relationship?"

And the elitism is constant:
"How could you stand growing up in Illinois?  Nothing to do but ride tractors and milk cows!"
"Why did you go to Augustana?  Why didn't you go to Harvard, like everyone else?"
My favorite: "Television?  Ugh!  Mindless drivel.  I haven't watched a television program in 30 years."

Elitism and homophobia come together in The New Yorker, a weekly magazine for people who think that Manhattan is the center of the universe, regardless of where they happen to live.

I lived in Manhattan for three years, and none of the gay people I knew read it.  But all heterosexual college professors did.  And quite a few outside of New York, in California, Florida, and Ohio.

Why is it required reading for elite heterosexuals but anathema for gay people, regardless of their elitism?

1. It's the height of insularity.  Manhattan is the center of the universe, California is full of wannabes, the rest of the U.S. is a "flyover" full of cows and rednecks, and the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Gay people know that West Hollywood is the center of the universe.

2. It's the height of heterosexism.  Endless stories about elite heterosexuals agonizing over failed marriages and dying relatives.

Endless cartoons about heterosexuals saying things that make sense to them, but not to gay people.  This guy tells his date, "I want Chardonnay, but I like saying 'Pinot Grigio."  She is shocked.  What's going on?

3. Gay people appear only as subjects of heterosexual discomfort.  In a similar restaurant, perhaps the same one, two feminine stereotypes are arguing (notice the limp wrist).  One says: "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last gay person on Earth."

Why is this funny?  Because he specifies "last gay person?"

Because it's rather disquieting for a heterosexual to think about gay people discussing marriage?

4. The stories are about men and women having relationship problems. Some of my least favorite writers, those who made me shudder when I was forced to read them in college, were published in The New Yorker:  J.B. Salinger, John Updike, Philip Roth, James Thurber, Joan Didion.

"A Perfect Day for Banana Fish."  What the heck is a banana fish? All I know is that someone dies.  Somebody always dies in these stories.

More after the break

"And Just Like That": Carrie's return has elitism, bisexuals, d*cks, musems, marital spats, s'mores, and shoes. Lots of shoes.

Link to the n*de dudes

I never watched the original S*ex and the City series when it first aired on HBO (1998-2004), although I knew about Mr. Big (Chris Noth), for obvious reasons.  Who wants to watch four super-entitled New York-centric ladies having lunch? The only episode I watched featured Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) investigating bisexuals for her newspaper column.  

Her conclusion: they are all gay, and fooling themselves.  Bisexuals don't exist. 

So much for bi representation. 

Researching this review, I discovered that Carrie has a stereotypic gay best friend with the incredible name Stanford Blatch (why, was Bruce Van Swishington taken?).  

Having never watched the original, I've never been interested in the 2021-25 sequel, And Just Like That (presumably the title means that 20 years have passed "just like that"). But I've seen n*de guys parading around on occasion, and the plot synopses mention several LGBTQ characters.  We'll see if the portrayals are cringy.

I'll identify the five main ladies by their careers.  From left to right, Filmmaker Lisa, Art Dealer Charlotte, Columnist Carrie, Realtor Seema, Lawyer Miranda. 

Episode 3.5, "Under the Table," has three main plot threads.

The Charlotte/Lisa Plot:

Scene 1: The Guggenheim.  I love that museum.  Wait -- they didn't visit, they're just walking past. Art Dealer Charlotte's boyfriend Harry (Evan Handler) reveals that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but they found it early, so he has a 98% chance of full recovery. 

In other news, they're going glamping (glamor camping) with the kids at Governors Island this weekend.

Scene 2:  Nuclear family breakfast in a huge, super-elegant kitchen. Filmmaker Lisa won't be back from filming her documentary until late Friday, so she tells her husband, Herbert Wexley (wow, what unrealistic entitled name), to take their children to Governors Island for glamping with Charlotte and her boyfriend. 

Husband is played by Chris Jackson

Wait -- this is the first he's heard of it. "No, I've told you several times." "No you haven't."

 

"Sorry, I can't do it.  I have a photo shoot for my campaign."  He has to pretend to be a "regular guy," eat one of those...um...frankfurter sausage things...and ride on the...you know, the poor people train...the subway.  

"You can do the 'regular guy' shoot on Monday, " Filmmaker Lisa commands. "This weekend we're going glamping with the Goldblatts."

Scene 3: Art Dealer Charlotte is trying to cook, but she's too distracted.  Her friend Anthony (Mario Cantone) asks if she's ok. 

Her children, a girl and a nonbinary person, ask if they can skip glamping.  "No, you're going" It's important because her boyfriend has prostate cancer, but he doesn't want them knowing that.

Scene 4: Governors Island (no apostrophe), just south of Manhattan, with views of the skyline.   The nonbinary child notes that there's a spa and go-karts. 

Art Dealer Charlotte's boyfriend complains about the mosquitos. 

 Filmmaker Lisa bursts in, and her husband criticizes her for being late. "Well, four hours ago, I was in Atlanta."  Then they bicker because one of them told the other to buy chocolate to make s'mores.  This couple is on the outs.

Scene 5: A tent big enough for three beds and a living room set. The boyfriend and the kids are lounging around, playing on their cell phones, when Art Dealer Charlotte bursts in and complains that they should be doing outdoor activities. They refuse. My parents used to say that on family vacations.  "You shouldn't be lounging around the cabin reading comic books.  Go enjoy the outdoors."  How does one "enjoy" the outdoors?  It's a place you go through on the way to enjoying things.

Meanwhile, Filmmaker Lisa and her husband bicker. She takes a photo of him and their kids.  When he looks at it, he accidentally scrolls to the last one she took: a selfie with her editor Marion (Mehcad Brooks).

"Are you having an affair with Michael B. Handsome?  Talk about getting your chocolate in Atlanta!"

"No, it's just a work crush."

He continues to growl, so Lisa stomps off, and runs into Charlotte at the pier.  They complain about their partners, and decide to ditch them and take a spa day. 

Cut to the spa. Close up of ladies in bikinis.  They're really pushing the heterosexual male gaze. 

Carrie/Miranda and Seema after the break

Adults, Episode 1.1: "Friends" 2025, with racial diversity, a gay guy who dates women, and some backsides.

  

Adults (2025), a tv comedy with another title that will be impossible to research, has just dropped on FX/Hulu: some 20-somethings sharing an apartment.  Sounds like Friends (1994-2004).  20 years later, will they be able to avoid the problematic gender roles, homophobia, fat-shaming, racism, and so on?

Scene 1: New York City, the raunchy F-train that leads to Jamaica Station.  The gang tells Samir to call someone to fix the shower; it's getting bad.  Just shower at the gym.  That's what I do. 

They're all cuddling, but two of the girls are playing with their boyfriends' body parts, marking them as heterosexual couples.  Maybe the remaining guy is gay.

Back story: They all live in Samir's parents' house. 

Uh-oh, it's happening again: an old guy in a suit is doing stuff.  They discuss what to do.  Call a mental health provider?  Yell at him?  Issa pretends that she doing stuff, too, to embarrass him, but that just turns him on.  She tries harder...

Cut to the group walking home, trying to console Issa: "He didn't finish, I swear."  Turns out that Issa is Samir's sister.  Think Ross and Monica.

Scene 2:  At the house, Billie and her boyfriend Anton (Owen Thiele)  are going through old photos, looking for the one where Samir "looks a little gay."  That's homophobic.  The only way to look gay is to make out with someone of the same sex.  They mean "looks femme." 

Issa and her boyfriend come downstairs and kiss as he leaves.  Then she argues with Sammy about whether Paul Baker (Jack Inanen, left) can move in.  Sammy's boyfriend? There is no Sammy listed in the IMDB.  Maybe she means Samir.

No, it turns out that Paul Baker is Issa's boyfriend, the one she just kissed, always called by his full name. . So if Billie and her boyfriend get to live there, why can't Issa live with Paul Baker?

Got the couples down?  It's Samir alone, his sister Issa-Paul Baker, and his college roommate Anton-Billie.

They're all distracted by a news story about Kyle Haberman coming forward to reveal that he was assaulted.  They hate him: he always orders drinks, but doesn't pay for them.  But now, because he is a victim, they have to be nice to him.

Scene 3: CSB Bank.  Samir (Mark Elassal) comes into to pay Peter's Heaters to fix the boiler in the house, but they only take checks, and he doesn't have a checking account?  That makes no sense.  Who writes checks anymore?  I can't remember the last time I used a pen.  

Afterwards Billie brings him a carob muffin. His girlfriend?  But she was fondling Anton on the subway.

Samir: "I thought the world would be waiting for me, and instead everyone is annoyed that I'm here."

No one told you life was gonna be this way. Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA....

She ignores him to give a Kyle update: $200,000 payout, and he is "the V of our G." She clarifies for viewers who were born in the last century: "Voice of Our Generation." 

They discuss how the boss came up to him at work and grabbed him. "Most men don't even realize when they've crossed a line."  This makes Samir nervous; maybe he accidentally crossed a line?   He doesn't specify gender, and he's the only housemate who wasn't fondling anyone on the subway.  Maybe he's gay.

Billie reassures him: "You are a baby angel...and kind of a bitch boy."  That's the sort of term you would use with a gay guy.

More after the break

Nathaniel Choate: Gay African-American Sculptor of 1960s New York

When I was living in New York, I had a friend who lived near the  Klitgord Center,  at the corner of Jay and Tilly Street in Brooklyn, the heart of the New York City College of Technology.  Every day he, and thousands of other people, walked past its gigantic 2-story mural memorializing some of the joys of college: Art, Drama, Music, Recreation, Health, and Recreation.

"Health" was a muscular man on the parallel bars, naked or wearing a skimpy jockstrap.

The Klitgord Center was demolished in 2013.

Recently I investigated the mural, and tried to find out something about the artists.

Sculptor Nathaniel Choate (1899-1965) was one of the few African-American men to graduate from Harvard in the 1920s.  Afterwards he studied in France, and traveled extensively in Morocco and Sudan, perhaps looking for the "good place" that drew dozens of gay men to North Africa.  He returned to the U.S. in the 1930s, and taught in Pennsylvania and New York.  He never married.

His subjects were usually muscular African men, such as "Alligator Bender" at Brookgreen Gardens in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Tile artist Francis Von Tury (1901-1992) was born in Hungary, had a studio in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and was a leading proponent of ceramics as both an art form and an industrial tool.  He never married, either.

Most of his work is stylized, but there are some interesting male figures, like this fisherman on a blue tile.

I don't know if the two men were friends, or lovers, before they began their collaboration.

The Four Seasons: Elite New Yorkers discuss True Love, with a gay couple, a lumberjack, Vivaldi, and a n*de Len Cariou

 

Link to the n*de New Yorkers

I lived in New York for four years while studying for my Ph.D.  One thing that bothered me was the parochialism, like that New Yorker cover come to life ("View of the World from 9th Avenue," by Saul Steinberg).  Literally everywhere else in the world was a cultural wasteland.

 Everyone always asked "Where are you from?", assuming that the answer would be "Scarsdale" or "Astoria."  I said Illinois:  "Oh, Chicago!  Now that's a second rate city!  Did you eat hot dogs at (snicker, snicker).baseball games?"

"No, my town was on the other side of the state, on the Iowa border."

"Iowa!  Ma and Pa Kettle chawing tobaccy!  How old were you (snicker, snicker) when you first saw one of those newfangled auto-mobiles?"

So I started saying "Los Angeles":   "How dreadfully superficial!  All about mindless movies and puerile television!  Do you watch (snicker, snicker) the A Team?"  

The Four Seasons, on Netflix, gave me a similar vibe: parochial, elitist, condescending, so I never made it through an episode.  But from what I can gather, it features three couples who leave the City (there's only one city) for a weekend getaway Upstate (there's only one state) four times a year.  There they talk in Woody Allen witicisms and discuss romantic love.

The main question is stated in the first episode:  Does each of us get a soulmate, someone chosen by the Universe to make our lives infinitely happy forever, or do we fall in love based on physical attraction and social compatibility, and then work to maintain the relationship?   Each couple will face a crisis that illustrates some aspect of the question.  

As the clickbait links say, the answer will surprise you.  Or not.  It's the theme of every romantic movie ever made.

You may also be surprised to find that one of the couples is gay.

Couple #1, Nick and Anne (Steve Carrell of The Office, left, Kerri Kenney):  What if you no longer love your soulmate?

Nick shocks everyone when he announces that he no longer loves his wife.  "Impossible!  You're soulmates!  You're destined to be together!"

When he dumps her anyway and starts dating the much younger Ginny ("The p* enis wants what the p* enis wants), his friends are all devastated.  If a married couple can break up, how does anything have meaning?

 His daughter, who attends an Ivy League College Upstate, maybe Vassar, writes a play in which her callous, unfeeling monster of a father announces: "I hate my daughter so much.  What could I do to cause her the most pain?  I know -- I'll leave my wife, thus destroying the family and making my daughter's life meaningless forever!"

The universe also disapproves of leaving your soulmate, and retaliates by killing Nick.  This leads to the discomfort of having the ex-wife and the horrible trollope he destroyed her life for showing up at the funeral.  Such a negative attitude toward divorce seems extremely retro.   

Couple #2, Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead,  famous playwright Marco Calvani, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends): What if your soulmate dies?

When Danny is diagnosed with heart disease, he leaves Claude to spare him the agony of seeing his decline and death, but Claude insists on getting back together: they're soulmates, in sickness and health. Someday one of them will die and leave the other alone, but the bereaved spouse will still find infinite happiness in the memory of their time together.

By the way, they have an open relationship, and have their "I'm leaving you so you won't feel pain" argument in the midst of a threesome with the Lumberjack (Jacob Buckenmyer).

Jacob Buckenmyer, seen here in Chippendales, is straight in real life.

More after the break.

Why We Watched "The Nanny" in West Hollywood

We didn't watch a lot of tv in West Hollywood, but we did manage to watch The Nanny (1993-1999), part of the  "servant brings joie de vivre to a dysfunctional family" sitcoms that extends back to Hazel , "Somebody bellow for Beulah?", and probably back to ancient Roman comedy.

Here a  "flashy girl from Flushing",  the loud-mouthed, low-brow working-class Jewish Fran Fine (Fran Drescher) has no education or experience in childcare, but somehow manages to becomes the nanny for the children of the ultra-sophisticated, ultra-elite Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy):

1. Teenage Maggie (Lauren Tom)
2. Tween Brighton (Benjamin Salisbury. left)
3. Preteen Grace (Madeline Zima)

Filling out the main cast are Maxwell's business partner C.C. Babcock (Lauren Lane), who has an unrequited crush on him, and sarcastic butler Niles (Daniel Davis).

Episodes involve Fran's wild I Love Lucy-style schemes, Maxwell's play production problems,  occasionally caring for the kids, and of course the ongoing question of "Will they or won't they?"

Of course they will, but it seems to take forever.  Maxwell is concerned that, coming from different social classes, they are incompatible  (has he never seen, like, every romance movie ever?).

Meanwhile the Sheffields get along swimmingly with Fran's family:  stereotypic Jewish mother Sylvia, generally unseen father Morty, and grandma Yetta.

And Maxwell has an endless stream of relatives who demonstrate that it's ok to romance your servants.  His sister marries her chauffeur. His brother even romances Fran.

Yet Maxwell proposes and takes it back, says the "L" word and takes it back, kisses her and takes it back, yada yada yada.

I would have told him, "show me a ring or I'm outta here," like 35 episodes ago.

Not a lot of beefcake.  This is a distaff show, about women talking, scheming, commiserating, bonding.  The few men around are seen from the perspective of the female gaze, desired for their charm, sophistication, and power, not for their physiques.  They rarely if ever take their clothes off.

Not a lot of gay references.  When a very occasional gay person does appear, everyone is surprised.  Apparently the world of Broadway draws only straight people.

Then why was it such a hit among gay men in West Hollywood?

1.  We were envious of New York.  It was bigger, more sophisticated, more serious, the birthplace of Gay Rights.

2. It was unremittingly cheery, with few of the depressing "problem of the week" episodes that spoiled other 1990s sitcoms.

3. Fran is a flamboyant fashionista, a campy, corny drag queen.

4. Since Maxwell is a Broadway producer, every Broadway star, singer, and actor you ever heard of makes a cameo: Ray Charles, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme,  Eartha Kitt, Carol Channing, Patti LaBelle, Rita Moreno, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ben Vereen, Celine Dion, Lynne Redgrave, Elizabeth Taylor, Elton John,

And many you never heard of, famous at the time but now long forgotten: Joe Lando (left), Leslie Moonves, Donald Trump.

"The Other Two," Episode 1.6: Cary goes shirtless, Chase twerks, and there's enough bulges for everyone

 

Link to n*de dudes

The Other Two, on MAX, are the struggling, closeted actor Cary  (Drew Tarver, left) and his sister, failed dancer Brooke.  When their little brother Chase (Case Walker) suddenly becomes the pop sensation ChaseDreams, the Other Two are torn between jealousy, pride, and over-protectiveness: "You can't perform at the White House unless your math grades improve."

I prefer the first season, when the family dynamics take precedence, and we can see some genuine affection between the siblings and their teen idol brother.  In later seasons, delayed due to COVID, Chase is grown up and wacky, and eventually doesn't appear at all, as episodes concentrate on the stardom of the siblings and their Mom Pat.

I'm reviewing Episode 1.6, because of guest star Patrick Wilson, Prince Orm in the Aquaman series. There are two plotlines, featuring Cary/Mom and Brooke/Chase, so I'll review each separately.

Cary/Mom's Plot: Chase recently outed Cary with the music video "My Brother's Gay, and That's OK."  This led to an offer to play Shirtless Bartender on the real-life talk show Watch What Happens Live, hosted by Andy Cohen (playing himself)  

He complains that he doesn't have any lines; they just hired him for his looks.  "Big deal, you'll be seen, and you can meet the guest stars."  Who are they, anyway?  He looks it up: Patrick Wilson...and Mom Pat!  She'll be talking about her children's book based on Chase's rise to fame.  Uh-oh, being shirtless in front of his Mom!  

Plus he was cast without anyone asking him to take his shirt off.  What if he doesn't have the pecs for the job? 

The only gay guy on Earth who never works out, Cary drops into a gym and asks to "get jacked fast" for his Shirtless Bartender gig.   Um..it's going to take at least a year, buddy.  Turns out that the Receptionist (David Arquilla) has been the Shirtless Bartender, too; he's not an actor, but he has pecs.  Uh-oh.

We cut to Cary using the equipment wrong and getting sneered at by muscle studs. The staff will be happy to demonstrate. He wants to give up after one minute, but he can't leave and have the Receptionist see him, so he hides out in the locker room and runs into Lance  (Josh Segarra), his sister's on-off boyfriend.

Lance encourages Cary to pose, and gives him a self-actualization talk: "You are a beautiful man, thin but tight." 

We cut to filming Watch What Happens. Andy Cohen introduces Patrick Wilson as the star of Candy Land, and Pat Dubek, as mother of ChaseDreams -- "I'm obsessed with your son," he admits.  In a non-erotic way: unlike most teen idols, Chase has fans in every age group.  Nearly everyone the siblings meet gushes over him.

Next Andy introduces Pat's other son, the Shirtless Bartender, and asks: "What do you have for us tonight?"

Uh-oh, Cary didn't know that he would have to perform.  He doesn't have anything ready except an angsty monologue from Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead: "We are born with an intuition of mortality..."  Ulp, Andy meant what cocktail is he preparing.

As the interviews continue, Cary knows that he's supposed to just look hot and laugh at the guests' jokes, but he can't help interrupting with bits of his own.  Patrick takes pity on him and asks if he has any projects he would like to promote -- but he doesn't.  

Later they bond while waiting for the elevator.  Well, Cary thinks that they bond; Patrick is just trying to get rid of him.

My grade: I didn't feel the stakes, and Patrick suddenly withdrawing support seemed a little forced, but I liked seeing Cary shirtless for the entire scene. B+

Brooke/Chases Plot after the break

"Difficult People": Billy pretends to be straight, Julie pretends to be Italian, and the son of the guest star takes his shirt off

  

Link to the n*ude photos

Yesterday on the treadmill, I watched Difficult People, a two season sitcom about two jerks, the Jewish Julie and the gay Billy (Julie Klausner, Billy Eichner. below). I've had a file of photos for a long time, so why not write a review?

Julie and Billy are trying to break into stand-up comedy as a pair. We only see snippets of their act, but it seems to involve insulting people.  Plots often involve pop-culture name dropping or the pairs' crazy relatives.  Among the famous guest stars are Amy Sedaris, Lucy Liu, Tina Fey, Mark Consuelos, and Kathy Lee Gifford.

Rounding out the cast are James Urbaniak as Julie's business suit-wearing husband, who works for PBS; Andrea Martin as her yenta mother; and Cole Escola, left, as the swishy queen who works with Billy at his coffee shop gig. 

This episode, "Italian Piñata" begins with the pair walking past the Stonewall Tavern, where the Gay Rights Movement began: queens upset over the death of Judy Garland weren't going to take the police harassment anymore, and fought back.  The Judy Garland angle has been completely discredited.  These were young adults in the 60s. They were into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, not some singer from their grandparents' generation.

Billy notes that it's National Coming Out Day, when super-hot A-gays who spend the rest of the year snubbing everyone who isn't a Greek god do their public duty by offering to introduce newly-out guys to the culture.  It doesn't even matter if they're ugly or have a horrible personality -- or both, like Billy -- if you're newly out, you're in. 

Julie Turns Italian: On their way to a horrible party that Julie's husband had to plan for his PBS job, in Hoboken, the pair drops into an Italian meat shop, where some ladies like Julie's jokes about "meat in my mouth."  They have big hair, eat everything in sight, carry purses that "fell off a truck," and discuss what they'll do to the penises of boyfriends who betray them.  Julie is in love!  She announces to her mother and husband that she's coming out -- she now identifies as Italian!  The two are horrified.

Mom works as a therapist whose client -- the famous Mink Stole -- has a daughter in a cult.  They discuss deprogramming -- kidnapping the brainwashed girl and yelling at her until she "believes what I want her to believe." Mom thinks this would work on Julie.  

Billy Turns Straight: Meanwhile, Billy and Julie go to a New Jersey gay bar, where he gets the idea of pretending to come out.  He announces that he was straight until today, and Julie is actually his soon-to-be ex-wife.  The gay guys, including bartender Pasha Pelosie, left, all want to welcome him into the gay community.  

He gives the hunky Joey (Mark Consuelos, top photo) the job, hoping to get into the guy's pants for his "first time."  But Joey wants to take it slow.  First, a long, detailed course in gay culture -- which he gets all wrong, even the Judy Garland-Stonewall connection. Billy turns him on by pretending to be straight -- wearing cargo pants, thinking that Judy Garland was hot -- but it doesn't help. No sex.

Left: The guy with Mark in the top photo is his son Joaquin, now attending Michigan State University, where he is a wrestler.

When the two groups get together, Julie and Billy are outed -- he knows who Liza Minelli is -- and they are dumped by the Italians and the gays, respectively. At that moment, Mom and the Husband shove a bag over Julie's head to kidnap her for deprogramming.  The Italian ladies think that she's getting an  "Italian piñata." Use your imagination.

Subplots involve Mink Stole, bad hair resulting from getting it styled by students; and the husband's PBS party, which ends up with an office full of kids and a scary clown chasing his boss down the hall.

Beefcake: A split-second of Mark with his shirt off.  When you have to depend on the son of the guest star and guys far down on the cast list, you know there's something wrong. 

Left: Ben Bauer plays a Gay Rights Activist in one episode.

Heterosexism:  Not much. Julie and her husband don't seem to like each other. The swishy queen at the coffee shop notes that he came out a year ago and left his wife, but he still thinks about her all the time, so maybe he should give her a call. Maybe you're a swishy bi guy?

Homophobia: Billy's boss at the coffee shop, who is trans, calls him a "fag": "I can say it because I used to be one."  One of the Italian ladies suggests that they go to the gay bar next door and hang out with her "fag" brother: "I can say it because he is one."

Left: Sean Martin Hingston shows the pair his penis in another episode.

My Grade: I liked the episode construction, with the various subplots linked together, but the humor was outdated and trite.  Jewish mothers, har har.   A swishy straight guy, har har. 

Some dicks and butts from far down the cast list on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

See also: Stonewall: A movie about the riots that started the Gay Rightes Movement

The naked pres bro on the bus on "The Girls on the Bus"

Chris Messina: "Birds of Prey," "The Mindy Project," and lots of movies featuring angst and dicks

  

I didn't get a lot of page views for my review of The Sinner -- maybe everyone found the title too judgmental -- so I decided to repurpose the numerous nude photos of Chris Messina into a separate article.  Who is this guy whom I never heard of before, who lacks a standard gym rat physique yet manages to tear his clothes off in practically every screen appearance?

Link to the nude photos

He doesn't have much of a social media presence.  This Chris Messina looks like him, but must be somebody else, since he has a boyfriend, and our guy has a wife.  Plus an article in Forbes proclaiming "Chris Messina loves women."  Wow, a heterosexual, how bizarre! I've heard of men like that, but I've never met one in real life. How do they decide who's the top and who's the bottom?

Our Chris, who loves women, was born in 1974  He grew up in New York City, dropped out of college after one semester, and moved onto Broadway, then tv. He has 75 acting credits on the IMDB, including substantial roles in Damages, The Newsroom, The Mindy Project, and Based on a True Story.   I've only seen him in Argo and Birds of Prey.

Not a lot of gay roles.  In an interview, he says that his villain Victor Szaz in Birds of Prey is "probably gay." and in Based on a True Story, his character is married to a woman, but makes out with a guy during a fantasy orgy.

Our first glimpse of Chris's private parts comes in the tv series Six Feet Under (about a mortuary).  His Ted Farwell, an attorney who dates some of the ladies, walks through his house nude.

28 Hotel Rooms (2012) features a Woman and a Man (Chris) hooking up in hotel rooms every time they are in the same city on business.  It sounds artsy, pretentious, and heterosexist, but apparently Chris walks around nude a lot.

The Mindy Project (2012-2017) stars Mindy Kaling as a OB/GYN doctor looking for love in New York City.  Chris plays Danny Castellano, her Love Interest, in 90 episodes. His gay brother Richie appears in 8 episodes.

90 episodes, and all we get is a bulge shot?

Oh, well, Digging for Fire (2015) gives us another dick shot. It stars Jake Johnson as a nuclear family dad with marital problems -- and a skeleton buried in the back yard.  Chris plays one of his friends, who comes to a party involving call girls and skinny dipping.

The Sweet Life (2016) is an "edgy and unconventional dramedy" about a Man an a Woman on a road trip to San Francisco, where they will jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.  All that angst, and all we get is a butt shot?

More dick in Sharp Objects (2016): a women with psychiatric problems investigates the murders of two young girls. Chris plays a detective working on the case, and obviously her Love Interest.  Sounds terribly depressing.  Go back to comedy, Dude!

The Secrets We Keep (2020).  I don't know, Romanian refugees, tortured past, dark secrets. 

 F*k the sadness.  Dick and butt shots aren't worth it. Let's go back to the gay Chris Messina and his boyfriend.

Dicks, butts, and angst on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

"Shining Vale": A Stepford Wives/The Shining mishmash, with Monica from "Friends," the gay kid from Pen15, and a lot of Higginbothams

  

I was attracted to Shining Vale, a horror series that aired on Starz before being transferred to Hulu, because the icon looks like The Stepford Wives, with a lot of women forced to wear paper smiles, and one of the episode titles reflects "The Yellow Wallpaper," a feminist classic about a woman trapped in the attic and not allowed to write. 

Episode 1.1, "Welcome to Casa del Phelps," starts with statistics: Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression, and twice as likely to be possessed by a demon. The symptoms are identical.

Prelude: A heterosexual nuclear family drives through the barren northwoods of New York:

1. Focus character Pat (Courtney Cox). Monica on Friends? I just reviewed a show starring her brother Ross.

2. Hubbie Terry (Greg Kinnear).  Remember "Talk Soup"?

3. Their surly teenage daughter, Gaynor (Gaynor?) The actor is named Gus, so maybe they're nonbinary, but Gaynor (Gaynor?) herself gets a boyfriend later on.

4. Their portly teenage son, Jake, who is attached to a video game at all times.  Jake has sort of a femme look, but will get a girlfriend later on. Actor Dylan Gage is gay in real life, and played a gay middle schooler on Pen15

The son and daughter are angry because they have to uproot their lives and leave their friends just because Mom had s*x with some random Muscle Guy.  Flash to the encounter; all we see is Muscle Guy flexing his biceps in the mirror while doing it.  Weird. 

Muscle Guy is played by Jonathan Higginbotham, but the top photo is Max Carpeter as Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire," for reasons that will become evident.

Suddenly a little girl in a 1950s costume is standing in the road!  In the wilderness a hundred miles from the nearest town? Mom screams that they hit her.  Mom screams that they hit her.  Nope, no one there. Dad suggests that it was a deer.  That was no deer, buddy.

They arrive at the huge mansion.  So if your partner cheats, your first reaction is to buy a huge mansion in upstate New York?  Excuse me -- I have some cruising to do.

Mom notes that Daughter Gaylord gets a room on the other side of the house for privacy, and Son Jake gets his own bathroom with a door that locks, for...well, you know.

A sinister lady dressed as a 1950s socialite, who will eventually be identified as Rosemary (Mira Sorvino), is staring at them.  Mom screams; she vanishes.  Dad says that it was probably a deers.

Flashback to the realtor showing . Upstairs, there's a huge stained glass window depicting St. George and the Dragon, but George is a lady, Rosemary.

Back story: 17 years ago, Mom wrote a bestselling novel referred to variously as "lady stuff" and "female empowerment."  She hasn't written a word since, but she hopes that moving to a mansion upstate, far away from Manhattan and its distractions -- museums, art galleries, bookstores, restaurants, gay bars -- will in spire her.  

Sunday night: It's very cold in the house, so they light a fire. and the dining room table was lost, so they eat on the floor for "family time." Or you could eat off tv trays in the living room.

They have to say what they're looking forward to.  Everyone chimes in: "Family!  Spending more time with family!  Family is everything! Family!"  Ugh!  

Son Jake and Daughter Gaybor were just paying lip-service to the family ideology.  They rush off.  With nothing else to do (no WIFI?), Dad suggests that they have s*x. "We haven't done it since you cheated on me."  Way to put her in the mood.

Left: Not Jonathan Higginbotham the Muscle Guy,  for reasons that will become evident. Matthew Higginbotham, a jungler who plays for the TSM Academy.  After googling it, I still don't know what that is.

3 months earlier:  Mom telling her therapist, "I didn't plan on cheating"  She was in her tiny, tiny, tiny apartment, bored (half a block from the Metropolitan Museum of Art?) and sad. Muscle Guy came by to fix the faucet, and she tripped and accidentally fell onto his d*ck. . The therapist asks if she's on anti-anxiety medication.  She's suffering from depression, not anxiety, but he gives her a prescription anway.

Back to the mansion: As Dad goes upstairs to get ready for s*x, Mom stalls by saying she wants to clean up the dinner dishes.  Whoa, someone is playing the piano!  And there's a tap on the window -- Rosemary, the lady from before, hovering ten feet off the grond!  Monica runs upstairs, where Greg is ready for s*x in -- boxers and a t-shirt?  He rushes down to check.  No one there.  "It must have been a deer."  That was no deer, but Mom has been established as crazy.  Maybe she's hallucinating.

Monday: Inm the morning, Mom pops a bunch of pills, criticizes Daughter Gaymer's short skirt, and listens to Son Jake's complaint that she forgot to cut the crusts off his PB*J. They criticize her for having s*x with a rando and forcing them to come to this haunte mansion.

When the school bus comes, Daughter Gazebo gazes at a hot guy (Derek Lah, left) and takes off some of her clothes to entice them. Why is Mom waiting with them?  Helicopter parent.  She asks Gayborhood to make good choices and Jake to try to make an age-appropriate friend, instead of hanging out with hunky older guys.  Say what?

Mom's agent calls: We gave you an advance for your new book six years ago, so get it in, or give the money back.  She goes up to the dark, scary attic, full of leering dolls and clowns, to start working. You've got 300 rooms. Find yourself a proper home office. 

The dog wants to play, but his ball rolls under a dresser, where Mom finds a picture of the two ghosts she's seen so far, the little girl and the socialite Rosemary.  One whispers at her!

Hubby takes a $250 cab from the city to investigate, but finds nothing.  Or you could call 911 and report a home intruder.   He thinks that it was just the wind. 

More after the break

"Eric": Drunken puppeteer, missing son, gay cop, and a boyfriend with AIDS. Life as usual in 1980s New York

The Netflix series with the one-word title Eric is drawing my interest because it's set in the 1980s, so there will be some nostalgia, and because it's about a missing boy  -- 99% of the time, it's a woman or a girl.   

But...it stars Benedict Cumberbatch, hated for his role in the aggressively queerbaiting Sherlock and the execrably heteronormative Doctor Strange. 

Oh, well, let's give it a try.

Scene 1: The ten-year old Edgar -- is that a 1980s male name? -- has been missing for two days.  His Dad addresses him on tv: "I'm sorry, buddy. Prove to everyone that you're not dead.  Come home"  Sorry for what, dude? Did you do something? 

48 hours earlier: Edgar wanders around backstage as his dad and others film Good Day Sunshine, a marionette show with full-sized human figures.  The puppeters sit under them, apparently visible on screen.    Their closing motto is "Be good, be kind, be brave, be different."  In the Reagan-Thatcher 80s?  As if!  

A live orchestra-- this is a big deal.

Edgar waits while Dad Vincent -- Benedict Cumberbatch -- criticizes the producers for trying to "switch it up" with a beatbox number. The director explains, "We need to get some elementary school viewers, the cool kids." 

"What's next? Slime?" That was a Nickelodeon thing.  He insults his fellow cast members until they make excuses and leave.

Meanwhile, Edgar wanders around wardrobe.  He cuts some aquamarine fur from a muppet "for Eric."

Scene 2: Dad Vincent grabs Edgar, snarling, and pushes him across the street, against traffic, and onto the subway.  Edgar tries to discuss his idea for a  new character, a monster named Eric.  But Vincent isn't paying attention; he's glaring at some beatboxing teens. The kidnappers?

Nope. Next Dad makes Edgar wait outside while he buys booze in a liquor store. Customers glare at him. Uh oh, here's where he vanishes. 

Nope. Next he angrily insists that Edgar race him home, through the busy streets of midtown Manhattan.  Uh oh, here's where Dad zooms ahead and Edgar vanishes. 

They make it home ok. 

Scene 3: Edgar's Mom, who has a man's hair cut, complains that the city is going to close another homeless shelter.  Where are they supposed to go?  Edgar goes up to his room, decorated with art and comic books, while Dad criticizes Mom for withholding sex, and Mom criticizes Dad for being a drunk.  Whoa, drama. 

Upstairs, Edgar can hear them arguing and yelling "Fuck you!" at each other.  He escapes into his art.

Scene 4:  At dinner, Edgar tries to talk about his puppet idea again, but Dad Vincent is too aggressive: "Sell me on it!  You're not being enthusiastic enough!  Don't be a wimp!" Emotional abuse, Dad.

Edgar goes up to his room again and puts on headphones, but it doesn't help.  He still hears the parents arguing:  "You're out all night!" "Fuck you!"  Is this going to be paranormal?  Is he going to escape into Eric's world?

Mom comes in to hug him and check under the bed for monsters.  They discuss how much they love each other.  My parents never once spent five minutes whining "I love you so, so , so, so much!"  when I was trying to read a comic book and fall asleep. 

Scene 5: Morning.  Dad makes French toast to smooth things over, but Edgar is still afraid of him.   Closeup of one of those "missing kid" milk cartons.

Edgar heads out to school.  Men glare at him.  A guy in a van glares through his rear-view mirror. Maybe he'll be kidnapped now? I'm tired of the misdirections. 

Edgar is played by Ivan Morris Howe in his first screen role, but he has done theater, including "Oliver."  Looks rather femme.

Cut to the police station.  Detective Ledroit comes in.  A woman asks "Who's the lucky lady?" due to his after-shave.  That's heterosexist!  How do you know that he likes ladies? Oh, because he gazes at you with a sultry expression for five minutes. 

Adequately heterosexualized, he can go on to the Missing Persons case. 

Wait -- the Detective is played by McKinley Belcher III, who is gay in real life and has a husband.  Why isn't his character gay?

Scene 6: Vincent at the studio.  Today's filming is big deal, with network suits watching, so he promises to not have a meltdown or tell people to "fuck off."  A coworker notices that he's bleeding, but he covered it with a headband.  Uh-oh, Vincent killed his kid.

When the filming starts, Vicent goes off script: "Let's play a new game.  It's called 'Spot the Pile of Trash.'"   He stomps off, gets ten messages to call his wife, ignores them, gets some fan photos taken, snarls at the network suits.  Just fire him, and get someone else to voice the puppet.

Scene 7:  Back home, Vincent finally learns that his son Edgar didn't show up at school this morning. Detective Ledroit is here, wanting to talk to him.  He runs in the bathroom and examines his head injury.  I think it's a misdirection -- he got it from beating up his wife, not from killing his kid. 

The Detective asks what Edgar was wearing and his route to school.  He is suspicious of the way Mom and Dad snipe at each other. 

He starts canvassing the building.  First up: Mr. Lovett, an old man who was glaring at Edgar as he left this morning. Ledroit -- Lovett.  Too similar!  "He was a good kid."  The detective is suspicious of a tricycle in his apartment and the use of the word "was." 

More after the break