"A Remarkable Tale": Remarkable Gay Inclusivity

A Remarkable Tale is a terrible title; the movie could be about anything. The original Spanish title, Lo Nunca Visto ("I have never seen it"), is no better. But it begins with a striking image: four people (including buffed model Ricardo Nkosi)  in traditional West African costumes running through the snow.

Nobody in West Africa dresses like that, except for ceremonies and tourist shows.  And it doesn't snow.  How did they get to the north?  A time warp from the 19th century?

You have no choice but to watch.

Cut to Upper Fuentejuela, a small, isolated mountain village in Spain, which has lost almost all of its residents to the lure of the big city, so town bigwig Teresa (Carmen Machi) and Jaime (Pepon Nieto), who I think is her ex-husband, are  trying to attract newcomers with "Open Day":  egg custard tarts, necklaces, and a song.  But nobody shows up.

Meanwhile Evil Corporate Shill is threatening annexation.

Teresa and Jaime drop in to yell at long-haired layabout Guiri (model Jon Kortajarena, below) for not showing up to Open Day.   Their son Carlos (Miguel Canaveras, right) decides to stay and hang out with Guiri.

A gay relationship?

When the West Africans show up, Teresa and Jaime assume that they are dangerous cannibals.  The Africans, in turn, believe that all white people are dangerous cannibals.

After the misunderstandings are cleared up, we learn the truth: the Africans are victims of human trafficking,  lured to Spain for a "dance competition" and forced to work in a brothel.

So three men and a woman are working in a brothel with male customers?  Interesting gay inclusivity.

They escaped, but are stuck in a country full of "dangerous cannibals."  And the police are looking for them.

They hide out with Teresa and Jaime, and gradually become involved in the life of the village.  And fall in love.

Teresa begins dating Azquil (Malcolm Sitté).

Guiri (left) begins dating Latisha (Montse Pia).

Calulu (Jimmy Castro), who turns out to be into drag, begins dating Jaime.

 Shukra (Ricardo Nkosi, top photo) doesn't date anyone, but he bonds with Jaime's mother.

They also save the day, of course.  And everybody hugs and proposes marriage while the Evil Corporate Shill fumes.

It's rather cliched: how many times have you seen outsiders burst into a small town and save the day with their joie de vivre?

But the West African-Spanish clash adds interest, and the gay plotline is unique.

Gay characters:  Everybody in town is sort of queer.

Beefcake: None, except the opening costumes. Pity; why cast buffed models if you're not going to show their physiques?

My grade: B+

Zip and Zap, Peter Pan, A Crush on Dad, and A Gorilla Sherlock Holmes

The Spanish bad boys Zipi y Zape, sort of Dennis the Menace squared,  first appeared in a comic strip in Pulgarcito magazine in 1947, and have since spun off into many more comics, three movies, a television series, a video game, and tons of merchandising.  But Zip and Zap and the Captain's Island (Zipi y Zape y la Isla de Capitain, 2016) is, as far as I know, their first appearance outside el mundo español.

Zip (Teo Planell) and Zap (Toni Gómez) are lanky androgynous teenagers who remind me of the Sprouse twins on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, except that they're constantly insulting and yelling at their parents: stick-in-the-mud novelist Pantuflo (Jorge Bosch) and his wife (who is so mousy and withdrawn that she doesn't get a name in the cast list).

At Christmastime, they visit an isolated island to meet with a publisher.  They get lost, and end up at a children's home run by the enigmatic Miss Pam (Elena Anaya), a sinister butler, and a cackling, demented nun.

The next day, Miss Pam tells Zip and Zap that, due to all their mischief, their parents have abandoned them. They will live at the children's home forever.  Oh, and won't you meet two other new residents, the too-cool-for-school Macky (Máximo Pastor, top photo) and super-inquisitive flibbertigibit Flecky (Iria Castellano).

Zip immediately starts a gay-subtext buddy-bond with Macky, while Zap gets a goofy hetero-crush on Flecky.

Did you figure it out?  Yep -- Miss Pam has lured the family to the island. She is using a retro Frankenstein machine to regress "troubled parents" to their 11-year old selves, before they lost their primal joie de vivre.  She's Peter Pan, making her own crew of lost boy-adults who shouldn't have grown up.

The children's home is occupied mostly by regressed parents, except they're not really regressed.  The parents are locked in a chamber while their young selves...but not really.  At the end of the movie, all of the regressed parents leave the island to rejoin their parents.

Wait -- Zap gets a crush on his own mother?  Why does that bother me, when Zip crushing on his own father seems fine?

But we're not done.  Miss Pam is also collecting people who look or act like literary characters...then...turning them into other things. So she turns a detective who acts like Sherlock Holmes into a gorilla.

Why not turn him into Sherlock Holmes?

A girl who looks like Pippi Longstocking has an octopus-submarine like Captain Nemo's Nautilus

The children are being controlled by a magic snow globe kept in an aquarium.

Did I mention that it's Christmastime, for no apparent reason?

I think you're just supposed to give your brain a rest, let the bizarre imagery flow over you, and wait for the father-son and mother-son couples to hug. 

By the way, in the 3 years since the movie came out, Toni Gomez has lost his androgynous long hair and hunked up a bit.  He does mostly modeling.

And Maximo de Pastor has hunked up quite a lot.  Look for him in Lucas in 2019.

Wait -- why is it the Captain's Island?  There is no captain.....

Elite: Polyamorous Pecadillos and Gay Muslim Thugs

I don't typically watch tv series where the first scene of the first episode is a close up of a half-naked girl.  But  I heard that there were a lot of gay/bi/queer/polyamorous characters, so I watched the first half of Elite to get a general idea of the content.

Elite is a Spanish teen soap opera, like Riverdale, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, or in my generation Beverly Hills, 90210, but with more sex, more boys' butts, and a lot more skullduggery.

The premise:  When their school falls down, three working-class kids get scholarships from the shoddy construction company so they'll keep their mouths shut.  They end up at the most elite prep school in Spain. 

The rich kids don't like them (obviously), but are happy to use them to push their various sinister agendas involving drugs, theft, corruption, and, as we find out in flash-forwards, murder.

1. Level-headed focus character Samuel (Itzan Escamilla, top photo), begins dating the rebellious Marina, whose dad is a billionaire industrialist connected to the shoddy construction company.

Meanwhile Marina has an affair with just-out-of-prison Nano (Jaime Lorente, left), who happens to be Samuel's older brother, has something to do with the shoddy construction, and needs money for unspecified debts.

Got all that?

2.Nadia, a conservative Muslim who has rather a chip on her shoulder ("I came here to study, not to make friends"), falls prey to a Cruel Intentions-style game to take her virginity and ruin her.  The players are Marina's brother Guzman (Miguel Bernardeau, left) and his catty girlfriend.

3. The obnoxiously brown-nosing "I'm here to get rich!" Christian (Miguel Herran, left) begins a three-way relationship with Carla and Polo (Alvaro Rico, below), who happens to be Guzman's best friend.

What better way to increase your networking than by dating two rich kids at once, one boy and one girl?

Yes, we see the bulges, biceps, and butts of all of the male cast, plus lots of extras.  The show actually pays more attention to the male physique than the female.

4. That's the last of the scholarship kids, but there's a fourth plotline involving the headmaster's son, gay-and-closeted Ander (Aron Piper, left).  With all the bisexual activity going down, he's worried about coming out as gay?

Ander befriends Christian, who offers to introduce him to his drug dealer-thug, Omar (Omar Ayuso, below), who happens to be Nadia's older brother, and has something to do with...well, you know.

The interconnectedness!  It burns!

Omar turns out to be also gay and closeted, and as the only two gay guys in a town full of polyamorous continuum-benders, he and Ander start dating.

With everybody interlinked with everybody, it comes as rather a relief when one of these people ends up murdered.  That's one less character to keep track of.

Beverly Hills, 90210 was never like this.

Welcome to the Family: Beefcake, Not Much Bonding. A-

Benvinguts a la família (Welcome to the Family) is a 2018 Catalan sitcom, which automatically makes it interesting -- who doesn't want to hear people speaking in Catalan?  But it also has some interesting, macabre plot twists.

Single mother Angela (Melani Olivares) and her scheming, get-rich quick brother in law Nando (Van Massague, below), are struggling to raise a family of three mismatched, perhaps adopted kids: flamboyantly feminine fashion plate David, neurotic brain-dead Fran, and preteen drama queen Sarah.

When they are evicted from their apartment, as part of a sinister scheme by her ex-husband, Angela goes to the only person she knows who can help: her wealthy father Eduardo (Simon Andreu), who disowned her years ago when she eloped with the pool boy.

Eduardo hasn't mellowed with age, and he's not interested in helping Angela; she was written out of the will ages ago.  His second wife, former tv star Victoria (Yolanda Ramos), isn't in the will,either; he fake-married her to get her off his back.

In the midst of these revelations, Eduardo drops dead of a heart attack, and both Angela and Victoria are penniless.  What is there to do but hide the body, pretend that Eduardo is still alive, and try to forge a new will?

Easier schemed than done.  There are complications, of course.  Eduardo's publisher wants his new book, his ex-wife has an important document, neighbors and business associates are suspicious, and lawyers and police officers keep snooping around.  Meanwhile the new blended family tries to maintain life as usual.

1. Victoria's sarcastic Alex (Georgina Amoros) dates Didac (Alex Maruny)

2. Nando starts a new get-rich-quick scheme and avoids the amorous attentions of next door neighbor Adela (Betzy Turnez),

3. David (Leiti Sene) makes sarcastic comments, and mostly tries to big-brother Sarah (Nonna Cardoner).

4.Fran (Nao Albert) starts trying to get a social life, with the help of Alex and Didac.

Snoopy cop Miquel (Miquel Fernandez, top photo and left), who becomes an ally, fills out the main cast.

The interactions are pleasantly hectic, the twists and turns are mostly unexpected, and there is a minimum of hetero-romance.  I was hoping that David would eventually get a boyfriend, but you can't have everything.

My grade: A-.

In Search of Basque Beefcake

I've always been fascinated by the Basque language of northern Spain -- not related to any other language on Earth, with words that date back to distant prehistory. 

And the Basque physique, with reputedly the biggest beneath-the-belt gifts on Earth.  In 1999, Yuri and I visited Basque country to check.

So I did some searching with Google Translate, to see if I could get some visual evidence of Basque profundity.

1. Azkartza Metropol means "Speed City," but it's a water polo team. Some nice muscles, but a little deficient in the sausage department.

2. Another "Azkartza" water polo team. Not much of a sausage fest here.

3. Igeri taldea, a swim team.  I like the abs, but again, I'm not impressed with much else.

4. Tolosadea IKT.  Tolosadea is a province south of San Sebastian.  The older guy isn't bad. 

5. Gexto Igeriketa.  Gexto is a suburb of Bilbao.  Meh. 

Maybe I would get better results with cyclists.

More after the break.

The Beefcake of Galicia, Spain

"Agrupación Deportiva Fogar da Xuventude nace e legalízase en Carballo no ano 1988 como unha entidade privada deportiva, social e cultural."

I knew that was not Spanish, but I could read it, so it must be close.  Portuguese?

No, the Portuguese word for "youth" is juventude,  

Catalan?  No, it doesn't look like Catalan.

One of the Iberian languages that are often labeled "dialects: Asturian, Valencian, Aragonese?

Turns out that it's Galician, a "dialect" that is actually closer to Portuguese than Spanish, 80% mutually intelligible.

I want to sleep in your bed tonight.
Galician: Quero durmir na túa cama esta noite
Portuguese: Eu quero dormir na sua cama a noite

Galician is spoken by 2.1 million people in the  northwest corner of Spain, a poor region, its people stereotyped as backwards, even barbaric, like the hillbillies in the U.S.

So imagine Galician as Appalachian English.

Other than the infinite number of swimmers and triathlon competitors at the AD Fogar, the main tourist draw in Galicia is  Santiago de Compostela, a famous pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages with a marvelously ornate Gothic cathedral.


You can still attend Pilgrim Masses several times a day. They are held in Galician, Spanish, French, German, English, and Polish, but not Latin.

Santiago de Compostela also has a water polo team.

And some bulgeworthy cyclists.

The biggest city in Galicia is La Coruna, a port and industrial center.  Its main tourist draw is the Tower of Hercules, the oldest intact Roman tower in Spain.

Plus some semi-pro boxers.

Pontevedra has banned automobiles in the city limits.  The results are a pedestrian paradise.  It's easily the most beautiful city in Galicia, with an excellent museum displaying Galician and Spanish art from the middle ages to the present.

And, of course, there's a water polo team.

The Gay World of Pablo Picasso

When I visited the Pablo Picasso Museum in Barcelona, I saw many portraits of women, but only a few of men, and they were all fully clothed.  I concluded that the artist (1881-1973), well known for his many wives and girlfriends, was simply not interested in the male form.

But it turns out that the museum was keeping some of his works under wraps.  Such as this Cubist fragment of a man who is all eyes and penis.

In fact, during his years as a student in Barcelona, Picasso produced many realistic paintings and drawings of nude men, such as this model from 1897.



















During his Blue Period (1901-1904), when he fell into a deep depression after the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas, Picasso consoled himself with a number of nude images.

He was in a cheerier mood during his Rose Period (1904-1906), when he was living in Paris.  He continued to produce male nudes, but specialized in adolescents, such as Boy Leading a Horse.

Picasso was very prolific during his long life, producing thousands of paintings and drawings. But, except for a few adolescent boys, his male portraits are often censored, left out of books, not displayed in museums, to give us the impression that he only ever used female models, and perhaps to erase the awareness of same-sex desire from the world.

Did Picasso have any same-sex interests of his own?  Probably -- he wanted to try everything in life, so he must have taken time out from his pursuit of the feminine for some same-sex dalliances.  His biography uncovers an affair with a gypsy boy when he was 17, and suggests that he and Casamegas were romantic partners.

We know that he was nonchalant about gay identity.  He had many gay friends, including Gertrudge Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Sergei Diaghilev, Jean Cocteau, art dealer Paul Rosenberg, and collector John Richardson.  He enjoyed surrounding himself with gay men, if only because they adored him for reasons other than his art.

The Small-Town Beefcake of Spain

Finding small-town beefcake in Spain is somewhat easier than in France.  Every town has a Club de Natación, which sends swimmers to provincial and national contests.  But the photos commemorating their wins are problematic

1. The swimmers tend to be young -- not at lot of grown-up or late-teen musclemen, and when you find them, they're standing behind kids.


Club de Antequera, a city of 41,000 in the mountains of Andalusia, known for its medieval Moorish fortress.











2.  There are boys and girls both, making it hard to separate out the masculine.

Only one suitable candidate in this photo of the Club de  Algeciras, a port city on the Bay of Gibraltar.  But with those abs, I couldn't resist.

3. There are a lot of people in the photo, making it hard to zero in on the just a few.   A winner of the provincial title in Extremadura,  a region in southwest Spain, bordering Portugal.

But I've managed to come up with a few gems.

4. Club Ateixo, a town of 30,000 near A Coruña in Galicia.  Galicia is known as the backwater in Spain; actors speak with Galician accents to demonstrate that they are "hayseeds."

5. Club Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in Andalusia, population 67,000, known for its beaches and waterfront horse races.

I can't figure out if the person on the right is a kid or a short adult.


More after the break

6. Club Cádiz, population 119,000, a major port city in Andalusia.

7. Provincial winners from Jaén, in southern Spain near Granada.  I'm not sure about the pastel-colored swimsuits.

8. Club Carmona, a town of 30,000 near Sevilla, full of Roman and Moorish antiquities.  Again I'm not sure if the guy on the right, with the Beijing panda briefs, is a teenager or a short adult.

9. Club Vinaròs, a town of 28,000 in Valencia, eastern Spain.  Not a lot of antiquities, so it doesn't get many non-Spanish tourists, but it has beaches and an "escapatorium."

And more pastel swimsuits.

10. Club Sabadell, a suburb of Barcelona, so the main language is Catalan.   A buffed swimmer demonstrates that he doesn't need goggles,  But the photo crops his basket.