Gemstones Episode 4.6: Kelvin cruises Anakin Skywalker, Jesse hangs d*ong, and Cobb gets his cob bit. With n*de Ricky and Smiley Creature

  

Link to the n*de dudes

Title: "Interlude IV."  The Interlude is usually Episode 5, but this season started with a stand-alone, so it's Episode 6.  We're halfway through the action in the present day, with Kelvin's meltdown, Judy's jealousy over the monkey, and Eli and Lori dealing with violence.

The New Parking Lot: 2002.  Eli is standing before the County Zoning Board, discussing his plan to build a 10-acre parking lot at the Salvation Center, which would involve buying and demolishing neighboring houses.   He claims that it will bring thousands of people to town, who will spend money, so it's a "win-win" situation.  Aimee-Leigh points out that they're also bringing in jobs.  The townsfolk growl and complain.  So am I.  Zoning restrictions?  How boring can you get? 

Cute council member Terry Cook is eating a donut.  An unnamed background player, he notes that they did several takes.  Sometimes he had to be angry; once he had to eat an egg.   He sort of looks like Jamie McGuire, the Smile-Faced Creature from From (n*de photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

 The council president yells: "You may be able to buy out desperate people, Dr. Gemstone, but that doesn't make it right!"   She notes that the county board usually rubber-stamps their crazy plans, but not this time: "The crowd of people behind you is voiceless, and someone has to be their voice!"  

The plan is rejected, and the couple leaves in defeat. Aimee-Leigh wonders why they're even doing this ministry stuff.

Eli: "For the lake house."  That is, for the money. Um...serving God?  Spreading the Gospel? Helping people?

They walk out into a huge demonstration.  Someone shoves pies in their faces.

Writers: This sequence has no connection to the plot.  In Season 3, the Y2K scandal caused Peter's meltdown and enmity toward the Gemstones, but Cobb's enmity has nothing to do with the new parking lot.

Corey Defends Daddy: At the lake house, Lori's husband Cobb (Michael Rooker) is trying to water-ski, but Eli drives too fast, and he capsizes. His manhood challenged, he splutters and swears. 

Meanwhile, on a raft-slide, Young Judy and Jesse laugh at Cobb, which upsets his son, Young Corey.

Young Kelvin defends him, pointing out that at least Cobb is trying, whereas Jesse spends all his time "being bad, having s*ex."  This has resulted in Amber getting pregnant.  The enraged Jesse tries to attack, but Corey stops him.

A New Album: While Lori and Aimee-Leigh watch their husband in the water, posturing to see who will become the Silverback, they advise the very pregnant Amber that she should go inside and take a nap.  She refuses, so they discuss how much they dislike their kids until Amber gets tired of it and leaves.

Then they discuss recording a new album; they haven't recorded together in years. 

Cut to the studio, where they are making up song lyrics while Judy listens.  Kelvin eavesdrops from outside the door. Notice that his t-shirt says The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius,  reflecting his belief that he is a "boy genius."  The tv show premiered on July 20, 2002, so this must be a few months later, maybe in September 2002.

More after the break

Ted Prior: Man-mountain hero of the macho 1980s, Chippendale dancer, Playgirl model. Any gay content?

Link to the n*de photos

N*de photos of this guy have been sitting in my "to profile" file since March, and since I have some free time today (and my pageviews are down by about 70%)," I'll give him a try.

His name is Ted Prior.  He was active primarily during the 1980s Reagan-Bush era  man-mountain craze, when Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and a dozen lesser lights -- Chuck Norris, Reb Brown, Steven Seagal, Michael Pare -- stormed into POW camps and drug lord lairs, got tortured while shirtless, single-handedly defeated entire armies, and won The Girl, thus demonstrating the 

"supremacy" of white heterosexual  America.

Born in New Jersey in 1959 and raised in Baltimore, Ted originally planned to become a professional bodybuilder -- he states that he won Teenage Mr. Maryland and "ten other awards" before he turned 19.  He moved to Los Angeles, in fact, so he could train at Gold's Gym.

But he worked in theater, too, and once he hit L.A., a walk-on as a bodybuilder in an episode of The Incredible Hulk (1981) convinced him to try his hand at acting. His first starring roles were in  Sledgehammer (1983) and Killzone (1985), written and directed by his older brother David.

Most of Ted's work for the next twenty years would come from David's production company, Action International Pictures: Operation Warzone (1988), Jungle Assault (1989), The Final Sanction (1990), Raw Justice (1994).

Ted's most famous film, Deadly Prey (1987) is a sort of The Most Dangerous Game. People are being kidnapped and taken to a secret jungle enclave, where the evil Colonel Hogan (David Campbell) has his mercenaries hunt them down.  Vietnam Vet Mike (Ted) is grabbed while taking out the garbage, brought to the enclave, stripped, greased, gawked at, and forced to run naked through the jungle.  Uh-oh, they kidnapped the wrong guy.

He is shirtless throughout: a major draw of the film, as you can see from the VHS tape cover.

In November 2024, the Lyric Hyperion Theater in Silverlake, the second gay neighborhood in Los Angeles, held a "Deadly Prey" day, and promised Ted Prior "in the flesh," har har.

More after the break

Sylvester Stallone: Rocky, Rambo, Estelle Getty's son, Kur Russell's boyfriend, and the Italian Stallion

During the 1970s, the New Sensitive Man was soft, cuddly, and sensitive, but during the 1980s Reagan-Thatcher conservative retrenchment, man-mountains came into style.  The first, and the best, was the uber-muscular Sylvester Stallone.

Skip to the nude photos

One of the original Boomers, Stallone began his career in 1970, at age 23, in the hardcore porn Party at Kitty and Stud's. Repackaged as The Italian Stallion during the 1990s, it became the bestselling porn dvd of the era.

Stallone was in a number of films during the early 1970s, including Lords of Flatbush, but he hit it big as the underdog boxer in Rocky (1976). Many starring roles followed, some straight policers (Nighthawks), some comedies (Rhinestone), one trucker-arm wrestler (Over the Top, with David Mendenhall),  but Stallone was at his best as a man-mountain who grunts, snarls, flexes, and saves the day.

Movies by other man-mountains -- Schwarzeneggar, Lundgren, Norris, Van Damme -- drew the crowds with their reactionary political agenda,  heterosexist girl-rescues, and climaxes where the effeminate gay-coded villain gets his just deserts, so there wasn't much for gay fans to watch except the beefcake.  But Stallone was different.

His characters  were macho, aggressively violent, and heterosexist, but they were not at all homophobic. They even did some homoerotic buddy-bonding -- with Kurt Russell in Tango & Cash (1986), for instance.

Even his beefcake was different.  Other man-mountains were rarely nude -- you don't need nudity to demonstrate that you are strong enough to lift a small country.  But Stallone never shied away from frontal and rear nudity.  His muscles were objects of utility but also of beauty, offered to both male and female fans.

Nor is Stallone homophobic in real life.  He is so gay friendly that when his son Sage Stallone died tragically in the summer of 2012, the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church picketed his funeral, "accusing" the elder actor of teaching him tolerance.

No gay characters, although he wrote a gay mercenary into an early draft of The Expendables (2023), then dropped him.

Nude frontal and rear photos of The Italian Stallion on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Lords of Flatbush: Fonzie Before Happy Days

Lords of Flatbush (1974) was a precursor of next year’s Happy Days, about four Brooklyn greasers (about 30 years old but still in high school) whose same-sex relationships are doomed by the “discovery” of girls. Chico (Perry King) courts a rich girl, and Stanley (Sylvester Stallone, pre-Rocky, never shirtless but filling out his t-shirts beautifully) gets his girlfriend pregnant.

 The other two gang members, Butchie (Henry Winkler) and Wimpy (Paul Mace), seem not particularly interested in girls, in spite of their obligatory smooching sounds and breast-grabbing gestures whenever girls pass. 

 Butchie especially, short, slim, with a desperate, haunted look in his eyes and a curious diminution of a name that protests too much, behaves in a decidedly transgressive fashion.  He likes boys, but the objects of his interest keep rejecting him.

Late one evening, the others decide to look for girls, but Butchie wants to hang out at the deserted soda shop with Eddie (Joe Stern), the dark, curly-haired soda jerk. No one else is present, so Eddie asks if they might “get personal.” Butchie, grinning, says: “as long as you don’t come over here and give me a great big kiss, anything goes.”

This is a curious response; although his grin suggests that he is stating a laughable absurdity, his quickness at considering it, and the accumulation of adjectives (it’s not just a kiss, it’s a great big kiss) suggest that it is close to conscious thought: perhaps Eddie could kiss him. Indeed, he has specifically rejected an evening of girl-chasing to be alone with a man. What does he expect to happen? 

 But then Eddie rejects him, telling him that he is wasting his life by spending all of his time in the soda shop, oblivious to the possibility that Butchie might hang out there because he likes Eddie. Understandably angry, Butchie goes home.

Later, Chico sneaks into Butchie’s room. They sit, one on a chair, the other on the bed. “Do you have anything to tell me?” Butchie asks. They gaze at each other for a long moment. 

 Chico considers telling him something, but then decides against it. What are they leaving unsaid? Somewhat angry, Butchie prods him further: “Because if you don’t have anything to tell me, I guess I could go to sleep.”

Chico stares at him for a moment more, and then angrily jumps up and runs for the door, refusing to tell him, leaving Butchie silent and frustrated, rejected twice on the same evening. Butchie remains silent and frustrated as Chico, still refusing to tell him, weds the rich girl.

Henry Winkler went on to superstardom as Fonzie on Happy Days, a sitcom that also had tons of gay content.

David Mendenhall and the Older Man

Born in 1971, David Mendenhall spent his adolescence doing voices for cartoons (The Berenstain Bears, Rainbow Brite) and starring in movies in which his characters are mentored, nurtured, and rescued by a series of bicep-bulging older men; all fathers or father-figures, but still, they allowed many gay boys to fantasize about riding off into the sunset with a hunky older boyfriend.

 Space Raiders (1983): Space pirate Hawk (Vince Edwards) bonds with 12-year old stowaway Peter (David), and rescues the boy when he is captured by evil bounty hunters. But in the end the two part company.

Over the Top (1987): Truck driver/arm wrestling champion Hawk (Sylvester Stallone) reunites with Mike (David), the 15-year old son whom he hasn't seen in many years, and rescues him when he is kidnapped by thugs hired by his evil grandfather.  In the end, they start a trucking business together.

They Still Call Me Bruce (1987): Korean martial artist Bruce (Johnny Yune) mentors the orphan Billy (David), who gets assaulted by a gang and goes into a coma. But he wakes up in time to inspire Bruce to win an important karate contest.

In Going Bananas (1988), David is nearly 17, but still small and slim, with a boyish face that makes him look like a child rather than a teenager, especially when paired with plus-sized actors (Dom Deluise and Jimmie Walker) in a plot about a talking chimp.

But his small starture facilitates gay subtexts: in the tv drama Our House (1986-88): he played J.R. Dutton, best friend to the teenage David (gay actor Chad Allen), but he actually seems more interested in the feminine-coded friend Mark (Thomas Wilson Brown).

In 1990 David retired from acting to go to college, getting a law degree in 2003.  But recently he has returned to show biz to guest star in some tv series and produce the game show Take it All.