The Great Cock of the Darking Wood, and Other Hunks from "The Magicians"

Back in 2015, I watched half of the first episode of The Magicians, now in its fourth season on Netflix.  Quentin and his childhood friend Julia are invited to apply to Brakebills University, a secret magical academy that's not Hogwarts. 

Quentin is admitted.  He meets various eccentric classmates and teachers, plus he discovers that the fantasy world from his favorite childhood novels, not The Chronicles of Narnia, is real.

Meanwhile Julia fails the exam.  Failed applicants get their memories erased, but in her case the erasure doesn't work (for Reasons)  so she starts learning magic on the downlow in a dream world.  Plus she wants to find out why her brother died at Brakebill five years ago. 

That was enough.  I just didn't have the patience for yet another mythology-heavy, secret-agenda-filled series.  Besides, it was way too heterosexist, with men and women constantly glimmering at each other.

Four seasons later, The Magicians has become as complex as Lost meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with endless secret agendas, people who are not what they seem, parallel worlds, poltergeists, dragons, and maguffin piled onto maguffin.  Just listen to this plot synopsis from Season 3:

Elliot and Fen, along with their now-grown child Fray (who is secretly a spy for the Fairy Queen) try to retrieve the First Key from a priest on Alter Island.  Meanwhile Quentin realizes that Emily has the last of Mayakovsky's batteries, but Kady steals it before he can get to it.  Then the Lamprey posseses him.

Whatever happened to The Golden Girls?  Season 3, Episode 5: The girls have to fly to the Bahamas for a funeral, but Rose is afraid of delivering the eulogy, Dorothy is afraid of flying, and Blanche is afraid of bald men.

But if you want to stick with it, The Magicians has been acclaimed as "the queerest show on tv."  Most of the main cast has been revealed as bisexual -- starting in the second season, after the homophobes get invested.  There are same-sex liasions and relationships. 

Personally, I don't have the time for it.  I'll make do with a list of Top 10 Hunks.

1, Hale Appleman (top photo) as Elliot, the world-weary, well-seasoned, hookup-happy upperclassman.  Later he becomes the Monster at the End of the World.

2. Jason Ralph (second photo) as Quentin, the newby who has an unrequited crush on Julia but also falls in love with Alice and Elliott.  Later he becomes The Beast.

3. Arjun Gupta (third photo) as Penny, an upperclassman who becomes Quentin's rival/best bud and later Librarian of the Neithrlands (don't ask).

4. Adam DiMarco (left) as Todd, a miscellaneous student at Brakebills.

5. Arlen Escarpeta as Prince Ess of Loria.

6. Mackenzie Astin as Corrigan, a member of a free trade alliance who is taken over by Reynard the Fox, a trickster god who is searching for his mother, the Greek goddess Persephone. Huh?

7. Jesse Lukan as a miscellaneous hunk who shares Elliot's bed.  Aren't you glad he's not the Mercurian Azaroth who is taken over by Seth the Unyielder?

8. Charles Mesure as Martin Chatwick, one of the kids from the not-Narnia books who became High King of Fillory, then turned evil and started breaking through to Earth in order to cause havoc.

9. Markian Tarasiuk as Prince Micah in the episode where Quentin and Elliot go to a parallel world and grow old together, or else see each other in a parallel world, or else...

10.  Darien Martin as Lunk.  I just like the name "Lunk." 

The cast also includes characters named Tick Pickwick, Bender (not that Bender), Our Lady Underground, the Stone Queen, Santa Claus, Bacchus, Fairy Ambassador, and:

The Great Cock of the Darkling Wood.

That's who I want to invite to my Christmas party.

John Hamill: The First Nude Physique Model

Born in 1947, the boyish, good-natured John Hamill began his career as a physique model, one of the first to pose fully nude.  Sometimes he even had a partner, in explicitly homoerotic scenes aimed at the increasingly visible gay male audience.  He also appeared in both gay and heterosexual "blue movies."

But he aspired to become a serious actor, so he studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts and began appearing on stage, notably in the gay-themed Boys in the Band in 1969 (presumably as the hustler hired to become a "birthday present").

His film career began in 1970, with starring roles in the thrillers The Beast in the Cellar (not as the beast), Trog (not as the rampaging caveman), and No Blade of Grass.  He also had some guest spots on tv series such as Paul Temple, The Befrienders, and Crossroads.  

But, like many bodybuilders, especially those with a "gay reputation," John found himself stuck in minor roles as threatening bad guys or inarticulate hunks.  In Tower of Evil (1972), for example, his character is introduced, takes off his clothes, flexes his muscles and gets killed, all in about thirty seconds.

Anxious for work, he agreed to star in the sex comedy Girls Come First (1975), as an artist asked to paint nude models.  Released in both hardcore and softcore versions, it was popular enough to lead to two sequels, and parts in similar movies, like Hardcore (1977).

But nothing else.  After a two-parter on Space: 1999 in 1978, he retired from acting and became a furniture refinisher.

Being so open about sex, and so nonchalant about both male and female partners, limited John's career, but left him -- and his fans -- with many fond memories.

You can see the nude photos on Tales of West Hollywood.

Big Mouth Season 3: Hormone Monsters Become Gay Positive

I've seen Season 3 of Big Mouth, and I'm happy to report that it's become much more LGBTQ-inclusive. And inclusive of everybody else. Among the supporting cast members are a kid in a wheelchair and a kid with autism.

Big Mouth is about a group of middle schoolers negotiating puberty, guided/ egged on by their hormone monsters: Maurice for most of the boys and Connie for most of the girls, although Nick gets Connie as well, leading him to question whether he is too feminine.

I thought that the hormone monsters were just personifications of the pubescents' interior state, but evidently they have an external reality.  There's a whole Human Management bureaucracy, with procedural manuals, meetings, and office parties.

While the monsters push for wild sexual excess, the kids are mostly worried about holding hands and "does he like me or like like me?"  Not that there isn't raunch:

When Jessi tries to get her first orgasm, we learn an awful lot about the vagina. Way more than I wanted to know.

The third season moves away from "I'm going through changes" to explore some of the issues of contemporary teenagers:  Attention-Deficit Disorder, cell phone addiction, nude selfies, sexual harassment,  "hot or not" lists.  The "Queer Eye" Fab Five show up to give Coach Steve a makeover.

There are three characters of gay interest:

1. Andrew Glouberman, whose extra-big penis causes him anxiety and consternation (yes, we see it).

2. Matthew, the swishy gay kid, has been previously consigned to making snarky comments.  Now he gets a boyfriend.

"You're going to put it in him!"  Maurice exclaims.  But for middle schoolers, just holding hands is enough.

3. Jay, who doesn't seem to have a hormone monster even though he masturbates a thousand times a day, kissed Matthew at the end of Season 2. This season he comes out as bisexual, which upsets his friends; they don't mind bisexual girls, but the thought of a guy finding them attractive is creepy.

But Jay doesn't actually date anyone other than pillows and couch cushions; most of his plots involve dealing with his negligent parents and abusive older brothers.

Maybe in Season 4.

See also: Big Mouth: The Hormone Monster Strikes Again

The Bisexual Fairy Godfather of the Summer of 1984

Between 1982 and 1984, I was studying for my M.A. in English at Indiana University.  I did not do well.  I couldn't focus on any one topic, or any one department -- I rushed around in the 3,000+ courses taught every semester, grabbing onto things like Mandarin Chinese and Russian Folklore, and ignoring my actual English classes

Besides, who had time to study?  I had just discovered bar pickups.  My friend Viju and I were out at Bullwinkel's, or a a gay bar in Indianapolis, two or three times a week, and we never came home alone.

Sometimes I brought a guy home, had sex with him, then went back to the bar to pick up someone else.

Meanwhile my classes faltered, and I squeaked by with B's and an occasional C+. But who cared?   I was going to become a book editor, not a literature scholar.

In the spring of 1984, I sent out resumes:130 publishing companies, 48 newspapers,  34 television stations, and 16 translation agencies.   No openings, no openings, no openings, no openings.

Classes ended. I received my M.A..  No job. I spent ten days visiting India with Viju, then a week in Rock Island, then returned to Bloomington.

I couldn't afford our apartment any more, so I got a room in Eigenmann Hall, and went back to my old job in the snack bar.

It was fun when I was a student.  But as my life's work?.  I imagined myself at age 50, still living in that coffin-sized room with the bathroom down the hall, still selling burgers and fries to undergrads.

All of my friends had graduated and moved away.  And any new friends I made would graduate and move away, again and again, an every-changing blur of faces and cocks for the rest of my life.

That summer was an endless cold, dark night.

The lunatic in the White House (not as bad as the Orange Goblin, but still a lunatic) almost ended the world by "joking" that the U.S. had launched nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union.

The AIDS crisis was making national news for the first time, and dubbed "a gay disease."  Fundamentalist churches latched onto it to decry the "clinically insane, disease-ridden homosexuals" coming for your children.

All four of the factories in Rock Island closed, doubling the unemployment rate.  My father and brother were both laid off.  I couldn't even fall back on a factory job.

The movies I saw (by myself) are now hailed as classics, but I found them depressing: Ghostbusters, Gremlins, The Karate Kid, The Neverending Story, Revenge of the Nerds, Bachelor Party, Conan the Destroyer

Laura Branigan's "Self Control" was playing on the radio:

I live among the creatures of the night.

I haven't got the will to try and fight.

I must believe in something, so I guess I'll just believe that this night will never go.


Then came my fairy godfather, aka Ben, who worked in the bank downtown.  He was my teller when I withdrew some money (this was before ATMs), and two nights later I saw him at Bullwinkle's.

About ten years older than me, a chunky redhead with a long face, a smooth chest, and no biceps to speak of.  Not at all my type.

And bisexual -- he mentioned watching Family Ties, not for the hot teen idol Michael J. Fox, but for Meredith Baxter Birney, who played his mother!

I couldn't help imagining Ben screwing the lady.  His butt bouncing up and down, squeezing her breasts, kissing her.  Gross!  Complete turn-off.

But I was depressed, and I would have gone home with Boy George just to avoid going back to my coffin-sized room in Eigenmann Hall.

Ben had a house in Unionville, about 10 miles of dark, scary country roads from campus. An old-fashioned wood-and-plaster living room, a four-poster bed with black sheets, a drawer-ful of porn magazines, both gay and straight.  Very cold for July.

[Sex scene is censored]

Afterwards, it was too early to sleep, and I didn't want leave, so we sat up and turned on Saturday Night Live. I told Ben about my master's degree, my dismal job prospects, and my future at the Eigenmann Hall snack bar.  He said that he was working on a Ph.D. in sociology --- very slowly.  This was his seventh year in the program, and he wasn't nearly ready to start his dissertation.  The job at the bank took up most of his time.  But he still planned to finish, and get a job as a college professor.

"I love being in front of a class -- it's an amazing rush.  Hey, why don't you go to work at a college?  They always need teachers."

"Yuck!" I exclaimed.  "I taught during my first year.  Ssurly students who didn't read their assignments, didn't know even the basics about...well, anything, and made homophobic comments."

"It beats making hamburgers, I bet.  Besides, just think of the beefcake!"

"But it's July.  Won't they have all the teachers they need for the fall?"

"Let's find out."  Ben walked naked into the next room and came back with The Chronicle of Higher Education.  5 English teaching jobs available in the fall that required just a M.A.

A month later, I was heading for Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, an English instructor. It would be horrible, but later, I would teach as an adjunct, then get my Ph.D. (not in English), and spend the next twenty years standing in the front of classrooms.

It definitely beats making hamburgers

The full story, with nude photos and explicit sexual situations, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Boomerang: Queer Inclusivity and Tequan's Pecs

Eddie Murphy is a major homophobe, so I haven't seen many of his movies, and I never heard of Boomerang (1992). It sounds dreadful: a player gets his comeuppance when he falls for a female version of himself.

But the tv version on BET (available on Vudu and Amazon Prime) stars Tequan Richmond, the dreamy teen idol from Everybody Hates Chris, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to run through a few episodes on fast-forward, just in case he takes his shirt off.


He plays Bryson, son of the female player, a successful music executive (at age 26?) into hooking up.  Except this is 2019, and hooking up is no longer considered a character flaw; in fact, it's a common pastime among his cohort of coworkers/buddies:




1. Simone  (Tetona Jackson), daughter of  Eddie Murphy character, co-owner the company, and Bryson's on-off girlfriend.

2. Ari (Leland B. Martin, left), his best friend

3. Tia (Lala Milan), a singer.

4. David (RJ Walker), who runs a storefront church.

5. Crystal (Brittany Inge), his ex-wife

Plots involve helping each other out of the crisis du jour rather than punishing players.

And guess what?  In the nearly thirty years since the original movie, times have changed.  Homophobia is no longer considered funny (except in movies aimed at teenage boys), and inclusivity is in.  Tia is a lesbian  dating a woman named Rocky, and Ari is bisexual.  Not just "bisexual but only dating women at this moment," actually kissing guys.

In the episode PRIDE, they all attend the Atlanta Black Pride Festival (which for some reason takes place in the wintertime) to film Tia's new music video, and Ari gets schooled by an ex-girlfriend "You like both?  That means you gay!"  But he keeps his bi flag unfurled.  Meanwhile David shows up as a street preacher, but instead of the usual "Y'all going to hell!' screaming, he says "Y'all are all beautiful!"

You're probably wondering if Tequan shows his physique.

Not often.  But after all that queer inclusivity, who cares?

See also: Everybody Hates Chris

"American Princess": My New Favorite TV Show

Entitled, detached-from-reality Jewish American Princess Amanda (Georgia Flood, who looks exactly like Kristen Ritter of Don't Trust the B__ in Apartment 23) is planning a "fairy tale wedding" in the wilds of upstate New York.  Minutes before she is scheduled to walk down the aisle, she stumbles upon her fiancé, Brett (Max Ehrich), having sex with last night's hookup.  Still in her wedding dress, she rushes away.

Isn't that how Friends started?

 Amanda runs into the wilderness and stumbles upon a Renaissance Faire, one of those summertime celebrations of all things Elizabethan -- well, the fun things anyway.  There's boozing, dancing, craft booths, jousts, swordplay.  Workers and many of the guests wear Elizabethan costumes and stay strictly in character.  There are classes in how to speak, wave, bow, and pretend not to be aware of modern technology.

At first Amanda is dismissive of the daffy, reality deprived weirdos, but soon she realizes that her world is equally reality deprived.  Besides, she was an English major, and likes this Renaissance stuff.  When her mother and sister show up to take her home, she refuses.  She gets a job at the Faire, and immerses herselves in the lives and problems of other "rennies" (faire professionals).

I'm surprised that there are so many of them, considering that they work only on weekends during the summer.  It can't be a full time gig.  But:

David (Lucas Neff, left,  unrecognizable from Raising Hope) has an act involving getting splattered with mud and pretending to pee on people.  A German and art history major, he wonders if this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life.

Delilah (Mary Hollis Inboden) has an act involving doing laundry and making sexual innuendos.

Maggie (Seanna Kofoed) has been playing Queen Elizabeth for over 20 years, and is worried about aging and losing her power.

Brian (Rory O'Malley), who plays William Shakespeare, has been her gay bff for many years, but he longs to be accepted by the other performers.  After some false starts, he begins dating Juan Andres (Juan Alfonso), who runs a craft booth.

Leaf (Brock Harris, left) is a jouster, and spends his off time flirting with guests of all genders.

The female sexual empowerment stuff gets a little distasteful at times. I fast-forwarded through some discussions of vaginas.  Did you know that they come in different sizes and shapes?  I do, now.

But the colorful interactions among the characters, both in the Faire and back home on the Upper East Side, are worth sitting through some "boob and bush" discussions.

Besides, just about everyone on the show is gay, bisexual, or pansexual.  There's even a three-way relationship between Natasha (Sophie von Hasselberg), Stephen (Ross Bryant), and Phil (Edgar Blackmon).

And there's a lot of beefcake.  Most of the shirtless actors are playing scruffy, unwashed Elizabethan underlings, but there are also some buffed physiques about.

The first season is up on Vudu and Amazon Prime.  I'm watching slowly, an episode every few days.   I don't want it to end.

"Vida": Queer Characters, Female Empowerment. What's Not to Like?

In Vida (2019-), two estranged Mexican-American sisters, party girl Lynn and responsible Emma, reunite at their estranged mother's funeral in Boyle Heights (a Hispanic neighborhood just east of downtown Los Angeles).

 They discover that Mom has willed them each a third of her financially unsuccessful bar and apartment building, so they have no choice but to drop whatever they were doing and move to Boyle Heights to become bartenders and apartment managers.  They rename the bar Vida, after Mom (and, of course, it's also Spanish for "this is life, the one you get, so go and have a ball").

The other third of the bar and apartment building goes to Mom's extremely butch roommate, who has the extremely butch name Eddy.  Are we surprised to discover that Mom was a lesbian, and Eddy her wife?  The girls are.

Are we surprised to discover that Emma was estranged from her Mom because she is bisexual?  Turns out that Vida was gay and homophobic at the same time.  It happens.

After the initial sexual identities are established, Eddy, Lynn, and Emma, along with their friend Mari, settle down to their various crises: keeping the bar afloat, cleansing the apartment building of evil spirits, suffering from homophobic and anti-Hispanic discrimination, and especially fighting gentrification: they want to keep Boyle Heights the way they remember from their childhoods.

Meanwhile, they start telenovela-style romances, with lots of sex, lies, and videotape.

1. Mari has a troubled on-off romance with  Tlaloc (Ramses Jiminez).

2, Lynn has a troubled on-off romance with Johnny, Mari's brother (Carlos Miranda; this might not be the right one, but who cares?).

3. Later she moves on to city councilman Rudy (Adrian Gonzalez).

4. Emma has a troubled on-off romance with Cruz, a woke lesbian bartender, but she also hooks up with Baco (Raul Castillo) the building's handyman.

5. Eddy hooks up with Nico (a woman, of course).  Do all Hispanic lesbians have masculine names?

Two of the four central characters are queer, which is groundbreaking, and the Hispanic culture is pleasant (they even speak Spanglish, switching back and forth between English and Spanish as the mood strikes).

But this is definitely a woman-oriented, women-centric series, with men definitely in the background.  Not that there's anything wrong with that -- Goddess knows there are plenty of series with women in background roles.  But it makes the beefcake options sorely limited.  And would it kill them to have a few gay men wandering around?

"Another Life": 3 Shirtless Men and 3,300 Women in Bikinis

I've completely run out of tv programs to watch on Netflix, when I get an email: "We added a program you might like, Another Life."  

So I start watching.   Juliet from Lost, or someone who looks like her -- a middle-aged woman with scraggly blond hair -- is standing on the bridge of a spaceship, wearing black bikini underwear, talking to a fully-clothed man.

Definite sign of trouble.

Juliet (Kalee Sackhoff, who is only 39 but looks over 60) wears that bikini underwear a lot during the first episode; plus, we see Alyssa Milano, or someone who looks like her, reading a magazine with her breasts showing, talking to a fully-clothed guy who looks like Hurley from Lost.

Trouble with a capital T, which rhymes with B, which stands for Boobs.

I'm not going to watch this hetero male gaze monstrosity, but I'll fast forward in case a guy takes his shirt off, or -- dare I hope?  -- a gay character shows up.

Episode #1: Across the Universe.  Nope.  An alien artifact lands on Earth, and renowned elderly astronomer Juliet is assigned to go find its homeworld and make first contact.  She leaves her young trophy husband, Erik (Justin Chatwin, top photo) at home to research the artifact further.

By the way, the fully-clothed guy is actually a hologram, William (Samuel Anderson, left), who is in love with her, naturally.

Her crew consists of three or four black bikini underwear clad women, including Alyssa  and a butch blonde with a man's haircut.  Maybe a lesbian?

Hurley is actually Bernie (A. J. Rivera), the ship's chef and morale officer-type.

There are a couple of other guys in the background.

Episode #2: Through the Valley of Shadows.  Nope.  They wear space suits and walk around in tunnels on an alien planet that's not the right one.

Episode #3:  Nervous Breakdown.  Nope.  The ship is damaged, so they bicker, the  men fully clothed, the ladies in boobalicious black tank tops performing random calisthenics.

To alleviate the boredom, here's a photo of Alex Ozeroff, who plays crewman Oliver.  He has also appeared in the Canadian sci-fi series Freakish, about high school students dealing with radioactive mutants.  Not zombies?

Ok, back to the boobs.

Episode #4: Guilt Trip.   Finally!  One of the guys appears shirtless amid the ladies in black bikini underwear when they're roused in the middle of the night by Juliet's bad dreams.

I think he's Jake Abel, playing Sasha, the diplomatic liaison on the ship, whatever that is.

Episode #5: A Mind of Its Own.  Nope. They find a second artifact, with all the men in orange spacesuits and the women in boobalicious tank tops.  The men stay fully clothed even when having sex with boobalicious ladies.

Episode #6: I Think We're Alone Now.  Nope.  The ship is in trouble again, and there are women displaying their breasts.  I wonder why director Mairzee Almas thought it was a good idea to zoom in for closeups of breasts during moments of crisis.

By the way, Greg Hovanissian plays Beauchamp McCarry, Juliet's second-in-command who doesn't appear in many scenes, and never takes his shirt off. But he seems to have nice abs. You can see more of them in Cupid, a short about Cupid in a sleeveless vest and wings shooting love-arrows at people.

Episode #7: Living the Dream.  A shocking development! A guy has his shirt off (actually, he's completely naked) in a room full of space suits.  I think he's Erik, Juliet's husband who stayed back on Earth.

Episode #8: How the Light Gets Lost.

There's a disco party on the ship, with a lot more crew members than have ever appeared before dancing and hooking up.  Young, innocent, virginal Charlie Brown (I can't figure out which character he actually is) takes off his shirt while bumping foreheads with Alyssa.

Later, he stumbles on Alyssa and another guy drinking peach vodka (I can' figure out who he is, either, but he's sort of shirtless, bearded, with a hairy chest).  They have  a three way!  With same-sex kissing and everything! So there's at least a few bisexuals aboard.

But that's all you get.

Episode #9: Heart and Soul.  The battle for control of the ship comes to a head.  No nudity, boy or girl.

Episode #10: Hello.  They reach their destination and are "staggered" by what they see on the planet: a cave and a green limber-limbed alien.  They realize that the alien artifact is not a gesture of friendship, but a precursor to invasion and Season 2.  There's some kissing and death.  And boobs.

Aren't you glad I went through on fast-forward, so you won't have to?

See also: Lost

Midsommar: Tweak it a Little to Find a Gay Movie

I'm interested in the possibiliy of ancient pagan religions surviving in contemporary Europe, in mummer's plays and Punch and Judy, so I wanted to see Midsommar (2019) in spite of the reviews pointing out that everyone is heterosexual and a lot of girls get naked.

In The Wicker Man (1973), an uptight British police officer investigates a free-love island  ("Children, what does the maypole represent?" "A penis!"), and ends up being their virgin sacrifice.  A naked lady bounces all over the place, and there's a lot of heterosexual shenanigans.  Midsommar couldn't be worse, right?

It could. It's very long and very boring, with the "surprise" ending broadcast loudly from Scene 1.  But with a little subtext-tweaking, it turns into a gay horror movie.

We did it all the time in the 80s.  It was the only way we could survive those horrible teen-nerd movies.

Anthropology student Christian (Jack Reynor, top photo) was planning to break up with his girlfriend Dani, but then her familiy was murdered, so he stuck around out of pity.  A year later, he's ready to pull the plug on the long-dead relationship and move on.  His new man-crush Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren, below) invites him and another couple, Josh and Mark, back to his village in northern Sweden to witness an ancient pagan midsummer festival.

Dani invites herself along.

Um...it was really supposed to be all boys, buddy-bonding, late-night groping, and orgies with Swedish studs, but....

Imagine the discomfort of sharing an 8-hour plane flight with your soon-to-be ex, while the guy you are crushing on is sitting right across the aisle!

When they reach the village, they meet Pelle's brother Ingemar  (Hams Holberg, left), who is bisexual.  He has invited a boy-girl couple, Simon and Connie, who he picked up in London.

The eager-to-experiment Simon (Archie Madekwe) is rather a clone of Christian, eager to break up with his girlfriend for the Swedish hunk Ingemar.

Things go wrong immediately when Dani has a bad trip on some magic mushrooms.  And when some of the village elders commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.

I'd be on the next bus back to Stockholm at that point, but the gang sticks around.

Mark (Will Poulter) is lured away by a naked lady to his death.  So much for heterosexual desire!  It can only end badly, either with a fragile, clingy, basket-case girlfriend or with a murderer.

Josh (William Jackson Harper) goes out in search of his boyfriend, and is killed by a naked man wearing Mark's face as a mask.  A nightmare of heavily symbolic homoerotic desires

Simon and Connie are separated and killed off camera.

Then Christian faces a fate worse than death: he is paralyzed and forced to have sex with a naked lady.

Horrifying!

Of course the only way the villagers can get him to do the deed is against his will.  He's into guys!

Turns out that the villagers need nine human sacrifices: four outsiders, four villagers, and one who could be either, chosen by the Festival Queen.  That's why Pelle invited three people, and Ingemar two, so they'd have one leftover just in case.

For some reason Dani becomes Festival Queen, and has to decide: Christian or a random villager.  Who does she choose?  It's obvious, isn't it?

There are surprisingly few bouncing breasts, and enough Swedish-hunk chests and abs to keep you interested.  Plus Christian's penis.

If you want a bright, sunlit, openly-gay character, or any deliberate reference to same-sex desire, this movie ain't it.  Everyone pretends that they never heard of gay people.  But for a blast to the past, to the old days when gay people never appeared in movies except in occasional "fag" slurs,  it's a pleasant diversion.

And did I mention Christian's penis?

The Top 10 Pop Songs: Beefcake and Gay Icons

Yesterday I discovered that the most popular country-western songs involve rather gym-deficient white guys asking girls for dates, discussing their girlfriends' hotness, or crying in their beer after their girlfriends dump them, with gay people nowhere to be found except in a few homophobic tweets.

But maybe pop music is similar.  I haven't really been paying attention to it for a long time, but back in the day, "girl!  girl! girl!" reigned supreme, and no one ever acknowledged that gay people existed, not even Sir Elton John (I remember when rock was young: men and Suzie had so much fun).  It would only be fair to look up the top 10 pop songs on Billboard's list, andsee if they are just as bad as the country-western crooners.

1. Jonas Brothers, "Sucker":  I'm a sucker for you.  I'll follow you anywhere, even if it gets me in trouble. 

No "girls! girls! girls!"  Gender not specified.

The Jonas Brothers are proud to be gay icons.  In 2013 they appeared on the cover of Out magazine.

See: The Jonas Brothers: I Wanna Be Like You

2. Sam Smith with Normani, "Dancing with a Stranger." A duet, with boy and girl parts.  We broke up, so I'm dancing with a stranger.  Jealous?

Ok, that's rather heterosexist, but Sam Smith is gay, and Normani recorded "Love Lies" with Khalid for the gay teen drama Love, Simon

3. Ava Max, "Sweet but Psycho."  She's crazy, but boy, tell me you don't love it.

The music video stars Prasad Romijn as the pretty boy being poisoned, tied up, and chased with a butcher knife by the psycho girl.

Ava Max is gay-positive.  She tweets: "Thank you for having me at the iconic G-A-Y heaven in London.  I love you!"

4. Post Malone, "Wow."  A rap song.  Most of the lyrics are obscure, but the gist is that he's rich and famous: "I got a hunnid bands ($100) in my pocket, so when I come in the room, people say 'wow.'"  

Gee, I've had a hunnid bands in my pocket lots of times.  Nobody cares.

No romances in the song.

Post Malone is mentioned in online articles about rappers who support LGBT people, so I'm concluding that he's gay-friendly.

5. Ariana Grande, "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored."  Self-explanatory.

The music video stars Charles Melton (top photo) and Ariel Yasmine as the couple Ariana is trying to break up, and ends with a girl-on-girl kiss, which according to an article in L'Officiel, left many gay fans "confused and disheartened," fetishizing lesbian sexuality without providing a meaningful narrative for the gay experience.

But Billboard has an article on 10 times she was a gay ally.

6. Lil Nas X with Billy Ray Cyrus, "Old Town Road"  This is Lil Nas's first published song, a country-western-rap hybrid, so what is it doing on a pop list?  The lyrics are obscure, but I think it's about how rich and famous he is: he's riding a horse onto old town road because he's tired of his life of "bull riding and boobies."

Lil Nas is rumored to be gay. Wow -- a gay black country-western singer.  How many more barriers are there to break?.

Billy Ray Cyrus is pro-gay.

7. Taylor Swift, "Me."  Boy, there are a lot of girls out there, but I'm the only me.

Taylor Swift is a gay icon.  According to the NewNowNext website, she was expected come out as gay or bi in April 2019, but instead she released "the gayest non-gay music video ever."  She does sing in male drag in pastel colors, and she and pansexual Brendan Urie do find a rainbow-colored skyscraper, but it's still about boy-girl trouble.

8. Ariana Grande, "7 Rings."  A parody of "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, but instead of simple pleasures, she likes Breakfast at Tiffany's and bottles of bubbles/ Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble.

No boys mentioned.  The music video shows her surrounded by girls.

9. Khalid, "Talk":  Let's talk about our relationship.  Gender not specified.  He states that he doesn't use pronouns in his songs because he wants them to take the point of view of the listener.  The music video shows him trying to talk to a girl, but then there's a boy there, then a whole group.

10. Halsey, "Without Me"  We broke up, and now you're regretting it, aren't you?  Gender not specified, but the music video shows her kissing a boy (Will Brandt) a lot.

Halsey is bisexual.

Results:  Wow, talk about diversity!  Male and female, black and white. The themes are similar to country-western: 7 relationship problems, 1 "things I like," and 2 about how rich and famous the singer is.

Heterosexism: Counting only the lyrics, only 5 of the 10 songs specify heterosexual romance.

Beefcake:  3 of the 5 male singers (counting Billy Ray Cyrus) have presentable physiques, but most of the female singers perform with hot guys.

Gay Content:  None in the songs, but 10 of the 11 singers are gay allies!

I don't think we're in Alabama anymore.

See also: The Top 10 Country Songs