Reacher Episode 4.1: Federal corruption, a gay-subtext sidekick, a lethal library, and The Girl. With Reach backside and Indonesian d*cks

  

Reacher, on Amazon Prime, stars the hunky gay ally Alan Ritchson as a drifter with a tragic past who helps the helpless, sort of like the Lone Ranger, but with more angst. There aren't any identified gay characters -- Amazon is not known for its inclusivity -- but I've found gay subtexts in several episodes, so I'm reviewing Episode 4.1 (2026).  At least Reach Boy will take his shirt off.

Link to the n*de photos

Scene 1: Reacher is on a subway, eating a cheese steak (so you know he's in Philadelphia). He cruises a mousy-looking middle-aged man. Into ratboys, Reacher?  No, he's using his Sherlock Holmes skills to figure out the home country, job, and psychological profile of the other passengers.  For instance, that woman crying and muttering to herself, her hands inside a blue purse: a suicide bomber!

He approaches and tries to talk her down, but she keeps crying and tells him to leave.  The train jolts, and she pulls out a gun.  Reacher thought it was a bomb. 

"I can help.  I was a cop before I became a drifter."

 "No one can help me now." She shoots!  Why do that on a subway?  

Scene 2: Reacher is interviewed by two detectives. The Bad Cop claims that they're going to arrest him for murder, but he realizes that they're just stalling.  Good Cop: "The feds are coming down from DC to ask you some questions, if you wouldn't mind sticking around."

"Ok, if you bring me a cheese steak." 

Left: Reacher in his underwear modeling days.

Another problem; He saw four other passengers in the subway car, but they only found three.  What happened to Ratboy? 

While he's waiting, we meet the victim's brother Jacob, still in shock.

Scene 3: Three feds arrive. He surmises that they're the B-team, roused from their beds to interview the last person to speak to the dead woman.  They won't tell him their agency or their names, so he calls them Snap (Jason Diaz, top photo), Crackle (Michael Gaty, left), and Pop.  The mascots of Kellogg's Rice Krispies.  Is that still around?

Left: Michael Gaty is gay in real life, but his character doesn't say anything identifiable.

They accuse Reacher of treason, and asked if he received anything from the victim. Nope.  

"Are you sure you didn't receive something, and hide it, planning to come back later?"

Nope.  "What are you so concerned about/"

They won't say, so he leaves.

But he's not done.  Two more guys get out of their car, speaking Indonesian (Armando Alera, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, and Joe Labelle).  They ask  if she gave him anything. 

"No."

"Did you give the flash drive to the police?"  Didn't you hear what he just said?

They attack, so he clobbers them and walks away.

Scene 4: Jacob (Chris Marquette), the victim's brother, is in the coffee shop across the street. Reacher approaches him. 

"My adopted sister couldn't have done that, because she was a happy person.  She loved her job (Human Resources at an Army base), she loved her son (football star at Temple). Everything was perfect."  Hint: the important part is "adopted."

Reach asks if she had any enemies?  No -- the father of her son left when she got pregnant, then died in a car crash.  "I helped raise Ben."

You don't mention a wife and kids, Jake Baby.  For a 40-year old man, that's a clear queer code.

Son Ben doesn't know about his mother yet, since Jacob can't get ahold of him.  He's not answering his phone.  Well, it's only about 6:00 am.  He's probably still asleep.

Ben, played by Denis Wong (the one wearing clothes),  will appear in Episodes 2-4.  Looks like an ongoing story arc this season.

While they talk, the background song is "Morning, Noon, and Night," by Joe Turner:

Sit down baby, let's have a little drink
Love you, pretty baby, morning, noon, and night.

Come on, Reach, the guy just lost his sister.  This is not the right time to ask him out.

The Indonesians are back, so Reacher buys the flash drive of a coffee shop patron.  "You wait here and try to get in touch with your nephew.  I'll be back in 90 minutes.

There's a n*de Indonesian dude on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Indonesia is one of the most diverse countries in the world, with over 60 ethnic groups. mostly Austronesian (Javanese, Sundanese).  98% are Muslim.  The Indonesian language is a lingua franca formed from a standardized Malay. 

English: Get on your knees

Malay: Berlutut

Indonesian: Berlutut-lah

English: I have a big one

Malay: Saya mem-punyai zakar yang besar

Indonesian: Saya punya zakar yang besar

More after the break

Inner City Prettyboy: What's Happening!!

In 1971,  there were no network television programs with all-African American casts.  In 1976, there were six, including such hits as Good Times, Sanford and Son, and The Jeffersons.  But only What's Happening!! featured teenagers (yes, two exclamation points in the title).

It began as Cooley High,  four-episode summer series about the exploits of Shirley (Shirley Hemphill), a sassy waitress in a diner in a poor African-American neighborhood. If you complained about your hamburger, she took a bite and said "It tastes fine to me."  This was supposed to be endearing rather than cringy.

 The regular series began in 1976, in the the ABC Thursday night lineup of hip sitcoms aimed at young people: Welcome Back Kotter, Barney Miller, Three's Company.   The geezers were watching The Waltons 

The focus character was now on the bookish high schooler Raj (Ernest L. Thompson, right).  His partners in hijinks were the Kramer of the series, rotund schemer Rerun (Fred Berry); and Duane (Haywood Nelson, center), a shy younger boy who was happy that they let him hang around.  Filling out the cast was Raj's imposing, no-nonsense Mama (Mabel King) and his little sister Dee, whose catchphrase "I'm telling Mama" enjoyed a brief popularity.

What's Happening!! featured simple morality plays, such as about Mama being accused of stealing; Rerun getting a job on a dance team, unaware that they want to use him for fat jokes; and Raj having a script rejected, only to find the plot stolen.  But there immediate complaints about the simplistic plotlines and the cultural stereotypes. Weren't Raj and Rerun just a teenage Amos and Andy?  And Mama just a new version of Aunt Jemima?  Mabel King wondered why her character had to be a maid.  Why not have her go back to school, get a better job, start a business?  It wasn't happening, and at the end of the second season she left.  The show was moved to Friday nights, dead time for young people, then to Saturday, as a nonsensical lead-in to the oldster favorites Love Boat and Fantasy Island, then cancelled.

Without Mama as a moral center, the series limped along with low ratings and was finally cancelled.

But there was a lot for gay kids to like in What's Happening!!  

1. Minimal heterosexual interest.  During the first two seasons, no episodes involved Raj and Rerun liking girls or getting girlfriends (two involved Duane).

2. Homoromantic buddy bonding between Raj and Rerun.  In the third season, they even move into an apartment together.

3. Duane was shy, soft, passive, pretty -- gay-vague.  Maybe he had so many "winning the Girl" plotlines, because audiences need reassuring that he was straight.

5. No shirtless shots, but lots of bulging.  Duane looked good coming and going.

A sequel, What's Happening Now!!, aired from 1985 to 1988.  The gang was now young adults.  Raj, newly married, was a writer. Rerun sold used cars. Duane was a computer programmer with a spectacular bodybuilder's physique (but he took off his shirt in just one episode).  They also added a couple of teenage best friends (Martin Lawrence, Ken Sagoes).  The homoromantic subtexts were all but forgotten.

More after the break

The 18 biggest, hottest, or most surprising d*cks of the musclemen and bodybuilders from Arnold to Slab, with bonus Brian

Link to the n*de photos

I've dated/hooked up with a few musclemen, and seen lots more at the gym, at my old job as an editorial assistant (actually gopher) at Muscle and Fitness, and in various backrooms, darkrooms, saunas, and bear parties.  To be honest, their pecs are usually more impressive than their packages.  It's as if the universe allows you to be massive in one place or another, but not both.  But there are exceptions, and besides, what's wrong with having a small one?  It gets the job done just as effectively as a big one.

Here are 18 bodybuilder/musclemen whose d*cks are extraordinary due to their size, the guy's hotness, or the surprise of seeing it on screen or in a video.  

1.`. Arnold Schwarzeneggar.    Everything starts with Arnold, who moved bodybuilding from a  subculture into the mainstream and opened the way for dozens of man-mountains to grunt and flex as they saved the world (or just America).  I saw several n*de photos in a friend's apartment in the 1980s, but 40 years later I can only find one online.

2. Peter Berlin (top photo).  You could argue that That Boy almost single-handedly changed depictions of gay stuff from sordid, furtive and guilt-ridden to bright and joyful.  

3. Angel Mock Curiel: After playing L'il Papi on Pose, the gay and trans ally vanished into civilian life.  But not before he posted some n*de photos.

4. Nate Stone (left).  I had to research a dozen Nate Stones before finding the former Bunk'd hunk, having a friend photograph him in his parents' house.  Points for the obscurity and the chutzpah.

5. Bridger Buckley.  I'm not sure that the Hot Pizza Guy from The Neighborhood really belongs to the anonymous donkey-stuff, but how could I not post it? 

6. Tony Cavalero has bulked up considerably since his days as Keefe on The Righteous Gemstones, but he hasn't posted any new shots, so all we have is the isolation tank d*ck in Episode 1.9.

7. Brock O'Hurn.  Torsten from The Righteous Gemstones, Zeus, Hulk Hogan, Super Hot Warrior Man who displayed his massive salami on Euphoria.  Are you tired of seeing it by now?  

I didn't think so. 

8. Bill Cable.  The guy posed in Drummer and Playgirl, dated both Pee-Wee Herman and Elvira, Mistress of the Night, buddied with Christian Brando, and appeared in Basic Instinct with Michael Douglas.  Actually, name anyone famous in the 1980s, and he was there.

9. Sylvester Stallone.  In the 1990s, it was shocking to discover that the grunting, scowling Rocky and Rambo made an adult movie in his early days.  It was also shocking to see his backside in Tango and Cash (1989).

More after the break

10. Leon Mallett: The East Anglia Boy went all the way in an adult, which for some reason fans didn't like. 

11. Steve Bond.  If all you knew of Steve Bond was the skinny kid in Tarzan and the Jungle Boy (1968), e, and you picked up a Playgirl magazine in 1975 to find him all grown up, you'd be shocked, too.

12. Blair Jackson, from the "Wicked Lips" episode of The Righteous Gemstones, offers us every potential d*ck shots, from the huge to the not-so-huge.

13. Dan Cudmore.  The guy has been all over Marvel and DC tv series, playing man-mountain gods and villains and showing his stuff.

14. Derek Yates.  The Smiley-Face Emoji Guy from How I Met Your Father has many n*de photos online.  He may be more famous for his d*ck than for his acting.

15. Ryan Potter.  The bi Supah Ninja and Beast Boy only gives us a faceless video, but he's Asian, and he's got a big one, so who's complaining?

16. Marcus Adair:  You saw him for about 30 seconds on The Righteous Gemstones, playing one of the mercenaries hired to take out the Cycle Ninjas who kept attacking the family.  Fortunately, he offered us a closer look.

17. Pete Hinwood.  A deltoid and a bicep, a hot groin and a tricep, makes me shake.  Makes me want to take Charles Atlas by the...hand. 

18. Kurt Ostland: Slab from the Disney Channel's Mr. Young has grown up, bulked up, and shown us some j/o photos.

Honorable mention: Brian Cage, left, one of the demi-god wrestlers of Disclosure Day.  I just posted a profile of him and his fellow demi-god, Lance Hoyt, two days ago, so I'm not sure if there will be enough pageviews to keep him or not.

Brian Cage and Lance Hoyt, the "Disclosure Day" demi-gods: Which has n*de photos? Which is gay? WIth Riddle rising and Oberst pretending

 

 Link to the n*de photos

Disclosure Day (2026), about aliens finally announcing their presence to the world (after hanging around since the Roswell Crash of 1947), offers beefcake only in the first scene.  Danny (Josh O'Connor) stole tapes demonstrating the aliens' presence, and Boss Hogg of the Evil Corporation kidnapped his girlfriend to get them back.  They want to make the trade at a wrestling match.  

I haven't posted a profile of a muscleman for a long time, so I thought I would research the wrestlers, Brian Cage (blue) and Lance Hoyt (red).

Brian Cage, civilian name Brian Button, works for Lucha Underground and Impact Wrestling. Sometimes he performs as Mortis as an homage to his friend Chris Kanyon, who created the character.  As a bodybuilder, he won the 2026 Mr. Nevada competition.

 Other than wrestling shows, he has appeared in:

A fan film, The Fall of Greyskull  (2015), playing He-Man.

The Bloody Man (2020), about a boy who accidentally summons a monster.  Brian plays "Barbarian Man."

And Kill City Cup (2023): A sort of cage-fighting Hunger Games.  He plays a wrestler. 

Brian's Instagram consists almost entirely of selfies, photos from his wrestling and bodybuilding performances, and ladies with big breasts. I got the distinct impression that he is straight.   

Yep, the pro wrestling website tells us that he is married to Melissa Santos, a ring announcer and television personality who works with him in the Lucha Underground.

But at least we have a n*de photo.  Or two.  Or three (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

More after the break

20 Musclemen who guided me through the Age of Innocence, from Bomba the Jungle Boy to the American Psycho

Link to the n*de photos

This is a nostalgic journey through the musclemen who gave me my first hints that gay people existed, and guided me from junior high through college and to West Hollywood. They provided a joy that transcended aesthetic pleasure, telling gay kids that we belonged.  We were welcome. 

Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide.

In your most need I'll be by your side.

1. Johnny Sheffield played Bomba the Jungle Boy on Tarzan Theater every Saturday afternoon when there wasn't a game.  I never actually made it through a whole movie -- they were dreadfully heterosexist.  But there was always time for those gleaming black-and-white muscles, especially when he was tied up.

2. Bruce Lee.  He died in 1973, but his movies were playing constantly on Kung Fu Theater, and everybody's older brother had his beefcake poster on his bedroom wall.

3. Michael Forest played a god of masculine beauty (literally the God Apollo) on an episode of Star Trek which I saw sometime in the 1970s.

4. Denny Miller. Moments of gay promise as a surfer and a jungle man on Gilligan's Island.

5, David Naughton.  The cutest guy of the Disco Era showed us his stuff in American Werewolf in London (1981).  Plus he also gave us a strong gay subtext in spite of the 1980s homophobia.

6. Yukio Mishima.  It wasn't hard to find gay-themed books in the early 1980s.  Just look for "evil" or "hidden" in the title.  So I found Confessions of a Mask, with Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima's obsession with male muscles and death.  

7. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The 1980s start and end with Arnold, who single-handedly brought bodybuilding into the mainstream and made it respectable.

8.  Sylvester Stallone gave him a little help with his grunting, sweat-soaked Rambo and Rocky.  We saw his stuff  in The Italian Stallion, a recast of his early adult movie.  

9. John Amos.  Gordy the Weatherman on Mary Tyler Moore, a warrior in a Conan rip-off that we all saw, and my gym buddy.

10. Lou Ferrigno, who played a muscular green Hulk against Bill Bixby's David Banner, dropped by often when I was working at Muscle & Fitness.  Did I mention our hookup?

More after the break

Andrew Stevens: Teen idol gave us queer codes in "The Fury," took off his shirt a lot, but never played a gay guy again

Nazarenes weren't allowed to go to movie theaters, so during my senior year in high school, I began telling my parents I was heading to the library or a friend's house, and sneaking out to the Showcase Cinemas to see The Chicken Chronicles (Steve Guttenberg, sigh), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, High Anxiety, Coma, The End, Big Wednesday, and in March 1978, The Fury:  Robin (Andrew Stevens, top), who has psychic powers, is kidnapped, so his Dad, former CIA agent Peter (Kirk Douglas, bottom) enlists a girl with psychic powers to find him.  

Everyone is heterosexual, and the guys both die at the end, which would be a major red flag today, but as a high schooler a few months away from recognizing that I was gay, I found many queer codes and a lot of beefcake. 

I had some idea that Andrew became a member of the Brat Pack in the 1980s, starred in some buddy-bonding angst dramas, and was called a "f*g" by Molly Ringwald (who would go on to play a pro-gay Mom in Stranger Things).  But that turns out to be Andrew McCarthy.  I haven't seen Andrew Stevens in anything else.  Here's why.

Born in 1955 in Memphis, Andrew started his career as a cute teenager, subtly muscular, with shaggy hair and a goofy smile, for "heartwarming" roles as cute or wounded kids in tv series like Apple's Way (1974), Police Story (1975), and Shazam! (1976).  I didn't like heartwarming.

In the 1980s, hair straightened, muscles bulging, tanned, Andrew began playing  suave playboys or con artists in the tv soaps Emerald Point N.A.S , Dallas, and Hotel.

Soap operas?  No way!



















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Kobey Pinnell: Bondi Beach bodybuilder is into shoes, but is he also into dudes?

 I'm following Daniel Bos, the probably gay Aussie bodybuilder who appeared as one of the Brothers Ferox on Spartacus: House of Asher.  He hooked me up with Aussie muscleman Kobey Pinnell.

I don't usually give the full names of non-actors, but  Kobey has 34,000 followers on Instagram and 18,000 on TikTok, so he'll probably be ok with the 1,000 or so pageviews that this profile will get.

Not much biographical information. Kobey grew up in Blacktown, a suburb of Sydney, where he was on the Skid Scooter Team and competed in the Paralympics.

He attended Patrician Brothers College, a Catholic boys' high school, graduating in 2022.

 His social media doesn't reveal a lot about what he's been doing since high school.  He displays his physique and shows off his clothes. 

Especially his shoes.  Dud has a separate shoe room in his house. 

Other than clothes and his physique, Kobey posts photos of Sydney sights, meals, and male friends.  No women, except when an older couple, maybe his parents, take him to Egypt.

We all know what happens at Bondi Beach. 

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Ken Clark: "South Pacific" Stewpot, Sword and Sandal Baddie, Bodybuilder on My Sausage Sighting List

I've seen live performances of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific (1948), about American sailors in love with South Pacific islanders during World War II, but never the 1958 movie. Until now.

Colonialist, imerialist, and highly heteronormative plotlines.  I already knew that.

But I didn't know that beefcake abounds -- and sausages.  Wait until the minor character Stewpot leads the sailors in a paeon to heteronormativity, "There's Nothing Like a Dame."

There ain't a thing that's wrong with any man here

That can't be cured by putting him near

A girly, womanly, female, feminine dame

Was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing?

Fast forward to Stewpot's only other scene, a weightlifting contest.  Darn, he's wearing grapes.

But when you see him in jeans, his beneath-the belt gifts are obvious.  Maybe he was even cast for them.  Henry Slate played a skinny, fully-clothed Sttewpot on Broadway, but for the movie, director Joshua Logan wanted to reflect the 1950s muscle craze, so he cast 31-year old bulging bodybuilder Ken Clark. 

I checked some of Ken Clark's other works, to see if more sausages were evident.

He was born in Neffs, Ohio, a tiny town near the West Virginia border, in 1927.  After high school he enlisted in the Navy, and then worked jobs as a coal miner, construction worker, and model while trying to break into acting.  

The modeling included some of those nearly-n*de photos published in "fitness" magazines like Physique Pictorial.  We have a backside, but I couldn't find any frontsides.

His acting career begins in 1955, with a string of two-fisted man's man roles: The Proud Ones, The Last Wagon, the True Story of Jesse James.

South Pacific did not propel Ken into stardom, in spite of his physique and sausage.  The guest spots continued: A cop in Suspicion, an FBI agent in The Shaggy Dog, a cop on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (left).  But at least he got a chance to showcase his talent.  And stuff.

He starred in Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) as a Florida game warden who teams up with a local physician (Walter Kelley).  They take off their shirts, fight giant leeches, and win the Girls.  

More after the break

Manny and Gavin Scharf: Gay-coded Wisconsin brothers, a wrestler and a bodybuilder, aren't into girls, until.... With some d*ck pics

  

Link to the d*ck pics

Several years ago, I became a friend of Gavin D. on Facebook and some other social media sites. He was a college wrestler from Wisconsin, about 200 miles away from my college town.

I don't give the real names of non-actors, so I'll call him Scharf, "Sharp," German slang for "Hunky." 

He didn't mention girls, but he mentioned other boys quite often.  And he posted n*de photos. I figured that he was gay, but not quite ready to come out yet.

His younger brother Manny was quiet, artistic -- gay-coded, too.

Apparently Manny was feeling left out, with two wrestler brothers and a sister who was a gymnast. At age 14 he joined the wrestling team, then began bodybuilding combined with intermittent fasting.  Strength training is fine for teenagers, but they are generally discouraged from bodybuilding until their bone structure is fully developed, and their body fat should not drop below 6-10%.  

 Manny shredded down to 3%, then to an unhealthy and unattractive 1%.  Soon he was competing in venues like the Brew City Classic in Waukesha, and was the the subject of adulating video and articles "Insane 16 year old bodybuilder!"; "The Wonderkid Bodybuilder"! 

He never actually won a competition; the adulation came mostly from the novelty of a super-shredded teen.  When he got to college, he stopped posting on social media, and I moved on to other things (I lost track of his older brother, too).

There's a n*de photo in my profile of Walker Bryant.  It was in the wrong folder.

More after the break