Brandon Spink: The young Batman, Jackass, and Baelfire takes a girl to the prom but comes out later. Maybe. With two d*ck shots and a Super backside

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Mason McKenzie: From a fairy's dungeon to Poison Ivy, pickleball, Phi Psi, and a physique. With Aidan, Mason, and the Hunter n**de

  

Link to the n*de photos

Once Upon a Time, with the characters from all the Disney fantasy movies related in a complex genealogy, was almost entirely heterosexist.  There was a blink-and-you-miss-it lesbian romance (with the couple vanishing immediately after their kiss) and a few very brief gay-subtext romances. One of the most significant was between Gideon, son of the Rumpelstiltskin and Belle, and Roderick, his cellmate in the Black Fairy's dungeon.  They were played by Anton Starkman and Mason McKenzie as children, and Grayson Gabriel and Giles Mathey as adults.  

That's four actors to check.  

I've already profiled Anton Starkman.

Giles Matthey is extremely ugly, and straight.

There are too many Grayson Gabriels to find the actor.

That leaves Mason McKenzie.  At least he has a chest (above), a nice backside (left), and no tattoos to date.

Mason was born in 2005 in Barrie, Ontario, about an hour north of Toronto. After many tv commercials, he broke into scripted tv in two 2017 episodes of the soap When Calls the Heart, as the bullying nephew of evil railroad executive Jeremy Wyatt.  (Nikolas Ducik, left played his brother, Earl).

Then came the Once Upon a Time episode, a thriller, and two romcoms: Frozen in Love (2018) and Love Under the Rainbow (2019), not to be confused with Under the Rainbow, about the actors who played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. 

You played the kid of the romantic leads, not the guys themselves, but still, it's not looking good for your gay representation score, Mason Baby.

In a 2019 episode of Project Blue Book, UFO researcher Hynek (Aidan Gillen, d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) handles the case of a scoutmaster who disappeared after his troop witnessed a UFO.  Was he abducted by the Men in Black? Mason plays one of the scouts.

In a  2020 episode of The Baby-Sitters' Club,  Mary-Anne is hesitant about approaching her crush, so one-shot gay character Alex (David Raynolds, not Reynolds) tells her about his crush on a boy at theater camp.  Mason plays Toby, one of his friends, but not the crush. 

More after the break

My Boyfriend and I Play "Fighting Prince of Donegal"

This is the Scholastic Book Club edition of Fighting Prince of Donegal, by Robert T. Reilly.

It may not look like much now, but when I was in fourth grade at Denkmann Elementary School, it appeared among the selections offered by the Scholastic Book Club.  I was entranced.

This was no wimpy fairy-tale prince in love with a princess.  He was a Fighting Prince, strong and powerful.  I had never heard of Donegal, but it was obviously a mystical, distant country with castles on high mountains, outlined against an orange moon.

My boyfriend Bill and I both ordered copies.  They wouldn't arrive for four to six weeks.

We talked about the book every day.  Would the Prince have muscles?  Would he have a best man?  Would he rescue his best man, who would then sigh "My hero?" and melt into his arms?

We made swords out of cardboard and played "Fighting Prince of Donegal."  My brother got to be the villain, who would lock Bill in the dungeon (the lilac bushes outside my house) so I could rescue him.

We often talked about what the Prince looked like.  If you read the ad very carefully, you could see that the book was originally published in 1958 and called Red Hugh, Prince of Donegal.  That meant a red-head.  He must look something like this.

Or, from an adult point of view:

We looked up Donegal in the Golden Book Encyclopedia.  It was a county in Ireland, on the northeast coast.

There was a book in the Denkmann Library called Donegal Stories, but it was all fairy tales, which we  hated.

Would those books ever arrive?

Bill's big brother Tom told us that a couple of years ago, Disney made a movie version of The Fighting Prince of Donegal, starring Peter McEnery.

"Did he rescue a boy or a girl?" I asked expectantly.

More after the break

Francois Göske : Searching for gay subtexts amid the constant drone of "girls! girls! girls!" At least he shows his junk

Robert Louis Stevenson's books are sacred, memories of childhoods past where boys conjured up lavish adventures with each other.  Especially Treasure Island, written specifically upon a request from his stepson Lloyd Osbourne that there be "no girls in it."  And there aren't, except for Jim Hawkins' mother.

So I was quite disappointed with the German miniseries (2007), in which Jim Hawkins (18-year old Francois Göske) not only does stuff with a lady of the evening, he falls in love with a female stowaway on the ship, Sheila (Diane Willems)!

Ok, I thought, but maybe Göske's other work will redeem him.  Some gay characters, or some substantial gay subtexts?

His first starring role was in a 2003 remake of the children's classic Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer (The Flying Classroom), set in a boys' school.  Only this one had girls -- and he gets a girlfriend.

In French for Beginners (2006), Goeske goes to France as part of a student exchange program.  It looks like he has a gay subtext buddy-bond with Lennard Bertzbach, but actually they are partners in crime, dedicated to winning the Girl of His Dreams. 

 A reviewer  suggests that this "charming" movie be used in French language classes.  It's not charming when you spent your childhood with the "what girl do you like?  What girl?  What girl?" interrogation.

Grimm's Finest Fairy Tales: The Farmer's Daughter (2008).  I'm not familiar with that particular fairy tale, but I imagine it involves Goeske kissing some girls.

Summertime Blues (2009), based on the juvenile novel by Julia Clarke: Goeske goes to the countryside with his mother, and meets the Girl of His Dreams.

Dornroschen (2009): The fairy tale of Sleeping  Beauty.  Guess who wakes her with a kiss?

More after the break

The N*de Ghost of Hylton Castle: A Gay Murder Mystery

Hylton Castle in Sunderland, near the Scottish border, is closed now, but for centuries staff and visitors reported seeing a n*de teenage boy wandering the hallways.

When they approached him, he moaned "I'm cauld"(cold),  and vanished.

Dubbed "The Cauld Lad of Hylton," the ghost had a helpful side.  He lit fires that had gone out, and tidied rooms that had been left in disarray.

But he also had a mischievous side.  He would slam doors, knock books over, blow candles out, and move objects around.

Besides, what could be scarier than a n*de teenager complaining about the cold?

According to legend, he was the ghost of Robert Skelton, a stableboy in the employ of the young Baron Robert Hyland during the age of Shakespeare.  On the morning of July 3rd, 1609, he overslept and didn't have the Baron's horse ready for a trip.  The enraged Baron killed him.

Some versions say that he chopped the boy's head off; others, that he stabbed him with a pitchfork, or hit him with a riding crop. 

Historical records do mention a Robert Hylton, tried for the murder of Robert Skelton in the fall of 1609.  He claimed that the death was accidental, and was pardoned by James I.

But the 20-year old Hylton wasn't the Baron yet.  His older brother, Henry, was.

In English Fairy Tales (1890), the famous anthology by Joseph Jacobs, the Cauld Lad is turned into a monster.

Most modern illustrations make him human, but  much younger than a real stableboy of the era, and not nearly as n*de.

This leads us to a question:  Ghosts usually appear in the outfit they died in.  Why was Robert Skelton n*de?

Elizabethans didn't sleep n*de, even in the summer time.   Unless they had thrown off their clothes in the heat of passion.

So Robert Skelton must have been having s*x on the night of July 2nd.  Who was is partner?

Some legends give him a forbidden romance with the Baron's daughter, but in 1609 Robert was too young to have a teenage daughter.

Robert Hylton himself, then?  But why would Hylton then be surprised at Skelton's oversleeping?

Maybe his brother,  24-year old Baron Henry Hylton? Shortly after the murder, Henry went to live with his cousin Nathaniel, and stayed for 30 years. He never consummated his arranged marriage.  He was characterized as reclusive, eccentric, and "mad."

Picture it: Robert finds his older brother and the stableboy in the midst of a s*xual encounter and, outraged at the breach of etiquette, grabs a pitchfork.  Robert is able to use his social position to get a pardon.  Henry never recovers.

And Robert Skelton wanders the hallways, moaning "I'm cauld..."

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunter

I wanted to do a profile of Jeremy Renner, the one-time roommate of Kristoffer Winter, who may or may not have dated my friend Infinite Chazz in West Hollywood.  But there are problems: no nude photos except for a j/o video, very little beefcake, and he's extremely homophobic. 

Addressing the rumors that he's bisexual because he was living with a man and a woman, he cursed "they're not f*** true!"  Same thing when he dumped both to move in with Kristoffer Winters, who may or may not have dated my friend Infinite Chazz in West Hollywood: "Believe whatever you f*king want!"

By the way, his favorite movie is the deeply homophobic Braveheart, which he's seen 35 times.  

So I'll review Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters instead.  It is inspired by, Remember Hansel and Gretel, the Grimm fairy tale about a father who tries to kill his children by abandoning them in the woods, whereupon they stumble upon a candy house, and a witch who wants to eat them, but they turn the tables and burn her alive?

A very pleasant bedtime story for toddlers.

In Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), the siblings grow up into a pair of wisecracking, martial-arts-using witch slayers (Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton), who travel all over 17th century Germany with their arsenal of gigantic phallic-symbol guns.

While investigating a mass child-disappearance in Augsburg, they run uncover a plot to bring hundreds of witches together for a Blood Moon Ritual.  They also find the answer to the secret of their past: why did their parents abandon them in the woods?

On the way, Hansel gets a girlfriend, but he also gets a nice gay subtext with the fanboy Ben (Thomas Mann), touching him repeatedly on the chest, riding with Ben's arms around his waist, and finally inviting him to join the witch-hunting team.

There are frontal and rear photos of Thomas Mann on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Meanwhile, Gretel expresses no heterosexual interest, although she does get an unexpected ally in a gigantic troll (Derek Mears), who also joins the team.  In the last scene, they're fighting a "sand witch" in the vast desert of 17th century Germany.

This is a very bloody movie; a scene involving the mass-execution of dozens of witches is particularly disturbing.  And I didn't like the anachronistic dialogue ("Awesome!") and technology: they have machine guns, phonograph records, tasers, and hyperdermic syringes.  But the people are attractive (at least, all of the good people are attractive), and there's plenty of gay subtexts.  

My Grade: C  

See also: A date with Kris (who may not be Jeremy Renner's boyfriend) leads to Christopher Atkins' dick

Once Upon a Mattress: The girl named Fred

December 12, 1972.  I'm in seventh grade at Washington Junior High.  After our usual Tuesday night dinner of tuna casserole, we gather in the living room and light up the Christmas tree-- we just set it up last night -- to watch tv.  But Maude and Hawaii Five-O are pre-empted by a musical called Once Upon a Mattress.  

A musical!  Gross!  "Can I be excused?" I ask.

"Don't be antisocial!" my father exclaims.  "Whatever you got to do, you can do it in here with the family."

I'm used to playing, reading, and doing homework in front of the tv  -- when I try to spend some time alone in my room, my father always yells at me to "Don't be antisocial!" and "Get out here with the family!"

What do they think I'm doing down there, anyway?

 But I have to get out of this stupid musical somehow!

"Um...I have to practice my violin."  I just joined the orchestra.

"Hey, if Boomer doesn't have to watch this junk, then I don't either!" my brother Ken complains.

So we get permission to hide in our  basement room.  But eventually I have to go to the bathroom, which means passing right in front of the tv set where that...ugh!...musical is playing.  I brace myself to rush through quickly, but I can't help glancing at the tv set.

It's Ken Berry from The Carol Burnett Show, who has nice muscles and a rackish smile.  He's singing "I'm in love with a girl named Fred."

Wait -- Fred is a boy's name.  Could he be...in love with a boy?

No, "Fred" is played by Carol Burnett.  But Ken goes on to explain why he loves her:


She is very strong.
She can fight.
She can wrestle.

These are the reasons that boys like boys!

I sit down to watch the last half.  It's a version of the "Princess and the Pea" fairy tale, about Queen Agrivain, who doesn't want her sissy son, Prince Dauntless, to get married, so she forces every potential bride to take impossible tests.

 But Winnifred, nicknamed Fred, is so tough and strong that she passes every test, so the wedding can take place.

(In 2005, Carol Burnett returned to the production as Queen Agrivain, with gay actor Denis O'Hare, below with his husband Hugo Redwood.)

I don't realize that,  when the original musical appeared in 1959, "clinging mothers" were assumed the cause of gay identity, so Prince Dauntless would be assumed gay.   I don't catch the sexual symbolism of the mute King who suddenly finds his voice.  And of course I have no idea  that director Ron Field is gay in real life.

But I know all about liking people who are tough and strong,  liking biceps and pecs instead of the soft curves that boys are supposed to long for.

And I know all about doing things on mattresses.

See also: Looking for Muscles on The Carol Burnett Show

King of the Golden River: Boy Meets Dwarf

Shortly after I was born, my parents bought a set of Colliers Encyclopedia and The Junior Classics, an anthology of mostly Victorian-era stories like Alice in Wonderland and Jackanapes. During my earliest childhood I often took them from the shelves and leafed through them, marveling at the odd illustrations.  I first tried reading them at age 8 or 9, but the antiquated language and obscure references made it well-nigh impossible.  Still, their very impenetrability was attractive, suggesting hidden codes and secrets, so over the years I tried again and again, finally encountering some amazing gay subtexts.

The King of the Golden River (1841) begins with a blustery, round person, "The North Wind," visiting an extremely girlish young man named Gluck.   From there, things get even more bizarre.  Gluck battles his older, bullying brothers, Hans and Schwartz, for a golden mug, which turns out to contain the imprisoned spirit of the dwafish King of the Golden River.  

Someone must travel to the source of the river and sprinkle it with "holy water."  The evil brothers try, but fail, and are turned into black stones.  Gluck tries, but gives the water away in acts of kindness, and is rewarded when the river turns into a river of gold.

There is no same-sex romance, but Gluck (played by Thor Bautz, left, in a gender-transgressive 2009 stage version) is quiet, sensitive, feminine, gay-coded.

And,  bucking the tradition of fairy tales ending with "they were married and lived happily ever after," he never meets a girl.  At the end of the story, he is old, wealthy, well-respected by the community, with no wife.  

That was, in itself, a revelation.

The author of King of the Golden River was John Ruskin (played by Tom Hollander, top center, in the 2009 tv series Desperate Romantics).  He was apparently heterosexual; like Lewis Carroll, he liked young girls.  But there is no evidence that he had a physical relationship with anyone.

His marriage to Effie Gray was annulled after six years, not consummated because "there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked passion."  There have been many theories about what those circumstances were, but probably not the nude female form itself. (Effie later married his friend, pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais).

He was a scholar of the Renaissance, who became aware of the practice of "the bestial vice."  Although he was quite homophobic, revealing that same-sex practices occurred at all helped to create the image of the "queer Renaissance," where gay people didn't have to hide.  Oscar Wilde said that studying under him at Oxford was one of the turning points of his career.

The Bravest Knight: Sir Cedric and his husband, Prince Andrew, give their daughter life lessons, with "when I was your age" stories

 

The Bravest Knight (2019) is advertised as the first children's animation to have an "openly gay main character."  Actually, that would be Paranorman (2012).   I wanted to see how "open" the gay main character was, so I watched the first two episodes.    

Episode 1, Scene 1: In a fairy tale world, Sir Cedric (T.R. Knight, left) is giving his daughter, Nia, lessons in how to become a knight. Today's lesson: how to save someone trapped in a tower.  His husband, Prince Andrew (Wilson Cruz, below), has volunteered to be rescued.  First, build a ladder -- or the prisoner could just lower a rope.  Prince Andrew has to be somewhere, so could we speed things up?  No,Siir Cedric has to tell a story.  The consort of a royal is always a rank down, so Prince Andrew and Sir Cedric. 

Scene 2: Flashback.  The preteen Cedric (Chance Hurstfield) is in his second year as a knight in training. He sees a flyer: all of the villains have broken out of Fairy Jail!  So he sets out to,,,um...arrest them?  But first he encounters a troll named Grunt (Bobby Moynihan), who tells his story.

Scene 3: Grunt used to have a bridge, like most trolls.  But Sturk, one of the villains who broke out of Fairy Jail, took it away from him.  Wait -- the notice just went up, but Grunt says that he's been bridge-less for weeks.  This timeline is convoluted.

Scene 4: Cedric abandons his original quest to help Grunt get his bridge back.  Problem: Grunt doesn't remember where it is.  While searching, they hear a woman screaming from a tower, and set off to rescue her.   She obligingly lowers her long hair for them to climb.

But it's a trap!  A witch who recently escaped from Fairy Jail  grabs them and throws them into a pit, where they meet several other would-be rescuers.  What is her end game?  Is she going to eat them, or what?  

Scene 5:  Their escape plan: they cover themselves in mud, so the witch will think they have escaped.  When she comes down to investigate, they incapacitate her with mud and climb out on the hair-rope.  Then they call the adults for assistance, and the witch is returned to Fairy Jail.

Scene 6:  Moral: Don't grab a rope unless you are sure what's on the other end.  Presumably this generalizes to: don't begin a course of action unless you are fairly certain how it will turn out.  

Episode 2, Scene 1:  Today's lesson is about jousting.  Nia is upset that her opponent will be the troll Grunt, who can't even control his horse.   "Never underestimate your opponent," Sir Cedric cautions.  And so the story..

Scene 2:  Preteen Cedric and Grunt, searching for the lost bridge, eome across a children's jousting tournament.  Another troll, Susie, is scrounging for coins under the bleachers.  

Scene 3: Cedric signs up to compete, but he doesn't have any armor, so he and his troll friends fashion a helmet from a pumpkin.  His opponent is a very small boy in a green helmet.  "Look how tiny he is!" Grunt exclaims.  "You'll win easily."  But his opponent trounces him.

Surprise -- it's a girl!  At this point one would expect Cedric to dissolve into a pool of hormones, except that we already know that he's gay.  They just shake hands.

Why is "It's a girl!" a big reveal?  We've already established that girls commonly train as knights, so why wouldn't they joust?

Scene 4:  Eliminated from the competition, Cedric and the trolls watch from the stands as the girl -- Eyame -- bests three more opponents and wins the tournament.  She is modest -- "I was fortunate today," but Cedric is effusive in his praise: "I learned more from watching you than in all my years of practicing back on the pumpkin farm!"  

Scene 5:  Susie the Troll suggests that they go to the abandoned, scary Dark Castle, which has maps of the kingdom.  Maybe it will show the bridge.  

Scene 6: Back in the present, Sir Cedric repeats the moral: Never underestimate your opponent. 

Story Arc: The flashbacks for the first season are about Cedric and grunt looking for the lost bridge, and meeting people who will apparently be important in their lives later.  But we don't get any later.    I want to know about life in the kingdom today.  Or how Cedric and Prince Andrew met.  I don't want to know about some dumb bridge.

Didacticism:   This show is obviously for young children, not adults, but still, is it really necessary to hit us over the head with a moral, twice per episode?  It seems old-fashioned and contrived.  

How Open is Cedric:  His husband appears only briefly in the first scene of the first episode, and then is never mentioned again.  The child Cedric doesn't display any romantic interest in anyone, boy, girl, or troll.  I'd say "not very open": you could easily miss it. 

To be fair, Prince Andrew appears in the first scene of several later episodes, often trying to get Cedric to settle down to official business, which is interrupted by a story.

My Grade: A>   I was bored stiff, but young children might not be, and having a gay character in a starring role in a program aimed at the kindergarten-set is amazing, even if his husband doesn't appear often.  

"Once Upon a Time" Season 1 Beefcake

Once Upon a Time is a pastiche of feuding figures from fairy tales (mostly Disney versions), mythology, novels, folklore -- you name it.  The main characters are Snow White, Snow's daughter Emma, her grandson Henry, Regina the Evil Queen (who turns into the Good Queen), Rumpelstiltskin, Prince Charming, Captain Hook, and Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

But many other recognizable faces from your childhood appear.

With physiques that are the stuff of legend.


1. Michael Socha as Will Scarlett, Robin Hood's chum.

2. Liam Garrigan as King Arthur, the mythical king of Dark Age Britain, seen here schtupping his bff Lancelot (just kidding)

3. Deniz Akdeniz as Aladdin (the one from the Disney movie, not the one from the 1001 Nights).

4. Charles Mesure as Blackbeard, the real-life pirate, aka Edward Teach (1680-1718)
























5. Sinqua Walls as Sir Lancelot from the Arthurian legends.

6. Hank Harris as Henry Jekyll, from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel (Sam Witwer as Mr. Hyde).





More after the break

Hans Christian Andersen: the Gay Writer of Fairy Tales about People Dying

Of all the authors that teachers foisted upon me as a kid to embrace Rock Island's Scandinavian heritage, the absolute worst was Hans Christian Andersen. I hated fairy tales anyway -- who needs fairy godmothers, when there are rocket ships blasting off to Jupiter?  -- and these were grim, morbid, horrible:

"The Little Mermaid": A mermaid sacrifices her life to save a handsome prince.

"The Brave Tin Soldier."  Yeah, he's brave, until he gets too near a fire, and melts to death.

"The Snow Queen." A cold person keeps kidnapping children and freezing them to death.

"The Little Match-Seller."  A girl selling matches..um...freezes to death.

Is it like cold in Denmark, or is this some sort of metaphor?

"The Garden of Paradise."  A prince dies.

One or two of his cautionary tales were ok -- "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling."  But really, who wouldn't rather be watching Fractured Fairy Tales on Rocky and Bullwinkle than reading about people dying?



Later I discovered that Andersen was gay or bisexual in real life.  In fact, his psychiatrist invented the term homosexual from the Greek homo (the same) and the Latin sexualis in order to diagnose his condition.

Gay but depressed.  No wonder his characters keep dying.

I've never seen any of the film versions of Andersen's fairy tales, but I understand that Disney let The Little Mermaid, Ariel, live, in the 1989 animated version.

If you want to see beefcake in the Hans Christian Andersen oeuvre, you need to seek out the occasional stage version of "The Emperor's New Clothes" (above), or The Little Mermaid stage musical.

Eric doesn't display much, but King Triton, Ariel's father, is bare-chested.

Although sometimes the actor wears a ridiculous beard.