"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.

Tween Fest: Internet Jerks in the Desert

In the short tv series Tween Fest (2016), available on youtube and Amazon, the young, entitled, and social media-savvy Maddisyn (Joey King) has become internet-famous with her pimple-popping videos, but she wants to break into music, like Justin Bieber and countless others. 

So her doting and clueless Dad (John Michael Higgins) and his unpaid intern Ethan (Kale Hills) organizes a teenage internet festival in Death Valley -- sort of a combination of Burning Man and the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. 

Of course, things go wrong immediately ("20,000 people in the desert.  Do you think we'll need bathrooms?).

Maddisyn's song is booed, so she becomes an anti-festival activist.

A conservative senator shows up (so conservative that he spearheaded a bill that would make all women who have an orgasm sex offenders).

The Splurge Company, which is sponsoring the event, removes all water so people will drink more Splurge.  Everyone starts collapsing from dehydration.

A kid internet reporter named Stop the Preston (transgender actress Josie Totah) comments on the inanity.

But most of the humor comes from the acts.

1. Zayden (Drew Tarver), who makes "social justice" videos. He pretends to need help  ("I'm a big, stinky homeless man.  Could you give me some free money?"), and then shames you when you refuse.  When his hypocrisy is revealed, he goes on a walkabout in the desert, and falls in with some Mad Max-style Australian "mean pranksters": they spit on people or light their butts on fire.

2. Venmo star Lexi (Arden Cho).  Venmo is an app that allows you to pay people directly from your bank account, and Lexi has been sharing her best transactions online (e.g., paid AustinJ $4 for a pizza emoji).  She wrote a book about her best transactions, plus a graphic novel which became an IPhone game (but those Expanded Universe transactions are no longer canon). 

3.   Family Guy  impressionist Dusty Del Grosso (Lou Wilson), who must find a new schtick when he gets a "cease and desist" order from the show's lawyers.  So he learns twonking (vape tricks).

4. "The Dabbler Dudes," who try anything weird (like wearing makeup, or cutting off their penises).

5. Dem Water Cup Boys (left), who ask for water cups in restaurants but fill them with soda. It turns out that they only prank restaurants owned by their rich daddy.

Plus Dustin Dustin Nathan, Austin Aaron Joshua, Justin Taylor Tyler, and Jason Tyler Justin-Austin.  And to think we had trouble in the 1980s with 2 Coreys.

And Gus Da Fingerer, PeateyBeatz, Vomit Donna, Shia LaPuff, the Pasta Beast, Jesus Juice, Pamberger2000, Random Kevin, and Ariana Grande (she'll smile and wave for 6 seconds).

Gross, humorous, and satisfying for those of us who get annoyed by people who make millions of dollars by filming themselves jumping into hot tubs filled with Cocoa Puffs.

However, I was expecting far more beefcake.  There actually isn't any.  None of the acts perform shirtless, and the audience is all fully clothed (in the desert). Looking online for photos of the entire cast, I only could find Josh Fadern (top photo), Jimmy Fowlie (above), and Brian Jordan Alvarez (left).

There weren't any explicitly gay characters, although gay people are mentioned, and a lot of the pranksters had subtexts.   Unfortunately, there was an explicit hetero-romance between Zayden and Lexi.

I give it a C-.

Getting Naked after Christmas: The British Boxing Day Dip

In Britain, Christmas is traditionally a time for caroling, exchanging gifts, going to pantomimes...

And plunging naked into the frosty Atlantic Ocean.

Porthcawl, Wales, has been holding an annual Christmas Morning Dip for chartiy for over 40 years.

Many other seaside towns hold their in Wales and England, like Aldeburgh,  Llandudno, Cromer, and Tenby, hold theirs on Boxing Day, December 26th (so-called because people would box up their Christmas dinner leftovers and pass them out to the less fortunate).

In Aldeburgh, Llandudno, Cromer, Tenby, and a dozen other towns, Boxing Day means a morning of fun and entertainment, followed by a quick costume change and a headlong dash into the sea (typically a frigid 50 degrees Fahrenheit).

Many dress in tuxedos and evening gowns (they're not limited to men, like the Naked Festivals of Japan).  Others go in costumes as Santa Clauses, Elves, Uncle Sams, or Power Rangers.  But most take off as many clothes as they can stand.

The rules are:
1. No full nudity (though occasionally skimpy thongs are ok, and sometimes they "accidentally" slip off).
2. No wetsuits (you have to be cold).
3. It only counts as a "dip" if you get your hair wet twice.

Afterwards the participants dry off, sip Bovril (beef tea)  and wait to see if they have won the prizes for bravest, best costume, and most donations.

Boxing Day Dips aren't gay-specific events, but they're a nice opportunity to see some beefcake during the most bundled-up of seasons, and give to charity.

Physique-Watching at the County Fair

I've been to three county fairs in the last month.  Not that I'm complaining -- they're a major source of summertime beefcake, as well as a fascinating glimpse into a different world.

Fairs originated in the Middle Ages, when most people engaged in sustenance farming, and brought their excess into town to trade for items they might need.

By the 19th century, most people were buying from professional merchants, and fairs became a place to see the latest agricultural equipment and techniques, and compete over the best produce and livestock.

There were state fairs beginning in the 1830s, and county fairs in the 1870s (international expositions of industry and commerce were called worlds' fairs in the 1880s).

Eventually there were carnival-type rides and games, musical acts, races, and other activities, and fairs became a place for fun rather than business.

Nazarenes weren't allowed to go to fairs -- places of sin and corruption -- and of course in gay neighborhoods you wouldn't be caught dead at the heteronormative nuclear-family gun-toting beer-swilling redneck fest -- so I didn't go to any until I moved to the straight world in 2005.



They are, indeed, full of nuclear families and gun-toting, beer-swilling rednecks, but don't let that dissuade you.  The opportunities for physique watching are endless.

1. Those nuclear family dads are often built, and wearing muscle shirts (it's always a hot day, and fairgrounds offer no shade).

2. The beer-swilling rednecks are often hot, too, in a seedy, rough-trade way.

3. Fair employees and volunteers, always buffed young men.  They don't take their shirts off often, but you can see some tight shirts and tighter jeans.

4. Groups of teenagers and college boys.  They don't take their shirts off, either, but they often wear those shirts with no sides, so you can get a side-glimpse of their chests.












5. Hang around the livestock exhibits to see farmboys who have won awards for their sheep, goats, cows, pigs, and horses (this is how everybody displays their goats, with face against crotch.  I don't know why).

Can you imagine what it's like to live on a farm, taking care of animals every day, taking a bus 5 miles into town to go to high school?  For city folk, it's a completely alien world.

But nowadays have smartphones and wi-fi, so they're as connected to the wide world as the rest of us.












 6. Don't forget that there are other gay guys in the straight world, who come to the county fair for physique watching.

See also: Summertime Beefcake at the County Fair

The Penis Festival of Greece

In the Greek Orthodox Calendar, "Clean Monday" is the start of Lent, the season where believers give up something important to them to commemorate Christ's sacrifice on Easter.

In the village of Tyrnavos, about 200 miles north of Athens, the men give up penises.

So they have a Penis Festival, or Bourani, at the end of their month-long Carnival season.

Bourani is actually a spinach soup. On Clean Monday all of the "initiates," including visiting tourists, have to drink it from a penis-shaped ladle, then sip tsipouro, an alcoholic beverage, from a penis-shaped cup, and finally sit on a penis throne.

You can bring a friend; couples are welcome.

 Meanwhile the men who have already been initiated stand around with penis-shaped scepters singing obscene songs about penises.

There's a parade of penises and other caracatures, and  many vendors plying the crowds with penis-shaped candy and toys.

Such an obviously homoerotic festival has ancient roots.  It was originally in honor of Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine and carousing.

Several puritanical Greek governments have tried to banned the festival, but it keeps going on in secret.

It's mostly men, but women have been allowed since 1980.

While you're in Greece, be sure to fly down to Crete to check out the artifacts of the beefcake-heavy Minoan Civilization.

My Date with Two Gay Dads

Plains, October 2017

Dads with their children are incredibly hot.

At festivals and street fairs, at restaurants, in line at the movies, having a kid in tow increases your attractiveness by about 500%

 The attraction seems to be in the paradoxical juxtaposition of innocence and experience, the sexless and sexual.  Dad is nurturing you, but his orgasm created you.  You are walking, talking proof of his sexual potency.

So when I saw two dads at Octoberfest, holding the hand of their 3-year kid between them, visions of sharing rushed through my head.

They were both twinks, so my cruising was bound to succeed:  Chad was tall and slim with dirty blond hair, a goatee, and a basket.  Rod, more muscular, Mediterranean-looking with a broad open face, clean-shaven.

Their kid was named Will, after the titular character on the mega-homophobic sitcom Will and Grace.

Chad grew up in a small town in Minnesota, met Rod in college, and convinced him to move to another small town to restore the old opera house.  Now he was working on various historic restoration projects, while Rod was mostly a house-husband, cooking and cleaning and watching daytime soap operas.

I didn't ask how Will came about, but I assumed it was through artificial insemination.  It didn't make a difference: they had a child, innocence derived from experience, sexless derived from sex, and I wanted them in my bed.

I invited them over for dinner Wednesday night, expecting of course that they would get a babysitter.

Instead they brought a bottle of wine and a chocolate cake. And Will.

Ok, no sharing tonight.

No sex games or nudity.

No discussions of celebrity hookups, gigantic penises, or dates from hell.

What else do gay dads talk about?

Their kid: "He's so smart.  He already know his ABCs... Will, settle down! and he can count to...Will, don't chase the cat!  ...Will, use your inside voice!"

College: "I took a class in your field.  Do you know professor...Will, don't run in the house..Professor...Will, don't touch that, it looks expensive...Do you have any gay students?...Will, take that out of your mouth!  He just gets excited meeting new people."

Gay Pride: "We went to Gay Pride in...Will, get your hands out of the dip...Minneapolis.  We marched with the Gay Fathers...Will, if you don't want that cherry tomato, spit it into my hand, don't smush it on the couch.....It's a great group...Where's your bathroom?"

Maybe Will would like to watch a video?  I have some cartoons...

TV: "We love American Horror Story...it's so gay-positive....
Will, don't touch that...and we're going through Star Trek, the original series, on Netflix...Will, do you need a nap?...Kirk is totally hot, don't you think?"

Time to eat.  Bob made vegetable lasagna and a salad, which Will ate with his hands, picking up a piece of lasagna, showing it to his dad, asking "What's this?", and repeating for each slice.

Food: "There's a pizza place nearby that serves a 10 pound pizza.  It's free if you and a friend can eat the whole thing...Will, that's not a toy...I went with my brother-in-law, who is this massive truck driver type, and even we couldn't get through even half of...Will, use your fork."

I cleared the dishes while Bob dished out the chocolate cake, which Will ate with his hands.

Then, nerves frazzled, ears ringing from the constant yelling, bloated from lasagna and cake in the same meal, and nauseous from watching the kid eat with his hands, I said goodnight and shooed them out the door.

 I won't be inviting Chad, Rod, and Will over again for a long time.

Not until Will looks something like this.

Call me in 15 years.

The uncensored story, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood

The Penis Festival of Japan

You've visited the Penis Park of Sinnam, Korea and the Naked Man Festival of Okayama, Japan.  There are a few days left on your tour of East Asia, but not enough time to visit Bhutan, the Land of Penises.  What to do?

How about a Penis Festival?

The Kanamara Matsurai, Steel Penis Festival, is held every year during the first week of April in Kawasaki, Japan, a suburb of Tokyo.  Vendors sell dozens of varieties of phallus-shaped objects, including home decor, toys, and candles.

There are giant penis-shaped seesaws that you mount to increase your fertility, your potency, or just your joie de vivre.  

You eat dried sardines, a Japanese aphrodisiac, or penis-shaped sausages, ice cream cones, lollipops, and rice candy.

The highlight of the festival is a procession of the omikoshi, the giant steel phallus, from its Shinto shrine,  joined by several others, including a pink one carried by drag queens.  You should join the procession in costume.  People wear penis costumes or strap giant dildos to their crotches.  Crossdressing is common: men wear kimonos, women wear fundoshi.

There are various heterosexual legends for the origin of the festival, the most graphic involving an iron-jawed demon that hid inside a woman and castrated any man who tried to have sex with her. Then the Steel Penis intervened, broke the teeth of the evil demon, and made the world safe for sex.  It was probably a metaphor for venereal disease, and people still come to the festival to pray for protection or healing.

But today it's not for heterosexuals only; there are many gay and transgender people in attendance, and the Kanamara Matsurai has become a fundraiser for AIDS research.

Not a lot of male nudity, but occasionally you see men in fundoshi or jockstraps.  Or Batman.

The festival takes all day, but if you have time left over, visit the Kawasaki Daishi, an important Buddhist temple, or the Fujiko F. Fujio Museum, dedicated to the Doraemon manga and anime series (about a robot cat and his boy).

Also see the Penis Festival of Greece.

The Twins Day Festival of Twinsburg, Ohio

Twinsburg, Ohio, is a small town of 18,000 near Cleveland, founded in 1817 by identical twins Aaron and Moses Wilcox.  In honor of its origin, it hosts the Twins Day Festival, the world's largest gathering of twins and other multiples, held the first weekend in August since 1975 (this year, August 4-6).

About 4,000 twins attend, fraternal, identical, and multiple.  Some come alone, their twin being detained or lost.  They are of all ages from infant to octogenarian, of all races, genders, sizes, and shapes, from the United States and about a dozen other countries.





Twins in the outside world tend to dress differently and pursue different activities to emphasize their uniqueness, but here they revel in their similarity, dressing and acting alike, banding together with other twins to form dazzling mirror images.

The festival features live music groups, food, crafts, rides, and exhibits, plus many twin-specific events, like a 5-k run, a twin parade, and the crowning of the imperial court.

Non-twins are welcome, but bear in mind that it's a place for twins to catch up with old friends and enjoy a safe haven from the scrutiny of curious outsiders, not for twin fetishists to cruise.

But some of the twins are quite hot, and a surprising number are gay or bi.  Even the straight ones seem perfectly happy to talk to strangers (all photographs copyright Charles Robinson, except #12, copyright John Robinson).

1.-2. Mike and Matt Gragnani, real estate agents from Berwin, Illinois.

3. Long haired bodybuilders in purple muscle shirts.

4. Ben and Jared from Louisiana.

5-6. Nick and Jim Falco from Elmhurst, Illinois have been attending since 1991.

7. Jeremy and Josh from Louisiana.

Between 1990 and 2005 in vitro fertilization and the use of fertility-enhancing drugs has increased the number of twins born, from 22 to 32 per 1,000 births.  Not that anyone is complaining.

More after the break

Gay Pride Has Changed

I've been marching in gay pride parades since they were called gay rights marches.

I was in the first ever to be held in the state of Iowa, in June 1981.

When I lived in California and New York, from 1985 to 2001, I marched almost every year, either with the Metropolitan Community Church or with the gay synagogue.

 It was the biggest event of the year: we spent months deciding which group to march with, working on banners and floats, charting out the route, making plans to meet friends afterwards, at the festival.

The day of the parade,we would show up at the staging ground on Crescent Heights an hour early (walk, if you could), dressed lightly -- Los Angeles in June is hot!

It was fun to be walking down the streets we drove down every day, with a wall of spectators on all sides, more gay men and lesbians than we ever knew existed.

The hetero screamers, outraged by our existence, with their signs saying we were going to hell, were confined to a small area next to the Rage, where we could ignore them easily.

Then came the festival in West Hollywood Park: 20 or 30 booths from every gay organization you had ever heard of, and some you hadn't: Dignity (for gay Catholics), Frontrunners (for runners), Gay Fathers, the Gay Asian-Pacific Alliance.  A few food carts, whatever vendors were brave and non-homophobic enough to come, selling ice cream, corn dogs, and Thai food on a stick.

A huge crowd of gay men and lesbians, some you would never see anywhere else.  A chance to catch up with friends you'd lost track of.

Acres upon acres of shirtless musclemen.  Nonstop cruising: it wasn't a successful pride festival unless you got at least three phone numbers.

Hetero screamers milled about with pamphlets about how we were going to hell, so the rule was: never accept anything someone tries to hand to you.  Representatives of gay organizations will sit at their booths with brochures for you to pick up.

In the evening there was a round of parties and dances, with a lot more cruising, and there was always that one guy who was completely nude in a public place.

At work the next day, you could always tell who was gay: they were sunburned.

In Florida I didn't go, and in 2005 I moved to the Straight World, where Gay Pride was a small, understated affair.  A barbecue in the park for about 20 people.  A parade with about 20 banners but no floats that marched down one side of the street, the other still open to gawking traffic.

I haven't been to a big-city Gay Pride for 16 years.

They've changed.

Last weekend I went to Minneapolis for Twin Cities Pride.  Due to a GPS problem, my wisdom tooth extraction, and oversleeping, my friend and I missed the Parade, but we went to the festival in Loring Park, near downtown.


1. It's not Gay Pride or LGBT Pride, it's just Pride. It's rather annoying to be erased from your own festival.

2. Instead of 20 or 30 booths, there were over 200.  Most were not gay-specific.  Banks, credit unions, colleges (not college LGBT groups, just "why you should come here"), sheets and towels, a service that would clean your rain gutter.

Instead of two or three food trucks, there were about fifty.  No longer do the organizers have to scrounge around to find enough vendors willing to be seen with us.

3. The rule about not accepting anything someone tries to hand you was gone.  Everyone tried to hand us something: beads, buttons, bags, brochures.  I didn't take anything -- force of habit.

Fortunately, I didn't see any screamers.

4.  But the festival wasn't for us anymore.  Over half of the crowd consisted of male-female couples, often with kids in tow, and most of the rest were groups of women  A scattering of gay men.  

5. The acres and acres of beefcake were gone. Very few of the men were shirtless, and very few were buffed.  At least I can say that I have a better physique than 99% of the men at a Gay Pride Festival.

6. The cruising was gone, too.  The few times I got cruised, it was by a woman or a teenage boy.  I get more action at the doctor's office.

Afterwards we walked back across Lyndale Avenue, through the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.  A large Muslim family was photographing each other in front of the cherry spoon statue.  College kids were playing miniature golf on a weird course with brillo pads and maps of downtown.  There was a baseball game going on at the stadium.

They were half a mile from Gay Pride.  They didn't know, or they didn't care.

"Gay Pride has changed,"  I told my friend.

"For better or worse?"

"I'm not sure."

One of the college boys playing miniature golf looked over at me with a cruisy glance.

Some things don't change.

This post with nude photos is on Tales of West Hollywood

See also: My First Gay Rights March

Summertime Beefcake at the Dunking Booth

Among my favorite summertime sights are the dunking booths at festivals, county fairs, Celtic games, school carnivals, summer camps, and various parties.

They are descended from the old dunk tanks used as punishment in the Middle Ages, where people accused of witchcraft or other "crimes" would be tied to a chair and dunked underwater.

In modern dunking booths, you just get wet.

The "victim" sits on a level platform suspended above a tank of water.  People line up to try a feat, like hitting a target.  If they are successful, the platform falls away, and he falls into the water.

Sometimes there's no feat; you pay for the privilege of pushing a lever and dunking the victim.

The tank is often made of clear plastic so you can watch him flailing around.

The victim is usually male, often a teacher, preacher, camp counselor, college football star, or other high-prestige figure, to make the dunking a kind of "revenge."

But don't worry: Dunking only occurs on hot days, when being dunked repeatedly is rather refreshing.

And you get to see a lot of attractive men in short pants or swimsuits.

See also: Celtic Festivals