The Lord of the Rings: Good Beyond Hope

It's one of the iconic stories of my life, told over and over again until it becomes myth.

How, in fifth grade, I stumbled across a copy of The Hobbit in the folklore section of the Denkmann School library, and read for the first time: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

I spent the next two days immersed in a new world, Middle Earth,with hobbits, elves, dwarves, goblins, magic swords, giant spiders, a dragon, a gollum,  and a beautiful, evocative map.

And no damsels-in-distress to gum up the works; Middle Earth was occupied entirely by men.

How, two years later, in seventh grade, the Scholastic Book Club offered The Two Towers, blatantly advertised as the "sequel" to The Hobbit.  I ordered it, waited patiently, and when it arrived, rushed home and began to read eagerly.  Aragorn, Boromir, Frodo..who were these people? This was not a sequel at all; it was the second book in a trilogy.  I had been swindled!

How I snuck a ride to the Readmore Book World downtown and bought the rest of the trilogy, and read...well, most of the Fellowship of the Ring.  The Shire scenes, with gay couples Frodo and Sam, Merry and Pippin wending through the Old Forest, fighting off Dark Riders and Barrow-Wights, meeting Tom Bombadil, reaching Rivendell, setting off with a fellowship of nine, including gay couple Legolas and Gimli.  Around the time they reach the Mines of Moria, it bogged down, and I started to skim.

The Two Towers was mostly unreadable, sheer boredom.  I skimmed through everything except for Merry and Pippin among the Ents.

The Return of the King, more of the same, with Frodo and Sam, especially Frodo, suffering for no reason, as if Tolkien delighted in torturing his heroes.  I skimmed through everything until the end, when they return to the Shire to discover that it has been broken up by the Industrial Revolution.

I couldn't bring myself to admit it for many years, but The Lord of the Rings is not a great novel, or even a good novel.  30% of it is torture porn (let's see what other horrible things can happen to Frodo!), and 60% is repetitive, ponderous, and dull.  Everyone has twelve names, everyone's sword has twelve names, and they're always stopping the action to sing.

And talk about anachronisms:  The Shire is 18th century England; one expects to hear the bothersome War of Independence being fought in the Colonies. But outside the Shire, it's the early-Medieval world of the Anglo-Saxon thanes.

Yet still I thought of it as the greatest book ever written.  I pressed it into the hands of my friends as if it were a religious tract.  I revered it as sacred writ.  I began working on my own fantasy world in imitation, with my own elves and dwarves, magic sword, and fabulous maps.

It seems like a paradox.

But the Lord of the Rings wasn't for reading.  It was for gazing at the covers.  The artist, Barbara Remington, had not read or even seen the book before drawing the covers, so she drew from magic and myth.

My favorite was The Two Towers, with its stylized sharp mountains, red sky, and dark flying riders.

It was about reading the cover blurbs, with quotes from Loren Eisley, W. H. Auden, and C.S. Lewis (none of whom I had heard of yet): "Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart....good beyond hope."

That line is better than anything in the book itself.

It was about gazing at the maps, and marveling at all of the mysterious places. I particularly liked the edges, the places not mentioned in the books: Rhun, Far Harad, the Ice Bay of Forochel, and Carn Dum ("here was of old the witch-realm of Angmar").

It was about reading the appendixes, with the languages, the indexes, the genealogical charts, and the timelines, with the discussions of what happened to the characters after the War of the Rings ended.

And it was about discovering the fates of the gay couples:

Merry and Pippin lived together for the rest of their lives

Legolas and Gimli crossed to the Elf paradise together

Frodo crossed over alone, while Sam pursued a heteronormative life of marriage and children.  But at the end of his life, he, too crossed over.

Was there ever a book so filled with gay romances?

That's what, in the end, rendered The Lord of the Rings "good beyond hope."

See also: The Lord of the Rings

"Happy Endings Sleepover": Spiy Twinks in Denmark Fall in Love

Happy Endings Sleepover (2019) is an oddly inappropriate title for a movie about international espionage.

Johnnie Allen, a bleach-blond twink who looks about 15 (Jeppe Forsgaard, right, in his first movie role), is in Copenhagen, Denmark, waiting for his first CIA assignment.

I don't believe that for a second.  This kid should be auditioning for the role of "gay best friend" in his high school drama club's production of "Musical Rom-Com."

Johnnie meets the older, bigger, but still twink-like Danish boy Sander (Jonas Kyed, who has been acting since 2015, mostly in film school shorts like Flagermusen et Vogteren, about two best friends who pretend to be superheroes until one dies of cancer).



Johnnie is deeply closeted due to his homophobic parents and job with the homophobic Trump Admnistration, and Sander has hidden his gay feelings ever since his junior high boyfriend rejected him and he attempted suicide. So they hit it off as...um...friends.

After about 40 minutes of hitting it off as...um...friends, Johnnie gets his assignment: transport an American double agent named Petrenko from Denmark to Belgium.  Sounds dangerous, so of course he invites Sander along.

Finally the international espionage begins: they pick up the spy.  Then Sander overhears him talking on the phone -- in English,so he doesn't understand it well, but it's clear that Petrenko is dead, and they're hauling a Russian agent named Kolya (Danny Baertelsen, a "business developer, mentor, speaker, private pilot," and apparently an actor).

Uh-oh, what do they do now?  An attempt to arrest him goes wrong -- there's a shootout, and he steals their car and gets away!

A few lines of dialogue later, they're in Antwerp, and coincidentally so is Kolya.  Another shootout, Sander is injured, and the espionage plotline vanishes very quickly, without much resolution.  They spend the rest of the movie coming out to each other, having sex, telling Sander's parents that they are boyfriends, and arguing over whether to tell Johnnie's Bible-thumping mother.

You can't help but like this movie.  The actors are so enthusiastic -- about acting, about life, about being gay. It's fun watching them and thinking "Was I ever that young?  Was anybody?"

Still, I wish there was more espionage and less falling-in-love montage.  Some more plot twists, some more tense situations, maybe a kidnapping and nick-of-time rescue,with Sander displaying a knack for capers and deciding to join the team.  Instead of the climactic scene being "Why can't we tell your parents?"

Heterosexism: Johnnie and Sander are the only characters with more than three lines of dialogue, so no.  Kolya is homophobic, but he's a bad guy, so...

Beefcake: Chests and butts (neither actor is a gym rat), discussions of penises  (Sander's is bigger).

Other Sights:  Beautiful location shots in Odense (filling in for Copenhagen), rural Denmark, and northern Germany.

Famous Actors:  None.  This is the only credit for most of the cast.

In the original novel, which appeared in 2018, Johnnie is a 20-year old college student studying in Denmark ("They call it Danmark," he comments inanely, "Which is why they are called Danes."  He meets and falls in love with Sander, who "is not what he seems."  Is he the spy? That would make a little more sense.  Not much, but a little.

Author Cade Jay Hathaway actually was a CIA Agent stationed in Denmark when he fell in love with Lasse (it's a boy's name).  He retired, and now the two live together with two cats, writing semi-autobiographical novels and being in love.

And now you know why Johnnie is so darn blond.

"The Crown", Season 3: More Hunks, Fewer Gay People

I loved the first two seasons of The Crown: the inner workings of Buckingham Palace in the 1940s and 1950s, as young Queen Elizabeth gets her first taste of power.  No references to gay people, no beefcake to speak of, not even many cute guys.  But you hardly noticed amid the beautifully realized sets and costumes.

I couldn't wait for Season 3, which extends the story into the 1960s and 1970s: the Queen (now played by Olivia Colman) struggling to maintain the facade of respectability as the winds of change sweep around her. The Beatles, Carnaby Street, youth protests, psychedelic drugs, the Wolfenden Report, the rise of the Gay Rights Movement in Britain. 

Except none of those things appear.  The winds of change involve threats to royal prestige: a new prime minister from the anti-royalist Labor Party; nationalistic fervor in Wales; and endless (but rather dull) financial problems.

But wait -- there were lots of prominent gay people in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.  Prince Charles himself was the subject of constant gay rumors.  Surely there's some reference?

Nope.

But at least there's more beefcake.

Episode 1: The Queen's art advisor, Sir Anthony Blunt (Samuel West), turns out to be a Russian spy.  He's also gay, but the fact is not mentioned.

Episode 2:  Britain needs a bail-out from the U.S., but President Johnson is playing hard-to-get.  As a last resort, the Queen sends the wilding Princess Margaret to dinner at the White House, where he enjoys her drunken antics and hands over the money.  Best line: Lyndon Johnson: "You can't screw a man in the ass and expect him to send you flowers." I guess not.  The top usually sends the flowers.

Episode 3: The Queen responds to the October 1966 disaster in the Welsh mining village of Aberfan: a mudslide engulfed a school, killing 116 children and 28 adults.  Way too sad for me; I didn't watch.  But Jack Parry-Jones plays one of the teachers.

Episode 4: Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice, who has been living in a convent in Greece, moves into Buckingham Palace.  Oh, no, the mother-in-law.

Episode 5: England is in a financial crisis.  The Queen bonds with her new race horse manager (John Hollingworth, left).

I'd date him.

Episode 6: With Wales clamoring for independence, Prince Charles (Josh O'Connell, left) is ordered to spend a semester studying Welsh at a university in Aberystwyth,  so he won't be entirely clueless in his role as Prince of Wales. 

Charles is a shy, sensitive young man whose best friend is his sister and who would really prefer to be an actor.  All sorts of gay stereotypes --  but nothing comes of it except a little buddy-bond with his Welsh Nationalist tutor.

Episode 7:  The 1969 moon landing results in Prince Philip getting a midlife crisis.  Look for Andrew Lee Potts as Michael Collins.

Episode 8: Camilla Shand's boyfriend, Andrew Parker Bowles (Andrew Buchan), dumps her for Princess Anne, so she revenge-dates Anne's brother, Prince Charles.  Isn't there any room for Charles-Andrew in this love rectangle?

Episode 9: A coal miners' strike.  Meanwhile the family breaks up Charles and Camilla.  So much for the gay rumors.

Episode 10:  Princess Margaret starts an affair with Roddy (Harry Treadaway, top photo), which leaks to the tabloids, and results in divorce.

The show is nice to look at, but becoming somewhat tedious for those of us not enthralled by British economic history. And would it hurt to include just one reference to gay people: "The tabloids are saying that Charles is what????"

"Tell Me a Story," and Be Sure to Include Biceps and Bulges

Tell Me a Story (2018-), on CBS and Vudu. "A re-imagining of classic fairy tales."

Well, I've already seen Once Upon a Time, but ok, I'll give it a shot.

First scene:  close-up of a bare chest tattooed with the words "Fuck You."   The uber-muscular Eddie (Paul Wesley) is asleep in his underwear in his trailer, when his friend Mitch (Michael Raymond Jones) drops in.

Nice.

Next scene: Jordan (James Wolk) strips down to take a shower. 

Bare chest and butt, and I think a bit of his penis. Wow!

Third scene: Gabe (Davi Santos) and his roommate Billy (Luke Guldan, left) are talking.  In their underwear.

Muscular physiques, underwear bulges!  Four in a row!  

I've never seen a tv show display so much male skin and so little female.  Just the way I like it.

Next scene:  High schooler Kayla was a screw up out on the West Coast (she smoked marijuana!), so she and her dad have moved to small-town Manhattan to make a fresh start.

Dad doesn't have his shirt off.  Maybe later.

I keep watching.

Unfortunately, they all turn out to be despicable people.

Gabe and Billy, who both have drug problems, work as go-go dancers and hustlers at a mixed gay-straight club.  Right, all gay people are drug-addled partyboys.

Billy talks Gabe into having a three-way with the ultra-rich, cocaine-addled Dan (Paul Rolfes).  While Gabe is...um...busy, Billy goes into the bedroom and steals from the guy's wallet.   Dan catches on, gets violent, and ends up dead.  Billy runs away, leaving his "friend" Gabe alone an apartment with the corpse of a man he didn't even know.

Meanwhile, at the same club, Kayla graduates to Ecstasy, washed down with vodka, and picks up Nick (Billy Sullivan).  After a lot of sex (showing us Nick's bare chest and butt, of course), she discovers that he is her new teacher. 

Well, I guess they couldn't help that, except  they continue the relationship.  Teacher-underage student.  Nice. 

Eddie (of the "fuck you" chest), Mitch, and a third buddy are saddled with debts and drug  something or other, so they are planning to rob a jewelry store wearing pig masks. 

Jordan (of the nude shower) is pressuring his girlfriend to get married and have a baby.  But she doesn't think that Trump's America is a fit place for a child, with all the neo-Nazis and guns and mass murderers.  Why bring a baby into the world, when it will be killed at age seven by a school shooter?   But Jordan finally talks her into it, so they go ring shopping at the..um...jewelry store where

Well, you know what happens next.  

I think I need a shower and about six hours of old Golden Girls episodes.

And I don't see the connection to fairy tales.  The pig masks?

Instead of more plot summary, wouldn't you rather see the chest of Dan Amboyer, who plays one of Gabe and Billy's go-go-boy coworkers?

Or the bulge of Rarmian Newton, who plays one of Kayla's classmates who gets a crush on her, finds out about her relationship with her teacher, and goes ballistic?

"A Remarkable Tale": Remarkable Gay Inclusivity

A Remarkable Tale is a terrible title; the movie could be about anything. The original Spanish title, Lo Nunca Visto ("I have never seen it"), is no better. But it begins with a striking image: four people (including buffed model Ricardo Nkosi)  in traditional West African costumes running through the snow.

Nobody in West Africa dresses like that, except for ceremonies and tourist shows.  And it doesn't snow.  How did they get to the north?  A time warp from the 19th century?

You have no choice but to watch.

Cut to Upper Fuentejuela, a small, isolated mountain village in Spain, which has lost almost all of its residents to the lure of the big city, so town bigwig Teresa (Carmen Machi) and Jaime (Pepon Nieto), who I think is her ex-husband, are  trying to attract newcomers with "Open Day":  egg custard tarts, necklaces, and a song.  But nobody shows up.

Meanwhile Evil Corporate Shill is threatening annexation.

Teresa and Jaime drop in to yell at long-haired layabout Guiri (model Jon Kortajarena, below) for not showing up to Open Day.   Their son Carlos (Miguel Canaveras, right) decides to stay and hang out with Guiri.

A gay relationship?

When the West Africans show up, Teresa and Jaime assume that they are dangerous cannibals.  The Africans, in turn, believe that all white people are dangerous cannibals.

After the misunderstandings are cleared up, we learn the truth: the Africans are victims of human trafficking,  lured to Spain for a "dance competition" and forced to work in a brothel.

So three men and a woman are working in a brothel with male customers?  Interesting gay inclusivity.

They escaped, but are stuck in a country full of "dangerous cannibals."  And the police are looking for them.

They hide out with Teresa and Jaime, and gradually become involved in the life of the village.  And fall in love.

Teresa begins dating Azquil (Malcolm Sitté).

Guiri (left) begins dating Latisha (Montse Pia).

Calulu (Jimmy Castro), who turns out to be into drag, begins dating Jaime.

 Shukra (Ricardo Nkosi, top photo) doesn't date anyone, but he bonds with Jaime's mother.

They also save the day, of course.  And everybody hugs and proposes marriage while the Evil Corporate Shill fumes.

It's rather cliched: how many times have you seen outsiders burst into a small town and save the day with their joie de vivre?

But the West African-Spanish clash adds interest, and the gay plotline is unique.

Gay characters:  Everybody in town is sort of queer.

Beefcake: None, except the opening costumes. Pity; why cast buffed models if you're not going to show their physiques?

My grade: B+

"Wet Hot American Summer": The Prequel

Wet Hot American Summer (2001) was the endlessly panned parody of summer-camp-sex movies.  It was set during the last day of camp in the summer of 1981, when  ludicrously over-aged actors played out bizarre, impossibly contrived plotlines that could never fit into a single day.  But it somehow became a cult classic, inspiring Netflix to ok two tv series.

Wet Hot American Summer: The First Day of Camp (2015) is, obviously, set on the first day of camp in the summer of 1981 -- eight episodes covering about twelve hours but plotlines that should really have taken months.

Case in point:  During a staff meeting, magazine reporter Lindsay (Elizabeth Banks) offers to do a story about summer camps.  Getting the green light, she drives from New York to Maine, goes undercover as a camp counselor, digs up dirt on a shady government cover-up of toxic waste, and falls in love with a reclusive rock musician (um...the drive itself takes at least six hours).

To make things even more bizarre, most of the actors reprise their roles, so instead of 30-year olds playing teenagers, we have 50-year olds playing teenagers.  And they look it.

And of course we already know where the characters are at the end of camp, so there aren't many surprises as their roles fall into place.  Except we find out that the can of vegetables that unstable camp cook Gene interacts with is not a hallucination.  It would take too long to explain. 

To add conflict, there's a rich snob camp across the lake (also occupied by fifty-year old teenagers), some hetero-romantic angst among the juvenile campers, some lawsuits, a horndog Broadway director, President Reagan, and an Israeli tennis counselor interested in three-ways.  But at least we see Ben (Bradley Cooper) and McKinley (Michael Ian Black) falling in love (Ben's girlfriend responds to his coming out with a surprisingly anachronistic "No big deal.  Everybody is a little gay.").

I've already uploaded photos of the least ugly of the original cast members, so I'll stick to the least ugly of the new kids on the block.

1. Jason Schwartzman (top photo) as Gary, the head boys' counselor.

2. Josh Charles (second photo) as Blake, head snob at the rich-kid camp across the lake.

3. Rich Sommer (left) as Graham, his sidekick.

4. John Hamm as hired assassin The Falcon.

5. Randall Park as a city employee who is in love with one of the teenagers.

6. Michael Cera as a shady lawyer.

7. Jordan Peele as the reporter's boss back in New York, who wants the story instantly.

8. Ron Huebel Brodfard Gilroy.  I don't knowwho that is.

9. David Wain in a ridiculous wig as Yaron, the tennis counselor-three way enthusiast.

10. Well, it's really not the most photogenic bunch.


See also: Wet Hot American Summe

"Wet Hot American Summer": Gross Kissing, a Gay Wedding, and Time Passages

I didn't see the 2001 movie Wet Hot American Summer.  I assumed from the trailers that it was all about girls in bikinis.

Besides, it was a bomb -- it made $295,000 on a budget of $5,000,000. 

And reviewers hated it:

 Roger Ebert wrote a parody poem instead of a review.

Stacie Hougland said "it's not only unfunny, it's downright repulsive."

Stephen Hunter: "This is supposed to be funny?  It was so depressing I started to cry."

But recently I heard that it had a gay couple in it, plus it starred several gay and gay-friendly actors, so I plugged it in on Netflix.

It's the morning of the last day of camp at Camp Firewood, Maine, in the summer of 1981, and all of the boy campers are squirming around in bed with the   girl campers. Gross!

Then singularly ugly, 30-something teenage counselors all get together for their last morning briefing. Andy (Paul Rudd, top photo) is licking his girlfriend's uvula (I'm not kidding.  Never in my life have I seen such gross kissing).

They go out to various activities that could not possibly fit into a single day.

Andy is so busy kissing a girl that he lets one of the campers drown. Later he lets one of the campers fall off water skiis and drown.

Camp director Beth (Janine Garofalo) falls for Henry (David Hyde Pierce), an associate professor of astrophysics who is coming up for tenure (associate professors have tenure!  Anybody hear of fact checking?).  So she and some other counselors drive into town to research astrophysics to impress him. While there, they smoke pot, buy cocaine, shoot up heroin, and mug a woman.  But they're back by 11:00.

Henry teaches several science lessons to the campers, and he and Beth become a committed couple.

Coop (31-year old Michael Showalter, left) unsuccessfully tries to woo Kate (Marguerite Moreau) away from Andy, who doesn't like her anyway.

The virgin Victor (33-year old Ken Marino) is scheduled to hook up with  Abby (who also kisses in that disgusting uvula-licking fashion), but he is forced to take some boys rafting on a river a two hour drive away.

He sneaks away and tries to drive back to the camp, but crashes the van, so he runs.

At least 100 miles.

Then he discovers that the boys are trapped on a raft heading for the falls, so he runs back to rescue them.

At least 100 miles

But they all return safely (and dry)  in time for the evening talent show.

McKinley (30-year old Michael Ian Black) doesn't like kissing girls or watching girls skinny-dip.  His two buds wonder why.

We find out when he sneaks off to the supply shed to have sex with Ben (25-year old Bradley Cooper).  (A brief kiss and  a shot of their legs while they're having anal sex).

Next the buds see them getting married, with Beth  officiating.  Wait -- how did they....and  isn't Beth in town, shooting up heroin?

I'm not sure if it's a homophobic scene or not.  Beth's over-the-top teary-eyed gushing sounds insincere, like she is making fun of McKinley and Ben.

"McKinley's a fag!"  The buds exclaim.  "What are we going to do?"

Why is he hanging out with homophobes, anyway?

Or are they homophobes? They show up at dinner with a wedding gift, a chaise lounge in a gigantic crate.  Wait -- did they drive into town?  How...

That's the end of the McKinley plotline,but we see him doing other things, like forcing a kid who hasn't bathed in two months to take a shower, and sitting in the audience at the talent show.  I don't know who Ben is.

For other characters, time seems to stand still.

Gail (Molly Shannon) spends the entire day in the arts and crafts cabin, crying over her ex-husband and being counseled by her campers.

Except for a brief scene of uvula-licking, Gary (AD Miles, left) spends the entire day in the kitchen, where head chef Gene (Christopher Meloni) says things that sound sexual, then backtracks:  "The juice packets are in the store room, next to my dick cream.  I didn't say dick cream, I said stick team.  They're next to the stick team's snacks."

Aside from the uvula-licking scenes, the heroin/mugging scene, and some queasy anti-Semitic bits, the movie is not particularly disgusting.  But actors are so old that they are not at all believable teenagers, and the time-compression and time-dilation are bizarre.  I spend the entire 90 minutes yelling at the screen: "Wait...that's impossible.  They couldn't have gotten that done.  How did they end up together so fast,,.  Is Gail still crying?  But..."

I'll give it a D just for the crazy pacing.

Netflix has somehow come up with two series, a prequel (same actors 20 years later, still playing teenagers) and a sequel (set 10 years later, so 1991).

Searching for Gay Characters in Comics in 2019

Heartened by the gay-friendiness of Welcome to Wanderland, I went to my local comic book store and picked up a pile ...um, I mean went to Comixology and downloaded the digital versions of six comic books that they recommended.   As usual, I was looking for gay characters, or at least gay subtexts, but beefcake would do in a pinch.

1. Amazing Age: "Sam Charleston is a normal kid who likes hanging out with his best friends Mike and Violet. However, a tragic event drives the trio apart and they navigate their high school lives without each other. That is until one day when one of Sam's old childhood comics mysteriously appears and brings the friends back together in an unexpected way."

Opening scene: they're writing a superhero comic.  Mike wants his character to "get a lady."  Not a good sign!

Then Sam's Dad dies, and he goes over to the dark side, becoming a juvenile delinquent.  Five years later, Violet is a punk, Mike is a jock, and they hate each other.

Sam passes out in class, and awakens as a character in his comic book, Amazing Age.

The end.  Why are these comics so short?  You barely get the premise.

Gay characters: None specified.  Mike wants "a lady."  I assume that Sam wants one, too.

2. Book of Monsters #1 - Alone: "Stories have long been told of the Pied Piper who leads kids through the deepest and darkest parts of the forest. But what happens when the children he is leading lose their way?"

The older teen's shirt reveals half of his chest on thecover, but nothing inside - a deliberate attempt to draw in readers with the promise of beefcake.

The kids lost in the woods fight troll-monsters who have a problem with personal pronouns: "Find own meat!  This mine!"  It gets old fast.

I'm much more interested in the Pied Piper than some dumb monster-battle, but he doesn't appear at all.

Gay characters: None specified.

3. Miskatonic High: "Five teens take on H.P. Lovecraft's monsters and their small-town high school ... They're just not sure which is worse."  Didn't know what to expect.

First scene: We open in media res at a Breakfast Club-like detention.  A discussion of nose-picking.  It can only go downhill

The five kids,   bookworm Simon, jock Matt , and three girls (Alex, Ren, Sarah), are performing required community service as their punishment, when they are zapped into the ancient world and fight an tentacled monster.

Yawn.  Not another monster battle!

Gay characters: Matt gets a girl.  I can't figure out if Simon is gay or just sophisticated.

4. Offbeats: "It's Tintin meets Tarantino in this 1950's crime noir! A young man tries to save a woman from a vicious street gang, but ends up needing to be rescued by a petty crook who introduces him to a whole new world!"

Next Issue: Booker and Jim rescue a missing dancer, but end up being betrayed. The cops hand Jim over to a local mob boss who offers to free him in exchange for betraying Booker -- who mounts a daring raid to rescue his new friend."

I was sold by the promise buddy bonding, but it was all a tease.  Jim is obsessed over his girlfriend, Booker has a wife, and they inhabit a world full of strippers and hookers.

5. Planet of the Nerds: "Three high school jocks in the 1980s are accidentally frozen by an experimental cryogenics device, only to be revived in the computer-driven, superhero movie-loving world of 2019, an era ruled by nerds!"

I chose Issue #4 because of the naked jock on the cover (top photo):  "Feeling like misfits in 2019, the thawed-out jocks from the '80s hatch a plan for revenge on the rich and powerful nerd who froze them."

No, they don't.  They break into his house, only to be stopped by his private security guards.

The cover picture does not appear in the story: the thawed-out jocks are staying with Steve's ex-girlfriend Jennie, who has aged 30 years, but Steve still feels that it's his duty to have sex with her (she refuses).

Fortunately for him, because he can now come out as gay (which is ok in 2019).  That's the end of the nudity.

I like the jocks' horror at the dystopian society they've awakened to:  We have Nazis again, Donald Trump is president, Prince is dead, Kirk Cameron is a religious cultist and Bill Cosby is a felon. 

Postscript: In Issue #5, they confront the evil scientist cum Nazi who accidentally froze them, and Steve gets a boyfriend.  Fade out kiss and everything.

Gay characters: Two

6. Rex Radley, Boy Adventurer: "Rex Radley is an 11 year old boy born into excitement! His mom pilots a giant robot and fights towering monsters! His dad has a cavewoman bodyguard and defends the planet from an army of dinosaur men! The Adventure never stops for Rex!"

So Jonny Quest without Dad's life partner Race Bannon, or his own life partner Hadji.  Sounds awful.

Rex does seem awfully mature for 11; I would have guessed 16.  But he has no friends his own age, and the adults are almost all women: Mom, his aunt, and Dad's companion:  a cavewoman who doesn't know how to use personal pronouns "Been long time since Tharga ate dinosaur."

Come on, personal pronouns are easy.  Repeated after me: Ego, yo, eu, je, Ich, wo.  And everybody knows that humans and dinosaurs never co-existed.

Gay characters:  None specified.

1 out of 6, not a great score.  I think I'll stick to Kevin Keller.

See also: Welcome to Wanderland

"Cloud 9": Gay Couples in 1879 and 1979

Caryl Churchill is an avant-garde playwright in the mold of Ionesco and Samuel Beckett; her plays challenge your notions of plot, characters, and narrative structure itself.  Actually, most of her plays don't really have a plot, but they have a political point. 

Cloud 9, first produced in 1979, was originally advertised as about "sexual confusion," but now it's about gender fluidity.  There are two acts, set in British Africa in 1879 and London in 1979.

British Africa:
Colonial administrator Clive has a perfect relationship with his wife and children, until forbidden desires disrupt things.

He has an affair with Mrs. Saunders, a visiting widow.

His wife Betty (played by a man), is having an affair with his friend Harry Bagley, and is also approached by the governess for a lesbian fling.

Harry has also seduced Clive's10 year old son Edward (played by a woman), the manservant Joshua (black, but played by a white man), and Mrs. Saunders.  When he makes a play for Clive himself, things fall apart.

Fast forward 100 years, but only 25 years have passed for the characters.

Betty (now played by a woman) is recently divorced.

Her son Edward (played by the actor who played Betty in 1875) is gay, and involved in a relationship with Gerry (who played Joshua in 1875).

But he also has an affair with his younger sister Victoria (a doll in 1875).

Victoria is separated from her husband Martin (who played Harry in 1875), and involved with Lin (who played Mrs. Saunders in 1875).  She has a 10-year old daughter (played by a man)

This time everything resolves happily, with both of the gay couples on "Cloud 9."

I didn't actually like the play -- weirdness for the sake of weirdness has never been my thing, and I'm not as shocked by same-sex relationships as the author intended. 

But I liked it more than anything by Ionesco, and it's nice to see two gay couples in the forefront, "sexual confusion" or not.

10 Beefcake Boys of "Riot Girls"

The premise of Riot Girls (2019): most of the population of Potter's Bluff has been killed by a mysterious plague, leaving only teenagers and a scattering of 10-year olds.

So many questions:  How long has it been?  Why are teenagers immune?  Do they succumb when they reach a certain age?  Are there other communities, or are they all alone?  Are they surviving on canned goods, or have they developed agriculture? Why is the electricity still on?

Not to worry, it's not important; the goal is to get the teens alone.  They have divided into two societies, as over-the-top good and evil as Boulder and Las Vegas in The Stand.

 The East Side  is a laid-back hippie commune, run by the saintly, "we're all in this together" Jack (Alexandre Bourgeois). He keeps admitting refugees, such as Sony (Ajay Friese, left), but for some unexplained reason, he doesn't like dogs.

The West Side is a heavily stratified, heavily militarized totalitarian dictatorship, where they kill refugees.  It is ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West.. um, I mean Jeremy  (Munro Chambers), who also kills his own people for such offenses as failing to meet work quotas.

The plot: Jack is captured by Westsiders, who intend to execute him.  His sister Nat (Madison Iseman), the butch Mohawk-haired Scratch (Paloma Kwiatkowski), and Sony rush to the rescue.

It's a surprisingly long way to the West Side; it takes them two days to get there, even with a car.

There's some blood, a lot of rock music, and some heart-to-hearts.  Dr. Evil is killed, and his successor promises "Things are going to be different around here."  The four friends head for home.  The end.

Hetero-horniness:  None.  No one seems particularly interested in sex except for a border guard who tries to rape Nat.  Sony tries to kiss her, but is quickly rebuffed with "I'm not..."

Gay characters:  You're not what, Nat?  The two girls are certainly gay coded, but at one point Nat clarifies: "You're not my boyfriend!", thus establishing her as both heterosexual and unaware that gay people exist.

Bondage: No one has ever heard of rope.  All captives, including Jack, just stand there.

Beefcake: None.  No shirts come off.  There are quite a few cute actors, so I'll try to find shirtless pics from othe productions.  Unfortunately, other than 1. Jeremy, 2. Jack,  and 3. Sony, I have no idea who is who.

4. Darren Eisnor as Todd, one of the Titans (the sports team that now serves as Jeremy's thugs)

5. Atticus Mitchel as Cracker.  Atticus Mitchel is 26.  What's the age range of this Apocalyptic plague?

6.  Darnell Bartholomew as a Westside Guard
















7. Jake Sim (not Sims) as Flick, who I think is second in command.

8. Chris Mark as Sean.  He couldn't have been shot in the locker room?

9.Carson MacCormac (left) as Spit.  Come on, one "frolicking in the river" shot for the gay male viewers?















10. Keanu Lee Nunes as a miscellaneous Titan.

I give up.

I'll give the movie a B-.  Points for its raucous energy and lack of hetero-horniness.  Demerits for the ludicrous villain and closeting the lesbian couple.

And closeting the physiques.