Imposters: Gay Subtexts in a Long Con

The first episode of Imposters is nightmarishly heterosexist, but hang in there -- it gets better.

The awkward, shy, but somehow extremely wealthy Ezra (Rob Heaps) works for his father's shoe company, where water-cooler banter involves mostly boobs and how much you are getting. 

Somehow Ezra grew up less sexist, and married the "the woman of his dreams," the French-accented Ava (Inbar Lavi),  even though he has to negotiate his Neanderthal brother (Adam Korson) and boorish father (Mark Harelik), with their "does she like it when you have sex with her?" leering.

It's no wonder that she vanishes a month after the wedding, draining his bank account and leaving a very nice "it's not you, it's me" video.

Then Ezra meets dumb but formerly extremely wealthy jock Richard
(Parker Young, top photo), who married the same woman, only she called herself "Alice."  One month, bank account drained, vanished.

 And lesbian artist Jules (Marianne Rendon), who married Cece.  One month, bank account drained, vanished.

The trio vow to track down the elusive scammer, to get their money back, or at least say "how could you treat me like that?  I thought our love was real." (Their only cue is a story about her pet dog, which she told to each of them).  They are brok, so they indulge in some cons and identity-theft tricks to raise money, and become quite proficient at it.

Eventually they track down the scammer -- real name Maddie -- in Seattle, where she is working on her new mark, a disagreeable, violent-tempered banker (Aaron Douglas).

She has two older associates with the ridiculously 1940s names Max and Sal (Brian Benben, Katherine LaNasa), and a big boss, the ridiculously malevolent Doctor.  If ever she tries to get out of the game or shirk her duties by getting a boyfriend on the side, the Doctor will send in his cool-as-ice fixer (Uma Thurman).

 Things get complicated when Maddie falls in love for real with the extremely wealthy Patrick (Stephen Bishop).

And even more complicated when her banker mark ends up murdered.


And even more complicated when Patrick turns out to have a game-changing secret of his own.

And even more well, you get the idea... when the Bumblers (Ezra, Richard, and Jules) show up in Seattle, and agree to work with Maddie and her associates to bring the Doctor down.

Gay characters:  Jules, who starts dating Patrick's "sister" Gina, even though they're both working on cons against the other.

Maddie is bisexual, I suppose, but it's never referred to.

Gay subtext:  Richard strikes me as gay but not out (Jules even refers to this or that hot guy as his new "boyfriend" or "man-crush").  He has a gay-subtext bromance with Ezra, and then switches to Maddie's associate Max.  Side note: Silver Daddy Brian Benben was last seen as a bare-butt Dad on Dream On?

Beefcake: Occasional shirts off. The cast is surprisingly top-heavy with hot guys.  For example, Samuel Patrick Chu plays a nebbish working at the bank, not part of any scams, with only a few lines.  And here's his physique.

I've only seen one season of The Imposters.  My grade: B

There are nude photos of Mark Harelik on Tales of West Hollywood.

See also: Chris Demetral

Bruno and Boots: A Gay Couple at MacDonald Hall

Bruno and Boots are the stars of a series of children's books by Gordon Korman, set at a down-and-out boarding school near Toronto:
This Can't be Happening at MacDonald Hall (1978)
Go Jump in the Pool (1979)
Beware the Fish (1980)
The Wizzle War (1982)
The Zucchini Wars (1988)
MacDonald Hall Goes Hollywood (1991)
Something Fishy at MacDonald Hall (1995)

I haven't read any of the books -- I never heard of them before Netflix - but Bruno is the "let's fill the swimming pool with jello" trickster, Boots the "but we'll get in trouble" superego, and they're surrounded by the usual high school nerds, jocks, and martinet teachers.  The rival school is the snooty York Academy, and Miss Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies provides a female Bruno-Boots pair to spar with and get crushes on.

A series of movie adaptions has appeared in Canada.  The first, Bruno and Boots: Go Jump in the Pool (2016), now streaming on Netflix, stars:

1. Jonny Gray, a Disney teen, star of the similarly-themed Max and Shred (2014-2015) as Bruno.











Jonny is the one on the far right.

2,  Callan Potter, a newcomer who would go on to star in The Other Kingdom on Nickelodon, as Boots. 

The plot:  In the book, a gay subtext:  Boots is forced to transfer to York Academy so he can compete on their swim team.  Bruno hatches some wild schemes to raise money to buy a pool for MacDonald Hall, so they can stay together.

In the movie:  They just want the pool.  Plus Boots goes out for swimming so he can impress The Girl.

That's right, the gay-subtext motive has been obliterated, and a hetero-horny motive introduced.

I guess because in 2016 you couldn't pretend that gay people do not exist anymore.

I fast forwarded through the other two movies, to see if there was anything good:

Bruno and Boots: This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall (2017): The headmaster tries to separate the duo.

Bruno and Boots: The Wizzle War (2017): They try to get even with a crazy teacher.

Gay characters: The girl-crush is de-emphasized.  You can still read them as a gay couple, if you want. .

Beefcake:  Bruno and Boots rush to class in their underwear, with some blatant bouncing around.  Otherwise nothing much.

My grade: C-

J.R.R. Tolkien, the Heterosexual Who Wrote about Men in Love

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) was one of the iconic authors of my childhood, his Lord of the Rings trilogy one of the first gay novels I ever read.  I didn't even know what "gay" meant yet, but I knew about Sam carrying Frodo up the slopes of Mount Doom, Merry and Pippin putting their beds next to Aragorn's, Gimili forsaking Middle Earth to follow Legolas to the Elven lands.

I didn't know anything about Tolkien himself, except that he was a scholar of Medieval literature from England.  I assumed that he was gay, of course.  What straight guy would evoke so many same-sex romances, and omit women, and desire for women, from Middle Earth?

Later I found out a few more details: he served in World War I, he was married to Edith throughout his life, he had four children, and he was a devout Roman Catholic (religion, too, was entirely absent from Middle Earth).  On the other hand, he was deeply involved in an informal group called the Inklings, men (including C.S. Lewis) who got together to drink, dream of Medieval worlds, and form those strong quasi-homoerotic bonds of Oxford best boys.

I certainly don't want to see the movie Tolkien (2019), which takes place before he even begins writing the novels and centers heterosexual romance as the great inspiration of his life. What's next, giving Oscar Wilde a great hetero-romance just because he was married to a woman?

So let's skip the details and see if Tolkien has any gay characters or beefcake potential.

1.  Nicholas Hoult (top photo) as good old John Ronald Reul himself.

2.  Anthony Boyle (second photo) as  Geoffrey Bache Smith, a childhood chum killed in the War.

3.Tom Glynn-Carney (left) as Christopher Wiseman,who invites Tolkien into his social group, his "fellowship," as it were.

4. Craig Roberts as Sam Hodges, a soldier Tolkien serves with,  maybe Sam to his Frodo?

5. Patrick Gibson as Robert Gibson, a fellow artist killed in the War.

That's about it,unless you want to take a look at the uncredited Bargeman, Drunken  Student #2, Rugby Spectator, and Moroccan Waiter.

See also:The Lord of the Rings

Frank Hamer and Maney Gault: The Brokeback Couple Who Brought Down Bonnie and Clyde?

I walked into the living room in time to see the last few minutes of The Highwaymen, about the Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, who tracked down legendary spree killers Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.   Basically all I saw was the bloody car being paraded through the streets of a small Louisiana town, one of the guys refusing an interview, and the two driving off together.  The closing credits stated that they were buried in the same grave.

Driving off into the sunset together!  Buried in the same grave!  Were they a romantic couple?  Time to do research:








Born in 1884 in Fairview, Texas (near Dallas), Frank started out as a cowboy, then joined the Texas Rangers in 1905.  He resigned several times, most notably in 1932, because Texas had just elected a female governor, and he couldn't stand the idea of being bossed around by a woman.  He also worked as a federal marshall, cattle theft specialist, prohibition enforcer (tracking down bootleggers during Prohibition), and strike-breaker.

In 1917, he married Gladys Sims, who was on trial for her husband's murder.  The husband's brother-in-law, Gus McMeans, ambushed them, and in the ensuing shootout McMeans was killed.  There was no investigation.

Frank also stalked and threatened José Tomás Canales, a state representative who was investigating corruption in the Texas Rangers.  He was not charged.

And that's just the summary on wikipedia.  Quite a piece of work.

Frank was married twice, and had two kids, Billy Beckham Hamer and Francis Augustes Hamer (that's how it's spelled).  He died in 1955.





Maney Gault (left, with Frank in 1932) doesn't have a wikipedia article, but I read an article in True West magazine.  He was born in 1886, and worked as a dairy farmer before the Depression; then he found a job in a sawmill.  Frank was his neighbor in Austin, Texas.

They sat up many nights playing cards and playing bluegrass music and um...such.

Frank got Maney a job with the Texas Rangers, and they started going on cases together.  They continued to work together until the Bonnie and Clyde case, whereupon Frank moved on to other jobs.  Maney stayed on as a Ranger  until his death in 1947, finally supervising a vast territory in west Texas.

He was married, too, to Rebecca Johnson Gault (1886-1955).  Two kids, Leona Gault Pannell and Johnson Gullette Gault. 

But marriage and children don't preclude same-sex loves.  Maybe Frank  and Maney had a Brokeback Mountain thing going on. Can you imagine them saying "I won't quit you"?

Ok, I looked up the movie's end credits again.  It says "same small tract," not "the same grave."

Find-a-Grave says that they are buried in the Austin Memorial Park Cemetery. They are the ones with crosses: Maney's grave is in the foreground, and Frank's a row back and to the left, about 10 feet away.

Were then 10 feet apart in life, too?

Or closer?

   

Was the Duck Man Gay?

When I was growing up in Rock Island, Disney comics were a mixed bag.  Some stories depicted Donald Duck as a harried urban schlub, taking soul-destroying jobs and being abused by his nattering girlfriend.

Others depicted him as a stalwart adventurer, going off with his Uncle Scrooge and resourceful preteen nephews in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola, the Mines of King Solomon, the lost Crown of Genghis Khan, the golden fleece of Jason and the Argonauts, giving me my first glimpses of many of the twists and turns of our cultural heritage.

It was a rough-and-tumble man-only world, with never an instant of hetero- desire or hint of hetero-romance. Girls did not usually exist at all, and when they did, they were killjoys, waiting back home along with the bank notes and mortgages and all the little miseries and dull dread of "adult" life.  Who wouldn't prefer searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola to shopping for hats with Daisy Duck down at the Bon Ton?

In high school and college I found many more of these "good Duck stories."  Others I read about in comic book guides, dreaming about the wonders they held for those who could fork out hundreds of dollars for the original comics:

"Land of the Totem Poles"
"Trail of the Unicorn"
"In Ancient Persia"
"The Gilded Man"

During the 1980s,  I read most of them in reprints and special editions, and I thought about the "Good Duck Artist."  With his wonderful romanticization of masculine worlds and constant critique of heterosexual romance, surely he was gay!

I knew that his name was Carl Barks,  and he was a Disney studio animator turned comic book artist, but I didn't know anything else about him.  Maybe I didn't want to know anything else.  What if this cherished figure of my childhood was straight, sleeping with ladies while he penned men-only worlds?

Then Barks' successor Don Rosa began to spin a series of epic romance stories featuring Uncle Scrooge in love with Glittering Goldie, a dance hall girl he met while prospecting in the Yukon.

But Goldie appeared in only one canonical story!  I exclaimed. As a villain!  Carl Barks would never envision a hetero-romance!

So I looked into Barks' biography to "prove" that he was gay.

Born in 1901, Barks grew up on the family farm in Oregon, surrounded by rough-and-tumble types: prospectors, loggers, and "well-armed cowboys."

Well-armed, yeah? Nice arms?  Big biceps?  Nudge, nudge, wink,wink.

As a boy Carl  (second from right) was not interested in sports. He preferred reading, music, and art.

Artistic, yeah?  Quiet type, not athletic.  Sort of a milksop?   Nudge, nudge, wink,wink.











At age 17, he moved to San Francisco, where he lived in a residential hotel and found a job as an errand-boy.

Errand boy, yeah? Lots of errands.  Lots of running around. yeah? Lots of guys wanting things done? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

In 1921, the 20 year old Carl married Pearl Turner.

Gulp.

They had two daughters.

Carl took a variety of jobs, including mule driver and carriage maker, while trying to sell his art.  He published a lot of risque comics in the Calgary Eye-Opener, a Jazz Era "dirty magazine."

Gulp.

After he divorced Pearl in 1929, Carl married Clara Baiken.  That marriage ended in divorce in 1951.  He married Gare Williams, a painter, the following year.  They stayed married until her death in 1993.


Gulp.

He eschewed big cities, preferring the wilderness, ending up in Grants Pass, Oregon.

Gulp.

Well, was he at least gay-friendly?  He lived to be almost 100, long enough to know all about the Gay Rights Movement, support gay people in the military, and maybe even support gay marriage.

Nope.  He was a staunch Republican who "disliked Democrats," a fiscal conservative who wanted things to stay the way they are.  There don't appear to be any specific statements about gay people in his work, but the comic book story The Golden Helmet (1952) contains a homophobic stereotype: when Donald is working as a museum guard, a fluff approaches and asks directions to the "lace and tatting" collection.  Donald bemoans the lack of "he-men" in modern society.

So Donald and company rejected women because they were heterosexual he-men?

And because Barks believed that his audience of preteen boys would not be interested in hetero-romance.

Yet.

See also: Donald Duck's Double Life; Heterosexualizing My Childhood Hero

Get Out

African-American photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) reluctantly accepts his white girlfriend  Rose's invitation to visit her ultra-rich family for the weekend.  They're not at all racist!  she assures him.  They have black friends.  They voted for Obama -- twice!

Chris knows that white people often suffer from unconscious racism that allows them to congratulate themselves for just saying hello to a black person.  He expects to spend the weekend hearing about black friends and becoming a spokesperson for the black condition.  But he goes.

The family, passive-aggressive Mom and Dad and crazy-aggressive "let's wrestle!" Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones), are pleased as punch to meet Chris. They say all of the things that liberal white people say to prove they are not racist.  Jeremy compliments Chris on his genetics, but...ok.   Just the usual microaggressions.

The black servants, Georgina and Walter, act like zombies, like Stepford Servants.

That weekend, the Armitages invite a lot of their wealthy white friends to a party, where they all but drool over Chris. They obviously want him -- physically.  Is this a club for black fetishists?

There is only one other black man at the party, a young guy named Logan King (LaKeith Stanfield).  He has the same vacant zombie vibe as the servants.  Plus he dresses and acts elderly, and he has a much older wife. Gigolo?  Or hypnotized?

Turns out to be much worse.  Spoiler alert:

Rich white people are transferring their brains into young black bodies, so they can be younger, stronger, more talented, more athletic, more hung, better in bed, better at practically everything.

Aha!  Black people have always suspected that white racism is rooted in jealousy.

Afterwards the old personality is still there, but stuck inside, unable to act.  That's why all of the transferred people act like zombies.

Georgina and Walter actually have the brains of Grandma and Grandpa Armitage in them.

Wait -- they wanted black bodies just so they could become servants?

Sometimes they kidnap the bodies they need, and sometimes Rose procures them by dating them and inviting them up "for the weekend."

Chris is next!  Both Jeremy and Jim Hudson (Stephen Root),  a blind art dealer (rather a poor career choice) want him.  A desperate escape attempt follows, with everyone in hot pursuit, getting offed by Chris as he struggles to Get Out!

Beefcake:  Not much.

Gay references:

Rose's previous conquests include 14 men and a woman (if each wooing takes about six months, that's a lot of work for someone of her age).

Chris calls his comic-relief buddy, Rod (comedian Lil Rel Howery), who suspects that something nefarious is going on. Remember Jeffrey Dahmer?  Some black dudes went to his house, thinking "I'm just gonna suck some dick, maybe jiggle some balls," and they got decapitated.

Gay subtexts:  Where to begin?  Every white man in the movie is arguably gay, leering at Chris, commenting on his attractiveness.  One assumes that they desire Chris's body. Only later do we discover that they want to live in it. 

Plus Chris and Rod work together to solve the mystery.  In the last, scene, Rod saves Chris, and they drive off into the sunset together, subverting the trope of male-female fade-out kiss.

Costume Quest: Frederator Has Done Better

Costume Quest is an Amazon cartoon series based on the children's video game and graphic novel.  Just before Halloween, four 12 year old friends go out to test their homemade costumes.  They discover that a mysterious group  called the Repusians have transformed most of the townsfolk into monsters (secret monsters wearing human suits).  They must draw on their costumes' special powers (and their own inner strength) to discover the monsters' secret agenda and save the day.

The four friends are (from left to right):
1. Lucy (Allie Urrutia), the mystical one.
2. Wren (Gabriella Graves), the fighter.
3. Her brother Reynold (Sloane Letourneau), who lacks superpowers
4. Everett (Issac Ryan Brown), the responsible one.

They are voiced by actual children (top photo), which makes their attempt to pronounce complicated dialogue reminiscent of classic Peanuts.

Their main ally is Norm (Fred Tasciore), who provides the costumes, and has secrets of his own.

The tv series is produced by Will McRobb, known for the gay-subtext (and text) children's classics Doug, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, and Sanjay and Craig.  and Frederator Studios (Fairly Oddparents, Adventure Time), so expect a fully-realized world, a complex mythology, an endless amount of adult beefcake, and some gay subtexts (or texts).

1. Full-Realized World: Yep.  Auburn Hollow is known for its nougat and superhero Abraham Lincoln, Jr., so those products appear in a variety of guises.

2. Complicated Mythology: Yep.  Monsters often cross over into our world and live among us.  Most just want to start a new life, but some are evil, and need a maguffin to give them enough power to take over the universe.  There are back stories, dark secrets, hidden agendas, game changing revelations, and so on, not as complex as Adventure Time, but enough for ashort series aimed and preteens.

3. Adult Beefcake:  Not much.  An occasional muscle man in the background, an occasional monster with 6-pack abs.


4.Gay subtexts:  Not a lot of romantic pairings of any sort, but some inclusivity: 

Teen idol Rooty Tootz (Robbie Daymond), who is heavily gay coded, has male and female fans.

When Norm is lonely, he looks for friends, not a girlfriend.

 Everett wants to get closer to his teenage brother Benjy, not a girl.  And Benjy's teenage friends consist of a boy and a girl.

I'll give it a B.

"Room For Rent": Quirky Gay Subtext Comedy

As a high school student, Mitch (Canadian comedian Mark Little) wins the lottery and goes home with $3.1 million  (this is one of those annoying Canadian movies that pretends to be American, so he wins American dollars).

He turns into an insufferable jerk, causing his friends to dump him and everyone in town to hate him, while squandering his money on fancy hotel rooms and frivolous investments.  His only  remaining friend, Huey (Patrick J. Adams, left), vanishes when the Lamborghinis run out.

12 years later, famous as "the boy who squandered $3.1 million,"  Mitch is living with his parents (SCTV alum Mark McKinney and Stephnie Weir, best known as Karen "Call me Angelique" of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend). He reads War and Peace, plays video games, and refuses to help out around the house or get a job, even though money is tight: Dad is a financial advisor, but no one wants financial advice from the father of the boy who squandered $3.1 million.  They decide to take in a boarder.

Thus the movie's title, Room for Rent.

Carl (Brett Gelman) shows up in the dead of night, leering and muttering about the knives in his valise, but Mom and Dad are desperate, and rent him the room.

He turns out to be the perfect anti-Mitch, polite, thoughtful, helpful around the house.  And he tries hard to redeem Mitch, reconnecting him with his friends Lindsay (Carla Gallo), Huey, and Rocco (Tom Anniko), getting him a job as a canvasser for a green movement, helping him plan a big retirement party for Dad (Warren, who he calls "War").

Mitch is, for some reason, suspicious, and takes every attempt to help as an insult.  What is this guy's angle?

True, Carl is creepily flirtatious, asking Mitch "Where do you sleep?", pushing him to have a drink, leering at him, touching him, implying that he is gay, implying to Lindsay that are lovers.

Mitch enlists Lindsay and Huey to dig up dirt on Carl, so his parents will kick him out.  They discover that Mitch invested in Carl's big invention (an umbrella that evaporates raindrops), but failed to market it, so Carl lost everything and was forced to move in with his parents.  So he wanted revenge.

His revenge plan involves helping Mitch reconcile with old friends, getting him a job, being nice to his parents, and flirting with him?

Does he actually want a relationship?

There is no indication that Mitch and Lindsay were ever romantic partners.  No kissing, no romantic gestures.  They could easily be friends.

When Lindsay discovers that Mitch has a terrible tattoo of a man on a dolphin on his back, she asks "What was the plan?  To never have sex with anyone again?"  He replies "No, to have sex, but carefully, so they would never see my back."

They're both hiding the gender of Mitch's proposed partners.

Nor is there any indication that Carl is straight.  When Lindsay offers to fix him up with a date for the big party, he states that he only likes women who are independent, employed, can cook, and are between the ages of 18-21. But he's obviously trying to get her to back off.  His main interest is obviously Mitch.

Everything works out.  Mitch and Carl reconcile with a rooftop hug and hand-holding, and go into business together.













The last scene is ambiguous:  Mitch is moving into a new house.  Lindsay is there, but there's no indication that they are living together, or dating.

Could Room for Rent be a quirky romance between two heavily wounded men?

"Hialeah": Gay Panic TV Series

Hialeah is a short comedy series (6 episodes, each about 10 minutes long) now streaming on Facebook and Youtube, produced by and starring Melissa Carcache.

She wanted to celebrate her home town with a series something like Que Pasa, USA, where English and Spanish were used interchangeably.

The premise: uptight Jewish photographer Kay (Jordan Wall) and Cubanita Mari (Melissa Carchache) meet and get married in Chicago.

Lacking money, they decide to move back to Hialeah, Mari's home town, and move in with her estranged Cubano family.  But they must keep the marriage a secret, so Mari introduces him as a mere boyfriend.

Her parents and grandparents are still upset over Mari's decision to abandon the family and "study abroad," and now they are even more upset at her choice of a Gringo, who doesn't speak a word of Spanish (he keeps confusing Kay his name with que?)  Besides, he's Jewish, so he doesn't even have a full-sized penis  -- they cut the tip off, as Grandma mimics with a butcher knife

Although Jordan Wall is quite muscular, he plays Kay as a nebbish, intimidated by the vigor, muscularity, and aggressive physicality of the Cubanos, worried that he doesn't measure up as a man, in his penis, his muscles....

And his lack of homoerotic desire.

Each episode introduces a tidbit of Cubano culture, which somehow gets Kay in trouble.  Three involve homophobic panic:

He shares a bed with Mari's bodybuilder brother (Noel Mirabal), who wants to cuddle

He is discomforted when her bodybuilder ex-boyfriend (Danell Leyva) wants a hug.

While practicing an energetic dance, he accidentally ends up partnered with a boy.

Plus the secret that Kay and Mari are hiding from the family, that they are actually married, could just as easily be the secret that he's gay (although I suspect that la familia is less homophobic than Kay himself).

I really don't see why Mari likes Kay.  He comes across as an insensitive jerk, looking down on Cuban culture, complaining about everything, rude to everyone, even people trying to be nice to him.

The cinematography is very bright and colorful, but I would have liked more location shots in Hialeah, to give us an actual feel for the city.  Almost every scene takes place in the Sanchez house.

I would have also liked an actual gay character.  It would have been interesting to see how Kay and la familia respond when the gay subtext becomes text.

But at least there's substantial beefcake.  Even the older generation is rather buffed.

Eurotrip: Hunkage, Homophobia, and a Gay Subtext

While on the treadmill at the gym, I watched most of Eurotrip (2004), a standard young adult comedy of the era, which means recent high school graduates obsessed with boobs and proving that they're not gay.

During the summer after high school, Scotty (Scott Mechlowitz, left)) freaks out when he discovers that his German penpal, Mike, thinks that he's hot.

Hey, Scott, I hate to break it to you, but lots of guys think you're hot.  Deal with it. Gay guys have to deal with ladies liking us all the time.

Scott angrily breaks off all contact.  But upon discovering that Mike is actually Mieke, a girl, he determines to go to Berlin and apologize.









To his credit, his goofy friend Cooper (Jacob Pitts, center) is more tolerant.  He is fully prepared to accept Scotty's "coming out."  And even when he hears that Mieke is a girl, he says "He's the girl, you're the girl, sometimes you're both girls.  Whatever works for you.  I'm not gonna judge."

But he leaves his tolerance behind at the Cleveland airport.

In Europe, the duo hook up with the boobalicious Jenny (Michelle Trachtenberg), and her studious twin brother Jamie (Travis Wester, right).  Think Fred, Shaggy, Daphne, and a male Velma.  Their misadventures take them to London, Paris, Bratislava, Berlin, and Rome, with ample opportunities for gross-out humor:

Jenny and Jamie accidentally make out with each other.

Due to a variety of mishaps, Scotty sets fire to the Papal Apartment in the Vatican and ends up being hailed as the new Pope (But this major act of vandalism and sacrilege doesn't get him in trouble after everyone realizes that he did it "for love.").

There are ample opportunities to see boobs -- lots and lots of boobs -- and also male physiques,usually framed as moments of disgust.  And lots of opportunities for the boys to prove that they're not gay.

They end up on a nude beach that's...gasp...occupied entirely by naked men!

A Creepy Italian Guy on the train starts coming on to Jamie, to his shock and horror.

Cooper thinks that he's going to have a hetero BDSM scene with one Madame Vandersexx, but instead she brings in GUYS and yells "Administer the Testicle Clamps!"

Even throwaway gags:

Scotty: I'm thinking of majoring in German.
Cody: Don't be such a woman.

Even Jenny is ridiculed for being "gay" for telling a story about hetero-romance.

So, you're probably wondering, why did I stick it out?

Other than the fact that the only other choices were Meet the Press and The Andy Griffith Show?

To start off, the movie offered substantial hunkage, which is really all you need on the treadmill at the gym.

 Scott Mechlowicz looked extremely familiar,but I haven't seen him in anything else.  His most notable movie is Peaceful Warrior (2006), in which he plays a gymnast with his shirt off.

I was interested in Jacob Pitts, who so intensely channeled Matthew Lillard (Shaggy in the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie).  He moved from Macbeth on Broadway directly to Eurotrip.  Currently you can see him on tv in Sneaky Pete and The Sinner.  Here's a recent nude.













And I was interested in the character of Jamie.  He seems to have a major crush on Scott, even selling his beloved (and expensive) camera to finance Scott's trip to Rome in search of "true love": buddy-bonding.

And he's the only one of the group who doesn't get a fade-out kiss.  Instead, he's offered a job with Frommer's Guides.  A economic fade-out, but I'll take the gay subtext.

Travis Wester is currently in law school.  I assume the guy he's hugging is his boyfriend.