Michael Landon, Gay Ally

Michael Landon arrived in Los Angeles at age 19 and immediately started landing roles as tortured outcasts and juvenile delinquents, such as the gay-vague protagonist in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). He also cut some teen idol records and posed for innumerable beefcake shots before landing the role of Little Joe, youngest of the three sons of widowed rancher Ben Cartwright (Lorne Green) on Bonanza in 1959.

For the next 14 years, Little Joe played the part of "teen hunk," strutting about shirtless and bulging, giving thousands of boomer kids their first crushes.  Unfortunately, he had little significant buddy-bonding, as he was constantly consorting with women, culminating in a marriage -- and the tragic demise of his bride -- 1972.

When Bonanza finally ended in 1973, Landon had acquired a reputation as a stable, solid, and "wholesome," a conservative remedy to the endless sexual innuendo found elsewhere on prime time.

But his next series, Little House on the Prairie (1974-83), was not exactly conservative.  It offered cynicism, backstabbing, contemporary social issues -- and an endless supply of beefcake.  According to Alison Arngrim, who played the bitchy Nellie Oleson, Michael Landon was quite aware of the program's gay male fans, and catered to them by mandating that the cute guys on the show often appear shirtless -- and engage in some buddy-bonding plotlines.

Never far from a tv screen, Landon continued after Little House with Highway to Heaven (1983-89), about a wayfaring angel who displays little heterosexual interest and travels with a male companion (Victor French).

He was in declining health, but he lived until 1991, long enough to express his support of his gay son, 16-year old Christopher.

The Top 10 Country Songs: Beefcake and Homophobia

Yesterday the aerobics room in the gym was playing Country-Western music again. I hid in the free weight room, where they were playing Classic Rock,but some of the machines are out in the other room, so I had no choice but to hear twang twang dead-end job twang twang women are unfaithful twang twang why can't men be men and homos not exist .

This isn't Alabama.  Who could possibly like this stuff?

I couldn't actually hear the lyrics, just the twang-twang, so I thought, maybe I was being premature.  Country-Western music may have evolved into something less...um....horrid since the days of Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash.  Maybe the new twangers are less homophobic.  Or at least know their way around a gym.

Why not give it a chance?  So I looked up the top 10 Country-Western songs for this week:

1. Blake Shelton, "God's Country": the North may be full of sinners and perverts, but the South is full of true Christians who are saved and going to heaven.

Blake, who is extremely ugly, here appears to have his head plastered on someone else's body. Couldn't he have chosen someone hot? He is well known for his homophobic tweets.

2. Morgan Wallen, "Whiskey Glasses":  I want to get drunk because my girlfriend has broken up with me, and is probably having sex with another guy right now.

Morgan here is covering up his bulge, so you can't look. I wonder if the other guy is bigger.

3. Luke Combs, "Beer Never Broke My Heart": I want to get drunk because my girlfriend has broken up with me.

4. Luke Combs, "Beautiful Crazy": My girlfriend is kooky but hot.  

I'm glad he found somebody new.

It's hard to find shirtless photos of Country-Western singers, but in this case, I don't think I want to.











5.  Kane Brown, "Good as You": My girlfriend is nice to people, plus she's hot.

Could this be the wrong Kane Brown?  He looks like a rapper, not a twanger.  But when you're looking at Country-Western stars, you take beefcake wherever you find it.

Kane is also the only singer on the list to come out against homophobia.

6. Chase Rice, "Eyes on You": My girlfriend is just plain hot. 

I wonder if she would say the same about you?

In addition to twanging, Chase Rice played football for the University of North Carolina, did something for NASCAR, and appeared on the reality tv show Survivor.















7. Thomas Rhett, "Look What God Gave Her": My girlfriend is hot, plus I'm religious.

Searching for Thomas Rhett and "gay" online, I found this tweet from 2010: "If my Ipod dies on a gay song, I'm going to kill you."

8.  Eli Young Band, "Love Ain't": My "just friends" girl is with the wrong guy, so she should dump him for me.

The only group on the list, it consists of Mike Eli, James Young, Jon Jones, and Chris Thompson, who met while attending the University of North Texas in Denton.

Apparently it wasn't in an English class.

9. Lee Brice, "Rumor":  There's a rumor going around that we're together, girl, so why don't we get together?

10. Dan + Shay, "Speechless": My girlfriend is just plain hot.

In my day, we used the plus sign + to indicate that a pair was a romantic couple, but I guess Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney both have girlfriends or wives or something.

Results: Not as political as I expected. 5 of the 10 are about how hot girls are, 2 requests for dates, 2 about lost loves, and 1 about being religious.

Heterosexism: They're all about girls, girls, girls.

Homophobia: Nothing in the lyrics.  Only 2 of the 9 stars have made homophobic statements (that I know of), but only 1 has made a pro-gay statement.

Beefcake:  Of the 9 stars, only Kane Brown has a respectable physique, and I still think that he's really a rapper.

See also: The Top 10 Pop Songs.

Why We Watched "Amen" in West Hollywood

When I was living in West Hollywood, Saturday night was cruising night; at 9:30 pm, just after The Golden Girls, you headed out to Mugi (for Asian men), Catch One (Black men), Basgo's (Hispanic men), the Faultline (Bears), or the Gold Coast (Sleazoids).

In by 10:00 pm, out by midnight with a phone number or a hookup.

But the bars didn't get busy until 11:00, so you might stall after The Golden Girls, and watch Amen (1986-91) before heading out.

It starred Sherman Hemsley (left), formerly of The Jeffersons, as the deacon of a black church in Philadelphia, who uses sneaky, underhanded tricks to get ahead (woo a new singer for the choir and so on).

He butts heads with the straightlaced Reverend Gregory (Clifton Davis, right),who finds himself loosening up and even making up some schemes of his own. Clifton Davis was a real minister, affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventist Church (and later a Baptist), so he made sure the shenanigans never got too immoral.

Although they did involve alcoholism, gambling addiction, divorce, and suicide (no gay people or AIDS, of course).

Meanwhile the Deacon's man-hungry spinster daughter Thelma (Anna Marie Horsford) sets out to grab Reverend Gregory.  After a few seasons of "will they or won't they?" and a few false starts, like the Reverend passing out before he can say "I do," they finally get hitched in the spring of 1990.

There wasn't a lot of buddy-bonding between the Reverend and the Deacon. The main draw was Clifton Davis, his hunkiness intensified for those with a preacher fetish.  Unfortunately, he never appeared shirtless (the top photo is another Clifton Davis).

The rest of the cast was of limited beefcake interest. The gossippy Hetebrink sisters.  Ultra-elderly Rollie, who, true to tv tradition, has a very active love life.

Farther down the guest star list, we find Bumper Robinson as Clarence, a street kid who the Deacon takes under his wing (left); and guest spots by many recognizable black actors, including James Avery (Fresh Prince of Bel Air), Ron Glass (Barney Miller), LaWanda Page (Sanford and Son), Richard Roundtree (Shaft), Nell Carter (Give Me a Break), Darius McCrary (Family Matters, below), and Shavar Ross (Diff'rent Strokes).

In retrospect, the main impact of Amen was to revv our engines.

"Ok, Amen is over. Where do you want to go cruising?"

"No doubt: Catch One."

See also: The Jeffersons

Peeking into the Homophobes in Training at the Dayspring Christian Academy

I was looking on Amazon for a Latin Bible, maybe Jerome's Vulgate, when this popped up: Latin Bible Reader, with some Bible passages in Latin and vocabulary lists and really amateur illustrations, written by Dr. Randy Hilton of the Dayspring Christian Academy. 

The back cover elucidates: It is a K-12 school "established in 1987 as a beachhead against against the secular and socialistic tidal wave sweeping across America."

In 1987? The middle the Reagan years, the heyday of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority?

I had to learn more about this school.

Dayspring Christian Academy was founded by Dr. Michael Myers, who still serves as headmaster.   It is in Montville, about 4 miles west of Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Amish country), across the street from the Mountville Church of the Brethren, down the street from the Mountville Mennonite Church, the St. Paul United Methodist Church, and the Vision of Hope Metropolitan Community Church.

A gay church a stone's throw from campus. Don't tell Dr. Myers!



Academics: They do offer Greek and Latin, plus rhetoric and logic,all of the classical arts.  With the Bible everywhere.

This is Dr. Hilton, by the way.  He teaches Latin and Doctrines.  When asked "What have you seen in your students that touched your heart the most, he responds "When they completely turn their hearts over to the Lord."

Wait -- he does soulwinning right there in Latin class?  I hope he declines it properly.

In English class, you study "British and American classics from Beowulf to Ben Hur." This is the first time I ever heard that the 1880 novel by Lewis Stone was a classic. Or good. Or that literature ended in 1880.  No Lord of the Flies for these Stepford students.

The Biology syllabus begins:  "Since the creation of Adam, man has been involved in the naming, dominion, and care of God’s plants and animals. The creatures of the earth were designed as a benefit to man and are therefore
worthy of observation and study. Because of man’s fall, students will also study life and its processes in order to survive the resultant diseases, infestations and harmful organisms...."

And on and on like that.

The Chemistry syllabus: "The foundation of science will be explored through a study of Genesis chapters 1 through 3."

I assume they get to atoms and molecules sometime?

What about World History?  " The impact of a society’s understanding of God on the view of the individual, government, education, work, and commerce is traced."

Surely not Algebra? Yep:  "Students also determine how the study of algebra reveals God through the biblical principles of constancy,  Christian character, problem-solving, representation, and the Dominion Mandate." 

What does any of that have to do with quadratic equations?

Every class is somehow connected to the Bible.  Even Olivet Nazarene College was never this fundamentalist.

Ok, student activities:

Clubs include Worship Team, Robotics, Ultimate Frisbee, and "Science Cinema" (you watch movies about science and criticize them for talking about evolution).

And something called Serve For Education Blessing Day, which allows students to play bowling, mini-golf, billiards, and video games.

Sports: They only offer soccer, volleyball, basketball, golf, and cross-country. The blond seems to have a physique.

The only shirtless photo I could find was of the gym teacher, which is not surprising, given the small school and the fundamentalist orientation.  But it's always fun to peek into the ranks of homophobes in training.

Imagine what Dr. Hilton would say!

Mitchell, South Dakota: Corn, Tourism, and Bulges

Mitchell, South Dakota is a small, square townof 15,000, on the Plains about 70 miles west of Sioux Falls. Known for its corn, tourism, and corn-based tourism.

And bulges.

Here are the top tourist draws:

1. The Mitchell Corn Palace, built in 1892, covered by murals constructed entirely of corn and other grains  (new murals are built every year).  There used to be several in the Plains, but it's the only one left.

It is kind of an impressive, kitchy Moorish-style building, but I'm not sure what you do there except look at it and say "That's a lot of corn." There's a comedy duo performing in March, and in April the Corn Palace Cup, a soccer invitational

2. Valtiroty Shiloh's Tabernacle: a "Bible Land" with a Garden of Eden, the ancient Hebrew Tabernacle, plastic cows in pens, a cardboard castle guarded by a dragon, and a proprietor anxious to save your soul.

3. The Prehistoric Indian Village, inhabited between 900 and 1000 AD, and excavated beginning in1910.  You can tour the archaeological site and the museum.

The McGovern Museum, dedicated to the life of the South Dakota senator and 1972 presidential candidate, who suffered a crushing defeat to incumbent, the soon-to-resign Tricky Dick Nixon (poor McGovern didn't even win his home state).

4. The Guns of History Gallery, consisting entirely of guns used at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

5. Dakota Wesleyan University, which is 130 years old, but still has a small, square campus with modern buildings. It's affiliated with the United Methodist Church, which is relatively gay-friendly, but still there's no gay student group.  There are plenty of bulges, though (top photo).

Athletics (The Tigers): wrestling, cross-country, no swim team.

I couldn't find a list of activities for Mitchell High School, home of the fighting Kernels, and searching for "Mitchell High School Gay" on google just gives me the names of people named "Mitchell Gay."

The athletics page just asks you to donate.  But searching for "Mitchell High School Wrestling" did reveal this person.  He might be from Mitchell Highs in South Dakota, Florida, Indiana, or North Carolina.











Or just someone named Mitchell.

Superstore: Just Leave It on and Watch

Superstore (2015-) is a workplace sitcom set in the vast Wal-Mart like Cloud 9, where responsible, by-the-books Amy (America Ferrara, best known from Ugly Betty) butts heads with the free-spirit Jonah (Ben Feldman, who bears an eerie resemblance to Charles in Charge-era Scott Baio).

We've seen this free-spirit/by the books pairing a thousand times.  Sam and Diane.  Sam and Rebecca.  Scully and Mulder.  But the twist here is: Amy is married.

Her husband Adam (Ryan Gaul) hosts a barbecuing podcast, watches football, fools around with tools, and basically acts like the uber-sterotypic Macho Man, in stark contrast to the sensitive, feminine-coded Jonah.

So this is the real-life aftermath of a teen nerd movie from the 1980s.  Instead of the teen nerd using his sexual prowess to steal The Girl away from her loud-mouth jerk boyfriend, she marries him. 

Of course, Jonah and Amy will hook up eventually anyway, but adding a husband delays the inevitable enough for the first two seasons to be palatable.

The other characters are the eclectic bunch familiar from other workplace comedies:

1. Lauren Ash as Dinah, the gun-toting, karate-chopping assistant manager/security specialist, who skins wildebeests before breakfast and dropped out of the marines because everyone was too wimpy.  She has a crush on Jonah.

2. Colton Dunn (left) as Garrett, the sarcastic, street-smart black guy who knows how to work the system to his advantage.  He's also in a wheelchair.

3. Nicole Bloom as Cheyenne, an airheaded 17-year old high schooler who got pregnant by her boyfriend (Johnny Pemberton), an aspiring rapper with extremely progressive, pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-racist lyrics: "God is a black woman, yo!"  They get married, and name their daughter Harmonica. 


4. Josh Lawson as Tate, a sadistic pharmacist who makes Jonah his personal slave.

5. Jon Barinholtz as Marcus, a doofus who gets everything wrong and often is injured ("My spleen!").

I was concerned about two characters.

6. Nico Santos as Mateo, who starts out as a priggish tattletale and brown-nosing sycophant, self-righteous, condescending, scheming, manipulative, a gay villan in training.  Over the first season, he softens and becomes more likeable, and in the second season he begins dating.  I still don't like him, but at least his character is not entirely homophobic, a source of laughter rather than disdain.

7. Mark McKinney as store manager Glenn.  McKinney was an original member of the Canadian comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall in the 1980s.  He plays Glenn with a squeaky cartoon-character voice, and as so completely clueless that he comes across as mentally challenged.  And he's a born-again Christian who reads the Bible aloud  and asks for Jesus' blessings during staff meetings.

Born-again Christian usually means homophobic, so I was cringing when a gay couple came into the store to plan their wedding.  He asks "Which is the lucky groom?", and upon hearing "Both of us," assumes that it's a double male-female wedding.  Upon being apprised that it's a gay couple, he is surprised but not angry, and overdoes the enthusiasm: "Oh, you're gay?  That's terrific!  I'm totally supportive! I think gay people are great!"  Finding out that Mateo is gay provokes the same reaction.

Ok, not homophobic.  Scarily out of touch, but not homophobic.

Superstore is not the most innovative of shows; it's mostly what we've seen before.  But it's pleasant enough.  It reminds me of the old days of network tv, where they put a C+ show in between two A+ shows, so you could either turn off the tv for a half hour or just leave it on and watch.

I'll just leave it on and watch.

Shawn Stevens: The Teen Idol that Failed

In the 1970s, Shawn Stevens had the soft, cuddly, puppy-dog cute, aggressively feminine presence that pushed Shawn Cassidy, Leif Garrett,  Scott Baio, and many others into teen idol heaven.  Why did he not make it to the heights of fame, with millions of middle schoolers kissing his poster and writing "Shawn Stevens" surrounded by little hearts in their chemistry notebooks?

It could be that the field was a little over crowded, with a dozen soft, cuddly, puppy-dog cute, aggressively feminine teens and post-teens strutting their stuff. You can only fantasize about kissing so many boys in a single week.

It could be that he lacked the talent, or the connections.

But I suspect that it was his strong religious beliefs, which kept him from moving to the next level: taking off his shirt, shoving lead pipes down his pants, shifting from dreamy to sexy as his target audience grew up.

According to his very detailed biography on IMDB, Shawn was born in Morristown, New Jersey into a fundamentalist Church of Christ family (his great-grandfather was a prominent Church of Christ minister who founded several Christian summer camps for inner-city youth).  His parents were also besties with fundamentalist ex-teen idol Pat Boone.

His family moved to California when he was 13, and he became deeply involved with musical theater, starring in youth productions and singing with the upbeat group The Young Americans.

When he was 19, a small role filmed in Utah led him to a lifelong devotion to the Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormons).

Then he got his big break: the shortlived tv drama The MacKenzies of Paradise Cove (1978), about five orphans who adopt a grizzly fisherman (think Punky Brewster times five), shot Shawn into stardom.

Suddenly Shawn was in the spotlight:

He became the National Spokesman for the March of Dimes.

He hosted the Miss Teen America contest.

The mayor of his home town proclaimed "Shawn Stevens Day."

He got Tiger Beat fave rave articles.

He got a record contract.  No actual records, but he did get to perform "New York State of Mind" on an episode of Fame, and he became buddy-buddy with androgynous superstar Leif Garrett.

1981 was a banner year: guest spots on Too Close for Comfort, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Facts of Life, and Captain Kangaroo, a recurring role on a soap opera, the teenage son on Savage Harvest (about a family attacked by lions while on safari in Africa).

And then it fizzled out.  During the next few years, a smattering of guest spots, another soap opera gig, and after 1985, nothing.  Shawn began working on promotional videos for the LDS.  According to Deseret News, they resulted in 600,000 conversions, which is probably a lot more than he would have drawn to the church as a guest star on Sheriff Lobo.

Still, one wonders, did Shawn deliberately end his Hollywood career for the higher calling of Mormon proselytization, or was it unavoidable, as time and again he said "I'll do anything for my art, but I won't take my shirt off."

"Or show a basket."

Religious zeal comes with a price.

Shawn's imdb bio paints everything as joyous, bounteous, and God-directed, of course, but reading between the lines, you can see hints of failures and disappointments, and a flight into the arms of the Church.

The good news: after 30 years, Shawn is back on the big screen, mostly in Mormon or otherwise Christian productions:
The Cokeville Miracle (the aftermath of a hostage crisis with a miraculous resolution)
Sacred Vow (marital infidelity is forgiven)
Drop Off (a drunk gets redeemed)
Love Everlasting (two high school outcasts find love with each other and with the LDS)
In Emma's Footsteps (the wife of Joseph Smith carries on the Mormon work)

Plus three episodes of the post-Apocalyptic Day Zero.

So if you can handle the beaming certainty of religious zeal and an utter lack of gay characters or subtexts of any kind, you have a chance to see Shawn again.

I imagine he still refuses to take his shirt off, though.

"God Friended Me": God Friends Gay People, Too

TV dramas often sent the protagonist out on the road, to encounter new people in different settings every episode.  It provides for more plot possibilities than the "what else can we have happen at that radio station?" of situation-bound dramas. and famous guest stars can draw in the viewers. 

Sometimes the wandering busybody is an angel, or sent by God in some way.  I tend to avoid those shows, as they tend to be treacly "learn to live every moment!" nonsense. 

God Friended Me gives the heavenly helper a twist.  Miles (Brandon Micheal Hall), who runs a popular atheism podcast, gets a Facebook friend request from "God."  Obviously not the Creator of the Universe, but some provocateur, so Miles accepts.  "God" suggests other Facebook friends, all of whom have problems that Miles can solve.

1. A doctor planning to commit suicide.

2. A writer with writer's block and an estranged mother gets into an auto accident, and is assisted by the doctor from Miracle #1.

3. A single mother with an autistic son.

4. A motherless teenager (Jason Genao) and a police office with a dead wife (auto accident) find each other.

5. A woman with a lost love, who turns out to be a lonely gay guy (Will Rogers, left).  They are happy to reconnect as friends.







 

6. An alcoholic artist with a sister who died in an auto accident feels guilty.

7. A Muslim cab driver who disapproves of his daughter's Jewish boyfriend (Etai Benson, right).

8. Miles' own estranged father, a minister who disapproves of his atheism, and whose wife died in an...auto accident.

And so on.  By the way, what's with all the auto accidents?  Sloppy writing, or is Miles in some sort of coma after an...auto accident? 

Meanwhile Miles (center) tries determine the identity of this "God" person, along with his Scoobies:

1. Cara (left), the writer from Miracle #2.
2. Ali, Miles' sister.
3. Rakesh (Suraj Sharma, right and top photo), a computer hacker.
4. Jaya, his girlfriend
5. Arthur, from Miracle #8

There's a lesbian couple and a gay man among the miracles, which raises the ire of fundamentalist Christian fans:  "But...but...it's about God!  It shouldn't be forcing deviant lifestyles down our throat!"   

Fundie fans also tend to believe that "God" is actually God, communicating out of an updated Burning Bush.  After all, who else would be able to get Miles to the exact location he needs to be in to meet the person who is connected to another person who will help them reconnect with their estranged whoever?