"Merry Happy Something": Watch it with the Family Bigot

Spending Christmas with The Relatives on the other side of the world is always stressful: stuck in a house for two weeks with no exercise unless it's nice enough to jog outside, forced to watch...ugh...sports and eat...ugh...meals prepared by people who think potato chips are vegetables, all the while deflecting conversations about religion, politics, Muslims, and homa-sekshuls (you don't want the Family Bigot to start screaming).

Spending Christmas with the boyfriend's relatives is even worse, since you have to switch instantly from boyfriend to "roommate" depending on which member of the extended family knows. And sometimes you aren't informed in advance.  I once spent an entire afternoon being "the roommate" for my boyfriend's aunt, only to hear "Oh, she's known since I was 12."

So when I saw that Netflix released Merry Happy Whatever, an entire eight-episode tv series about the horrors of meeting The Relatives at Christmas, I planned to watch.  No doubt it would be infinitely heterosexist.  So what?  It would still be a good cure for the Day After Thanksgiving malaise, with The Visit looming.

It's a traditional multi-camera sound-stage sitcom, with a couch downstage center facing what is supposed to be a tv set.  With a laugh-track yet.  How retro!

L.A. hipster and aspiring musician Matt (Brent Morin, below) agrees to fly cross country to small-town Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to spend a 10-day Christmas vacation visiting the Family of his girlfriend Emmy.

10 days?  That was his first mistake.

Family Patriarch Don Quinn (1980s hunk Dennis Quaid), a small-town Sheriff, seems to be channeling Tim Allen on Home Improvement, or maybe William Shatner on S* My Dad Says.  Sports, tools, cars, grunting, flee from anything feminine.

He's got ancient gender-based hangups on everything from women working to men wearing the wrong kind of shoes, plus a few that I never even heard of, like "only women should decorate the Christmas tree."

And he has three children (not counting Emmy) who are totally on board with his cave man machismo, and three in-laws who are trying hard to avoid his wrath by pretending to be:

1.Dimwitted jock son Sean (Hayes MacArthur, top photo) is generally a success: wife, house, job, kids, the litany of male accomplishments that I heard incessantly while growing up.  Then he loses his job, and is afraid to tell his wife, Joy (Elizabeth Ho), because a man who can't support his family is not a real man.

And their 12-year old son, Sean Jr. (Mason Davis), ha a heart-to-heart about "feelings" that he's been "trying to hide."  They brace themselves for a coming-out, but Sean Jr. means that he's an atheist.  Almost as bad for this conservative Catholic family!

2. Chirpy housewife Patsy is married, but has been unable to conceive a child.It must  be due to the less-than-manly sperm of her husband  Todd (Adam Rose). Also he's Jewish, but terrified of suggesting the most innocuous dreidel to augment the Birth of Baby Jesus.   

3. Aggressive, controlling Kayla (Ashley Tinsdale)  is married to mild-mannered Alan (Tyler Ritter, left). But when they arrive for the first of 10 traditional holiday gatherings with the Family, he announces that he wants a divorce. They're arguing all the time, and they haven't had sex in a year.

Kayla begins dropping broad hints that the reason they broke up is: she is not attracted to men. In fact, she likes women -- a lot.  She comes out as a lesbian to Matt, but is afraid to tell the Family. Wouldn't you be?

When Matt falls into this maelstrom, Dad immediately labels him "a woman" because he is a musician, doesn't like sports, faints at the sight of a needle, and is from California.  Aren't they all sort of iffy out there?   The rest of the Family, sensing that he' the weakest member of the pack, fall in line:

Matt: Where is everybody?
Patsy:  The men all went out to get a Christmas tree.
Matt:  Well, not all the men.
Patsy:  All the real men.

At first Matt tries to macho up and bond with Dad, but then he changes his tactics, pushing back against Dad's gender-role malarky.  Men can be sensitive, artistic, intellectual, non-sports enthusiasts.

Energized, the others start pushing back, too.  Todd gets the nerve to suggest adding some Jewish traditions to the household.

Sean gets the nerve to tell Dad that he lost his job, AND that his son is an atheist.

In the last episode, set on New Year's Eve, Kayla comes out.  The Family gathers for a group hug, and Dad gives her a rainbow-flag keychain.  Matt's intervention has worked wonders.

I think I'll watch this show again in a couple of weeks, when I'm back home visiting The Relatives. 

"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+

"Assimilate": You Will Like Girls. Resistance is Futile

The promo for Assimilate (2019) shows two very cute guys making a web series about their horrible small town in Missouri because they need money to get out. 

Gay guys can relate.

The townspeople start acting strangely.  Sounds like a sort of Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing.  A little boy appears in a second story window.One of the boys says "We save Joey, then we save our parents, and then we get out!"

Could they be a gay couple?

It's worth a look.

First scene:  the guys are Zach (Joel Courtney, top photo) and Randy (Calum Worthy).  They  begin their web series.

They mention the captain of the football team, but not the girl he's with.

The priest of the local church (or a Protestant minister who wears a clerical collar) tells them about a production of Jesus Christ, Superstar.  "There will be girls!" he squeals in heterosexist glee.

"We're definitely not going to that!"  they agree.  Obviously not interested in girls.

They tell their friend Kayla  about their project, and she says "You can both get rich and date starlets."

They look at each other umcomfortably.

Gay guys in a town where everyone is pushing the "girls! girls! girls!" brainwashing all the time.  No wonder they want to escape.

Whoops. She leaves.  Randy tells Zack: "Dude, you have to ask her out."

Ok, so Zack is straight.  Their discomfort at the "girls! girls! girls!" rhetoric was just a tease.

But do they at least have a gay-subtext buddy bond, where they rescue each other from the horrors ahead, and walk off into the sunset together?

Fast forward to last scene. Zack and Kayla are saving the kid.  They have been the central pair all along, Randy having vanished as soon as his usefulness for the gay tease ended. 

Or maybe it's not a gay tease at all.  Maybe the pod people are a metaphor for heterosexist brainwashing, how gay boys are being pressured every moment of every day to like girls, talk about girls, desire girls, claim that girls are   the meaning of life. Resistance is futile.

The Beefcake of My Cousin's Cousin's Home Town

I have to fly to South Carolina for a funeral, and my mother wants me to look up some sort of distant non-relative, the son of my cousin George's cousin on his mother's side.  I checked him out on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: 28 years old, nice physique, but there are 20,000 photos of him with guns and fishing poles.

Plus he has a girlfriend, of whom he posts "If you have an amazing woman like i do go out your way to let her know that no-ones got shit on her."

Gee, how poetic.

Then I read that he graduated from Berkeley.

Say what?

Turns out that it's not the University of California, Berkeley, the bastion of the New Left, the ultra liberal, ultra intellectual Harvard of the West.  It's Berkeley High School in Moncks Corner, South Carolina (that's how they spell it, one of the weirdest, most Gothic towns in all the Truman Capote-Flannery O'Connor-Tennessee Williams South.

Its main tourist draw are the scary Cypress Gardens

It was originally a Huguenot settlement (French Protestants fleeing Catholic oppression).

There's a Trappist Monastery that got in trouble for unethical treatment of the chickens they used for egg farming.

It's the home of Charlamagne tha God (that's how he spells it), an actor and talk show host who got in trouble for defending transphobic violence.

There are restaurant called Little Pappy's, Tail Race, and Gilligan's, after the tv show Gilligan's Island.

There are Baptist, Primitive Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Church of God, Christianity Holiness (that's how they spell it), Assemblies of God, AME, and Nazarene churches.

The high school offers basketball, baseball, football, wrestling, and girls-only cheerleading.  It has no Gay-Straight Alliance.  The principal graduated from the ultra-fundamentalst Grand Canyon University.  The coach tells us about his wife and kids.  Apparently girls' tennis is big, but I only found one good photo of a wrestler.

These two are not actually from Moncks Corner, but they wrestled there.


















And one presentable photo of a swimmer.

So, what do you think?  Should I take an extra day and drive 50 miles to visit my cousin's cousin from Moncks Corners?

Turns out that I didn't need to bother visiting him.  He visited me.  See: The Surprising Post-Gay Halloween of Charleston, South Carolina.

Eerie, Indiana: Omri Katz, Paranormal Investigator

Israeli actor Omri Katz played J.R.'s son on Dallas (seen here hugging his gay-vague nanny, played by Christopher Atkins), and a scientist's son zapped into a world of sentient dinosaurs in Adventures in Dinosaur City.  But he's probably most famous for the gay-vague classic Eerie Indiana (1991-92).

It lasted for only 17 episodes (plus an eight-episode spin-off starring Daniel Clark), but it is still remembered and discussed by fans.  One of the first of the teen-paranormal series of the 1990s, it drew on Twin Peaks (1990-1991) to depict a small town with an overarching mystery to be solved, with minor mysteries along the way.

Marshall Teller (Omri) moves with his parents to a small town in Indiana where weird things happen.  Tupperware containers keep you alive forever. Time stops.  ATMs aren't what they seem. There's a tornado every year on the same date.

A world full of bizarre events, where everyone has a secret agenda and nothing is what it seems?  That's the life of every kid, of course, but it also reflects the journey of gay boys as they try to negotiate the mine-field of adult heterosexism, the constant "What girl do you like?" and "You'll meet a girl someday."

Marshall pairs up with local kid Simon Holmes (11-year old Justin Shenkarow) to investigate. They are often assisted by mysterious grayhaired boy, who has no name and no memory of his past, but calls himself Dash X (16-year old Jason Marsden, right).  But more often he has a hidden agenda of his own.

There were few girl-crazy plotlines -- neither Simon nor Dash X so much as glances at a girl -- but there's lots of captures and daring rescues.  However, Marshall remains just a close friend with Simon, while he is quite obviously attracted to the infuriating, mysterious, powerful yet somehow vulnerable Dash X.  If they had more time, the two might have fallen in love.  Unfortunately, the series ended before they could unravel the mystery or develop the homoromance, leaving viewers with more questions than answers

After the excellent "things are not what they seem" Pleasantville (1993), the Halloween comedy Hocus Pocus (1993), and a tv movie, Omri Katz moved to Israel, where he appeared occasionally in short films (which sometimes feature nudity), including the gay-themed Journey into Night (2002).  He now works as a hairdresser in Los Angeles.

Justin Shenkarow remains an actor and producer with credits in Home Improvement, Picket Fences, W.I.T.C.H., and Aliens in America.  

Coffs Harbour: Big Bananas, Aboriginals, and Drag Queens

Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, is about halfway between Sydney and Brisbane.















Originally its economy was based on bananas, so there are many  big bananas in town, including the Big Banana Fun Park.










And the big bananas who compete in the many aquatic events, such as the Coffs Harbor Ocean Swim and the Coffs Harbour Triathlon.

There are 8 high schools in town (most called "colleges").    Australian high schools don't offer wrestling, but there are lots of swim teams.

There's also a campus of Southern Cross University.

If you get tired of the big bananas, Coffs Harbor features the Bunker Cartoon Gallery, a museum dedicated to the history of Australian cartooning, and the annual Buskers and Comedy Festival (a busker is a street performer).

Although I suppose they have some big bananas, too.

And a variety of outdoor activities, including hiking, golf, tennis, scuba diving, and surfing.  These guys belong to the boardriding club.

Big bananas are a prerequisite for membership, I suppose.

5.6% of the population of Coffs Harbor is Aboriginal, nearly double the national average of 3%.  Most belong to the Gumbaynggirr, one of the largest Aboriginal tribes in New South Wales.  The language had almost died out by the 1990s, but now there are classes and activities, and about 700 people can speak it.

Gumbaynggirr educator Clark Webb looks like he has a big...well, never mind.

  Every July Aboriginals and their allies across the country celebrate NAIDOC Week (National Aboriginal and Torres Islanders Day Observance Committee).  In 2019, the Coffs Harbour NAIDOC featured a football carnival, an art exhibition, an elders' lunch sponsored by the Deadly Sistahs Girlz, and:

An after party hosted by rhe Fearless Felicia Foxx, the "Realest Tidda of Sidney"

A drag queen at a family-friendly event in rural Australia?

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

McCook, Nebraska: Population 7,000, beefcake population 23,000

Pity the gay people of McCook, Nebraska, population 7,000, in southwest Nebraska nowhere near anywhere.  The nearest gay neighborhoods are in Denver, 4 hours away, and Omaha, 4 hours away in the other direction.

The top attractions are the Museum of the High Plains (in an old house), the city park, and a nearby reservoir.

The top restaurants are Fuller's, with toys on the walls, A Taste of Texas BBQ, and McDonald's.

A March for Love in the city park in 2017 drew 50 participants and onlookers, as well as a car with a driver yelling "Death to gays!" and a protest "Marriage = 1 Man and 1 Woman" festival.

But what McCook lacks in restaurants, sights, and pro-gay residents, it makes up for in beefcake.  There are thousands of pictures online of McCook Bison wrestlers.

With or without their shirts.

Individual or group

Wacky or not (this one says "We mean business," so they're wearing ties, and one guy has a briefcase).

In McCook or away.

Sometimes with singlets.

And just when you think you have seen a beefcake photo of every high school and community college athlete in town, a whole file of pictures of the swim team appears.


And the cross-country team.

And powerlifters.

But I'm out of room.

Team Stomp Wrestling: Come for the Beefcake, Stay for the....

I don't know exactly what Team Stomp Wrestling is.  Its website doesn't work, and its Facebook page is a masterpiece of lack of information.  All I've been able to discover is:

1. It's in Lima, Ohio.

2. It's not the high school wrestling team.

3, Member regularly photographed with their shirts off.

4. All ages.

5. The Facebook page contains no photographs of anyone actually wrestling, just a lot of guys hugging.

6. The address is a long, low, nondescript building next to Rex Auto Supply and Brown Supply Company.

7.  They have a dog.

8. They have golf as well as wrestling.

9.  They go on field trips to statues of buffed guys (I'm assuming Neptune).

10. Their twitter page has a post from a guy named Zach, a "rock star pro wrestler," who is proposing to his girlfriend.  He thanks her for "being my Dwayne Johnson."

The next 100 posts are of people congratulating them with memes.

I'm guessing it's some sort of wrestling club.  I just came for the beefcake, but if you are interested in attracting new members, wouldn't you, like, somewhere on your social media sites, say what the group is?

Or do you expect everyone to just come for the beefcake?

Brainerd Boyfriends

Brainerd, Minnesota, population 13,000, is  on the Mississippi River about 2 hours north of Minneapolis and 2 1/2 hours east of Fargo.  It's in a lake-abundant resort area, as you can probably tell from the sights:

Paul Bunyan Land, featuring a 26-foot tall talking animatronic Paul.

Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf

Three Bears Water Park (what do bears have to do with sliding into water?)

Trip Advisor also suggests the Crow Wing County Historical Museum and the National Pacific Railroad Shops Historic District, a series of railroad repair buildings.

Brainerd High School, enrollment 500, has a gay-straight alliance.  There's an article in the Brainerd Dispatch on Valedictorian Bri Storlie, who is gay.  She states that when you put up 50 posters, all but two are torn downthe next day, and when they scheduled a Day of Silence to draw attention to homophobic bullying, some students showed up with anti-gay slurs on their t-shirts.

In addition to the homophobia, Brainerd beefcake is hard to find.  I found a few photos online, but most were from the Brainerd Dispatch, which prohibits downloading them.

So we're going to make do with "dreamy boys," fully clothed objects of romantic fantasies for the tween crowd, for whom faces are more important than physiques, and holding hands is the ultimate in physical contact.

Some bored-looking wrestlers.

The captain of the swim team, and his buddy.  If only I were 30 years younger.

A football player.  Is he benching only 90 pounds?  Oh, well, it's all about the face, not the physique.

The high school's best all-around athlete.  I like the little striped bow tie.