Gavin MacIntosh, Part 2: From gay middle schooler to car salesman to OnlyFans hunk

Link to the n*de photos

This was a big deal in 2013: On the first season of The Fosters, a soap opera about the "gloom, despair, and agony" befalling a family of fostered and adopted kids, Jude (Hayden Byerly) starts a romantic relationship with his classmate Connor (Gavin MacIntosh).  They were both thirteen, making them the youngest out gay kids on television at the time. 

Homophobes squealed with outrage -- when they kissed, Youtube put an age advisory on the clip.  Gay fans kept a careful watch to see if unconscious  or conscious homophobia in the writer's room would lead to the couple being "punished" with more than their fair share of tragedy.  

Turns out that lots of horrible things happened to them, but nothing worse that the horrible things happening to the other characters -- this was a show about agony, after all. 

About halfway through Season 3 in 2016, Connor announced that he was moving to California to live with his mother, and Gavin MacIntosh left the series. 

The bio of Jude on the fan wiki ends abruptly, but according to Wikipedia, he eventually gets another boyfriend and breaks up with him, reuniting with Connor in a 2021 episode of the spin-off Good Trouble.

So, is Jude now a 19th century Russian prince?

Fans spent a lot of time on social media speculating about why Gavin left.  Was tired of the constant agony his character was going through?  Squabbling over his contract?  Planning to go to college?  He did attend Long Beach City College in 2016-17.

Whatever the reason, Gavin finished up guest spots on Bosch (2014-2016) and Bones (2016-17), and then retired from acting.

More after the break

"Running Point": Travis has a stage mom, Jackie has a p*enis problem, and Sandy's ex is dating a Greek god. With a p*enis

I don't like sports at all, but I'm still going to review an episode of Running Point (2025), on Netflix, about a basketball franchise (a team in a league that is guaranteed to play regardless of performance).  

Problem: "running point" is meaningless to me, so I keep forgetting the title every time I look away.  Google AI says that it is "a team's offensive style that emphasizes fast-paced, up-tempo play with a lot of transition opportunities."  So basically "play it loud"?   

The Premise: When Cam (Justin Theroux) of the Los Angeles Waves retires to go into rehab, he names his sister Isla (Kate Hudson) franchise president, to the consternation of her brothers Screw-up Ness (Scott MacArthur) and Micromanaging Sandy (Drew Carver).  Both Scott and Drew have played gay characters, and I think they're both bisexual in real life, so there's a good chance we'll see some gay representation.   

To increase the odds, I'll review Episode 1.7, "A Special Place in Hell," where "Jackie and Sandy's messy love lives catch up with them."  

Scene 1: Isla enters the franchise headquarters, narrating that since Coach Marcus (Toby Sandeman) gave Player Dyson(Uche Agade)  the confidence to shoot free-throws granny-style, the team has turned around. They've won three games in a row.  Hey, Isla's friend is Brenda Song from "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody"

In the office, she asks her assistant Jackie (Fabizio Guido, left) to refill her water jug, but he's not around.  Cut to him in bed with a woman: "This is the best thing that ever happened to me, including finding out that I'm in a family of billionaires."   But he's late for work, so he rushes out (underwear shot).

Back story:  Jackie, who worked concessions at the basketball arena, recently discovered that he was the illegitimate son of the sibling's father, so their half-brother.  They responded by giving him a job as Isla's assistant? 

Scene 2:  Jackie trying to work and look at bikini girls on the internet.  Isla wants to know where he was all morning.  He had to stop and...vote.  "Oh, we have to do that again?"  Probably, but there will just be one person on the ballot. 

The other brothers and the coach call her into the conference room to discuss "an existential crisis":  Important Player Travis' overbearing Mom.  She comes onto the court during games. She calls plays. They can't just send her back to Florida, because players idolize their Moms.  They sacrificed everything to push them out of the hood.  So could Isla tell her to tone it down?

Scene 3: Heading to the restroom, Jackie texts his girl an invitation to the Shake Shack. Inside, he literally bumps into the Very Important Mr. Ramirez (Roberto Sanchez), and praises him for all he has done for the Hispanic community.  Mr. Ramireze then praises Jackie's father: "I never approved of his lifestyle, but seeing you makes me think that some good came from his proclivities."

 It sounds like he's being homophobic, but he means that Jackie's Dad, the deceased franchise president, had lots of heterosexual marital affairs.

When Ramirez leaves, Jackie unzips at the urinal --- and screams!  Well, it's your own fault for not wrapping it.

Scene 4: The team practicing.  Travis' Mom drops by to water him, smooch him all over, and discuss how much she loves him.  Ugh, a smothering mom.   

After he leaves, Isla drops in to try to get Mom to lay off a little.  She's one of those big, flashy, crass women you see on reality tv, maybe a parody of a Kardashian or something. I'll fast-forward over that section.

Scene 5: Finally, we get to Sandy (Drew Tarver, right).  He leaves a voice mail for Charlie, with whom he has had a falling-out. "I know we're not technically speaking, but I found the air pod you were looking for.  I could drop it off anytime.  Love you."  After hanging up, he screams "F*ck!" in horror at how lame he sounded.

 I'd identify him as gay, but I've been fooled before by women with men's names, so let's just wait. 

Meanwhile, Jackie goes to his half-brother Ness's office: "When I pee, it feels like fire coming out."  See a doctor.   "You've got chlyamidia, dog." A common STD that spreads through unprotected oral, anal, or vaginal s*ex, although with gay men, it appears most often in the rectum. 

Having s*ex increases a straight man's prestige, since presumably women have to be wooed and won, so.  Ness congratulates and hugs him.  "You'll be fine.  Just go see the team doctor.  STDS are like 80% of what they deal with."

More after the break. 

A Teenager Doing Pushups on TV

Today you can go online and see 100,000,000 pictures and videos of n*ked bodybuilders and athletes flexing for selfies, and every actor with even minimal musculature takes off his shirt at the drop of a script.

When I was a kid, there was virtually nothing.  An occasional Tarzan movie, an occasional teen idol with an open shirt in a Tiger Beat centerfold.  And that was it.

Seeing a man or boy on tv with his shirt off was so rare -- vanishingly rare -- that every instance is indelibly imprinted in my brain, as unforgettable as my first airplane trip or my first date with a guy.

Greg strips down to go surfing on The Brady Bunch .
Stephen Parr shows off his washboard abs on Mystery Island.
Steve Elliot shaves while wearing only pajama bottoms on Petticoat Junction.

And, sometime in the 1960s, I'm guessing around 1968, a Public Service Announcement for the President's Council on Physical Fitness shows a teenage boy doing pushups.

Shirtless.

Hard delts, thick biceps, beautiful interplay of muscles as he rises and falls, rises and falls.  His face becomes red.  He is smiling.

The narrator tells us that with every pushup, he's "a little bit stronger, a little bit healthier, a little bit happier than before."

Amazing.

I can't find the original PSA, but it was an iconic moment, a moment when I recognized the beauty of the male physique, in spite of the adult insistence that only women liked to look at men.

By the way, pushups are still widely recognized as a good way to maintain core strength.  The recommended number in a minute differs by age and sex.  50-60 year olds are supposed to be able to do at least 25.  I can do 50, which makes me "excellent" for my age group but only "above average" for a 20-year old.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the Blacksmiths with Brawny Arms

One of the poems parodied on Rocky and Bullwinkle was "The Village Smithy," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1840):

Under a spreading chestnut-tree the village smithy stands.
The smith, a mighty man is he, with large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands.

Actually, it was parodied everywhere, in cartoons and comedy sketches throughout my childhood.   It must have been a recitation assignment for generations of squirming schoolkids, and a hated memory for comedy writers of the 1960s.

If you read the entire poem, you find that the smithy has a wife and kids, but I only ever heard the part about how the village children come around every day to gawk at his muscles.

I could relate.

Although the poem doesn't really have a plot -- the blacksmith flexes his muscles, children gawk, he goes to church -- it was spun into movies in 1897, 1908, 1913, 1922, and 1936.

In the days before factories, the blacksmith had the job of forging tools and other instruments from iron. There were several blacksmith gods, including Vulcan in Graeco-Roman mythology and Ilmarinen in the Finnish Kalevala.

Unfortunately, they rarely worked shirtless -- too many sparks.

But early cinematographer Eadweard Muybridge filmed two naked blacksmiths for his study of Animal Locomotion.

There are still blacksmiths today.  They even have World Championships.  40 blacksmiths from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Britain competed in the 2014 Horseshoeing Contest in Eureka, Nevada.  Trey Green of Lakeside, California was the winner.

Looks like they still have "large and sinewy hands."

See also: James Whitcomb Riley: Even a Dull, Depressing Poet Can Be Gay

"Dive!!": Japanese Anime Featuring Bulges, Biceps, and Longing Gazes

 Most Japanese anime series devote about 70% of the run time to close-ups of women's breasts, but Dive!! (with two exclamation points) is somewhat different: instead of boobs, we see biceps, bulges, pecs, and abs filling the screen.  Most of the characters are in high school, but we'll assume that they are of legal age, so it's ok to look, and the camera certainly expects us to.   I reviewed the first episode. 

Scene 1:  A little boy, Tomoki, follows his dog to a swimming pool, and is mesmerized by the diving boards, and by a boy getting ready to dive (long full-body shot).  A Damascus Road moment -- he's just discovered the meaning of life!  Diving or cute boys?  Another lingering full body shot as the boy notices Tomoki's interest, approaches, and asks, "Want to jump?"  Did you say "jump" or "kiss"?

Tomoki narrates: "Since that day I have been addicted to the fear and excitement of this world of wind and water." And cute boys.

Scene 2:  A huge auditorium.  The teenage Tomoki gazes in ecstasy as Yoichi, the boy at the pool that day bulked and bulged up,  approaches the board and executes a dive. He wins first place, and gets a full body shot (I'm going to stop pointing these out.  They happen constantly.)  "You were awesome!" Tomoki exclaims.  Yoichi counters: "You can soar, too!"  They gaze into each other's eyes.

Scene 3: At school, Tomoki's classmates criticize him for his diving obsession. "But you see so many bulges!"  (Just kidding.)  A hot girl approaches.  Now they understand why he dives: to get girls.  When I was in school, everyone assumed that the only reason a boy did anything, from joining a club to choosing a college, was to meet or impress girls.

Scene 4: Tomoki and the Girl walking.  While she blathers on about pancake toppings, he reflects: people always ask if diving is scary.  But it's not: the real problem is the pain.  I've jumped off the high dive. There's a little sting as you hit the water.  Maybe when you dive, you're going faster, so it hurts more.

They reach the pool.  The Girl want to watch him dive, but "You can't.  No spectators.  Um...look, there's Yoichi! Bye!"  He abandons her for the cute boy.  

Scene 5: Yoichi displaying his bulge...um, I mean stretching.  The obviously smitten Tomoki approaches to watch him dive. 

 Coach: "Growl, growl, your shoulders were off."

Now it's Tomoki's turn.  He hesitates; the other divers tell him to hurry up.  Hey, one of them flashed a limp wrist!  Does that mean the same thing in Japan as it does in America?  He does a backwards double-somersault.  

Coach: "Growl, growl, your toes were off."

Scene 6: The divers in the hot tub, complaining about the coach: he expect us to become Olympic athletes.  This is supposed to be fun. They also criticize Tomoki for hesitating on the board: it throws all of the divers off.  

Scene 7: As we look at various diver bulges, the narrator plot dumps: Mizuki Diving Club was founded six years ago by Chairman Mizuki, head of the biggest sports company in Japan, to promote Japanese divers.  If they don't start producing results -- Olympic-ready athletes -- they will be closed.  So far Yoichi is their only hope: both of his parents were famous divers, so he grew up on the boards. The camera lingers on his body.

Scene 8: Flashback to Tomoki's first day of diving instruction.  As the kids practice on the low dive, he gazes awestricken up at Yoichi on the high dive.  "He is so cool!"

Scene 9: It's raining, but the young Tomoki goes to the pool anyway: "I thought there would still be practice.  I want to learn to go on the high dive like everyone else."  Yoichi encourages him to try.  He bounces and splats on the water: 

Yoichi: "Next time keep your eyes open."  Whoops, he goes in too slowly, and splats again. A third try, and he makes it!  Yoichi helps him out of the pool, grinning.

Tomoki narrates: "That was the only time Yoichi taught me something."

Scene 10: The team is gossipping about "A scandal!  Adultery!"  One of the boys saw Coach Fujitani talking to a young woman; obviously his girlfriend! And then he bailed on practice.  "No way!  Coach would never abandon us like that! She's obviously from corporate, here to shut us down."

Meanwhile, Yoichi accuses Tomoki of having a girlfriend.  "It's not like that!" he exclaims, but Yoichi is already walking away.  Tomoki watches him sadly. "Oh, no, this is the worst!" he thinks. Why is he upset that Yoichi thinks he's dating a girl?  Because now Yoichi will never ask him out? 

Scene 11:  A forlorn Tomoki goes home.  Younger brother Hiro:  "The Girl is upset because you didn't return her texts."  Tell her to get lost!  "Leave me alone!  I'm having boyfriend problems!"  

Scene 12: Tomoki walking his dog, being forlorn: "The Girl said that she was in love with me, and wanted to be my girlfriend, and I agreed!  Why did I do it?  Maybe I wanted to brag to my friends, or keep from hurting her feelings?  Or maybe I was scared of what rejecting a girl might mean."  The Girl keeps texting him, and he keeps ignoring her.

Scene 13: After school.  Tomoki says goodbye to his classmates, sees the Girl, and...runs to the pool.  Suddenly one of his teammates points out that the young woman from corporate is here to shut them down!

The bulges line up for her announcement: she's the new coach, determined to take them to the Tokyo Olympics.  The end.

Beefcake: Lots of physiques, bulges everywhere. In later episodes, we get butt shots, too.  Of course they have to dress in swimsuits to dive, but the camera loves lingering,   

Is Tomoki Gay:  It looks canonical, but to be sure, I fast-forwarded through some other episodes.

In Episode 3, Tomoki and the Girl go on a picnic.  He sees other couples kissing, and asks: "Do you ever feel like you're trapped?  Penned in a small space, and you'll be stuck there for the rest of your life?"  Sure, that was my childhood and adolescence, trapped by the "all boys like girls" mythos.

In Episode 6, the Girl has dumped Tomoki for his brother.  He is angry and betrayed, but brother points out that he doesn't know her birthday, her favorite color, or anything else about her.  "And have you ever kissed?"

But there is no same-sex kiss, either, just some longing looks and touched hands.  If he is canonically gay, it is all in conversations.

The original novel by Eto Mori (2000-2002) is dubbed "homoerotic" by wikipedia, but no further details are given.  The 2008 movie adaption, as described on Asianwiki, seems to concentrate on the "beautiful coach" and reduce the homoerotic to subtext. 

The Incredible Severns Grow Up

"The Incredible Severns" are featured in the March 10, 1947 issue of Life Magazine, brothers ranging in age from 4 to 21, all in show biz.  Here Peter Stackpole photographs them demonstrating "Yoga-like muscle exercises"

Looks to me like they're just showing us their ribs.

So, did they grow up to be musclemen?  I did some research.

Dr. Clifford Brill Severn (1890-1981) and his wife Rachel, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans from Johannesburg, immigrated to the U.S. in the 1930s, and got all eight of their children (six sons and two daughters) involved in movies.

Cliff (1925-2014) began acting at age ten, and appeared as the boy buying Scrooge's Christmas goose in A Christmas Carol (1938).  He retired from acting after They Live in Fear (1944) to join the British army.  In 1947 he founded the Southern California Cricket Club, and championed the sport in the U.S. for the rest of his life (photo: a random shirtless cricket player).

Raymond (1930-1994) began acting at age nine, and played opposite Mickey Rooney in A Yank at Eton (1942).  He retired in 1944, and in 1947 joined the Southern California Cricket Club with his brother (photo: Mickey Rooney).

Ernest (1933-1987) appeared in four movies, and retired in 1947.

Christopher (1935-) appeared in six movies, including Mr. Miniver (1942).  He retired from acting after Titanic (1953).

William (1938-1983) appeared in seven movies, including David and Bathsheba (1951).  After high school, he became a fundamentalist Christian and started an evangelical ministry that took him all over the world.  He later became a televangelist.

Winston (1942-) appeared in four movies, including A Man Called Peter (1955).  He later played on the U.S. national cricket team. I"m guessing that this is his grandson.


Ok, I didn't find any musclemen in the grown-up "Incredible Severns."  But it was fun trying.

"Selection Day": Ultra-Closeted Gay Cricket Players Who Don't Play Cricket

The 2016 novel Selection Day, by Aravind Andiga, traces the journey of two boys, Radhu and Manju, being groomed by their father to become cricket stars.  Well, perhaps "aggressively shoved into" is more accurate.  The elder Mr. Kumar is completely obsessed with the sport, and believes that his sons are his ticket to fame and fortune. 

Manju, the central character, has two secrets: he doesn't like cricket very much, but he's afraid to tell his father tha he wants to become a scientists; and he's gay.  But if he comes out, he will lose his cricket scholarship and his career -- cricket is even more heterosexist than American sports, and gay athletes absolutely "do not and cannot exist."

His wealthy boyfriend Javed encourages him to come out anyway, but you know, Manju is poor.  The rich have options that the poor do not.  They can choose not to marry.  They can spend most of their time in London.  They can be "eccentric" without losing their families, their social statuses, maybe their lives.  The poor have to marry or die, they can't flee to London.  They are stuck.  The novel ends with Manju stuck.

I was interested in seeing how the Netflix tv series (2018) would handle the book.  After all, Manju being gay is pretty much the entire plot.  How could they heterosexualize him? 

Turns out that they don't exactly heterosexualize him, but they gay-subtext him into oblivion.  He's angst-ridden over something that is unknown and unknowable.  He kind of glances at Javed. He hangs out with girls.

Javed (Karanvir Malhotra, above) is such a minor character that he doesn't make much of an impression at all.

I actually get more of gay vibe from Lord Subramayan (Shiv Pandit, top photo and left), Manju's touch-feely mentor. But it's a creepy-homophobic gay predator vibe.

If I didn't know Manju was gay from the book, I'd never figure it out in the series.  In an interview, Mohammad Samad (who plays Manju) states that he wasn't even aware that his character was gay until after he was cast.

I have two more questions about this boring, homophobic mess:

1. These are athletes. Shouldn't there be some locker room scenes, or at least some shirtless workouts?

2. In a tv series about cricket players, shouldn't there be some scenes with them playing cricket?

The Homophobic Horrors of Gym Class

The homophobic horror that is gym class began in 1855, when the state of Ohio made the ill-fated decision to require it of all students.  It took off during the 1920s, when "physical culture" was all the rage in Europe, and students were doing gymnastics in the yard.

By the time I entered junior high, the diabolical structure was in intact.

1. The "class" was actually called Physical Education or "p.e.," but only girls said that.  Boys had to say "gym," even if the teacher insisted.  

Got that?  Better not slip up, or you would be called a "fairy" or a "girl."

2. The two most gifted athletes in the class would then become team captains, and choose their team members.  "Fairies" were constantly ridiculed and degraded during the process, and left unchosen at the end, while the two team captain argued over who had to take them.  "I'm not taking the fairy -- you take him!"  "No way -- no girls on my team -- you take him!"

Then we played a sport.  No instruction in rules or strategies -- the "teacher' assumed that we already knew the rules.  If we asked, we were yelled at: "Don't be a smart-ass!  You know the rules!"

3. In junior high the sport was usually dodge ball, which involves trying to kill each other with hard round projectiles while yelling homophobic slurs: "Take this, f*g!"

4. In high school the sports were football in the fall, basketball in the winter, softball in the spring.  Same procedure: no instruction, two jocks picking teams and deriding the "fairies" while the "teacher" looked on.

Football was the worst.  "Stand here, facing this big, hulking man-mountain.  You're going to try to stop him from passing this line."

I just stepped aside and let him through.

We also got brief instructional tours, single class sessions, of golf, archery, and tennis, barely enough to learn what the equipment looked like. 

And rope-climbing.  I never understood that one.

I was very happy during my junior year, when the "teacher" gave up and just gave us free days to do whatever we wanted.  I ran around the track.  No homophobic taunts, no humiliation, and no projectiles hurled at you.

Shirtless Sports Fans

I've never been to a sports match except for a couple of baseball games, but I understand that it's customary for fans to take their shirts off and spell out their team with letters on their chests.

Looks like there's more beefcake in the stands than on the field.

They can also spell out the name of their favorite player.

Or miscellaneous sentiments.

It helps to get the letters in the right order.

Two letters on a chest isn't really fair.

More after the break.

Zachery Ty Bryan: Home Improvement Also-Ran

Born in Colorado in 1981, Zachery Ty Bryan was hired to play the oldest brother on the TGIF sitcom Home Improvement (1991-1999).  As he grew into adolescence, he became more and more muscular, but his spectacular physique never made a splash in teen magazines -- they were all agog over Jonathan Taylor Thomas.  For most of the series' run,  JTT was the standout star, Zachery a background player.

But he never became bitter over his second-banana status; ZTB and JTT remained on friendly terms.  Instead, he used his free time to star in movies and tv series:

1. First Kid (1996), about a regular guy who lands a date with the President's daughter.

2. "Mr. Muscles," a 1997 episode of Promised Land about steroid abuse.
3. Principal Takes a Holiday (1998), about a teen operator who gets a drifter to stand-in as his school principal.
4. Held for Ransom (2000), which allowed his character to buddy-bond with Jordan Brower.

Afterwards he mostly played athletes whose plots involve winning the championship, not getting the girl.  The Game of their Lives (2005), for instance, is about the U.S. soccer team beating Britain in 1950.

Code Breakers (2005) is about a cheating scandal at West Point Military Academy, with no girls in the cast.

In Hammer of the Gods (2009), he played a man-mountain, the Norse god Thor, who wields a mighty hammer and saves his friends (there's a girl, too, but it's most about his friends).

Today Zach has moved into independent film production.

Dylan Playfair: Some Assembly Required

Speaking of retreads, Disney's True Jackson, VP was about a 15-year old girl who becomes the vice president of a quirky fashion company.  The Canadian series Some Assembly Required (2014-) goes one step farther: when a defective chemistry set destroys Jarvis Raines' house, he sues the toy company, and ends up owning it!

Jarvis (Kolton Stewart, right, previously the star of the dance drama The Next Step) has a lot of ideas for interesting toys, so he moves in, along with an eclectic group of employees from his school:

1. Piper (Charlie Storwick, a center), a computer whiz who has a crush on Jarvis.

2. The gay-coded fashion-plate Aster (Travis Turner, left), hired as designer.

3, Geneva (Sydney Scotia), an it-girl hired to be Jarvis's  assistant.

4.  Bowie (Harrison Houde of the YTV series Spooksville), his best friend, who later becomes company president.

5. Knox (Dylan Playfair, right), a jock recruited as the product tester.

The former owner, Candace (Ellie Harvey of The New Addams Family) sneaks in as cleaning lady "Mrs. Bupkis" to undermine the company.

Heterosexual romance is in the air: Piper has a crush on Jarvis, and Knox has a crush on Candace. But there is also a nearly-gay character, and Jarvis can't seem to keep his eyes off Knox's muscles.  

By the way, Dylan Playfair is the son of Jim Playfair, a former Canadian hockey star who is now an assistant coach for the Phoenix Coyotes.  Groomed for a career in hockey, Dylan played all through high school, but after suffering a concussion during a game, decided that he wanted to do something else with his life: act.

How did Dad respond to this less than macho career ambition?

He was surprisingly supportive.

So Dylan attended Vancouver Acting School, did some modeling, and worked as a bartender while auditioning. Within a year, he was cast in Grave Encounters 2 (2012)

His character is introduced smoking marijuana.

Dad wasn't happy.

Since 2012, Dylan has been very busy, playing three hockey players, a college student in a murder mystery, and a high school runner in a buddy-bonding movie.  In 2016, he starred in the tv series Haters Back Off.  

Good advice.

He's gay-positive.  In 2012 he tweeted about gay marriage in the U.S.: "it's the Apocalypse for redneck, homophobic, racist, prohibitionist, religious extremist ignorants.  Everyone else is ok."

See also: Mr. Young