The Hollow: Adam and Kai Hugging

Three teenagers awaken in a locked room with no windows or doors.  They don't remember who they are, but slips of paper in their pockets give them names.  As they try to escape, distinct personalities emerge:














Adam (voiced by Adrian Petriw, left) is the strong (as in super-strong), logical, level-headed leader.

Kai (Connor Parnall) is the skittish, easily frightened goofball, but a mechanics whiz (he can rewire a spaceship).

Mira (Ashleigh Ball) has mystical powers, like being able to talk to animals.

They escape, only to find themselves in a secret scientific facility, chased by devil-dogs.

Then in a world occupied by minotaurs from Greek mythology, who intend to eat them.

They escape into a lair of witches who want to inhale their souls, meet the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, rewire a spaceship, crash it into the ocean, meet the Cyclops of Greek mythology, and...

More after the break

12 hunks and hunkoids of "The Fosters," all grown up. With a few grown-up d*cks.

Link to the NSFW photos

The Fosters (2013-2018) was a groundbreaking drama on ABC Family, now on Netflix, about a lesbian couple (Stef and Lena) with five children, biological, adopted, and foster (Brandon, Jesus, Jude, Callie, Mariana). The Fosters have foster children, har har 

But it wasn't all sunlight and diversity. Actually, it wasn't sunlight at all. I never watched -- I don't do tragedy -- but the episode synopses sound grim. There were drinking problems, psychological problems, incurable diseases, deaths, homophobic hate crimes, custody battles...like a live-action Howard Cruse comic.   But for many viewers, the remarkably open gay content was worth being depressed.

Besides, there are endless teenage boys with their shirts off to draw in the gay boys and straight girls. I'm checking to see if there were any adult hunks in the crowd, or if any of Fosters Fave Raves have grown up.

1. David Lambert (left):  Brandon, the oldest son in the family. an aspiring pianist whose dreams are dashed when an injury paralyzes his hand.  He also becomes the victim of statutory rape by hooking up with his father's girlfriend.

2. Danny Nucci: Mike, Brandon's biological father, a cop who has a drinking problem, shot an unarmed suspect, and has a girlfriend who hooks up with Brandon.

3. Tom Williamson: AJ, Mike's foster son.  Where does he find the time to be a foster parent?

4. Jake T. Austin (left): Jesus, the second son, who has Attention-Deficit Disorder.

5. Brandon Quinn: Gabe, Jesus' biological father, who didn't tell Jesus because he didn't want the boy to know he's a registered sex offender.

6. Hadyn Byerly: Jude, the youngest son, who becomes mute in angst over coming out as gay (with lesbian parents?), but eventually learns to accept himself and starts dating, with probably the youngest same-sex kiss on television.







More grown-up Fave Raves after the break

Zits: A Comic Strip for Anyone Dating Twinks

He's big, awkward, clumsy, and gawky, with weird tattoos and piercings.

He sleeps till noon.

He is constantly texting, tweeting, and posting on social media, but he refuses to hold a face-to-face conversation.  When you ask "How was your day?", you get a blank stare.

He leaves his clothes scattered all over the floor, dumps wet towels all over the bathroom, and God forbid he ever washes a dish.

He is physically incapable of showing up for anything on time.

He is constantly criticizing your wardrobe, musical tastes, pop culture references, and knowledge of technology.

He has pizza and ice cream for breakfast, and never gains an ounce.

He wants sex thirty time a day.

Jim Borgman and Jerry Scott's comic strip Zits depicts 15-year old Jeremy Duncan from the parents' point of view,  depicting adolescence in all of its geeky, gawky, messy, self-obsessed glory.

But if you're dating teenagers or twinks, it will ring absolutely true.

 I can see Jeremy every time I try to get a twink date or hookup to look up from his smartphone now and then, or when I order a salad while he gets the triple-bacon cheeseburger.






Jeremy has a coterie of friends, including best bud Hector, bohemian Pierce, and girlfriend Sarah, but most of the jokes involve generation-gap squabbles with Mom and Dad.

There are also jokes about being middle-aged, balding, and clueless, to give the teenagers something to laugh at.

There are only two differences between the 21-year old still snoring in my bed at 11:30 am and Jeremy Duncan:

1. Jeremy is not attractive.  Actually, there's no beefcake in the strip at all. Sometimes the cartoonist pays attention to feminine breast and curves, but the men are all stylized and nondescript, meant to be funny-looking rather than hot.

2. Jeremy is heterosexual.  Way, way, way heterosexual, in that annoying "girl-crazy" fashion.  Heterosexism is the rule in Zits: "All boys, without exception, long for girls."

And that annoying casual homophobia: the touch of another man, even your dear friend, is repugnant, as this 2014 strip tells us in emphatic terms.






A gay character named Billy appeared in a few strips in 2006, identifying himself as gay, but expressing an interest in "hot girls."  He vanished, due to Jim Borgman's squeamishness over "seeing the 6:00 news in a comic strip."  Later, Borgman backtracked, saying that he was "proud" of the continuity.

Billy appeared again, just once, in 2012.  Jeremy advises, "Give it time, dude. They're from a different generation, so it takes them time to catch up."

Sarah asks "Are Billy's parents upset that he's gay?"  No, Jeremy says, "We're talking about phone apps."

The Patty Duke Show

I was saddened to hear of the death of Patty Duke today, at age 69.

The actress was a long-time friend of the gay community, supporting gay rights and AIDS research, and appearing in a number of gay-friendly productions, such as By Design (1982), in which she played a lesbian fashion designer, and Hail to the Chief (1985), about the first woman president of the U.S., with a gay Head of the Secret Service ("The deadliest fairy you'll every meet").

Two of her sons, Sean Astin (born 1971) and Mackenzie Astin (1973), are actors.  They have also appeared in gay-positive productions.  Mackenzie is bisexual.

Of all her memorable performances on tv and in the movies, Baby Boomers remember her most fondly for The Patty Duke Show (1963-66).  It was before my time, but I've seen episodes on youtube.

Patty Duke plays Cathy Lane, a sophisticated, urbane Scottish teenager "who's lived most everywhere, from Zanzibar to Barclay Square," but comes to America to live with her uncle.  She has a cousin, Patty Lane, a typical American teenager who "loves to rock and roll, a hot dog makes her lose control."

Guess what: Patty Duke plays both girls!  They're identical cousins!

Ok, there's no such thing.  They must be sisters -- there's more going on in that family tree than meets the eye.  Better not to ask.

We also shouldn't ask about what happened to Cathy's parents.  Better leave it open, like Mike and Carol's exes on The Brady Bunch.

Cathy sets in to become Americanized, and the standard sitcom complications ensue:
Patty gets a crush on her French teacher.
Cathy tutors a basketball star.
Patty becomes the editor of the school paper.
Cathy gets a date with Sal Mineo.

Looking through the episode synopses on Wikipedia, I find few instances of the girls masquerading as each other.  I guess the novelty of seeing Patty Duke playing two characters at once was enough to fuel the plots.

The family was rounded out with a mother and a father (William Schallert, Jean Byron), a kid brother (Paul O'Keefe), and a series of boyfriends and crushes, notably Eddie Applegate (Richard, who appeared in 88 episodes), but also just about every young adult in Hollywood: Ronnie Schell, Steve Franken, James Brolin, Frank Sinatra Jr., Bobby Vinton, Richard Gautier, and Daniel J. Travanti.

Celebrities like Frankie Avalon, Sammy Davis, Jr. Troy Donahue, and Robert Goulet played themselves.  Chad and Jeremy and the Shindogs performed.

No gay specific characters, obviously, but the show was memorable for not trying to push people into a heteronormative box.  Patty and Cathy's classmates included science nerds, movie buffs, artistic types, athletic types, boys who weren't interested in girls, girls who weren't interested in boys.

William Asher, who co-created the program and wrote most episodes, went on to the gay-subtext filled Bewitched.

In 1999, 33 years after the series ended, many of the cast reprised their roles in The Patty Duke Show: Still Rockin' in Brooklyn Heights.  The family reconvenes to prevent the destruction of the old high school.

Patty is a drama teacher, divorced from Richard, with a grown son (Alain Goulem) and a granddaughter, and Cathy is a widow with a teenage son (Kent Riley. left).

Neither of them is immersed in the heterosexual nuclear family box.

See also: Mackenzie Astin; Sean Astin