Eight simple rules for determining if Martin Spanjers is gay

  

Link to the n*de photos

Rule 1: Does his character gawk at guys in the shower?

This is a still from Epiosde 3.1 of the  TGIF sitcom Eight Simple Rules (2002-2005).  It was originally Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, about an overprotective Dad played by John Ritter, but when Ritter died, it became a general family-angst dramedy.  I never watched, but in 2004 you could hardly turn on your computer without seeing Martin Spanjers as the teenage Rory gawking at Sam Horrigan.  

Only Seasons 1-2 are available to stream on Disney Plus, so I don't know what's going on in the scene, except that Rory doesn't want to shower after gym class due to his less than adequate package.  Maybe Sam Horrigan is a high school jock?  

2. Does he play a gay-vague teenager?

Fan consensus is that Rory is one of those gay-vague sitcom kids, soft, shy, pretty, and struggling valiantly to act girl-crazy because on American sitcoms, all teenage boys must be girl-crazy.

3. Does he show his stuff on screen?

The next time I saw Martin Spanjers, he was still naked, playing the teenage shapeshifter Sam Merlotte in a 2009 episode of True Blood, about vampires, werewolves, and various other magical beings in rural Louisiana.  When you shift back to human form, you lose your clothes, so he's n*ked when he breaks into a house looking for food or something to steal.

4. Does he have a gay-subtext role?

The house happens to belong to a maenid (minor goddess) named Maryanne, who naturally wants to have sex with him.  He steals $10,000 on his way out, which causes the adult Sam Merlotte a lot of headaches.  

Although the encounter is heterosexual, we can still see a gay subtext. Sam was thrown out of the house when his parents discovered his "secret," like gay kids ejected by homophobic parents. About 40% of homeless youth are LGBT.

5. Does he avoid roles involving hetero-romance?

After Eight Simple Rules, Martin did the usual guest star bit, appearing on as a barista 90210, a chicken restaurant employee on Good Luck Charlie, a kid accused of killing cows on Saving Grace, a rich boy who the Griffins eat on Family Guy,  Well, he had already frozen to death while trying to climb Mount Everest.

He had minor roles in Just Peck, about teen angst, and Little Fish, Strange Pond, about existential angst.

More after the break

Josh Jones #31: "Modern Family" clerk, Pentecostal prophet, Actor for Christ, Dracula. With Jones junk and Broderick backside

We're watching Modern Family in order as a comfort show in trying times.  In Episode 4.12, "Mistery Date," (November 15, 2012), Phil rewires the house while everyone else is gone, and announces that he has been transported to the distant year 2025 (this year!).  

"Go back to 2012!" we both yell at the screen. 

Wasn't 2012 great?  The Middle (Axl in underwear -- sigh), Suburgatory, Raising Hope (Jimmy with his shirt off -- sigh).

Magic Mike, Pitch Perfect (Adam Devine, sigh), Paranorman (first gay character in a kids' movie).

I was teaching at a small private college with exquisite architecture and a view of the Susquehannah River, winning 5-k races, benching 185, going to gay parties, and publishing regularly. 

Barack Obama was elected to a second term.

Sigh.  Back to Modern Family:  Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) goes with his gruff, macho father Jay to buy a giant crib for the upcoming baby.  When the clerk (Josh Jones) asks if he wants to have it assembled, he says no, Dad is macho, and has to do everything himself.  

What about help getting it to the car?  No, Dad is too macho for that, also.  But the Clerk glances over and sees Jay asking for a hug from the store mascot, the Hug-a-Bunny.  Okaaay

That's all, three lines.  But Josh is cute (or was, in 2012), and shorter than Jesse Tyler Ferguson at 5'10", so a member of the Short Guy Brigade. 

In the other plotline, Phil works out at his brother-in-law Cam's gym and accidentally makes a hookup date with Dave (Matthew Broderick), who just had a bad breakup.  They go home and take their shirts off (for non-hookup reasons), but Dave decides that he isn't ready, kisses the still-oblivious Phil, and leaves.  Dude, you went to a gay gym.  What did you expect?

But everybody knows everything about Matthew Broderick already, and Josh Jones will present a research challenge: there are thousands of people named Josh Jones, including many actors, writers, and comedians (our Josh is #31 on the IMDB).

The IMDB: No biographical information, and only four acting roles:

The "Mistery Date" episode of Modern Family (2012).

The Ladder (2013), a short: a teenage boy "teeming with hormones" carries a ladder across town to reach The Girl's window..  Heteronormative! Yuck!  Josh plays a soccer player.

Film Permit Police (2015): I guess it's a tv series about policing people who film without a permit.  Corey Martin Craig plays a Hipster Filmmaker.  Josh plays a permit violator.

We Live Baby (2020): "Summer is faking nice on Live."  I have no idea -- are those people or is a season faking on life?   Josh plays a Stranger.

Additional research led to a few dead ends (no, our Josh is not a British comedian, a rapper, the offensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks, a professional fisherman, or a star of Dancing on the Ice).  But I finally found of some of our Josh's social media.

Facebook: Nine photos, all headshots, and no biographical information.  Posts are about his auditions; he didn't make The Book of Mormon, but he made it into Dracula. 

And a quote from Nehemiah 9.8.  Uh-oh, fundamentalist.  But why Nehemiah?  I don't think I ever heard the minor prophet used as sermon fodder in 20 years as a Nazarene.   

Backstage:

He attended Biola University (2005-2010), a fundamentalist college about 10 miles from Anaheim, California, and got his degree in music.  While in college, he sang Second Tenor in Carmina Burana and Bach's Magnificat (figures).

In addition to his tv and films, Josh has some theater credits: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Dracula, Willy Wonka, The Music Man, Inside the Box, Bridge of Blood, Carmen, and The Magic Flute.

Bridge of Blood is not what you think: it's about Jim Elliott being massacred...um, martyred..when he was trying to bring God's Word to the Auca Indians of Peru in 1973.

More after the break

Jeremy Renner: A gay serial killer, some gay subtext roles, some homophobia, and a penis

  

Like to the nude photos

I wanted to do a profile of Jeremy Renner, the one-time roommate of Kristoffer Winter, who may or may not have dated my friend Infinite Chazz in West Hollywood.  But there are problems: few nude photos, not much beefcake, and he's extremely homophobic. 

Addressing the rumors that he's bisexual because he was living with a man and a woman, he cursed "they're not f*** true!"  Same thing when he dumped both to move in with Kristoffer Winters, who may or may not have dated my friend Infinite Chazz in West Hollywood: "Believe whatever you f*king want!"

By the way, his favorite movie is the deeply homophobic Braveheart, which he's seen 35 times.  

Jeremy will not be playing a gay character anytime soon -- God help the agent who suggests it! -- but oddly, there are obviously unintentional gay subtexts in some of his movies, beginning with the first, National Lampoon's Senior Trip, 1995: stoner Dags has a buddy.

And A Friend's Betrayal, 1996. He's not the one doing the betraying, but he does have a buddy, Brian Austin Green.

How about a fey vampire who preys on teenage boys in a 2000 episode of Angel?

Or a 2002 biopic of Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who preyed on teenage boys?  Why would the homophobic Jeremy accept such a role?

He gives us some rear nudity in Twelve and Holding, 2005:  "A 12-year old boy and his friends face the harsh realities of death, teenage hormones, and family dysfunction." 100 to 1 the "hormones" mean the 12-year old gets down with a girl.

More Jeremy after the break

Adam Stevenson: Vampire's boyfriend, sailor's husband, ghillie dancer, possible bond age bottom, true Scotsman

 

Link to the n ude photos

When I reviewed A Discovery of Witches, I was impressed by the overwhelming cuteness and strong gay vibe of Adam Stevenson, who plays the gay-tease boyfriend of the vampire Marcus.  He is killed off two minutes after he is introduced, and Marcus is turned straight, but that two minutes is loaded down with erotic and romantic moments.  So of course I had to do a profile.

Born in Glasgow in 1990, Adam is a major proponent of Scottish independence: "If we are truly heading into a society of tolerance and democracy, if we are moving in the direction of equality and harmony...then I see one obstacle in our way, and that is being bound to the United Kingdom."

Super-cute, and a political activist.  What else do you need?  

Oh, right -- n ude photos.

After high school, he worked in the hospitality industry, engaged in political activism, and discovered an interest in acting.  He performed in Bordering on Shakespeare with the National Theater of Scotland, and started the theater company Little Bohems, bringing "modern and contemporary plays to small audiences in  unique settings throughout the Central Belt and Borders."  That's the region between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Adam's passion for acting led him to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he received his degree in 2017.  He was immediately cast in Episode 2.5 of  The Crown: the Queen attends the traditional Ghillies Ball at Balmoral Castle. "Ghillie" means "Gameskeeper" in Scots Gaelic; you perform Scottish Highland dances.  In a kilt, of course.

Next came the gay-tease buddy in A Discovery of Witches, 2018

And a role as Urie Campbell, a young soldier who has a gay-subtext bond with his buddy Hector in Mary, Queen of Scots, 2018.  He has some lines in Scots Gaelic.

Andrew Rothney plays King James I. 

In 2019, COVID hit, and with the lockdown the acting roles dried up.

In 2021, Adam started a Kickstarter campaign to fund My Friend Jame,  a COVID-era film about the relationship between a homeless man and an autistic boy,  written by Marina McQueer, his boyfriend Paul's sister (not pictured).

Yes, McQueer is a real name. 

More Adam and Paul after the break.  

Matt Smith: Who doesn't want to see the d*cks of Christopher Isherwood, Charles Manson, Superworm, and Dr. Who?

Link to the n*de photos

We've been watching the 2011 series of Doctor Who, the seemingly endless British sci-fi series that sends the last remaining Time Lord through time and space to save Earth, an alien planet, or the entire universe.  Again and again.  Oddly, when his world-saving takes him to modern day Britain, there are plenty of exteriors, but when it is a distant planet or the far future, all we see are endless corridors. 

Doctors regenerate every few years, getting new bodies and personalities.  Right now it's Matt Smith, an effervescent, jokey type, with an inner trauma that sometimes comes out.  After all, he saw the destruction of his people, and he's over 1,000 years old, so dozens of human companions have died, gotten lost, or left him to go on with their lives.

Matt Smith has appeared as the Doctor in dozens of projects outside the show itself: videos exploring odd corners of his universe, video games, a lot of four-episode miniseries, spin-offs starring former companions Sarah Jane and Amy Pond

The children's program Blue Peter. 

Comic Relief: Red Nose Day, An Adventure in Time and Space...I got tired of counting.  You have to be British to really understand his amazing popularity.

The Doctor would be enough for a career, but Matt has played a wide range of other characters, mostly based on real people:

Christopher Isherwood, the gay author of A Passage to India and Maurice, in Christopher and His Kind, a 2011 adaption of his memoirs. Left, the one without the biceps.

Rowing star Bert Bushnell in Bert & Dickie, 2012.  Neither was gay.

More after the break

Peder Lindell: Vampire, magician, pilot, gay skater, gay Catholic school boy. With possible Peder penis

Ok, this time I checked in advance, so I don't get tricked by another interloper on the red carpet. 

Link to the nude photos

The Disney wiki lists Peder Lindell in the cast of  The Rise of the Red as Morgie, the teenage son of Morgan Le Fay from the Arthurian mythos.

The character does not appear in earlier "Descendants" movies or tv shows, but he looks like he might be gay.

Peder grew up in Northfield, Minnesota, and began acting at age 11. with a role in a stage version of On Golden Pond at the Minnesota Jungle Theater.  He went on to star in Gypsy, and then as Jason, a closeted gay student at a homophobic Catholic school, in Bare: A Pop Opera. 

Jordan Luke Gage played Jason in the West End revival.  Spoiler alert: the gay dude dies.

Peder is currently a theater arts major at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.  

He has his pilot's license and certification as an Advanced Rescue Diver and Emergency First Responder.

 And he has a boyfriend and a little dog.

Of his six acting credits on the IMDB, three are shorts: 

Out of My Hands, about a boy and a gun, aired at the Catalina Film Festival.

Leak seems to be about a boy in a jar.

Scraps depicts a gay romance between skateboarders in Montana in the homophobic early 2000s.  It's the "first Montana LGBTQ skate film."

More Peder after the break

Preacher: Tortured former thug and bi vampire compete for the Girl, search for God, show their butts and His dick

  

Another of the new paranormal shows on Netflix, with the standard Netflix one-word title: Preacher.  I've heard of this one: a bleak, gritty series about outcasts in an endless desert, some of whom are gods and demons?

Prologue: A baby in a spaceship zaps through an animated solar system, and lands in Chad, while The Preacher (Irugu Mutu), who wears a clerical collar although he seems to be evangelical,  says "Something's coming."  He  yells about the coming Battle Between Good and Evil.  But they're not afraid, because a Prophet has been foretold.  Then the baby-spaceship zaps into the church and explodes him.  I guess he wasn't the titular Preacher.

Scene 1: A guy covered in scars lies shirtless on the bed, while a little boy promises his daddy, The Preacher (Nathan Darrow, top photo), something that we don't hear, and the background song tells us that "It was the time of the preacher, when the story began. Of the choice of a lady and the love of a man."  That's horribly heterosexist.  Is the paranormal stuff just going to be an excuse for a hetero-romance?

The tattooed guy  stumbles past the bottles of booze indicating that he's a drunand puts on his clerical collar.  This is the third preacher in three minutes: Jesse, played by Dominic Cooper.  Could he be the titular Preacher?

He walks through the wilderness outside of  All Saints Congregational Church.  The sign reads "Open your ass and holes to Jesus."  He changes it to "hearts and souls," so apparently it wasn't intentional.  Darn, I thought he was being rackish. 

By the way, this is TEXAS.  

Scene 2: The horrible, dusty, redneck-ridden town of Annville.  Preacher Jesse  is preaching a sermon on Tom Landry -- a sports person of some sort?  Except he's distracted, he can't read his notes, and the congregation is bored.  1000 to 1 he's mourning a dead wife.

Sermon ends, time for a barbecue in the endless desert.  With beer?  What kind of Christians are these?  A little boy, who may be the kid from The Mick, grabs one and heads past the shootin' range to bring it to Jesse.  He complains that his dad, Donnie (Derek Wilson), is abusive, and asks Jesse to "hurt him."  So this Preacher has magical powers?

No, he just has a violent past, but he doesn't crack heads anymore.  How about counseling?

Scene 3:  An Indian is fighting a guy in a prairie dog suit about who should be the new mascot.

Mayor Miles (Ricky Mabe) gets punched by a girl, so everyone makes fun of him for being a sissy. 

The Redneck Sheriff complains to the drunken Preacher Jesse that the Japanese let a guy marry his own pillow, so civilization has ended.  Hey, that's a homophobic allusion to gay marriage!   Jesse complains about the abusive Donnie, but the Sheriff refuses to investigate.

God's penis and a guy who can do oral and anal at the same time after the break

Jeremy Lerner: Six-pack abs, some costars' bulges and dicks, and a lot of premiere parties for movies he wasn't in

 

Link to the costars' bulges and dicks.

 I stumbled across Julian Lerner while researching someone else. I don't know who he is, but anybody with abs like that gets a profile.

But I don't profile singers. How about some acting roles?

He's in Disney's Descendants: Rise of the Red,  a 2024 movie in which Red, the teenage daughter of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and Chloe, the teenage daughter of her bitter enemy Cinderella, go back in time to meet their mothers as teenagers, to forestall their life-long feud. 

It also stars:

1. Joshua Colley., left, as Captain Hook's son.  I thought Captain Hook was gay. Kid must be adopted.

2. Peder Lindell as Morgana Le Fay's son.

3. Paolo Montalban as King Charming -- Prince Charming after he inherited the throne, get it?  I always thought that was a description, not his actual name.

4. Levin Valyali, left, as the middle-aged Aladdin.

5. Kabir Bery as the teen Aladdin

6. Leonardo Nam as the Mad Hatter's son.  Come on, that guy was too looney to establish a permanent romantic relationship.

7. Anthony Pyatt as the teenage Hades.  

More after the break

David Boreanaz and Friends: Tortured vampire, fundamentalist FBI agent, homophobic ghost, and a porn video

 

Link to the nude photos
 

Born in Buffalo in May 1969, David Boreanaz graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in cinema in 1991 and moved to L.A. to start his film career. Instead, he found his way onto Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-99).

Buffy Summers is The Slayer, the "one girl in all the world" with the power to kill the vampires, demons, and other evils who keep escaping from the hellmouth located in suburban Sunnydale, California, while trying to negotiate high school. 

Her scoobies include science nerd Xander (Nicholas Brendan, left); his girlfriend, a 1000-year old vengeance demon;  witch-in-training and eventual lesbian Willow; and  Willow's doomed, bury-your-gays girlfriend.

Not a lot of beefcake in the bunch, but the writers took care of that by giving Buffy lots of boyfriends, including two feuding vampires, the conflicted, tortured Angel (David Boreanaz, top photo), and the sassy punk rocker Spike (James Marsters).  

Literally tortured.  The writers kept trying to out-do themselves in thinking of creative ways to torture Angel.

I liked some of the adventures, such as when everyone in town had to sing instead of speak, or when grinning men who fed on fear started floating around.  And Buffy gave us two indispensable terms for analyzing tv shows, scoobies and Big Bad.  

The attitude toward LGBT people was a bit old fashioned.  Xander, upset because a lady demon rejected him, announces that he's going to go gay. Willow explicitly states that she was straight, but changed to gay.  Their handler shuts them all down, proclaiming that there's no time to worry about "orientations" when they're facing the most severe crisis of all time (every season).

In 1999  Angel left Sunnyvale, except for a few guest appearances, to start his own paranormal detective agency, in Angel (1999-2004).  His scoobies included Cordelia, a reformed high school Mean Girl; the half-demon Doyle (Glen Quinn),  and Wesley (Alexis Denisof, left), a "rogue demon hunter" -- at least in the first season.  Glen Quinn died, and there were many defections and replacement, doubtless because this was not a fun, tongue-in-cheek paranormal adventure.  

I had to keep watching due to a partner who was a big fan, but it got very, very dark.  Sure, Cordelia used to be a Mean Girl, but did that justify putting her through excruciating physical pain in every episode?  I insisted that he fast-forward past  the scene where Wesley's girlfriend spends five minutes dying, in the awareness that she has no soul, so she's headed for extinction. This is supposed to be entertainment?  F*k the Sadness. 

After Angel, David finally managed to break into movies.  I didn't see any of them, and probably won't.  These Girls (2005): high school girls blackmail a "slightly older hunk," who happens to be married, into having sex with them?  In 2005, David was 36.  But at least he gives us frontal and rear nudity.

More after the break

The Hard Easy (2006): two teams of jewel thieves converge on the same target?

Mr. Fix It (2006): a man named -- get this -- Lance Valenteen, har har -- has the job of convinces ex-boyfriends to return to their girlfriends.  He finds himself falling in love with one of his targets.

Suffering Man's Charity, aka Ghost Writer (2007): A sleazy gay predator teacher (Alan Cummings) tries to manipulate a young writer (David) into sex, but upon discovering that he has a girlfriend, kidnaps and tortures him (while he is dressed in lady's clothes, for some crazy reason), then kills him, and puts his name on his victim's unpublished book.  It becomes a hit, which raises the ire of the ghost. Was the writer checking items off a list of "how to insult gay people"?  

David returned to tv with Bones (2005-17), playing an FBI Agent who pairs up with his forensic-anthropologist Love Interest to solve murders.  They appear to be a non-paranormal Mulder and Skully, with Booth (David) solving cases through "intuition, faith, and God," and Brennan (the Love Interest) preferring empirical evidence and naturalistic explanations. It's a slow-burn "will they or won't they?", with the Big Damn Kiss in Season 6, a kid in Season 7, and the Big Damn Wedding in Season 9. 

I never watched, but some reviews dislike Booth's homophobic attitude toward gay and trans people. Other argue that Brennan is pro-gay, and there's a regular lesbian character, so we get "both points of view."

When Bones ended, David moved on to Seal Team (2017-), about the elite U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group, not the semi-aquatic mammal.  He plays Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Jason Hayes, aka Bravo 1/1B.  Imagine trying to get all that on your name badge at a conference.

I doubt that there are any gay characters. Perennial gay ally Steve Howey appears in two episodes, playing a straight guy.

So: 25 years of tv series with no or few gay characters, with a few homophobic asides, and in real life, David seems rather ambiguous.  He posts a photo on instagram wearing a GLAAD t-shirt, but also, according to a subreddit, posts that "LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, reproductive rights, and Black Lives Matter are synonymous to communism, tarot cards, and zodiac signs." Wacky.

When the highly-conservative, devout Roman Catholic in his 50s posts a jerk-off video, it's not really sexy, it's rather sad. But I posted pics on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

See also: Buffy the Vampire Slayer