How to Eat Fried Worms: They Tease You Because They Like You. With gay subtexts and Luke Benward grown up

When I was bullied as a kid, my parents said "They tease you because they like you."  No, they assault you because they hate you.

Before about 1980, bullying -- physical or verbal assault -- was considered an inescapable part of life. Parents and teachers thought that intervention would turn the victim into a "sissy," so they did nothing, except maybe punish you for "tattling." 

Bullying still appears in tv shows and movies aimed at children, who are told, over and over, that you can end it by "standing up for yourself."   In Dear Santa (2024), a kid with dyslexia stands up to bully Gavin Munn (and wins the Girl of His Dreams) with a little help from Satan.

Thomas Rockwell's 1973 novel How to Eat Fried Worms does not involve bullying.  Billy bets his friend Adam that he can eat 15 worms, one a day for 15 days. If he wins, Adam will give him $50 for a new minibike.  Everyone is perfectly friendly throughout.  

And, coincidently, there is no Girl for Billy to win.

But the 2006 movie version is all about bullying.  New kid in school Billy (Luke Benward) becomes the target of raging bully Joe (Adam Hicks) and his cronies.   They prank him with a thermos full of worms, and then force him into a bet: eat 15 worms on Saturday (all at once?).  The loser has to come to school with the remaining worms in his pants.

Billy succeeds in eating most of the worms, causing Joe's cronies to defect to his side, leaving Joe humiliated and alone.  Then we discover that Joe himself is a victim, savagely bullied by his older brother Nigel.  Billy and his new gang defend Joe from Nigel.

One of the worms didn't get eaten -- it was accidentally put into an omelet that another character ate.  So they both technically lost the contest.  The last scene shows Billy and Joe both entering the school with worms in their pants, their arms around each other, now friends.

Plus Billy impresses the Girl of His Dreams.  Of course they had to throw that in as a final heterosexist dig.

But at least there are three gay -subtext moments.

More after the break

Mason McNulty: Kayden's buddy plays a box of candy, a duplicated boy, and Billy the Kid, but is he really gay? With McNulty d*cks

  

Link to the n*de dudes

During the last six months or so, Kayden Koshelev has stopped posting about Alkaio Thiele on his social media, and started chumming up with a guy named Mason McNulty.  A new boyfriend?

Time to do some research.

Mason was born in Southern California in 2005, and began his career at age three months, as a model for ad for the State of Utah.  His on-screen credits begin in 2011, when he voiced Toothbrush on an episode of South Park, and go on to Modern Family, Glee, Teen Wolf, Danger Force, and Pen15.

His "best known for" projects on the IMDB include:

Schooled (2018-20), a spin-off of The Goldbergs, set ten years later, when minor character Lainey Lewis returns to become a music teacher at the William Penn Academy.  The shy, sensitive, gay-coded Toby (Mason) goes out for football, although he isn't very good; the coach tries to steer him into playing Pokemon instead; he dresses as a box of candy in the Halloween parade; he sings in the school choir.  The fan wiki doesn't mention an interest in girls.

And Assimilate (2019).  A teenage girl, her boyfriend (Joel Courtney, left), and her little brother Joey (Mason) fight "doubles" that are replacing their family and friends. And everybody else in the world, leaving only a few scattered survivors left.  As far as I can tell, Joey doesn't express any hetero interest.

So far, so good.  But once Mason moves into teenage and adult roles, it's "girls! girls! girls!"    Connor on Love XO, Adrian in Class of 1970, Andreas in After Them. Sam in Deadly Fiance. 

Even in Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door (2024), in which a fictional next door neighbor suspects that Gacy is a serial killer, and is constantly dismissed by the adults.  Most of Gacy's victims are gay, but as far as I can tell, Bobby (Mason) is straight. 

Mason's most recent project is Billy the Kid: Blood and Legend (2026): Sheriff Pat Garrett (Costas Mandylor) hunts his former friend, the legendary outlaw Billy the Kid (Mason).  They "are locked in a deadly game where survival and justice are measured in bullets."  What the heck does that mean?  I'm not into Westerns, but you can tell by the poster that there's a Woman of His Dreams.

In addition to acting, Mason is a singer/songwriter.  I checked two of his music videos: 

"Dust" is about losing the Girl of Your Dreams.

"Lessons of Love" shows two girls rejecting him, explaining what he's doing wrong, and finally agreeing to dates.  The first involves dancing, and the second running hand in hand through grass. 

Dude is straight.

More after the break

Gemstones Season 3 Finale: Kelvin and Keefe married? Pontius a Dark Lord? Peter redeemed? Plus saying goodbye to the Gemstone hunks

Link to the n*de  dudes

On The Righteous Gemstones, season finales is not a separate episode; it is a scene set some time after the various plot resolutions, allowing viewers to say goodbye to the characters, a sort of "and they lived happily ever after." There are few plot developments, and only vague hints about the future. 

The Season 3 Finale has more of a timeless,dreamlike quality than the previous finales.  It has a flattened structure with no dialogue and not a lot going on.  The family gathers for a private monster truck rally.  Thus, the season begins and ends with the Redeemer.

The Arrival: Setting: a field, with a wooden fence to the side and a swing set.  The Gemstone garage is visible in the background.  This is the same field where Jesse played with the Redeemer in the 2000 flashback.  

The family arrives and sets up lawn chairs in a row, in this order: May-May, Chuck, and Karl; Peter (he has a prosthetic leg, and doesn't bring his own chair, so maybe he's in prison, out on furlough for this special event); Eli and Martin.

Next, Baby Billy, Tiffany, and their two kids sit on blankets instead of chairs. In a deleted scene, Tiffany is letting her baby sit up, so it's been at least nine months, probably a year, since we last saw them. 

Next: Amber, Gideon, and Abraham.  Pontius is not present, suggesting that he is completely estranged from the family.  In the future he will be an antagonist, the Dark Lord of the family.

The Rocking Chairs: Then Judy and BJ, and finally Kelvin and Keefe.  Now they have two rocking chairs, depicting Keefe as the roots of the tree, and Kelvin as the branches. Those things must be very uncomfortable to sit in, and rather fragile.  Adam Devine notes that he broke his chair when he kicked it during the fight scene, and they had to get a replacement. 

Kelvin points the chairs out to the family, who look surprised.  Why haven't they seen the  chairs before?   Maybe  Kelvin and Keefe keep them in the bedroom, where they don't gete many visitors; or maybe Keefe has just finished his chair. In real life, the family would get up to take a closer look, but on the show that would involve a lot of staging with no payback.

 Why bring them today, instead of regular lawn chairs?  The guys' conflict this season has been whether to be open as romantic partners, and the two chairs certainly do the job.

 The Rings:  Kelvin sits in an odd position, with his fingers splayed, to draw attention to his new ring.  It is thicker and more substantial than the "wedding ring" he wore earlier in the season.  Keefe's is hard to see, but it looks thicker, and not as shiny.  Did they pick them out for each other?  Maybe we are to infer an advance in the relationship; maybe the guys are now married.

Gideon's Role: Kelvin pats Keefe's hand several times, presumably call attention to the fact that he built the chairs.  Keefe raises a thumbs up, and Eli and Gideon, the head of the family and his apprentice, return it.  Remember that the last time we saw them interacting, during the kidnapping, Gideon was explicitly rejecting Keefe as a member of the family.  This is a gesture of inclusion.

Also notice that Gideon did not drive Eli to the event, but they use the same gestures, suggesting that he has moved from driver to apprentice minister.

The Guys' Couture: Keefe is wearing an Eckhaus Latta Accordion Sweater in Kelvin's standard green color, with the midriff and back bare, giving him a feminine appearance.  

Eckhaus Latta is known for experimenting with unconventional textures and styles, and unconventional advertising.  In 2017, the ads for their Spring Collection featured gay, straight, and gender-indeterminate couples having unsimulated activity. This certainly adds a lot to our understanding of the Kelvin/Keefe relationship.

Kelvin is wearing a shirt depicting fish, suns, and the letters S and W in rainbow colors, a callback to the young Kelvin's Hawaiian rainbow shirt in the 2000 flashback.  It comes from Moschino Couture, a Milan-based fashion company that offers clothing for everyone (who can afford to spend $300 on a t-shirt), but is best known for its gay line.  Kelvin is, in effect, wearing a gay shirt.

By the way, it comes with matching boxer shorts.  

The Monster Truck Rally: Each family member gets a turn at driving the Redeemer to crunch cars and other things.  They crunch in this order:  the siblings (Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin), the partners (Keefe and Amber), the Montgomery boys (Chuck and Karl), BJ, Martin, the Freemans (Baby Billy and Tiffany), Abraham, and the older generation (Peter, May-May, Gideon, Eli).  They seem to go order of distance from the siblings, with some variation to get different reactions. 

Why is Peter redeemed:  If you've ever wondered why the monster truck is called The Redeemer, now you know: being permitted to drive it signifies redemption, wholeness in the eyes of God and the family.  Uncle Peter tortured Jacob, subjected his niece and nephews and their loved ones to trauma that will take years to work through, sent goons out to kill his own children, and plotted to blow up the church, yet he has been redeemed.

In spite of the Cycle Ninjas, toilet babies, Bible Bonkers, and proliferating p*nises, the ongoing theme of this show is a profound theological question:  Is there an sin that can't be redeemed?  Is there any darkness so deep that there's no coming back? 

The answer: no.  Sometimes it takes a lot of work and a lot of pain, but everyone can be redeemed.  In Season 1, Scotty assaulted Eli, robbed the church, and treated Gideon as a slave, yet after his death he was admitted to the family.  In Season 2, Baby Billy was reconciled with his long-abandoned son through a punch in the nose.  Kelvin was redeemed through Keefe's symbolic death and resurrection. Peter sacrificed himself to save the family. 

Other activities during the event include: Baby Billy riding a donkey-shaped piñata and hugging Jesse; BJ riding a stuffed giraffe; Keefe riding Karl's shoulders;  the siblings doing a line-dance; Eli and Martin pretending to dine with the stuffed animals; Eli riding a swing; Kelvin pouring popcorn into his mouth.  A  shot of Kelvin riding Keefe's shoulders was deleted, probably because Keefe is grimacing.

We can find some character development in these acts. Kelvin and Keefe no longer need to spend every moment together. They are comfortable engaging in independent activities and forming separate alliances. Nor does Keefe need Kelvin as a conduit into the family: he is a Gemstone in his own right, not just "Kelvin's friend."  This is a significant relationship advance, suggesting again that the two have moved forward to marriage.

More after the break

Isaac Ordonez at Paris Fashion Week, with some b*yfriends, Lucas from "Stranger Things," and the "Red, White, and Royal Blue" guy

 

This post has been moved to RG Beefcake and Boyfriends. 

Link to the unc*nsored post