Kyle Bornheimer: Bear Bares It All

Kyle Bornheimer has been in the business for less than 10 years, but he is already getting a reputation for failed sitcoms: Worst Week, Perfect Couples, Romantically Challenged, and most recently Family Tools.  In all of them, he plays the same kind of character, a likeable nebbish who is clueless about matters of hetero-romance.  

I suggest some of his non-heterosexist comedy shorts instead, such as Gym Day, about a man who goes through endless hassles to get to the gym, only to find it closed, or God Reschedules Rapture, about...well, God being too busy to hold the Rapture as scheduled.  Some appear on the Funny or Die website.

Kyle has also played  likeable nebbish characters who are clueless about matters of gay romance:

In Spokane (2004): a straight guy falls for a gay guy at a wedding, resulting in a naked hotel room encounter.  You can see it on the collection Boys Life 7 (2010).

In a 2006 episode of the shortlived Lovespring International, about a dating service,  he played a clueless gay nebbish looking for a date.

He also "hints" about same-sex desire, as on Perfect Couples (2010-2011), when Dave (Kyle) makes a gay friend, and his wife is jealous.

Bachelorette (2012) is a raunchy comedy about four women preparing for their friend's wedding.  A gay guy does a striptease for them.

Or most recently, on Family Tools (2013), his character has a requisite crush on a girl, but also cozies up to his assistant, Darren (Edi Gathegi).

I understand he's on the current reboot of Will and Grace as a security guard.

And in all of his performances, we get shirtless and nude shots of his muscular bear physique, often hiding his private parts behind humorous objects.  In Spokane, he bares it all.

Good News and Bad News about Jake T. Austin

You remember Jake T. Austin, who played the gay-subtext kid Max on the Disney Channel's Wizards of Waverly Place (2007-2011), and Jesus on the gay-friendly Fosters (2011-2015)?  Well, I have good news and bad news.

The good news first:

1. He's got an amazing physique, which he is not shy about showing off. Not like some other Disney teen stars I could name.

2. Remarkable chest.  He's Tiger Beat fave rave material.

3. He's still working regularly, doing a lot of voiceovers, like Blue Beetle in the Teen Titans movies.

4. He appeared on Dancing with the Stars in 2016

5. Did I mention his six-pack abs?

6.  He still hangs out with Moises Arias.

7. He has never tweeted anything homophobic.

8. Nice biceps.

9. He's single.

10. He's been spotted on the street in West Hollywood.

And now the bad news:

1. If he was gay, he would have made a public statement by now

2. He has a girlfriend

Elijah Wood: Fear of the Buddy-Bond

Unlike his Lord of the Rings costar Sean Astin, Elijah Wood never got much play as a teen hunk, and he didn't do a lot of buddy-bonding roles; the only one that springs to mind is Radio Flier (1992) with Joseph Mazzello, and Oliver Twist (1997).

In fact, a lot of his roles drew on 1990s anxiety concerning same-sex bonds; masculine smiles hide danger, destruction, and malice:

The Good Son (1993): Mark (Elijah) discovers that his irrepressible cousin (Macaulay Culkin) is a psychotic murderer.

The War (1994): Stu (Elijah) and his friends are at war.  Oh, and he gets a girlfriend.

The Ice Storm (1997): Mikey (Elijah) has a violent brother, has sex with a girl, wanders out into an ice storm, and dies.

Or sometimes irrelevant:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1993), a version that ignores the Huck-Jim subtext.

Flipper (1994): a remake of the classic tv series with Elijah playing Luke Halpin's character. He kisses a girl.

The Faculty (1998): Casey (Elijah) discovers that the faculty are aliens, with the help of a girl who has a boorish boyfriend.

The lack of heterosexual interest and homoromantic subtext of The Lord of the Rings might exonerate him, except that during the last ten years, he hasn't done much of gay interest: a gay-vague psychopath with supernatural powers who eats women in Sin City (2005), and a gay "best friend" in Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012).

There's an Elijah Wood dating story on Tales of West Hollywood.

10 Beefcake Stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

The 1950s was the era of the chest, when actors started taking off their shirts regularly on screen, and buffed, brawny "he-men" took precedence over the slim, svelte sophisticates of previous generations.

Here are some beefcake stars you  may not remember.  Some were gay or gay-for pay.

1. Alan Ladd (1913-1964), best known for Shane, but a staple of Westerns throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

2. Anthony Perkins (1932-1992).  You knew he was gay, and that he played the creepy killer in Psycho, but did you know he had a Kielbasa+?

3. Christopher Walken (1943-) is also known for playing creepy guys and serial killers, but in his salad days he was quite buffed.

4. Edward Albert Jr. (1951-2006), son of Baby Boomer staple Eddie Albert, took off his shirt a lot for the hippie generation.

5. George Nader (1921-2002), beefcake star, gay activist, and author of the gay sci-fi novel Chrome.

More after the break