Teenie Harris and the African-American Physique

Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908-1998) grew up in the Hill District, Pittsburgh's African-American neighborhood, and became a professional basketball and baseball player in the Negro League. 

Later he opened up a photography studio and began publishing in the Pittsburgh Courier, Flash, and elsewhere.  Although he published "glamour portraits" of celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, President Kennedy, and President Eisenhower, his main interest was in documenting everyday life: men and women going to work and school, playing, partying. 

60,000 of his photos have been digitized by the Carnegie Museum of Art, and many offer a rare glimpse of African-American beefcake of the era.

1. Camp Weldon Johnson, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, 1941. 

2. More from Camp Weldon Johnson, 1941.




















3. Two men at an interracial pool party in 1946 (quite revolutionary at the time).

4. Centre Avenue YMCA Pool, 1951.

5. Golden Gloves Contenders, 1951

6. East Liberty YMCA, 1953.  Men  teaching lifeguard techniques.

7, Boxer Wendell Turner with boy scouts, 1961.

The Beefcake Curse of "Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors"

I was never much of a fan of 1980s psycho-slasher movies, especially the Nightmare on Elm Street series.  Freddy Krueger was arrested for killing 30 kids, but got released because "someone didn't sign the dotted line."  That's idiotic. So a group of concerned parents lynched him and burned him alive.  That's uncomfortably close to the various real-life threatened kids scares of the 1980s.  And now he has a vendetta against the kids, coming at them in dreams.  Wouldn't he come after the parents?

I also hated the song the tormented kids sang "Grab your crucifix."  There are other religions besides Roman Catholicism, you know.

But when I was in South Carolina, I watched Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and it wasn't awful.  The surviving girl from the first group of Freddy's victims, atrociously wooden Nancy (Heather Langencamp), is now a sleep-disorder specialist working at a psychiatric institution, where she and the hunky Neil (Craig Wasson, left) help a new group of kids being tormented in their dreams. They will do anything to avoid falling asleep, including committing suicide.

1.  The sarcastic and very hunky Philip (Bradley Gregg, top photo)

2. The kick-ass black kid Kincaid (Ken Sagoes, left)

3. Mousy Jennifer

4. Belligerent street kid Taryn

5. Extremely cute Dungeons and Dragons nerd Will, who is confined to a wheelchair (Ira Helden, left)

6. Extremely cute Joey (Rodney Eastman), who is too traumatized to speak 

The special effects are ludicrous.  Freddy as a giant snake swallowing somebody?  

Freddy's back story is ludicrous: his mother was accidentally locked in an asylum for the criminally insane over the holiday weekend, and was raped repeatedly.  She gave birth to  "the bastard son of 100 maniacs."  Well, I guess she wasn't married, but was that really the main problem?  And you can't be the son of 100 people.  And criminality is not inherited.  

But I liked how the dream warriors came together, each using their special skills to defeat Freddy.

How "the bait," the person they're trying to save,is a boy not a girl.

How there's only the tiniest bit of hetero-desire, in the scene where Joey is accosted by a hot nurse who ludicrously strips ("do you like my body, Joey?"), kisses him, and turns out to be Freddy.   Also a moment of sexual harassment.  Otherwise no one hooks up, not even Nancy and Neil.

And the beefcake.  Other than the naked nurse, there's no female pulchritude.  But the boys (actually actors in their 20s) get underwear scenes and shirtless shots, or they're so extraordinarily cute that who cares if they take their shirts off?  

I checked to see if they've retained their incredible hunkiness after 30 years.

1. Bradley Gregg as Philip.  Yikes.

2. Ken Sagoes as Kincaid.  He's got a sort of Uncle Fester vibe going on.

5. Ira Helden as Will.  Wow.  I don't get it.  Many guys in their 50s are attractive.  Is the cast of Dream Warriors cursed?

6. Rodney Eastman as Joey.  OMG, the years have not been kind.

Come on, Craig Wasson, you're my last hope.

I give up.  He's naked in this shot, but believe me, you don't want to see it.

The curse of Dream Warriors strikes again.

Bob's Burgers: The Most Gay-Positive Sitcom on TV

Since 2011, Bob's Burgers has been airing on Sunday night, in the company of Family Guy and American Dad.  But it is quite different from those programs.

1. The father and mother in the nuclear family are not insensitive jerks.
2. They accept their children's idiosyncracies, instead of berating and belittling them (on American Dad) or maiming and murdering them (on Family Guy)
3. There are no sociopaths (like Roger Smith and Stewie Griffin), who kill, maim, and express same-sex interests all in the same scene, as if they are all equally disgusting.
4. There are few if any jokes involving menstruation, masturbation, vomiting, golden showers, diarrhea, or body fluids in general.
5. No one ever collapses in a pool of blood.
6. No one ever expresses hatred of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Jews, Muslims, women, gay men, lesbians, or transgender persons.

In short, you never think you're watching a Nazi recruitment film scripted by potty-mouthed third graders.

It's about a small, struggling burger joint in a resort town in New Jersey, run by aspiring chef Bob Belcher (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, top photo) and his New York accented wife, Linda (John Roberts).  Plotlines generally involve restaurant problems, such a visit from the health inspector, competition with the pizza place across the street, or buying a food truck -- and the problems of the three kids:



1. Shy, socially-awkward teenager Tina (Dan Mintz).
2. Chubby preteen Gene (Eugene Merman), an exuberant nonconformist who may be gay.
3. Preteen rebel Louise (Kristin Schaal), who always wears bunny ears (no one in the family seems to care).

Heterosexism appears on occasion.  A boy band has only female fans, and when Gene gets a secret admirer, everyone assumes that it must be a girl.  But not often.  Usually same-sex desire and relationships are seamlessly integrated into everyday life.

Bob gets a part-time job as a taxi driver, and finds himself driving a group of drag queens home from the bars.  Does he:
a. Freak out, but learn tolerance.
b. Rescue the drag queens from homophobic harassment.
c. Invite them to the restaurant.

Answer: C.  Invite them to the restaurant.

At Christmastime, Bob decides to reconcile with his estranged Dad, Big Bob.  They meet in a gay bar called the Junkyard.  Why?
a. Neither of them realize that it's a gay bar until they get hit on; then they freak out but learn tolerance.
b. Big Bob tells Bob that he's gay and closeted; that's why he withdrew from the family.
c. Big Bob likes hanging out there with his gay friends.

Answer: C.  Big Bob just likes hanging out there.

Gene announces that he is gay.  What happens?

a. The family freaks out but learns tolerance.
b. The family goes overboard with acceptance,
c.  Nothing.

Actually, this episode hasn't appeared yet, and it's not likely to, because stories require conflict and, at least on Bob's Burgers, there wouldn't be any.  Being gay is perfectly ordinary; the family wouldn't have a reaction to it.

By the way, John Roberts, the voice actor who plays Linda, is gay.

Jer Adrienne Lelliott: A lot of threatened gay and gay-vague boys before transitioning.

I rarely update profiles; there are so many of them that I don't have time, and besides, I figure that not much will happen. But not for Jer Adrienne Lelliot, who I profiled in 2012.

Born in 1982 under the deadname Jeremy, Jer skipped the kid-comedy routine and went straight into a soap, playing the noble, longsuffering David Patterson on Melrose Place (1997-98).

Threatened kid roles followed: the son of a KKK leader hiding in a safe house in Ambushed (1998), and the son of a bomb expert being held hostage by the Serbian Liberation Front in Diplomatic Siege (1999).

The short-lived Safe Harbor (fall 1998) was about a small town sheriff (Gregory Harrison) and his mother (Rue McClanahan of The Golden Girls) raising three sons. Only 10 episodes were aired, but they gave Jer, still presenting as masculine, an opportunity to buddy-bond with a friend, lounge around the pool, and show off a slim, lanky physique.

The paranormal movie Disappearance (2002) gave Jer more buddy-bonding.  A nuclear family is driving through Nevada, along with a boy named Ethan (Australian actor Jamie Croft).  No one explains what Ethan is doing there. Is he a foster son?  Did teenage son Matt (Jer) invite a school friend along on their vacation?

Whatever brought them together, they are doomed.  The family stumbles onto a small town where the people behave like sleepwalkers and bizarre things happen.  While trying to solve the mystery, they discover that they are trapped.  Eventually they become sleepwalkers, too.

Soon Jer's characters moved beyond gay-vague.

In Gacey (2003), she plays a gay boy who becomes one of the serial killer's victims.

In Race You to the Bottom (2005), travel writer Nathan (Cole Williams) and Maggie (Amber Benson) both have boyfriends, but they're having an affair as they explore the California wine country for an assignment.  Nicholas (Jer),  Nathan's partner, is not amused.

Driftwood (2006) stars Raviv Ullman as a death-obsessed teenager who is sent to a re-education camp to be brutalized.  There he is haunted by the spirit of a gay boy who was murdered in the camp, and helps Noah (Jer), who has been sent to the camp to be de-gayed, to stand up to his oppressors.

She received a MFA in acting from California State University, Fullerton in 2009 and an Ed.D. from USC in 2024.  Currently she works as the HIV program manager at the Clinica Romano in Los Angeles, artistic director at the Courage Theater, and as co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund.

Rather busy.  But she found time for a guest role on an 2019 episode of Ctl Alt Del, about the employees at a women's clinic.

And to produce Spit Me Out (2024), about a queer grifter who tries to convince her girlfriend to leave their small-town church.  The pastor is played by trans actor Becca Blackwell, and the rest of the cast is also gay, nonbinary, trans, and queer.

Left: Becca with Cameron Monaghan on Shameless.

Which gives me an excuse to post a photo of Cameron's backside