Josh Mikel: Satanist, zombie chow, boyfriend, drummer. With two important questions answered, and maybe a cock

  

Link to NSFW version

Born in Conyers, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, Josh graduated from Florida State University's Theater and Creative Writing programs.  He has written a number of award-winning plays, many for children:  The Monster Hunters, Pirates!, Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island!.  I looked at some of the scripts, but didn't see anything of particular gay interest.

Josh has 92 acting credits on IMDB, including a lot of fantasy and horror: Renfield, Mayfair Witches, Unhuman, Creepshow, and 50 States of Fright.  It took 17 auditions to be cast on The Walking Dead, as Jared, one of the "Saviours" who demand tribute from surrounding post-zombie-Apocalypse communities.  

 

But a lot of general dramas, too. The Lengths (2014) is of gay interest: Josh's character is in love with both a man and a woman. 

There are several bulge shots, and maybe a butt, but it's obscured and hard to see, so I substituted this fully visible butt.

In Season 1 of  The Righteous Gemstones, the recently converted Keefe returns to the Satanist/Goth Club Sinister, Josh's Daedalus assumes that he's there for "pleasures" and caresses his body and licks his face, while his friend Cryptocore starts to go downtown. This scene establishes that Keefe is gay, and that Daedalus is an ex-lover.

Josh has also done storyboard art and set design for everything from Kirksville to The Little Mermaid.  

If he has any time leftover, he is the drummer for the indie rock band Look, Mexico.  One of their songs, "It's Been a Long Time Since I Smelled Beautiful," might have a gay subtext:

Will you compromise, or will you say what's on your mind this time?

Will you smile for me, or will you say what's on your mind this time?

But we're not, we're not keeping quiet.

So if you think you're ready…

It's our time now.

More Josh after the break

Pee-Wee's Playhouse: Did somebody say "Swish"?

When I was living in West Hollywood, we watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 every Saturday morning, but we stayed away from children's tv.  It was crowded with insipid child versions of adult characters -- The Muppet Babies, The Flintstone Kids -- or insufferably cute furry animals -- Wuzzles, Kissyfur, Care Bears, Gummi Bears.  


But there was one "must see" exception.  At 11:00 am between 1986 and 1990, every household in West Hollywood watched Pee-wee's Playhouse.  It was a surreal, live action series hosted by the androgynous Pinkie Lee lookalike Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens), who would invite various live and puppet characters to play in his playhouse.

It was the gayest show on television.

1. A hunky speedo-clad lifeguard named Tito.

2. Drag queens Ms. Yvonne (right) and Mrs. Steve (left).  They both appeared at the 1990 AIDS Walk. We all assumed that Mrs. Steve and Ms. Yvonne were real drag queens, played by male performers; I only discovered that they were actually played by women while researching this article.

3. The extraordinarily feminine Jambi the Genie, who lived in a drag queen's jewelry box and lisped "Wish?  Did somebody say wish?"  Everyone in West Hollywood spend the afternoon saying: Swish?  Did somebody say swish?"

When John Paragon died in 2021, his cremation urn was a replica of Jambi the Genie's box.

4. Laurence Fishburn, who would go on to Boyz in the Hood and the Matrix movies, as Pee-wee's friend Cowboy Curtis, who informed us that he slept nude, and joked about his penis size: "You know what they say about big feet -- big boots!"

5. The creepy, leering, obviously drunk King of Cartoons, who stumbled across the room and slurred "Let the cartoon begin." And the creepy 1930s cartoon that followed.  Ok, he wasn't gay-coded, but who puts a guy who's drunk, or pretending to be, on a kids' program?

6. A hunky soccer player named Ricardo.

The writers, producers, directors, and cast have always claimed complete ignorance of any gay-coded characters or gay-subtexts.  In fact, according to Inside Peewee's Playhouse by Caseen Gaines, Paul Reubens was homophobic -- if he had known about any subtext, "he would have put a stop to it."

Or maybe he was just closeted.  Paul Reubens consistently refused to comment on his s*xual identity, although when he was arrested for allegedly possessing child pornography in 2002, he stated that he was a collector of muscle magazines and "vintage homosexual erotica."

He finally came out two years after his death, in the documentary Pee-Wee as Himself (2025). 

In the homophobic 1980s, all we had were winks, hints, and innuendos.  But into the 2010s and 2020s, it's just sad.

See also: Joey Beni appears in five gay tv shows with multiple n*de scenes, so he's obviously gay, right?

Tristan Borders pushed up the queer codes as Young Kelvin Gemstone, but what about his other roles? With twink butt and Cleveland cock

The 20 TV shows that we watched in West Hollywood: a gay brother, some "confused" guys, squabbling drag queens, Seinfeld, and Mario Lopez (sigh)

Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby: Bodybuilder and Buddy

Speaking of bodybuilder buddies, when Bill Bixby finished his gay subtext series My Favorite Martian and The Courtship of Eddie's Father,  he cashed in on the 1970s superhero craze in The Incredible Hulk (1977-82).

He played the antiheroic Marvel comic book character Bruce Banner, heterosexualized by being renamed David (Bruce "sounded too gay") and a getting a dead wife. When he gets angry, David transforms, Jekyll-Hyde style, into the green-skinned, muscular Hulk, who has super-strength, subhuman intelligence, and a nasty temper.  Fortunately the Hulk knows enough to avoid harming good guys or bystanders, and he usually disarms or scares the bad guys rather than killing them.

Like The Fugitive, David is wandering the countryside, trying to find a cure for his "problem," fleeing an tabloid reporter (Jack Colver) obsessed with him, and getting involved with people's personal lives along the way.

The Hulk was played by 26-year old bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno (left and top), a multiple Mr. Universe and Mr. America contender whom I met when I was working for Muscle and Fitness; he appeared on the cover at least once a year.

Other than the documentary Pumping Iron, this was his first screen appearance, but soon his physique and his inspiring story -- he had been nearly deaf since childhood, and had a slurred voice -- propelled him into fame.  After The Incredible Hulk, he had starring roles in Hercules (1983), Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989), The Cage (1989, with James Shigeta as the villain), and The Incredible Hulk TV Series (1996-97), where the Hulk could speak.   A special favorite of kids, he appeared as himself on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

I don't know if there were any gay subtexts in the series -- it was on Friday nights, so I never saw it -- but there was an off-screen bromance.  Bill became Lou's mentor and confidant, and like Paul Newman and Rocky Graziano twenty years before, they were often seen socializing together off the set.

I remember them coming into the Muscle and Fitness editorial office together, looking for all the world like a gay couple, especially Bill in his tan suit and sunglasses.

In his memoirs, Lou stated that he doesn't like to watch The Incredible Hulk now because it is too sad.  Bill "was like a brother to me.  We grew together.  I miss him."

Bill Bixby was a gay ally, of course, and Lou Ferrigno always seemed perfectly fine with the adulation of gay fans.  When he appeared on the reality series The Apprentice, he was fine with the elderly gay icon George Takei commenting on his  hotness of his semi-nude body, but got upset over a joke that criticized his fashion sense.

Lou is now appearing on the webseries The Incredible Ferrignos, in which his entire family, all certified personal trainers, offer make-overs to families with unhealthy diet and exercise habits.

Lou Ferrigno, Jr., (born 1984) starred in two of David DeCoteau's nearly-gay movies: 1313: Hercules Unbound! (2012) and 1313: Night of the Widows (2012).

I get more of a gay-friendly vibe from Brent (born 1990).  He's not an actor, but you can see lots of shirtless pix on his facebook page.

"Stonewall": The riots that started the Gay Rights Movement, with nice cops, a White Saviour, J. Edgar Hoover, and some dicks

 

Link to NSFW version

The Stonewall Riots of June 28-30, 1969 began with patrons of the Stonewall bar in Greenwich Village fighting back against police harassment.  They ended with the modern Gay Rights Movement and the "minority group" model of LGBT identities. Today there are Pride festivals and parades around June 28th of every year to celebrate that beginning., and queer history, literature, culture, and politics are definitively divided into pre-Stonewall and post-Stonewall. 

Although there have been many books and documentaries, Stonewall (2015) is the first movie intended for a mass audience.  It assumes that you are straight, with little or no knowledge of the riots, an ally but mostly unaware of the closeted, harassed, hounded life of LGBT people before Stonewall (and sometimes still today)

1. Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine), a clean-cut all-American kid from rural Indiana, gets a scholarship to Columbia, but before his parents can fill out the scholarship papers, they discover that he is gay and kick him out.  His closeted boyfriend, football star Joe(Karl Glusman), refuses to talk to him.  

Bonus Karl Glusman cock after the break

So he goes to New York anyway, where everybody -- repeat, everybody -- falls in love with him.  Well, what do you expect from the focus character?

Danny lives on the street, and works as a hustler (although the look of pure disgust he gets whenever a client tries to go down on him would probably limit his success).

He hangs out and often lives with a group of androgynous gay and transgender street kids led by Ray/Ramona (Johnny Beauchamp). 

2. They are regulars at the Stonewall Tavern, a dive-bar run by Mobster Ed Murphy (Ron Pearlman), who may have murdered Ray's boyfriend. It was illegal to serve alcohol to "a known homosexual," so all gay bars were underground, mostly run by the mob.

3. Meanwhile Danny gets involved with Trevor (Jonathan Rhys-Meyer, left), a middle-class college student,  who picks up twinks by playing Procul Harem's "Whiter Shade of Pale" on the jukebox.  I'm always moved by the line: She said "There is no reason 
And the truth is plain to see."

More after the break