"The Boys": Superheroes, Homophobia, and the Girl of His Dreams

The Boys, on Amazon Prime, has been promoted and double-promoted a theatrical experience far superior to anything you have ever experienced before, the best tv series of all time -- no, the greatest work of art ever created in the entire history of humankind.

After all that, if it's just the best thing I've ever seen, it will be a letdown.

But it's free with your Prime membership, and maybe some of the Boys are hot, so...

It starts off promising, with two teenage boys discussing penises, then grabbing at each other when they are nearly killed by a runaway truck and taken hostage, saved by superheroes.

But then we get down to the main plot, about electronics-store nebbish Hughie (Jack Quaid, left) and The Girl of His Dreams, who is killed to provide character motivation.

Yawn.  Haven't I heard this a thousand times before? Action heroes ALWAYS have dead wives, or else estranged wives to reconcile with.  It's disgustingly heterosexist.

Since a superhero killed The Girl, Hughie becomes an anti-superhero vigilante, teaming up with Billie Butcher (Karl Urban, left), whose  -- you guessed it --was also killed by supes.

Wait -- two dead Girls of Their Dreams?  That's two too many.  I give up and read the plot synopsis instead.

 They start a vigilante band, The Boys.

1. Hughie
2. Butcher

3. Mother's Milk (Laz Alonzo, left)
4. Frenchie (Tomer Capon)
5. The Female (Karen Fukuhara), the only Boy who has super powers.  The others get by with paralyzing gas and computer bugs.

The superheroes, created by an evil corporation when they were babies, are all arrogant, self-serving, and corrupt, not above causing the disasters they save people from.  The main group is called The Seven for merchandising purposes:

1. Homelander (Antony Starr, left)
2. Starlight (Erin Moriarty)
3. Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), who is a lesbian ("The first canonical gay superhero!").

Note: I am told that she's not a lesbian at all.  Apparently the Wikipedia article naming another character as her ex-girlfriend was in error.

4. A-Train (Jesse T. Usher, left)
5. The Deep (Chace Crawford)
6. Black Noir (Nathan Miller)

7. Translucent (Alex Hassel, left).

Well, at least the show is equipped in the hunkoid department

Other superheroes of interest are:

8. Mesmer (Haley Joel Osment, who often plays gay characters).

9. The evil Ezekial (Shaun Benson), "a closeted homosexual."  Is this the 1950s?  When did we go back to the term "homosexual" to describe a gay person?  Are we going to start using old, offensive terms for racial minorities, too?

The episode plot summaries are extremely complex, but there seems to be a lot of sex and violence.  Both the Boys and the Supes are morally suspect; not a "truth and justice" type among them.

I'm not willing to find out.  The origin story about the death of not one but two Girls of Their Dreams turned me off, and the  homophobic "closeted homosexual" slur sealed the deal.

If only they had stuck to the gay-subtext buddy-bonding boys in the first scene.

A Wholesome Family Weekend

I was in Indiana last weekend to visit my mother and sister, and got overloaded with "wholesome" family activities.  Fortunately, we were able to squeeze in some physique-watching.

Saturday:

We arrived in Indiana at 5:00 pm, picked up my sister and brother-in-law, and drove to Edinburgh, in the south.

Edinburgh is known for the Exit 76 Antique Mall, a gigantic warehouse with over 900 dealer booths -- but not much of interest.  I bought two books and an old coca-cola sign.











 Not many attractive men in the mall itself,but the guy at the checkout had a stunningly handsome face.  I was the first person that day to identify his Popeye t-shirt.

After visiting the cemetery to see my father's grave, we had dinner at the Cracker Barrel, a fundamentalist restaurant that fetishizes the "good old days."  While you're waiting for your table, you browse in a store of fundamentalists bric-a-brac, like cds of gospel music and t-shirts saying "I'm going to heaven."  This tall stringbean with brillo hair was chatting up a girl in a secluded corner by the angel costumes.

Our waiter was another tall stringbean with brillo hair -- the boss must have a thing for them.

On to the Quality Inn, a 2-star motel where scary-looking guys smoke cigarettes in the parking lot.  It's on Lover's Lane, next to some other 2-star motels to cater to the hoardes of people who visit small-town Indiana.

Sunday

Breakfast at the Waffle House, where our waiter's name was Buttercup.

Next stop: gas station, where the cute Caleb was on duty.

I had to snap this guy getting gas.  Not much to look at, but he was herding a wife and five kids, all under five years old.  His penis has been very busy.














Next we visited my elderly, conservative, Trump-loving, gun control-hating mother, who insisted that we go to church with her -- Nazarene church, ugh!  About 10 people in the congregation, all over 100.

Then we met up with my sister and brother-in-law again for lunch -- apparently Nazarenes have loosened their restrictions on eating out on Sunday.  Ann's Restaurant, a staple since 1952.

This studly blond wasn't our waiter, but I managed to get a shot of him.

A nuclear family: husband, wife, two young kids.  The husband looks like he could be the waiter's cousin.

On Sunday afternoon my sister and brother-in-law took us to the Johnson County Fair.  Apparently the Nazarenes have loosened their restrictions on going to "fairs, festivals, circuses, carnivals, and the like."
















Monday

On Monday morning, we had breakfast at Denny's.  That's right, Denny's.

This bearded guy in a suit was sitting next to a guy who wasn't in a suit, across the table from an elderly male-female couple.  I wondered if he was gay, eating with his boyfriend.

After visiting my mother again, we were on our own for the day, so we tried browsing in the antique shops in town.  But every single one of them is closed on Mondays.  Every single one!

Well, how about the museums up in Indianapolis, 45 miles away?











Every single one of them is closed on Monday.  What do they expect tourists to do?

We found a YMCA to work out.  Another cute brillo-head.  There must be a whole family of them around southern Indiana.

In the afternoon we spent 6 hours at the Works, a sex club in Indianapolis.

But that's a story for Tales of West Hollywood.  See: "Six Hours at a Sex Club."

Dave Draper Doesn't Get the Girl

Dave Draper, "The Blond Bomber," was the go-to guy for movie bodybuilders during the 1960s, when most of the bulkers had moved to Italy to do sword-and-sandal flicks.

He never appeared in the gay-vague Physique Pictorial or similar physique magazines; in fact, some of his magazine covers are rather heterosexist, sandwiching him between two women, who are lusting after his biceps.  Inside, however, we see some homoerotic subtexts, as when fellow bodybuilder William Smith gazes at Dave's biceps.

After a minor role as a guy who takes his shirt off in Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed (1963), he capitalized on the sword-and-sandal crazy anyway, showing old Steve Reeve movies as Dave the Gladiator on local L.A. TV (1964-65).

In 1966 he landed a starring role in Lord Love a Duck, a comedy about a gay-vague Mephistophiles, Alan Musgrave (gay actor Roddy McDowall), who concocts wild schemes, including murder, to grant the wishes of his friend Barbara (Tuesday Weld).  Dave was one of her wishes, but not the man she married. Alan is supposed to find him intimidating, but instead approaches him with barely-restrained eye-bulging desire.

After more minor roles as guys who take their shirts off and scare people in Three on a Couch and Walk Don't Run, Dave starred in Don't Make Waves (1967), about New Yorker Carlo Cofield (Tony Curtis), who moves to Southern California to "Turn on!  Stay loose!  Make out!"  and romance a skydiving model named Malibu (Sharon Tate).  Dave played her boyfriend, Harry Holland, who also befriends Carlo.  There's a significant gay subtext, as in most of Tony Curtis's movies.

In 1967, Dave appeared as musclemen on episodes of The Monkees and The Beverly Hillbillies.  No significant gay subtexts, though it is interesting to watch the lesbian actress Nancy Kulp pretend that she is swooning over his physique.

Disillusioned at always been cast as bullies, objects of derision, and guys who don't get the girl, as if the bodybuilder was somehow inadequately masculine, Dave retired from acting to concentrate on bodybuilding and writing, and on managing World's Gym in Santa Cruz.  His personal website features many interesting articles on the history of bodybuilding, but doesn't mention gay people.