Deciphering the hyperbolic gush of "Seraphim," about black gay men falling in love and dying. With awful grammar, purple rain, and n*de dudes.

Link to the n*de dudes

The trailer of Seraphim: The Motion Picture (2024 or 2026) shows two African-American men, named Angel and Druid, so you think there will be paranormal content.  We see them knocking on each other's door, kissing, hugging, dancing, having s*x, displaying their bottoms, gazing into each other's eyes, singing while having s*x, and singing while having a b*ndage scene.  Then one is shot and killed by a snarling cop, and the other experiences grief.

So, gay life ends in tragedy.  A bit old-fashioned, marred by internalized homophobia, but totally comprehensible. But check out the plot synopsis: a labyrinth of obscure references and pretentious, hyperbolic, overpraising gush set amid the annoying overuse of all-caps and quotation marks. 

Let's go through it beat by beat. I'm fixing the ALLCAP and quotation mark mishegas. and the misuse of commas, for, everything.

" From the creators of the critically acclaimed, socially-conscious album Seraphim..."

Seraphim is a concert album with themes of racial injustice and homophobia, written, performed, and produced by Marck Angel.  I never heard of him, but according to his bio, he is an acclaimed actor, singer, dancer, songwriter, record producer, director, novelist, painter, architect, marine biologist, neurosurgeon, theologian, and Greek god, able to walk on water and leap tall buildings in a single bound. 

"...based on the award-winning short film Justice..."

There are many, many short films by that name: a girl seeks revenge for her sister's murder; a famous lawyer prepares for a case; a woman is accused of murder; the mind of a troubled young man in prison.

"...comes Seraphim: The Motion Picture , starring Pop/R&B sensation, Marck Angel ("Finding Me", "Christopher Street")..."

I figured that since Marck is the greatest everything in the world, his two songs would be going super-platinum and stay on the Billboard #1 list for 345 weeks, but I can't find them.

I found two songs named after Christopher Street, the heart of New York's gay village and the name of an influential gay magazine.  

The first is from Wonderful Town (1953), a musical about two sisters (variously played by Rosalind Russell, Carol Channing, Nancy Walker, and Brooke Shields), who move from Ohio to New York to pursue their dreams. One falls in love, and the other gets a newspaper reporter job.   There are gay subtexts throughout, including the irony of their tour of  Greenwich Village:

Here you see Christopher Street,
Typical spot in Greenwich Village.
Ain't it quaint?  Ain't it sweet? 
Pleasant and peaceful on Christopher Street

The second is called "Christopher Street," by Yarn (2014), a North Carolina based band that frequently plays at gay venues:

I hear the sound of the street shuffle all damn night
And I see the colors from the street lights
Oh and the queens they come walking this way
Lord I'm counting on better days

Sounds homophobic. 

More about Marck Angel.  The acclaimed actor has three other credits on the IMDB:

Cocktails (2014), about the owners of a gay club.

Finding Me (2013-15), a tv series about a gay black man trying to find himself.

Deckalogue: A Finding Me Story (2017).

Plus F*ckme, not listed on the IMDB, appears amid the 23 posters for Seraphim on Marck's Instagram.  Sorry, 28.  They just keep going. 

"...web-series heartthrob Donta Hensley (Honest Men, Davenport Diaries)..."

Honest Men is a 17-episode tv series about "honest conversations" between men, their sons, and "the boy next door."  There's also strangling, bedroom stuff, and a guy squeezing his pecs while his buddy is going downtown (example on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Davenport Diaries is a 16-episode tv series with no plot synopsis, but it looks like a soap opera.

"....and up and coming stage/film prodigy Donnie E. Thomas (Love and Therapy)."

Donnie E. Thomas has no other screen credits.  There is no Love and Therapy movie or tv show, but there's a S*x, Love, & Therapy movie from 2014, starring Patrick Breul (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) as a marriage counselor who promotes the benefits of falling in love before you fall into bed -- until he hires a s*x-crazy female assistant.

Whew, we made it through the first sentence.  More after the break.

"This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans." But does it have any d*cks? Thai BL with cooking and evil schemes. Plus Japanese and Himalayan dudes

Link to the n*de dudes

I 'm seeing more and more Thai BL series on Netflix.   I like the universe where everybody is gay or bi, and the settings are  sometimes interesting, but the multisyllabic names make research difficult. Try typing "Sailub Hemmawich Kwanamphaiphan" and "gay" into your search engine. And when you do, they never have n*de photos available; I have to make do with random n*de dudes.  I think this one is Japanese, not Thai.  But who can resist a show called This Love Doesn't have Long Beans?

I checked: Long beans, fak yao, are legumes, denser and less juicy than Western green beans, and they grow up to three feet long.  No proverb that I could find.  

Scene 1:  Influencer Prawan is reviewing the No Long Beans Basil House. He only reviews restaurants that specialize in basil stir fry, pad krapao.  This one is unique because they don't include long beans, a traditional ingredient in the dish.  

He praises the atmosphere, the plating, and the food, loudly, annoying the other customers, until Chef Oab, the "Hellfire Chef," asks him to leave.  Then he hates everything, insults Chef Oab, and tries to fight him.  Waiters hold him back.

"You think because you're a great chef, and incredibly handsome, that you can push people around! Well, I'll get even.  I'll leave a bad review, and none of my 13 followers will come to your restaurant."

Scene 2: Shirtless musclemen posing for the camera.  Influencer Prawan bursts in late, and then won't take off his shirt.  "It's a commercial for a weight loss clinic.  We asked for a model with a six pack." "Well..um...I can act."  The director kicks him out.

Next he gets a text from the electric company: he has to pay his bill today, or they're cutting off his power.  But he only has 99 baht (about $3.00) in his bank account.   What can he do?

How about ask his agent for a loan?  No way -- he got Prawan that modeling job, and he was kicked off the set for not being in shape.  "You promised that you'd be in model shape by the beginning of the year!  

Prawan begs for another chance.  His influencer career isn't working out -- no one is paying him to review restaurants.  Maybe if you expanded beyond pad krapao?   

"Just get me one more job."  

"No, you're hopeless."

Scene 3: Back home, Prawan is inundated by bills from creditors and disconnect notices. He goes to his friend JJ's house and announces that he's staying there.

"Only for one night.  After that, you go home."

"But my power's been cut off.  I can't go home."

"I've paid your electric bill."

"Oh...well, they've turned off the water, too..." Har-har.

Scene 3: Chef Oab reviewing a commercial for his restaurant.  First, as one of the celebrity judges on Kitchen Fire Thailand (logo in English), he screams that the pork is undercooked, and tastes awful. Cut to praising how he selects the ingredients for the world's best pad krapao.  Most important: no long beans. Shouldn't that be a matter of taste?  

He's not going to use the commercial.

"But why?  We can make any changes you want."

"Because I'm closing the restaurant.  I've lost my passion."  

"Is it because of your ex girlfriend?"   Cut to him and his girlfriend hugging, gazing at each other, tasting food, and opening their restaurant, with "no long beans" because she is allergic to them.  

"Yes, and also I need money.  I'll sell to the first person who meets my offer."

More after the break

Deli Boys, Episode 2.1: The guys are back, with more wacky drug deals, Andrew Rannells as a squeaky-clean gay DA, and Pakistani d*cks

  

Link to the n*de dudes

The second season of Deli Boys just dropped on Hulu.  I reviewed an episode of the first season, and gave it a B: not enough beefcake, but some gay characters, including Brian George, whom men of a certain age remember as Babu on Seinfeld, as the season's Big Bad.

The Premise: After their father is murdered, Pakistani-American brothers, the hardworking Mir (Asif Ali) and the screw-up Raj (Saagar Shaikh), inherit his deli and DarCo, a company that produces and sells achar (a pickle relish).   Soon they discover that they are actually transporting cocaine to drug dealers in the West Philly market.   Two of Dad's consiglieres, Aunt Lucky and Ahmad (Brian George), show them the ropes of their new business -- until Ahmad, betrays them in a ploy to gain control.  Oh, and he's the one who murdered their Dad.

Scene 1:  DarCo is now the Number #1 cocaine distributor in Philly, grossing $2 million per quarter, but with fame comes notoriety: Every criminal is trying to "jack their sh*t"  So the guys and Aunt Lucky go to Max Sugar's casino to ask for his help in laundering their drug money.

Max (Fred Armisen) resists the idea... whoops, he catches someone cheating with weighted dice, so he goes down to the floor and forces the guy to eat them.  Dude is dangerous!

Back to business: he is extremely attracted to Aunt Lucky, and agrees to discuss the matter further, over dinner tonight.

Left: Not Fred Armisen.

Scene 2: DA Andrew Chadwater (gay actor Andrew Rannells) is running for mayor on a platform of cracking down on "dealers, sickos, and crooks," with the campaign slogan "Say 'heck, no' to drugs."  Sounds like Nancy Regan's "Just Say No" campaign in the 1980s. 

At headquarters, he gets the intel on the latest fad, where you mix cocaine with ices.  His assistant points out that his ex-husband was a cocaine addict, so he has a personal stake in the issue.

"We're not talking about Craig" Chadwater exclaims.  "Did he call?"

"No."

More after the break

Gay couples from your grandfather's comics: Mutt and Jeff, Alphonse and Gaston, LIttle Nemo and Flip, Chip and Dale....

Comic book historians call the period from 1890 to 1930 a golden age, with The Yellow Kid, The Katzenjammer Kids, Moon Mullins, Barney Google, Krazy Kat, Little Nemo, and so on.  I've read selections: they haven't aged well.  Even when I can understand the slang, the jokes don't make much sense.  They seem to be mostly about people hitting each other.

But there are a lot of gay subtext couples.  Did readers in 1926 wonder what Mutt and Jeff are planning, or was it obvious that they are on their honeymoon?  

Did they wonder why Flip, nephew of the Dawn Guard, was so obsesseed with preventing Little Nemo from reaching the Princess?   Did they wonder about his cigar?  (Left: Flip tries to seduce Jimmy in the Return to Slumberland graphic novel).

And what about Alphonse and Gaston?

The invention of prolific cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper, the two Frenchmen, one tall and one short, first appeared in The New York Journal in 1901, and continued intermittently until 1937.

 Jokes involved them being urbane, sophisticated, and foppish, traits antithetical to the big-shouldered Yankee masculinity of the era.

And over-polite, each graciously refusing to leave before the other as the building burns down or the bull charges at them.

More after the break