"Playdate": Paul Blart plays with Reacher, his gay son with a mysterious super-strong boy. With plot holes...um, I mean plot twists, sci-fi, and teenage romance

I was born at the tail end of the Baby Boom, when 77 million people were growing up in the U.S., so I could just walk outside and find nine or ten boys my own age to play with.  But today there are fewer kids, they live farther away, and parents are worried that if you go outside by yourself, you'll be grabbed by human traffickers or serial killers, so they arrange for you and a kid you barely know to go on a scheduled and heavily supervised "play date."     

When a movie called Playdate (2025) dropped on Amazon Prime, I checked the promo -- two dads, one of them Reacher (Alan Ritchson), and two boys.  There had to be some gay-subtext buddy-bonds in there!   

Scene 1: Ugh, the other Dad is Kevin James, star of Paul Blart Mall Cop, The King of Queens, and other mishegas that I've never seen but understand to be heterosexist, homophobic, and dumber than Adam Sandler.  He plays lacrosse coach Brian, who puts his kid Lucas (Benjamin Pajak) into the game even though he's terrible and the other members hate him.  That's called nepotism, buddy.

Blart convinces Lucas that he'll make a good play, walk across the field in slow motion as his teammates cheer, and impress girls.  Meeting/ impressing/ winning girls as the only reason boys do anything, established at minute 2.3.

"I love you, Dad!" Lucas exclaims, but the homophobic Blart shushes him.  You must never admit that same-sex love exists, not even the familial love of a parent and child.  The proper expression is "I like you."

Lucas makes the play, but tries to walk across the field in slow motion, and the opposing team clobbers him.  His teammates all hate him.  Also, he's severely injured.

Scene 2: Mom suggests that maybe Lucas isn't cut out for sports.  "No!" Blart exclaims.  "He is a boy!  All boys are cut out for sports!  By the way, what's taking him so long in the bathroom?"

He's being assaulted by a gang of bullies.  Blart breaks it up, threatens to "kick the ass" of the head bully, then worries that his son thinks he's a coward for not going through with it.  If you beat up a 14-year old kid, you'd have more than that to worry about.

Lucas notes that he's used to the assault; it happens every day.  Mom is horrified, and suggests calling the Principal, but Blart says the parents can't intervene.  What is this, 1982?  He has to get to work, but when he returns, they will figure something out.

Scene 3: At work, Frat Executive (Kurt Long), Insanely Handsome Frat Executive (Luke Greenfield), and Sorority Executive are cheering at a nature show, as a leopard kills an antelope. Boss Trent (Miles Fisher) calls Blart in and tells him to fix the numbers in that account.  "But that would be fraud!"  "Ok, you're fired."  Wait -- we were introduced to all these characters for one scene?  They won't appear again?

At home that night, Lucas is dancing for his parents. Mom says "Shake it, girl!"  Blart is not happy; if the kid doesn't drop the sissy act, people might think he's gay or something.  This guy is a total homophobe, and the year appears to be 1982.

Scene 4: Blart  takes Lucas to the park to force his inner manliness with a game of football.  He spies the super-buffed, effervescent Reacher,  with biceps the size of cannonballs, playing "lob football at the speed of sound" with his son, who looks like he can bench press his school.  

Reacher talks Blart into a one-on-one and tackles him, resulting in gay panic.  Meanwhile, CJ loves Lucas's hoodie and dance moves, and invites him home to see a tree that looks like Mark Ruffalo. Blart is scared of these people, but Reacher talks him into it. 

Something is wrong here.  Reacher is over-eager to be Blart's friend. His son CJ keeps glaring at him, and when he moves in for a hug, goes ballistic, punching, kicking, and biting. Is he being kidnapped?

Scene 5: They arrive at the house. Reacher hugs Blart tightly.  Lucas: "Isn't Reacher super-strong and cool, and look how big he is?"  Don't you hate it when your boyfriend is more interested in your Dad?

While Lucas and CJ are in the back yard smooching...I mean, dancing...Reacher gets even more creepy.  He mentions a dead wife nonchalantly, but doesn't remember her name.  Or what CJ stands for. 

They go to lunch at Buckee Cheese's, where bad guys attack. Reacher manages to subdue them, but when they rush to the car and drive away, six or seven carloads of assassins give chase. 

More after the break

"The Tick": Can a Man and a Boat Find Love?

I'm completely obsessed  over the relationship between a man in a moth costume and a talking boat.

The Tick. created by Ben Edlund in 1986, is a superhero parody that examines how being super might play out in the real world, where the rent is due, buildings you smash up have to be repaired, and you suffer from anxiety and depression over "being different."

The comic book, animated series, and tv series versions have all been slightly different, but the Tick and Arthur always capitalize on the superhero-sidekick homoerotic bond: they live together, share expenses, share a bed, bicker like a married couple.  The 2001 series, with Patrick Warburton as The Tick, was called "the gayest show on tv" for dealing with issues like coming out to parents and gay adoption.

The latest adaption, on Amazon Prime (2016-2019),is even more gay-coded.  In previous versions, Arthur gets girlfriend, but here, he (now played by Griffin Newman) does not express any heterosexual interest.  Neither does the Tick (Peter Serafinowicz).  Everyone accepts them explicitly as a couple.  They are invited to parties together; Mom invites "the two of you" to dinner; they apply for official superhero status as a pair.

Of course, they are not actually lovers; the Tick is happy to see Arthur "getting out there" and dating new people.  Or new boats.

Fellow  superhero Overkill (Scott Speiser) has a sentient boat named Dangerboat (voiced by Alan Tudyk in a parody of Kitt , the talking car from Knightrider).  Early in the series, Dangerboat announces that he identifies as male.  This starts out a little discomforting, like a transphobic joke, but after the initial “identifies as” scene, everyone just accepts that Dangerboat is a male boat. Furthermore, he is gay, attracted to both male boats and male humans. He was in love with his previous owner,  Michael, and now he has a crush on Arthur.

He gets a  little frisky while Arthur is taking a shower (inside him).,but then he apologizes, and just asks Arthur out (or in) to movies.Arthur keeps blowing him off. (“Just date the boa!” I yelled at the screen.“You could do worse.” )

 Tick is enthusiastic about the potential romance,but Arthur isn’t sure – a man dating a boat? How would that even work?  (Gay human couples get the same response).  “”I don’t want to confuse him, or confuse me.  I’m already confused.  He’s just a boat, right?”

Thing come to a head when Dangerboat has a post-traumatic episode over Michael’s death, and Arthur talks him down from a "deep cleansing" that would kill them all: “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love”   Dangerboat admits that he loves Arthur, and Arthur responds "I know you do."

Darn.

Later, Dangerboat apologizes for losing it, and hopes that they can still be friends.  “We are friends,” Arthur affirms.

Darn.

So I guess they won't be dating.  But I still think Arthur could do worse.

By the way, this version also has a lot of beefcake.  Arthur is nude frequently, and there are glimpses of other superheroes, like Superion  (Brendan Hines, left), and villains, like Stosh (Tyler Bunch).  

Plus a Season 1 plot arc involves the Very Large Man (Ryan Woodle), an ordinary guy zapped with a ray that makes him 200 feet tall.  At that height, he's no longer sentient, but he does have a 20 foot long d*ck (we only see his backside).

The perennial question: smart but tiny, or dumb but hung?

See also: "Superman" (2025): You'll believe a man can queerbait.  With Alan Tudyk.

The Chair Company, Episode 1.6: More queer codes at Seth's 18th birthday party. Plus Seth's selfie, a queer puppeteer, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Brock c*ck. With Tyler Bunch.

10 Things You Should Know about "The Tick"

Bentley Storteboom: Dutch, 25 years old, and gay? Or just one of the three? With KJ Apa, Malachi Barton, and Noah's buddy

  

Link to the n*de photos

Two of these three statements about Bentley Storteboom are false.  Guess which.

1.He's Dutch

2. He's 25

3. He's gay

1. Is he Dutch?   Storteboom means "Fallen Tree" in Frisian, spoken by 400,000 people in the northern regions of the Netherlands, like these musclemen on the beach.

No, he's Canadian.

2. Is he 25?

No, according to the IMDB, as of this writing he's 13 1/2! 

  

He may look 25 in the top photo, but here he looks like 16-year old Gavin Munn of The Righteous Gemstones.

Bentley was born in August 2012, in Maple Ridge, a suburb of Vancouver.  According to his mom, “He wasn’t your typical boy that wanted to play soccer or sports,” but he was interested in movies and the theater, and started asking about how kids got on tv.  His parents had no experience in performing arts, and had no idea.  Kudos for not trying to push him into sports, Mom and Dad.  My parents never let up.  "You're a boy!  Boys like sports!  Try out for football!"

They did some research, enrolled Bentley in the LeClerc School of Acting, and found him an agent, and he started auditioning at age six.  Soon he was appearing in commercials, and got the starring role in the student film Small Boy (2020): "After getting left out during a hide and seek game, a small boy realizes what he wants is different than what he was seeking from others."  So, different from the others?  Gotcha. 

That fall he won two Joey Awards (for Canadian youth): best actor in a commercial and best actor in a student film. 

In 2020 he won an iconic role in the series finale of Supernatural (2020).  As Dean is dying, he tells his gay-subtext partner Sam that he must "carry on."  The time for the "manly love of comrades" is over; it's time to accept his heterosexual destiny.  A few years later, Dean looks down from heaven and sees that Sam has acquiesced: he's got a wife and kid (Bentley). And the kicker: they're playing ball!  Bentley might not be "like the other boys," but his son is.  We hear the Kansas song:

Carry on, my wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done.
Lay your weary head to rest.  Don't you cry no more.

Funny, I feel like crying at this negation of the gay experience. 

Episodes of Nancy Drew (2021) and YoShowBiz (2021) followed, but Bentley's big break  (at age eight) came with what the local papers breathlessly praised as "a recurring role on a hit tv show!"  It was Riverdale (2017-2023), the campy, over-the-top, NSFW adaption of the Archie comics world. 

KJ Apa, formerly Archie, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

More after the break

Raphael Luce: Femme boy from a family of stunt doubles and skywalkers plays heterosexual demons, hangs out in France with male friends

  

Link to the n*de photos

I started researching Raphael Luce based on this photo: dude's got a physique.

Plus he has a femme affect, and hangs out with guys a lot.

Raphael has French and American citizenships and spends a lot of time in France.  Here he and his boyfriend are eating at the Five Guys in Paris.  On the Champs-Élysées, a short walk from the Arch de Triomphe?. What's next, a Burger King in the nave of Notre Dame?

"Fun times in France."  The two boyfriends playing cards?  Can't you think of anything more interesting to do on the bed?

Raphael was born in 2006 to a circus-and-stunt family. Dad Jade Kindar-Martin is a tight-rope artist specializing in skywalking (great heights) and firewalking (with the rope on fire).  He performed for the Cirque de Soleil for many years, then moved to Hollywood to follow his wife into stuntwork. 

 Dad has doubled for Joseph Gordon Levitt, Austin P. McKenzie, Sam Reid, and Hunter Douhan, and played the killer bunny Bonnie in Five Nights at Freddy's.

Mom Karine Mauffrey has stunted in over 50 movies and tv shows, from The Walking Dead to Hannah Montana.,

His sister Jophielle starred on General Hospital (2019-24)  as Violet Finn, the variously sick, kidnapped, and assumed dead daughter of the variously addicted, sick, poisoned, kidnapped, and falsely accused of murder Dr. Hamilton Finn (Michael Easton, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

More after the break