Sam Lerner: Is the "Goldbergs" star gay-teasing, coming out, or from a parallel world? Is that really his tree trunk? Is that really his boyfriend's backside?

  

Link to the n*de dudes

I'm having a bad, bad day.  First I hurt my back lifting weights, and I wasn't even doing squats.  Then I spent an hour going through a teen idol's social media and acting credits, looking for gay hints, only to discover that at the bottom of his IMDB page, he identifies himself as straight. Then I spent two hours researching Sam Lerner, and things got bizarre.

Sam was born into a show biz family.  His Dad and Uncle Michael have hundreds of acting credits, ranging from Laverne and Shirley to Barton Fink.  He expressed an interest in acting at age five, but his parents didn't think he was talented enough, not even when an agent friend offered to represent him, and the jobs started pouring in: episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, Two and a Half Men, Oliver Beane, and The King of Queens, and the movie Life with Men.

Tell me more about those men...

Finally, at his Bar Mitzvah, Sam took the stage and performed a comedy roast of his younger sister, and the parents relented.   Dad even offered to become Sam's acting coach.

Can I get an invitatiion too your J*zz Fest, buddy?  Spoiler alert: It ain't "jazz."

42 acting jobs followed.  Sam states that his best work is in:

Envy (2004): Stick-in-the-mud Tim (Ben Stiller, backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) becomes so envious of the success of his chaotic friend Nick (Jack Black) that his wife and son (Sam) leave him, and he harms a horse. It's a comedy.

Monster House (2006): a sentient haunted house bedevils DJ (Mitchel Musso), Chowder (Sam), and The Girl of His Dreams.

Project Almanac (2015): A found-footage film about a high school student (Jonny Weston) who builds a time machine, along with his buddies (Allen Evangelista, Sam).  He wins The Girl of His Dreams.

Plus two tv comedies:

Suburgatory (2011-14): Sam appears in six episodes as Evan, a stereotypic nerd with a crush on cool girl Tessa. 

The Goldbergs (2014-23): Sam appears in 175 episodes as Geoff, a stereotypic nerd who dates a variety of girls before settling down with the Girl of His Dreams.  Fun fact: Geoff's Dad is played by Sam's real-life Dad. Ken Lerner.

Looks like it's straight guys all the way down.  I don't even see any projects with gay characters played by other people.

Maybe there are some gay hints in the movies Sam has produced?

Drop (2025): A "widowed mother" goes out on her first date since her husband died, and things go terribly wrong. Brandon Sklenar plays her date-with-a-terrible-secret.

Sauna Dreams (2024).  A mockumentary about sauna athlete David Roffman (Ephraim Rimsky) on his way to the 2023 World Sauna Championships in Detroit. Were you expecting a gay sauna?  Me, too. 

Well, is Ephraim at least gay?  In 2018, he celebrates his second anniversary with this guy, and says "Mazel tov on five years." Which is it?  Maybe they've been together for five years, but only married for two?

 But in 2024, Ephraim tells us that he has moved in with his girlfriend. 

So, is he bi?  Was he just pretending to be married to this dude?  Or are they writng partners who didn't think there would be any confusion because gay men don't exist, and what else could they be?    

This may be relevant to Sam, as I check his social media.

Sam shows us his backside several times, often in a femme pose.  Maybe once or twice, you're just fooling around, but over and over, you are obviously signaling your interest in doing gay bedroom stuff  

Sam compliments Monster House co-star Mitchel Musso on his attractiveness.   That's usually the statement of a gay man.

Curioser and curioser. 

More after the break

Jackson Tessmer: From Hebrew School to toga parties, with angst tv, Christian drama, Asa Butterfield, and n*de selfies

 

Link to the n*de photos

Jackson Tessmer was born in Hermosa Beach, California, about 20 miles south of West Hollywood.  When he was a teenager, he moved to Inverness, Florida, where he graduated from Citrus High School in 2022.

He was a swimmer and powerlifter, winning first place in the Orlando Open Championships in 2022 with a bench of 170 and a deadlift of 211.  Sorry, I couldn't find any powerlifting photos.

He was also very busy with Hebrew School and  temple activities.  It's a wonder that he had time to go on auditions.

Jackson's on-screen acting credits begin with a series of shorts: Show and Tell (2013), Birthday Boy (2014),  Table Manners (2015).  He starred with Michael Berthold in Dear Ones (2014), On Your Street (2016), and Ranger Things (2017).

Plus walk-ons in Tomorrowland (2015) with George Clooney, Modern Family (2016) with Mitch dressed as Little Orphan Annie, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), with Asa Butterfield 

Jackson's first starring role came in Schoolbus Diaries (2016-17), with "the everyday lives of children and teenagers" mediated by their surprisingly wise bus driver. 

No Place in the World (2017) is a Christian movie featuring two sisters with problems at home and school, "trying to survive in a disconnected, self-centered world."  I'll bet they find God.  Jackson seems to play a school shooter.

I can't find the tv series Mohawk (2018) streaming anywhere, but Jackson's demo reel shows his father, who has just crucified someone, punching and strangling him.  He's saved by the spirit of a Native American woman.

Paradise Lost (2018) is another show that is impossible to find on streaming services. All I can figure out is a guy (Josh Hartnett) and his wife and kids returning to his home town to confront the demons of his past. Jackson plays his son. Shane McRae plays Dickie Barnett, his enemy.

More after the break

The shirtless parking valets: A shock of joy on "Suburgatory" on the night before Thanksgiving. With Mohr and Parker backsides and a lot of bare chests

 

Link to the n*de dudes

When I was growing up, you almost never saw a bare chest on tv.  On the rare occasions when it happened -- Denny Miller surfs to Gilligan's Island,  Ponch and Jon hit the beach on CHIPS, Kevin poses for an art class on Mr. Belvedere -- you felt an intense, palpable joy.  Not desire so much as understanding.  This is it, what we were made for. Beauty.  Truth.  The Eternal Masculine. 

With the advent of cable and then streaming tv, nearly every actor took off his shirt frequently, and some even put their junk on display.  And of course we can go online and see 100 n*de men before breakfast. When you see it all the time, that shock of joy vanishes.  

But it returned on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011, the night before Thanksgiving, when Suburgatory aired Episode 1.8, "Thanksgiving."

Suburgatory (2011-14) starred Jeremy Sisto (left, showing his sausage) as George Altman, an architect who moves his teenage daughter Tessa (Jane Levy) from Manhattan to Chatswin, Connecticut.  She is not pleased, but she tries to find some semblance of cool amid the Mean Girls, Dumb Jocks, and Ladies Who Lunch.

It was not our favorite show -- mostly women in the cast, a lot of heterosexism, and some low-key gay stereotyping -- but it aired between The Middle and Modern Family, so we had no choice.

George's backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

In Episode 1.8, it's Thanksgiving in Chatswin, and Tessa is upset because Dad George has rejected their traditional Manhattan activities for dinner with the ultra-rich Dallas Royce.  In the B Plot, Tessa's friend Lisa is upset because her middle-class Mom, Sheila Shay, insists that she wear a "Puritan dress" to their Thanksgiving Dinner.

 When Tessa and Dad George arrive at the Royce mansion, they see shirtless valets parking the guests' cars.  

Whoa, that shock of joy came rushing back!  

Maybe because it was so unexpected.  Who hires shirtless valets?  Especially at Thanksgiving, when it's in the 30s and 40s out?  And there are twelve people at that party. Why do they need four valets?  

Director Alex Hardcastle was not even trying to be realistic. He presented us with a vision of masculine beauty to counterbalance the feminine vibe of the rest of the episode (spoiler alert: Tessa's friend Lisa spends about ten minutes of air time n*ked, in protest of that Puritan dress). 

The first Indian Valet vanishes immediately, but when George's friend Noah hands his car keys to the second, we get a bare chest and shoulders close-up.  He looks like a college athlete.

He disappears, but as Noah walks toward the door, we see the two Pilgrim valets, one extremely muscular, the other a rather thin twink.  No closeups, but they are visible for several seconds, organizing the various parking slips.

Later we get quick glimpses of the two Indian Valets at the Royce table,  so they must be Royce relatives co-opted for the job.  The Pilgrim Valets are visible at the middle class Shay table, so presumably they were hired. 

But who are the actors?  In 2011 I let the scene slip into memory, but last night I saw it again during a rewatch.  With 15 years of experience on this website, RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, and Tales of West Hollywood, I am equipped to research their other acting roles,  look for n*de photos, and check their social media to see if they are gay. 

More after the break.

A Roland for an Oliver: Gay Medieval Lovers

"A Roland for an Oliver" is apparently a common expression, although I've only seen it in British fiction.  It means that you're equally matched (for instance, these brothers can both bench press exactly 320 pounds each).

It's derived from the Medieval gay lovers that I first read about in The Young Folks' Shelf of Books during my early childhood.

I heard about them again in college, when my French Literature class was assigned a modern version of the 12th century Chanson de Roland, the national epic of France.





During the siege of Viana, Emperor Charlemagne agreed to let the outcome rest on single combat between two champions.  He sent his nephew, the bold, heavily-muscled Roland, the Prince Valiant of France.  Count Gerard of Viana sent his grandson, the handsome, quick-witted Oliver (or Olivier).  Their talents were complementary; they were perfectly matched.

As they fought, an angel appeared, separated them, and bade them become friends (the same thing happened to Simon and Milo a few generations later).

They spent the rest of their lives together, fighting side by side, and their love, with its divine mandate, was acclaimed in every corner of Charlemagne's Empire.

Then the Saracens began wending their way through Basque country,  In 778, the approached the pass at Roncevaux, Spain, in the Pyrenees.  If they entered France, they would take all of Europe.  Charlemagne and his troops tried to stop them.  In the heat of battle, Oliver was killed, and the distraught Roland cried:

So many days and years gone by
We lived together.
Since thou art dead, to live is pain.

Then he died as well.

Actually, the battle had nothing to do with the Moorish caliphate; Basque guerillas ambushed Charlemagne's troops, in retribution for his destructiion of their capital, to rob them.   Roland really existed, the leader of the Franks' invasion of Brittany, but there's no historical evidence for the existence of Oliver.  The Chanson de Roland  created him to be Roland's true love.

I didn't bother to point out the homoromance to my French professor, who no doubt would have insisted that Roland, like Aschenbach in Death in Venice,  wasn't Wearing a Sign.  He was betrothed to Oliver's sister, after all, and in the Italian epic Orlando Furioso, he falls in love with a woman (and flies to the moon).  

More after the break