Jake Silbermann: Coming out on a soap, crushing on a dude off-Broadway, with some film roles and a beautiful, humongous...

  

Link to the beautiful, humongous...

Two Jakes with familiar-sounding names had impressive photos on the celebrity d*ck  subreddit.  Yesterday I profiled the first Jake, McDornan, from Quints, Greek, What We Do in the Shadows, and Mrs. Davis. The second Jake, Silbermann, is not instantly familiar, but I know him from somewhere.

Researching him proves problematic: a comedian/ musician named Jake Silbermann is much more famous, and gets 99% of the internet search hits.  I'll have to go with the IMDB biography for our Jake:

Born in New York City in 1983, and received a B.A. in Theater Arts from Syracuse University in 2004.  After some commercials and guest spots, he landed his most significant role to date, Noah Meyer on 222 episodes of As the World Turns (2007-10).  

Noah and Luke were praised as soap opera's first gay power couple, Nuke.  But it doesn't seem like they were together very often, or for very long.  I'll try to piece together their convoluted storyline.

1.Noah is a student at Oakdale University and intern at WOAK television, dating fellow intern Maddie.  he thinks that Luke (Van Hansis) is after his girlfriend, until the dude reveals that he is gay.

2. Noah and Luke start dating on the downlow.  Maddie finds out and dumps Noah.

3. Noah's Dad (Daniel Hugh Kelly) finds out and disowns him , tries to "cure" him, and finally tries to end Luke.  He ends up paralyzed, but eventually recovers.

4. Noah marries a young Iraqi woman so she won't be sent back to her country, but she falls in love with him and wants to make the relationship physical.  Then she disappears, but it turns out that she has been kidnapped by Noah's Dad.  In the ensuing confrontation, Dad is killed.  Or is he?

5. After some skulduggery, Luke realizes that he still has feelings for his ex, Kevin (Karl Girolamo), and breaks up with Noah.

6. Later Luke starts dating Reid, but when Noah is in critical condition in the hospital, he rushes to his ex-boyfriend's side.

7. Luke gets back together with Reid, who then has a car accident and expires. Meanwhile, Noah gets back with his ex-girlfriend, Maddie.

8. Noah is blinded in an accident. Luke starts dating Brian (Lawrence Lau), the doctor in charge of restoring his sight.  

Or is Brian his grandmother's new husband?  Wikipedia and the fan wiki give different stories.  I guess it doesn't matter: everybody that Luke dates is a goner. 

So naturally Noah calls off the latest attempt to start a relationship and leaves town. Just before the soap opera ends, cancelled after 54 seasons.  But at least they got to kiss twice.

More after the break

The Fixers: A gay-vague Taiwanese hunk, a bi gambler, politicians, blackmail, mysterious monks, and Chinese dudes

  

Link to the not fully clothed dudes

The Fixers, on Netflix: "A mismatched pair...."  Good enough for me: let's find some gay subtexts.

Episode 1: "The Swamp Eel." 

Scene 1: A chubby eyeglassed guy awakens in the hull of a ship, chained to a bed.  A young guy (Jun Shuo-Lou) tells him that they've been kidnapped because "Your boss found out that you were dating his wife."

"But I'm just his accountant.  I never even met his wife."

What other reason would he have to kidnap them?  

He has evidence of money laundering -- the Boss must think that he's going to leak it.  But it's hidden in his study.

"They're in the study," Driver says, tossing him the key to his chains as he walks out.  Huh?  

He wasn't in a ship after all; he was in a truck. We see the Driver changing clothes beside his ritzy car, while his partner is eating a sandwich.  "We just kidnapped you to get the location of the incriminating evidence.  You're free to go."

As they zoom off, the driver, who turns out to be a fixer named Gold, calls the Boss to say that they're on the way to get the ledgers.  His partner complains that they keep doing jobs for the police. 

Scene 2:  Establishing shot of a poor neighborhood.  A dice game. Uh-oh, Swamp Eel (Christopher Ming Shun Lee, right) uses a device to cheat, then gathers his money. "My beautiful wife has made me dinner, so I have to go."  Hetero identity established immediately

Some gangsters led by Milky enter.  Swamp Eel says "(censored)" An old stewardess joke that implies gay/bi identity.

"Your debt's overdue. Time to pay."

"Um...er...uh...business is slow.  Let's play a dice game for it."

Milky (Sam Lin, left) bets a huge amount. Swamp Eel uses his device, but they catch him. 

"Now we're going to cut off your most valuable body part!"  

Swamp Eel runs away, across the housetops, and into a secret hole in a wall, across another rooftop, into an open-air market, where he swings a swamp eel like a lasso. They pellet him with cabbages. He jumps into a police car and blows them kisses.

Scene 3: He arrives at home to find "Scammers go away!" signs all over his house.  His son Howie reveals that his wife is live streaming about being scammed.  She used the house as collateral to take out a loan for five million Taiwan dollars ($16,000 USD) to invest in cryptocurrency, expecting to get rich.  Instead, she lost everything.

Left: the IMDB says that Howie is played by Chen-yu Sun, but he is voiced by Sebastian Sero.  Must be the English dub.

Swamp Eel yells at her for losing the money. "You're obsessed with getting rich!"

"Well, what do you do all day? Nothing!  I think you have a  romantic partner"

"Ok, ok, I'll take care of it.  I'll get the money back."

Scene 4: A girl enters Chiu Cha Temple, a second-story the Xinzhuang District of New Taipei City. She prays, then fills out a consultation card and selects a fortune stick.  In a hidden room, the monk looks up her information online, comes out, and tells her that Mr. Chao should go to a different temple, Ching He- by himself. 

Cut to the middle-aged Mr. Chao, photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) with an unbrella walking up steps in the rain to reach the fictional Ching He Temple. A Monk leads him through several rooms to a meeting with the Head Monk, who asks "How can we help you?"

Scene 5:  This is confusing.  Mr. Chao is seeking re-election, but his son's drug arrest is ruining his chances.  But then another extremely important guy appears at a re-election fundraiser, and while he is being photographed by the press, his estranged son appears.  Everyone is shocked.  But it's not Mr. Chao and his drug-bust son.  It's someone else. Why confuse viewers like this?

Scene 6: The Eel gets a phone call from his Friend Jung: Gangster Milky is telling everyone that his games are rigged, and everyone knows that they're out 5,000,000 NTD, so he needs money, right?  Friend Jung has a debt collection job that pays 300,000 but he'll have to flash a gun around.  The Eel refuses: "I don't do that anymore," but changes his mind and retrieves the tin box with his gun.  

Cut to the fundraiser, where the New Guy is schmoozing.  His estranged son, whom everyone was surprised to see, turns out to be the Driver from Scene 1, actually Louis Hsieh or Fixer Gold, who works for the monks of the Ching He Temple (where Mr. Chao asked for assistance).  He approachesd a girl at the bar, flirts with her, talks her into drinking, then asks her for a date:

That turns into an interrogation: "I can't believe that a woman with a Ph.D. had to date her boss's husband." Hey, that's the line he used in his first scam.  Turns out that she works for Mr. Chao's opponent, Lu Shu-Jung (not listed in the IMDB), who hired a tough named (Censored) to frame Mr. Chao's son, thus ruining his campaign.

"Why did the Tough agree to do it?"

More Taiwanese dudes are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

"We promised to get his own drug charges dropped.  But we're going to frame him for kidnapping and human trafficking.  He's going to prison regardless, evil laugh."

"Ok, I recorded the conversation. You're free to go."  So Fixer Gold wasn't really into her.

More after the break

Jake McDorman: Ryan Pinkston's brother goes on to date a superhero, a vampire, and a nun. With some not-fully-clothed photos

Link to the n*de dudes 

 The celebrity p*nis subreddit usually doesn't offer much of interest, famous shots that we've seen a thousand times and obscure actors showing their stuff while kissingladies.  But yesterday it offered very impressive photos of actors that I've actually heard of, Jake McDorman and Jake Silberman.

McDorman got his start on the Fox comedy Quintuplets (2004-05), as the tall, athletic, popular quint.

Ryan Pinkston played his shorter, much hotter brother. 

Left: Ryan in the shower.

Jake went on to Greek (2007-11), playing a wealthy collegiate preppy, president of his college fraternity (Greek, get it?).  I watched on occasion for the gay character.

After Greek, Jake became a fixture on network tv, with recurring or starring roles on Manhattan Love Story, Limitless, Murphy Brown, The Right Stuff,  Mrs. Davis, and Class of '09.

With many opportunities to show his physique and backside.

According to the IMDB, Jake is "most famous" for:

Lady Bird (2017): The unfortunate title kept viewers away, thinking that it was a biopic of Lady Bird Johnson, President Johnson's First Lady. It's actually a coming-of-age story about a girl in contemporary California with that name. Jake's character does not appear in the plot synopsis.

Watchmen (2019): A tv series about the incredibly homophobic comic book vigilante. Jake plays 1930s superhero Captain Metropolis, who starts a romance with regular character Hooded Justice. 

I checked: Hooded is a guy, played by either Cheyenne Jackson or Jovan Adepo, depending on whether you believe Wikipedia or Decider. 

I'm probably going to go with Jovan (photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Hey, what  happened to the homophobia?  The Watchman comic was impossibly offensive.

More after the break

Robert Rhodes: The visual difference hasn't kept him from playing a dragonrider, a cultist, and a thug. Or from finding a boyfriend (or two).

 

Link to the not fully clothed photos

In House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel, the crowning of King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) has led to civil war in the Medieval fantasy world of Westeros, and several dragons left without masters. In Episode 2.7  (2024), a group of Dragonseeds is  ordered to try to claim them.   

Silver Denys (Robert Rhodes) volunteers to go first, but as he reaches out to touch Vermithor the Bronze Fury, it breathes fire on him. Most of the other dragonseeds are likewise demolished. Finally a blacksmith named Hugh managed to trick the dragon into obedience.

Silver Denys was on screen for only about a minute, and had no lines, but he became the subject of extensive fan debate.  Was he brave or foolhardy?  Some fans also criticized his appearance: the stage makeup was amateurish, not realistic, grotesque, an obvious symbol of his parentage, and so on.  Others stepped up to "defend" him: it's his real appearance, he's  "d*formed."

Robert called them out: "Call it a scar or a difference. The word d*formed isn't very pleasant and insinuates I am half formed/incorrectly formed.  I'm not incorrect, just a bit different."

For a long time, Robert responded to the stares with anger, but now, if he's not tired from telling the story 1,000 times a day, he'll say "Is there anything you want to ask about?"  

The story: he was born with a congenital melanocytic nevis -- a birthmark that covered half his face.  Doctors worried that it would become cancerous, so he spent his childhood in and out of hospitals, undergoing tissue expansions and skin grafts.  He had his last surgery at age 17.

When he was in high school, Robert realized that he was gay, and worried that he'd be doubly stigmatized when he tried to make connections.  Would he ever be able to find a partner? Was he going to live as an perpetual outsider among his own people?

Then he auditioned for Hairspray -- and won the part of Link Larkin, the hunky heartthrob  (played by Zac Efron in 2007 and Garrett Clayton in 2016).   That's when he decided to become an actor, to have people look at him for his hotness and acting talent, not for his scar.

After high school Robert attended the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in South London, where he received a B.A. in Performance in 2018.  He started filling up a resume with acting roles:

Commercials for Enterprise  and Kandar 

The lead in the music videos Heroist (left)  and God for a Day 

Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame 

Bill Sykes in The Invitation 

It was a little harder to break into on-screen acting.  Robert is an ambassador for Changing Faces UK, which combats the stigma around people with visible difference.  Especially in mass media, where they are portrayed as "shy, broken, desperate" outcasts, or more commonly as villains:

Kylo Ren in the Star Wars universe

Tony Montana in Scarface   

Scar in The Lion King

The Joker.

So he tries to find roles where his visual difference is irrelevant to the character.

 His first  professional acting role was in a tv adaption of the Agatha Christie novel Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022).  Will Poulter plays as a golfer who stumbles upon an injured man. His last words are "Why didn't they ask Evans?" I don't know what Robert's character does.

More after the break