Nathan Kress, Freddie from "ICarly," grown up. Is he still homophobic? Is he still shy about showing his beneath-the-belt stuff?

 

Link to the not fully clothed photos

Many Nickelodeon shows of the 2000s had strong homophobic subtexts, and  ICarly (2007-2012) was one of the worst.  Miranda Cosgrove starred as Carly, who hosts an internet comedy show with her butch-but-straight buddy Sam (a girl) and nerd-next-door-with-a- stereotyped crush on her, Freddie (Nathan Kress).  

They are supervised by her wacky bi-subtext older brother, Spencer. 

 On the way, the contempt for gay men, or as Sam alls them, prancies, oozes out in joke after joke.  The most egregious is Spencer being chased down and arrested for appearing in public in a dress; cross-dressing has not been a crime in any American city since the 1970s.

I especially disliked Nathan Kress, amd not only for the horribly cliched "unrequited crush" plotlines.  As he bulked up, he steadfastly refused to permit beefcake photos.  To an extent, that's his choice: his body, his rules.  But when you choose a career that depends on displaying that body, and further set yourself up as a teen idol, you have a sort of obligation to your fans.

More annoying was his reason for failing to post beefcake: he was a way, way conservative fundamentalist of the "hating ten gays before breakfast" variety, and he didn't want girls and prancies getting ideas.

Today Nathan's instagram is full of wife-and-children pictures. 

Still hardly any beefcake, unless incorporated into the wife-and-kid pictures.

And he's still ultra-fundamentalist.

More Nathan after the break

"Lost Boys": Music video by Phoebe Bridgers, with Skyler Gisondo escaping to Middle Earth, or not, plus some not fully clothed dudes

  The censors are becoming extremely picky lately.  I have no idea what was inappropriate for a kindergartener in the last version, except that I used another euphemism for "not fully clothed"

Link to the not fully clothed dudes

I'm not happy with the Gemstone guys since the show ended in 2025.  Both Adam Devine (Kelvin) and Tony Cavalero (Keefe) were married to women, but they played a lot of gay-subtext roles, and in their social media, they minimized their hetero interests, even pretending to be into guys.  

When the show ended, it suddenly became wife and kids, marriage and family, all through their social media, and their productions are entirely gay-free, even gay-subtext free.

Gavin Munn filled his social media with buddies and grown-up beefcake guys, until the Gemstones ended.  Then it was "I'm not doing this anymore, I'm taking a girl to junior prom!"

Skyler Gisondo is the worst of the lot.  His social media was full of gay buddy-bonds, with girls rarely if ever mentioned -- until the show ended.  Then it was "Here's my girlfriend!  Have you met my girlfriend?  I have a girlfriend!"  And his Superman (2025) involved blatant, slap-in-the-face queerbaiting: "I'm going to pretend I'm gay for two hours, then pull the rug out from under you in the last scene, har har!"

Skyler's latest work is in the music video "Lost Boys" (2026), by Phoebe Bridgers, an American singer/songwriter who has won four Grammies for her "melancholy" songs with complex lyrics mirroring personal issues. 

Left: Phoebe's partner, Bo Burnham (not fully clothed on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

 Phoebe is bi and an advocate for LGBTQ rights, and "Lost Boys" has a strong gay connotation: the boys are "lost" beause they have rejected the heteros*xist trajectory into job, house, wife, and kids in favor of the infinite joy of the world of men.

We stop the fight right now, we got to be who we are.

So doubtless the song is about that joy.  

Right?

Scene 1: Phoebe, dressed as the Elf Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings,, drives with her knight on a motorcycle to a LARP battle in an auto graveyard.  The players are dressed as Medieval warriors. But it's a real battle, with people hurting each other.

The first stanza seems to be about joining the army, "Where they make you remove your hair/ Impatient with a rifle and your papers." 

Scene 2: They have dinner in a Japanese restaurant, looking not entirely happy.

More after the break

Cal Tolentino: Bodybuilder dates "Best Medicine's" Liam, rooms with Martin Herlihy, kisses a ninja. With two Cal d*cks.

 

Link to the n*de photos

I've been watching Best Medicine (2026) on Netflix: Josh Charles plays a gruff physician in a small town in Maine, where there are a surprising number of diseases with weird symptoms.  Turning blue?  Suddenly seeing birds?  I like the gay characters fully integrated into the community, like sarcastic teenager Liam (Josh Hoon Lee).  

In most episodes, Liam hangs out with two girls, Harley and Amelia.  But in Episode 1.9, at a high school "sleep-in," Amelia is replaced by Kyle (Cal Tolentino), joining them for a giant-sized Connect Four and a "Skeeter" game.   

In Episode 1.13, Kyle appears as the third of the rude teenagers again, protesting the plan to bring a salmon farm to the city, which would destroy the ecosystem. They're arrested for trespassing, which they find thrilling.  Later, they sit together at the wedding of gay couple Greg and George.

I couldn't figure out why the showrunners replaced the girl in the trio with a boy, except to imply that Kyle was dating one of the other two.  In my headcanon, he's dating Liam.

When I started researching the actor to see if he is gay in real life, I got a surprise:

The dude is built.

Cal grew up in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, about an hour west of Philadelphia.  He competed on American Ninja Warrior Junior, a reality show where you race through a multilevel obstacle course, beginning at age 11, then switched to the teen version, where he was a national finalist three times.  But he really wanted to be an actor, so the minute he got his driver's license at age 16, he started training at Playhouse West.  Also he changed his name from Caleb Plohoros to Cal Tolentino. From Greek to Italian?

While training, Cal was in three plays: A South Philly Christmas, Meisner, and Savannah. 

He broke into on-screen acting in 2025, with four short and a tv spot:

Hundred Dollar Brawler, about boxing. Cal plays the Hype Guy.

Guardians of the Outward Plain: A boy and his lion pal try to make human connections. Cal plays a Mechanic.

Godhead, not to be confused with the other 2025 Godhead short: A man searching for his lost brother stumbles into a sinister drug den. There are four characters other than addicts: Adam, Judas (Cal), and a Preacher (Sullivan Vaughan, backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

My Teenage Great Grandma, a vertical-format drama streaming on NetShort. A scientist dies in 1945 and re-animates as a teenager in 2025. Sounds wacky.  Cal's character appears halfway down the cast list.

Plus Cal and Peyton Carson wrote, directed, and starred in 4 AM: After a "rowdy Memorial Day Weekend," two guys try to go back to life as usual, but a text message results "in a painful test of trust." It's not available to stream, and I can't tell from the description and photos if they're buddies or boyfriends.

In 2026, Cal appeared in two episodes of Good Luck, Baby Girl, a short-form vertical series streaming on TikTok and Instagram.  It's about three girls trying to make it in L.A.

Two episodes of Best Medicine.

More after the break

It's Raining Men (Hallelujah!)

 

Humidity's rising, barometer's getting low
According to all sources, the street's the place to go.
Cause tonight for the first time, just about half past ten
For the first time in history, it's gonna start raining men

"It's Raining Men" was written in 1979, by gay composer Paul Jabara ("Disco Queen," "Last Dance"), and Paul Shaffer, then a member of the house band of Saturday Night Live.  They offered it to many vocalists, including Barbra Streisand, Cher, and Donna Summer, but they all refused.  Even Two Tons O'Fun (Izora Armstead and Martha Walsh), then performing as backup singers for pop star Sylvester, balked, thinking the song too weird to chart.

 Finally they agreed and released "It's Raining Men" on their third album, Success, in 1982.  They also released it as a single, and performed in the music video as the Weather Girls.

In October 1982, "It's Raining Men" hit #1 on the U.S. Dance Club Chart.  It also charted well in Europe.

There have been covers from everyone from RuPaul to Geri Halliwell to the Vamps to Miss Piggy.

In 2014, after a British politician blamed the UK's recent floods on gay marriage, a Facebook campaign was launched to get the song on the British charts again.  It hit #21.

Why is this a gay anthem?  It has nothing to do with liberation, and it's strictly heteronormative.  The men are raining down upon women.

God bless Mother Nature -- she's a single woman too
She took over heaven, and she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every woman could find the perfect guy

Maybe because it's fun for gay men to think of being deluged by men, especially after growing up in a desert where gay romance was assumed not to exist.

It's raining men, hallelujah!

It's raining men, amen! 
I'm gonna go out, I'm I'm gonna let myself get
Absolutely...soaking....

See also: Ocho Rios

Jimmy Olsen's Secret Life, Part 2: Keefe singing, Jimmy (censored), and Gideon (censored)

How "I'm Coming Out" Became a Gay Anthem

"Let's Hear it for the Boy"