"I Would Rather Die": Zombie outbreak in Argentina, with a retro teen nerd plotline, some obnoxious jocks, and some Mendoza d*cks

 

The Argentine tv series I Would Rather Die, Prefiero la Muerte (2026),  just dropped on Amazon.  Yet more zombies?  There'd better be a fascinating new twist, and some gay characters.

Link to the n*de dudes

Scene 1: Archie  (Diego Bernal) is chased through a convenience store by Mr. Rodriguez, a zombie.  Flashback to pre-zombie times, coming in with Goth Girl Kris, "the sister I never had."  Pre-zombie Rodriguez is "a perv*rt," but he makes the best strawberry popsicles in Mendoza." Does he make them or sell them?

Mendoza, population 115, 000, is a "welcoming, safe, queer-friendly" city in the wine country of Western Argentina, known for its annual Vendimia Para Todos, a LGBTQ wine festival.  

Argentine n*de dude on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

The perv demonstrates his creepy intent by caressing Arch's hand as he takes the money.

Creepy gay or creepy pedo?  Archie is in high school, so 16-18.  Generally pedophiles like younger teens or children, but Argentina never had a s*domy law, and got gay marriage in 2010, so I'll probably say pedo.

Cut to class, where Arch tells us that he's a straight A student, but fails at making friends and winning the Girl of His Dream.  She's...sigh...Brenda!  Close up of her hair blowing in the wind, even though they're inside.  Hetero identity at Minute 2.25. Unfortunately, she's dating Domino, an obnoxious jock who no one could possibly be interested in, except that it's necessary for the plot.  Wait -- they're on a break.  This is your chance, buddy -- go for it!  

Scene 2: The Girl drops by to invite Archie to a party that her Obnoxious Jock Ex (Leonardo Avila) is holding, but he refuses.  She just asked you for a date, Arch.  That's a pretty blatant sign of interest. Say yes or give up and find someone else. 

Goth Girl Kris agrees: "Find someone else, so you can stop being a v*rgin, and people will like you."  Apparently "v*rgin" is the worst thing you can be in western Argentina.  

Next the Obnoxious Jock grabs Archie. "The Girl invited you to my party, but don't come.  We may be on a break, but I hate you regardless, because it's required for the plot."

Scene 3: After school, Archie drops by the convenience store.  If there's a creepy pedo or gay guy inside,  why go there?  Uh-oh, Mr. Rodriguez has zombified!

The door is right there, Arch Baby.  Just run away!  "No, I think I'll run into the storeroom."  

Left: There are several Diego Bernal actors out there.  This might be our Archie.

Mr. Rodriguez follows, trips, and gets his leg impaled on a pole -- which protrudes through his thigh.  Some heavy-handed homophobic symbolism.  Anyway, he bites Archie, thus recruiting him into the homos*xual...I mean, zombie lifestyle.

Scene 4: The next day at Tae Kwon Do class, Archie chats with Leopoldo (Gabriel Fritsch de Anda), who shows him something disturbing about Goth Girl Kris.  Archie rushes to school and confronts the Obnoxious Jock.  Turns out that he posted semi-n*de pictures.  I thought it would be a lesbian "slur."  "Leave her out of our beef!"

"Nope! I'm going after you and your friends, because my palatable hatred is required for the plot."

More after the break

Rick Gomez: What has Endless Mike of "Pete & Pete" been doing lately? Is Steve Zahn his boyfriend? Is he really endless? With Rick d*ck

Link to the n*de photos

Remember this?

Hey smiin' strange
You're lookin' happily deranged
Can you settle to shoot me?
Or have you picked your target yet

It's the theme to The Adventures of Pete and Pete (1991-95), the first of the Nickelodeon "adults are insane" teencoms.  Two brothers, both named Pete, negotiate the weirdness of the city of Wellsville, where no one is really well. 

A bowling ball has mystical powers.

A garage band vanishes overnight.

Little Pete accidentally erases baseball from existence.

I liked Rick Gomez as Endless Mike, who knows more about the town's weirdness than he lets on.  He sometimes bullies and humiliates Big Pete, and sometimes acts as his ally and protector. You might even find a gay subtext in their interaction.

No one ever explains why his name is Endless.  Maybe the teenage boy is a manifestation of a transdimensional being who exists beyond time and space as we perceive it.

Or maybe he's endless in the beneath the belt region (example on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

When Pete & Pete ended, I moved on to other things, and thought about Endless Mike rarely, if at all.  And the years passed.

Recently we started watching Silo (2023-), a dystopian science fiction series where 10,000 people, all of surviving humanity (that they know of) live in a huge underground helix.  They can't go outside, or ever open the single door, because the air is poisonous (or so they are told). 

And there in the cast list was Rick Gomez!

He plays Patrick Kennedy, a maintenance worker with a dead wife (of course) who sells strictly-forbidden relics from the Before Time.  He starts to suspect that they are being lied to (they are, sort of), and joins the Resistance. 

Right: Steve Zahn plays Solo, who survived a rebellion in his own silo, where everyone went outside and died.  They buddy bond in Season 3.

A few years have passed, but you can still see that insoucient, all-knowing smile.  

I wanted to check what Rick has been doing since 1995, whether he is actually gay in real life, and if he is really endless.

Searching for "Rick Gomez," "actor," and "n*de" yields a lot of photos of Rick kissing guys (top photo) and showing his backside (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), but it turns out to be a Google Images misdirection.  The gay/backside actor is Ricardo Gomez.

Our Rick starred in five tv series between Pete & Pete and Silo.

1. Hitz (1997), about workers at a record company (remember records?)

2. Band of Brothers (2001), about World War II soldiers. Rick plays George Luz, who does some buddy-bonding during the War, but then returns to Rhode Island for the married-with-children bit.

Not much of gay interest so far.

More after the break

The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie

The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie was an anthology series that grabbed kids and teens (and sometimes adults) from live-action sitcoms and put them into badly-animated adventures:

The kids from The Brady Bunch are trapped on a desert island.

The Nanny and the Professor kids tackle spies.

Gidget (who actually hadn't been on tv for a decade) tackles smugglers.

Ann Marie from That Girl goes to Wonderland.

I watched sometimes -- it was pleasant to see some of my grade school crushes, like Greg Brady (top photo) and David Doremus (left), even in animated form.

And there was plenty of animated beefcake, like this hunk, a cousin of Tabitha and Adam from Bewitched who plays in a pop group in a circus, or something.

Besides, the only other option was Scooby-Doo.

But the stories varied in the quality of their animation, and their level of ridiculousness.

Warner Brothers stars Porky and Daffy clash with The Groovy Ghoulies from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Yogi Bear flies around with Hanna-Barbera characters in a giant ark, ridding the world of bigotry, greed, sloppiness, and lack of niceness (all caused by mad scientists with ray guns).  

Wait -- an ark is for surviving when the world is destroyed in a giant flood.  Why would it need to fly?

The absolute worst was Popeye and the Man Who Hated Laughter, which aired on October 7th, 1972.

I would love to hear the conversation in the board room at ABC:

"Let's do a cartoon special about newspaper comics!  Kids love reading the newspaper, right?"

Um...no, we didn't.

"Great idea!  We can include all of their favorite comic strip characters -- 

The Katzenjammer Kids (1897), two German-accented brats who for some reason were trapped on a tropical island with their mother and Der Captain,.

Jiggs and Maggie, the middle-aged couple from Bringing Up Father (1913)

The nonverbal Little King (1930)

Mandrake the Magician (1934)

The Phantom (1936), who , Tim Tyler, Mandrake the Magician, The Little King, the Katzenjammer Kids, the Phantom..."

Right, comic strips that were last popular 40 years before we were born!  

They added Popeye, another character from ancient days who was having something of a renaissance on Saturday morning cartoons.

The plot: A mad scientist hates laughter, so he kidnaps the source of most of the world's laughter -- characters from doddering, long-forgotten comic strips.  The only way they can escape is to convince him that laughter is not so bad after all.  So they put on an idiotic talent show.

The only song I remember is: "Hi, my name is Iodine, and I'm feeling so fine, doing the comic strip rag."

"Rag" was a dance craze from before World War I.

Well, at least you could see The Phantom and Bluto together, different animation styles and all.

See also: 1970s Saturday Morning Beefcake

Gay Subtexts in "Bringing Up Father."

Nanny and the Professor

Corey Sevier: Dog's best friend, Greek god, Yoga mogul, and shirtless Christmas romcoms. And maybe Peter Brady

"The Terrors of Jordan Mendoza" mostly involve guys hitting on him. With Marc Maron's backside and a lot of Pinoy dudes

  

Link to the n*de dudes

The Terrors of Jordan Mendoza, written, directed, and starring Jordan Mendoza playing himself, popped up on Hulu.  He mentions pranking a girlfriend so he must be straight or bi, but he's produced episodes of the gay-inclusive Chad Powers, Big Mouth, and Neon, and the gay-themed Overcompensating. There may be some inclusivity.

Scene 1: Jordan calls Steve Buscemi to ask him to be the host of his new sketch show illustrating his nightmares.   Steve refuses, so Jordan guilts him: "This will be the first ever Asian sketch show.  It'd be racist if you didn't do it."  

Is that your boyfriend sitting at the table in your back yard, buddy?

Cut to Steve introducing the show a la Twilight Zone: "You're about to enter a realm of desire, dread, fantasy, dreams, and nightmares, hopes and horrors."

Before starting on the dreams, let's take a look at Jordan's backside (front and a n*de Pinoy dude on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

First Dream: Jordan is a bank robber holding five customers hostage. The police bring in Steve as a hostage negotiator.  

Jordan's demand: "I want to be a famous snake."  Steve tries to clarify what he means, but he gets upset and starts shooting people. They start naming famous snakes, like Kaa from The Jungle Book, but Jordan changes his mind: now he wants to be a hostage negotiator.

Dream 2: A black and white movie.  Jordan is the defendant in a trial.  The judge (Marc Maron, left) tells him that "your crimes represent the darkest strain of moral corruption that this bench has ever observed." In light of the heinousness of his crime, he is sentenced to "15 hugs and kisses from the nearest judge."  

More after the break