Cloverfield: Come for the alien invasion, stay for Godzilla. With Vogel backside, Hud junk, and endless misdirection.

  

Link to the n*de dudes

For movie night last night, we saw Cloverfield (2008).  I don't usually review movies from that long ago, but there are some nice n*de photos of the cast, the utter lack of LGBTQ representation requires comment (this scene is just a tease), and I have some questions.

The first is: we thought that it would be thematically linked to The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), about a space station that accidentally gets zapped into a parallel universe.  But there's no connection except the name.  Cloverfield (2008) is a "found footage" movie, presenting a videotape that was found in the ruins of what used to be called Central Park, no doubt dug up by archaeologists thousands of years after our civilization was destroyed by an alien invasion.

There's a prelude that is not connected to the rest of the movie in any way: An extremely wealthy middle-aged man films the ruins of New York from his apartment.  There are many fires below, so no doubt the Apocalypse has already begun.  He awakens his wife, and they discuss how much they love each other and kiss a lot.  He takes his shirt off, but this was a DVD, so I couldn't get a screen shot, and I can't find him in the cast list.  

We cut to an interminable party with a huge number of immensely rich young adults, all white except for the token black guy, having interminable boring conversations and being elitist (they're shocked when a lady knows who Superman is).  Are straight people's lives really this boring?  

The takeaways from the endless boredom are:

1. This is a going-away party for Rob (Michael Stahl-David, top photo and left).  He's moving to Japan tomorrow to take a huge, huge promotion with a massive, multi-million dollar pay increase.  We never find out what his job is, but I assume it will have something to do with saving the world from the alien invasion.  

2. His friends don't think he should go, because he'll have to leave his girlfriend, Beth, who is the most beautiful woman in the world, and way too good for him.  It's a miracle that someone that beautiful wanted to be with him in the first place, and he'll never find anyone close, so why would he give her up?

3. Ron and Girlfriend Beth argue, and she goes home.  Turns out that he had an affair with Lily. his brother's girl, so now Beth wants to dump him.  Fortunately his brother Jason (Mike Vogel, left) doesn't know. yet.

4. Rob's friend Hud (TJ Miller, below) is filming the party, and asking for testimonials from people, but mostly stalking the Girl of His Dreams, Marlena, who seems to be an extremely famous fashion model.   She is not at all interested, but he keeps trying.  All women have stories about that obnoxious guy who refuses to take "no" for an answer: that's Hud.

Suddenly there's a news story about an oil tanker that overturned in New York Harbor, near the Statue of Liberty.  The apartment is in Lower Manhattan -- they can see Harbor from the roof, so they all go up to look.  There's a power blackout, and rockets zoom over the city, some exploding.  They're being invaded!

Rob says "I know what started this. I saw it."  We flash back to the subway, where he's filming his girl, and accidentally catches a sinister-looking bald man, who gets up from his seat. That scene is repeated several times, but it is never explained.  It's an alien invasion, not a terrorist attack. 

Everyone runs outside.  Suddenly the head of the Statue of Liberty crashes onto the street!  With a stick up her nose.

More zaps from alien spacecraft zooming across the sky.  Plus a giant monster is  smashing into buildings, and smaller, human-size spider-beings are killing people.  This seems like an inefficient weapon for an  invasion.  

Everyone runs into an all-night bodega. That is, Rob, Brother Jason, Lily (Jason's girl, whom he had an affair with), Cameraman Hud (left), and the Famous Model. The promo says that there are six friends; this is just five.  Will they be joined by someone else later?

The other party guests scatter. 

The police or military tell everyone to evacuate the city by crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.  Except it is bombed by the aliens, and they have to return to Manhattan.

Rob talks on his cell phone to someone, but all we hear are clicks.  Then he says "I know what I have to do," and heads toward the monster!  Obviously he was talking to the aliens, and now is under their control.  This is never resolved.

They try to take subway tunnels, where they are attacked by the spider-monsters.  The Famous Model is bitten.  Fortunately, they find a triage unit set up in a department store, but it's too late for the Famous Model: she starts coughing blood, and dies.  

Brother Jason has already been killed, I forget how. So only Rob, Cameraman Hud, and Brother's Girlfriend Lily are left.

More after the break

Will Buie Jr.: Another Bunk'd hunk shows his stuff, then turns out to be straight. With queer codes, tall grass, daytime divas, and Jake junk

 

Link to the n*de photos

When Will Buie Jr. (left) appeared on the my teen idol feed, I noticed right away that he has a buddy and a nice chest. Two good signs.

The first twenty or so photos in his file show him with buddies.  I like how they are in non-revealing outfits, but Will takes any opportunity to show off his chest. 

And his "Pullin" underwear.   

But lots of straight guys have buddies, and...um...pull things.  Next I'll check Will's acting career for gay or gay-subtext roles.

His on-screen career begins in 2017, when he was ten years old, with the movies   Gifted and The Last Movie Star, episodes of  Red Blooded, and Modern Family, plus a recurring role in Daytime Divas, about five feuding hosts of a morning talk show.  One of the divas is bi/pan, and another has an 8-year old trans daughter,  which is a problem for her transphobic husband. Will plays the girl's brother. 

Queer-adjacent.  A good sign.

 

McKinley Freeman (left) plays...um..well, who cares?  He's on the show.

In 2018, Will was cast in Bunk'd, a Disney Channel teencom featuring the counselors at a never-ending summer camp.  He continued for 69 episodes (2018-2024) as Finn Sawyer (Huck Finn-Tom Sawyer, get it?). 

LGBT people appear in only one episode of Bunk'd:  In 2023, Camper Winnie gets a visit from her older brother (Jacob Haran) and his boyfriend (Frankie Rodriguez of Chad Powers).  Each reveals that he intends to propose at the camp, but keep it a secret. 

However, Karan Brar (Ravi) came out as bi 2023, and at least three other cast members are gay or probably gay: Luke Busey (Jake), Kevin Quinn (Xander), and Nate Stone (Timmy).  N*de photos of Nate Stone on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.  

More after the break

A high school boy gives me his underwear

 

Link to the NSFW version

When I was growing up, we visited my parents' home town in northeastern Indiana about twice a year, at Christmastime and during the summer.  My favorite part of the visit was when Grandma announced "Let's go to Fort Wayne!"

When we were very little, Mom and Dad came, too, and when we were older, my baby sister came with us, but for about five yeares it it was just Kenny and me, fighting over who would get to ride "shotgun" in Grandma's brown Chevy Impala as she drove down country roads through Butler Center and Laotto and Huntertown, and finally  Fort Wayne:

The biggest, brightest, most exciting city in the world.

It was unimaginably huge, bigger than Rock Island, Moline, and Davenport put together, and it had the most fascinating places I had ever seen.  There was always something new: a gigantic County Courthouse; a candy factory much nicer than that scary one in the Willy Wonka movie; a Children's Zoo with its own train; an art museum; the history museum at Old City Hall; Kern's Toy Store; a memorial to Johnny Appleseed.

Somehow Grandma always knew where there were a lot of cute boys:  playing basketball in schoolyards, crowded into booths at the soda shop, building snowmen at Lakeside Park,  running around in groups at street fairs.  Sometimes she let us play with them, while she sat on a bench, reading a magazine.

We usually stopped for lunch at the Famous Coney Island on Main Street: hot dogs with chili, cheese, and onions, and steamed buns.   Plus french fries, onion rings, and root beer floats (vanilla ice cream floating in a gigantic mug of root beer).

And a never-ending supply of cute high school boys in white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties who brought out your orders.

On a cold day just before Christmas in fourth grade, we were having lunch at the Coney Island, and my brother and I were rough-housing, stealing fries off each other's plates, shoving each other, and laughing.  Grandma Davis told us to settle down, so I stopped and picked up my root beer float.

Then Kenny shoved me again.  I dropped the heavy mug onto my chest, drenching my shirt with root beer.  More root beer splashed onto my pants, and the clump of melting ice cream fell right onto my lap.

Gross!  Cold and wet!  I pushed it onto the floor.

Kenny laughed and pointed.  "You peed your pants!"  

"Oh, no, you're soaked!" Grandma Davis exclaimed.  She grabbed some napkins and tried to dab me, but the root beer and ice cream had already soaked in.  "You can't ride all the way back to Garrett like this -- it's freezing out!"

A high school boy came running up: short, compact, muscular, with brown hippie-hair and a bright smile.  He was carrying a little pad and pencil.  I don't remember his name, if I ever knew it, so I'll call him Jim.

"Don't worry, Ma'am, I'll take care of your grandson," he said.  "Come on, champ, let's get you cleaned up."

 He took me by the hand and led me past the staring patrons to a little door marked "Employees Only."  Inside it looked like a kitchen, with tables and chairs and a little refrigerator.  There was a bank of lockers on on side, and a rack with a lot of coats hung up on it.

The full story, with n*de photos, is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

See also: Comic Books and C*cks at the Furniture Store. With bonus Desi guys

The Answer to the N*ked Man's Question

Dillon Brady: Four-time Gemstone extra, IT guy, crabber, polar plunger, model, and Slytherin

Topper Guild: The youtube star breaks into tv. With Kaido Roberts, muscle men, Nick d*ck, and Topper

"Under the Banner of Heaven": Murder and a crisis of faith in a fundamentalist Mormon family with five brothers (and five d*cks)

 Under the Banner of Heaven, a Hulu series about corruption in the LDS Church, was written and produced by Dustin Lance Black, who is gay, so there's bound to be some gay characters or subtexts.  Besides, who isn't interested in cute Mormon missionaries?  

Link to NSFW version

Scene 1: Establishing shot of Salt Lake City.  Jeb (Andrew Garfield), a super clean-cut nuclear family Dad, is listening to "Let's Hear it for the Boy."  A gay anthem!  So the protagonist is gay?   His preteen daughters, who wear long pioneer dresses, ask him to do loving-father activities, like lasso them.  Wife, who wears a modern t-shirt and cut-off jeans, calls him to the phone.  He has to go to work, so everyone has to do the evening prayers early.

We hear all the prayers: for the Mormon missionaries (how about a visual?), for Church President Kimball, for Grandpa in heaven, and for an Easy-Bake Oven.  "Let's Hear it for the Boy" came out in 1982, and Spencer Kimball died in 1985, 

Scene 2: Continuing to pray, Jeb the Cop puts the siren on his car and heads to a house surrounded by yellow tape and police cars.  Inside: the tv on, bloody footprints, scattered toys, a dead lady, and something in a basinet that makes him say "Evil."  The dead lady's murder was not evil?    He goes out to the yard and arrests the bloody young man who happens to be walking around.

Scene 3:  At the police station, Jeb the Cop and his Gentile (Non-Mormon) Partner do the good cop-bad cop routine on the blood-splattered suspect, Allen Lafferty (Billy Howle), who happens to belong to one of the most important familiies of the Church.  He claims that for the last year, "peculiar men" dressed like Mormon prophets have been stalking his family, so no doubt they did it.  They are probably after his brothers and their wives and kids, too.

Scene 4: While they book and strip Allen (nice body), Jeb watches, flashing back to someone he saw at church (was this a flash of same-sex attraction?).  They send a squad car out to check on the only brother whose address Allen knows: the others all moved to hide from the humiliation of having a brother who left the Church.

Scene 5: Jeb is too disgusted to continue the interrogation, so his Gentile Partner continues alone.  Stunt casting: he's played by Gil Birmingham, a bodybuilder who appeared in Diana Ross's music video "Muscles" in 1982.

Allen: if you want to know who did, check out the Mormon saints.  

Flashback to his future wife Brenda winning runner-up in the Miss Twin Falls, Idaho contest in 1980, then going to Brigham Young University, to stay away from the "Democrats and crazies," and studying broadcast journalism.  She meets Allen at church.  

Back at the interrogation, Allen blames the Church on his wife's death: "My only regret is that I didn't drive her out of Zion (Salt Lake City) to protect her from our people."  

Scene 6:  Jeb the Cop continues to ruminate about how evil Allen is, to do that to a baby (and an adult?).  They're still having trouble tracking down the addresses of his brothers and their wives/kids, so Jeb calls his wife -- they went to church with the Lafferty family, so maybe she has some of the brothers' addresses.  

He returns to the interrogation: Jeb: "So, you despicable monster, was there anyone besides you who hated Brenda enough to do it?"  Allen:  Everyone hated her because she was so perfect."  Yeah, I heard that a lot in high school.

Scene 7: Flashback to Allen introducing Brenda to the family at a picnic. "Just don't say much," he warns. Patriarch Ammon (Christopher Heyerdahl, left) wants to know why she abandoned Twin Falls, Idaho for the evil Big City (Provo, Utah?).  There are an endless number of boisterous brothers, Stepford wives, and staring kids to meet. 

I have beefcake and nude photos of most of the Lafferty men,  but I won't ask you to know all their names. We'll call them Oldest Brother, Second Brother, and Little Brother (although there are two more). 

Back at the interrogation, Allen tells them that Brenda was attracted to Second Brother because "everybody was attracted to Second Brother"  Even men?  His Oldest Brother was also into her, and flirted by condemning the use of coca-cola and promoting lawn-clipping juice instead.  She raises some eyebrows by having opinions (Allen: the LDS Church killed her because she wasn't subservient enoough.)

Back at the picnic, an old man appears, yelling  "They're coming for me."  Eventually we discover that the government is planning to take his land unless he clears it of rocks by Monday, so the Laffertys must help.  That's all?  I was expecting the Angel of Death. 

Scene 8:  Flashback to the Laffertys starting the rock-clearing job.  "No one is allowed to pee until we're finished!"  Just the men work, of course; the women watch, pray, and serve lemonade.  Suddenly Brenda rushes out to help.  Everyone is aghast! 

When the job is over, the old guy prays while the men pee  (no cock shots, but use your imagination).

Patriarch Ammon announces that he's been called away to the mission field, and the Holy Spirit told him to leave his Oldest Brother (Wyatt Russell) in charge of the family business, with Little Brother as his assistant. Uh-oh, Second Brother is going to be upset.  

The Patriarch also orders Allen to "get your harlot" to be properly mousy, timid, and subdservient! 

Sceene 9:  Back at the interrogation, Allen says that after they were married, he cut off his family and left the Church, but he still misses some things about it, like the belief that "God is love."  Really?  So far the Church sounds terrible oppressive.

Flashback to Joseph Smith, the founder of the church, digging up the golden plates that he would translate into the Book of Mormon.  But here the revelation becomes heterosexual: God chose him as Prophet because he loved his girlfriend Emma so much.  I know the Mormons are all about being heterosexual, but that interpretation still seems way over-the-top heterosexist.

Meanwhile, the police get the address of Little Brother and break into his apartment: some burning books and papers, a gun chest emptied out.  "This is bigger than just a domestic."  Maybe he and his family were killed?  They put out an APB.

Scene 10:  Jeb's Gentile Partner decided to notify Brenda's parents of her death, angering Jeb, who wanted to do it.  They argue about who has the biggest cock.  Turns out to be Gentile Partner,  who has new intel: Brenda's father said that Allen was abusive.  Now who's the prime suspect?    Allen still denies everything: "My father-in-law hated me, just like Emma's father hated Joseph Smith.  It was the peculiar bearded men, I tell you!"

Later Jeb the Cop speculates that Allen may have killed his family in a Satanic ritual.  After all, he left the Church, and Gentiles are capable of anything.  This is in the mids of the Satanic panic, where they thought that thousands of kids were being abducted every week to be sacrificed or used in sex rituals.  Actually, less than a hundred kids are kidnapped by strangers every year, most for black market adoption.  

Scene 11:  Little Brother wasn't murdered: he's hiding at a cheap motel.  He runs away, and prays that God would smite his enemies, but they're not smitten, and he's arrested for the murder of his brother's family.

Scene 12: Gentile Partner suggests that, since Jeb went to church with these people, his wife and daughters may be at risk -- go home and check on them. Har-har, you really just think he's too close to the case to be objective. But he goes, and talks to his mother, who has dementia in a subplot. The end.

Beefcake:  Allen takes off his clothes twice.

Heterosexism:  Constant, of course.  What did you expect in a tv series about Mormons?

Gay Characters:  There are some flashes where it looks like Jeb is dancing with a guy and hugging a guy, but they come and go so fast that it's impossible to tell what's actually going on.  

Update: They're just a gay tease.  The only same-sex desire or practice in Utah appears in Episode 5, one of the brothers investigates a Mormon-like cult where they drink wine and practice plural marriage.  They try to get him involved in a bisexual orgy in the hot tube.  But after kissing the guy in charge, he decides that he's not into it and leaves.

My Grade:  Jeb is an extremely unpleasant character, rigid, imperious, demanding, and intolerant.  He's less worried about the murders than about the horror of Allen leaving the Church.  C.

See also: Billy Howle: A serious actor, crazy cute, with frequent n*de scenes. Do you need anything else? With bonus Tommy Knight d*ck

The Testament of Ann Lee: The origin of the Shakers, with a female Christ, energetic dancing, gay guys, and a lot of male n*dity

"After the Hunt": Pretentious philosophy professors have problems, with some p*nises and Will Price. With Andrew Garfield.

Jack Barlow: "Real Housewives" teen, Mormon missionary, hair-care guru, gay tease