From David Paetkau to Lars Slind: Finding a Gay Connection

One of the main things I like about writing this blog is the research: investigating gay subtexts in movies or tv series I never heard of before. Sometimes the research leads in unexpected directions:

6:00 am: I never heard of David Paetkau, who played a gay character in the Canadian ice hockey movie Goon (2011), so I looked him up on IMDB.  He's been in over 30 movies and tv series, including Final Destination 2 (2003), Whistler (2006-2008), and Flashpoint (2008-).  Nothing I've seen, and nothing with keywords "gay."

6:10 am: Google Images has pictures of him getting married, in a cop uniform, and hugging a number of guys, including Shaun Sipos.  I never heard of him either, but one blogger thinks he's cute.  So maybe Shaun Sipos is gay or plays gay characters?

6:15 am: Like David, Shaun Sipos is a British Colombia native who was in Final Destination 2.   He's also been on the tv series Melrose Place (2009-2010), Life Unexpected (2010-2011), and The Vampire Diaries (2013).  I haven't seen any of them either, but a keyword search for "gay" reveals that his Melrose Place character was involved with a bisexual woman.

 6:20 am: He's in a movie called The Michaels (2014), in post-production. I can't find a synopsis online, but with multiple Michaels, one must be gay.  And there's a character called Handsome Party Guy, played by Lars Slind.  Never heard of him.

6:25 am: Score!  Lars Slind, born in 1983 in Arizona, is an artist, actor, model, and writer with about a thousand shirtless and underwear shots on the internet.

He starred in the tv series The Cavanaughs (2011-2012) and has guest starred on Teen Wolf, True Blood, and Desperate Housewives, mostly in roles like "Hunky Guy."

6:35: He played Superman in Batman Hangover (2013), available on the Funny or Die website, and he's got a starring role coming up in the superhero comedy Real Heroes (2014).

 Let's face it -- no one with this kind of physique is going to be cast as a gay character -- Hollywood wants its gay men to be wispy bits of fluff. 

6:40: But Lars is gay or an ally (I can't tell which).  He posed for the gay magazine DNA and gave an interview to  The Gay League, a gay superhero fan blog.  

Finally a gay connnection!  And it only took 45 minutes!