The Big Men of American Tall Tales

In the mid-1980s, Shelly Duvall (fresh from playing Olive Oyl in the Popeye movie) hosted a Showtime series of Tall Tales & Legends, featuring live-action versions of Big Men (and Women) from American folklore: Pecos Bill (Steve Guttenberg), Johnny Appleseed (Martin Short), John Henry (Danny Glover), Davy Crockett (Mac Davis), Annie Oakley (Jamie Lee Curtis).

It was dreadful.  It brought back terrible memories of childhood, when those "colorful figures from our nation's past" were pounded into my brain through incessant classroom assignments and Wonderful World of Disney episodes.

Pecos Bill rode a mountain lion instead of a horse, used a snake for a lasso, and ate dynamite for a snack.

Davy Crockett was once swallowed by a bear, so he turned it inside out and escaped.

Paul Bunyan carved out the Grand Canyon by dragging his axe in the dirt.

Mike Fink (left) was half horse, half alligator, and half snapping turtle.

Who cared?  I much preferred Tarzan, Batman and Robin, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E.  For that matter, Li'l Abner and Alley Oop from the comics page.

For that matter, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge.

And some of the tales weren't even very tall:

Casey Jones ran a railroad engine fast.

John Henry...well, he drilled a million holes in rocks, and then died.

Johnny Appleseed...um, well, he walked around planting trees.

But, on the bright side, they weren't given many heterosexual exploits.

Pecos Bill had a girlfriend, and I just discovered that Paul Bunyan had one, but she doesn't appear in any stories that I recall.

The other Big Men were portrayed without Big Women.

And there was a a lot of beefcake.  Big Men were by definition as muscular as Superman.

You could ask your parents for a Davy Crockett action figure, and then strip him out of his clothes.

John Henry was portrayed as a hard-iron bodybuilder, as in this 8-foot tall statue in Talcott, West Virginia.

 And Paul Bunyan?  Just think about the possibilities.  If he is 30 feet tall, then he must have a three-foot long....

See also: G.I. Joe and Ken; Roadside Beefcake

Cinderella: Men in Tights

Let's face it -- 90% of the reason we go to the ballet is for the beefcake -- to look at the muscular male dancers in skin-tight leotards.  10% or less is for the bonding -- gay subtexts are scarce, even when the choreographer is gay.

And Cinderella is the most heterosexist of the lot.  It's based on the most iconic of Charles Perrault's fairy tales:

1. Cinderella escapes from her horrible childhood home to a fancy dress ball, with the help of a fairy godmother and a furry-animal makeover.
2. The Handsome Prince falls in love with her.
3. She flees at midnight, before she turns into a pumpkin.
4. The Handsome Prince tries her shoe out on every woman in the kingdom, but it only fits Cinderella.

Cinderella has no female friends, only bullying stepsisters.  The Handsome Prince has no male friends, just fawning courtiers.  It's male-female pas de deux, heterosexual love! love! love! from here to eternity.

There have been about 20 ballet versions, but the most commonly performed is the 1945 version with music composed by Sergei Prokofiev.

It adds some comedic touches, such as having the stepsisters performed by men in drag (as they are in the popular British pantomimes).  In 1948, it was re-choreographed as a full-blown comedic ballet.

Still entirely heterosexist, from stem to stern.

Fortunately, costumers usually compensate by dressing the Prince in the most tightly revealing leotards they can find.

So audiences who are bored by the heterosexual love! love! love! mantra can still find something to look at.

See also: The Midsummer Night's Dream Ballets.

I Was Betrayed by Keanu Reeves

For Boomers, Keanu Reeves is indelibly linked with Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), a comedy about two "dumb and dumber" teenagers (Keanu, Alex Winter) on a time-travel quest to bring back some "historical dudes" for their history project.  It was wildly popular, spinning off into a sequel and a cartoon series and giving teens of the early 1990s the catchphrase "Excellent!"

But Keanu was nor really cut out to be a comedic actor; his mumbling James Dean style was more suited to quirky indy dramas with gay subtexts, such as The Brotherhood of Justice (1986), about a group of shirtless teenagers becoming vigilantes to fight crime in their gritty urban neighborhood, and Dangerous Liaisons (1988), with 18th century French aristocrats play seduction games.

He also tried his hand at action-adventure movies.  In Point Break (1991), he plays Johnny Utah, an FBI agent assigned to investigate crime in the world of professional surfers, where he bonds with surfer bum Bodhi (Patrick Swayze).  It's gay-subtext buddy-bonding at its best.

He even played a gay (sort of) character in My Own Private Idaho (1991), about hustler buddies ( the Hollywood "men who have sex with sexy women for pay" kind of hustler).  Mike (River Phoenix) is frail, sickly, and gay (does Hollywood have any other kind?)  He pines away with unrequited love for Scott (Keanu).

By this point, I assumed that Keanu was gay in real life, or at least a strong ally who would give us many open gay characters, or at least a series of gay-subtext buddy-bonds.  My friend Will claimed to have hooked up with him during the summer of 1986.

But then I was subjected to a decade of dreary "fade-out kiss" actioners and romances full of heterosexist statements like "every man is searching for the woman he was destined to be with": Speed, A Walk in the Clouds, Chain Reaction, The Matrix, The Replacements, Sweet November.

Where were the gay characters?  Where were the gay subtexts?  Where was the plain old inclusivity?

I felt betrayed, and gave up on Keanu altogether. I haven't seen any of his movies since 2001.

See also: River Phoenix: Running on Empty; Will and Scott's Wild Night with Keanu Reeves.

Jeff MacKay

The problem with meeting celebrities is that you usually don't recognize them, and then their feelings get hurt.

I never saw Black Sheep Squadron, Tales of the Gold Monkey, Magnum PI, or The Transformers, so how did I know that the guy I met was a celebrity.  I didn't even know that he was an actor, although it's a safe bet in West Hollywood

He was living in Hollywood, a few blocks from Mann's Chinese (and near where the Gay Community Center is today).

He told me that he was born in Dallas but grew up in Oklahoma City, and....

That's all I knew about him, except he had a nice smile, a husky, hirsute physique, and his name was "Jeff."

Later he revealed that he was Jeff MacKay, the actor.  I pretended to know who he was, but really I didn't.

After that night I never saw him again.

He died in 2008 after a long struggle with alcoholism, leaving many family members and friends with fond memories of his kindness and good humor.

I'm sorry I didn't get to know him better.

See also: Guess which celebrity I've dated.