Oct 11, 2019

The Top 6 Beefcake Stars of "Power Rangers Beast Morphers"

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers premiered on the Fox Kids Network in August 1993, when I was living in West Hollywood and a big fan of some of the classic kids' shows like Tiny Toon Adventures, Rugrats, Doug, and Rocko's Modern Life.  So I watched.  For about 10 seconds.

Teenagers from a contemporary American high school get assignments from a....a nightmarish disembodied head with bulbous lips floating in a vat of opaque jelly.  They turn into costumed superheroes -- action sequences actually borrowed from an earlier Japanese series -- and the superheroes in turn merge into mechanical creations.  They fight a number of ridiculous monsters sent to destroy the world by the over-the-top Rita Repulsa.


Ridiculous premise, disturbing, disgusting images -- sorry, I can't get over the horror of the opaque-jelly vat guy.  Click.

Who knew that kids would like it?  That there would be years of spin-offs and sequels?

The latest, Power Ranger Beef Morphers, which has just premiered on Nickelodeon, is about...um....

I am copying the premise directly from wikipedia.  I can't understand a word of it:

Set sometime in the future, a secret agency in the city of Coral Harbor known as Grid Battleforce combines a newly-discovered substance called "Morph-X" with animal DNA to create a new team of Power Rangers known as the Beast Morphers. The Beast Morpher Rangers must defend the Morphin Grid from Evox, an evil sentient computer virus that creates evil avatar clones of original Beast Morphers candidates Blaze and Roxy, who have been rendered comatose as a result. When the three of them are transported to the Cyber Dimension, Evox, Cybervillain Blaze, and Cybervillain Roxy gain its de facto ruler Scrozzle as an ally as he helps them in their plan to return Evox to Earth

Holy cow.  I just want to know if there are any cute guys in the cast.

1. Rorie D. Travis stars as Devon Daniels.  I couldn't find any beefcake photos, but this one of him and a buddy is evocative.  I wonder if he's gay.

2. Jasmeet Baduwalla,aka Jazz, as the Blue Power Ranger (top photo).  At least he has some abs.








3. Abraham Rodriguez as Nate Silva.  Cute, but I could use some biceps.















4. Colby Strong as Blaze, the one who is comatose while his cybervillain double tries to take over Scrozzle or something.  Cute, but haven't any of these guys heard of a Nautilus machine?











5.  Cosme Flores as Ben Burke.  It's nice to see plus-sized actors being cast in action-adventure roles, but I'm still holding out for someone who can bench press his body weight.











6.  Reid McGowan as Steel.  Finally, some muscles!

Now,  is a shirtless shot too much to ask for?

Oct 10, 2019

The Top Beefcake Stars of the Disney Channel, 2019

Disney Channel sitcoms used to be almost entirely about teenager girls who want to become singers, or who already are singers. Remember Austin & Ally, Sonny with a Chance, Jesse, Hannah Montana?  It wasn't all bad, since the teenager girls had teenage boys hanging around, with the potential for gay subtexts.

Besides, many -- most -- of the teenage boys were "dreamy" or muscular or both. Remember the Austin half of Austin & Ally?

Now Disney seems to be mixing things up with high-concept, fourth-wall-breaking, bizarre-premise shows.  Plus the cast has gotten exponentially younger, and the beefcake exponentially scarcer.



Sydney to the Max.  Does anyone use the phrase "to the max" anymore?

 12 year old Sydney lives with her father, Max.  Her adventures are paralleled by flashbacks to Max as a 12-year old having similar adventures.

12-year old Max has a best friend, Leo, but they both get crushes on girls.  And Sydney gets crushes on boys.

The adult Max is played by Ian Reed Kesler, who looks rather buffed, and has played gay characters.




Fast Layne.  Don't you hate series with titles that are awful puns?

12-year old Sophie stumbles upon a talking car named VIN.    "I've got a secret" antics ensure.  Brandon Rossel stars as her crush.









Just Roll with It: 12 year old Owen Blatt and his family have sitcom adventures, but several times per episode, they stop the action to ask the studio audience what should happen next (you get three choices).   Then they continue based on the selection.   I'm not sure if they actually filmed multiple segments, or if they are memorizing huge scripts.

Oliver's dad is played by Tobie Windham, seen here in a stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (he's the one with the bulge).


Coop and Cami Ask the World: 12-year old twins Coop and Cami Wrather have an online show called What Would You Wrather? Don't you hate shows with titles that are awful puns?  In the show, viewers get to vote on their decisions.  For instance, when Coop's crush cancels on him, should he accept his mother's offer to be his "date" to the dance?

What?  No, that's tots creepy.

The cast seems to consist almost entirely of 12-year olds, but I did find Kevin Daniels as the school principal.


Raven's Home:  Remember That's So Raven (2003-2007), about a girl with psychic powers?  Well, Raven is home, a single mother living with her "best friend" and their kids in Chicago.

Closeted lesbian couple? The two ladies don't even have any hetero-romantic plotlines, although their preteen kids do.  This is a program I can get into, even though it's beefcake-deficient.

Jonathan McDaniel has a recurring role as Raven's ex-husband.  Believe me, you do not want to see what's going on under that shirt.




Bunk'd:  Remember the kids from Jesse?  They are inmates at an endless summer camp.

The good news is, they're well into their teen-idol years: Karan Brar is 20.

The bad news: Cameron Boyce appeared only as a guest star.

More bad news: Heterosexual hijinks abound.




Pup Academy:  Sentient dogs from a parallel world have to go to a special school to learn how to pass as pets.  Huh?

And there's a prophecy about a "Chosen One."

The human characters include the founder of the academy, his crush, his grandson, and his grandson's crush.  The dogs are voiced by girls.  I got nothing.





Gabby Duran and the Unsittables: Gabby becomes the babysitter to a gaggle of alien toddlers, and must keep their secret while dealing with their weird powers.

For once, the star is a teenage girl, not a 12-year old, so she has a teenage boy accomplice played by Maxwell Acee Donovan.

He may not be a Tiger Beat Fave Rave, but I'll take what I can get.

Now could somebody point this boy in the direction of a gym?


Oct 7, 2019

How Queer is "Carmen Sandiego"?

Millions of millennials grew up with Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego  (1991-1995), a game show based on a video game where contestants answered geography questions in order to track down the elusive super-thief (diversity alert: Carmen was middle-aged, female, and I assume Latina).

A powerful woman who thumbs her nose at the system and doesn't have any male admirers.  A lesbian girls' dream!











No other gay content in the show itself, but host Greg Lee is apparently gay.  Seen here with his date, actor Gregory Michael of Dante's Cove,, at the 2007 Outfest.  The top photo is Gregory in action.

Anyway, Carmen won lots of Peabody awards and spun off into Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego (1996-1998), hosted by Kevin Shinick.










And Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? (1994-99), an animated series which pits the superthief (voiced by Broadway legend Rita Moreno) and her V.I.L.E. organization against 14-year old detective Zack (Scott Menville) and his older sister Ivy of the A.C.M.E. Agency.  It also starts to redeem Carmen, making her an anti-hero who uses her thieving skills to help  Zack fight cadres of real baddies.









Now Netflix has released Carmen Sandiego (2019), an animated series with Carmen completely rehabilitated, a "modern day Robin Hood."  Trained to be a V.I.L.E. agent, she decided to devote her life to something other than evil, and went rogue.  Now she works behind the scenes, pursued by both A.C.M.E. and V.I.L.E., to solve crimes and thwart thefts of Vermeer paintings in Amsterdam, the Magna Carta in Mumbai, smart fabric in Greece, and rare gems in Japan, with the ultimate goal of taking down the entire V.I.L.E. enterprise.



Her scoobies include:
1. Teenage computer hacker Player (Finn Wolfhard).
















2. Redheaded doofus Zack (Michael Hawley)
3. His sister Ivy, who looks nonbinary.
4. Shadosan, the Japanese sensei who adopted and taught Carmen.
















Their main antagonists are A.C.M.E. agent Chase Devineaux (Rafael Petardi) and V.I.L.E. agent Graham (Michael Goldsmith), whom Carmen dates briefly.  Otherwise I don't see any hetero-romance plotlines, which is remarkable.  Not a lot of gay subtext, either, but with children's tv, I'll take what I can get.

The Gay Connection of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays

I hate sports.  I've never seen a sports match on tv all the way through.  I have no idea who belongs to what team, or what RBA the MVP has with what blocking average and defense in the line draw.

I also hate it when people assume that because I'm a guy, I'm naturally obsessed with sports.  Random people stop me on the street and proclaim "The Vikings are ahead 3-2!"

Vikings?  Like in Thor and Odin?

Or ask "How's the game going?"

The game?  You mean Tetris, on my computer?  It's going ok, I guess.

When I was little and went in for a vaccination, the doctor advised "Be brave!  Be like your hero, Mickey Mantle!"

I was so offended by the imputation of hero-worship for a sports star that I forgot to be afraid of the shot.

Actually, Mickey Mantle (1931-1995) was one of three baseball players that I had actually heard of.  I even know that he played for the New York Yankees during the 1950s and 1960s (because they mentioned him on Seinfeld).  He set some records and stuff, and he has some gay connections:

1. He drew gay rumors, even though he was married for many years, and had many affairs with women. There are homophobic rants online complaining that he doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame "because he was a f***"

2. His nephew Kelly is a famous drag performer, with credits in movies, theater, music, and tv, including RuPaul's Drag Race.






3. He had quite a nice physique, and was apparently gifted beneath the belt.














The other baseball player that I've heard of is Joe DiMaggio, because of that song, and the third is Willie Mays (1931-), who played for the New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants, known as the "Say Hey Kid" for some reason.  He's got a gay connection, too.

1. On an episode of Bewitched, he shows up at a party for witches.  Darren is shocked that Willie Mays might be a ....you know, but Samantha retorts, "The way he hits?  What else?"  So ever after, I thought that Willie Mays did his sports things with witchcraft.

Witchcraft was code for...you know, so I figured that he was gay.

2. Apparently he's straight but not homophobic.  He appeared in a tv commercial for Coors Beer along with gay Olympic medalist Bruce Hayes.  When asked if baseball was "ready" for an openly gay player, he responded: "Can he hit?"

3. He had a very nice physique, and a super-sized baseball bat.

See also: Joe DiMaggio's Nude Frolick
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