Angels in America: Tearjerker about AIDS, Mormon angels, and some 1950s guy. With dicks and butts o keep you going

 

Link to the dicks and butts

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, won numerous awards during its run at the Mark Taper Forum and then on Broadway.  I saw it in 1997.  Well, the first 300 hours, anyway -- it's divided into two parts, Millenial Approaches and Perestroika, each requiring superhuman endurance and thinking about butts and cocks to sit through.  

Very, very depressing: people dying have never been my idea of entertainment, and this dude is dying of AIDS, very slowly, with all of the symptoms displayed in graphic detail.  Meanwhile he thinks he's a Mormon prophet and turns straight, having sex with a female angel with multiple breasts and vaginas, and this guy named Roy Cohn is dying of AIDS, too, and an elderly lady in a 1950s outfit is comforting him although she hates him.

Are we supposed to recognize these people?

Plus the names are bizarre and off-putting, and you never know what's really happening and what's an AIDS fever dream, and people are dying.  Help!

Ok, very slowly, let's try to get this through mishmash of obscure history, with illustrations of actors from the tv miniseries that appeared in 2003:

Part 1: Millenial Approaches. Not the year 2000, the 1000 year reign of Christ on Earth.

1. New York, of course, in the 1980s. the Jewish Louis, played by Ben Shenkman, discovers that his Mormon boyfriend Prior -- prior to what? --  has AIDS, and dumps him.

Prior is played by Justin Kirk, top two photo.  He will have delusions of becoming a Mormon prophet.

2. Prior is comforted in the hospital by an ex-drag queen nurse named Belize.

3. Meanwhile, Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson, butt and dick left), conservative Republican Mormon politician in Boyfriend Louis's office, becomes interested in him, which causes friction with his crazy wife and conservative mother, and causes him to dream about meeting Prophet Prior. 

Republican Joe comes out to his mom, who travels to New York to coddle him, and to his wife, who flees from the house and believes that she is in Antartica.  Then he starts dating Boyfriend Louis.

4. Joe's boss is Roy Cohn.  Yes, that Roy Cohn, played by Al Pacino.  I had never heard of him at the time, but he was one of the instigators of the Red Scare in the 1950s.  He was gay in real life, but closeted and homophobic. 

In the play, Roy claims that he is dying of liver cancer, but actually it's AIDS.  

The elderly lady who is comforting him, although she hates him, is Ethel Rosenberg.  In 1953, Roy prosecuted Ethel and her husband Julius as Soviet spies, and got them the death penalty.  They were widely presumed innocent, being railroaded because they were Jewish. 

5. Prophet Prior has a lot of disturbing fever dreams: he meets his ancestors, also named Prior,  and a Mormon angel with several breasts and vaginas, who has sex with him and tells him to prepare for the Great Work.

Left: Simon Callow, one of the prior Priors

The first play ends there.  Sort of a cliff hanger, innit?

Perestroika after the break

Gemstone Future Memes: a gay resort, dog cousin night, a demon in the sack, and "Who dreamed it?"

This is a series of memes -- jokes -- featuring Kelvin and Keefe of The Righteous Gemstones and a few random hunks.  Most don't require you to have any background knowledge of the show.

Link to the nude dudes

1. Random nude dude

2.  The Nude Dude Review

Link to the full story

Kelvin: Coming to this gay resort was a good idea.  Keefe's going to be sorry that he missed the Nude Dude Review.  I wonder where he went.

Keefe: Threw my back out in the sauna....I knew it didn't bend that way.  Must get to Kelvin...missing the Nude Dude Review...must see dicks.

3. In French class we called them "false friends"

At a conference in Montreal, Kelvin discovers too late that Le Spectacle des Trainées does not feature hot male interns.

4. Best dog friend of a cousin

Keefe: We have to bring him to Cousin Night, Kelvin.  He's the best dog friend of a cousin.

For this one, you need to know that Kelvin started to call Keefe his boyfriend, then chickened out and said "best...dude...friend of a cousin"

5.  Doubtful, but you never know.

Kelvin: Keefe is a good teacher.  He's done everything: oral, anal top, anal bottom...

BJ: Anything with...

Kelvin: 69, frottage, split roasting, intefemoral...

BJ: Anything with...

Keefe: Bondage, S&M, CBT, WS, Princeton Rub...

BJ: Anything with women?

Kelvin: Gross!  No, of course not!

6. Intermission

More after the break

Ryan Pinkston: Hottest of the Short Guy Brigade, martial artist, teen jerk, gigolo, gay cop. With costar dicks

Link to the dicks

I've never been interested in tall guys; I like them short, the shorter the better, and in the 2000s, the 5'4" Ryan Pinkston was one of the hottest of the Short Guy Brigade

Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC, Ryan got his start in martial arts: he received his black belt in Wushu Kung Fu at age nine and went on to championships in karate, kung fu, and tae kwan do.

An interview on the Jenny Jones talk show landed him an agent, and within a month he had roles in Spy Kids: 3D (2003) and Bad Santa (2003), and he was helping Austin Kutcher play celebrity pranks on Punked.

But there was a problem.  Although handsome, muscular -- and short -- Ryan was typecast as an aggressive wise guy, basically a jerk. So that's the sort of role he received

In 2004, the 16-year old got his own tv series, Quintuplets, about teenage quintuplets with conflicting personalities.  His Patton was pushy and aggressive; brother Parker (Jake McDorman, left) was the athlete, and Pearce (Johnny K. Lewis, below) was the nerd, who actually danced with another boy in a "prom" episode.

Johnny K. Lewis is nude on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Next came the boorish Felch in Revenge of the Nerds (2006), chronic liar Sam Leonard in Full of It (2007), and Fletcher in the homophobic College (2008), which paradoxically offered an extensive homoerotic subtext.

Ryan's guest spots on the teencoms Out of Jimmy's Head and Hannah Montana were a little better, jerks with a soft, sensitive side.

But then he hit the bottom of the barrel: teen sex comedies. Foreign Exchange (2008), Extreme Movie (2008) with Frankie Muniz, Adventures in Online Dating (2009).

At least he had no problem with shirtless, shower, swimsuit, and semi-nude shots, although he drew the line at nudity.  And he was fine with rolling around with other guys naked.  Teens could sigh over the homoerotic subtexts even if they didn't like his characters.
 
But then, in 2010, something remarkable happened: a complete turnaround.  Ryan's characters changed from jerks to nice guys, and coincidentally some buddy-bonding was added to the girl-crazy schtick.

Boy Band (2010): in 1982, his Greg buddy-bonds with Brad (Michael Copon) to form the first boy band in history.

Tower Prep (2010), about a school for kids with paranormal powers: his Gabe has a crush on Ian Archer (Drew Van Acker).

Cougars, Inc. (2011): his Jimmy and best friend Sam (Kyle Gallner) can't afford college tuition, so start an escort service pairing older women with teenage boys.  Hey, is that legal? Of course, they get in on the action, too.  We get a nice shot of Ryan's butt as the camera lingers on his supine body, but this only nudity in any movie.

Frontal nudity after the break

"Jennifer's Body": Beefcake and Gore, but No Body

This week's Movie Night was Jennifer's Body.  I can't imagine why my partner chose it, or even researched something that sounds like a heterosexual porno.  Don't worry -- we aren't actually subjected to any lady parts.  But the movie is still awful.

A girl with the dumb name Needy (Amanda Seyfried) has been in a mental hospital or prison, we can't tell which, since "the killings began two months ago."  

No way you could get through a trial and found guilty or insane in just two months.  

After assaulting a guard/ attendant, she is placed in an impossibly Dickensian solitary confinement hole, and tells us her story.

Cut to Needy as an absurdly stereotyped high school nerd (everything but taped up glasses) living in an impossibly stereotyped small town, with a puppy-dog-cute boyfriend (Johnny Simmons, top photo; we see a lot of his body).  She has an unstated romantic relationship with Jennifer (Megan Fox), who is apparently the epitome of gorgeousness and therefore rules the school.  

Don't take the unstated romantic relationship as evidence that this movie is gay-friendly.  It is otherwise heteronormativ: every boy without exception, without exception, oozes on Jennifer.  And homophobic: "gay" is used as an all-purpose slur, most notably in the line "Something gay and evil has arisen in our town."

One night Jennifer talks Needy into going to a dive bar to hear a musical group no one has ever heard of.  The lead singer, Dirk (Juan Riedinger), thinks that Jennifer is a virgin, and therefore useful for his diabolical plan.  

How on Earth did he get the idea that this girl who is sashaying around the bar, flirting with every guy in sight and drinking enough booze to get Godzilla drunk, is a virgin?

Suddenly a fire breaks out, and everyone in the bar burns to death except for Jennifer, Needy, and the band, which whisks Jennifer away in their van.  

Jennifer returns later that night, bloody, laughing, and violent.  

And she starts seducing, killing,  and eating boys.  First Jonas (Josh Emerson, left), best friend of one of the guys who died in the fire. (While forest critters watch, for some reason).   We see his chest and belly as Jennifer undresses him prior to sex/death.

Then Colin (Kyle Gallner), a swishing, swaying, multiple-rings-wearing, make-up wearing straight guy.  Jennifer lures him to a deserted house in a scary, deserted housing development.  He actually has to break a window to get in.  I'd be running the other way.  (We don't see any of his body.)

Jennifer explains that the band sacrified her to Satan to further their musical career, but she didn't die.  She just gets very weak and sick, until she drinks some human blood; then she's super-strong and seductive.  But she won't hurt her best friend Needy -- yet.

Trying to figure out what's going on, Needy turns to the high school library's very well stocked occult section, and discovers what happens when you attempt to sacrifice a virgin to Satan, but she's not a virgin: a demonic being takes up residence in her body.  

Uh-oh, the big dance is coming up!  A perfect opportunity for Jennifer to eat every boy in sight.  Nonsense.  She only ever eats one boy at a time. 

 So Needy stalks the big dance (all boy-girl couples), while Jennifer is busily luring her boyfriend to a deserted swimming pool (overrun with weird alien vines).   Needy figures out the truth and bursts in just as Jennifer has killed a boy named Chip.  But he resurrects long enough to help subdue the demon. Almost.

Finally Needy accosts Jennifer in her bedroom, and ends up killing her, and being blamed for the fire and the murders.  Ulp -- Jennifer bit her, and you know what happens when you are bitten by a demon, right?  

This movie is not only homophobic, but racist.  At the tavern, Jennifer makes a big deal of Ahmet from India -- that's how he's listed in the credits.  Wondering what an Indian cock looks like.  Indian cocks look like cocks. 

There's also a teacher with a hook hand, for no reason.

"Young Rock" Episode 2.12: Dwayne calls out a bully, works on his bluster, and offends his boyfr.... With bonus Crane cock

 

Link to the nude photos

 Young Rock (2021-23), about the early years of "The Rock," Dwayne Johnson,is one of my favorite comedies: an insider view of the 1990s pro wrestling subculture, a deliberate gay subtext between the modern-day Rock and his boyfr...best friend Randall Park, a near-absence of heterosexual romance, and endless vistas of locker room beefcake.  I reviewed "You Gotta Get Down to Get Up," Episode 2.12 of Young Rock, because it stars two of my favorite actors from the old days, Sean Astin and Ryan Pinkston.

Scene 1: Randall is upset because Dwayne didn't invite him to lunch with his best friend Forest Whitaker. They're boyfr....buddies.  Shouldn't he be invited by default?  Besides, it's only 24 hours until the presidential election; shouldn't Dwayne be out there, campaigning in battleground states?  

No, Dwayne says, he always goes his own way.  A story to illustrate:

Scene 2: In 1996, Dwayne is getting some wrestling experience in Memphis, living with his buddy Downtown Bruno, Ryan Pinkston, in a decrepit trailer with no ceiling.

Bruno is down on his luck.  He moved from playing a heel, Dr. Harvey Winkelman, to managing heels, but now he is just a referee for Jerry "The King" Lawler, Michael Strassner.

Strassner cock on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

They discuss his ring name.  Since his dad was Rocky, maybe Rocky Junior?  His family suggests Little Chief, his friends the Wild Half-Samoan.

Scene 3: In the locker room, Dwayne has been booked on a tag team, but they still need his name. He says "Flex Kavana."  

Back in 2034, Randall is surprised that it wasn't the Rock right away. No, Flex, because he's muscular, and Kavana, because it sounds Polynesian.

His tag team partner, Brian Lawler, played by Marcus Molyneaux, approaches. They knew each other as kids: Brian used to set up rings for Dwayne's Dad.  He's hot now,  so his ring name is Too Sexy Brian.    

They film one of those bragging promos, but Dwayne flub it by saying "We're naughty by nature but violent by decision."

More after the break. 

Kaos: Scheming royals...I mean modern-day Greek gods, some queer, some Daddies, some both

  

Greek gods and demigods are usually heterosexualized in modern texts, but in the original myths they were all queer, having sex with any being who caught their eye, and even pursuing an occasional same-sex romance.  Kaos, on Netflix, imagines a world where the gods are still active and involved in human affairs, like a royal family with the power to turn humans into artichokes.  Let's see how well their queer past holds up.

Scene 1: Prometheus (Stephen Dillane, above), the one who gets his liver eaten every day, narrates as we zoom in on Mount Olympus: "Power can give a man many things. Taste is rarely one of them." Zeus, Jeff Goldberg, struts Hugh Heffner-like through his gold-and-white mansion, sits on his throne, and invites mortals to worship him on Olympia Day.  But you shouldn't: "He's a transcendent, unmitigated bastard." 

Prometheus has a plan to bring him down, involving three mortals and a prophecy.

Scene 2: Modern-day Heraklion, Crete, except they're still worshipping the Greek gods, or at least keeping track of their scandals.  The first mortal is Eurydice, or Riddy, who isn't interested in politics. 

Cut to Riddy at the supermarket, looking at boxes of Spartan Crunch, Gaia's Granola, and Achilles' Heels, har har.  A woman tries to pick her up, but she deflects her by mentioning a husband.  

Check-out counter: on tv, an announcement of Olympia Day.  She buys a pomegranate, har har.  Look it up.

Outside, the woman who tried to pick her up is being manhandled by security for stealing cat food. Riddy intervenes.

"Nobody believes me," the woman says, "But it all comes true.  I told them about the horse..."  OMG, this is Cassandra!  Look it up.  She tells Riddy, "Today's the day you leave your husband.  Your love is dead."

Scene 3: Up on Olympus, Zeus is producing lightning and thunder.  His wife Hera arrives, and he shows her the Meander, a fountain where the water flows in circular pattern in mid-air.  He will reign as long as it runs.  He noticed a blip in it.  She thinks he's being ridiculous.  He asks "Where's our son, by the way."

Cut to the son, Dionysus, Nabhaan Rizwan, "god of pleasure, madness, and wild frenzy," dancing and carousing at a nightclub, smooching with men and women both, getting a blow job from a lady, then leaving, depressed.  He tells the falafel guy that he works for his dad, "but he doesn't take me seriously."  So sons have complained since...um...ancient Greek times.  He wants to do more for people than just dance and have sex.

Dillane's cock and Nabhaan's butt are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends 

He zooms up to Mount Olympus for an uncomfortable breakfast.  Hera sneers "Would you like some honey?", har har.  Look it up.

Dionysus gives his Dad an Olympia Day present: a watch, because "time together is precious."  Zeus is not impressed: "nope, ugly."  He summons his ball boy to dispose of it.  A ball boy to fetch tennis balls, not a sex partner.

It's the wrong time to ask for a promotion, but Dionysus tries anyway: "Make me the god of love, or war, or anything with influence."

Nope.  He gets all bratty, so Zeus uses his god powers to pound his head into the table.  "Where did I go wrong?" he asks Hera.  None of his kids come to visit him.

Down on Earth, they're about to unveil the Olympia Monument.  Uh-oh, it's been stolen, replaced by the graffiti: "F*k the gods"!  

Zeus goes all Spirit of Vengeance.  "Who has desecrated the gods?  Who has blasphemed against me?   I am going to wipe them off the face of the Earth."

No, he isn't, Hera suggests.  Kings delegate power.  Call  Poseidon (Cliff Curtis, left).

Scene 4: Riddy drives home, to where her husband, Killian Scott, is playing his guitar and thinking about how much he dislikes her.  Wait -- he's Orpheus.  They're the stars in like the greatest heterosexual love story of all time!  And their love is dead, har har.   They certainly joke, frolic, and kiss like they're still in love. 

Back story: Orpheus is a famous singer.  But you knew that already, right?

The problem: he's too needy.  He forced her to model for the cover of his new album, and his latest song is entitled "Eurydice." 

Prometheus: "There's nothing quite like the loneliness of someone you're falling out of love with."

They do some sloppy smooching and hit the bed, Orpheus with his shirt off, Eurydice with her bottom showing, but they're interrupted by Calliope, the Muse of Music, evidently his agent, picking him up for rehearsal.

I'm out of space, but I read ahead to see about the fates of the LGBTQ characters. After the break

Simon Rex: From gay-ish porn to homophobic comedy to gay necrophilia to Bupkis

 

Link to the porn and penis shots

I don't know who Simon Rex is, except that he starred in Down Low, a Netflix bait-and-switch movie where everybody dies, and maybe Jackass?  But seeing or hearing his name gives me a vaguely disquieting, uncomfortable sensation, as if there's something wrong about him.  Let's do some research to find out why. 

Wikipedia gives a full, lenthy biography.  Born in San Francisco in 1974, started out modeling nude and wanking in four gay porn videos -- not having sex with any guys, just wanking.  Wikipedia mentions his girlfriend right off to assure readers that it's ok, he's straight, he never did any actual gay stuff.

Maybe that's where the disquiet comes from -- reading articles that mention his "disreputable" and "sleazy" past, without specifying that it's just some j/o videos.

Modeling gigs for Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfinger followed.

In 1995, at age 21, Simon became a VJ, like a disc jockey for videos, on MTV.  He says that this  made him a household name, "because I was on tv every day from 3-4."  Prime after-school time.  

The VJ gig lasted for only two years, but it pushed Simon into a movie career:

He played "Slab O' Beef" in Shriek if You Know What I did Last Friday the 13th.

George Logan, a rapper/ women's boxing promoter in Scary Movie 3 and 4.  He commits suicide by overdosing on Viagra and jumping off a  balcony.  Also, there's a lot of homophobic rhetoric.

National Lampoon's Pledge This  is about the breasts of college girls. Simon plays Derek, who dumps one college girl with breasts when he falls in love with another.  A review notes that it presents lesbians as sexual predators and gay men as easily turned straight by the right pair of breasts.

I'm getting an idea of the reason for the disquiet.

His days of frontal nudity far behind, Simon rarely even took his shirt off. Here's one of the few examples, in Boy Toy, 2011. 

The title is misleading: it's not a gay movie.  It's about an unsuccessful but well hung underwear model who tries a new career as a gigolo. No, we don't see his dick.

2020s dick after the break. Warning: explicit.

Modern Family Episode 5.6: Gloria's crush on Adam Devine, Phil's three-way, and a nude Matt Risch

  

Link to a nude Matthew Risch and an almost nude Ed O'Neill

Back in 2014, I was quite adamant that Adam Devine's character on Modern Family, Andy the Manny (male nanny), was homophobic, so I've been reviewing episodes, looking for evidence.  This is his first appearance, in Season 5.6: "The Help."  Ugh!  I hated being called "the help" when I was in high school, working at the Carousel Snack Bar.  I told the boss "I am a human being.  I have feelings.  I am not 'the help.'"

As in all Modern Family Episodes, we have three plots, usually involving a random assortment of family members, interspliced.  I separated them out.

Plot 1: Claire, her husband Phil, and their kids.  Phil's Dad, Frank (Fred Willard), staying with his family because his girlfriend dumped him, being depressed and annoying. They discuss whether he needs a therapist, but Claire's dad Jay (Ed O'Neill) says that he just needs a woman.

"I know a place," he tells Phil.  "Tonight you, me, and Frank are going out on the town." 

 "Fun!  A three-way!" Phil exclaims: a running gag has him saying innocent things that sound sexual, usually homoerotic.   

Cut to the bar.  The men approach two women and say hello. "Not interested!" one exclaims. The other flirts with Frank, so his wingmen scram.

In the morning, Frank tells Phil that he hooked up: "She's downstairs right now.'  Except she turned out to be a sex worker, and he owes her $500. Ok, first of all, you have to make the contract clear, and second, sex workers don't spend the night. They get the job done and go home. 

While they're scrounging to find $500 in cash, Claire returns from yoga class, and wants to know who the woman in the kitchen is.  "The therapist we hired!" Let the misunderstandings begin: "I have always wanted to do what you do. I'd be good at it.  It's basically what I do for the whole neighborhood anyway."  

The sex worker (Peri Gilpin, best known for Frasier) assures Frank that his performance was superlative.  She has a lot of elderly clients who can't even get...um there are kids present...but "any woman would be lucky to have you."  This gives him the confidence to start dating again -- and move out, which is what Phil and Claire wanted all along.

Plot 2: Gay couple Mitchell and Cam are getting married, but they can't decide on anything, so they've asked their flamboyant friend Pepper (Nathan Lane), a professional wedding planner, for help. He comes in with overloaded binders and his flamboyant assistant, Ronaldo. But when they don't like his first idea (a purple color scheme), he goes into a snit, so they have to pretend to like all of his other horrible ideas, like riding in on a unicorn and wearing Willy Wonka outfits. 

Pepper is burnt out from planning 50 gay weddings since they became legal in California, so why not let Ronaldo do it?  Uh-oh, the assistant stealing the job from his boss -- drama.  Of course, they all act like they are cheating on a romantic partner: "I couldn't stop thinking about you.  What happened here yesterday was real!"  Pepper-Ronaldo break up and reconcile.

Plot 3: Jay, the patriarch of the family, and his wife Gloria, who is actually younger than his adult kids, argue over her habit of firing their infant son's nannies: she feels threatened by other women in the house. Also, their teenage son Manny keeps sexually harassing them. 

At the park, Gloria meets Andy, the manny of her frenemey Joan.  Andy reveals that she is  unfriendly because she's worried that Gloria might steal her husband.  

Gloria is irate: Frenemy's husband is too fat to be attractive.  Not anymore: Andy helped him lose 30 pounds! He also can cook. Enough bragging, dude.  It sounds like you're hitting on Gloria.  But it works -- Gloria decides to steal Andy, but in a non-sexual way (well, not overtly sexual; she gets quite chummy as she leads him off).

When Jay and Manny get home, Andy introduces himself as the new manny. Manny: "Am I being replaced?"  No, he's the baby's new nanny, but "My mission is to make all of your lives happier and healthier." So, are you a nanny or a life coach/personal trainer/dietitian?

No way! Jay yells.  "He's a man!  It's weird!" The aging Baby Boomer Jay thinks that only women are qualified to do childcare, but Gloria has a big crush on him: "He's perfect," she sighs. Manny disapproves, too: how is he going to sexually harass a guy? Gloria storms out of the room.  That's the end of it, right?

The next day, Jay is in the shower.  He forgot to get a towel (isn't there always one hanging on the towel rack?), so he yells for Gloria. But Andy brings it for him, and does the gay discreet-glance-at-his-bulge thing (but in this case, he sees Jay's dick rather than his bulge).  I'm confused: is Adam playing Andy as gay, or do straight guys like looking at dicks, too?    

Andy made a heart-healthy breakfast for Jay and Manny, and afterwards, he suggests jogging.  How about taking care of the baby?  

"Nope," Jay tells him. "My wife overstepped her bounds by hiring you. You're fired!"

"I came on too strong, didn't I?  My dad warned me about that when I turned 14." He goes into a story of his dad dying, so he had to be "the man" of the family, and take care of the kids. But that doesn't dissuade Jay and Manny: they want him out.

Gloria returns and starts yelling.  They yell back.  Andy begins a group therapy session that ends with everyone apologizing and promising to do better at communicating their feelings. Cut to the whole family jogging...er, walking fast.

Ok, I get it.  All three of the groups hired "help" in scenarios that looked sexual (or, in Frank's case, were sexual), and turned out to be more "help" than anyone anticipated.

Beefcake: None.

Gay Stereotypes: Of course.  Mitchell, Cam, and their friends seem to be having a contest to see  who can be swishier. 

Homophobia:  I didn't see any in this episode, just some gender polarization.  Andy displays no queasiness about seeing Jay naked in the shower, and actually takes a peek at his penis.  All gay characters on the show are femme stereotypes, of course, so he's written as straight, but it  certainly indicates that he is not afraid of male nudity.

See also: Modern Family Episode 5.13: Phil wants Keefe's lips on his mouth. Who doesn't?

Gangs of London: A gay assassin, his boyfriend, a gay mafia son, some sex parties, and a lot of violence and dicks

 

Link to the mafia dicks

In dramas about crime families, the youngest son is traditionally gay -- think Deran in Animal Kingdom, Ian in Shameless, and Kelvin in The Righteous Gemstones.  So I'm reviewing the first episode of Gangs of London, on Netflix, to see if the traditionl continues.

Scene 1: An upside-down view of a cityscape.  Telling us that this is an alternate world?  No, it's a guy hanging upside down from a tall building, crying and begging Sean (Joe Cole, left) not to kill him.  But he says "What choice do I have?", douses him with gasoline and sets him on fire.  Soon the rope snaps, and the burning body falls. Kind of an overkill.

Scene 2: Irish Traveler Darren (Aled ap Stefan), who apparently works as a hit man, gets a new assignment -- "nobody, just some pedo," and invites his Buddy ( Darren Evans) along.  They park, and Darren goes up the stairs to an apartment, where he waits to shoot the guy.

Downstairs, the Buddy has trouble from a group of toughs.  Then Finn Wallace arrives!  The hit is on the head of the biggest, most important, most brutal crime family in London!  He tries to call Darren, tell him to cancel the job, he's not who they said,  but it's too late, Finn Wallace goes upstairs, and Darren shoots him.

Meanwhile, his Driver Jack ( Emmet J. Scanlan) is terrorizing the Buddy.  When he hears the shot, he runs to the car for his gun.  All the Buddy can think to do is run him over. 

Emmet's dick is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Scene 3: While Darren soaks in a tub, being horrified, the family gathers for the funeral.  

We meet Family Advisor Alex (Paapa Essidue) and a little boy named Danny, who may grow up into a main character.  The costumes seem a little quaint, so I'm thinking that this is all a flashback

They watch the guests arriving, wondering if any of them ordered the hit.

Scene 4: Sons Billy and Sean (Brian Vernel, Joe Cole) play Dad's favorite song, "Suzy Q," so loud that everyone is disturbed.  

We saw Sean being brutal in Scene 1.  Billy is the gay one, and a recovering heroin addict, naturally.  

Left: Horror Hunks claims that this is Brian Vernel, but the one in Gangs of London is younger, with black hair

Family Advisor Alex advises them to not look for the killer, or they'd have a war on their hands.

More dicks after the break

"English Teacher": Gay teacher, his ex-boyfriend, and his homophobic buddy face woke culture and get naked

Link to the nudity

I spent the worst year of my life teaching English at Homophobe State University in Hell, aka a far northern suburb of Houston, Texas. The minute I submitted the last of the final grades, I got in my car and drove nonstop until that blessed "You are now leaving Hell" sign was receding into the distance.

So the new Hulu series, English Teacher, about an English teacher in small town Hell...I mean Texas...piqued my interest.  I could relive how hideously horrible it was, from the safe distance of my living room a thousand miles away.

Score -- none of the promotional materials let on, but this English teacher, Evan, played by Brian Jordan Alvarez,  is gay.  Let the rampant homophobia begin.

Left: the worst place in the world

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, Brian Jordan Alvarez's cock, to take your mind off the horror.

Wait -- in English Teacher, everyone knows that Evan is gay.  Not a problem.  The problem is, he's kind of a jerk.

The much more woke students want to cancel him, for instance, because he said that he couldn't understand why lesbians aren't attracted to men.  Lots of people aren't attracted to men, idjit!

In the first episode, a parent wants him fired, claiming that he turned her kid gay by kissing his then-boyfriend and current hookup, played by Jordan Firstman, in front of the class.  

He has to prepare a defense for the school board, so he writes an impassioned essay on homophobia and gay rights, claiming that it was act of love between life-partners, and if he kissed a woman, it would be celebrated.  But Dude is not totally blameless: in a flashback, we find that the kiss was not a little peck. There was grinding and butt-grabbing. 

More after the break

Zephyr Benson: The Son of the Most Beautiful Teen Idol of the 1980s

What is it like to grow up with a father who was the most beautiful teen idol in the world, the source of gushing romantic fantasies for millions of gay boys and straight girls?

Of course, I'm talking about Robby Benson, teen idol of the late 1970s and 1980s.  He appeared in some movies, but really, he was too beautiful to be a major star -- everyone was so busy swooning and sighing to pay attention to the plot.

He had a physique and a basket, too, but who noticed?  We were busy imagining what it would be like to walk hand-in-hand with Robby through the rain, and share a brief, chaste kiss.

Oh, I hear laughter in the rain,
Walking hand in hand with the one I love

Sorry, I had a Neil Sedaka moment.What was I writing about, again?

Right, Robby's kids.  It seems that Robby managed to find someone strong enough to come within five feet of him without swooning (Karla DeVito), so he married her...um...sorry, just imagining their wedding...kissing Robby Benson! ...and they had two kids, a girl named Lyric (born 1983), and a boy named Zephyr (born 1992).

Zephyr lacks the drop-dead gorgeousness of his father: his long, oval face is rather a turn-off.  But he does have dreamy blue eyes. 

He has the same slim, tight physique as his father, but not so tightly muscled.

He's an aspiring actor with 7 credits listed on the imdb, including more than one gay character.

His magnum opus to date is Straight Outta Tomkins (2015), which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in.  It's about a teenager who falls in with a drug dealer, and mistakes the mercenary attention for a real emotional connection.

Plus he tweets his support of marriage equality.  What else could you want in the son of the most beautiful teen idol in the world?