Vice Principals Episode 1.8: The guys try to take out their boss, and there's a horse and some n*de dudes

Link to the uncensored review

Fans suggest that I try Vice Principals (2016-2018), Danny McBride's series about two high school vice principals scheming to take down their principal so they can take her job and enjoy all that fame, power, and wealth. Really? 

 "Best show on television!" "Hilarious!" "McBride is a comedic genius!"

Other fans caution that it's homophobic, racist, and loaded-down with queerbaiting.  

Uh-oh.  I'll watch an episode, just to track the homophobia and queerbaiting.

Scene 1: Gamby (Danny McBride) and Lee (Walton Goggins) have lured Principal Brown into a night of drunken debauchery to discredit her, so they can take over her job.  They leave her passed out in the bathtub of a sleazy hotel, then burn all the evidence linking them to her deviance. 

Does it make you nervous that two white men are going up against a black woman? 

How about that she is named Brown?

How about that there are no African-American teachers at North Jackson High School in Charleston, South Carolina?  

Scene 2:  B Plot: Gamby gives his daughter a horse to make up for taking away her motorcycle. She is angry, and ignores him. 

Later he asks how she likes the horse.  She prefers the motorcycle.  Besides, aren't horses expensive to keep up?  Gamby tells her that he'll be principal soon, so money will be pouring in.  Are principals really rich?  

Scene 3: In the school cafeteria, Ganby and Lee criticize Principal Brown for eating too much. Then they review the footage they shot of drunken debauchery that will destroy her career.   If she doesn't get drunk or have wild s*x on school property, what's the problem?

Ganby can't remember his closer,  "End of the line, Slut!"   He's too distracted by his anguish: The Girl of His Dreams, whom he was dating, is ghosting him.

Scene 4: The guys lure Principal Brown in the woods by claiming that students are sneaking out there to smoke marijuana, and start to confront her with the evidence of her "gin-soaked evening."  But she thanks them for helping her out: "I'm glad you were there...I really appreciate it."   

Ganby tries to say "End of the line, Slut," but can't; she is being too nice.  But Lee, the  more evil of the two, steps in: "We have this here video of you acting all crazy. Your career is over!  We won, bitch!"  

He brags about some of the other things they did to her, like burn down her house, causing her to attack, punching and kicking them.  If you've been waiting your whole life to see a middle-aged black lady and white man in a fist fight, your prayers have been answered.  I find it a bit uncomfortable due to the overlay of institutional racism and patriarchy.  She is a far superior fighter, if that helps.

Finally Lee gets around to the blackmail: step down as principal, or the video goes viral. Hey, isn't that a plot arc of the first season of Righteous Gemstones: give us a million dollars, or we'll post this video of your sex-and-drugs party?

Scene 5:  Lee threw Principal Brown's shoe away, so she has to walk down the rocky trail back to the school semi-barefoot.  She walks to her car in slow motion, gazes longingly at the school, and drives off. 

Cut to the B plot: Ganby watching his daughter ride her horse.  Ray (Shea Whigham, left) drops by.  Wikipedia says that he is the husband of Ganby's ex, whom Ganby hates even though he is a nice guy.  So the daughter's stepfather? 

Ganby is happy that his daughter is "doing what she loves again," "out of death's way."  Call back to an earlier crisis?  

Ray complains that, as stepfather, he'll always be second in the daughter's heart. (Ok, ok, I looked up her name: Janelle.)  "I'm jealous.  Whatever I do, she'll always love you more."  They bond.

More after the break

"Shardlake": Murder in Tudor England, with a limb-different Sherlock Holmes and a lot of queerbaiting

There are three reasons that Shardlake, a four-episode tv series on Hulu, gives me bad vibes.

1. It is set during the reign of Henry VIII.  Maybe in British schools you get lectured on this every year, but all I know about Henry VIII is that he broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, married a lot -- I'm related to Ann Bolyn -- and was played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, William Cecil, and William Paulet straight.

2. Do you know what a "shard" is in America?

3. It stars Sean Bean, who I thought was Mr. Bean, the annoying Borat-like character. Turns out that Sean Bean has no connection to Mr. Bean. He played Boromir in The Lord of the Rings and Ned Stark in Game of Thrones.  Might as well give it a try.

Prologue: Crows cawing at a gloomy looking monastery.  Sinister looking guy goes down the stairs, crosses the courtyard, unlocks a door, and heads down to the basement -- where a knight slices off his head!

Scene 1: Hunky guy with a upper-body limb difference washes, shows a little chest, gets dressed.  He tells an off-camera Matthew, no doubt his boyfriend, that he's "ready for whatever the day brings."

No boyfriend: he's Matthew Shardlake, talking to himself.

Shardlake is played by Arthur Hughes, left, who is limb-different in real life. He has appeared in a lot of Doctor Who movies, starred in the soap The Archers, and played Richard III.

Meanwhile, a young guy gallops across the countryside for five minutes.  You assume that he's going to be a main character, but he delivers a letter and vanishes from the story.  

It's for Lord Cromwell.  Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded.   

Bad news: "My representative!  My voice!  This cannot go unpunished!"  They must have murdered his representative in the monastery.

Scene 2:  Shardlake snarls through town.  People jump out of his way and cross themselves in fear. He stops to watch a magical parrot say "God save King Harry," but condemns it as a trick.  Harry is Henry VIII. 

A guy tries to pick him up.  After substantial flirtation, he admits that he's actually summoning him to see Lord Cromwell.  He seems to like-like Shardlake.  Maybe a gay-subtext is brewing.

He's Jack Barak, played by Anthony Boyle, left.

 There's been a murder, "a friend of yours. Poor Lord Singleton." Robin Singleton, fictional, sent by Lord Cromwell to investigate the Monastery of St. Donatus, also fictional.  

Scene 3: Their meeting.  Lord Cromwell is in a mood. Back story: Ann Bolyn was executed a few months ago.  This is the fall of 1536.   He shows Shardlake two skulls of Saint Barbara confiscated from monasteries to demonstrate how monks lie about everything, and has him read the letter revealing the murder.

His assignment: They're going to start closing monasteries, confiscating their wealth, and passing it out to the nobility.  But you can only close them if you can prove that the monks are "papists, thieves, or sodomites."  Aren't monks all Roman Catholics, so papists by definition?  That's what Robin Singleton was researching.  So Shardlake must discover who killed him, hopefully a monk, and get on with the investigation of monastic evil.

Jack is assigned to accompany Shardlake.  Being a misanthrope, he doesn't want any traveling companions, but it's an order from Lord Cromwell. Maybe they'll fall in love.

Scene 6: While snarling through town, Shardlake encounters a tough, who tells him to go into that house and up the stairs, then disappears from the story.  Grr.

He meets with Lord Norfolk, Thomas Howard, the uncle of Ann Bolyn. He's my great-great-great, etc. grandfather!  

An opponent of Lord Cromwell, Norfolk wants to know why Shardlake was cozying up to him.  "I'm to investigate a murder at St. Donatus, and then close the monastery so Lord Cromwell can confiscate its wealth." Norfolk disapproves: "It is theft in the name of God."

Norfolk is played by Peter Firth, left, who showed us his equipment in Equus, but is now 70 and a bit crotchety.

More crotchety guys after the break

Jake Satow: Saving Christmas, a Christian horse, a nonbinary internet celebrity, and the guy from "Baywatch"

Link to the uncensored photo collection

I was looking for actors who played nonbinary characters, and the name "Jake Satow" popped up.  Never heard of him, but he's attractive, so I checked the listing on IMDB.

He has 18 acting credits.  The most recent is Saving Christmas Spirit, 2022.  

How many times does that holiday need saving?

Spoiler alert: Christmas Spirit is a store that needs saving.  Jake plays a teenager who gets a girlfriend.

Adeline, 2022, is about a horse that heals people in a small town.  I swear, I'm not making this up.  Presumably a Christian movie, since one of the IMDB reviews says something like "Stop the insanity. The Bible isn't real." 

It stars 1980s hunks John Schneider from The Dukes of Hazzard, bottom photo, and David Chokachi from Baywatch.

Jake had a busy 2022.  Other roles include Howard Hunt's son in Gaslit,  which has a maddenly misleading title.  You expect the gaslit Victorian era, with hanson cabs clattering down cobblestone streets.  It's about Watergate.

Hockey Trophy Jake in Breathing Happy, about a recovering drug addict celebrating his first year of sobriety on Christmas Day, naturally. Other characters are named the Mysterious Door, the Golden Door, and Salvation Elf.  Another Christian movie, I imagine. 

Christian Holmes at age 14 in The Dropout, about a woman dropping out of college to start a tech company that revolutionalizes the health care industry.  Christian Holmes at age adult is her husband.

This is all terribly heteronormative. 

Before 2022, Jake was starring in a lot of shorts: a clown with marital problems, the morning announcements at a middle school, an alarm clock going off an hour early, dad dying, and Christmas.  They all have about the same cast, so I'm guessing local productions.

His website lists a theatrical production, The Honorary Counsel, performed with the actors in Zoom rooms, plus modeling on runways for Columbus Fashion Week and for Macy's and Homage.  

No indication of nonbinary, trans, or otherwise LGBTQ roles.  Maybe in real life?

Jake has 17,000 followers on Instagram.  His profile says says "Christian"...uh-oh, probably homophobic... SAG/AFTRA....The Dropout, and Saving Christmas Spirit.

More after the break

Joseph and I hook up in a haunted house

 

Terre Haute, Indiana

One day the July after my first year in grad school in Bloomington, my friend Joseph called: "You up for a road trip this Saturday?"

"Where to?"  I asked, hoping he wanted to go to one of the gay bars in Indianapolis. 

"I gotta go to Terre Haute to pick up some stuff, then drop it off at my parents' house in Broad Ripple [a suburb of Indianapolis]."

"How much stuff?" I asked suspiciously.  I didn't want to be conned into helping him move.

"Not a lot, just a few keepsakes.  My parents are selling my great-aunt Rose's house, and they want me to go get what I want before everything gets packed up and sold."

"Are other guys coming, too?"

"There aren't a lot of guys around Bloomington during the summer, so it will be just you and me."  He paused.  It's a pretty long trip, so we'll probably have to spend the night in Broad Ripple before heading back."

Spend the night!  I know what that meant!

 Joseph was  one of the first gay guys I met in Bloomington: an undergraduate history major, with black curly hair, a baby face, and a lean tan physique.  And short -- Definitely my type!  But he was also very popular, dating Rick the philosophy major, then Mark the optometrist, then a medical student named Manfred (really!), so I never managed to squeeze in.

Obviously I wasn't his first choice, but who cared?  This was my chance to get intimate!

Saturday after lunch we set out for Terre Haute, about 1 1/2 hours away.  Joseph said that he grew up in Broad Ripple, but they drove out to visit his mother's aunt Rose almost every weekend.  He had fond memories of fishing in the Wabash River, drive-in movies, dinner at the Pizza King, and drinking hot chocolate at Christmastime

"Aunt Rose is in a nursing home with dementia," he told me. "She fades in and out.  Some days she's almost normal, and others she thinks it's 1961, and I'm her brother Oscar.  But she can still name all of the U.S. presidents, in order, up to Richard Nixon."

"Did she know about you [being gay] before her dementia?"

"No.  I'm not out anyone in my family, and I sure wasn't going to come out to a hard-core Methodist lady.   She was always worried that I wasn't dating enough.  One of the last things she said to me before her dementia began was 'You shouldn't be so picky, or you'll never find a girl."

Aunt Rose used to be a professor of American history at Indiana State University.  She lived in a big, two-story house in West Terre Haute, just across the Wabash.  It was painted a depressing shade of grey, but it had a wide porch and a big, carefully mown front lawn.

As we walked up to the house, I saw what looked like a face in the attic window.

 "Who's that?"  I asked. 

"Who's who?"

But it was gone.

More after the break

Confusing Children and Angels: Laugh-In

When I was a kid, my  friends and I hated variety shows: Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton, Carol Burnette, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell (left).  They were old, square, has-beens.  And what could be more boring than someone standing in front of a microphone, singing?

But Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (1968-73) was for us: not exactly variety, or even sketch comedy, but comedic slogans zapped across the screen at lightning speed.

1. Judy Carne yells "Sock it to me!" and gets socked.

2. Rowan and Martin give the "Flying Fickle Finger of Fate" award.

3. Zsa Zsa Gabor gets big  laughs by saying the word "bippy."

4. A Nazi spy peers from the undergrowth ("Verry interesting")

5. A spaced-out Goldie Hawn forgets her line and giggles.

6. Flip Wilson's drag persona Geraldine offers herself to all comers: "What you see is what you get."

7. Pigmeat Martin struts across the stage, jive-talking "Here come da judge!"

8. A dirty old man makes mumbling propositions to a purse-wielding spinster.

9. Gary Owens as a baritone-voiced announcer makes nonsequiter announcements.

10. Jo Anne Worley says "Blow in my ear, and I'll follow you anywhere," and giggles.

Episodes are streaming on Amazon Prime, but today they're unwatchable.  The lightning speed gives me a headache, and the jokes are sophomoric; only children would think it hilarious to say "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnells."  The cast members are just big kids, saying things that sound dirty on the playground.

But between 1968 and 1973, the jokes were bright and fresh, and risque and cool.  Most importantly, they were ours.

No beefcake, except for an occasional hot guest star, like Davy Jones of The Monkees.  
Not much bonding, not even from hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, a comedy team since 1952.
No one ever acknowledged the existence of gay people.

But there was lots of gender nonconformity.  Years later we remembered it fondly, as the first hint of gay potential.

1. Alan Sues played Big Al, a feminine sports announcer who had an obsession with a bell he called his "tinkle."

Gay but never out, Alan Sues also played a fey grown-up Peter Pan on peanut butter commercials.

2. Tiny Tim, who looked like a long-haired Dracula, played the ukelele and sang "Tiptoe through the Tulips" in a fey falsetto.  He proved he was heterosexual by marrying a woman named Miss Vicky on The Tonight Show.














3. Flower child Henry Gibson appeared with a gigantic artificial flower and recited nonsequiter poems.  He was often assumed gay, although he was married to a woman for 40 years.

In his last role of note, Magnolia (1999), he played a cranky older gay man named Thurston Howell (after the millionaire on Gilligan's Islandd), competing with another guy for the attention of hunky Brad the Bartender.  He advises: "It's a dangerous thing to confuse children with angels!"

In those days we often confused children with angels.

Gemstones Episode 1.1, Continued: Blackmail, a bisexual party double-dragon Ninjas, Scott Wolf's bulge, and Kelvin's size

 

Link to the uncensored review

The earlier scenes established one of the main plotlines of the season: Kelvin Gemstone is gay and an evangelical minister -- got to be some conflict there -- and interested in his former-Satanist friend Keefe.  Next we move on to introduce the other plotlines. 

El's Dead Wife:   We cut to megachurch senior pastor Eli eating dinner alone, just as lonely as Kelvin.  He stares at a painting of him and, presumably, his dead wife.  Later we discover that she is Aimee-Leigh, a famous Gospel singer who partnered with Eli in the ministry before her death in July 2018.  Trivia alert: a little over a year before Episode 1.1 aired.

The Bisexual S*x Party: Then on to Jesse in the master bedroom suite, brushing his teeth while his wife Amber waits in bed. Suddenly he gets a text: a video of Jesse in a hotel room, snorting cocaine, and doing things I can't mention here. We see men's private parts!  So someone taped Jesse having a bisexual s*x party.

The sender wants to meet, so Jesse makes an excuse and drives to the deserted parking lot of a strip mall.  A red van appears, and a blackmailer in a Devil mask demands a million dollars by Sunday, or the video goes viral!   

Later, Jesse asks Chief Accountant Martin for the money, pretending it's for a new mission endeavor, but no dice.

Squeezing Out the Competition:  Eli is planning to open a new satellite church in Locust Grove. A fictional town, not the suburb of Atlanta.  The pastors of smaller churches in the area, especially Rev. Seasons (Dermot Mulroney, right, from a 1994 movie), fear that theit will draw away their members.  Tough. Eli admits that he's intentionally trying to steal their congregations.  In-joke: his name is John Wesley Seasons, but he's a Baptist!

Judy and the Atheist: The family meets at Aimee-Leigh's shrine to discuss their disapproval of Judy's boyfriend BJ, because he is an unbeliever; he's even pro-choice on abortion!  She argues that he doesn't support abortion anymore.  How conservative are the Gemstones?  It varies from season to season, and even from episode to episode.

Plus they are living together, in spite of the church's prohibition of premarital cohabitation, so whenever someone visits, BJ has to hide. She argues that they are engaged, which is practically the same as being married.  No one mentions disapproving of Kelvin being gay; could they not know?

On the ride home, Kelvin becomes angry with Jesse for "constantly getting in my business, telling me what I should or shouldn't do."  Like what guys he can date? Jesse claims that he's just trying to protect Kelvin: "Dark forces are at work. Evil forces that want to destroy our family."  He means the blackmailers, but what does Kelvin think he's talking about?  An ex-Satanist that he attracted to?

We cut to Jesse's wife Amber meeting with the church ladies to defend the Gemstones' excessive wealth, 

Jesse's Crew Sees the Tape:  Jesse shows Kelvin and his crew, the guys who were at the party, the tape. Kelvin ignores the lady, but wants to know about the man -- Chad.  He points out that he is  bigger. Everybody is bigger, dude. 

Kelvin will be obsessed with his size through the series. I wonder if it is scripted as small, or the same size as Adam Devine's.

So, will Kelvin to chip in half of the million dollars?  He considers it, but after Jesse calls him "a shitty brother and a shitty minister," he refuses.  

We move on to a church service -- very money-grubbing.  Eli, Kelvin, and Jesse perform, while Keefe stands in the balcony.  Apparently he is working security.  After the service, they find all of the cars in the parking lot plastered with fliers about how evil the Gemstones are.  No doubt Rev. Season is responsible!  

S*ck your Satanic boyfriend:  After a confrontation with Rev. Seasons about the fliers -- he denies responsibility -- Eli and his family head to dinner in a private dining room on the second floor of Jason's Steakhouse.  Trivia alert: Really the Liberty Taproom and Grill in Mount Pleasant, a suburb of Charlesotn.

The siblings are generally sniping at each other. disapproving of BJ for being a nonbeliever and Judy for planning to move away from the compound and buy a place in town.  They consider this a betrayal. Why do they care?   

Kelvin accuses Jesse of "betraying your family" in another way.  They stand, preparing to fight.

Kelvin: "How about you tell the family what kind of man you really are?"

Jesse: "How about you just go on and s*ck Satanic boyfriend Keefe off?"  This is the first time Keefe is named on the show. 

"S*ck your Satanic boyfriend" is a parallel to "what kind of man you really are," comparing two illicit sexual acts.  But what is illicit, a boyfriend or a Satanist?  From Jesse's statement that he has gay friends earlier, we can conclude that he means "Satanist," just as Judy is inadequate because of her non-believer boyfriend.  But Kelvin responds as if Jesse has criticized him for being gay: instead of defending Keefe, he throws a water glass.  

The Devil is a Top:  They start throwing things at each other. Jesse throws a water glass at Kelvin, but hits BJ in the nose.  Kelvin yells that they should have Jesse arrested for assault, and he responds "I hope the Devil f*cks you dry!"  

Again we see parallel threats, getting arrested and getting "fucked" by the Devil, both humiliating losses of power.  It is interesting that Jesse adds "dry," that is, without lube. He assumes that Kelvin, being a bottom, would otherwise enjoy the act.  In Season 3,we learn that Kelvin is in fact a bottom, and Keefe a top.

More after the break

"Holiday Exchange": Entitled, elitist A-gays find Christmas magic in an idyllic village in Britain/L.A.

 

Link to the uncensored version

It's not even Halloween yet, but the romcoms are started.  

Darn, they all have such interchangeable titles that I forgot which one I'm reviewing. Oh, right, The Holiday Exchange, on Amazon Prime.  

The icon shows a woman torn between two men, and the blurb is about a guy going on a "holiday exchange" that he found on a gay app, so I suspect some "mistaken for gay" jokes as the guy finds the Girl of His Dreams.

Scene 1: A guy wearing an eye mask and a frilly shirt wakes up -- gay. Close-up of a photo of him and his boyfriend -- gay.  He knocks it over, drinks some booze, and shaves and applies femme moisterizer products -- gay. 

A guy texts: "Wilde, call me back," but he ignores it.  Moisturizer guy is named Wilde, like Oscar?  Gay. He's played by Taylor Frey, top photo, who also wrote the screenplay.

Knock on the door: It's femme fashion designer Chase, Colton Tran, and a woman, with ideas for his wedding outfit: "Your Mom told us that your Big Day was coming."

"Nope, you misunderstood, I'm not getting married, I'm selling my company."

"Oh, well, we have ideas for that, too."

Wilde goes annoyingly over the top complementing Fashion Designer Chase; he is an angel, a shining light, goodness personified; he has created everlasting happiness for literally thousands of people by...um...designing their clothes. 

Back story: Wilde just dumped his boyfriend, Sean.

Scene 2:  An idyllic village, over the top idyllic, Currier & Ives idyllic. 

George tells his business partner Oliver, Rick Cosnett, how they met, confesses to drinking too much, and then lays on the over-effusive praise.  

Oliver is also an angel, goodness personified, spearheading drives that raise billions for charity. He's single-handedly wiped out world hunger.  Don't introduce Oliver to Chase the Fashion Designer, or they'll cancel each other out.  

His problems: he is too busy with his day job as a divorce lawyer, his numerous charities, and taking over Dad's business when he retires to get a boyfriend. Coworker George is in favor of being single. This must be the "mistaken for gay" guy.

Wait -- they specifically state that they live in Los Angeles.  The establishing shot was a New England Currier & Ives village. What the fudge?

Out in the elegant party, Saintly Oliver talks to James, who works in his company.  They hedge around the discussion of why their last date was so awful. So Saintly Oliver and Moisturizer Wilde are both gay?  Who's going to hook up with the lady in the middle of the icon?  

No,  James "can't" get together during the holidays: he'll be seeing family, driving up the coast. Dude's not into you. 

I'm watching with subtitles, so I can't hear the accents, but these people are saying "Happy Christmas" to each other.  Could they live in Britain, but be having an elegant party in L.A.?

More after the break.

Les Demi-Deux: Danny Fitzgerald, Richard Bennett, and the beauty of the male form

 

Link to the uncensored version

In the days before Stonewall, when gay photography was usually closeted under the guise of fitness magazines, you may have come across Demi-Gods, published by the Demi-Deux studio.  A French import?  Exotic, seductive, and maybe more legal than the American variety.

The Demi-Deux promoted the beauty of the male form itself. You don't have to pretend that you're looking for muscle-building tips.  It's ok to gaze in awe.

You may have been surprised to discover that the Demi-Deux was not a French studio.  It was the work of Danny Fitzgerald, who lived in his parents' house in Carol Gardens, Brooklyn, and his model and collaborator, Richard Bennett.

Born in 1920, Danny Fitzgerald photographed scenes of everyday life during World War II and the 1950s. Some of the subjects had their shirts off, adding masculine beauty to the scene.

 In 1958, Scranton, Pennsylvania native Richard Bennett moved to New York to become an actor/model. He sent his portfolio to Danny Fitzgerald, who invited him to do a photo shoot.  The two became lovers, and stayed together until Danny's death in 2000.

It was a new world.  Allen Ginsberg described gay men in "Howl," 1956.   Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms, 1958, featured a gay teenager. Why not publish photos for an audience of open, out gay men?

Calling their studio Les Demi Deux, they published photos in many of the gay-closeted physique magazines of the era, such as Physique Pictorial, The Young Physique, and Muscles A Go-Go, and, beginning in 1963, their own Demi Gods.

More after the break

The top ten hunks of "American Sports Story"

 

Link to the uncensored photos

Hulu is pushing American Sports Story.  I'm not at all into sports, but I'm interested in whoever this is.

It's Josh Rivera, born in 1995. known for The Hunger Games, West Side Story, Cat Person, and American Sports Story, where he plays "Aaron Hernandez"

Whoever the heck that is.

According to a review, "Josh Rivera's exquisite performance will force you to rethink Aaron Hernandez"  I can't very well rethink him if I've never heard of him.

Wikipedia: he was a football player, a "tight end" with the New England Patriots.  Tell me more about that "tight end" business.  

In 2013, he was arrested for the murder of Odin Lloyd, who was dating his girlfriend's sister. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. In 2017, he was found dead in his cell, apparently a ___ victim.

Ok, I'm trying to make double-entendres, and this is getting very dark. Let's get some more beefcake up in here.

The wikipedia article goes into detail about Aaron's professional career and many other fights and attempted murders that he was associated with, but the only one salient here is a radio sports program that implied that he was gay, and that's why he ___ himself.

Who does that, in 2017?   I'm disgusted by this guy's homophobia more than his history of violence.

The tv series seems to be playing up the internalized homophobia angle.  Episode 3 is "Pray the Gay Away."

According to a recap, Aaron is in college, playing for the Florida Gators.  His teammate Ted Tebow, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, invites him to church and has conversations with him about God and religion, encouraging him to be a better person.  So he gives up drugs and tries to turn straight. But then he goes home for Thanksgiving, runs into an old boyfriend, either Jake Cannavale or Kamala Epstein, left, and is tempted to use drugs and get together again.

I'm nauseous. F*ck the Sadness. Let's just do the Top Ten Hunks thing.

1. Josh Rivera, top photo.

2. Ean Castellanos, left, as DJ Hernandez, presumably Aaron's brother.

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 1.1: Kelvin is in love with a Goth, Judy with an atheist, and Gideon with the guy from the Other Place

Episode Title: Same as the series, "The Righteous Gemstones."  Danny McBride has not commented on the origin, but in the Book of Exodus, Aaron's breastplate contains twelve gemstones, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, and in Ephesians, we are told to "put on the Breastplate of Righteousness."  Maybe some Evangelical preachers make the connection, and apply Christian virtues to the twelve gemstones.  Maybe someone in McBride's childhood even called them "righteous gemstones."

Who is More of a Man?: Chengdu, in southwestern China. Beneath an advertisement for "24 Hours of Saved Souls," a woman is singing in Mandarin, while hundreds of people file into a swimming pool to be baptized by missionary Eli Gemstone (Dan Conner of Roseanne) or his adult children.  Jesse, the oldest (Danny McBride of Vice Principals), complains that his brother Kelvin (Adam Devine of Workaholics) is dipping the converts too far, getting water in their noses. Kelvin disgrees. Suddenly someone turns on waves and disco music, people lose their footing, it's chaos!

Left: Fireman from Chengdu.  Or somewhere in China, anyway.

The Gemstones return home, and are greeted by Martin, Eli's chief accountant and right-hand man, and his secretary Judy, the third Gemstone child, who complains that she didn't get to go, even though she learned "Ni hao" (Hello).  Jesse argues that missionary work is for only men, and she counters: "I'm more of a man than Kelvin is."  Jesse agrees. Is this a gay reference? 

The three men are chauffeured, in three identical cars, through a huge estate with a golf course, amusement park, and private police force.  Ok, Eli is not a missionary; he has a televangelism empire like Jimmy Swaggart's

They are dropped off at their houses. First  Eli, greeted by a staff of 15 women. Then Jesse, greeted by his wife, Amber, and children, Pontius and Abraham.  Then Kelvin, greeted by no one. So his plot arc will be about finding someone. 

Kelvin and the Vampire:  Kelvin walks into his game room, and starts sorting his mail.  Suddenly a man appears in the doorway, lowering from a sit-up bench like a vampire rising from his coffin -- next to an Egyptian mummy case. This is the Land of the Dead. 

He says "Hello, friend," more threat than greeting. 

Kelvin: "You scared the ___ out of me!"  

Left: At the gym

The Vampire: "I'm sorry, man.  I'd like to keep your ___ in." 

Kelvin didn't like China: "Jesse was riding me the whole time, fully up my ___"  Second reference to that thing that I can't mention here..

He continues to criticize Jesse for not "letting me be me." 

Is this a reference to Kelvin being gay?  Will he come out during this season, or is he already out?

After a bro fist-bump, Kelvin asks (his friend has not yet been named, but we'll call him Keefe) how the housesitting went.

It went fine.  Keefe slept in Kelvin's room one night, "But it felt odd, so I slept the rest of the time here on the couch." The huge house must have a dozen guest rooms.   Why the couch?

Kelvin: "Hey, man, you do not need to feel odd sleeping in my bed.  I told you you could."   Is he easing Keefe into the idea of sleeping with him?

Keefe didn't like being in Kelvin's room: "The energy in there is just unsettling.  It's lonely"   Very insightful.  He can sense Kelvin's loneliness.  There's no one in his life, no friends, no romantic partner.  He doesn't realize it yet, but he is, in the words of Dag Hammarskjold, "screaming for love." .

Kelvin thanks him for looking after the place: "Home-run friendship." Keefe is appreciative: "I know not everybody wanted me here."  House-sitting?  Why would the family care?

Timeline problem: Keefe was a Satanist before he and Kelvin met. Maybe Kelvin even brought him to Christ.  How long have they known each other?  In a future episode, Keefe's Satanist friends wonder why he hasn't been around lately, so just a few weeks.  But there's a faded 666 tattoo on Keefe's chest. Laser tattoo removal takes 6-10 sessions, scheduled 6-8 weeks apart.  Did Keefe start the removal long before he met Kelvin, or did the writers goof? .  

Keefe decides to return to his apartment: "I'm pretty bushed. Gonna go soak in a tub. " It's the middle of the day! You haven't seen your friend in a week or so.  Why don't you want to stick around? Are you worried about things heading in a direction you're not ready for?

"No, man!" Kelvin pleads. "Let's stay up late, play some video games, smash some Pixie Sticks."  Staying up past your bedtime?  Eating sugar?  Are you planning a romantic encounter or a junior high sleepover?

Keefe refuses politely. "That sounds good, but I really need a soak...I like to turn it up real hot."  A double-entendre. 

More after the break

A Teenager Doing Pushups on TV

Today you can go online and see 100,000,000 pictures and videos of n*ked bodybuilders and athletes flexing for selfies, and every actor with even minimal musculature takes off his shirt at the drop of a script.

When I was a kid, there was virtually nothing.  An occasional Tarzan movie, an occasional teen idol with an open shirt in a Tiger Beat centerfold.  And that was it.

Seeing a man or boy on tv with his shirt off was so rare -- vanishingly rare -- that every instance is indelibly imprinted in my brain, as unforgettable as my first airplane trip or my first date with a guy.

Greg strips down to go surfing on The Brady Bunch .
Stephen Parr shows off his washboard abs on Mystery Island.
Steve Elliot shaves while wearing only pajama bottoms on Petticoat Junction.

And, sometime in the 1960s, I'm guessing around 1968, a Public Service Announcement for the President's Council on Physical Fitness shows a teenage boy doing pushups.

Shirtless.

Hard delts, thick biceps, beautiful interplay of muscles as he rises and falls, rises and falls.  His face becomes red.  He is smiling.

The narrator tells us that with every pushup, he's "a little bit stronger, a little bit healthier, a little bit happier than before."

Amazing.

I can't find the original PSA, but it was an iconic moment, a moment when I recognized the beauty of the male physique, in spite of the adult insistence that only women liked to look at men.

By the way, pushups are still widely recognized as a good way to maintain core strength.  The recommended number in a minute differs by age and sex.  50-60 year olds are supposed to be able to do at least 25.  I can do 50, which makes me "excellent" for my age group but only "above average" for a 20-year old.

Mike Henry's Tarzan

There were several Tarzans in the 1960s -- Denny Miller's blond beach boy, Ron Ely's lanky environmentalist, Johnny Weissmuller flickering on late-night reruns -- but Mike Henry captured the imagination of the Now Generation.  The former football star and tv cowboy donned a loincloth for Paramount only three times -- in Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), Tarzan and the Great River (1967), and Tarzan and the Jungle Boy (1968).  He had signed up to play Tarzan on tv, but he opted out and continued his career fully clothed.

Why was Mike Henry the iconic 1960s Tarzan?

1. He had a hairy chest.  Previous Tarzans had been muscular, of course, but only Mike Henry was a bear.

2. He got out of Africa.  Fighting the Waziri headhunters and elephant poachers was hackneyed. Mike Henry's Tarzan explored the jungles of Mexico, South America and Southeast Asia.

3. He was well-educated and sophisticated, more James Bond than Noble Savage.  Edgar Rice Burroughs' literary Tarzan was fluent in English and French -- it was Johnny Weissmuller who invented the "Me Tarzan" lingo.  Mike Henry returned to sophisticated Tarzan of the novels, taking his clothes off only when the plot required it (during 9/10ths of the movie).

4. He rescued and bonded with kid sidekicks: Ramel in Valley of Gold and Pepe in The Great River (both played by Manuel Padilla Jr.),  and of course the Jungle Boy (played by Steve Bond). They were too young to be his romantic interests, but gay boys who were about that age themselves certainly fantasized about fading into the sunset with Mike Henry's muscular arm around their shoulders. 

Manuel Padilla Jr. appeared in American Graffiti and Scarface, then retired from acting.  He died in 2008.

Steve Bond continued acting and modeling until his retirement in 2017.

See also: Steve Bond: Tarzan costar turned Playgirl centerfold turned soap opera hunk

Steve Bond: Tarzan boy turned Playgirl model turned soap hunk in the steamy 1970s

Link to the Playgirl photos

The October 1975 issue of Playgirl featured a layout of model/actor Steve Bond.  They quickly became the most famous n*de photos in the world (not counting those of Christopher George)

Not because he was a man-mountain -- no bodybuilder, he had the tight, pleasantly muscled physique of a New Sensitive Man.

Not because of his size beneath the equator, though he was huge.

Because of the contrast.

The last time anyone had seen Steve Bond, the 14-year old Israeli actor, born Schlomo Goldberg, was making his screen debut, in a 1968 Tarzan movie starring Mike Henry.

Seven years makes a big difference.

After one or two more child-actor roles, Steve went back home to Israel, finished high school, and completed his mandatory military service.  Now he was in L.A. again, ready to hit the big time.  The nude photos came at a moment of desperation, when he was flat broke

Unfortunately, posing in your birthday suit was still controversial in 1975, and Steve found it difficult getting the attention of casting directors. During the next decade, he played some street toughs, some sexploitation studs, a Chippendales dancer, and a forest ranger investigating some teen murders (in The Prey, 1984).

Finally, hoping that the photos were long forgotten, he landed one of the defining roles of his career, good old boy Jimmy Lee Holt on General Hospital (1983-87).

No such luck.  In 1985, an eagle-eyed editor at Playgirl discovered the old photos, and reprinted them.  Steve was devastated.  What would happen when the General Hospital producers found out?  Would he be fired? 

Turns out that nothing happened.  Jimmy Lee Holt was too popular to dismiss. The GH producers even commissioned a Speedo poster to show off Steve's assets.

He got profiled in teen magazines and Muscle & Fitness.

More after the break

"Alex Rider": A Teenage James Bond, His Goofy Best Friend, and Exquisite Victorian Stickers

 I have seen the first episode of Alex Rider, about a teenage James Bond.

Scene 1:  Establishing shots of New York.  Scruffy Scary Guy drives to a parking garage, takes out a sinister satchel, and does something scary with a hologram.  Meanwhile Parker (George Sear) is just putting on his tie.  He tells his Dad he's going to an exhibition at the Rubin, but they'll get lunch later.

 Whoops, I thought Parker was the main character.  Turns out it's Dad (Michael, played by Steven Brand).  He cancels his lunch with Parker and appointment with the Senator, and calls someone named Brandt: "I need to talk to you about Parker.  It's urgent."  

Then he steps into an elevator and plunges to his death!

Turns out that Scruffy Scary guy has projected a holographic image of an elevator car onto an empty shaft, in order to kill Michael!  Much easier than shooting him!

Parker looks out the window, smiling.  He was in on it!

Five minutes of commercials.  Since when does a streaming service have commercials?

Scene 2: London.  A ritzy school.  Alex (Otto Farrantm left) and Tom (Brenock O'Connor) have stepped out of a 1980s movie, where teenage boys can think of nothing except girls.

Tom: Girls!  There's a party tonight!  Girls will be there!  We just need Jahit to text us the address.  Girls!

Alex: Girls!  Will the Girl of My Dreams be there?  Girls!

Which seems odd, since Otto Farrant starred as a gay teenager in Spool, and Brenock O'Connor played a teenager whose bully has a secret crush on him in Sing Street.  

The teacher confiscates Tom's phone before they can get the address, so after class Alex does some remarkable acrobatic work to break into school and retrieve it.  He's got the spy skills already!

Unfortunatly, he's caught.

Scene 3: Uncle Ian (Andrew Buchan) is driving Alex home and yelling at him for being a screw-up.  He confiscates Alex's phone and grounds him.

Scene 4: At home, Alex complains to Jack that there's no food in the house.  Not to worry, she got take-out (don't tell your Uncle).  

I don't understand Jack's role in the family: an African woman about Alex's age, responsible for the cooking, so housekeeper?  Adopted sister?  But Uncle Ian consults her about how to deal with Alex, so  his wife?  

At dinner, Uncle Ian watches a news story about Michael's death. "He was...um...a client at...um...the bank where I work."  Dude, I could tell in 30 seconds that you are a spy.  Why hasn't Alex figured it out?

Turns out that Alex knows Michael's son Parker from his youtube prank videos.  He used to be fun-loving and outrageous, until his dad sent him to a special school in France (uh-oh, a Stepford son).

More after the break