Lemogang Tsipa: a gay Trojan, a warlord from Atlantis, and Shaka Zulu. With c*cks, circumcision, and Matthew McConaughey

 

Link to the n*de photos

I wanted to profile Lemogang Tsipa because he has an unusual name, which I keep confusing with Lemongrab from Adventure Time (it actually means "Recognition" in Tswana).

And because his character had a bisexual three-way (and kissed a dude) in Troy: Fall of a City, so maybe he is gay or bi in real life.  

Plus he is super-handsome.

Basic bio: Lemogang was born in 1991 in Empangani, South Africa (about two hours from Durban). His father is Pedi and his mother Tswana, so he grew up multilingual, fluent in English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and Tswana.

At age nine, he was diagnosed with ADHD, but he was able to channel his energy into chess, swimming, soccer, hockey -- and dramatics.  He graduated from Grantleigh College,  a boarding school in Richards Bay, and the South African School of Motion Picture Medium (BFA, 2012).

Lemogang's film debut came in the South African Felix (2013), and his first international film was Alien Outpost (2014), about the aftermath of an alien invasion.

More international film roles followed: 

He played Addo in the contemporary adaption of Roots (2016), with Malachi Kirby as Kunta Kinte and Rege-Jean Page (left) as Chicken George

Phedon in the Stephen King fantasy The Dark Tower (2017), starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey (left, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

Patroklus, lover of Achilles, in Troy: Fall of a City (2017).

 

But most of Lemogang's work has been in South Africa:

Amandla (2022), featuring two brothers (Lemogang, Thabo Rametsi) on opposite sides of the law.

Blood Psalms (2022) is set 11,000 years ago, shortly after the House of Kemet fled the destruction of Atlantis and settled in Africa.   While the Five Tribes gather to celebrate the politically-motivated wedding of King Letsha (Mothusi Magano), his daughter, Princess Zazi, becomes pregnant with a baby whose birth will fortell the End of Days.

There are also various scheming pretenders to the throne, sorcerers, orphans with disputed parentage, and hangers-on hiding terrible secrets. 

More after the break.

Gemstones Episode 2.1: Junior likes d*cks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f*k yeah, we got both!

 

Link to NSFW review

Righteous Gemstones Season 2 is my favorite.  Season 1 muddled the Gideon-Scotty plotline, Season 3 had some infuriating queerbaiting, and Season 4 was rushed and muddled, but Season 2 did the Kelvin/Keefe and Junior/Eli romances exactly right.    

Memphis Soul Stew: Memphis, 1968. Teenage Eli Gemstone, the Maniac Kid (Jake Kelley), is playing a heel, a pro wrestling villain: "from the wrong side of the tracks, a newcomer to the League, all muscle, all attitude."  He fights dirty, pretending to reconcile with opponent Kyle Hawk, then throwing him out of the ring.  

As he fights, his manager Glendon Marsh (Wayne Duvall) cheers. Glendon's teenage son Junior (Tommy Nelson) watches, sometimes happy but usually disturbed.  Is he jealous of the attention Eli is getting?  Is he a rebellious teenager during the era of the Generation Gap?.

Junior is gay: In the locker room, Glendon offers Eli "some bonus pay on the South Side," while Junior looks on, smoking a cigarette, still either jealous or angry. As they leave, they pass a n*de guy.  Junior is so busy looking that he trips, and then looks back again.  The boy is definitely into men.

Jim Crow Must Go:  As they drive through a black neighborhood on the South Side of Memphis, near where Martin Luther King, Jr. will be assassinated on April 4th.  Junior looks out at the townsfolk in disgust. 

Suddenly they are surrounded civil rights protestors: "Jim Crow must go!" "We protest injustice."  Junior calls them "bums," which was usually applied to hippies, not African-Americans, leading me to believe that something changed between writing the script and hiring the background actors.  Glendon punches him: "they just want what everybody wants, a piece of the fucking pie."

Ok, Junior is racist, and Glendon is abusive, but why this scene? Hiring background players, costume, and staging must have been very time-consuming, with no payoff: civil rights are never mentioned again.  

The Loan Enforcer: Glendon is a loan shark as well as a wrestling manager: the job involves beating up a deadbeat.  Eli and Junior both go, squabbling over who's the boss.  

"Kill 'em!" we hear.  Psych!  It's the tv.  We meet a slovenly, drunken, foul-mouthed, abusive jackass of a husband.  While Junor subdues his wife and baby, Eli punches him a few times and asks for the money, and when he doesn't have it, breaks his thumbs. Junior laughs "derangedly" (according to the subtitles).

Afterwards Glendon drops Eli off, hands him some money, and tells him, "Buy yourself something nice." This is a feminizing statement. 

As Eli drives off on his motorcycle, we hear Buck Owens' "Tall Dark Stranger":

 They say a tall dark stranger is a demon, and  that a devil rides closely by his side.

 So if Junior is the demon, Eli must be the devil riding beside him.  How long will they ride together?

Abusive Daddies all the way down:  Eli drives to the Gemstone residence (it's not a stage name, apparently), where his abusive dad chastises him for being late for dinner. So they're eating after Eli's wrestling match?  Like at 11 or 12 pm?   There's also a mousy, skittish mom and a little sister, May-May (important in Season 3). 

Ordered to say grace, Eli jokes: "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," which makes May-May laugh.  Dad slaps him.  End of flashback.

We're fine with the f*ggots:  In 2022, elderly Eli Gemstone is a megachurch pastor and televangelist.  He and the satellite church ministers are discussing the case of Pastor Butterfield (Victor Williams), caught with his wife and another woman in a dance club restroom, while they were all high on Molly ("we thought they were Sweetarts").  The story made the front page of The New York Times, thanks to reporter Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman), who has made a career of publicizing ministerial  scandals.  Eli wants to be lenient, but the others object. 

A Spanish speaking pastor explains: "My church is ok with the maricones, but we're not ready for swinging and tropus."     Pastor Diane translates: "His church is really cool with the gays and the queers, but not so much about the swingers and the thruples."  They fire Pastor Butterfield; he tries to commit suicide.

Left: God Squad pecs

Tell the girls:  A young man rides a motorcycle to the Gemstone Compound, doing crazy stunts (this will be important later), while the background song advises:

Tell the girls that I am back in town.  They'd better beware

They may run, and they may hide.

I'll follow, and I'll be there.

 At least we know that he's not the closeted gay minister.  He turns out to be Eli's grandson Gideon, back from a job as a stuntman to assist with the Gemstone ministry.  He's going to move into the house that Eli built for his abusive dad.

In other news, Gideon's younger brother Abraham has been leaving "secretions" all over the house, like in the freezer next to the Dreamsicles.  

We cut to a church service with Eli Gemstone and his children, Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin, announcing the start of their streaming service, GODD.  We see Jesse's wife Amber, their kids, and Judy's husband BJ in the audience.  No partner for Kelvin. He must be single

F*ck, yeah:  After the service, the family drives in a caravan to Jason's Steak House.  They get out of their cars in slow motion and walk past the al fresco area, heterosexual couples reveling in their nuclear family conformity, the "job, house, wife, kids" litany of my youth made visible. The background song brags about their heteronormative success:

Turn your head when I walk by -- I got the world at my feet.
All I want out of every day, is to wake up every morning
Sun is shining, smiling, and we've covered every room 

 Wait -- where's Kelvin?

Suddenly the record scratches off. Two vans pull up with a flexing muscle Christ and the logo "Strength above All Else." Twelve muscle men emerge, wearing identical canvas gis: the God Squad! Biceps and pecs, abs, bulging flexing intruding on the smug primness of the nuclear families. Wait -- where are the bulges.  They wear cargo pants that don't show anything.

There is no romance here.  There is no heterosexual desire.  It is raw homoerotic power. The song changes to:

F*ck, yeah!  F*ck, yeah!  F*ck, yeah!

More after the break

"North by North": An Inuk lady, her gay bff, some paranormal, some Inuk culture, and some musclemen. With Jay's junk and a bonus n*de dude

Link to the n*de dudes 

North of North (2025) appeared without warning on my Netflix list: a woman feels stifled in her tiny village in the Artic.  I can relate to that, so let's go.

Scene 1: While showering (only shoulders visible), a young woman  named Siaja explains that she's from as far north as you've ever been.  I think that's Calgary in the Western Hemisphere, and maybe Oslo in Europe.  Then much farther north than that: Ice Cove, Nunavut.  

A quirky Canadian small town and Inuit culture?  I'm there. 

Siaja has achieved the Canadian Dream, with a husband and child.  Only now husband Ting (Kelly William, top photo) is the Golden Boy of the town, and she's only known as his wife.

First up: he gets to drive the car to the Spring Festival, while she has to haul the supplies on a lame Ski-Doo (snowmobile).

Scene 2: She drops in at Mom's very nice house -- lots of windows -- and announces that because it's a new year, she's going to apply for a job.  Mom dispproves: you're a wife and mother. That's your job.

Mom opens the store next door, which sells artisanal soap and miscellaneous stuff.  Suddenly her hookup from last night walks in, shirtless.  Siaja asks where he was in 1998 -- he could be her father!  He scrams.  

Mom criticizes her for scaring all of her hookups away.  How many hookups could she get in a town of about 2,000, with no tourist trade and the nearest neighbor 300 miles away?

Left: I think the Handsome Man is played by Jeff Roup. who shows his d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Scene 3: Siaja leaves her child for Mom to babysit and heads for the town headquarters, which has a restaurant, some offices, and the radio station: DJ announces the seal hunt this afternoon and the naming of the festival king and queen this evening.

A blond woman named Helen, apparently the town mayor, comes in complaining about the 14-hour days that supervising the festival takes, while other town business just sits there.  Siaja butters her up with coffee and suggests other cultural activities spread through the year.  Didn't you just hear her?  And she wants to be hired as a full-time cultural manager. 

"Nope.  You have zero work experience and no leadership skills."

"But I see life and beauty in everything!"  At that moment, a guy walks in, wanting to know where to put the fish heads.

Scene 4: While Radio Announcer Colin (Bailey Poching) and a purple-haired woman are discussing how much partying to do tonight, Siaja comes into their office and screams.  Helen didn't even look at her job proposal.

Left: Bailey Poching is gay in real life.

"Why do you want a job anyway?"

"To make our community a better place...ok, I want something of my own."  

"But Inuit culture is all about community.  Your own needs are irrelevant."

When Helen comes in to order the others to get back to work, Siaja asks for a chance.  Couldn't you get a job, like, somewhere else?   Ok, a petition to prove that the town wants a cultural director.  500 signatures -- but that's a quarter of the town! -- by tonight!

More after the break

"Die Drei ???": Boy detectives in 44 books and 4 movies, most with gay subtexts. With a lot of co-star d*cks, but no Alfred Hitchcock

Link to the n*de dudes

The Three Investigators (1967-83) is an American boys' mystery series originally published as Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, although the famous director rarely appears and plays no role in the stories:

The Mystery of the Green Ghost

The Mystery of the Screaming Clock

The Mystery of the Dancing Devil

The Mystery of the Sinister Scarecrow.

The Secret of Shark Reef

In all, 41 Mystery of and 4 Secret of.

The stories have been translated into over 20 languages.  In Germany, the investigators are Die Drei ???, pronounced Fragenzeichen, "Question Marks," after their business card.. 

The three boys:

The leader, future detective Jupiter: stocky/muscular, highly intelligent, able to piece together clues quickly.  His Uncle Titus' salvage yard provides many mysteries.

Athletic Peter takes on the dangerous assignments, like trailing suspects and rescuing his friends.  His father works in special effects in Hollywood, giving them access to movie-making mysteries.

Shy, sensitive, gay-vague Bob, who wears a leg brace, works at the library; he conducts the research in public and forbidden collections. His father is a journalist, giving them access to news-story mysteries.

I read three of the books back in the 2000s, when I was researching an article on queer codes in children's literature.  None of the investigators express any girl craziness, and the constant kidnapping, tight-squeezes, and nick-of-time rescues create many opportunities for buddy-bonding. Peter and Bob are so intimate that one almost expects them to be a canonical gay couple. So when I discovered that the trio has appeared in two German movies, I had to check them for gay subtexts (or maybe texts).

In the books, the boys are 13-14 years old, but  Julius Weckauf (Jupiter), Nevio Wendt (Peter), and Levi Brandl (Bob)  are 16-18, able to drive and get into more life-threatening situations. 

Die Drei ???: Erbe des Drachen, "The Dragon's Legacy" (2023): the boys have a summer internship on the set of the movie Dracula Rises, filming in Transylvania.  They investigate the disappearance of a boy 50 years ago, encountering a secret society and an "an undead creature." 

The trailer doesn't show anyone meeting the Girl of His Dreams, and Bob looks quite gay-stereotype feminine.  I'll take it as a queer code.

Mark Wachke, who starred in The Dark on Netflix, plays Peter's father, the special effects guy.

Die Drei ??? und der Karpathanhund, "The Carpathan Hound" (2025): gay gallery owner Mr. Prentice asks the boys to track down his stolen Carpathian Hound sculpture.  Darn, I thought it would be a "Hound of the Baskervilles" thing. 

Johannes Nussbaum (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) plays Sonny Elmquist. 

The trailer reveals lots of threatening villians, including a carnival devil. We see Peter rescuing Bob, and again, no Girl of His Dreams. Have they become a canonincal couple?

Plus a homophobic fan complains about "turning some characters gay."  Sounds like it is worth a review.

A third German movie, Die Drei ??? Toteninsel ("Death Island"), will premiere in 2026.

Wait -- "where to watch" showed that the movie is available on Amazon Prime, but apparently not in the U.S.  We'll have to make do with the trailers, and check to see if any of the actors are gay in real life. 

More after the break

"Rock Paper Scissors": Paper meets The Girl, Rock tries to prove that he's a Dave. With 2 gay characters, four Danny d*cks, and Mickey from "Seinfeld"

  

Link to the n*de dudes

"Rock Paper Scissors" is a game where players turn their hands into the objects, hoping that theirs will cover, crush or otherwise defeat their opponents.  Here Kramer and  his gay-subtext boyfriend Mickey (Michael Richards, Danny Woodburn) play on an episode of Seinfeld.

Danny's d*ck and four others are posted to  RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

When Paramount Plus recommended a tv series called Rock Paper Scissors, I figured it was for preschoolers, like Bananas in Pajamas.  But the fan wiki states that there are two walk-on gay characters, Hipponoid Commander (Episodes 1.1) and Dave (Episode 1.14), and Common Sense Media (the homophobic one) says that it is "completely inappropriate," with "strong LGBT undertones."  Can't let gay kids know that they exist!  So we'll check it out.

Episode 1.1, "Paper's Big Lie"

Intellectual Paper (Thomas Lennon), trying to invent something, is annoyed by the loud ninja practice of his roommates, athletic Rock (Ron Funches) and hipster Scissors (Carlos Alarazqui).  There's a knock on the door: it's their new neighbor, a female Pencil.

Cliche shot of Pencil walking in slow motion, her long hair blowing in the wind, while Paper gushes in "girl of my dreams" ecstasy.

She works for a high-tech company, so he pretends that he has a high-tech job, too.  His brain objects: "You work at a crappy store that sells technology."  But his nether parts outrank his brain.

Even when Pencil asks for a tour: Paper puts up a poorly drawn sign and claims that she can't go inside because they're working on a top-secret device that will produce unlimited food out of nothing. 

The human boss yells: "I don't pay you to talk to girls, I pay you to unravel the pile of wires in the back room."

Left: Threads says that this is Carlos Alarazqui, best known for "Rocko's Modern Life" and "Reno 911." I don't think so.

This makes Pencil a bit suspicious, but not the President of the United States: she saw the sign and figured that Paper must be super-smart.  The world needs his help. Lady is not too bright, is she?

Problem: The Hipponoids, "the most dangerous species in the galaxy," have the Earth surrounded.  The  Commander (Darin de Paul) explains that their planet is low on food, so Earth must hand over its supply. 

Perfect!  Pencil announces that Paper can make a device that will produce unlimited food, with no raw materials needed.

Paper's brain begs him to admit that he knows nothing about technology, but no, he thinks he can still find a way to fix this and Win the Girl.

In the workshop, Pencil praises Paper's tech expertise while building the device herself.  She seems to be just as invested as Paper in keeping up the Big Lie.  There must be some "Boy of My Dreams" going on.

When they show the device to the Hipponoid Comander, Paper tries to take credit, but accidentally breaks it.  He lies about that, too.

New plan: he'll bring his ninja roommates Rock and Scissors to the ship, and they'll knock out the aliens before they can invade the planet.

That doesn't work.  Finally Paper decides to come clean: "I was just trying to impress someone that I like, and the lie got out of control."

The Commander is sympathetic: back on the home world, he was an office drone, but he lied that he was  a great warrior to impress his crush.   Then he had to join the space force, and somehow he rose up in the ranks to become commander.

"There he is -- handsome, huh?"  He looks rather goofy, but Paper agrees.

"I've had to keep up this lie for 50 years!"  You'd better seal the deal soon, buddy. "And I can't invade Earth because then he'll find out that I lied, and never speak to me again."

Paper and the Commander find a solution that permits them to retain both lies: they pretend to use hand-to-hand combat to decide the fate of the Earth.  Paper wins, but "Your Commander is so tough that he 'accidentally' destroyed the device."

Whoops, Rock just fixed it. 

Gay Representation: The Commander as a muscular being fights stereotypes, and Paper responds nonchalantly to his crush on a male.  The writers could easily given him a crush on a female warrior, so this is a positive step.  But how about a scene where the Commander actually interacts with the crush? B

The next episode after the break

Greg Evigan: A trucker named after a s*x act, Paul Reiser's partner, Doug Savant's boyfriend, and a 1970s bulge. With David Faustino and Giovanni Ribisi

During the late 1970s, there was a trucker fad. The truck driver (or sometimes any driver, as in Dukes of Hazzard) became the new cowboy, a loner who followed his own rules and thumbed his nose at the establishment.  People started throwing around terms like  "smokey" for cop and phrases like "10-4, Good Buddy" for "Goodbye."

Maybe the gas crisis made people long for the freedom of gas-guzzling semis.

On tv, the quintessential trucker-hero drama was BJ and the Bear (1979-81).  B.J. McKay, played by Greg Evigan, ran a freelance truck-driving business, got harassed by the smokies (especially Southern-fried Sheriff Lobo, who eventually spun off into his own series, starring gay ally Brian Kerwin).  As is usual in road tv, the plots involved BJ fixing the problems of the people he met along the way.  After resolving the crisis, he would head out into the sunset with his "best friend Bear," a chimpanzee named after the University of Alabama football coach.

Greg Evigan previously starred in A Year at the Top (1977-78), a sitcom about two musicians who sell their soul to the devil in exchange for a year of fame.  It offered lots of buddy-bonding.

Unfortunately, BJ and the Bear didn't seem to.  I never watched the show, but the tv promos invariably showed B.J. picking up a semi-clad female supermodel who was hitchhiking or had car trouble en route to the Swedish Bikini Team tryouts.  

As if that superfluous cheesecake wasn't sufficient, in the second season B.J. became the owner of a trucking company, and hired several female drivers with large breasts, including one named "Stacks."

But my friends and I often joked about the producers naming their character after a sexual act.

And Greg Evigan was nice to look at.  His semi-clad pictures, with a bulge that entered the room three seconds before he did, soon flooded the teen magazines.

He wasn't a teenager and he didn't sing, but who was complaining.

A decade later, Greg returned to prime time in My Two Dads (1987-1990), which wasn't about gay marriage: stick-in-the-mud Michael (Paul Reiser) and free-spirited Joey (Greg) were both dating the same women 16 years ago. She got pregnant and dumped them both without informing them that either could be the father.  They find out 15 years later, when she dies.  The judge orders them to live together and co-parent teenage Nicole.

It was an entirely gay-free universe with no "mistaken for gay" plotlines, but the setup is aggressively queer coded. 

More after the break

Max Ehrich: Disney Channel dancer, Dome hacker, gay soap opera teen -- wait, is that a different actor? Well, at least the d*ck is his

Link to the d*ck pics

When Max Ehrich (try to type that without adding an "l") appeared on the celebrity p*nis website, I did some preliminary research, and found that he is gay in real life, dating Connor Paolo, and he played a gay teen on The Young and the Restless.  

So this will be my third profile of a gay soap opera teen.   

Max played Fenmore Baldwin, son of Michael Baldwin and Lauren Fenmore, born in 2006, but turned into a teenager when he took over the role (2012-15).  

Most of his plotline involved drugs:  becoming addicted, stealing drugs from the hospital and spending a month in prison, overdosing and going to rehab.  He was blackmailed into spiking the punch at a party, so everyone would lose consciousness, and Detective Mark Harding (Chris McKenna, left) could murder Austin, who was having an affair with his niece Summer, and frame her.  

Also Fen is crushing on Summer, so she talks him into a variety of misdeeds, including cyberbullying  Jamie Vernon (not for being gay).  Then, when she starts crushing on Jamie, Fen frames him for theft, is accused of pushing him off the roof, and bullies him into a self-harm attempt.

Next Fen's drug dealer, Carmine (Marco Dapper), who also happens to be having an affair with his mother, is murdered, and Fen thinks that he did it...

Wait, back up a crush on Summer?  What happened?  Where is the gay plotline? 

Maybe they meant some other project.  Max begins his career as a Nickelodeon-Disney Channel boy, playing a dancer in High School Musical 3 and Shake It Up, Carly's boyfriend in an episode of ICarly, and CJ's older brother, who gets two girlfriends, in nine episodes of 100 Things to Do Before High School.

In Under the Dome (2013-15), an impenetrable alien dome is lowered over a stereotypic small town. Among the stranded visitors are a lesbian couple, a murderer, and  in Season 2, computer hacker Hunter May (Max).  He gets a girlfriend.

American Princess (2019-20): a mis-titled comedy featuring a girl who abandons her wealthy lifestyle to work at a Renaissance faire.  Max plays her boyfriend. 

Southern Gospel (2023): A "rock n roll star" realizes his childhood dream of becoming a preacher.  Ugh.

It's based on the real-life  Dr. Gary Smith,  who founded the City of Life Church in Kissimmee, Florida. Ugh. 

A Cowboy Christmas Romance (2023): A standard Christmas romcom: lady with a high-pressure career in the Big City spends the holidays in a small town, where she finds love with a cowboy (Adam Senn).  

Max plays her brother.  The plot synopses on Wikipedia and Decider don't state whether he is gay or not, but presumably not, or there would be massive headlines eveywhere. 

More after the break

More Alfie Williams: In the pub, in the pool, on holiday. With gay friends, a disability advocate, some Jimmy d*cks, and Corey's backside

  

Link to the n*de photos

This is a collection of cute/cool photos of  Alfie Williams, star of the zombie apocalypse movies 28 Years Later (2025) and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026),  and the upcoming thriller Banquet, with Corey Mylchreest.  Plus a few photos of some adult co-stars. 

1. Corey tied up.

2. Alfie and Dad on the green hills of home: Gateshead, just across the river from Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

3. Milking a cow (for fun, not for a part).  But it's not a real cow, and I don't think that's milk coming out.

4. The Bone Temple features a post-Apocalyptic cult where everyone is named after and dresses like 2000s English media personality Jimmy Saville.  Here Alfie and his Dad are hanging out with his two favorite Jimmies.

Across from Alfie is Maura Bird (Jimmy Jones), a nonbinary, genderfluid actor who uses she/they pronouns.  

Next to them is Robert Rhodes (Jimmy Jimmy), who is gay in real life.

Alfie is always drawn to LGBTQ people and guys who have played gay characters.  I can't imagine why.

5.Robert Rhodes is also an advocate for people with visual differences.  When he was starring in House of the Dragon, he received some hostile and derogatory comments, and the fans who came to his defense "used very unpleasant language."  Call it a scar or a difference, not a disfigurement or deformity.

6. Sorry, I couldn't find any n*de photos of Robert, so what about Sebastian Rhodes? 

More after the break

"Troy: Fall of a City": Soap opera version of Homer's "Iliad," with the gay characters turned bi

I went into the Netflix tv series Troy: Fall of a City expecting a vast canvass, a lot of spectacular special effects, and nonstop beefcake.  After all, a new take on one of the most familiar stories in the world has to have something to justify the retelling.

The first episode was promising: Paris Prince of Troy  (Louis Hunter, left) meets a mysterious group of beings who might be gods.  Zeus (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) asks him to choose who is superior: Hera (power), Athena (wisdom), or Aphrodite (beauty).  When he chooses beauty, the others in a rage vow to shatter his world. 

Very interesting, very evocative.  It goes downhill from there.

Troy is the story of a battle between the gods, with humans their unwilling pawns.  Paris (remember him?) kidnaps Helen, Princess of Sparta, to the consternation of her husband Menelaus (Jonas Armstrong, top photo).  The Spartans and their allies lay siege to Troy, a siege that lasts for ten long, gruelling years.  

In the Iliad, Homer covers only a few weeks in the story; his Odyssey focuses on the minor character Odysseus (Joseph Mawle, left) trying to get home.  

Other ancient authors have filled in the rest, explored interesting byways and asides, speculated about the lives of the characters before and after the War, given other minor characterstheir own epics.  You couldn't cover all of it in a hundred tv series.

Troy: Fall of a City tries to.

The result is a jumble of people, name upon name splattering across the stag. Some I recognized from literature or mythology: Ajax, Hector, Priam, Hecuba, Cassandra,Troilus, Odysseus, Aeneas.

Some not: Xanthus (David Avery), Diomedes, Thersites, Harmon, Dolan, Iola.

The main stories are minimized or ignored.  The famous are shuffled off to the side.  

Hesion (who?)  gets as much air time as Hector (Tom Weston-Jones).  

More after the break

Robert Oberst's Hot Photos, Part 2: Beefy boyfriends, helicopter d*ck, and strongman s*x

 

Link to the n*de photos

This is a collection of hot or humorous photos of Robert Oberst, a professional strongman who held the American record for the log press.  He starred in two strongman reality programs, and played Cousin Karl in Righteous Gemstones Season 3.

1. "Want to play with my balls?"

2. "So, Eddie, are you big all over?"

3. Well, now you know.

4. "How do you play the Helicopter P*nis game?"

5. Robert demonstrates

 6. "I don't remember where I left my underwear."

More after the break

"The Chair Company": A chair conspiracy, a queer kid, a ginger chub, weirdness for its own sake, and men in suits with d*cks

Link to the n*de dudes

 I am attracted to men in suits, but not at all to the corporate world, the heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, kids that was pushed endlessly through my childhood.  I want a world of art and beauty. 

So at first I wasn't interested in The Chair Company on HBO MAX, starring Tim Robinson as Ron Trosper, a "job, house, wife, and kids" guy whose chair collapses during a Very Important Presentation, leading to more mishaps that threaten to destroy his Very Important Career.   

Trying to track down the Chair Company responsible for the defective chair, he ends up at an empty warehouse.  Later a guy assaults him, telling him to "Forget about the chair company."

He doesn't.  He tracks down his assailant, Mike (Joseph Tudisco), a security guard at a local cafe.  But Mike says "I was hired by a guy I'd never met.  He didn't show his face." 

Maybe they could work together to find him?

Wait -- why is Mike interested in helping?  There must be some gay-subtext buddy-bonding.  I'm reviewing the next episode, 1.3: @BrownDerbyHistoricVids Little Bit of Hollywood? Okayyy.

Try putting that in the Works Cited section of your research paper.

Scene 1: Family Man Ron is at Game Night with his daughter, her fiancee, and her fiancee's parents.  Hey, Daughter is gay.  What a surprise -- I figured this show would be entirely heteronormative.  Ulp, he gets a text: "No way out!", with a photo of him taken at that moment from the hall closet.

He pulls open the closet door, and a little person pushes him aside and runs out.  But he wanted to be found out.  Family Man Ron gives chase, but Partner Mike rushes up and explains "He's my guy, LT (Joe Apelian). I had him watching to make sure you weren't setting me up."  

LT wanted to tell Mike that there was no way out of his hiding place, but he texted the wrong person. 

Scene 2: The enraged Ron wants to end the partnership, but Mike has intel: he tracked down the guy who paid him to scare Ron, but that guy was hired by someone else, and paid $50,000 for the job.  That's quite a lot -- usually scares go for $400. 

LT interrupts, yelling that Partner Mike isn't his friend, he's no good.  He begins kicking boxes.

Left: None of the three have beefcake photos online, so I'm posting 1990s heartthrob Lou Diamond Phillips, who plays the CEO of Family Man Ron's company.

Scene 3: That night, while asleep, Ron keeps imagining LT staring at him.  He checks all the closets. 

In the morning, he asks his wife if they can install a security system today.  A reasonable plan, but he makes it sound crazy by imagining someone with a gun bursting in and forcing them to kill each other.  

Scene 4: At work, Ron is discussing something about square footage with a client (Mike Britt).  A literal bug crawls into Ron's phone.  Now we're getting surreal. 

When he has a spare moment, he tries to find out who owns the empty warehouse -- ulp, you have to make your request in person.  But before he can duck out, he is dragged into the atrium to watch his tv interview about a shopping mall the company is building: "The way you think about Canton, Ohio is about to change: you're about to step into a bit of Hollywood."  Thus the title.

 The whispering is about a Mistakes Party -- where you admit your mistakes -- that Ron isn't invited to, because he's the boss.

More after the break