The Boys and Men of Oz

I know, all gay men are supposed to get all starry-eyed over The Wizard of Oz, the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland, but I don't care for it.  As a child I was terrified of the flying monkeys, the man-eating pigs, and the homicidal Wicked Witch. As a teenager, I ridiculed the saccarine songs and the corny "It was all a dream" bit.  And why would anybody want to go back to Kansas?

I had no idea that the movie was based on a novel, one of a series, until I read something about Ruggero the Nome King in Lin Carter's Imaginary Worlds..  A check of the children's room at the Rock Island Public Library revealed 14 books written by L. Frank Baum and 20 by others, extending from 1900 through the 1940s.  I checked out the first five.  And then the next, and the next.  I had found a "good place."

There was little beefcake: the protagonists, boys or girls, were drawn in the same style, as delicate and pretty as cherubs yet tough and hardy, able to endure long wilderness treks and fight monsters.

There was little buddy bonding. The protagonist traveled with a melange of talking animals, magical objects, and adult companions. I found only two significant homoromances:

 In Ojo in Oz, between Ojo and the bandit Realbad, but in the end Realbad turns out to be the boy's father, ruining it.

And in Rinkitink in Oz (1916), the jovial king Rinkitink discovers that his talking goat companion is really an enchanted prince named Bobo.  The two walk into the sunset together.





There were many disturbing, horrible elements.

1. No one ages in Oz, so babies stay babies and kids stay kids forever.

2. No one can die, so if you cut someone into pieces, each piece remains alive and conscious.

3. Inanimate objects can easily be brought to life, and they stay alive and conscious forever.

4. There is casual racism, sexism, and class-based bigotry.  Rude comments and unpleasant mannerisms are presented as endearing. Kids are often threatened by sinister adults.

So why was Oz a good place?

1. The delicate, pretty boys in their flamboyant costumes are all gay-coded. Every boy in Oz is gay.

2. Adult men and women follow a strict division of labor, with women who hoped for equality ridiculed.  But the boys and girls have precisely the same interests and activities.  A boy named Tip is transformed into Princess Ozma.

3. The boys and girls never express any heterosexual interest.  Occasionally an adult does, but only minor characters in side-plots irrelevant to the main story.

4. There are few if any nuclear families.  The main family structure in Oz is single parent and child.

5.The outsiders who find their way to Oz are the odd, the unusual, the outcast, the "queer."  And they always find a home.

See also: The Wizard of Oz

Oz, the Great and Powerful

Jerry O'Connell's Secret Identity

During the late 1980s, the conservative political atmosphere resurrected the old "I've Got a Secret" sitcom genre of the 1960s (Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Mr. Ed, My Favorite Martian).  Nuclear families were harboring a child-robot (Small Wonder, 1985-1989), wisecracking aliens (Alf, 1986-1990), and a Bigfoot (Harry and the Hendersons, 1991-1993).  Kids were aliens (Out of this World, 1987-1991), superheroes (My Secret Identity, 1988-91), and spies (The New Adventures of Beans Baxter, 1987-88).  Not surprisingly, many of them featured gay subtexts.

My Secret Identity starred Jerry O'Connell, aged 14 to 16, no longer the chubby, buzzcut kid of Stand by Me (1986), but getting noticeably taller and more muscular before our eyes.

Until by the final season, he had become a teen hunk,  ready for shirtless roles in Calendar Girl (1993) and Sliders (1995-2000).

One episode even involves him becoming a media sensation after he is photographed in his underwear.

His character, Andrew Clement, was accidentally zapped with a photon beam in the lab of his scientist friend, Dr. Benjamin Jeffcoate (Derek McGrath), giving him an unknown number of unpredictable superpowers.  Plots involved learning to use and misuse his powers, plus the standard evil teachers, bratty little sister, bullies, sports teams, and dating -- but not a lot of dating.  Only 7 episodes out of 72 involve Andrew being in love with some girl.

Instead, in the second season, Kirk (Christopher Bolton) comes to town, and the two display an instant, stammering, tongue-lolling attraction (so as to not make it obvious that they have fallen in love at first sight, the script makes them old friends who are reuniting).

They are inseparable for the remainder of the series, taking jobs together, working on sports and hobbies, breaking up and reconciling.  And more than once, Kirk requires rescue, leading to a "my hero" moment.

See also: The Lake, Episode 1.4: Sleazy mayor Jerry O'Connell wants a three-way with Justin and his boyfriend.

"The Upshaws": Has Bernard Turned Straight? Netflix Hopes You Think So.

The Upshaws, on Netflix, features an African-American blended family: Bernard (Mike Epps), his wife Regina (Kim Fields), and their three kids, plus Kelvin, Bennie's kid from another mother, the baby mama (sometimes), and the sharp-tongued Auntie Lucretia (Wanda Sykes).  During the first season, adult son Bernard Jr. (Jermelle Simon) comes out, first to Kelvin (by accident), then to his mother, and finally to his dad (during a father-son boxing match).  So far so good.

Then the second season dropped.  And the icon seems to show Bernard kissing a girl!  And there are episodes entitled: "Maybe Baby" and "Bennie's Woman."  I can't remember which of the Bernards was called "Bennie," but it sounds very much like Bernard Jr. turns straight, or bi with a girlfriend, which is thematically the same thing.

I watched the first episode, "Maybe Baby," with fear and anxiety.  Bernard Jr.'s high school girlfriend Monique (Sharifa Oliver) shows up with his ten-year old daughter!  Apparently they had sex on the night of the prom, because Bernard had to be sure that he was really gay.  That's nonsense; how will having sex with a woman tell you if you are attracted to men?  You could be bi.  And if you're gay -- attracted only to men -- you can just look at a woman to tell that you're not interested.

She got pregnant, but didn't tell him for some reason that doesn't make sense.  Then, ten years later, the daughter found out, and decided that she wanted a dad in her life.

So, does Bernard decide that he's actually bi, and return to the ex?

I fast-forwarded through the rest of the episodes with fear and anxiety.

Episode 2:  Auntie Lucretia insists that they do a paternity test to make sure Bernard is really the father.

Episode 3: Dad-daughter bonding night. "We could watch Frozen." "What are you, like a thousand?"  Girl, it's from 8 years ago.  "Well, we could just talk."  "Ok.  If you knew you were gay on prom night, why did you..."  

Episode 4: Bernard complains to Mom and Auntie that he can't find "someone," because the minute they discover that he has a kid, they ghost him. Usually dropping pronouns means that you're interested in someone of the same-sex -- gay people do it so often to avoid harassment that it becomes instinctive -- but in this case I'm not so sure.  Maybe Bernard has come out to himself as bi, and is looking for men and women, and he'll end up with a woman by the end of the series.  Gulp.

Episode 5: On his job at a UPS-like shipping service, Bernard is assigned to work with his ex, Hector (Dewayne Perkins). It's not what it looks like -- Dewayne is gay in real life.

They broke up after Bernard refused to come out as his boyfriend in front of Hector's parents. "But I'm out to everybody now, so let's try again."    Bernard neglects to mention the daughter; when Hector finds out, will he ghost him?  The date does not appear on screen.

Episodes 6-7: Bernard doesn't appear, or is just in the background

Episode 8: Apparently the date went well.  Bernard and Hector are cuddling on the couch.  Suddenly Bernard's daughter arrives for their bonding time, a few hours early because Mom was busy.  At first Bernard tries to cover, but then he comes out with "This is my daughter."  We are not told how Hector reacts.  The end.  Rather a cliffhanger.  I guess they're pushing for a Season 3.

Take another look at the icon.  Feminine hairstyle, pajama bottoms that look like a dress, an arm across Hector's chest that makes it look like cleavage.  Even close up, and knowing the scene, you'd swear that Bernard is kissing a girl.  And Netflix decided to use this image to sell the show.  Why?

Remember Will and Grace, the 2000s sitcom about a gay man and his platonic (sort of) life partner?   Nearly every promo showed Will or his friend Jack kissing a girl, so audiences would think "He's cured! He's not gay anymore!"  It always turned out that they were rehearsing a play, or they were dreaming, or they had to pretend to be a couple for some zany scheme.  20 years later, Netflix is doing the same thing, trying to draw viewers to The Upshaws by making them think that Bernard has turned straight.

See also: The Upshaws

Alex Saxon: From fundamentalist college to ace and trans roles to teen angst hunk. With n*de older brother.

 

Link to the n*de dudes

A new Righteous Gemstones character has appeared in the Episode 4.1 cast list, Alex Saxon as "Thaddeus," no doubt a Civil War guy.

According to Alex Saxon's biography on the IMDB, he was born in  1987 in Liberty, Missouri, 15 miles north of Kansas City, began acting in the theater at age 8.

A femme appearance, in the theater, and living in Liberty, Missouri.  I can imagine how terrible the bullying was.

He sang, danced, and sometimes acted in Bye Bye Birdie, Jekyll& Hyde: The Musical, Grease, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Breakfast Club Live

After high school, he enrolled at William Jewell College as a pre-med major, but then changed to Psychology and Applied Critical Thought, with a minor in Chemistry.  He graduated magna cum laude in 2009.

The William Jewell College in Liberty is affiliated with the Baptist Church, so I imagine that it's not at all gay friendly. 

Alex hit Los Angeles in 2011, and began acting for the screen:

A vampire guy at the Big Dance in an episode of Awkward (2011).

The Olivia Experiment (2012): A woman suspects that she is asexual, so she accepts a friend's offer of a night with her own boyfriend to find out.  That is wrong on so many levels.  You know whether you're into someone or not without actually having it.  That's like the people who ask "How do you know you don't like going with women unless you've tried it?"  Easy...look at a woman, and ask yourself "Do you want to go with her?"

Alex plays a member of the Asexual Support Group, where Olivia is informed that she's not really asexual, she's just afraid to open up to intimacy.  

Young Paul Holt in Chapman (2013), which seems to be a Western.

Young Henry Bird in The Advocates (2013), which seems to be about lawyers

Chloe in two episodes of Ray Donovan (2013-2015): a "transvestite" hooker who is blackmailing movie star Tommy (Austin Nichols) to get money for "a s*x change."  What is this, 1975?  The vocabulary is all wrong.  Transgender people don't get "s*x changes," they transition.

Coin Heist (2017), about four teens -- "the hacker, the slacker, the athlete, and the perfect student," who scheme to steal from the U.S. Mint.  Alex, with relatively short hair, plays the Slacker, who is the ex-boyfriend of the Perfect Student (a girl, of course) and falls in love with the Hacker (a girl, of course).  Not to worry, the Perfect Student hooks up with the Athlete (a boy, of course), so everything is all tied up into a nice little heteronormative package.

Then it's back to long hair for 28 episodes of the teen angst series The Fosters (2013-18), as Callie's on-off boyfriend

36 episodes of the teen angst series Finding Carter (2014-15) as the on-off boyfriend of Carter's sister.

10 episodes of The Fix (2019) as the stepson of Sevvy Johnson (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), an actor accused of murdering two of his girlfriends.  He assaults his father, gets into fights, and does other deviant stuff while dating girls.

62 episodes of Nancy Drew(2019-23), as a drug-addled outsider who becomes one of the teen sleuth's scoobies and dates girls.

An episode of Criminal Minds as Pete Bailey, younger brother of the murdered Deputy Director Doug Bailey (Nicholas D'Agosto).

Noticing a pattern in Alex's screen presence? Long hair, soft, feminine, gay-coded in spite of his characters' endless series of girlfriends.

He doesn't have Instagram, and his X just promotes his tv series, so his personal life is up for speculation.  LezWatch calls him cisgender heterosexual, but that may just be default.

Could he be gay in real life?

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.6, Continued: Torsten gets ** up, Keefe holds Kelvin's d*k, and Sky is skyclad. With random skyclad guys

This is the G-rated review of Righteous Gemstones Episode 2.6, with the n*de dudes omitted.

Link to the n*de dudes version

Kelvin and Keefe have returned to the God Squad, but muscleman Torsten (Brock O'Hurn) challenges their authority.  He's the strongest, so he should be the ruler. 

The Second Cross-Raising Test: This time the contestants not only have to carry the gigantic phallic symbol, they have to push  nto an upright position.  So whoever achieves a proper er ection is the leader.  And it goes on like that. What do you expect from a society dedicated to homoerotic desire?

First Torstein tries, and succeeds!  "He got it,,, up!" Liam exclaims. 

It's Kelvin's turn, but since he is injured, Keefe goes in his stead.  First he strips to his jock strap.  "You don't have to...." Kelvin begins, but then he likes what he sees and says "Ok."  

Keefe does several splits on the ground, presenting himself as a valid object of desire.  We get a shot of a very interested muscleman; apparently Kelvin didn't realize that a group of gay alphas was bound to include a few tops.  

Keefe tries, but staggers under the heavy weight.  A concerned boyfriend, Kelvin yells "Get it off him!", and the contest ends. 

Moderator Sky (Joel Rush, left and below) asks: "Do you concede?"

Kelvin kneels and indicates that he does. Torsten achieved the best erection, so he will now lead the God Squad. 

Sky: "Clean your underwears out of the master. Torsten stays there now."

Two questions: Why underwear, and not all of his clothes?  Because underwear has a se xual connotation.  Kelvin's er otic supremacy is over.

Why underwears?   Usually underwear is a mass noun, like water or rice.  It doesn't have a plural. Sky is referring to two sets of underwear, Kelvin's and Keefe's.  They share the master bedroom, so both are ejected.

Jesse tries to man up:   Jesse and the family watch Wonder Woman (har-har) and discuss who shot the Cycle Ninja.  Everybody thinks that it was Amber, which Jesse continues to find emasculating. Amber mollifies him: you were trying to help.  You're just a terrible shot.  This was not a symbolic castration, but we can still find a parallel with Kelvin's loss of power with the God Squad.  

She continues, whispering in his ear like Lady Macbeth: Why do you need your Daddy's permission.  You're a man, aren't you?  Take care of the Junior problem yourself: Just do it.  Send a message. 

Left: Justin Deeley as Macbeth

Skyclad guys after the break

Caleb Ruminer: From fundamentalist Arkansas to angst drama, softcore straight stuff, gay adult stuff, and gay teases

  

Link to the n*de Caleb and some other dudes

In the teen drama Finding Carter (2014-2015), 16-year old Carter (Kathryn Prescott) discovers that the woman she thinks of as her mother actually kidnapped her when she was three.  She is reunited with her birth family, and must juggle the standard high school "boys! fashion!  mean girls!" drama with soap opera angst: kidnapping, insanity, se xual assault, cancer, drug ab use, murder, "shocking revelations," and "dark secrets."

She has two potential boyfriends, the violent drug dealer Crash (Caleb Ruminer) and the kind, gentle Max (Alex Saxon). 

There are two lesbian characters, Madison and Bird, who face extensive homophobia, go through extensive angst, and date Max before figuring "it" out. 

I've already done a profile of Alex Saxon, so this is about Caleb Ruminer,  which is hard to type without it sounding dirty.  It means "someone who ruminates," fixates on negative thoughts.

Caleb was born in Cabot, Arkansas, about 25 miles north of Little Rock.   Ulp.

He found his passion for acting while singing in church, appearing in church plays, and so on. Ulp.

After graduating from high school, he attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, AMDA, in Los Angeles, for two years. Then dropped out because they were too liberal?

His first acting gig was an 2013 episode of Castle, as the brother of a teenager who would grow up to be on death row.

Then came the unyielding angst of Finding Carter 

In a 2014 interview in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (wait -- there are Democrats in Arkansas?), Caleb talks about a struggle with being a Christian and playing a bad boy.  But, he figures, the bad boy is never praised for committing sins, so it's ok.  He found a church in Los Angeles where they talk about how you can be Christian and an actor.  

Ulp.  Doubtless there's some (a lot) of homophobia in our boy's background.

But some pe nises, too (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

After Carter, Caleb starred in Lethal Seduction (2015), which is what it sounds like: teenager Caleb is seduced by his cougar neighbor, who influences him to do  a lot of deviant stuff.  His mother is also in love with him, so the two psychos have an increasingly violent tug-of-war with Caleb in the middle. Plus he has a teen girlfriend and a best buddy (Sam Lerner, right)

Sam Lerner is best known as Geoff Schwartz on The Goldbergs (2014-23). There's a photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends of him chilling with some very gifted home boys.

Next Caleb had guest spots on:

Episode 1.5 of The World According to Billy Potwin (2018), about a far-right anti-vax 13-year old in a family of liberals. Like Family Ties? 

Episode 1.1 of Strange Ones (2018): "Two enigmatic travelers make their way across a remote landscape," facing paranormal peril. First up: an angst-ridden high school girl conjures a demon.  Wait, a movie entitled The Strange Ones and a tv series called Strange Ones both premiered in 2018.  I may be mixing them up.

Episode 2.3 of Dirty John: Betty Broderick (2020), a true-crime show about the woman who murdered her ex-husband (Christian Slater) and his new wife in 1989.  "Betty takes a desperate step to save her marriage."

Episode 1.1 of The Irrational (2023): A professor (Jesse L. Martin, left) uses his knowledge of human nature to solve murders.  His roommate and best friend is a queer woman.

Caleb's character is a former Marine suffering from PTSD and alcohol abuse.  Figures.

Dude, try a comedy.  They aren't that bad.

More after the break.  

"Twin Peaks: The Return": Paranormal weirdness 25 years later. See if you can figure it out. With Kyle's backside and James' d*ck

   

Link to the backsides and d*cks

We've been watching the 1990s cult classic Twin Peaks, about paranormal, cryptic, and just weird events befalling FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLaughlan) as he investigates the murder of high schooler Laura Palmer, who had "lots of secrets."  And now we're on Twin Peaks: The Return (2017-18), a continuation of the original story.  

Some problems:

1. People stare for lengthy periods before speaking, and then speak slo-www-ly.  If conversations occurred at a normal pace, each episode would be ten minutes long.

2. About half of every episode consists of a naked woman talking to a fully-clothed man.  Granted, some of the men are attractive, but there's no way to look at them without seeing a lot of lady parts.

3. The story makes no friggin* sense.

See if you can figure out what's going in the first 2 episodes, plus a scene.

Red Room:  The original series ended with many unresolved plotlines, notably Agent Cooper (left) losing his (second) True Love and being possessed by the malevolent spirit Bob.    

In 2016, we discover that Agent Cooper was split into three parts.  The Doppleganger, controlled by the evil Bob, was loosed upon the world.  His body, now named Dougie, moved to Las Vegas, got a job in insurance, had a wife and a kid, and now consorts with hookers who stare at him for a lo...ong time while totally n*ked.  Agent Cooper's spirit was trapped in the Red Room, where the other spirits make cryptic remarks, talk backwards, and stare at him for a lo...ong time. 

Still trapped, Agent Cooper's spirit is talking to the Giant Alien, who told him that "the owls are not what they seem," one of the big unresolved mysteries of the original.  Now he tells him to listen to the sounds on an old Victrola. 

Twin Peaks: The psychiatrist who counseled and had s*x with Laura Palmer, now batshit crazy, is in his survivalist cabin, waiting for delivery of a bunch of shovels. 

New York: A young man (James Croak) has a job sitting in an empty room, staring at a large round window, to see if anything happens.  A girl from the coffee shop drops by, hoping to have s*x with him, but he can't because the security guard is watching, and he's not allowed visitors.  No one should know what's going on.  Doing a good job!

Twin Peaks: Benjamin Horne (Richard Beymer of West Side Story, top photo), owner of the Great Northern Hotel and the One Eyed Jacks casino and brothel, who had s*x with Laura Palmer before she died, was last seen going batshit crazy and thinking that he was a Civil War General. In 2016, he is telling a newly hired lady about the hotel rules.   His younger brother comes in, lambasts him for hiring someone else to have s*x with, and talks about his new business, marijuana.

Meanwhile, at the sheriff's office, Lucy the Receptionist turns away a salesman who wants to see "the sheriff," because he doesn't know which he wants: there are three of them, two named Truman, and one is sick.  The other is Robert Forster, the brother of the Sheriff Harry Truman who buddy-bonded with Agent Cooper 25 years ago.

Unknown Location: The Agent Cooper Doppelganger gets out of his car and bangs on the door of an isolated house.  After disabling the guard, he goes inside and stares for a lo...ong time at several people who will never appear again. He criticizes one for having inadequate guards, but she explains that "it's a world of truck drivers."  

She fetches a man (George Griffith) and a woman, and they hug everyone else in the house -- I forget how many people -- and leave with the Doppelganger.

New York: The coffee shop girl visits the young man who has a job staring at a window, with more coffee.  This time the security guard is out, so he invites her in.  They begin s*x, her backside bouncing, her boobs heaving, while we get a glimpse of his chest. Pay careful attention, as that's the only beefcake you'll be seeing amid the endless heaving breasts.  Then a wraith comes through the window and slashes them to death.  

Buckhorn, South Dakota.  An apartment has a weird smell coming out of it, so a resident calls the police.  There's a long, involved bit about who is in charge and who has the key, with a lot of characters who never appear again, until the lady realize that she has the key.  Oy vey.   Inside the apartment is the school librarian's head on the decapitated body of an older, chubby man.  We never find out who he is, or why the killer arranged them like that.

Twin Peaks: Sheriff Hawk receives a phone call from the batshit-crazy Log Lady, whose pet log has  psychic powers.  It has a cryptic message revealing that the disappearance of Agent Cooper 25 years ago was related to Sheriff Hawk's Native American heritage and "something missing."

Buckhorn, South Dakota: The Forensics Lab has a match on the fingerprints in the decapitated librarian's apartment: they belong to the high school principal. (Matthew Lillard). So two agents and two cops, including the principal's best friend George, arrest him.  "It's all a mistake," he yells. 

Twin Peaks: To discover "what's missing," Sheriff Hawk pulls all of the files on Agent Cooper, and he and Receptionist Lucy go through them.  She ate a chocolate rabbit from some Easter evidence, but that's not it: his heritage has nothing to do with Easter bunnies.

Buckhorn, South Dakota: The Principal is interrogated about the decapitated people.  He was not having an affair with the librarian, and he was never in her apartment.  He can account for all of his activities on Thursday, except for about 15 minutes.  They lock him up, then get a warrant to go search his car.  There's either a human tongue or a piece of fish in the trunk.

The wife visits the Principal in prison to tell him that she framed him so she can pursue a romance with his best friend, George (Neil Dickson).  As she leaves, we see another cell occupied by a guy in an old-fashioned Davy Crocket outfit, covered with soot.  He vanishes.

At home, the Doppelganger tells the wife that she did a good job pretending to be a human being, and shoots her.

More non sequiters after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.6: Yep, they have s*x. Plus Judy grows a heart, Torsten a brain, and Amber the noive

 

This is the G-rated version of the Righteous Gemstones Episode 2.6 Review 

Link to the NSFW version.

Episode 2.6 has that controversial scene that fans are still arguing about, three seconds that have been analyzed backward and forward, frame by frame. Are they doing it or getting dressed?  But really, it's so obvious that it could become an adult videowith only a few minor changes in the actors' dirctions. It's so obvious that I can't even put a screen shot at the top photo without getting a "sensitive" tag.   But first we have some unfinished business to attend to.

The Cycle Ninjas:  We begin immediately after the Cycle Ninja attack in Episode 2.4.  Jesse and Amber grab guns and fire on them as they zoom off, grazing one.  He falls off  his motorcycle, but jumps onto his colleague's and gives them the finger.

The family, except for Kelvin, gather in Eli's drawing room to discuss the incident with the sheriff.  Judy thinks that it was a case of road rage.  Sheriff Brenda thinks that it was a botched robbery by some teenagers: professional assassins would have finished the job.  Eli is sure that Junior sent the Cycle Ninjas to kill him.  Other family members are at risk too, so he puts the compound on lockdown.

Judy complains about being stuck at home, with Tiffany living there after Baby Billy abandoned her. "She cleans everything with vinegar."  Not the time, girl.  Eli agrees: "Are you incapable of thinking of anyone but yourself?"

Out on the porch, Eli asks if Jesse has been to see Kelvin: "No. we ain't friends.  He grew up to be a nerd." 

The Second Dressing Room Scene

We cut to a full body front-and-rear shot of Kelvin, as he stands in front of the mirror in his dressing room. "Look at me," he tells Keefe, "A grotesque reflection of what I once was." Dude, you're not going to get any sympathy with that incredible body on display.

 He is distraught over the fight with his father and the loss of the God Squad; he has been de-manned by the symbolic castration. Why should he get dressed?  "I shall remain hidden, like the beast I've become."

 Keefe advises that dressing for the day "soothes the soul," and drops to his knees.  Kelvin pushes his head forward and down to begin oral actiivty.  We see and (and hear) his climax and conclusion.  Keefe swallows and says "nice." 

The scene lasts only a few seconds, and thus is easy to miss (I missed it the first time).  And it is immersed in the act of getting dressed.  Viewers are expected to be unsure whether they did it or not, thus continuing the "are they or aren't they?" speculation. 

But the "they didn't do it" theory makes no sense: 

While stepping into his Tommy Johns, Kelvin steadies himself by pushing on Keefe's head. You steady yourself on your friend's shoulders, not on his head.

Using his hands to push is painful.  Elsewhere he is shown using the palms and base of his hands without pain.  

Keefe says "nice" because...um... Go on? 

Structurally, it is a logical conclusion of the first dressing room scene.  Keefe rejects Kelvin's invitation, and then initiates it.

It makes sense for Kelvin's character. He that his injury has rendered him impotent in a society dedicated to the phallus, grotesque in a society that prizes male beauty.   What better way to demonstrate that he is still potent, still beautiful? 

It makes sense for Keefe's character.  You've just gotten a good look at the amazingly hot backside of the Man of Your Dreams, and now you are kneeling with your face three inches from his amazingly hot c*ck --aroused by your proximity.  What guy could resist going down?

Afterwards, Keefe helps Kelvin get dressed, boops his nose, and puckers up for a kiss.  Kelvin moves in, then changes his mind and abruptly turns aside.  He still resists the idea of romantic love, but he is gradually coming around.

Down in the yard, the God Squad is running a motorcycle over the tennis court and otherwise wilding.  They've even moved into the house.  Kelvin is horrified: "Our empire is crumbling."  Notice that it's now "our" empire; they are equal partners.  Keefe encourages him to prove that he is still strong, physically and mentally: "Your will is not broken, even though your thumbs are."

More after the break

Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers

September 1974: My friends and I are in ninth grade at Washington Junior High, 13 or 14 years old, aspiring to be cool, hip, and intellectual.  So we watch all of the hip sitcoms that would later be lauded as part of the Golden Age of Television.

Like Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers.

Never heard of it?

It was famous in the fall of 1974.

MTM Enterprises was changing the face of television, making it hip, modern, and "real," set in real places like Cincinnati and Minneapolis, starring people with real home and work lives (they even had sex).  It already had two hits, Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart, and Paul Sand looked like a third.

Especially when CBS put it into the fall schedule between its #1 show,  All in the Family and the Mary Tyler Moore/Bob Newhart block

I wanted to like it:

1. Cute, dour-faced comedian Paul Sand starred.
2. He was a bass player with the Boston Philharmonic (I was in the orchestra!).
3. Friends and Lovers sounded dirty.
4. There was a hot athletic older brother (Michael Pataki, left).  Maybe there'd be some beefcake.
5. And a workplace friend (Steve Landesberg, later of Barney Miller). Maybe there'd be some buddy-bonding.

I was only home to see a few episodes, and they weren't very good.

1. Paul Sand was not at all likeable -- his self-deprecating humor was...well, deprecating
2. The brother never took his shirt off, although Max Gail (later of Barney Miller) flexed in one episode.
3. And everyone was obsessed with heterosexual sex.  It was like Three's Company, a few years later.

It actually became the #25 most watched show of the season, doing better than its competition, Emergency! and The New Land, but by January it was cancelled, replaced by the mega-hit The Jeffersons.

Which also suffered from a lack of beefcake.

Corey Saucier: Texas model who got n*ked with Carrie Bradshaw, counseled a dying gay guy, and posted an adult video, sort of

  

Link to the n*de photos

I like guys who aren't very famous, where there's something to research.  Never heard of Corey Saucier, but there are two types of photos of him online:

1. Teen idol type

2. And sullen artistic model type.

Corey was born in 1988 in a suburb of Houston,  played basketball, football, and basketball in high school, and decided to become a model while at Texas State University.

This modeling photo is from 2008, when he was 20.  

According to his purple-prose bio at the Fort Agency, "Corey Saucier has shot with fittingly unique brands, such as Diesel and his handsome visage has posed for Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and Levis."

His handsome visage?  Come on, that sounds ridiculous. Visages don't pose.

He continues: “My style is a mixture of chic and rugged”

He has two acting roles listed on the IMDB, both, in 2022:

Shane in "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered," Episode 1.8 of  And Just Like That, the update of S*x and the City.   I never saw the original, but I understand that it's about four ladies sitting around discussing s*x in a gay-free New York.  He isn't listed in the episode synopsis, but apparently he gets nekkid with, I think, Carey?

And Dr. Underwood in Spoiler Alert, about a gay couple (Jim Parsons, Kit Aldritch), one of whom is dying of cancer.  Why on Earth would anyone want to watch something like that?    I assume that Dr. Underwood is diagnosing him or whatever.

More after the break

Josh Fadem: From Tulsa to "Twin Peaks," with Groundlings, zombies, coffee, a glory hole, and his d*ck

  

Link to the d*cks

We've been watching the 2017 sequel to Twin Peaks, the 1990s cult series about paranormal events in a quirky small town.  

The darn thing makes no f*king sense.  

The main plot, as far as I can figure out, involves the spirit of FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLaughlin), trapped in the Red Room 25 years ago with ghosts and demons who talk backwards and make cryptic statements.  Meanwhile, his body, named Dougie, took a job at an insurance agency in Las Vegas, had a wife and son, did something that got him targeted by the mob, and consorted with prostitutes.

After 25 years, Dale's spirit returns to Dougie's body, but can't perform everyday tasks, speak more than parroted words, or understand anything -- yet no one notices!  

In Episode 1.5, his wife dresses him in a ridiculous lime-green suit and drops him off at his office, where of course he just stands there until gopher Philip Bisby (Josh Fadem) notices, gives him a cup of coffee, and escorts him to his staff meeting, where he just stands there.  

Coffee guy Philip appears again in Episodes 1.6 and 1.7, luring Dougie with coffee and escorting him to the boss's office.  I found something homoerotic in the exchange: Philip sort of likes Dougie. 

He is cute -- and short, 5'9" to Kyle's 6'0" -- so I started looking for the other work of actor Josh Fadem, and maybe some n*de photos.

I thought he was a recent college graduate, new to Hollywood, on his first acting gig, it turns out Josh Fadem was in his mid-30s in 2017.  He now has 159 acting credits, 40 writing credits, a wikipedia article, and a number of n*de photos.

He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1980, and  graduated from Booker T. Washington High School.  Imagine being Jewish in Bible Belt, Oral Roberts University Tulsa. 

He moved to Los Angeles in 2000, trained with the Uptight Citizens Brigade and the Groundlings, and appeared in countless comedy shows, including It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Whitest Kids U Know, UCB Comedy Originals, The Bank Room, The Midnight Show, Key and Peele, Superstore, Minx, and American Dad.

And a lot of heterosexist shorts, like The Do It Up Date and I Think She Likes You.

On the other hand, The Gory Hole sounds provocative.

Josh is best known as Simon Barrons, assistant to Tina Fey's Liz Lemons on three episodes of 30 Rock (2009-2012).

And as Marshall Dixon, also called Joey, a University of New Mexico film student/teacher hired by unethical lawyer Saul in 14 episodes of Better Call Saul (2015-22).  Marshall doesn't seem to get any plot arcs of his own, but according to the Google AI, he has a gay subtext.

More after the break. Caution: explicit.

Twin Peaks: The owls are not what they seem

In the spring of 1990, many tv viewers were persuaded to turn away from the Thursday night juggernaut of The Cosby Show -- A Different World -- Cheers -- and Wings to watch Twin Peaks, a tv series created by surrealist director David Lynch, to learn "Who killed Laura Palmer?"

No one knew that the answer would become so darn convoluted.

The premise: popular high schooler Laura Palmer of Twin Peaks, Washington, is found murdered.

FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan, best known for Lynch's homophobic Blue Velvet) is called in to investigate, and works with local sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean, best known then as the gay guy from Making Love).

Gradually they discover that everyone in town has multiple dark secrets.  There are weird alliances and interconnections.  A middle-aged woman regresses to a teenager.  Laura's psychiatrist commits suicide.

Cooper has a dream of a backward-talking dwarf who is From Another Place, who makes cryptic utterances like "when you see me again, I won't be me" and "everybody is full of secrets."

Laura had several secrets of her own.  One wonders how she found time to hang out with her boyfriend  (played by Dana Ashbrook, left), when she was having affairs with several older men, as well as working as a prostitute to support her drug habit.  (In David Lynch's world, prostitution is the Ultimate Evil).

After seven episodes, the first season ended, with lots of clues but no answers.

During the summer of 1990, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer was published, and became a must-read.  It offered no new clues.

You could also get Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town, with tourist information about the town, including the cafe where Cooper got his "damn fine coffee!" and cherry pie.

In September 1990, the second season began, on Saturday nights.

A giant who may be an alien warns Cooper that "The owls are not what they seem."

Whatever that means.

Laura appears in a vision and says "Sometimes my arms bend back."

Whatever that means.

Cooper learns of Black Lodge, which can manipulate world events.

There was no way to unite all of the plot threads into a coherent whole, so in December they threw in a lame explanation -- Laura was murdered by her father, who was being possessed by a being named BOB, who was working for the Black Lodge, who...or something like that.  And everyone scratched their head and said WTF?  All this to murder a teenager?

This was the homophobic David Lynch, so of course there were no gay characters, other than some leering effeminate villains, and some unintentional gay subtexts in the interaction between Truman and Cooper.

No beefcake to speak of.

So why did Twin Peaks gain so many gay fans?

Maybe it's the sinister small towns.  In West Hollywood many of us came from small towns, and remembered them as prisons where everyone had lots of secrets.


Maybe it was wishful thinking.  We were waiting for one of the "secrets" to be about being gay.

Or maybe it was our own hidden knowledge.  Before the 1980s, and often after, kids grew up unaware that gay people exist.  There was a conspiracy of silence that could be overcome only through seeking out subtexts, euphemisms, things left out, clues hidden from view.  We knew more than anyone that "the owls are not what they seem."

See also: Josh Fadem: From Tulsa to "Twin Peaks," with coffee, zombies, a corrupt lawyer, a glory hole, and his d*ck

Twin Peaks: The Return: Paranormal weirdness 25 years later.  See if you can figure out what's going on.

Joe Gaydar breaks unwritten gym rules, some involving n*de dudes and b*ndage

 

Link to the n*de photos

When Tony Cavalero was staying in Chicago, he got a hotel gym boyfriend, Joe Gaydar.  Not his real name -- I don't post the real names of non-actors , if there's nudity involved - but close.  I imagine that the guy got a lot of homophobic bullying in grade school.

Joe works as a corporate health specialist, "Empowering Your Employees for Optimal Wellness and Unprecedented Success!" The all capped first letters was his idea, not mine. 

But his main claim to fame is an entertaining Instagram, filled with humorous POVs:

 "Old lifters vs. new lifters"

 "Things we all do at the gym"

"When that guy at the gym keeps staring at you"

"When you see Hugh Jackman, aka Huge Jacked Man, looking like a chiseled Greek god."

"When you've already gone to the gym, and the day's main mission is accomplished."

And my favorite, "Breaking unwritten gym rules."  

1. "I don't have to wipe down the equipment or put the weights away. Someone else will do that for me."  I hate walking up to a machine and seeing someone's sweat or that disgusting disinfectant slime on it.

2. "Grabbed two different brand dumbbells.  It's the same weight, right?"  Definitely a violation of an unwritten rule.

3. "Even though it's peak hours, I'm gonna use multiple machines, because my workout is more important than yours."  That's just being a jerk

4. "Let's load the plate with the logo facing in!"  Absolutely unthinkable.

5. "I got a 45 and a 45.  One's iron and one's rubber.  Same difference, right?"  Again, unthinkable.

6. "Looks like somebody left their stuff here.  They can't be trying to reserve the machine, so let's move it."  Wait -- you can't reserve a machine, unless you're standing right next to it.  The guy who left his stuff there is the jerk.

7. "13 reps.  It's ok to end a set on an odd number, right?"  In all my years of going to the gym, I have never ended a set on an odd number.  It just seems wrong.

8."All done with my set, so I'll sit here on my phone for 15 minutes."  Sometimes I walk up to them and say "If you're just resting, can I squeeze in a set?", and they stare like I just grew a second head.

9. "I've got a big d*ck, so I don't need to use a towel in the locker room.  Guys should be happy to get a peek." Not a problem, buddy: show your dick all you want.

More rules after the break.