Proud: A young male model in Poland is gay, sleazy, frequently n*ked, and not at all proud.

 

Link to the n*de photos

The first episode of the TV series Proud has dropped on HBO MAX: "After a tragedy, a carefree young man must grow up or lose what he has left."  Nothing in the premise or episode synopsis suggests that he is a gay carefree young man, but dropping a show called Proud during Pride Month is a dirty trick if it's gay-free.  So we'll give it a try.   

Scene 1: Shaky hand-held camera follows the back of a Carefree Young Man's head as he walks past blurry people in a room.  They seem to be models waiting for an audition. The casting agent wants them all in underwear.   The Young Man sneaks into the bathroom, takes cocaine, does some push-ups, and heads for his audition.  

Wait -- they said underwear.  He strips, completely n*de, explaining "I don't do underwear."

One of the casting agents says it's fine, "The kid's a free spirit."  You just like his c*ck, buddy.   He starts choking, so the young man gives him Heimlich. 

Scene 2: A blurry club, very dark, very red, very crowded.  Looks like mostly men.  The Young Man does cocaine, is absorbed by gyrating body parts, then follows a group of guys through the kitchen and into the dark room.  Ok, he's gay. And this must be Europe, where every bar has a dark room.  They don't usually put them next to the kitchen,though. 

The dark room is even darker and blurrier than the main club, but I think I see some kissing and other stuff.

Whoops, a girl bursts in and opens the curtains: "Party's over!  Get out!"  

Ulp, this isn't a dark room.  The Young Man invited four guys to a wild night at his sister's apartment! Does the apartment open directly onto the kitchn of a gay club, or do we have to deal with inept editing as well as inept cinematography?

"I thought you weren't coming back until Monday," the Young Man says in a blurry, drug-addled voice.

"It is Monday, you idiot!"

"Dang, I have a very important meeting today!"

Scene 3:  After kicking the guys out, the Young Man -- Filip -- goes to the kitchen and asks Sis why she's so upset.  "We had an agreement -- no partying in the house! Plus you haven't taken out the trash or done the laundry.  Those are your two jobs!"

"I know.  I've been busy."

She wants him out.  She can't take his lack of responsibility, not doing any chores, always being drunk and high, strange men coming in and out all the time, with her child in the house. The child looks like she's about a year old. 

"But I'm broke."

"Then sell your motorcycle!" 

They argue for awhile.  Sister yells: "You think life is all fun and games, but today is the day you grow up.  Move out by this evening!"  This isn't carefree, it's pathological!

Scene 3: The n*ked Filip is getting dressed. We may get a brief c*ck shot, but it's too blurry to see anything.  A guy bangs on the door, asking for his money.  A lady walking down the hall says that she's walking Filip's dog, and he owes 50 zloty ($13) for dog food.  

The guy takes the dog.  Filip yells down after him, but he says "I want my money today!"

Filip pours some vodka into a coke bottle and jumps into a taxi to head to his very important meeting.  But he turns around to sell his motorcycle.

Scene 4: Two guys pick up the motorcycle, insisting that they'll only pay half of what it's worth. Hey, he has four of them!  And he's broke?  Maybe it's the cocaine.  The guy from his very important meeting calls, angry: "Where the hell are you?"

Left: The IMDB lists only Ignacy Liss, who plays Filip, but I found Mateusz Wieclawik in the closing credits (d*ck pic on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  I don't know who he plays; no one in the show has hair like that.

Filip takes a taxi downtown.  His agent meets him: "You're 45 minutes late!  Everyone is freaking out!  I'm tired of making excuses for you!"  Sort of a jerk, aren't you, Filip Baby?

Uh-oh, the guy he owes money to is there.  Filip pays with the motorcycle money, gets his dog back, and asks if he has any more cocaine.

On to the meeting!  They rush him into makeup, complaining that he reeks of alcohol and "things go better when the models actually show up." 

The makeup lady just got engaged, and her teenage daughter shows up and announces "I'm meeting someone."  This upsets her.  Must be a subplot brewing.

Scene 5: It's one of those daytime talk shows, show, just finishing a segment with an expert on marital conflicts.  Next up: the hosts will show you how to be chic on the beach. They approach the four models.

"Filip  is presenting a beautiful red brief cut."   

Uh-oh, Filip is high: he begins giggling, then throws up, then collapses -- on live tv!  They quickly cut to commercial. 

More after the break.  Spoiler alert: He lives.

10 Gay Movies I Hated

I haven't seen a lot of gay-themed movies since 2005, when I moved to small-town America, but before that, living in West Hollywood, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, I saw practically everything.  Some were good, but a lot were awful: angst-loaded melodramas set in worlds where there is no gay community, every heterosexual is homophobic, lesbians turn straight, and gay men keep falling in love with women.

Here is the list of the biggest offenders, excluding historical artifacts like Cruising and The Boys in the Band, and movies where the gay guy dies (which I never see in the first place).

It's Still the 1950s

1. Get Real (1998). The only gay guy in the world (Ben Silverstone), who plasters his room with pictures of hunky footballers but still worries that his parents will "find out.  He falls for a local jock, who won't acknowledge his presence in public, continues to date girls, and beats him up to prove he is heterosexual.  But there are no other options.

2. Sordid Lives (1999).  In "modern" Texas, a drag queen named Brother Boy (Leslie Jordan) is in a mental hospital, undergoing de-homosexual therapy.  Meanwhile, a gay man (Kirk Geiger) moves from Texas to Los Angeles, where he undergoes 300 years of therapy to accept "who he is," but is still terrified that his theater-crowd friends will "find out."  Are you kidding me?  (Southern Baptist Sissies is in the same vein).

3. Cruel Intentions (1999).  Teenage brother and sister have fun destroying people's lives.  Fruity queen (Joshua Jackson, not even the most homophobic of the Jacksons) helps them blackmail his sex partner, a closeted footballer, who tries to turn hetero by throwing out his Judy Garland cds.  Excuse me?  Who researched this movie?

Gay Men Really Want Women

4. The Object of My Affection (1998).  Straight woman (Jennifer Anniston) and gay man (Paul Rudd) fall in love and begin a relationship.  Um. . .what exactly did they think the word "gay" meant?


5. The Opposite of Sex (1998). Teenage girl (Christina Ricci) shows up at her gay brother's house and seduces his lover (Ivan Sergei), who never once states that he's bisexual.  Apparently all gay men are into women, they just like men better -- until they find The Girl of Their Dreams.

6. Party Monster (2003).  Party boy (Macaulay Culkin) says he's gay, but he falls in love with a girl, who almost convinces him to abandon his "destructive lifestyle."  But it doesn't work, and he becomes a murderer.  Those are your choices: turn straight, or kill people

Gay Men are Really Women

7. The Birdcage (1996).  It may have been ok with La Cage aux Folles in 1978, but in 1996, the sight of one effeminate stereotype (Robin Williams) teaching another effeminate stereotype (Nathan Lane) how to butter his toast "like  a man" was infuriating.

8. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). East German boy (John Cameron Mitchell) falls in love with an American GI, and decides to become a woman for him.  Operation is botched, creating a transwoman with an "angry inch," who becomes a punk rocker and falls in love with a homophobic Bible-belt boy.  Same-sex desire doesn't exist; it's all male-female, regardless of the body you inhabit.

Lesbians Switch Teams a Lot

9. Chasing Amy (1997). Hetero man (Ben Affleck) falls in love with a lesbian and begins the task of converting her to heterosexuality.   Isn't that a debunked myth -- lesbians will "turn back" if they meet the right man?  It works, albeit temporarily.

10. Kissing Jessica Stein (2001).  Jessica meets a lesbian. She's astounded, utterly unaware that such things exist.  In Manhattan.  In 2001.  To be fair, she lives in a gay-free Manhattan, where people constantly make heterosexist statements ("Oh, you got flowers!  Who's the guy?").  They begin a relationship, but then Jessica switches back to heterosexual again.

Gay as Arrested Development

11. Chuck and Buck (2000).  The worst gay-themed movie since Cruising.  I'll save it for another post.

See also: 10 Gay Movies I Loved

"Cruising": Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and dicks in a doomed gay world. With a nude Mr. Big.

The 39 Dumbest Things on TV

"Bloodhounds": Strong Gay Subtext among Korean Boxers

 Gay subtexts occur when two guys not specifically identified as gay through statements or displays of affection have a relationship that is exclusive (no significant interest in women), domestic (living together), emotionally intense, and permanent (they stay together at the end of the adventure).  Platonic pals could have a similar relationship, of course: that's why it's called a subtext rather than a text.  A casual glance at the Korean action-adventure series Bloodhounds revealed a lot of gay subtext potential, so here goes:

Scene 1: Innocent-looking Geon-Wu (Woo Doh-Hwan, left) and rowdy-looking Woo-Jin (Lee Sang-Yi, below) practicing boxing in separate empty gyms. Later, on a bus, Geon-Wu intervenes when a passenger refuses to wear a mask and starts assaulting the driver. 

He goes home to find his mother begging creditors for more time to pay, and leaves to avoid embarrassing her.

Scene 2: Some suit guys discussing how COVID is threatening their hotel business. Loan shark Kim Myeung-Gil (Park Sung-Wong) passes out his business card to everyone. 

Scene 3: The Rookie of the Year Tournament, in a giant stadium (empty due to COVID).  Rowdy-looking Woo Jin (left), who specializes in weird noises, Maori haka-dancing, and punching himself in the groin, beats two opponents.   

Geon-woo beats his opponent, then rushes to see if he is ok (a really nice guy, apparently).  

Next the guys fight each other.  Rowdy Woo Jin loses, and is devastated.  How could this by-the-books upstart beat him?  He is dishonored forever.

Scene 4:  Geon-woo waits for Rowdy Woo Jin outside the locker room, and invites him to dinner.  "Why, to rub it in?  You won, now get lost!"  But he consents.

Dinner consists of ten minutes of flirting, being way over-impressed by each other's back stories, and figuring out ways to touch each other.   The sexual tension is intense, but the conversation is boring.  

The only statement of interest is when Woo Jin reminisces about being in the marines.  He loved "taking showers together...soaping each other up..."  Geon Woo, surprised, says "So you're...."  Woo Jin: "Of course not!  I was just messing with you."

Scene 5:  They walk to the bus stop very slowly, each trying to figure out how to get the other into the bedroom; instead, Woo Jin just asks for a second date.  They discuss the loan sharks who are exploiting everyone, now that COVID is making everyone lose their businesses.  Like Geon-woo's mother, who can't make the rent on her coffee shop.  

Scene 6: Mom on the phone to her creditors. Geon-woo comes in, all excited over the money he won today, and the cute guy he met, not in that order.  But Mom won't take the money to cover the rent: it would be dishonorable.  

Cut to the loan shark crew going from business to business, grinning hungrily as the owners sign the papers.

Scene 7:  Geon-woo's gym is closed due to a COVID exposure!  But his coach tells him to take a week off anyway, and rest after his big tournament.  So he calls Woo Jin.  So early in the morning? If you're too over-eager, you'll scare him off.  "I'm sleeping!"  Woo Jin tells him. "But I'm bored.  Let's hang out."  "So clingy! Ok, you can come over and sleep with me."  

On the way to Woo-Jin's house, Geon-woo stumbles upon a guy getting beat up.  He chases the assailant, who fights back with a taser.  "Who sent you?" the guy wants to know.  "No one -- I just wanted to help."  The guy lets him go.

Cut to a lady trying to pay back an old guy in a library for the loan that allowed her to get her daughter some life-saving surgery.  He refuses: pay off your urgent debts first.  Is this a comparison of "nice" loan guys with evil loan sharks?  When she leaves, he takes out his ledge and cancels the loan.

Scene 8: The assailant, who turns out to be a girl, returns to headquarters and reports that the client didn't have any money, so she took his gold watch instead.  Gasp -- she worksfor the nice library guy, her Grandpa!  "But the watch is worth 20 million won, and I only loaned him 10 million!" Grandpa exclaims, demonstrating his honesty.  

They discuss the evil loan shark gang.  Granddaughter wants to do some recon, but Grandpa thinks it's too dangerous.

Scene 9:  The guys having breakfast, discussing boxing, and finding new ways to touch each other. They end up wrestling or hugging or something, and chase each other off-camera, where presumably they are kissing. 

Cut to the wealthy Mr. Park celebrating his birthday with dinner and a show: can Kang in-beom (Tae won-suk) smash a watermelon with his bare hands?  He can.  His gift is some golden turtles worth billions of won, and so clean that no one will know they are stolen.  

Scene 10: Kang in-beom also works for the loan sharks: he is tasked with taking fifteen goons and smashing the storefronts of business owners who aren't paying up, including Mom!  

 She calls Geon-woo for help.  He jumps out of Woo-Jin's bed, runs home, and fights the goons.  After he finishes clobbering them, head loan shark Myeung Gil shows up to explain the loan agreement and send in Kang in-beom, who bashes him repeatedly with his head, strangles him, and squeezes him into unconsciousness.  Myeung Gil then slashes his cheek while "laughing sinisterly" according to the subtitles.  The End.

Beefcake: The guys box shirtless.

Gay Subtext:  I went through a couple of episodes on fast-forward. By Episode 3, they're all living with the friendly librarian.  They always appear as a pair.  Neither ever expresses any interest in a girl.  And at the end of the adventure, they (and Mom) go home together.  

That's every characteristic of a gay subtext.  It's almost text, except there are no overtly romantic displays of affection, like holding hands, kissing, or having sex, and the lack of expressed interest in women is not unusual in Korean dramas.  

The 18 biggest, hottest, or most surprising d*cks of the handsome/h*ng actors, from the Nip/Tuck fratboy to the Headless Ghost

Link to the n*de photos.

Why do you read a profile of an actor who has appeared only in shows that you never watch and movies that you've never heard of?  Why do I research him?  Sure, it's fun to check out his acting projects for gay representation, and his social media for evidence that he is gay.  Sometimes there are other interesting things to learn about, like the Welsh language, Russian science fiction, or the scheduled tribes of India. But I really want to see his d*ck.

It may be displayed during a show, on social media, on hookup sites, or leaked.  It may not precisely belong to him, but the face and physique are close enough.  I'm even down with a very well done artist's interpretation.  

Most of the handsome/hung actors (everyone but teen idols and bodybuilders) have d*ck pics in their profiles, but some are unforgettable.  Here are my 18 favorites.

1. Aaron Moody.  It took a lot of research to figure out which Aaron Moody had 11 inches.  Turns out that it's not the Nip/Tuck fratboy who got his face superglued to his buddy's backside.

2. Jamie McGuire (top photo). A Halifax hunk who plays the Smiley Creature in From.  I'm 99% sure that one of the two n*de dudes is him, but to be on the safe side, I posted a n*de Dylan Sprouse (from the Suite Life of Zack and Cody).

3. Austin Linley, left, had a BFA and a series of depressing shorts when he was hired to discomfit his closeted roommate on Overcompensating by walking around the dorm room n*ked.

4. Matt Smith. Prince Phillip, Charles Manson, Christopher Isherwood, Dr. Who, and Superworm shows us his stuff twice.  And his backside, for a change of pace.

5. Noah Matthews Matofsky.  Most Down Syndrome guys are on the small side (I'm not telling you how I know), but Noah is an exception.  Plus he can say "I love you" in 20 languages.

6. Ansel Pierce.  Although he is best known as the Euphoria big d*ck, Ansel has other points of interest, like a job in West Hollywood and a movie about a chubby gay guy in love (he plays the buddy).

7. Josh Fadem.  The coffee guy from the Twin Peaks remake sings a Hanukkah song and shows us his stuff.

8. George MacKay.  We only see the d*ck of the time traveler's buddy from behind.  This makes it even more provocative.

9. Jackson Tessmer. What can you say about a guy who goes to Hebrew School, stars in Christian dramas, and posts selfies?

More after the break. 

Tracker: Guy tracks missing people in scary states. Are any of them gay? Do any have beefcake pics?

  

The new mystery-crime series Tracker got a boost from appearing after the Superbowl (some kind of sports broadcast), and is now the most popular tv series on Hulu.  It sends the Tracker, played by Justin Hartley, to places that I'd be afraid to drive through: Klamath Falls, Oregon?  Missoula, Montana? -- to track down missing persons.  Not paranormal missing, just regular getting kidnapped and lost in the woods stuff.

He is assisted by a lawyer, a lady who likes to see him n*ked; a computer hacker who rarely leaves his cubbyhole; and his managers, a butch-femme lesbian couple, so there's some representation, but I want to see if the missing people are gay.  I watched some of the episodes until they were established as gay or straight, and otherwise depended on episode descriptions.

1. Klamath Falls: A 14 year old kidnapped, presumably by his birth dad, but then they discover that dad has been dead for several years. 

2. Missoula: A young man, played by Donald Heng, has been pulled into a deadly cult.  He's 27 years old, an accountant,  andaccording to his parents, "shy, so he doesn't meet many people."  27 years old and unmarried?  Gay...wait, his parents say that two months ago he met a woman.  Heterosexualized in 4 minutes.

3. Springland: A young woman's free-spirited sister. Well, I'm not picky, maybe she's a lesbian...nope, she has a boyfriend named Gecko.  Heterosexualized in 8 minutes.

4. Mount Shasta: A teenager played by Hunter Dillon goes missing from a troubled teen camp that is run like a prison.  They search his dorm room.  Tracker asks "Does he have a girlfriend?"  Mom doesn't know: "I don't even know if he likes girls."  He has a girlfriend, but it's nice that she doesn't assume automatically that every boy likes girls. Heterosexualized in 8 minutes.

5. St Louis.  Finally, a place I wouldn't be afraid to visit. A convicted murderer's daughter wants him to prove her father's innocence by tracking down a key witness. Doubtful.

6. Lexington: Tracker must team up with a rival tracker -- a lady -- to track down a missing race horse.  Unlikely.  I thought this assignment would be a nonstop hunk fest, but I haven't found anything. "Peter New" is in the cast list, but guess what happens when I google "Peter  New" and "nude" 

There's also a Peter Oldring.

7. Chicago. My kinda town. Tracker has to track down a female MMA fighter.His computer hacker, played by Eric Graise, gets to leave his dark computer room and participate in the action.  Eric played a gay character in the reboot of Queer as Folk, and his character is never heterosexualized, so maybe....

More after the break

Pablo Castelblanco: The OCD guy from "Happy's Place" beefcakes, plays gay, but closets his Insta. With Steve Howey and Pablo p*nis

  

Link to the n*de photos

I was running low on tv series to review, so I clicked on Happy's Place on Netflix, in spite of the annoyingly manipulative title.

Making your way through the world today takes everything you got

Taking a break from all your worries sure would mean a lot

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name...

Whoops, wrong sitcom. 

Sometimes it feels like a big ol' fight

To get through the day and sleep on through the night

You can't complain because no one's here to hear it

But here you'll surely find a place that will lift your spirits...

Happy's Place (2024-) currently airing on NBC, stars Reba McIntyre as a woman (not named Happy) who inherits a Tennessee bar from her father.  Her co-owner is a much younger half sister that she never knew about.

I watched Episode 1.7, "Ho-Ho Howey," because of guest star Steve Howey, who played Reba's son-in-law on her earlier series (Reba, 2001-07),  and has played gay characters (and shown his stuff) often in movies and on tv.

His stuff is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

I wasn't impressed.  An old-fashioned sitcom plotline with jokes requiring your familiarity with the earlier Reba.  It reminded me of the Saturday-night shows that the old folks used to watch while we were out at the clubs.  

And only one cute guy in the regular cast. 

  

Not Tokala Black Elk as the sardonic bartender.  The n*de photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends must be of a different Tokala Black Elk; the guy behind the bar was grizzled, gaunt, and craggy.

The cute guy was Steve (Pablo Castelblanco, top photo), the bar's full-time  accountant, shy, awkward, germaphobic, suffering from OCD.  Could I hope that he was gay?

To explore further, I watched Episode 1.17, "The Doctor is Out": Steve has improved so much, moving from a giant bottle to a small bottle of hand sanitizer, able to handle someone else's pencil, that he gives up therapy.  But then he starts using Reba as a substitute therapist, and reverts, rearranging the spices in the kitchen.

Steve  doesn't express any heteros*xual interest in either episode, nor is a girlfriend mentioned in the Seasons 1-2 episode synopses.  Could a character in a sitcom for old people, set in Knoxville, Tennessee, starring a lady who tells us to seek out God's help for our problems, be canonically gay?  

Reba is an outspoken gay ally, so maybe...

I read two interviews, one from just last month.  Pablo Castelblanco says only that Happy's Place is the best gig he's ever had, he hopes it runs for years, and in future episodes he would like to explore Steve's "love life." 

That's a little vague, buddy.  Do you expect him to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend?  Which will the writers permit?

The articles also mention that Pablo is gay in real life.

Pablo Castelblanco, aka Pablo Esteban, grew up in Colombia, doing the usual school plays and watching Reba's earlier show.   His parents planned on him becoming an accountant, but he thought of engineering -- or acting. He studied at El Bosque University in Bogota and then the AMDA College of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles, where he appeared in Sálvese Quien Pueda, Yerma, Stage Door, Metamorphoses, and The Diary of Anna Frank.  

Pablo's first on-screen role was Tristan St. Pierre in a 2016 episode of Scream Queens: he writes lesbian fan fiction about the Chanels  (the It-Girls of the school), and is finally invited to join them, becoming the first male member.  According to the fan wiki, he is "homos*xual." 

A good start, buddy.

Then came some artsy shorts (Sedation, Admission, There's No Such Thing as a Dragon) and guest spots on some comedies (Dear White People, New Girl), and in 2022, a starring role on Alaska Daily: Hilary Swank plays a journalist seeking a "fresh start" in Anchorage after a career crash. She ends up investigating the murders of several Native women.  Philip Lewitski (left) played her photographer colleague Miles.

Pablo played another reporter, Gabriel Martin, aka Gabriel Tovar,  The show is no longer available on Hulu, and he's not mentioned in the plot synopses, so I can't tell if he is gay or not. 

More after the break

"It's Not Like That": Preacher starts dating his dead wife's best friend. No, he's not Eli Gemstone. With surprising queer codes and n*de dudes

   

Link to the n*de dudes

Amazon does not have a great track record on LGBTQ rights.  I still buy books from them, but when Amazon Prime recommended a new comedy series called It's Not Like That, I was skeptical, and did some research.  Sure enough, it was produced by the Wonder Project, a new studio that plans on delivering fundamentalist, faith-based, family-friendly,  protest Pride, take back God's rainbow content..  I'm going to have a lot of fun moving into enemy territory to look for gay subtexts produced by accident, and describing the hotness of men who would be horrified to discover that they are an object of male desire.

Premise: Pastor Malcolm (Scott Foley), dealing with grief over his wife's death (of course), starts dating her recently divorced best friend, Lori.  

Pastor Malcolm has three children, a boy (Justin) and two girls (Flora and Penelope), all traumatized by the death of their mother.  Wait...Flora?  What year is this?

Lori has an ex husband and two children, a boy (Merritt) and a girl (Casey), both traumatized by the divorce. 

I'm actually going to review/find gay subtexts in Episode 3, because it features an imam (Ahmad Ghafouri, left) and a rabbi (Rachel Leah Cohen).  Wait -- a female rabbi?  She must be Reform, which is pro gay, even permitting gay rabbis.  I doubt that the writers know this fact, or will have the backbone to mention it.

Scene 1: Pastor Malcolm, getting dressed, notices his dead wife's clothes hanging in the closet, and flashes back to when she was wearing one of the dresses in front of the church: Grace Community Church, with a sign saying "Where all are welcome."  Presumably it means all heterosexuals.  

She's planning a rummage sale, and suggests partnering with some of the other religious groups in town, like the Temple and the Islamic Center.  "We could make it an interfaith rummage sale."  These people are super liberal.  When I was a Nazarene, we weren't even allowed to hang out with Baptists.

Back in the present, Pastor Malcolm is overcome by grief, but thinks "That wasn't a bad idea."

Cut to Pastor Malcolm asking his daughters to go through Mom's stuff and find things to sell.  They resist:  "You want to pretend that she never existed!  I'll never forget her, even though you have!"

"Why don't you throw out all of our stuff, too, since our lives mean nothing to you!"

"This is so unfair!"  

Scene 2: At Lori's house, amid some disasters, Surly Son Merrit (Caleb Baumann) is on the phone: Dad David is trying to convince him that his new apartment is cool.  Nope, he's not staying there.  Lori lays down the law: Dad gets you on the weekends, so you have no choice.

Merrit and Shy Daughter Casey resist.  "You're the one who got the divorce.  Why should we suffer?"

"Why don't you just sell the house, and throw out all our memories, since our lives mean nothing to you?

"This is so unfair!"

The parallels are cleverly constructed.

Cut to Pastor Malcolm and Lori at the coffee shop, commiserating on how hard it is to be a parent after a major trauma, like death or divorce. But they stand firm: "It's the right thing to do.  It will be hard for them, but I'm ready." 

Scene 3: At school, Merritt joins Pastor Malcolm's daughter Flora for lunch. She's looking for a writing project, so he suggests one: "It's about us."  Flora is shocked.  But he actually means their parents' hookup, har har.   Queer code #1: He's not romantically interested in her.

Flora has not heard this before, and doesn't believe him.  "Dad's not ready to forget about my mom yet." You accused him of that like five minutes ago.

Meanwhile, in the restroom,  a girl asks Shy Daughter Casey, "Are you doing anything this weekend?"  Queer Code #2: Asking her for a date.  Casey is surprised because she bullied her before, but: "That's just what we do.  I really like you."  

"Ok, but this weekend, we have to go stay with my newly divorced Dad."  The Girl tells us that her dad left when she was six, so she's an expert on divorce.  She offers to teach Casey the tricks of the trade.  First lesson: how to cash in on their guilt. Hey, no fair to ask her out wihtout a follow-up.

Scene 4: Lori is at work, spying on her kids' text messages and being depressed, when her friend Gail comes in to ask about her date last night.  She had a good time, but refused to kiss him, and now he is ghosting her. At Nazarene summer camp, the preacher said that you shouldn't kiss before marriage, but it was just a recommendation, not one of the rules in the Manual.

"So scroll on to the next one."

Next up, Dad David (JR Ramirez, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) drops in to discuss their shared client.  Apparently they manage Country-Western singers.  Lori breaks the news that the kids don't want to spend the weekend at his new place.

"Tough, they gotta."

"But we want them to have autonomy."

He gets angry.  "I'm trying everything, and nothing is getting through to them!"

Lori thinks that Shy Daughter Casey's wrestling has something to do with it.  All her gear is at home, and there are matches on the weekend, so...  Queer Code #3: Wrestling is a masculine-coded activity.

They compromise.  David will stay at the house with the kids, and Lori will stay...um, somewhere else.  You going to shack up with the hunky preacher?

Cut to everyone setting up for the Interfaith Rummage Sale.  Daughter Flora confronts Pastor Malcolm: "Are you trying to erase Mom's memory because you moved on to Lori?"

"It's not like that."  The title of the series, har har.  "All we did was kiss, but we decided that we weren't ready for a relationship, so we're staying Just Friends."

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: When I searched for Scott Foley n*de, I got Peter Kendall n*de in The Girls on the Bus

More after the break

"The Front Runner," homophobia, and angst in the gay bookstore in Hell-fer-Sartain

When I was in college in the early 1980s, you couldn't do a keyword search for "gay fiction," and get 1,000 hits.  I sometimes found fiction with gay characters or gay themes by accident.  Death in Venice and Billy Budd were assigned by professors who didn't mention the gay content, and vociferously denied it when I asked. 

Left: The Death in Venice ballet.

A carefully-worded inquiry to my artistic, sophisticated friend Aaron led me to Samuel Delaney's Neveryon.  

Fred the Ministerial Student, my first boyfriend, told me about The City and the Pillar.

But usually I just scanned the shelves in the library stacks, looking for titles that evoked evil: A Thirsty Evil, The Young and the Evil 

Or loneliness: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Well of Loneliness.

Or the need to be somewhere else: Other Voices, Other Rooms, Another Country

It was easy, but rather depressing.  I wondered if this was what gay life was like: tawdry, empty, despairing, doomed?  

 

After receiving my M.A., I spent a horrible, soul-destroying year teaching Bonehead English in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas.  There was a gay neighborhood in Houston, but it was 17 miles away, which meant two hours in the worst traffic I have ever seen, there and back, probably a flat tire from the endless construction. and guys who were so deeply closeted that they had a wife back home and wouldn't tell you their real name.

 

The one bright spot was the Wilde n Stein Bookstore on Westheimer. It sold honest to goodness gay books.  I couldn't afford many, but those few opened up a whole world of gay history and culture: 

Hidden from History

The Celluloid Closet

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality

Byron and Greek Love

The fiction, not so much.  Sure, they had open, overt gay characters and contemporary settings, but:  Dancer from the Dance, The Kryptonite Kid, The Beautiful Room is Empty, The Boy Who Picked the Bullets Up, Dance on My Grave, Nocturnes for the King of Naples...

They still had key words about death, darkness, sadness, and evil, and they still painted gay life as tawdry, empty, and doomed.

The worst offender was The Front Runner, by Patricia Nell Warren. I bought the second edition, printed in 1978, with the beefcake drawing of a muscle daddy horrified by the idea of being gay as he gazed at a skinny blond twink.  

 I don't remember much about the plot, just a feeling of palpable disgust at four scenes that traumatized me for life.   

1. Muscle Daddy Harlan, fired from his job as athletic director at a major university, goes to work at a gay-friendly college in upstate New York founded by a guy who brags about how he and his lover fool the straights: the lover pretends to be a woman, dressing in drag and flaunting around.  "Have another cocktail -- darling!"  "Fooled them all the time."  Thhe partner wasn't transgender, or even a drag queen; he simply had to pretend to be a woman.  Two men together can never survive in the straight world. They must be male and female. Yuck.

More after the break

Baylen Bielitz: The kid version of the gay superhero Wiccan visits Oz and The Secret Garden, buddies with Jett Kyte, crushes on Spider-Man.

  

Link to the n*de dudes

I've been researching the actors who played Billy and Tommy, sons of the Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff in Marvel comics and tv shows.   They grow up to be superheroes Wiccan (gay) and Speed (bi), so did the casting agents make sure that the actors playing them were gay/bi, too?  

Teenagers: Joe Locke and Ruaridh Mollica (below).  Both gay.

Tweens: Julian Hillard and Jett Kyte (left). Both probably gay.

Kids: Baylen Bielitz (right) and Gavin Borders. 

(Ruaridh in action on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

I doubt that the casting agents were specifically looking for gay actors to play the preteen Billy and Tommy. They might not even be aware that LGBT kids exist.  But they if they were looking for resemblance to the older actors, they might ping on a gay vibe, or ask if Mom and Dad would object to their kid playing gay.  We'll start with Baylen Bielitz, five-year old Billy (the future Wiccan) on Wandavision.

Baylen was born in Southington, about 20 miles from Hartford, Connecticut, in May 2014.  He expressed an interest in acting and dancing when he was five years old, so his parents entered him into a local acting competition.  He won and got an agent, who started sending out video audition tapes (this was during the pandemic).  

 On his sixth birthday in May 2020, Baylen posts "It's my b-day, dance with me," noting that he always was inspired by Derek Hough.

Actor/dancer/choreographer Derek Hough, is straight, but he has played gay characters and fought for LGBT representation on Dancing with the Stars. He performed in the first male-male duo on the show, in December 2024.

A few days later, Bay got word that he had been cast as  Billy Maximoff.  Directly from kindergarten to the Marvel Cinematic Universe!  In the summer of 2020, he and his mom drove to Atlanta to film his scenes. 

I doubt that he knew the entire biography of Wiccan when he auditioned, but he does now.

Other on-screen roles came quickly.

2021:

He appears in The Gilmore Girls on stage and in several tv commercials.

Plus he gets to pose (or photoshop-pose) with Tom Holland's Spider-Man (n*de photo of Tom Holland on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

 2022:

He plays Younger Boy to Lucas Luchsinger's Older Boy in A Better Half (2022), a short about a man confronting his demons. 

Left: Lucas is now in college.  Most recently he starred in Antigone.

In an episode of Evil, about a team of Catholic exorcists, Bay and Robbie Crandall play brothers who are being bedeviled by a demon.  Or is it their mom, trying to push up the subscribers to her social media channel?  

The Noel Diary stars Justin Hartley as Jake Turner, a driven big city corporate type who returns to his small home town for Christmas and...well, it's the plot of every Christmas romcom ever.  Bay plays his younger brother in a flashback sequence.

More after the break. .

"This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans." But does it have any d*cks? Thai BL with cooking and evil schemes. Plus Japanese and Himalayan dudes

Link to the n*de dudes

I 'm seeing more and more Thai BL series on Netflix.   I like the universe where everybody is gay or bi, and the settings are  sometimes interesting, but the multisyllabic names make research difficult. Try typing "Sailub Hemmawich Kwanamphaiphan" and "gay" into your search engine. And when you do, they never have n*de photos available; I have to make do with random n*de dudes.  I think this one is Japanese, not Thai.  But who can resist a show called This Love Doesn't have Long Beans?

I checked: Long beans, fak yao, are legumes, denser and less juicy than Western green beans, and they grow up to three feet long.  No proverb that I could find.  

Scene 1:  Influencer Prawan is reviewing the No Long Beans Basil House. He only reviews restaurants that specialize in basil stir fry, pad krapao.  This one is unique because they don't include long beans, a traditional ingredient in the dish.  

He praises the atmosphere, the plating, and the food, loudly, annoying the other customers, until Chef Oab, the "Hellfire Chef," asks him to leave.  Then he hates everything, insults Chef Oab, and tries to fight him.  Waiters hold him back.

"You think because you're a great chef, and incredibly handsome, that you can push people around! Well, I'll get even.  I'll leave a bad review, and none of my 13 followers will come to your restaurant."

Scene 2: Shirtless musclemen posing for the camera.  Influencer Prawan bursts in late, and then won't take off his shirt.  "It's a commercial for a weight loss clinic.  We asked for a model with a six pack." "Well..um...I can act."  The director kicks him out.

Next he gets a text from the electric company: he has to pay his bill today, or they're cutting off his power.  But he only has 99 baht (about $3.00) in his bank account.   What can he do?

How about ask his agent for a loan?  No way -- he got Prawan that modeling job, and he was kicked off the set for not being in shape.  "You promised that you'd be in model shape by the beginning of the year!  

Prawan begs for another chance.  His influencer career isn't working out -- no one is paying him to review restaurants.  Maybe if you expanded beyond pad krapao?   

"Just get me one more job."  

"No, you're hopeless."

Scene 3: Back home, Prawan is inundated by bills from creditors and disconnect notices. He goes to his friend JJ's house and announces that he's staying there.

"Only for one night.  After that, you go home."

"But my power's been cut off.  I can't go home."

"I've paid your electric bill."

"Oh...well, they've turned off the water, too..." Har-har.

Scene 3: Chef Oab reviewing a commercial for his restaurant.  First, as one of the celebrity judges on Kitchen Fire Thailand (logo in English), he screams that the pork is undercooked, and tastes awful. Cut to praising how he selects the ingredients for the world's best pad krapao.  Most important: no long beans. Shouldn't that be a matter of taste?  

He's not going to use the commercial.

"But why?  We can make any changes you want."

"Because I'm closing the restaurant.  I've lost my passion."  

"Is it because of your ex girlfriend?"   Cut to him and his girlfriend hugging, gazing at each other, tasting food, and opening their restaurant, with "no long beans" because she is allergic to them.  

"Yes, and also I need money.  I'll sell to the first person who meets my offer."

More after the break

Deli Boys, Episode 2.1: The guys are back, with more wacky drug deals, Andrew Rannells as a squeaky-clean gay DA, and Pakistani d*cks

  

Link to the n*de dudes

The second season of Deli Boys just dropped on Hulu.  I reviewed an episode of the first season, and gave it a B: not enough beefcake, but some gay characters, including Brian George, whom men of a certain age remember as Babu on Seinfeld, as the season's Big Bad.

The Premise: After their father is murdered, Pakistani-American brothers, the hardworking Mir (Asif Ali) and the screw-up Raj (Saagar Shaikh), inherit his deli and DarCo, a company that produces and sells achar (a pickle relish).   Soon they discover that they are actually transporting cocaine to drug dealers in the West Philly market.   Two of Dad's consiglieres, Aunt Lucky and Ahmad (Brian George), show them the ropes of their new business -- until Ahmad, betrays them in a ploy to gain control.  Oh, and he's the one who murdered their Dad.

Scene 1:  DarCo is now the Number #1 cocaine distributor in Philly, grossing $2 million per quarter, but with fame comes notoriety: Every criminal is trying to "jack their sh*t"  So the guys and Aunt Lucky go to Max Sugar's casino to ask for his help in laundering their drug money.

Max (Fred Armisen) resists the idea... whoops, he catches someone cheating with weighted dice, so he goes down to the floor and forces the guy to eat them.  Dude is dangerous!

Back to business: he is extremely attracted to Aunt Lucky, and agrees to discuss the matter further, over dinner tonight.

Left: Not Fred Armisen.

Scene 2: DA Andrew Chadwater (gay actor Andrew Rannells) is running for mayor on a platform of cracking down on "dealers, sickos, and crooks," with the campaign slogan "Say 'heck, no' to drugs."  Sounds like Nancy Regan's "Just Say No" campaign in the 1980s. 

At headquarters, he gets the intel on the latest fad, where you mix cocaine with ices.  His assistant points out that his ex-husband was a cocaine addict, so he has a personal stake in the issue.

"We're not talking about Craig" Chadwater exclaims.  "Did he call?"

"No."

More after the break