Dang!: Dysfunctional Asian-American family, with Andrew Law as a gay brother. Gen Z humor, gross-out jokes, cute gay guys, and Brian Jordan Alvarez..

 

Link to the not-fully-clothed dudes

I've been looking forward to the animated Dang!, about dysfunctional Asian-American siblings, wiith some trepidation.  In one of the scenes in the trailer, Andrew Dang struggles to say something to a burly Hispanic dude in a bodega, knocks over a display, says "I love you!" and leaves in embarrassment.  Sounds like he's gay, but in another scene, he's knocking over furniture in enthusiastic kissing and hugging with a woman, so I'm not sure.  I've been fooled by queerbaiting trailers before.

But it stars Andrew Law, the showrunner of The Family Law, about a Chinese-Australian boy coming out, so we'll give it a try.

Scene 1: Boardroom at the XY Deadstock Company.  Andrew calls a meeting with his disengaged, phone-scrolling "grindset alpha" employees.  His co-owner fires him because "every day you spend hours in the bathroom, eavesdropping on your own employees and tweeting their conversations."

"Can't fire me if you can't catch me!" He runs away in a panic, chased by security guards in a parody of those zany movie chases. One expects to hear "Yackety Sax" in the background.  He runs into Lucille,  Head of HR, who hands him the termination papers.

Scene 2: A purple-haired woman is livestreaming her bread podcast, accumulating coins. If she gets enough, she promises marble rye next. Andrew comes and gets yelled at for interrupting. She notes that she's only doing this until she lands the job at Klerp, Kate Hudson's lip gloss newsletter. 

Andrew being fired will be a major inconvenience for Sister, since he pays for all her stuff. "Go back and fight for your job."

Scene 3: Andrew begs the Co-Owner to give him his job back.  "We're a world-changing company!" "We let teens resell their fanny packs for $6,000.  And you don't do anything."  Who would spend that much on a used fanny pack?  

"My lawyer and I will see you in court!"

"Isn't that just a guy you date?"  

"We only dated once."

Gay identity established at Minute 5.00, but what about the enthusiastic girl-kissing?  Maybe it's bi identity.

Scene 4: Lawyer tells Andrew that they have two options: Prove that the Bathroom Twitter account wasn't his.   "Nope, it was mine."  Ok, prove that he was wrongfully terminated.   His older sister Ruthie texts, so he runs away.

Left: The IMDB and the closing credits don't reveal which actor plays which character, so all I know is that Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jared Goldstein (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) are in the cast.

Cut to Klerp, where Purple-Haired Sister is waiting for her internship interview.  The receptionist offers several wacky perks, like a cranial massage, bone marrow broth, and a bossy therapist: "A gay guy who agrees with everything you say, but goes too far."

She's interviewed by a young teen girl who puts rose quartz in her coffee.  They're ready to hire her, when Andrew appears, gesturing wildly.   "Our Sister Ruthie is in town, and she wants to...ugh...grab dinner!" 

"Don't panic.  We can avoid her until she leaves."

Scene 5: They run back to their apartment to grab some essentials and hide, but she's in the house!  She explains that she's moving to town for her very important, very successful job, so she'll be able to evaluate their tech business and muffin shop. 

Dang, the siblings don't have either of those careers!  "When Little Miss Perfect finds out, she'll be sooo annoying!"

Purple-Haired Sister has another interview at Klerp, so Andrew is in charge of entertaining their sister for the day. She interviews with Kate, who is trying "interminable fasting" and doesn't know what "Cornell" means.

More after the break

Tyler Alvarez: Gay-subtext foster, vandal, blockbuster, and ghost, but is he gay in real life? With two Tyler and four other d*cks, plus Gavin Munn

 

Link to the d*cks

In Minimum Wage Episode 1.2 (2026), thirty Drama Club teens descend upon the pizza place, making impossible demands and being outrageously entitled.  Tyler (Tyler Alvarez), the most entitled of the lot, acts like a stereotypic gay drama club boy, hanging on his bestie, Teala (Teale Dunn).  But he is actually straight; they are dating.

They are reprising their characters from the teen romcom Crush (2022): High schooler Paige pursues her crush, a female track star, but ends up with her sister.  Amid all the lesbian representation, Paige's "gay" best friend (Tyler), is actually straight, with a girlfriend (Teala). 

I wanted to know if the cute (and short) Tyler Alvarez has played any other gay-coded straight guys, or even gay-coded gay guys.

Question 1: Any actual gay characters?

Tyler was born in 1997 to a Dominican-American father and a Puerto Rican mother.  He attended the LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, class of 2015.

While still in high school, he was cast as Diego in Every Witch Way (2014-15), featuring a girl at Hogwarts...um, I mean Iridium High...who discovers that she is the Chosen One.  Tyler plays Diego, a Churi Kanay (who can control the elements).  He's straight.

Next, High School Lover (2017): A 17-year old girl falls for the older Francois Arnaud (d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) and her dad is upset.  Isn't it also a crime?  Tyler plays Larry, her best friend and comic relief.  I read a plot synopsis and an interview, but nobody mentions whether he is gay.  

And Declan on five episodes of The Fosters (2018), about a lesbian couple raising a crew of foster and adopted children.  Declan is a streamer with an implied crush on Jude (Hayden Byerly), who famously came out while in middle school.

American Vandal (2017-18), surprisingly, is not about the motorcycle gang, it's about actual vandalism at a high school: phallic images painted on 27 teachers' cars.  Tyler's Peter Maldonado and his friend Sam (Griffin Gluck) team up to find the culprit.  They don't express any heterosexual interest, and are often interpreted as a gay-subtext couple.

Tyler also played the violent, homophobic Benito on six episodes of Orange is the New Black (2015-19) and Malcolm, a girl's toxic, manipulative boyfriend, on five episodes of Never Have I Ever (2021).

He had a starring role in Blockbuster, which premiered on Netflix in November 2022 and was cancelled in December (but it's still there, in case you want to look it up). He plays Carlos, a "casually queer" video store employee who starts a "he's arrogant!" romance with Damon (Max Lloyd-Jones), culminating with a kiss.

On Ghosts (2023), Tyler plays Ralph, a "basement ghost" cholera victim who dates Stephanie, a victim of a 1980s psych-slasher.  After they hook up, he ascends to the afterlife.

Wait -- I thought this sounded familiar.  Tyler Alvarez is a Short Guy, 5'6".  I posted a profile after I saw him on Ghosts, but deleted it due to low pageviews. 

Maybe a d*ck or two (or three) will push up the pageviews this time?  The one on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends definitely looks like Tyler.

More after the break

Life is Still Unfair: "Malcolm in the Middle" returns, with a super-jerky Malcolm, a n*de Hal, and a nonbinary sibling. Plus Francis and Alex d*cks

 

Link to the n*de dudes

Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006) starred Frankie Muniz as Malcolm, the genius son in a struggling, working-class family with four boys.  I watched mainly because it was inserted into the must-see Sunday night lineup on Fox: Futurama, King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, Family Guy, American Dad. 

 I don't remember many of Malcolm's plotlines, but I liked the delinquent older brother Francis (Christopher Masterson) in military school amid hunky gay-subtext dormmates, then moving to Alaska with his...um...best buddy.

Christopher c*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

And middle brother Reese (Justin Berfield), who had so many queer codes that I expected a coming-out episode -- until the spineless writers lost their nerve and gave him a girlfriend. 

20 years have passed, and three of the four brothers (plus their parents, buddies, marital partners, and kids) are back in a four-part miniseries on Hulu.

Scene 1: Suited 40-year old Malcolm tells a reporter that his company does tech stuff to hook up grocery store chains with food banks, so their unsold merchandise goes to people who need it.  Then, addressing the audience, he brags that he is rich, successful, and infinitely happy. And he did it all by cutting off his family. 

I'm not happy about the "Looking at me, I'm so much better than you!"  And your family was not abusive. Cutting them off is cold.

Scene 2: At the house, Mom Lois is shaving Dad Hal's back hair, while he stands n*de  in front of a laptop, face timing with youngest son Dewey. We're supposed to find this disgusting, but Hal has a perfectly presentable physique for a 70 year old (butt after the break).

Dewey (now played by Caleb Ellsworth-Clark) is performing before King Carl Gustaf of Sweden.  And he brags about his numerous girlfriends. Was the original series this annoyingly heterosexist?

Did you remember that Hal and Lois had a fifth child in a late-series "Why not have a wacky birth?" plot arc?   I didn't, but, but here they are: the young adult Kelly (Vaughan Murrae), who is nonbinary.  

Hal makes a big show of not understanding their pronouns: "We're going shopping.  Does them want to come?"   But Kelly fights back: "Him can't come with we. Us have homework."

In other news, Lois and Hal's big anniversary party is coming up.

Scene 3: On the way home, Malcolm continues to brag about how cutting off his family changed his life: "I don't act like a sociopath.  I'm less angry, more mature. But whenever I'm around them, I revert."  Montage of Malcolm yelling at a family dinner, at a funeral, when his brother criticizes him for bragging about his car.  Now he lives far away, and avoids holiday visits, but a stream of phone calls and emails makes them think that he still cares.

Cut to Hal and Lois at a big box store, looking for a ruby garland.   Craig (David Anthony Higgins), who used to be Lois's boss with a crush on her, pops up to explain why he's no longer working at the drug store.

Suddenly Hal and his old musical group perform an a capella love song -- right in the aisle!    Well, not a love song, precisely: "Your bedroom activity takes me to paradise..."

 I remember that group vaguely -- he's the only white member, but he feels left out because the other guys are more successful.  Didn't they also prank Lois's racist mother?

Musical group member Alex Morris d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Lois is embarrassed by the "romantic gesture."  Could they do something likes, for a change?  

Scene 4:  Back to Malcolm.  He introduces his daughter Leah, "a trophy I won for attending my first kegger in college Her mother left three days after giving birth.  I'm a single father, but I'm good at it!"

Cut to Leah crying in her room.  She addresses the camera, explaining that she doesn't cry all the time. She usually does depressed apathy or rage.

Malcolm wants to know what's wrong: she's isolated at school, with no friends, and Mean Girls prank her. 

"Don't worry, it will get better once you go away to college and cut me off."

Mom Lois calls, insisting that they come to the anniversary party. This is her third text, so Malcolm has to strategize, explaining why he didn't answer the others in a way that makes it look like he cares.

More after the break

Aidan Close: Draco Malfoy's son strips down for his senior thesis, plays an incel and a Civil War soldier, wears a butterfly dress

  

Link to the n*de photos

What is Aidan Close wearing?  A Kermit the Frog outfit that's too big, and sliding off him?

Don't you hate it when butterflies eat the back of your dress?

He wore the butterfly dress for the gala performance of  Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway, where he plays Scorpius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy's son.  Emmet Smith, below, plays Albus Potter, Harry's son.

Adrian:  "I'm so happy the Sorting Hat brought us together."  

Question #1: Are they dating?

Probably not.  Neither post many off-stage photos together. 

Question #2: Are they dating in the play?

A review says that their relationship is "intimate, sweet, and safe," but is it a friendship or a romance?

They are good buddies in the original two-part, multiple-hour play, which sends the two Hogwarts boys on a time-travel adventure: Each gets a girlfriend. It's Harry Potter, you can't say the g-word or the t-word.

But in the paired-down, 3 1/2 hour version more often produced, the girls are platonic pals, and the relationship becomes more or less gay-coded, depending on the director's staging.  

Left: A hug.  They may be a different Albus and Scorpious.  

Left: Anthony Boyle, a previous Albus Potter, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Question #3: Any gay characters?

His theatrical credits include:

Much Ado About Nothing.  There's more or less gay subtext.

Incels and Other Myths, performed at the New York Theater Festival (2023): A teenage boy (Aidan) into online gaming gets pulled into the misogynistic incel subculture. 

More after the break

Why Do Gay Men Like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"?

"Like" is too weak a term.  To gay men of a certain age, it is the movie.  It is more than a movie, it is salvation.

They don't attend the audience-participation midnight showings, with young oddballs throwing toast and rice, yelling nasty, often homophobic lines at the screen, and cheering when the "Frank the Fag" is killed.  They watch at home, alone, a private communion.

 Gay empowerment was not at all what Richard O'Brien intended when he wrote the script of a science fiction-horror musical comedy pastiche.

 If yo're looking for positive LGBT representation, you must overlook or excuse quite a lot:

Frank N Furter is a villain!  He keeps Brad and Janet prisoner, turns them to stone with his Medusa ray, brutally beats his servants, kills Eddie and then serves him to his guests for dinner.  That's not just villainous, it's psycho-killer!

And what do you make of the song "Superhero", which Brad and Janet sing in the wreckage of Frank's lab at the end of the movie:

Superheroes come to feast, to taste the flesh not yet deceased
And all I know, is still the beast is feeding.

Not exactly uplifting, is it?


No one is gay.  The male characters are all bisexual, capable of sexual relations with men and women both, and the female characters are all heterosexual.

The main sexual awakening isn't same-sex, it's Rocky and Janet.

The "don't dream it, be it" scene in the pool isn't gay, it's a pansexual orgy, while Frank is floating on a life preserver from the Titanic.

That pink triangle on Frank's lab coat was not intended to be a gay symbol.  It just happened to be on the coat they bought for a prop.

So how did gay men of a certain age get around all that?

1. They didn't notice Frank's villainy.  All gay and bi men in the mass media of the era were villains, usually psycho killers.  It was business as usual.  You simply didn't notice.

Instead, you noticed the scenes where Frank becomes a sympathetic character, longing for home:

I see blue skies through the tears in my eyes,
When I realize, I'm going home.

Telling about his first drag dreams:

Whatever happened to Fay Wray, that exquisite, satin-draped frame?
As it clung to her thigh, how I started to cry, 'cause I wanted to be dressed just the same.

2. There was same-sex desire!  Even the gay men in the mass media of the era never expressed same-sex desire.  Gay meant feminine and not interested in women, period.  You never saw a gay man with a boyfriend except Jodie in Soap, who was planning a sex change to "become a woman" for him. (They didn't understand trans people, either.)

Then you go to Rocky Horror, and Frank belts out:

A deltoid, and a tricep, a hot groin and a bicep
Makes me shake, makes me want to take Charles Atlas by the....hand.

3. There were bulges!

You rarely saw men shirtless in movies of the 1970s, and costumers tried their best to remove all hints of a bulge.  But Rocky and Brad are both half-naked most of the time, in extremely bulgeworthy outfits.  Male beauty was celebrated, not erased.

4. There was transformation.

I feel released
Bad times deceased
My confidence has increased
Reality is here

After years and decades of being told, over and over, that you, like every man who had ever lived and who ever would live, longed for women and shuned the touch of men, that same-sex desire did not and could not exist, you heard Frank sing:

Don't dream it, be it.  Don't dream it, be it.  Don't dream it, be it.

You left the theater with tears streaming down your face, transformed, literally saved.

I was lost, but now I'm found.  Was blind, but now I see

See also: "A hot groin and a tricep": Nude photos of Peter Hinwood, the original Rocky Horror. With Ian McShane, Morgan Jackson, and Chord Overstreet.

Blair Jackson's Hot Photos, Part 1: Wicked Lips, Fierce Friday, and what happened in Australia in the summer of 2016

This is a collection of hot or humorous photos of actor/model Blair Jackson, who becomes Kelvin's nemesis in Righteous Gemstones Episode 1.4, "Wicked Lips." 

Link to the n*de photos

1. "Do my pits look too big?"

2. "Do my abs look too big?"

3. "What do you mean, I have to wear a shirt to be serviced?  I usually take off my shirt when I want to be...oh, you said 'served.'"

4. What happened in the summer of 2016, stays in the summer of 2016.

5. What happens in the library, stays in library.

6. Thai dreams of thighs.  And shoulders.  And....

More Blair  after the break

Shane Gray: Stunt performer, pole vaulter, boy scout, man's man, with a potential p*enis and some locker room hijinks

Link to the potential p*enis and locker room hijinks

I was running low on Righteous Gemstones cast members to profile, so I checked the stunt performers for Episode 4.1, and found Shane Gray.

He was fun to research because there are a lot of Shane Grays in the world -- an African musician, an Arkansas "husband and father," a baseball player, someone who is recently deceased and extensively mourned on Facebook,  plus the fictional Shane Gray of Camp Rock, played by Joe Jonas.

Our Shane Gray is a "Stunt Man, Stunt Rigger, Action Actor, Eagle Scout."  

He has a very brief Facebook page, some newspaper articles about his boy scouting and pole vaulting, and a Youtube Channel with some audition videos.  Here he auditions for the role of Monkey D. Luffy at the Universal Fan Fest 2025.

He attended Thousand Oaks High School, where he was a pole vaulter (on the right) and had an entry in the Westlake Village Student Art Show.  He graduated in 2022.

He works with his father,  Jason Gray, another "husband and father" who runs his own rigging company and has 200 stunt jobs listed on the IMDB. 

In-your-face heteronormativity?  That explains why I didn't profile Jason.  Plus he has no beefcake photos.  Shane does.

.

The IMDB lists five stunt jobs for Shane.

He was a stunt rigger for the music video Die for You, by The Weekend (2021).

Fire safety in an episode of American Horror Story (2022): he gets set on fire.

Utility stunts in Fade to Black (upcoming), a horror movie starring John Carroll Lynch, Thomas Barbusca, Gavin Leatherwood, and Scott Evans.

Utility stunts in The Wolf and the Lamb (upcoming), a Western starring Zach McGowan (left), Eric Nelsen, Mike Manning, and Elias Kacavas

Stunt performer in The Righteous Gemstones Episode 4.1 (2025)

N*de photos after the break

My 16 favorite Gemstone d*cks, displayed on the show or off

The Righteous Gemstones was unique in its enthusiastic portrayal of men's frontsides, in nearly every episode. Plus a number of the actors who didn't get a chance to show their stuff on the show have obligingly posted pictures on the internet.  Here are my favorites, some huge, some not, but all a pleasure to watch.

Link to the uncensored list

1. Stephen Schneider (left) as Stephen had an affair with Judy Gemstone in Season 3.  Her husband BJ burst into his house, and fought him to reclaim his manhood. The actor was offered a prosthetic, but he wanted to perform with au naturel.  I can see why.

2. Blair Jackson played the boyfriend of Dot Nancy, whom Kelvin Gemstone is trying to draw away from Satan, in Season 1.  Off-camera, he has shown us his stuff.

3. Walton Goggins.  In our first view of the elderly grifter Baby Billy, he stands up in his bathtub to reveal superheroic proportions.  It re-appeared so often in Season 4 that even gay male viewers got tired of it.

4. Stephen Dorf,  who played the nasty, homophobic, and probably gay megachurch pastor Vance Simkins, goes big in a movie from 2005.. 

5. Jak Kriskowski appeared in a scene where Pontius enrolls in military school.  His scene was cut, but Jak joined the army in real life, and has given us a peek..

6, Kelton Dumont, as wild child Pontius Gemstone, was caught with girlfriend and jumped up and tried to hide it. After a lot of photo manipulation, you still can't see much, but I found a few other possibilities.

7. Adam Devine: To our disappointment, Kelvin Gemstone showed his backside quite often, but never his front. Probably because the dude is canonically small, and the actor is obviously not. We've seen it several times in his movies.

8. Cullen Moss as the security guard hot for Gideon's boyfriend Scotty.  He is on display in a 2021 movie.

More after the break.  

Lox Pratt turns subtexts to texts in "The Lord of the Flies"

   

Link to the not fully clothed dudes

Lox Pratt is the breakout star of the 2026 Lord of the Flies tv series.  He brings a snakelike menace to the choirboy Jack, who rebels against Ralph's attempts to maintain order and civility on the desert island, and leads his choirboy/hunters into war-whooping  savagery.

But there is a fragility to Lox Pratt's Jack that is missing in previous versions of the character.  As they prepare for the evacution, the other boys hug their parents, but Jack stands alone on a vast expanse, watching.  

He is so wounded that he can't reach out to others except through manipulation and control.  He treats Simon as an underling rather than a partner, and he has no idea how to act on his friendship with Ralph.  Even when Ralph takes the lead.

All versions of Jack are queer-coded, but Lox seems struggling to push it from subtext to text, from his first appearance as a gay-coded choir uniform, to his last,wearing an animal skin that looks much like a mink coat, eyes downcast as Ralph explains to the rescuing Navy officer, "We were together -- before."

Next Lox will be starring as Draco Malfoy in the upcoming Harry Potter tv series, premiering in December 2026.  He says that while the earlier movies and books were about Hary, this new series will expand on the Potter world.  He was able to dig deep  into Draco's character: he's "not just the sneering bad guy in the corner — he’s got a lot more depth.” 

Johnny Flynn, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, plays Draco's dad, Lucius Malfoy.

Draco doesn't express any interest in girls in the books or the movies, although he has a wife in the culminating flash forward.  Maybe Lox will be allowed to present him with even more gay codes.

More Tom Felton' on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

More after the break

Erik Hesse: Immensely hot Short Guy from Reading, PA, with bad fashion taste, a job hugging athletes, and an eight inch tripod

 Link to the n*de photos

The celebrity p*nis site posted a video,  reputedly of ice hockey player Blake E. in the locker room, shoving his stuff at his teammates (photo on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends). Very impressive, and sort of gay-adjacent. So I researched him.

No social media presence, just his stats: Born 1998 in Macomb, Michigan, 5'9", 181 lbs, a hockey player for the Royals in Reading, Pennsylvania (the one with the railroad in Monopoly).

The n*de dude looks nothing like the real Blake E.  I think he was identified as a prank.  

But who is the hunky short guy with the farmboy innocence and a 1950s haircut?  If Blake is 5'9", he must be 5'8".  

He's journalist Erik J.  I don't like to give the last names of non-actors, but it's German, for an inhabitant of Jesburg, Hesse.  So I'll call him Erik Hesse. 

Erik grew up in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, a commuter town about 25 miles from Philadelphia. In high school, he played baseball until an injury forced him off the team.  He was also a sports reporter for the Knight-Crier. 

He attended Temple University in Philadelphia, graduating a year early, in 2023,  with a BA in Media Studies and Production.

Left: Temple University Campus Recreation.  Do you choose one, or take all four, or...

While at university, Erik worked as a server at the Texas Roadhouse and an anchor for OwlSports, and apparently won two Emmies.

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: I couldn't find any n*de Temple students in my files, so I posted one from. 

More after the break