Evan Mulrooney: Tony's gym boyfriend, an Albanian c*cktwizzler, a Trad Husband, Jar-Jar Binks' hookup. Is he gay or just pretending?

I find a lot of gay actors to profile from the gym buddies that Tony Cavalero posts about.  Today he worked out with Evan, whose Instagram is full of muscle pics and humorous POVS, like "Top Three Spots for a First Date in Wilmington, Delaware." One involves searching for the Mud Man in Dupont Marsh Fields.  I found a Dupont Environmental Education Center, but nothing about a Mud Man cryptid anywhere.

I guarantee that you have no idea what he means by "perfect protein snack."  Hint: it starts off with baked cottage cheese.

But  I need to know if he's an actor -- Tony often works out with civilians.

Success!  11 acting credits listed on the IMDB, more on his professional resume, plus two interviews.

Evan is Evan Mulrooney, who grew up in an "unstable household" in Wilmington, Delaware (he still suffers from general anxiety disorder).  

He attended the Salesian School (private, Catholic) and University of Maryland on a football scholarship, but some torn knees and concussions suggested that sports was not a viable career path.  

After graduation, he  moved to Chicago, where he studied at the Acting Studio  and the Annoyance Theater. 

Evan's theatrical credits include: 

Steamworks: The Musical, about the legendary gay bathhouse

Shitfyre: The Musical, a retelling of the Fyre Fest debacle (according to Google AI, "a disastrous music festival that failed due to poor planning and execution).

It’s Christmas Goddammit!: "a dark comedy about a truly dysfunctional family"

Queer Eye: The Musical Parody, presented by Second City.

At least two gay roles there.  

In 2022, Evan moved to Los Angeles.  He has 11 or 13 on-screen credits, depending on who you believe, including:

Crime boss Joe Bulo as a young man in four episodes of Fargo (2022)

Agron Darke, an Albanian mob enforcer on a 2023 episode of Justified: City Primeval.  The shooting script has him complementing Raylan's hat.  A mark calls him a "no-neck Albanian c*cktwizzler," and his brother Besnik says that "he's sensitive, like a woman."  So maybe he's got some gay hints.

Vinnie Caccimello in four episodes of Only Murderers in the Building (2025).  He's not in the cast list, but he may be the son of missing dry cleaner Nick Caccimello.

The movie Start without Me (2025), not listed in the IMDB: "Adam, a former musician (Finn Wittrock), and Marissa, a flight attendant with marital issues, embark on a life-changing Thanksgiving road trip."  

So Evan played at least one gay-subtext character in his tv work, and has at least one probable n*de photo.

More after the break

"Chicago Party Aunt," Episode 1.5: Free-spirit Diane tries to help repressed Daniel get his first kiss. Will it be with his dentist?

 

Free spirit paired with stick-in-the mud, "life is a banquet" paired with "that's not a good idea", "it's only 2:00 am" paired with "I have a big test tomorrow," has been traditional comedy since the days of Laverne and Shirley and The Odd Couple, In this case, it's Chicago Party Aunt on Netflix, pairing the free-spirit middle-aged Diane with her stick-in-the-mud 18-year old nephew, Daniel (Rory O'Malley, left). 

 I watched Episode 1.5, "Halloween Circle": Daniel tries to get his first kiss at a Halloween party.   No hope that either of the two regulars will be gay, but there might be some gay friends at the party.

Scene 1: Diane takes Daniel to get his first fake id: you have to order "two Chicago hot dogs" at a restaurant, then go through a secret door through the kitchen, a meat locker, another secret door, and into the basement, where a gangster-type offers the id for "his usual fee": a kidney.  Just kidding: $200.

Scene 2: Breakfast in their apartment. Oatmeal for Daniel,  Kahlua for Diane.  They discuss the upcoming Halloween party at Roscoe's, the best gay bar in Chicago.  Daniel is excited about his "first queer Halloween."  Daniel is gay!  I'm speechless!

Turns out that Rory O'Malley  is gay in real life.  I could have gotten that from the IMDB, which notes that he married Gerold Schroeder in 2014.

Daniel wants to get his first kiss from a random hot guy at the party: "I'll go up to him and say 'Would you like to kiss?."  That won't work, dude.  

Diane gives him some cruising tips: open with a joke, then a compliment, then a smouldering look, then the kiss. 

"I can't stay out late because I have a dentist appointment tomorrow.  Ugh!  I hate it when Dr. Gluck make jokes with his hand in my mouth."

"Cancel it!  Tonight you're going to get more than a hand in your mouth!"   

Scene 3: The hair salon where Diane works. Everyone wearing Halloween costumes. Diane bursts in and asks if they are going to the party tonight.  No, they have other plans.  

So who will Diane party with while Daniel is cruising hot guys?  "Why not ask Gideon?"

"Gideon??? That boring wet blanket?  No way!"  

Gideon, the salon manager (RuPaul), happens to be standing behind her, and criticizes her for her substance abuse and reckless behavior.  Hey, he sounds like Daniel's type.  Hint, hint.

Scene 4:  Daniel working at a coffee shop that sells beet juice and green algae.  I thought he was a teenager?  He tries cruising a hot guy, and fails miserably.   

Meanwhile, Salon Manager Gideon is on a lunch date with a guy he met on a dating app, who is discussing his bizarre diet, then: "So, any fun plans for Halloween?"  

"Face Time with my Mom back in Georgia," Gideon says.  His date is not impressed.

Back at the coffee shop, the manager asks about Daniel's lame cruising attempts.  He says that he's hoping to kiss someone tonight.  Manager advises against taking cruising advice from raunchy Aunt Diane: "She calls me Vanilla Lice, and I'm pretty sure she crop dusted the nut cheese aisle."  I don't know what that is.

More after the break

Burr Tillstrom: The Gay Puppeteer of 1950s Children's Television

Before The Cartoon Network, before Sesame Street, even before The Mickey Mouse Club, in the earliest days of television, kids (and adults) rushed home every afternoon to see the adventures of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, two puppets and their human host.  They may never have realized that there was a hunky 30-year old man behind the set, manipulating the puppets and providing their voices.

They certainly never knew that he was gay.

Born in 1917, Burr Tillstrom began the art of puppetry in college, and created the perpetually-surprised Kukla in 1936. Other characters followed, but it was the laconic Ollie (Oliver J. Dragon) who became the clown in the comedy team, a formula that extended from Laurel & Hardy to Martin & Lewis, Abbott & Costello, and in children's tv, Rocky & Bullwinkle.

In 1947, he teamed up with the vivacious Fran Allison (1907-1989), and they began the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie tv series, a daily half hour (later diminished to fifteen minutes) on Chicago's WGN.

Themes and storylines were compelling, and not necessarily for kids. They performed mysteries, science fiction, and even the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta The Mikado, with Kukla as Nanki-Poo, Ollie as Ko-Ko, and Fran as Yum-Yum.

The program drew many adult fans, including Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Lillian Gish, James Thurber, Judy Garland,  Talulah Bankhead, and Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim, who wrote Kukla and Ollie a song, "The Two of You."

 During the tv season, Tillstrom lived in Chicago, in an old coach house that he remodeled with the help of his partner, Joseph Lockwood Jr. (left), also the stage manager and the costume designer.  They spent the summers in Europe or in the gay resort of Saugatuk, Michigan

After the program ended in 1957, Tillstrom and Allison continued to perform with the Kuklapolitan players.  They starred in a Broadway show, appeared in Side by Side with Sondheim, hosted the CBS Children's Film Festival, and appeared live at the Goodman Theater in Chicago every Christmas.

Tillstrom died in 1985, before gay identity was regularly acknowledged, so his New York Times obituary and his Wikipedia entry both keep him closeted.  But the gay communities of Chicago and Saugatuck knew.  In 2013 he was inducted in to the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

By the way, gay people seem particularly drawn to puppeteering, perhaps because they often live in a world of masks. 

Bronson Pinchot: A gay icon of my childhood turns out to be straight. Then it gets worse. But at least we see his dick

For many years, tv has disguised gay couples as heterosexuals with some other reason for being together -- they work in the same office, or share an apartment, or are brothers.  So censors, skittish network executives, and shrieking homophobic audiences remain clueless, but if you're "in the know," the gay subtext is obvious.

Bronson Pinchot broke into film as Tom Cruise's buddy in Risky Business (1983)..  After several years of playing swishy gay-vague characters, such as Dennis on Sara and Lloyd in After Hours, he was cast in the gay-vague buddy sitcom Perfect Strangers (1986-1993).  He played Balki Bartokomous, an exuberant free-spirit from the faux-Greek country of Mypos, who descends upon his stick-in-the mud distant cousin Larry (Mark Linn-Baker) in Chicago.  You can anticipate the the standard "let's do something wacky"/"but I have a dentist appointment" plotlines.

It's supposed to be a brief visit, but the two end up falling in love, their affection explained as fraternal love, and Balki stays on.

I watched during the first season when Perfect Strangers led into Head of the Class and Night Court on Wednesday nights.  A surprising number of plotlines could be read as negotiating a same sex romance.

Larry: "Balki is cute and all, but how can I build a future with someone who doesn't even know how to fill out an IRS Form 1088-B?" 

Balki: "Larry is good in bed, but he's so shy and reserved. How can I draw him out of his shell?" 

Apparently the network had a problem: the guys were too obviously a gay couple.  So during the second season plotlines increasingly involved dating girls, culminating in steady girlfriends Jennifer and Mary Anne (Melanie Wilson, Rebeca Arthur).

Obviously a screen.  Could they be sitting farther apart on that couch?

More after the break.  A lot more.

The Netflix "Good Times" Sequel: Still stuck in the projects, still too skittish to admit that gay people exist

 

When I was a kid in the 1970s, we gathered in front of the tv almost every night from 7 to 9 pm: my parents, my brother and sister, often a friend or two.  But we weren't staring empty-eyed, becoming brain-dead. We were reading, playing, doing homework, and talking.  It was family time. I still tear up when I hear, or think of, the theme songs.

One Day at a Time: This is it.  This is life, the one you get, so go and have a ball.  This is it, rest assured you can't be sure at all... 

Alice: There's a new girl in town, and she's looking good.  There's fresh freckle face in the neighborhood. Things are great when you stand on your own two feet...

And Good Times: Anytime you make a payment.  Anytime you meet a friend.  Anytime you're out from under, not getting hassled, not getting hustled....ain't we lucky we got 'em...good times.

And they were good times.

It was the story of an impoverished black family living in "the projects," probably Cabrini Green in Chicago: Dad James (John Amos, known as the adult Kunta Kinte on Roots), Mom Florida (Esther Rolle); goofy, artistic JJ (Jimmie Walker); driven, intellectual Thelma (Bern Nadette Stanis), and black activist Michael (Ralph Carter, top photo, a major crush).  

I don't remember many plotlines: in those days you could only see an episode when it aired, so you missed a lot, and those you saw, you saw once and never again.  But I remember that JJ and Michael shared a bed, fueling my early-teen gay vibes; and Michael was usually dour and depressed, beat down by the institutional racism that would inform his life, just as I was beat down by the incessant "what girl do you like?" interrogations.  

The show had a lot off-stage problems.  Both John Amos and Ester Rolle disapproved of increasingly buffonish, mistrel-like direction that JJ's character was taking, and wondered why the Evans couldn't move out of the projects into a nice working class home. They were both written out.  But the story had a happy-ish ending, with the family moving on up: JJ a professional comic book artist, Thelma married to a pro-football player, and Michael in college.  

After the curtain fell on the Evans family, we moved on to other programs, and didn't think of them often.  In West Hollywood, I saw John Amos at the gym regularly, but we never actually spoke  Jimmie Walker came out rather vocally against gay marriage. Ralph Carter was living with HIV, but didn't say anything in public for fear that people would think he was gay.  

Eventually those of us who watched as kids and teenagers were approaching retirement age, and most of the adults were gone. This is it -- this is life, the one you get, so go and have a ball.  Then for some reason, Netflix decided to run a ten-episode animated sequel, set in the same Cabrini Green-ish housing project, starring Reggie Evans (JB Smoove), the grandson of the original James Evans, so either JJ or Michael's son.  But JJ became a famous artist, and Michael went to university -- they escaped the cycle of poverty.  

His wife Beverly is scheming social climber - in the projects?  They have an artist son, Junior (Jay Pharaoh, left); a social activist daughter, Grey; and instead of Michael, a drug-dealing baby, Dalvin (Slink Johnson).

Before the first episode aired, BernNadette Stanis, who played Thelma, was complaining because none of the original cast were involved, and because they pitched the show as progressive, but it wasn't progressive at all.

The Hollywood Reporter called it "Coarse and unpleasant..with none of the warmth and charm that defined Good Times

But I won't shun the new Good Times without at least watching the trailer.

Scene 1: Cabrini Green, with the wacky, slanted building style that one sees in old cartoons.  We cut to the family in their living room. Grey has great news. Junior asks if that the state is going to pay her disability due to her ugliness. Reggie kicks himself for not wearing condoms.   

Scene 2: While playing pool, Reggie tells us about Grandfather James, but skips his own father -- is it JJ or Michael?  We cut to him beating up Grey's boyfriend. 

Scene 3: Junior is repeating 10th grade for the third time. Mama just wants him educated enough to get a job "on the drive-through." Teacher suggests monetizing his feet for fetishists.  Gross.

Scene 4: Mom prays to Black Jesus. We cut to heaven, where he is playing video games.  God hands him the phone. 

Scene 5: Reggie is happy because he doesn't have "that drug-dealing baby" to deal with anymore.  We see the baby in his carriage, selling drugs to a big-breasted women.  He drools with hetero-horniness.  Ugh!  Even the baby is hetero-horny?  

Scene 6: Rats run through garbage as a woman complains that Reggie's neighborhood is a shit-hole.  "It's the system. They put the guns and drugs on the street."  In fact, government-looking white guys are carrying baskets full of guns and drugs into the project.

Scene 7: Montage of a girl taking off her top while Junior gawks, a woman pointing a gun at the baby, Grey pole-dancing with big-butt women; a well-dressed prostitute delighting her coworkers with her bling; a naked woman's butt being slapped; Reggie being electrocuted at a museum; and the prostitute yelling "Dynomite!", JJ's catchphrase on the old show.  Reggie: "We're just as good as the Evans of old." But you have 10 times more objectification of women's bodies, and you're still too skittish to admit that gay people exist.

Scene 8: At the dinner table, Junior asks "What about the struggle?" Grey shrugs: "We're black.  It will be here tomorrow."

But I won't be watching.

See also: John Amos: The guy from Roots and Good Times naked at the gym

This F*king Town; with some celebrities I hooked up with,.um, I mean met

Stephen Grush: From Pericles to Ryan Phillippe, with gay subtexts and nude photos of practically everybody

 

Stephen Louis Grush has over 30 credits on the IMDB, often in projects that emphasize gay subtexts, or texts.

In Catch Hell (2014), two toughs (Stephen Louis Grush, Ian Barford) kidnap a Hollywood actor (Ryan Philippe) with the intent of torturing and killing him.  They do a lot of torturing, but Junior (Stephen) also falls in love with him.

In Gracepoint (2014), Stephen plays a plumber's apprentice who may be gay, accused of murdering a small boy.

In a 3-episode story arc on Rectify (2016), focus character Danny (Adan Young) is out of prison and living in a halfway house.  His roommate Manny (Stephen) walks around naked and masturbates in front of him; this is particularly upsetting because he was repeatedly raped in prison.  But Manny won't stop.  Finally Danny tells the house leader about it, expecting the guy to be kicked out.  Instead, they give him a new roommate.

 Stephen graduated from Roosevelt University in 2006 with a B.F.A. in Theater Performance.  Primarily a theatrical perfomer, he has appeared on the Chicago stage in The Seagull, Pericles, The Tempest, Lifeguard, Sex with Strangers, The Last of the Boys, and some plays without homoerotic content.  Plus he is the artistic director of XIII Pocket, which produces and performs original plays by Chicago-area playwrights.

There are nude photos of Stephen in the NSFW version of this post.

The Land of Ziggy Zaggy

 

When I was in kindergarten, first, and second grade, we lived in Racine, Wisconsin, 70 miles north of Chicago.   I have only a few memories from that period: going to the beach a few blocks from our house, going to the zoo, marrying the boy next door, my second grade teacher making me stand in the corner for refusing to square dance (she wouldn't believe that it was forbidden for Nazarenes, and at the age of 7 I was in no position to ask the preacher to telephone her).

And a very weird memory of my Dad being proud of me for watching a children's tv program.

Dad was in his late 20s, just out of the Navy, rather athletic, a stalwart Democrat and an avid Nazarene.  He worked on the assembly line at the J. I. Case Company, a job he would keep for the next 30 years.

The memory is vague:  Dad is sitting on the couch, half reading the newspaper, half snoozing, so he must have just gotten home from work, around 4:00 pm.  My brother and I are watching tv.  

Mom comes in from the kitchen and asks "What do you want to watch now?  Romper Room?"

"No," I say.  "The Land of Ziggy Zaggy."

Dad looks up.  "Ziggy Zaggy?  What kind of kookie show is that?"

Mom changes the channel, and we see a woman walking onto the stage, singing about the mystical land.

Dad laughs.  "Ok, I get it now!  You're starting early, just like your old dad!  A chip off the old block!  Come up here and sit by me."

I sit on the couch, and he puts his arm around me.  I'm thrilled.  Dad is usually kind of critical,but today I'm a chip off the old block!  I did something right, something that made him proud of me. But what?

50 years later, I don't remember anything about the show except for a woman singing an invitation to visit "The land of Ziggy Zaggy."  That title doesn't exist, but after a few searches on alternates (zaggo, zongi, zuggi), I found it:

It was a local Chicago children's program, The Land of Ziggy Zoggo. Also called The Nancy Berg Show, after the host.  Short lived, 1963-65.  We only moved to Racine in the summer of 1965, so I must have watched at the end of the run, just before I started kindergarten.

There's a full episode on youtube.  Very amateurish, painted backdrop for a set, only one performer.  Three sketches, about 5 minutes each.

1. Miss Nancy visits a Middle Eastern country, where she meets a Go-Go Genie (herself) selling magic carpets in a parody of talky used-car salespeople.  She buys the carpet, but it doesn't fly!  She criticizes herself for being conned, then kicks the carpet.  Now it works!  She then flies through the clouds while singing. 

2. The kimono-clad Miss Sukayaki (Nancy again), with a stereotyped "Ah so" accent, goofs on the  "ancient Japanese custom of flower arrangement." 

3. Miss Nancy flies a balloon to the African jungle to show film footage of various animals: a rhinocerous, a lion, a leopard.

No beefcake, no buddy-bonding, actually no male characters, but the exotic locations must have been appealing to me as a kindergartener.  And maybe the hint of social satire: you may get conned by a fast-talking salesperson.

But why was Dad so pleased?  Why was I "starting early" and a "chip off the block" for wanting to watch The Land of Ziggy Zoggo?

After watching the episode, I conclude that he was pushing heteronormativity at  me.  He assumed that, at the age of  4 1/2, I was crushing on Miss Nancy.  

"The Bear": It took 3,430 f-words to realize that this wasn't about gay bears

The Bear, on Hulu (originally on FX): everyone knows that a bear is a hairy, chunky gay man.  Plus the icon for Episode 8 looks like two guys holding hands.  On close inspection, they are not, but still, they're quite chummy.  Is it a gay-themed series?  Searching for "The Bear" and "gay" of course yields 35,000,000 hits, so I'll have to review an episode to be sure.  I chose Episode 4, "Dogs," in which Carmy and Ritchie work together.

Intro: Someone's hands making donuts.  The promo said that this was a meat restaurant, "The Original Beef of Chicagoland." No, it's Roecker's Bakery.

Scene 1:  Behind the store, a slim bearded guy (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, left) is putting a t-shirt on a a giant inflated hot dog.  Curly-haired guy with ugly tattoos (Jeremy Allen White, below) asks why.  "Because fucking kids love fucking hot dogs, dumbass."  "I know, that's why we fucking sell fucking hot dogs."  "We're bringing this fucking hot dog to the fucking kid's party we are catering, so shut the fuck up, fucking dumb ass."  I doubt that these guys are boyfriends. About 300 "fucks" later, we get the gist: they borrowed money from a gangster, so they're catering the kid's party to avoid getting their legs broken.

They try to get the hot dog into their car, but it doesn't fit.  They begin cursing at each other (more) and throwing punches.  Not only are they not boyfriends, they actively hate each other.

Scene 2:  In the bakery, the Chef has prepared a new chocolate cake.  Sydney, a woman, tastes it and pronounces it "ok." He is thrilled.   Sydney asks another employee about the mashed potatoes (essential in a bakery), and is told to "I have been in this kitchen since before you were born, so fuck off." I'm getting nauseated from the "fucks," so I'll substitute f***."    

Scene 3: The hot dog guys on the highway.  Slim guy is laughing hysterically over a video in which "this f**ing guy tries to f** up a f***ing little nerd, and the f*** little nerd just f***ing washes him!  F***!"  I give up.  Just assume that 3/4ths of the dialogue consists of the F word.  Ugly Tattoo guy cautions him to not bring up the stuff about Cicero (a person, not the Chicago suburb.) Cut to Cicero and Slim Guy yelling at each other.  

Scene 4: As they set  up for the birthday party, an old guy approaches Ugly Tattoo -- Carmen.  "I thought  you killed yourself." "No, sir, that was my brother."  Slim guy -- Richie -- takes a pill for his anxiety.  He didn't bring ketchup because only f* assholes put ketchup on hot dogs.  He also wants to know why Carmen brought all this "gay-ass fruit."  

Not only are they not a romantic couple, they're f*** homophobes.  I'm out.

The producers must be so homophobic that they never heard of gay bears, so they didn't expect any confusion.  Or they don't care.

By the way, Richie gets top billing, and Carmen third.  Second billing goes to "Pete," played by Chris Witaske of the comedy series What Men Want.  I'm guessing the answer is "women."

"The Red Line": Gay, Black, Muslim, Asian, Non-Binary, Boring

During a hard night of saving lives in the ER, young, attractive doctor Harrison Brennan (Corey Reynolds) chats with his husband and daughter back home.  Later he stops into a convenience store for a gallon of milk.  A robber bursts in, assaults the clerk, takes money, and leaves.  Harrison rushes to perform first aid.  Then Officer Paul Evans (Noel Fischer) bursts in and shoots him in the back.

Did I forget to mention that Harrison is a young black man wearing a hoodie?

The police are 30 times more likely to kill an unarmed black man than an unarmed white man.  Stereotypes associating "black" with "danger" and "threat" make them likely to shoot in situations that would seem perfectly innocent if the person was white.

The Red Line (2019), on CBS and Vudu, explores the impact of the shooting on "three families".  Actually four interconnected groups.

Harrison's family and friends:
1. Husband Daniel (Noah Wyle, left), a high school history teacher, who is still hearing "How are you holding up?" six months later.  When Paul is exonerated for the shooting, he files a civil suit.

2. Jira (Aliyah Royale), their daughter, who has to hear "I understand what you're going through" from well-meaning white people.   Suddenly saddled with just one father, and a white guy at that, she starts searching for her birth mother.















3. Liam (Vinny Chhibber), their friend and Jira's teacher.  Who, by the way, is the first South Asian, Muslim, gay character on network tv.  .












Jira has two friends of her own:

1.Riley, who is non-binary (played by non-binary trans-masculine actor JJ Hawkins, left).  There are so few non-binary characters on tv that you'd think they would get some showcasing, but they don't do much besides say "I'm here for you."

2. Matthew (Rammel Chan), who doesn't do much.  But the actor is very interesting, a science fiction writer and improv artist.  I'm following him on twitter.

Jira's birth mother:
1. Tia, who s running for alderman (city council) on a "stop shooting black people" platform.  Her campaign gets complicated once word gets out that her biological daughter is associated with the "shooting while giving first aid" case.
2. husband Ethan (Howard Charles).

Remember Officer Paul?
He's affected by the shooting, too.  He has to wear a disguise due to protests, and he had to move, but he's exonerated by his superiors, and his coworkers praise him: "You did your duty!"  He is never actually shown feeling guilty over the shooting, or even regretting it; he believes that he acted appropriately under the circumstances.  His unconscious racism is never addressed, at least in the two episodes I watched.

His famly and friends include:
1. Work partner Vic (Elizabeth Laidlaw).

2. New partner Diego (Sebastian Sozzi, left), who tries to tone down his "all black people are violent" hand-on-gun-during-traffic-stops aggressiveness.

3. Brother Jim (Michael Patrick Thornton), a former cop who is in a wheelchair, and has "got your back."  The actor is paralyzed, but uses a walker.

Other than the aggressive diversity of the cast, there's not much to see here. People making pronouncements and feeling things, talking points writ large.

Manking the victim a saint was stacking the deck a bit.  All black lives matter, not just the ones made palatable to white folk.

Gay Symbolism in Chicago

I went to high school in the midst of the disco era, when everyone was carrying around boom boxes, practicing complicated dance moves, and listening to songs about the night life:
I love the night life, I want to boogie on the disco floor.
Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother, you're staying alive
I should be dancing

And the groups we listened to were all flash and glitter, with bare chests and bulges, promising crazy nights of sexual excess, flirting with androgyny, asking us to wonder "Could he be gay?"

Except for Chicago, some guys with guitars and drums, wearing regular  shirts and jeans -- no bare chests, no bulges.

No androgyny, all married to women and following sports.

 Their no-nonsense, hetero manly albums (mostly entitled Chicago) had a subdued beat impossible to dance to and lyrics that you actually had to listen to in order to understand, mostly stories about pain and loss.

And, paradoxically, obviously without their intention, full of gay subtexts.  Girls rarely mentioned.  The lost love could be male or female.

April 1975, just after Dan and I broke up, "Old Days":
Take me back to the world gone away
Memories
Seem like yesterday

August 1975, the beginning of my sophomore year at a new high school,  "Brand New Love Affair":

It's no good to be all alone

When you hurt a friend

And you both feel empty

What I'd give to erase the pain

Will we ever make friends

June 1976, just after my date with the King of Sweden, "Another Rainy Day in New York City"

Another rainy day in New York City

Softly sweet, so silently it falls

As crosstown traffic crawls

Memories in my way in New York City,

July 1976, just after my first sexual experience, "If You Leave Me Now"

If you leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me.

September 1977, the beginning of my senior year"Baby, What a Big Surprise"

, Yesterday it seemed to me

My life was nothing more than wasted time

But here today you've softly changed my mind

May 1978, during the angst-filled month before I figured "it" out, "Take Me Back to Chicago"

Take me back to Chicago
Lay my soul to rest
Where my life was free and easy
Remember me at my best

Chicago, the Musical: Skip the Movie, See it on Stage

I hate the movie version of the musical Chicago (2002), directed by Rob Marshall.  It's set in the Jazz Age, but there are no scenes set in  speakeasies or vast Great Gatsby-style estates, or streets clogged with Model-Ts and movie marquees advertising Rudolph Valentino.   It's completely stage-bound.

There's no beefcake, not even an undone button, just lots of women in slinky leather outfits gyrating like exotic dancers.

And the lesbian angle is only hinted at, briefly.

The plot: during the 1920s, Roxy Hart (Rene Zellweger) is arrested for murdering her lover, and sent to Cook County Jail in Chicago to await her trial.   She becomes a cause celebre, and draws the attention of glitterati lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), to the consternation of his previous client, celebrity murderess Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

Velma and Roxy begin competing to see who can gain the most celebrity. When another murderess hits the news, Roxy ups the ante by getting pregnant (or pretending to).  Velma counters by sabotaging Roxy's case.

Finally Roxie is acquitted, but she misses the limelight, so she and Velma team up to do a celebrity-murderess act.

Yawn.  Why couldn't Richard Gere at least have taken his shirt off?

Fortunately, the stage versions take care of those problems.

Well, it's still stage bound, of course, but prison matron Mama Morton is definitely a lesbian, who helps Roxy in exchange for sexual favors.

And there's lots of beefcake, male dancers along with the women strutting their stuff with fedoras and jazz hands.

Not to mention shirtless, muscular Billy Flynns played by Jerry Orbach, Ben Cross, James Naughton, Christopher Sieber, Patrick Swayze, Billy Ray Cyrus, Taye Diggs, Adam Pascal, Mark Fisher, Joel Warren, Tony Yasbeck, David Hasselhoff, Tom Wopat, and Gregory Harrison.

You're not going to see a high school or community college production anytime soon, but it's worth checking out in the various national tours.