Robert Rhodes: The visual difference hasn't kept him from playing a dragonrider, a cultist, and a thug. Or from finding a boyfriend (or two).

 

Link to the not fully clothed photos

In House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel, the crowning of King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) has led to civil war in the Medieval fantasy world of Westeros, and several dragons left without masters. In Episode 2.7  (2024), a group of Dragonseeds is  ordered to try to claim them.   

Silver Denys (Robert Rhodes) volunteers to go first, but as he reaches out to touch Vermithor the Bronze Fury, it breathes fire on him. Most of the other dragonseeds are likewise demolished. Finally a blacksmith named Hugh managed to trick the dragon into obedience.

Silver Denys was on screen for only about a minute, and had no lines, but he became the subject of extensive fan debate.  Was he brave or foolhardy?  Some fans also criticized his appearance: the stage makeup was amateurish, not realistic, grotesque, an obvious symbol of his parentage, and so on.  Others stepped up to "defend" him: it's his real appearance, he's  "d*formed."

Robert called them out: "Call it a scar or a difference. The word d*formed isn't very pleasant and insinuates I am half formed/incorrectly formed.  I'm not incorrect, just a bit different."

For a long time, Robert responded to the stares with anger, but now, if he's not tired from telling the story 1,000 times a day, he'll say "Is there anything you want to ask about?"  

The story: he was born with a congenital melanocytic nevis -- a birthmark that covered half his face.  Doctors worried that it would become cancerous, so he spent his childhood in and out of hospitals, undergoing tissue expansions and skin grafts.  He had his last surgery at age 17.

When he was in high school, Robert realized that he was gay, and worried that he'd be doubly stigmatized when he tried to make connections.  Would he ever be able to find a partner? Was he going to live as an perpetual outsider among his own people?

Then he auditioned for Hairspray -- and won the part of Link Larkin, the hunky heartthrob  (played by Zac Efron in 2007 and Garrett Clayton in 2016).   That's when he decided to become an actor, to have people look at him for his hotness and acting talent, not for his scar.

After high school Robert attended the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in South London, where he received a B.A. in Performance in 2018.  He started filling up a resume with acting roles:

Commercials for Enterprise  and Kandar 

The lead in the music videos Heroist (left)  and God for a Day 

Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame 

Bill Sykes in The Invitation 

It was a little harder to break into on-screen acting.  Robert is an ambassador for Changing Faces UK, which combats the stigma around people with visible difference.  Especially in mass media, where they are portrayed as "shy, broken, desperate" outcasts, or more commonly as villains:

Kylo Ren in the Star Wars universe

Tony Montana in Scarface   

Scar in The Lion King

The Joker.

So he tries to find roles where his visual difference is irrelevant to the character.

 His first  professional acting role was in a tv adaption of the Agatha Christie novel Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022).  Will Poulter plays as a golfer who stumbles upon an injured man. His last words are "Why didn't they ask Evans?" I don't know what Robert's character does.

More after the break

"Knight of the Seven Kingdoms": Some bare backsides, some d*cks, and queerbaiting in this magic-free prequel to "Game of Thrones"

   

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I turned off Game of Thrones (2011-2019), a fantasy series on MAX, after the first five minutes.  First Peter Dinklage remains fully clothed as he does stuff with a non-fully clothed lady.  He chats with her over a closeup of her stuff before leading her to his bedroom, where three more not-fully clothed women are waiting.

Then Emilia Clarke gets not fully clothed so her brother can feel her stuff in close-up twice.  When he leaves, her backside fills the screen as she steps into the bathtub.

Ugh.  This was impossible!

But I heard that the prequel, The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2026), features a gay-subtext buddy bond between a Hedge Knight (Peter Claffey who played the straight guy in the gay-friendly Wrecked) and a character whose name I don't recall (the names all sound alike).  I'll give it a try, but the first bouncing breasts, and I'm outta here.

Episode 1, Scene 1:  A Hedge Knight (not attached to a prince) is digging a grave for his mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb, d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  Isn't Pennytree one of those "everything for a dollar" stores?

It's raining, because even thousands of years ago in a galaxy far, far away, tired cliches rule: it always rains at funerals.  

Hedgie takes the guy's sword, because why bury it with him, and asks his horses what they should do now.  Maybe enter a tournament?  Why can't you keep on being a hedge knight?

He pauses to get not fully clothed, and does bathroom stuff.  Nice backside, but we actually see the results coming out. 

Scene 2: Hedgie approaches a inn, and orders a bald boy wearing a dress to take care of his horses.  The boy sneers and insults him.

Mr. Grant: "You got spunk.  I hate spunk!"  

The inn is empty except for a guy who is passed out drunk, because everyone is gone to the tournament at Ashford.

Uh-oh, the drunk guy comes to and says "Stay the f*ck away from me!", brandishing a knife.  Hedgie is shocked, but doesn't engage, and the guy stumbles up to his room.  I assumed that this was the gay-subtext boyfriend, but the guy doesn't appear again.  This scene was just padding. 

Scene 3: Hedgie catches the Bald Boy on his horse, playing at being a knight, and yells at him.  The Boy wants to come along as his squire; Hedgie refuses. 

"Please?  You're poor,  incompetent, and very stupid. You need a squire."

"Nope."

They will eventually get together.  But this isn't the boyfriend -- actor Dexter Soll Ansell is only eleven years old.  And not bald in real life (the character has shaved his head to avoid being identified as the Chosen One, I think.  His biography on wikipedia is endless and exceedingly complex.)  

Scene 4: Off again.  Don't they have roads in this world?   Hedgie reaches the tournament, a lot of tents in the middle of nowhere, with people doing artisan-style work, like at a Renaissance faire.  He meets with the Master of the Tournament, who thinks he doesn't look like a knight. 

"I'm a knight,  Ser Dunk, knighted by Ser Arslan of Pennytree."  Ser Dunk, har har.  Better than Aslan.

"Never heard of him.  Are you sure you were knighted?"

"Um...um...sure...as his life was ending, Ser Arslan performed the ritual."  We don't see it happening in a flashback.  I think Ser Hedgie is bluffing. 

Master notes that knighthood is sacred.  If you lie about your knighting, they hang you by your hands and feet and lower you onto a sharpened stick.  Could we see that?

Then he laughs.  He was just kidding about the sharpened stick, but you need someone to attest to your knight master.  Would anyone here know him?

"Sure, Ser Manfred of the House of Dodarrion."

"If he vouches for you,  I'll let you enter the tournament."

Scene 5: Outside Ser Manfred's tent: Two pleasure ladies tell Hedgie that the Ser is napping.  They think he's come around because the Ser did things with  his wife, and then mock him for being a hedge knight; "He's got to sleep in hedges because no Lord will have him."

This hurts Ser Hedgie's feelings.  "No need to say mean things!" 

"Toughen up!  The Ser will awaken by evenfall (dusk).  Come back then."

Scene 6: At the practice pavilion, the redheaded a-hole Ser Steffon (Edward Ashley) bests the teenage Raymun (Shaun Thomas. right), kicks him, and curses him, then sees Hedgie watching and yells the Medieval equivalent of the "What are you looking at" threat.  I don't like how their names are almost but not quite English. Shows lack of creativity. 

Raymun  tells Hedgie that he is the A-hole's cousin and squire: "You look pretty hot...um, I mean cute...no, strong! Would you like to fight him?"  Hedgie refuses, and Raymun vanishes.  Darn it, I thought he was going to be the boyfriend.

Scene 7:  At evenfall, Ser Manfred is still not awake.  The pleasure girls fling some more insults, but Hedgie fights back, sort of: "Why are you being so mean?"  

"Aww, don't cry.  We insult all men. It's part of the job." Apparently guys really like women who dislike them.

More after the break

"The Wizard of Id": 1970s satire comic strip with buddy-bonding, a gay knight, and "The President...um, I mean the King... is a fink"

During the early 1950s, Brant Parker, a political cartoonist living in Binghamton, New York, befriended high school student Johnny Hart, and encouraged him to submit his cartoons to magazines.  

Hart placed a few in The Saturday Evening Post, but his big break came in 1958, when B.C., a comic strip about sarcastic cavemen, was picked up by Comic Creators’ Syndicate.  Soon he was being lauded as the most promising of the new crop of hip young comic artists.  

Always an iconoclast, he presaged Doonesbury in introducing political satire into his daily strips.  In his  later years, he became a fundamentalist Christian, and started having his cavemen voice his beliefs.  How do prehistoric cavemen even know about Good Friday?  

A few years later, Hart approached Brant Parker, who had remained a close friend, and again breaking tradition, asked him to collaborate on a strip about the sarcastic residents of a Medieval kingdom; The Wizard of Id began in 1964, and continues today, the work of Brandt's son Jeff Parker and Hart's grandson Mason Mastroianni.

We didn't get the strip in the Rock Island Argus, but I found it in dozens of small paperback collections published during the 1970s: The Peasants are Revolting ("you can say that again"), Remember the Golden Rule, The Wizard's Back, Every Man is Innocent Until Proven Broke, I'm Off to See the Wizard ("you'd have to be").

Though named after the inept Wizard,   Wizard of Id is an ensemble strip, involving the daily interactions of many strongly drawn characters: 

Tiny, blustering King Id

Troub, a hippie troubadour

Bung, the drunken court jester

Spook, who has been in the dungeon for so long that he is a mass of  hair

Tthe Lone Haraunger, who scrawls his slogan, “The King is a Fink,” under the King’s nose

Robbing Hood, who “takes from the wretch, and gives to the peer”

Rodney, a cowardly knight.  

Id is a decidedly male preserve where women are demonized or simply ignored: the Wizard’s wife Blanche is the fat, ugly harridan who figures so prominently in the sets of Borscht Belt comedians, and the Lady Gwen has no strong personality traits, and seems to exist simply to express an unrequited love for Rodney.  Eschewing the heterosexual hijinks that preoccupy the minds of most characters in non-nuclear family strips, from Peanuts to Garfield and even Johnny Hart’s earlier B.C., residents of Id spend most of their time buddy-bonding.  

When Rodney is released from a curse that turned him into a statue, it is Bung, not the Lady Gwen, who joyfully reunited with him.  

Yodey, a dumb but massive squire, treats Rodney with an admiration that treads the line between hero worship and romance.  Even the King, who never expresses interest in women, rarely appears without Rodney or the Duke at his side.

The buddy-bonding alone  made The Wizard of Id a welcome relief from the "girls! girls! girls!" we saw on tv, in movies, in comics -- well, everywhere else.  But it gets better: there's a gay-vague character.

More after the break

Male Nudity in English Class: The Canterbury Tales

During my junior year in college, I heard The Word in my college class for the first time.  My Culture and Civilization of Modern Germany class was devoted to proving that no German ever wrote about homosexualitat, but the professor in my Chaucer class, a big, hoarse-voiced woman named Dr. Dorothy, thought that The Canterbury Tales was all about how terrible "homosexuality" was.

Ok, but the Pasolini adaption of The Canterbury Tales had the most impressive male nudity I had ever seen at that point.  I can't show a picture here, but those guys were huge.


















The Pardoner, one of the pilgrims who tell stories on the road to Canterbury, was thin and willowy, beardless, with long yellow hair and a high pitched voice.

"An effeminate homosexual!" Dr. Dorothy cried, obviously delighted to say a forbidden word.  "How grotesque!"

Ok, but look at the Squire: a powerfully built young man of about twenty.  But instead of jousting and fighting dragons, he spends his time dancing, singing, and embroidering, quite feminine pursuits. He is a "lover and a lusty bachelor," so busy having sex that he doesn't sleep much at night.  Yet who does he have sex with?  Chaucer leaves this vague, but traditionally squires were devoted to the knights they served.






In The Miller's Tale, a parish clerk named Absolon is infatuated with the Miller's wife, and asks her for a kiss through a peep-hole.  Instead, the Miller shoves his bare butt through and farts in Absolon's face.  But Absolon gets revenge by shoving a red-hot poker into the Miller's butt.

"Symbolic homosexuality!" Dr. Dorothy cried, enjoying the shocked expressions on the students' faces. "How humiliating for the Miller!"

Ok, but look at The Knight's Tale, about two bosom buddies, Arcite and Palamon, who are both in love with Emily.  A classic triangulation, with the quarrel over the girl an impediment to their love, which is described in lushly romantic terms:

Sworn as we are, and each unto the other,
That never, though for death in any pain,
Never, indeed, till death shall part us twain.

Medieval literature was filled with men in love, like Roland and Oliver.  Shakespeare and John Fletcher used the same story as the basis for The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634), here performed by Tyler Neale and Tim Elliott.

A Knight's Tale (2001), starring Heath Ledger, tells a different story, but it does feature a nude Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany), plus a gay couple, the Knight's humorous sidekicks, Roland and Wat (Mark Addy, Alan Tudyk).

As I discovered in my classes in Modern British and American Literature, you can't always believe what you hear from a college professor.

See also: Pasolini's Canterbury Tales: More gay characters and cocks than Chaucer imagined

"Superman" (2025): You'll believe a man can queerbait

Pasolini's Canterbury Tales: more gay characters and cocks than Chaucer imagined

Link to the cocks

The Canterbury Tales (I Racconti di Canterbury, 1972) is my favorite of Piers Paulo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life (others include The Decameron and The Arabian Nights), maybe because the set-up and many of the stories are familiar from my college claasses, so I don't get lost in the abrupt sedgeways.

And because I saw it last of the three, so some of the cast was familiar: Pasolini's lover Ninetto Davoli as a comic-relief buffoon, Franco Citti as someone morose and frightening,  Although I'm still annoyed by the closeups of random people with bad teeth grinning at the camera for no apparent reason, and the groups of people sitting around singing for no reason.

There is less full-frontal nudity than in the others, but for some reason the penises on display are much more impressive. The biggest of the lot -- probably the biggest portrayed in any film anywhere -- belongs to John McLaren.

Pasolini includes adaptions of 8 stories:

1. The Merchant's Tale: An old man gets a young wife, who is having an affair with Damian,  Oscar Fochetti, so two naked teenage gods (left) decide to have a little fun with them. While a naked boy plays the flute.

2. A new tale: A professional blackmailer, who has just turned a man (Philip Davis) over to the authorities for a same-sex relationship, meets the devil.  The execution of the sodomite is uncomfortable to watch, especially when one considers that similar atrocities are still happening in the world today, but at least the blackmailer gets his comeuppance.

3. The Cook's Tale: The foolish Perkin (top photo), channeling Charlie Chaplin, invades a wedding, hangs out with the guys, and has a three-way relationship with a man and his wife.

More after the break

Prince Valiant

During the 1960s, the Rock Island Argus printed mostly depressing 50-year old comic strips with jokes about husbands hating their wives or friends betraying each other, with little bonding (Out Our Way was an exception) and very little beefcake. Alley Oop and Prince Valiant were exceptions -- 50 years old, but muscle-heavy.

Prince Valiant was a color strip that appeared only on weekends.  Like Gasoline Alley, it featured characters aging in real life, but it was unique in having no speech balloons; text appeared at the bottom of each panel, making the strip seem more like an illustrated novel than a comic.

When it first appeared in 1938, Val was a young prince from Thule (modern day Norway) who traveled to Britain to become one of King Arthur's knights. Later he returned to Thule to help his father regain his throne, then traveled across Europe and Asia, fighting Goths and Huns, visiting the Holy Land (long before the Crusades).  By the 1960s, the middle-aged Val had settled in North America.

Generally Medieval fantasies (and real epics like The Song of Roland) offer little beefcake; knights wear shining armor, and their northern climate doesn't permit much skinny-dipping.

Sigfried in The Nibelungenlied gets naked, and Sir George in The Magic Sword (1962),  and Lancelot (Nicholas Clay) in Excalibur (1981) take their shirts off, and that's about it.  But in Prince Valiant,  Val was shirtless more often than not.  His muscular physique was drawn in full color and in loving detail.

Unfortunately, through the 1960s, Val retained a 1930s page boy haircut, red lips, rosy cheeks, and long lashes, giving him a rather feminine appearance that didn't lend itself to romantic fantasies.  The name "Val" didn't help much.

And there was little buddy-bonding.  During the 1930s, Val sparred with rival prince Arn of Ord, but they became little more than grudging friends.  In fact, the main plotlines involved the fade out kiss.  First Val and Arn competed for the hand of the fair maid Ilene.  Then she died in a shipwreck, Arn was dropped from the strip, and Val turned his attentions to the fair maid Aleta.

They married, and in 1947 their son Arn was born (the first European baby born in North America).   Eventually they had three more children. When I started reading the strip in the 1960s, Arn was a mischievous teenager, but soon he, too, married.

 Hal Foster, the original cartoonist, also drew Tarzan for many years.   He died in 1982, but the strip is still going strong.

Darkover

In Marion Zimmer Bradley's  Star of Danger (1965), which I first read in 1978, a sixteen year old Terran named Larry visits Darkover, a melange of feudal kingdoms where telepathy is common.   Although cautioned not to leave the Terran sector, he does anyway, and meets the native boy Kennard. They quickly develop a Jonny Quest-Hadji sort of friendship, but their parents are suspicious and hostile, and forbid them from seeing each other.

The two are as disconsolate as any star-crossed lovers.  “I don’t like to say goodbye, Larry,” Kennard stammers. “I like you. . .I wish. . .” He takes Larry’s hand between both of his, and Bradley informs us that “Larry didn’t know for years how rare the gesture was.”

In spite of Dad’s admonition, Larry sneaks out again, and he and Kennard reunite, only to be captured by evil mercenaries.  They escape, but must cross the dangerous planet together,  facing more mercenaries, monsters, brigands, savages, and other dangers, always risking their lives for each other.  At one point they realize that they have a psychic link, and share a moment of intimacy rare in science fiction: “Kennard reached silently for Larry’s hand. . .the clasp slid up Larry’s elbow until their arms were enlaced as well as their hands.  It was a sign not alone of friendship but of affection and tenderness.”

Nevertheless, at the end of the novel Larry goes back to Earth for high school, and Kennard remains on Darkover.  Alone.

Hungry for more same-sex romance, I read all of the Marion Zimmer Bradley novels I could find.  And I found Heritage of Hastur (1975), in which Regis Hastur, attending private school on Darkover, desires his roommate, Dani: “he literally ached to slip across the brief space between their beds, slip into bed beside him, share with him this incredible dual experience of grief and tremendous joy.”   But Dani is a cristoforo, or Darkoverian Christian, so “of course” he condemns same-sex relations as evil, and Regis must keep his passion to himself.

As  Regis and Dani cross Darkover, rescuing each other from various evil fates, including the noisome pederast who seems to simper about in many science fiction novels, they recognize that they are in love.  Dani admits that he was always been in love with Regis, but was cowered by his internalized homophobia: “I was so ashamed. . .I wanted to die for  you, it would have been easier."

But when I first read the novel, I did not even realize that Regis and Dani were lovers , so squeamishly does Bradley tiptoe through the subsequent climax and denouement. The social forces of the 1970’s conspired to keep her inarticulate, me inobservant, and Regis and Danilo trapped by a heteronormativity that made their relationship trivial, expendable, and in the end shameful.  Nevertheless, there is none of the homophobia one finds in Ursula K. Leguin, and The Heritage of Hastur is the first novel I ever read in which men identify themselves, however tentatively, as “lovers of men.”

"Werewolf Castle": Mostly Gay Actors, Mostly Shirtless Scenes, and a Dead Wife

 

Werewolf Castle (2021) has popped up among my Vudu recommendations.  The trailer shows a werewolf eating a girl while Medieval villager Thorfinn (Peter Lofsgard) looks on in horror, but after that it's all beefcake and bonding -- seven shots of the shirtless Thorfinn, plus a scene where another guy grabs his arm.  Besides, who knows who the girl is?  She could be his sister, his mother, or a random villager. 

I'm still worried that I'll fork over $3.95 for a rental and spend two hours watching Thorfinn fight werewolves with his shirt off, only to see him fall in love with a girl.  Time for more research.

1. Getting pictures of his shirtless scenes proved impossible.  There are none on Google Images, and screen captures didn't work with Chrome or Firefox.

2. If "Peter G. Lofsgard" is the same as "Peter Lofsgard," he has a boyfriend.

3. Six of the top-listed stars on IMDB are men.  I am particularly interested in the buddy-bonding potential of Percy, played by Jake Watkins. 

Jake Watkins is also gay.

4. Or Osmond Blakewood (Derek Nelson).

Derek Nelson has lots of pictures of women on his Instagram, so he's probably straight, but he has a bedroom-cuddling shot with Peter Lofgard in Vampire Virus 

5. A second trailer on IMDB shows the girl getting werewolf-ized three times.  Once she's in bed with Thorfinn.  So the dead wife or girlfriend drives the plot!  Boo!  

6. A review on Dread Central complains about having a "flamboyant" gay-coded villain, Wolfstan (Reece Connolly, who is gay and flamboyant in real life).  Maybe it's not a stereotyped gay villain so much as the luck of the draw: when you hire mostly gay actors, some of them are bound to be swishy.

7. Who is hiring all of these gay actors?   Writer/director Charlie Steeds has produced 15 movies, including A Werewolf in England, Vampire Virus, Death Ranch, An English Haunting,  and Escape from Cannibal Farm.  They usually have a heterosexual-romance primary plot, with gay characters or gay subtexts in the background.

I've now spend more time on research than it would take to watch the actual movie.  But sometimes research is a lot more fun.

"Crossing Swords": The Gay Wedding Episode

 

Crossing Swords is an Adult Swim-style raunchy animated comedy parodying Medieval romance.  The schtick is that all of the people are pegs, with no arms or legs.  When they hold something, it appears in space next to them -- which becomes a problem when there are two people, and you can't tell who is holding what.  

The central character, idealistic young squire Patrick (Nicholas Hoult, left), negotiates various scheming, manipulating, and sexually adventurous courtiers, as well as his ne-er-do-well siblings: the pirate queen Cora; clown Blarney; and Robin Hood-type outlaw Ruben (Adam Ray). I reviewed the Season 2 episode "Destination Wedding."

Scene 1: Patrick escorting  King Merriman (Luke Evans) and his family across the desert to an Egyptian kingdom, where they are trying to form an alliance by marrying their squire Holden to Prince Rami IV.  

Scene 2:  Everyone is partying.  The dimwitted squire Broh yells out a congratulations: "I hope you wreck that dude tonight!  Or that he wrecks you!  I'm unclear on your relationship's sexual dynamics."  Holden doesn't look happy.  Patrick is suspicious.

King Merriman asks Patrick for help on his speech; the Queen gets drunk; the Princess ignores her own arranged fiance.  

Scene 3: The rehearsal dinner.  King Merriman begins his speech with "Webster's Dictionary defines sodomy as...", but Patrick quickly jumps in and changes the cue cards to "a celebration of true love."

Later, Patrick overhears Prince Rami complainng: "I don't want to marry some swampland duke's son."  The Pharaoh reassures him: "it's just until tomorrow night." Uh-oh.

Patrick seeks out Holden and asks "Um...is everything ok between you and Rami?"  "Of course.  I love his money...um, I mean him.  You're just jealous because I'm marrying a prince."

Scene 4: King Merriman discovers that one of the waiters is a deposed king!  The Pharaoh has been conquering kingdoms and forcing the royalty to work in humiliating jobs, like wedding caterer. 

Meanwhile, Patrick guards King Merriman's wedding present: an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus that his grandfather stole years ago, glammed up with jewels.

Suddenly his outlaw brother Ruben appears.  It seems that he fell in love with Holden when they hooked up last season, so he's going to disrupt the wedding.  But Patrick's job is to make sure the wedding goes smoothly!

Scene 5:  Everyone watching centaur races. Ulp -- Outlaw Ruben is masquerading as a centaur!

A drag show.  Ruben swings down on a robe, but grabs the wrong person.

The bachelor party.  Ruben masquerades as a stripper. Patrick throws him out.  "He looks like,...someone I knew," Holden muses.  He turns to Prince Rami, who is having sex with another guy.  "Maybe I'll just go to bed."

Scene 6:  The wedding guests start to arrive,  Patrick is exhausted from trying to keep Ruben away from Holden for the last 24 hours.  

Back stage, Holden is practicing his vows: "Rami, this is the richest relationship I've ever been in...you make me feel secure...financially. I just wish you wouldn't have sex with other dudes all the time."

Suddenly Ruben bursts in and declares "We were meant to be together!"  Holden agrees -- but that won't stop him from marrying Prince Rami's money.  

Scene 7: Guards lock the door.  Half the wedding guests are mummies.  Patrick realizes that the wedding was just a ruse to conquer the kingdom and turn the royal family into servants.  He rushes to warn Holden, who dismisses him: "You will not upstage me on my wedding day."  

Then Ruben bursts in: "Stop the wedding!  I have...feelings!"  As the guards seize him, Holden has a change of heart.  He tells Prince Rami, "I do care for you...r money, but I'm in love with someone else."  

The Prince acknowledges that he was never really in love with Holden: "You think a prince with this ass would marry a squire with your ass?  You're not my type.  I like twunks -- a cross between a twink and a hunk."  

Patrick tries to calm everyone down by bringing out the wedding gift: the stolen sarcophagus of the Pharaoh's great-grandfather.  When he opens it, the mummies all come to life and attack the wedding guests. 

Patrick uses the confusion to help the royal family escape.  Ruben saves Holden.

Scene 8: On the way home.  The King and Queen make fun of the tackiness of the wedding.  Ruben and Holden make out.  Patrick is disgusted.  The end.

(Only eight scenes because I omitted the B Plot about Pirate Queen Coral's gambling debts).

Beefcake:  If you like chests painted onto pegs.  There are also peg-penises.

Gay Characters: Holden appears in only two other episodes, but he's presented as gay in both. Ruben is an ongoing character.

Homophobia:  None. Everyone is completely nonchalant about gay people. Patrick is disgusted by the two guys making out in front of him, but probably because they are being very expressive, and they're all riding on the same camel.

My Grade: B.

The Magic Sword

On Saturday afternoons in the 1960s, if there was no sports match on, WQAD tv played science fiction movies.  Usually the same movie.  I saw snippets of it many times -- ten or fifteen minutes in between homework and going out to play -- but not enough to figure out the zany plot.

It was something about a young knight in a Prince Valiant haircut, who sneaks out on his witch-mother, goes on a quest to rescue a princess, gains companions who die in various gruesome ways, and then is captured by a wizard in an genie outfit.  Everyone looks frightfully embarrassed.

The witch had a rather cute servant, whose two heads spoke in unison.

The wizard was accompanied by a woman with an ugly face, who collected "little people for the stew."

There was also an egg-headed servant with a doleful expression.

It was dreamlike and surreal, like watching a story that everyone in the world knows intimately, but you've never heard of.

But I endured the craziness for a scene near the end, when the boy is strung up in the dungeon, his shirt torn off.  A stunning smooth glowing chest, tightly muscled arms and shoulders.

Twenty years later, when Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed it,  I finally discovered that the movie was The Magic Sword (1962), a loose adaptation of the legend of Sir George and the Dragon.  The witch was played by famous British actress Estelle Winwood, and the wizard by Basil Rathbone, who was well known for starring in a series of Sherlock Holmes movies in the 1930s and 1940s.

The boy strung up in the dungeon was 25-year old Gary Lockwood, who would enjoy a long acting career.  He is probably most famous for developing psychic powers on a 1965 episode of Star Trek and getting chucked out of the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  And, of course, for providing a glimpse of beauty on dull Saturday afternoons when there was no sports match on.

The First 10 Hunks and First 35 Heterosexual Romances of "The Wheel of Time"

And you thought The Lord of the Rings was over-long.  Robert Jordan's fantasy series The Wheel of Time spanned 14 books, plus companion volumes, a role-playing game, and now a tv series on Amazon Prime.  I wanted to see if there was anything gay, lesbian, or queer in the series.  I'm going in fresh, with no exposure to the books.

Scene 1: A naked woman gets dressed during lengthy plot exposition, which I ignored.  In Creative Writing 101, the first lesson is: "Show, don't tell."  

Scene 2: Some women on horseback chasing two men up a mountain (nice scenery).  When they catch them, Young Man (Roman Dvorak) yells "Don't hurt him!  It's not his fault!", but he turns out to be alone.  The head woman explains that the Power is for women only, and he touched it, so he must die.  She kills him with her mind.

On top of the mountain, Lan Mandragoran (David Henney) and Moiraine something or other are watching.  "He's not the Chosen One," Moraine concludes.  Ya think?  "Let's check the Two Rivers next.  There are supposed to be four ta'vera there." I'm guessing ta'vera are men who have the Power.

Scene 3: A woman named Edwene or something (I really hate these names) is being initiated into the Woman's Circle.  First they braid her hair; then they throw her off a cliff into the river!  She survives, but still, it seems a bit barbaric.

Scene 4:  An elderly farmer and his hot son Rand (Josha Stradowski) bringing wool to town to sell.  Uh-oh, Rand has a thing for Edwene, the girl who was just initiated into the Women's Circle.  No doubt hetero-romance is forbidden!

Scene 5: Establishing shots of a village.  Looks like early Middle Ages.  People frolicking in a pub, including Rand the Farmer's Son, Gambler Mat (Barney Harris, left), and Perrin (Marcus Rutherford, below).  They discuss their various heterosexual interests and the rumors of war.

Suddenly Edwene comes in.  Everyone congratulates her on a successful initiation (she didn't drown). Rand gives her a Girl-of-His-Dreams gaze.

Boots come walking in the door.  It's Lan Mandragoran and Moraine from Scene 2, searching for the Chosen One!   Everyone is terrified and obsequious, as if Moraine is the boss, the school principal, and Darth Vader all rolled into one.  When she leaves, Perrin scoffs: "She doesn't look like a God of Infinite Power!"  "Quiet!" Rand tells him. "She can hear you!"

Scene 6: A woman working at the forge.  Perrin comes in and asks why she didn't go to the initiation ceremony earlier.  "I love you," he says.  "I know."  Girl, that's harsh!  You have to say it back!

  

Scene 7: Back at the pub, the barmaids wonder what Moraine the Great and Powerful is doing in their village.  The boss (Michael Tuahine) asks Rand the Farmer's Son and Egwene to finish cleaning up ("I'll just leave you two alone, hint hint).

They smooch.

Scene 8:  Moraine the Great and Powerful taking a bath.  Lan Mandragoran joins her.  We see his butt as he climbs into the tub. He thinks the water is too cold, so she warms it.  (That's what she uses infinite power for?).  They discuss a disturbance in the Force -- the Chosen One is close by!

Scene 9:   Rand getting dressed after sex with Egwene (shirtless shot).  Egwene has an invitation to become Nyaenve's apprentice, but Rand disapproves: "Being a Wisdom is lonely.  No husband, no kids."  No same-sex marriage in this world, I take it.

Scene 10:  Hooves come clomping into town, at night, in the rain.  Could it be Gandalf?  We don't know: we switch to a candy-seller named Padan (Johann Myers) driving around wishing everyone a happy Bel Tine (could you get any closer to Beltaine?).

Then we switch to Perrin and his girlfriend or wife in bed together.

I'm out.  It's heterosexual couples all the way down.  But in case you are interested, here are a few more hunks from the series.

Alvaro Morte appears in four episodes as Logaine Ablar, an Asha'man of the Black Tower and a False Dragon.  

Taylor Napier appears in four episodes as Maksim, one of Alana Mosvani's warders.  He doesn't appear in the books, but Maksim, Alana, and the other warder Ihvan have a polyamorous bisexual relationship.  Although they're never actually shown kissing. 

Peter Franzen appears in three episodes as Stepin, warder to Kerene Nagashi, who leaves the White Tower with her when she is sent by Tamra Ospenya to find the newborn Dragon. He is murdered by the Black Aja.  Aren't you sorry you asked?

Dierich Bouts: Medieval Beefcake Painter

A scary monster is carrying away a naked guy.  I guess we're supposed to feel terror, but when I was a kid and saw this painting in my friend Greg's house, the only thing I could think of was "I can see his wiener!"

It was just a small painting in his father's study, so I didn't see it often, but it was memorable, probably because my reaction was so different from the one expected of me.

I just tracked it down: A segment of  La chute des damnes (The Fall of the Damned), paired with L'Ascension des élus (The Ascent of the Elect), painted between 1468 and 1470 by Dieric the Elder, now in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, France.

But don't get excited. There are a few butts, but no more wieners.

We don't know when Dieric Bouts was born (probably between 1410 and 1420), or where he studied (his work suggests the influence of Flemish painter Rogier van den Weyden).

We know only that he became the "official painter of Leuven" (now in Belgium) in 1458 or 1459, that he was commissioned to do a lot of portraits and religious art, that he married twice and had four children, and that he died on May 6th, 1475.

And that he was interested in muscular male bodies.








Check out The Martyrdom of St. Hippolyte, the center panel of a tryptich that Dierich painted for the altar of the Sint Salvator Kathedral in Brugge about 1470 (now in the Groningen Museum).

Looks like the same guy as the one being carried away by a demon.

His beefcake model got a monk's haircut in The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus, the central panel of a tryptich in the Sint-Pieterskerk in Leuven.

Dieric definitely had a type.

His two sons, Dieric the Younger and Aelbrecht, both became painters.