The Lost Bus: Why did my partner choose this verkockten angst-fest for Movie Night? With McConaughey cock, ten hunks, and "Que sera, sera"

Link to the n*de photos 

This week my partner Bob chose the movie for Movie Night, while I was still in the kitchen putting artichoke hearts on my salad: The Lost Bus (2025).  I didn't even get a chance to read the description, but we almost always watch science fiction, fantasy, or horror, anything paranormal, so I figured the bus would be lost on a creepypasta highway that never ends. 

Scene 1: The horribly run-down, drought-ridden town of Paradise in northern California.   Matthew McConaughey, the hunkoid we recall from Dazed and Confused, Angels in the Outfield, and Boys on the Side, is almost unrecognizable as a grizzled, depressed school bus driver.  He drops off kids at their houses. There are only six left.  Then three.  Then none.

"Wait -- is he going to get lost on the never-ending highway by himself?"  I asked.

"This isn't a paranormal movie."

No paranormal?  Well, that's ok.  Sometimes we watch comedies -- but this is definitely not a comedy.  Or mysteries, if there's a gay character.  So Matt's character is gay, and an amateur sleuth.  

Scene 2: The extremely depressed Matt finishes his run, parks the bus at the bus yard, and asks the dispatcher for an extra shift.

Matt's backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends. He shows his d*ck on-screen two or three times (as in The Lincoln Lawyer, below), but it's too small to make out much.

"Sorry, but drivers with seniority get the first choice of the extra shifts, and you've only worked here for five minutes."

"But I'm desperately poor, and I have several dying relatives who need medicine!" 

"Everybody who works here is desperately poor and has dying relatives.  Next!"

Fuming with rage over the "injustice," Matt storms out, gets into his beat-up car, and zooms down the country roads.

This doesn't feel right.  I put it on pause.  "So the dispatcher is going to be murdered, with Matt the prime suspect?"

"This isn't a murder mystery," Bob said.

And Matt's character is pure redneck.  There are redneck gay men in real life, but in movies they all live in Manhattan and own twelve pairs of shoes.

Not a mystery, not a comedy, no paranormal, no gay character. WTF... 

"Tell me he's not going to kidnap the kids.  I don't do movies about kidnapped kids, crying and holding teddy bears.  I was traumatized by the kidnapped boy whose Mom was singing "Que sera, sera" I can't even hear that song without screaming.  Let's watch something else."

Left: The boy was Christopher Olsen, in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).  I saw the scene while my parents were watching it on tv.

"There's no crime in the movie," Bob told me.  "It's a thriller. Number #1 on Apple Plus this week."  He took it off pause.

Scene 3: Matt the Straight Redneck arrives at his run-down dirt farm.  His dog greets him weakly.  He gets a call saying that the cancer has spread, and "It's time."

"Ok, that's it!" I exclaimed.  "I definitely don't do dogs dying of cancer movies.  Turn the darn thing off, now!"

While we were watching something else,  I looked up a plot synopsis: the desperately poor, dying dog, fuming over injustice stuff is a misdirection (also the disabled mom and sick son that we hadn't gotten to yet).  Matt is going to be heroic, saving a busload of kids and The Girl (America Ferreira) from a forest fire.  

"I just read a plot synopsis," I told Bob.  "It sounds awful.  Why did you choose that movie, anyway?"

He shrugged. "It sounded good, and Matthew McConaughey is hot." 

Beefcake is a legitimate reason to watch a movie, but I checked -- Matt is so busy dealing with dying loved ones and saving terrified children that he doesn't have time to take off his shirt.

No one else does, but I'm going to look for beefcake and nude photos of the top ten hunks of this verkockten movie.

1. Matt.

2. His 18 year old son Levi, making his screen debut as Matt the Straight Redneck's estranged, sick son.

Levi is probably gay, but he has no other acting credits, so I can't look for gay characcters, and as of this writing he's only been 18 for a few weeks, so I can't look for nude photos. 

More after the break.

"Ugly Betty": The Gay, Transgender, and Racial Diversity Has Not Aged Well

I've been re-watching Ugly Betty (2006-2010), the soap opera/comedy adaption of the Colombian telenovela Betty la fea, about a Latinx girl of unconventional attractiveness (America Ferrara} who gpes to work in the svelte, "new now next" world of fashion magazine Mode.  The two worlds, working-class Queens and the upper East Side upper-crust, compete, collide, and merge in humorous or heartbreaking ways (this is a soap opera,after all).

Alhtough only 10 years has passed since the series ended, our  world is completely different, and Ugly Betty has not aged well.

1. The executive producer, some of the writers, and halfof the cast was Latinx.  The show won Alma awards for Hispanic representation.  But some of the depictions of Hispanic persons are cringeworthy today.  They're not all crass, gauche, loud, and flashy.

2. I find it a little annoying that Betty is supposed to be la fea, but she has to beat off the suitors.  In the first season, she has an on-off romance with a Queens boyfriend and Mode accountant Henry (Christopher Gorham, below), and gets several other suitors.

2. Women, especially women of color other than Betty, are scheming, manipulative, devious, underhanded, and treacherous. Mode creative director Wilhelmina wants to become editor-in-chief, a job for which she is exceptionally well qualified.  But magazine mogul Bradford installs his ne-er-do-well son Daniel (Eric Mabius, top photo), who knows nothing about fashion (except how to bed supermodels) and doesn't even want the job, except as a chance to prove to his father that he's not a screw-up. Wilhelmina is the villain, a veritable Wicked Witch of the West.

Other scheming women of color during Season 1 included: Sofia (Salma Hayak), who tricked Daniel into falling in love with her so she could write it up as the lead article in her magazine; and Constance (Octavia Spencer), the case worker of Betty's father Ignacio, who develops a wacky Fatal Attraction obsession with him.


3. Gay men are even worse.  In the first season, there were only two, both  flamboyant, flitting, fabulous fashion plates (plus a straight guy who pretended to be fabulous to get all of the wonderful benefits that gay people get, har har): Betty's nephew Justin, who doesn't actually come out until Season 4, in spite of his mother constantly saying how suppportive she is;and Wilhemina's "flying monkey" assistant Mark. She demeans, belittles, berates, and gay-bashes him every chance she gets, making it obvious that she ccnsiders him less than human.  She even "sells" him to a competing rich bitch.

4. The representation of transgender people is still worse.  Daniel's older brother Alex disappeared for two years and was assumed dead; then he returns as Alexis. It takes awhile,but eventually the other characters get used to she/her pronouns. But everyone, even Alexis, believes that she changed gender rather than confirming the gender identity she had all along: "I used to be a boy, but now I'm a girl." 

And "they cut it off," which is not at all what happens in sex confirmation surgery.

And back when he was a boy, Alex dated and had sex with girls, because, you know, everybody with a penis likes girls.  Now that she has "changed into girl," she dates boys. That's not how it works.  Your sexual orientation doesn't change along with your genitals. But heteronormativity and all that.

Did I mention that Alexis is even a bigger villain than Wilhelmina?

I still like the show, but it's amazing how much the world has changed in just 10 years.

See also: The Heterosexual Gay Kid of Ugly Betty

Chris Gorham: Sometimes Gay, Sometimes Blind, Always an Ally

Back in 1999, the WB tried to get on the teencom bandwagon with Popular (1999-2001), about two high schoolers, the popular Brooke and the outcast Sam, who become unwilling siblings when their parents marry. It was actually more of a dramedy, with suicides and life-threatening illnesses, and some storylines of gay interest: a boy wants to become a cheerleader; their shop teacher has a "sex change"; a gay student gets harassed.  It ended on a cliffhanger, with Brooke apparently killed by her rival Nicole.

It was not very popular, but that may be because the target audience of adolescents was not home on Friday nights, but it did give us the hunky Christopher Gorham as the dying Harrison John.




Chris had already played a gay character, the "sexually confused" Elliott on Party of Five, went on to star in other gay-positive tv series: Felicity (2001-2002), Out of Practice (2005-2006), and Ugly Betty (2006-2010).

It was while playing Henry the nerdish accountant on Ugly Betty that Chris first took his shirt off on camera.  Many viewers were shocked by his buffed physique, and assumed that there was some special-effects trick going one.

This angered Chris's wife, Anel Lopez Gorham: "You've looked like this forever," she complained.  Why is it so hard to believe that he has a great physique?

Don't worry, his clothes have come off a lot since.

The Ledge (2011) is about the fundamentalist Christian Joe (Patrick Wilson), who doesn't like his wife's lover (Charlie Hunnam, left), especially the fact that he's an atheist, so he forces him onto the ledge of a high rise to see if he is still an atheist when facing death.  Chris (right) plays Gavin's roommate, whom Joe doesn't like because he's gay.

Chris is currently starring in Covert Affairs (2010-), as a blind CIA agent who takes off his shirt a lot.

He and his wife are strong supporters of marriage equality.  He explains: "We’re an inter-racial couple. It wasn’t that long ago that it was illegal for us to marry. So we’re huge supporters of the right to marry.