The First Bad Kid: Barry Gordon gets nuttin' for Christmas in 1955, plays gay-subtext teens, nebbishes, nerds, lawyers, and the Quik Bunny

In December 1954, three-year old Barry Gordon made the scene with Art Mooney's "I'm Getting Nuttin' for Christmas (because I've been nuttin' but bad)":

I broke my bat on Johnny's head;
I hid a frog in sister's bed;
I spilled some ink on Mommy's rug;
Bought some gum with a penny slug;
Somebody snitched on me.

Far more mischievous than Dennis the Menace or Peck's Bad Boy of the 1920s, he was a humorous precursor to the threatened or threatening kids whom the adults would fear through the 1960s. Audiences were amazed; the record sold a million copies, and hit #6 on the Billboard pop chart, beating out "Autumn Leaves" and "Love is a Many Splendored Thing."

But you couldn't have a kid miss out on Christmas forever, so they made him record "I Like Christmas" in 1955.  

During the 1950s and 1960s, Barry (who recorded many other songs, with  "Rock Around Mother Goose" and "I Can't Whistle" gradually giving way to "True Love Can Never Die," "Sealed with a Kiss," and "The Girl I Left Behind."  In the days of acid rock and Yellow Submarine, none of them charted.

He made some movies,  including Hands of a Stranger, Pressure Point (with Peter Falk and Sidney Poitier), The Spirit is Willing, and Out of It, in which a high school brain (Barry) buddy-bonds with a jock (John Voight).

Barry was nominated for a Tony for his performance in the Broadway play A Thousand Clowns (adapted for film in 1965), as a gay-vague teenager crushed when his free-spirit guardian (Jason Robards) caves to the establishment.

Barry also made the rounds of tv guest spots: Leave It to Beaver, Davis the Menace, Make Room for Daddy, Jack Benny, and Love American Style (in the 1969 episode "Love and the High School Flop-Out").  Why is he sitting with his hands like that?

He had bad luck with starring roles:

The New Dick Van Dyke Show (1971-74) pushed Dick into a "backstage at a tv studio" premise that his former co-star Mary Tyler Moore was already doing, in one of the most popular tv series of all time.  You can imagine what happened to the lifeless imitation. Dick's muscular son Barry as his announcer failed to incite much audience interest.

Our Barry played a writer on Dick's soap opera as the third season eked by. 

More after the break

Lucky Vanous: The Diet Coke Guy

Like Scott Madsen, the Soloflex Guy , and Clara Pelter, who asked "Where's the beef?", Lucky Vanous became famous in an instant.  Though the Nebraska native had been modeling and studying acting for several years, he became the talk of the town through a series of heterosexist commercials for Diet Coke: some female office workers gaze through the window at the construction site next door, where lean, muscular Lucky goes on his break, rips his shirt off, and opens a can of Diet Coke.  They become more and more aroused as he drinks.

He was not a bodybuilder, but he was lean, muscular, and hirsute, a perfect New Sensitive Man even without saying "I know how you feel."

Lucky's exercise book and video, aimed at a female audience (The Ultimate Fat-Burning Workout) appeared in a few months.  In May 1994 he took off his shirt on tv sitcom Wings.  He was a presenter at the Clio Awards (for excellence in advertising).  In December was profiled in Playgirl.

A couple of movie roles followed, plus some tv: the evening soap opera Pacific Palisades (1997), guest spots on Pensacola: Wings of Gold and Will and Grace, and finally 18 Wheels of Justice (2000-2001), about a federal agent turned trucker who helps people with their problems.

Although in real life Lucky was always gracious to his gay fans, his stage persona maintained the heterosexist "every woman's fantasy" myth, insisting that all women but no men wanted to see him with his shirt off.  So the shirt came off when the audience was mostly women, but stayed on when it was mostly men.  This promo for 18 Wheels of Justice gives you the general idea.

In 2016, mega-hunk Brock O'Hurn starred in a homage to the commercial for Icelandic Water.  Only this time there was some gay inclusivity.

See also: Brock C*ck, Part 1: From the God Squad to the Immortal Kane, with bonus Daryl McCormack and James Duval

Scott Madsen: The Soloflex Guy

Jason Bradley Jacobs: From a cowboy cruising in the shower to a cartoon Kentucky Adonis to...well, isn't that enough?

The Sonic Drive-In Guys Are Saving a Gay Kid's Life

Totalitarian Television: Underdog and Friends

When I was a kid, all of the grown-up men I knew worked in the great smoking factory that my Dad called "the goddam hellhole."  And all of the grown-up women were their wives, cooking and cleaning and raising their kids in the small square houses that stretched out to infinity in all directions.  Everyone assumed that this was my destiny, too.  When I grew up, I would spend every day in the goddam hellhole, and come home every night dog-tired and cursing to my small square house, where my wife and kids would be waiting.  

Most of the tv programs I watched offered an escape: Gilligan and the Skipper didn't work in a goddam hellhole, they were sailors, and Robbie Douglas' Dad and Uncle Charlie lived happily together without wives.  But if I got up too early on Saturday morning, or dared to watch tv on Sunday, a series of badly animated cartoons pushed obedience to Big Brother:

Tooter Turtle longs to escape his dreary pond in the woods, so he asks Mr. Wizard to hook him up with a new job: firefighter, lumberjack, pilot, astronaut, college student.  Catastrophe strikes, and Mr. Wizard returns him to reality with his chant: "Twizzle, twozzle, twozzle, twome, time for this one to come home."

Tennessee Tuxedo, a penguin voiced by Don Adams of Get Smart, thinks he is just as good as any human, so he and his friend Chumley get jobs as weathermen or movie producers, or start a rock band.  Catastrophe strikes.  Inevitably.  The theme song tells us: "He will fail, as he vies for fame and glory."  (Later it was changed to the less depressing "he may fail").

The message was clear: don't dream, don't aspire.  Conform.  No escape is possible.

Commander McBragg, a retired British army officer, told an unwilling visitor about his adventures in India, Africa, China.  But was he telling the truth, or making it all up?

At least they didn't have wives.  But the superhero Underdog (voiced by Wally Cox)  had a girlfriend, Sweet Polly Purebread.  And his alter ego wasn't a cool journalist, like Clark Kent, or a millionaire, like Bruce Wayne -- he was a shoe shine boy!

The cartoons were produced by Total Television.  Some originally appeared on King Leonardo and His Short Subjects (1960), and some on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (1963) or Underdog (1964), but by the time I was watching, they were relegated to the ghetto of early Saturday or Sunday mornings.

At least they were better than Rocky and Bullwinkle.

5 Heterosexist and 5 Gay-Inclusive Christmas Specials

Have you ever noticed that most Christmas specials are annoyingly heterosexist? Here are the worst examples:

1. Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962): Why is Magoo/Scrooge so miserable?  He was so obsessed with money that he lost Belle, the girl of his dreams.  So he atones by helping a heterosexual nuclear family, Bob Cratchett, wife, daughter, and three sons.

2. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964):  Ok, it's about accepting difference.  The "misfit toys" are all adopted out, Rudolph uses his glowing red nose to save the day, and Hermey the Elf gets to become a dentist. But Rudolph gets a girlfriend, Clarice ("She thinks I'm cute!") and Hermey dances with a female elf at a party.

In the closing "Holly Jolly Christmas," Burl Ives sings that there's a girl waiting for you (a boy) under the mistletoe: "kiss her once for me."  When a woman sings that song, it becomes "kiss him once for me."

3. Frosty the Snowman (1969): only a subtle a hetero-romantic subtext about a little girl in love with the snowman, but the sequel, Frosty's Winter Wonderland (1976) is all about the snowman finding a wife.

4. Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970): a heterosexual love story between the young-adult Santa Claus (then known as Kris Kringle) and the future Mrs. Claus (a teacher named Jessica).  At least Kris (voiced by former teen idol Mickey Rooney) is a cute redhead.

5. The Year without a Santa Claus (1974). Mr.s Claus saves the day.  And heterosexual monogamy.

But not to worry, there are a few inclusive ones.  Here are the best:

1. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965): a reference to the Little Red-Haired Girl and Lucy's obsession with Schroeder, but otherwise about nurturing and friendship.

2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966): the Grinch is a green-furred outsider who dislikes Christmas, so he and his dog Max set out to ruin the holiday for the residents of Whoville by stealing all of their stuff.  When he discovers that the townsfolk are happy together even without stuff, he relents, returns everything, and joins in the celebration.

No same-sex plotlines, but at least there's no hetero-romance, and few if any heterosexual nuclear families.

3. Olive the Other Reindeer (1999): a dog (Drew Barrymore), a penguin (Joe Pantoleono), and a flea (Peter MacNichol) save Christmas, and no one falls in love with anyone.

4. Billy and Mandy Save Christmas (2005): the cast of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy discover that Santa Claus has been transformed into a vampire. While looking for a cure, the Grim Reaper develops a homoromantic bond with a flamboyantly feminine, gay-coded vampire named Baron Von Ghoulish (voiced by gay actor Malcolm McDowell).  They even sing about how much they like each other.

5. Prep & Landing (2009).  Two high-tech Elves buddy-bond while saving Christmas.

A Teenager Doing Pushups on TV

Today you can go online and see 100,000,000 pictures and videos of n*ked bodybuilders and athletes flexing for selfies, and every actor with even minimal musculature takes off his shirt at the drop of a script.

When I was a kid, there was virtually nothing.  An occasional Tarzan movie, an occasional teen idol with an open shirt in a Tiger Beat centerfold.  And that was it.

Seeing a man or boy on tv with his shirt off was so rare -- vanishingly rare -- that every instance is indelibly imprinted in my brain, as unforgettable as my first airplane trip or my first date with a guy.

Greg strips down to go surfing on The Brady Bunch .
Stephen Parr shows off his washboard abs on Mystery Island.
Steve Elliot shaves while wearing only pajama bottoms on Petticoat Junction.

And, sometime in the 1960s, I'm guessing around 1968, a Public Service Announcement for the President's Council on Physical Fitness shows a teenage boy doing pushups.

Shirtless.

Hard delts, thick biceps, beautiful interplay of muscles as he rises and falls, rises and falls.  His face becomes red.  He is smiling.

The narrator tells us that with every pushup, he's "a little bit stronger, a little bit healthier, a little bit happier than before."

Amazing.

I can't find the original PSA, but it was an iconic moment, a moment when I recognized the beauty of the male physique, in spite of the adult insistence that only women liked to look at men.

By the way, pushups are still widely recognized as a good way to maintain core strength.  The recommended number in a minute differs by age and sex.  50-60 year olds are supposed to be able to do at least 25.  I can do 50, which makes me "excellent" for my age group but only "above average" for a 20-year old.

The Sonic Drive-In Guys Are Saving a Gay Kid's Life

These are the Two Guys (their internet name) who have been starring in commercials for Sonic Drive-Ins since 2002 (with a few breaks).

They are depicted sitting in their car at various times of the day and night, various months of the year, discussing hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, corn dogs, tater tots, or ice cream concoctions. Occasionally they get out of the car.

Their patter, mostly improv, is reminiscent of the classic comedy duos such as Abott and Costello and Martin and Lewis:  the clown, played by T. J. Jagodowski (left), says something ridiculous or wears an outrageous costume, and straight man Peter Grosz (right) reacts with grumpy dismissal.

And now I'm going to say something.  Listen carefully:

They are a gay couple.

They always eat out together.  They apparently live together.  They share finances.  They mention that they've been together for many years.  They don't refer to any other relationships, or display any interest in women.

Let the screaming begin.

Screamer #1:  Why can't they be friends?  Every time two guys appear together, they aren't gay!  Straight guys go to restaurants together!

Translation:  If there is any possibility, however unlikely, that a fictional character can be read as straight, he MUST be read as straight.  We will accept characters as gay only if there is no other choice, only if our desperate attempts to read them as straight have failed.

But you can do it the other way, too.  It's how gay people survived growing up in a world that denied their existence a hundred times a day, watching tv and going to movies that shouted, over and over, that "boy meets girl is universal human experience!"  They found a fictional character and looked for evidence that would support a gay reading. 

Two guys who go to a restaurant together could be gay.

Screamer #2:  What about when they settle a disagreement with a game of Horse (basketball)? They like sports!  They can't be gay!

Translation: Gay characters must be swishy stereotypes.  The slightest reference to a masculine-coded activity requires us to read them as straight.

But gay guys play basketball.

Screamer #3: What about when T. J. mentions his ex-girlfriend Janine?  He dated a girl!  He's straight.

Translation: The slightest reference to heterosexual behavior requires us to read the character as straight.

But lots of gay men date women before they come out.  They're bowing to societal pressure, the constant "what girl do you like?" litany of high school and college.  Remember this exchange:

T. J.: The last time we ate this good, we were in college.

Peter: No, I was in college, you were in denial.

He's not in denial anymore, he's come out.

Screamer #4: What about the commercial where Jane Krakowski and Ellie Kemper, the stars of The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt (not in character) wave at them, and they wave back.  They wave at women!  They must be straight!  

Translation:  Women are invisible to gay men, so any man who displays the slightest recognition of a woman, who says hello to a woman, who steps out of the way to avoid being plowed into by a woman, must be heterosexual.

But gay men are perfectly capable of seeing women, and of waving at famous tv stars, without being romantically interested in them.


Screamer #5:  Ok, now I've got you.  Peter Grosz is married to a woman, Debra Downing, and has a son!  Talk you way out of that one!

Translation: Heterosexuals are incapable of playing gay characters, so if the actor is straight, the character is straight.

But heterosexuals are perfectly capable of playing all sorts of characters, including gay people.

Besides, T. J. Jadodowski never mentions a wife or girlfriend in any interview.  But he does mention going on a trip to Italy with a male friend.

Screamer #6: What about when T. J. is pretending to be a car, and says "I'm going to go talk to her -- the little red coupe with the nice taillights."  He's going to flirt with a female car.  No gay guy would do that!

Translation: Gay men are incapable of playing heterosexuals, so if your character is straight, you must be straight.

But gay actors are perfectly capable of playing all sorts of characters, including straight people.  And straight cars.

There is no piece of evidence that will unequivocally "prove" that a character is gay or straight.  The signs are incomplete, open to interpretation.  All we know about these guys is what they say and do for a few moments in their car at a Sonic Drive-In.  We have to fill in the rest of their lives.

And it's ok to fill it in with a same-sex romance.

Many gay kids are still growing up in a society that denies their existence.  A Sonic Drive-In commercial starring the Two Guys may be trivial to us, but to them it could make all the difference.  It might be the one moment that gives them hope.

Behind the Iron Curtain: A Radio Free Europe Commercial from the 1970s

During the 1970s, when fear of the Soviet Union was rampant, a tv commercial appeared depicting a boy with rusty chains wrapped around his head, being brainwashed by Soviet propaganda.  A voiceover solemnly intoned "They took his country.  Now they're taking his mind.  Millions of children are growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Albania ... Bulgaria ... Czechoslovakia ... Hungary ... Poland ... Romania ... Yugoslavia."

I thought the boy was cute.  Maybe I could rescue him from his brainwashing!

In the school library, I found books on most of the countries "behind the Iron Curtain," with lots of pictures of boys and men.  They weren't sitting in dark rooms with chains around their heads.  They were dancing in traditional costumes, swimming in public pools, going to school, or just posing in groups.

But that made the brainwashing more insidious, I reasoned.  It was even more important to go to those countries and rescue them:

Albania

Bulgaria

Czechoslovakia  (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia)

Hungary

Poland

Romania

Yugoslavia (now divided into several countries, which I'm not going to list here, because if I make a mistake, I'll get in trouble).

I recently found the commercial on youtube.  It was directed by Jack Goodford, who also directed Mr. Magoo Cartoons for the UPA Studio.

Radio Free Europe was an anti-communist group broadcasting news and information from its base in Munich.  It still broadcasts to 21 countries in 28 languages.

R.E.M. has a song called "Radio Free Europe."  I don't understand the lyrics:

Keep me out of country in the word
Deal the porch is leading us absurd
Push that push that push that to the hull
That this isn't nothing at all

Pinocchio in Outer Space: Gay Subtext Classic Cartoon

Most of the various renditions of Pinocchio, the Italian puppet who becomes a real live boy, emphasize heteroromance, giving Pinoke or his creator Gepetto a girlfriend.  But the odd film Pinocchio in Outer Space (1965), goes the other way, giving Pinoke a very obvious boyfriend.

It's unusual in other ways, too.  After an intro set in a quaint Medieval century village, it rather jarringly pushes us into the twentieth century when Pinocchio studies space flight, and the Blue Fairy and an older woman, perhaps a goddess, discuss how crowded outer space is getting.

After some medieval adventures, Pinocchio encounters an alien space ship, piloted by an evolved turtle named Nertle (Arnold Stang).

They zoom into space (as the Earth recedes, we see that Pinocchio lives in Massachusetts).  They explore an ancient Martian city, drawn in realistic science fiction style. 

With Gepetto all but absent, Pinocchio and Nertle buddy-bond.  Nertle points out that the two moons of Mars are "perfect for romance."  Then he bats his eyes at Pinocchio.

Later Nertle asks "Have you ever seen anyone so lovable?", and Pinocchio bats his eyes at him.

Apparently the Martians were all killed by Astro, the giant space whale, who is now on his way to devour Earth. Pinocchio sacrifices himself to save the world, and Nertle appears weeping at his deathbed.  Not to worry, he is resurrected by the Blue Fairy, and father, son, and boyfriend rejoice. 

Some internet reviewers have even found some homophobic jokes.  Nertle is a Twertle, pronounced with a lisp like gay stereotypes (in French, his name is Twortu, from tortue, "Turtle"), and he comes from the planet DV-8 ("deviate," get it?). 

Where did this crazy movie come from?

It was produced in Belgium by animator Ray Goosens, who directed a lot of Belgian cartoons, including TinTin and Asterix, and translated into English by Frank Ladd.  It was very popular in Europe, even used to advertise candy.

Pete Lazer, who voiced Pinocchio, was a former child star who was making the rounds of adult tv series, including Mr. Novak and The Defenders.  His last screen credit was a 1967 episode of Felony Squad.

Baby Boomers remember Arnold Stang as the voice of Top Cat.  He had a 60-year old career, specializing in big-talking little guys.

There's no documentary evidence that any of them were gay.

The 44 Dumbest Things You See on TV

I've watched a lot of tv, mostly sci-fi and sitcoms.  The set was on all the time when I was a kid.  In adulthood, it's like comfort food, warm, predictable, mildly amusing.  But is it really necessary to have so many plot conventions that strain credulity?  Plus are sexist, heterosexist, or downright homophobic?  Almost makes you want to pick up a book instead.

1. No one ever says a complete sentence; everyone takes turns.  "This looks like the work of..." "Two killers."  "So we should..."  ",,,get backup."

2. Whenever someone says "It's possible that...", as in "It's possible that the signals are coming from Mars" or "It's possible that the killer worked for the FBI," they mean "It's an absolute certainty."

3. Whenever someone says, "The chances against this working are a million to one," they mean, "It will absolutely work."

4. You cannot discuss the plan on the way to the site, even if it takes two hours to get there.  You must always wait until you have arrived.

5. All discussions of plans must begin with the phrase: "And that's the plan.  First we...."

6. Whenever anyone prepares food, they must tell the person they are preparing it for that it is "Your favorite."

7. The only people who can eat dinner at home are heterosexual nuclear families: The Man in a lumberjack shirt, a son and a daughter under age 10, and The Woman, usually blond.  The Man must always say "Great meal, honey."

8. The only people who can eat in restaurants are four young adults, divided into male-female couples.  One is always shown shoving a forkful of food into someone else's mouth.  Sometimes this happens in groups, too.

9. Whenever anyone turns on the tv, they must  hear a news story pertaining to their situation.

10.  If they are shown watching tv alone, it should be an old black and white movie, usually a Western.

11. Except for kids and serial killers, who must watch public domain cartoons from the 1930s.

12. The only people who can watch tv in groups are heterosexual nuclear families, and they are always cuddling while holding a gigantic bowl of popcorn.  No one in the real world eats popcorn while watching tv.

13. If someone wants to talk to you, they can't call, they must drive across town to see you in person.

14. And the drive is extremely short.

15. And the door is unlocked, so they just walk in.

16. Whenever you enter a scary place, someone must say "This place gives me the creeps."  But no one in real life ever says this.

17.  People always complain that they don't have enough money to pay bills, but have thousands of dollars to spend on expensive props.

18. Poor people live in huge, well-appointed houses.  Middle-class people live in mansions. There is no such thing as an apartment, except in New York, where poor people live in huge apartments with a view of the Empire State Building.

20. Every hotel room in Paris looks directly out onto the Eiffel Tower. 

21. Men may not be shown engaging in any housecleaning activity.  Ever.  They can be asked to cook, to "help their wives out," but they must flub the job and take the kids to McDonald's.

22. The main characters must be white, but the captain, chief, or judge who appears in just one episode should be black, to demonstrate that racism no longer exists.

23. Everyone belongs to a huge number of clubs and organizations, but only for one episode apiece.  Then the club is never mentioned again.

More after the break

15 Reasons to Skip Christmas

I'm not a big fan of Christmas.  I dread seeing the first Christmas ads of the year, in August or September.  The decorations going up in stores in October.  And the day after Thanksgiving, when the onslaught begins in earnest, a full month of gaudy decorations and tinny music and exhortations to be merry.

It's the most heterosexist time of the year.

Here are 15 reasons to just skip it and spend December hiding out in yurt in Mongolia.

1. The Animated Specials: Unrelenting in their zeal in pairing up Santa Claus, Rudolph, and Frosty the Snowman with their female counterparts, while Burl Ives sings "Somebody waits for you -- kiss her once for me."

2. The TV Movies.  Christmas Magic, A Christmas Kiss, A Bride for Christmas, Undercover Christmas.  A lonely woman finds love with an unexpected man in a "Holiday Miracle."  Over and over and over again.

3. The Nutcracker Ballet.  Ok, so there are ample bulges and biceps to be seen, but it's a hetero-romance composed by a gay man.

4. The Commercials.  15,000 tv commercials show young heterosexual couples in expensive bathrobes giving each other elegant gifts and then kissing.  15,000 more show kids ecstatically upwrapping the gift du jour, while their heterosexual parents hug each other fondly.  No same-sex couples, not even pairs of friends.

5. The Songs.  Men and women endlessly meeting each other under the mistletoe.  Kids getting gender-polarized presents.   And "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the most depressing song ever written, part of the repertoire of Judy Garland, who believed -- with many gay people of her era -- that to be gay was to be constantly sad.

Did you know that the song was originally much more depressing?  I'm not sure how that's possible, but the maven of depressing songs refused to sing it until it was cheered up from "throw yourself in front of a bus" to a mere "sob uncontrollably."

6. "Don we now our gay apparel."  A reminder that the word "gay" previously meant something like "happy, giddy."  Except today it's regularly censored, lest anyone's holiday celebrations be ruined by the recognition that gay people exist.

7. The Visit.  You are required to wait at a crowded airport, sit in a packed airplane made even more cramped by bulky coats and packages, and go "home" to visit your birth family in the Straight World.  But your heterosexual brother and sister are excused.  The message is clear: they have their own home, but you don't.  No matter how long they have lived in a place, no matter what social and emotional connections they have made, gay people have no "home."

8. The Dinner. Christmas Dinner back "home" involves endless discussions of heterosexual husbands and wives, boyfriend and girlfriends, but you are cautioned not to tell Aunt June about your boyfriend, lest her holiday be ruined.

9. The Breakup.  There are an extraordinary number of breakups just after Christmas.  People who don't like their boyfriends or girlfriends always think things like "I can't ruin their Christmas by dumping them.  But the day after..."

My problem has always been going "home" for 10 days and leaving the boyfriend back in West Hollywood or New York or Florida.  The vultures start circling immediately, bulging and flexing and cruising, and when I get back, I'm welcomed by "I didn't plan on it -- it just happened."

10. The Parties.  They never end.  Various offices, departments, schools, organizations, miscellaneous groups of friends.  10 or more before the season is over -- if you're lucky.

Roomsful of people who don't know you're gay, forcing you to come out endlessly and get surprised reactions, or else endure heterosexist small talk and flirting from every heterosexual Cougar  in sight.

And endless supplies of cookies, candy, cakes, bars, and whatever other high-fat, high-sugar horrors that can be decorated in gaudy colors.

11. The Fashions.  After all the parties, no wonder people dress in bulky sweaters and coats.  Primary colors, gaudy designs, knit fabrics.  It's the worst time of the year for showing off your muscles, or getting a glimpse of a Cute Young Thing's biceps and bulge.

12. Santa Claus.  Fat, elderly, married, and wearing red.  The antithesis of a gay icon.

13. The Salvation Army, which teaches that gay people should be stoned to death, is out in numbers ringing those little bells, and people are tossing money in gladly, emphasizing how thin the veneer of tolerance is -- at any moment, "I don't have any problem with you people" could change to screaming.

14. "A Perfect Holiday Gift."   TV commercials and ads call it "the holidays," but they mean Christmas only, showing only Christmas traditions and ending summarily on December 26th, even though there is still New Year's Eve, Kwanzaa, and sometimes Ramadan and Hanukah left.

Gay people hear quite enough of this "universal" means "only us" claptrap:

She's every man's fantasy.
Every woman wants him; every man wants to be him.
There's not a man alive who wouldn't want to get with her.
Every boy "discovers" girls during adolescence.


15. "Cheer up, it's Christmas."  You are required to feel ecstatic all the time.  Even the most upbeat person can't be up all day, every day, but if you experience even a moment of melancholy, there are 3000 people waiting to tell you that there's something wrong with you, you're a Scrooge or a Grinch.

Gay people hear quite enough of this "You must feel a certain way" claptrap:

You're not really gay.  You just haven't met the right person yet.
How do you know you're gay if you haven't tried it with a woman?
Ok, so you're gay, but don't tell me you would kick her out of bed!

But at least there are Pantomimes in England, and the Santa Speedo Run in Boston.

See also: 

Borden's Elsie: Alpha Bull Dad and Gay Son

Sometimes when we were visiting my Grandma Davis in Indiana, my brother and I got permission to go up into the attic and browse through her piles of old magazines. Good Housekeeping, Saturday Evening Post, Grit...nothing really exciting, but we liked to marvel at the craziness of the past.

One day we stumbled upon a series of illustrated stories from the 1940s starring Elsie the Cow, the mascot for Borden's Milk.

Wait -- was this cow selling the milk that came from her body?  Disgusting!  And who would name it "Hemo," after blood?

The stories were about a battle of the sexes between housewife Elsie and her alpha-male bull spouse, Elmer, with an incredibly sexist passive-aggressive vibe and the hint of violence:

"But Elmer, all the answers in the book can't be wrong!"
"I'm not trying to turn the child against you, darling!"
"Why do men lose their temper more easily than women?"
"It's possible to kill a wife with kindness, dear."

Was this an idealization of the 1940s nuclear family, or a critique?

Borden created a whole back story for the cow couple, including a teenage daughter, Beulah, a mischievous son, Beauregard, and infant twins.  Stories of their domestic life appeared through the 1940s, and for the kids, there was a 1950s comic book series.  And so many advertising tie-ins that there's a whole book devoted to them.

Elmer the Bull, future mascot for Elmer's Glue, was blustering but, oddly, sexy.  He was naked though his family wore clothes.  He had thick bull-muscles.  And, most provocatively, his sex organs were coyly obstructed. I had seen bulls on the farm -- I knew what was being hidden.

Beauregard was a general mischief maker, but he also had some gender-transgressive qualities that lent him some gay symbolism.  Here he seems to be trying on green lipstick and hair dye.

In the 1950s comic books, he's a teenager, and also rather muscular.

By now I imagine he looks something like this.

(Image borrowed from Roberto Linares on YGallery).

See also: Grit

Yogi Bear and Boo Boo

A few years ago I published a scholarly article outlining the homodomestic relationship between Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. And Ruff and Reddy.  And Spongebob and Patrick.

People immediately started screaming at me.  Even today, every few weeks someone finds the article and starts screaming again:
"It's a kid's cartoon!"
"You're reading too much into it!"
"The cartoonists never intended them to be gay!"
"Can't two guys be friends without everyone thinking they're gay?"
"How can they be gay, when they aren't Wearing a Sign?"

Except I never said that the Yogi Bear and Boo Boo were "really" gay, whatever that might mean for beings with no bodies or minds, who don't exist at all outside of some images painted on celluloid.  Or that the producers meant them to be gay.  I said that their partnership provided a model with which gay kids could identify and validate their own same-sex desires.

A lot of the things I know about the world -- avalanches, duels, Napoleon, gangsters, daffodils, Shakespeare, karate, King Arthur, submarines, Egyptian hieroglyphics -- I probably first heard from the block of cartoons that Hanna Barbera broadcast on prime time in the late 1950s, and aired through the 1960s on Saturday mornings and on late-afternoon kids' programs like Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat.

The characters belong to my earliest, preliterate, preverbal memories:

Huckleberry Hound
Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har
Pixie and Dixie
Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey
Ruff and Reddy
Snagglepuss
Wally Gator
Yogi Bear and Boo Boo






Note that they usually came in pairs who lived together, traveled together, and worked together to defeat the bad guy who wanted to eat or confine them.  I know now that they were reflections of the movie-comedy teams of the 1940s and 1950s, like Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, and Martin and Lewis.

I didn't know then.

I knew only that every adult man in the real world had a wife, and every teenage boy had a girlfriend whom he hoped one day to marry.  I saw no men, heard of no men -- none at all  -- who lived together, who built a life together, who didn't need or want wives. But at "cartoon time," in plain view, there was Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Pixie and Dixie, Quick Draw and Baba Looey.

See also: The Three Stooges and The Flintstones.