Mo Bakker: Santa Claus's grandson and his boyfriend cruise in Kenya, cuddle in Greece. With bonus Belgian d*cks

Link to the n*de dudes

English-speaking audiences are most familiar with Flemish actor Mo Bakker for the three Claus Family movies: 

Die Familie Claus 1 (2020): Christmas-hating teenager Jules discovers that his grandfather is Santa Claus, about to retire and expecting him to take over the family job

Die Familie Claus 2 (2021): Jules goes on a trial run to grant a little girl's holiday wish.  Plus the kids try to fix up Mom with her best friend, not realizing that he is gay and has a husband.

Die Familie Claus 3 (2022): Jules and his sister Noor work together to fix the mess Grandpa made of the gift-delivery. Plus Mom's new boyfriend Jeff (Kurt Rogiers) drops towel.

Throughout, Jules is heavily queer-coded, with an interest in musclemen and no romantic interest in girls: he keeps partnering with girls, but they are always relatives or just friends.  Although there are no undeniable queer codes, no boyfriends, or "I'm gay" statements, the series, and especially the first, appears every year on lists of "The Best LGBTQ Holiday Movies."

But what about actor Mo Bakker.  Surely he wasn't cast because he was gay.  At age 14, he may not even have known.  So let's check to see if he is out now.

Mo was born in 2006, son of Belgian actor Kuno Bakker, who played a gay guy in Feast (2022).  

Older brother Kes, also an actor, has 12 credits listed on the IMDB, including the teen drama High Tide, available to stream on Netflix.  He plays a gay character, falls in love with a dude, and drops towel.

Mo's acting career begins with August (2014), a short about a boy with a girlfriend.   He has several other projects listed, with plot synopses and trailers only in Flemish, including:

Niet Schieten (Don't Shoot, 2018): A boy is dying, and his grandfather feels guilty.

The tv series Please Love Me (Zie miej graag, 2017-20): A divorced woman is "trying to put her life back together."  Mo and his brother Kes play her sons.

Sisyphus at Work (2021): A film director is dying.

Finn's Heel (Finn's hiel, 2022): Two boys (Mo, Brecht Dael) bond over boxing lessons, and hug.  This one sounds gay.

The teen tv series wtFOCK (2023), about students in a prestigious high school in Antwerp.  There are gay guys in the cast (who make out in the pool), but Mo plays a heterosexual athlete who gets his girlfriend pregnant.

Not a lot of gay content here.  Let's check Mo's Instagram to see if he is gay in real life.

I'm always jealous of Europeans, who can jet to my top 10 favorite countries (outside the U.S.) in a couple of hours.  Here Mo and his boyfriend are cuddling on a raft in Nicosia, Cyprus: five hours from Brussels, 14 hours from Minnesota.

More after the break

"Chantal": The assault of the Mayor's "friend" in Wild West Flanders. Plus boxer brothers and Colossus

I'm getting tired of big-city detectives moving to quaint small towns to solve murders -- I don't even like murder mysteries -- but who could resist Chantal (2022-25) on Amazon Prime:  a tv series set in "the far west of Flanders," the region of Belgium where they speak Flemish (actually a dialect of Dutch, separated for political reasons).

The Quad Cities, where I grew up, had a large Flemish community --  you could even take courses in the language at the community college.  The Belgian Inn, a few blocks from our house, served a famous Vandereuben: ham, corned beef, sauerkraut, and French dressing on slabs of rye toast the size of a dinner plate. 

 There is also a Belgian-American museum, a Belgian bookstore, and an annual Belgian bookstore, but I'm sure you'd rather see the Vande  reuben.  

I'll review Episode 4, because "the mayor's friend is assaulted."  Maybe it will be a boyfriend.

Scene 1: Night. a man loads a gun and some stuff into his car, when two guys approach and ask if he's Etienne (Bernard Pieters).  Before they can answer, they kick and punch him many times.  One complains that he hurt his foot on Etienne's head.  They have a message for him, but he's unconscious, so they run to their car and drive away.  A blonde woman and a bald man watch.

Scene 2: In a field, the guys complain: "Colossus just told us to scare Etienne, not kill him!"  And even if he's not dead, he won't know why they beat him up: they didn't get to deliver the message.  "Just tell Colossus 'mission accomplished.'"  They drive away.

The guys are Rinus (Kenneth De Scheemaecker) and Quinten (Bjarne Devolder, who is gay in real life).  Maybe the character is gay, too.

Title: Establishing shot of the picturesque village, shots of the cast, and "Who the F*ck is Colossus?"

 Scene 3: A middle aged guy (Mathias Sercu) knocks on Chantal's door -- her boyfriend from 25 years ago!  So this is one of those series where the big-city detective goes back to her small hometown to solve murders.

She isn' t happy to see him, but at least he brought breakfast.  They discuss how he's getting tired of his wife, even though she's attractive, smart, and makes a lot of money as a model.  Hint-hint.

Chantal doesn't take the bait.  She tells her lovers that they can bring toiletries,but leave the suitcase at home.   Her hookup from last night appears, har har, and asks if he can leave some toiletries.

A cop who dresses as a cowboy (Dries Heynemann) comes rushing up: she's needed now!  "But it's my day off!" "Tough -- mayor's orders!"

Cowboy wants to know what Ex-Boyfriend is doing there.  "What do you think I'm doing here, on a Sunday morning?"  As the Hookup passes on the way out, Cowboy stares at him suspiciously, no doubt thinking that they had a three-way.

Scene 4:  On the way to the mayor, Cowboy gazes at Chantal's lady parts -- wait, he's into her, too?  --  and they discuss his attraction to Sylvia -- the Ex-Boyfriend's wife?  

The Case: Etienne, city councilman, head of the hunting club, and the mayor's friend (hopefully boyfriend) , was beat up in his driveway, and is now in a coma.

They interview the Mayor (Yves Degryse): "Etienne was supposed to pick me up at 5:30 for hunting, but he never came or called, so I went over, and found him in the drive way." 

He looks like he's about to cry.  "Are you ok?" Chantal asks.

"No, my friend was beat up."  Chantal is still suspicious.  Maybe she thinks they are boyfriends.

Scene 5: More about Etienne: Good guy, captain of the football (soccer) team, day job in real estate, partnered with the Mayor.  Chantal finds this suspicious.

At the station, Chantal wonders why Etienne was carrying a gun when he was attacked. Did he startle a burglar? Because he was going hunting?  Neighbors didn't hear anything.  No surveillance cameras.  "So we know nothing."

"Just like we know nothing about why your Ex-Boyfriend was at your house," Cowboy chimes in.  Why does he care?  Is this one of those series where every man gazes at the focus character like she's a pork chop?

As she is brainstorming, and the other cops are making fun of each of her ideas, the Mayor calls her and Cowboy into his office. He just got a threatening call from Schiettekatte (everyone knows who these people are except Chantal, who is new in town, so they have to explain it to her). 

Schiettekatte is a Very Important Man who put in an application to tear down a shrine to Tipsy Mia's dead son so he could build something.  They rejected him.  He just called and told the Mayor to reconsider his application "if you don't want to end up like Etienne."  Red herring.

More after the break

Beefcake and Bulges in Old Swedish Photographs

The Du Gamla website uploads photographs of people who lived in Sweden from the 1850s and 1950s.  Some local celebrities, like Olympic athletes, but mostly regular people with no particular claims to fame.

It's a fascinating compendium of people who were once solid, who ate and drank and planned for the future, who desired and were desired by men or women, or both, and now are long forgotten.

Like Allan Buhne, 1911.  Obviously a wrestler.

I have found no other record of him on the internet except for this, from the records of the Hammarby Idrottsförening (Sports Club) in Stockholm: Allan Buhne came 4th in SM. He worked for almost all his life in Hammarby Wrestling.

It's obvious that he had the same singlet problem that wrestlers have today.

Frithiof Martensson (1888-1956) was a middle weight contender in the wrestling contest at the 1908 Olympics.  Later he became a dental hygienist.

August Bylen, 1871-1954, was a metalsmith and farmer. And, apparently, packing.

Ruben Johansson, 1899 to 1918.  Very cute guy.  He died at age 19, maybe during the worldwide influenza epidemic.

Ragnar Larsson, 1901-1984, a wrestler at the 1924 Olympics.

More after the break.

Spencer Lloyd: From "American Idol" to a homophobic church, with n*de hocky and a video in between

  

Link to the n*de photos

Making the rounds of actor photos this morning, I came across a "Spencer Lloyd" video.   No other photos, but another n*de pops up on a google search.

No one by that name is listed on IMDB, but when you dump "Spencer Lloyd" into a search engine, it wants to auto-fill with the Canadian tv series Heartland: a multi-generational soap opera set on a ranch in Alberta.  He must have appeared somewhere in the nearly 300 episodes to date -- the IMDB often omits actors. 

Googling "Spencer Lloyd" and "Canada" reveals a young guy, probably just out of high school, who played hockey for the Beaver Valley Nitehawks in British Columbia.  He must have done that before he broke into showbiz -- or tried to break in.

After extensive research on Instagram, Facebook, the American Idol Blog, and Fame Watcher, I have pieced together Spencer's biography.

There's no Canadian hockey or soap opera -- that's another Spencer Lloyd.  But I'm not taking the photos down.

Our Spencer Lloyd grew up in Bryant, Arkansas, population 16,688, known for its La Quinta Motor Lodge, Cotton Shed Vintage Market, and Chick-Fil-A.  

In 2013, at the age of 19, he got on a bus with 3,000 other hopefuls for American Idol auditions in Little Rock.  He made it to the first round.

In Austin he sang "Say Something" and an original song, "At the Final Judgment." Uh-oh, sounds homophobic. He made it to the second round.

In Hollywood, he sang "Ordinary Girl" in the Wild-Card.  And then got booted.

He still performs and records music occasionally. Apple Music lists several singles for sale, most recently "No Love Like Ours," released December 2023.

In March 2016, Spencer found his way to Nashville, where he signed on with Wilhemina Modeling.  This must be where the n*de photo comes from.

He moved to Chicago in May 2016, and went to work as fitness instructer at Barry's Chicago. 

More Spencer after the break.

Gemstones Episode 3.6: BJ swallows a lot, Keefe learns about hard wood, and Kelvin gets a girlfriend. With nude boxer bonus

 

This is the censored version of the review, with no nude boxers or explicit sexual discussions.  

Link to the nude boxers.

In the last episode (before the interlude), we saw the family shattered, with Judy/BJ and Kelvin/Keefe breaking up and the Montgomery boys plotting against Eli.  Now we're going to see life amid the ruins.

Title: "For Out of the Heart Come Evil Thoughts." Matthew 15:19: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." We don't need to match the Gemstone with the sin: they are all guilty of false witness, lying to others or to themselves.

How to Make Things Right: BJ didn't move out, after all,  but the two are barely speaking. Judy asks what she can do to make things right. BJ doesn't know.  She is despondent. Remember that in 2000, she worried that she would never find anyone who would love her.  It took 18 years, but she finally found someone, and now it's over.

Gay joke: "I swallow a lot, but this may be something I can't choke down."  You just need a little practice.  Ask Keefe for some pointers. 

The Montgomery Boys Leave:  At Eli's mansion, the Montgomerys thank the family for "straightening them out."   Kelvin suggests that it happened "when we dressed them up."  That sounds like a gay reference.  

Jesse says "They're ready to fuck": their next steps should be girlfriends,  intercourse, wives and kids, the whole heterosexual trajectory.  To start them out, he gives them his monster truck, the Redeemer.

 As they drive away, Kelvin takes off his "wedding ring."  If he leaves it off, the relationship will really be over.  He'll be single again.  He puts it back on.  But maybe he is thinking of a heterosexual trajectory of his own. 

Taryn is Back: We cut to Kelvin introducing Taryn, who we last saw at Keefe's "wieners and ice cream" party, as his new assistant youth pastor.  A kid asks about Keefe, and he gets all bitchy: "He is leaving to pursue other opportunities.  Not even sure why you keep bringing that up!" -- while fiddling with his wedding ring again.  He continues to fiddle -- and look despondent -- as Taryn leads the kids in a dance. 

Paying off the Scandal:  The siblings meet with Stephen, his wife, and their lawyer.  They want $500,000 for "damages and emotional distress," or the affair goes viral.  So it's like the blackmail over Jesse's sex-and-drugs party in Season 1, but this time there's no tape.  Judy could just deny that anything happened.  She could even sue him for slander.

Martin suggests paying the money, along with an apology.  Kelvin must be wondering: if it's worth $500,000 to keep an extramarital affair under wraps, how much damage would he cause the church by coming out  -- or being outed.  He doesn't like Taryn in that way -- he doesn't like women in that way -- but what choice does he have?  

After scenes where Baby Billy and Jesse discuss the hologram Aimee-Leigh idea, and BJ stalks Stephen, Kelvin tries to find out if the relationship is really over.

The First Reconciliation Attempt:  We find Keefe working at Woodpecker's Carpentry.  Wood-pecker, har har, the first of many phallic references in this scene.  His earing, necklaces, and rings are gone -- for safety, or to keep closeted?  

Suddenly Kelvin appears. Looking around nervously, Keefe asks "Brother Kelvin, what are you doing here?" Note that he uses formal titles to reaffirm that they have broken up: they are just pastor and parishioner.  No doubt he's worried that Kelvin will out him by referencing their relationship or just being flamboyant.  Kelvin does try his usual titty-tweak, but Keefe doesn't respond.  You're broken up!  You're not allowed to take liberties anymore!

Gay joke: "Master Bishop has taught me a lot in the ways of hard wood." Tell me more about your...um...hard wood.  The odd title "Master," not used for master carpeters, led some fans to speculate that he and Keefer were involved in a BDSM relationship. 

 Wait -- how long has he worked there?  Surely it's only been a few days since the breakup.

Kelvin asks "Have you found happiness?" An odd question. Why not just ask if he likes his new job.?  Keefe says that he has, but of course he's lying.  He's busy working on a reconciliation rocking chair.  He uses the  punching gesture that straight guys sometimes use to ward off physical contact: a bro-hug would be too painful.

Apparently Kelvin expected Keefe to be crying and miserable, lost without him, like in the Season 1 breakup.  Seeing that his ex is doing ok, he becomes bitchy, denigrating the carpentry job and declaring that he's having lots of fun with Taryn: "everybody loves her...no one misses you at all." The happiness facade fails: Keefe frowns and orders him to leave. 

We cut to Judy asking Eli for the bribe money. He exclaims "Can't you children figure out your lives?" and refuses.  

Then the Montgomery Boys zoom the Redeemer into Peter's new militia compound, claiming that they stole it.  But in Episode 2, he sent goons to kill them.  When did they start working for him again?

BJ Trains: BJ bursts into tears while working at his Church Welcome Center job. Jesse and his crew sympathize: Stephen has cuckolded him, taken away his power.  He needs to fight the guy, "knock his dick in the dirt, show him who is the man."  

They take him down to the basement for punching-bag training.

Top photo: Michael O'Hearn works out with boxer Paulo Costa. 

Left: Punching bag

Crash! BJ complains that he broke his wrist on the punching bag.  "It was limp already," Jesse says: his first homophobic slur ever, again suggesting that Kelvin will have trouble coming out.  The family certainly knows, but they do not want the whole church to know. 

More advice and boxers after the break

"Bloodhounds": Strong Gay Subtext among Korean Boxers

 Gay subtexts occur when two guys not specifically identified as gay through statements or displays of affection have a relationship that is exclusive (no significant interest in women), domestic (living together), emotionally intense, and permanent (they stay together at the end of the adventure).  Platonic pals could have a similar relationship, of course: that's why it's called a subtext rather than a text.  A casual glance at the Korean action-adventure series Bloodhounds revealed a lot of gay subtext potential, so here goes:

Scene 1: Innocent-looking Geon-Wu (Woo Doh-Hwan, left) and rowdy-looking Woo-Jin (Lee Sang-Yi, below) practicing boxing in separate empty gyms. Later, on a bus, Geon-Wu intervenes when a passenger refuses to wear a mask and starts assaulting the driver. 

He goes home to find his mother begging creditors for more time to pay, and leaves to avoid embarrassing her.

Scene 2: Some suit guys discussing how COVID is threatening their hotel business. Loan shark Kim Myeung-Gil (Park Sung-Wong) passes out his business card to everyone. 

Scene 3: The Rookie of the Year Tournament, in a giant stadium (empty due to COVID).  Rowdy-looking Woo Jin (left), who specializes in weird noises, Maori haka-dancing, and punching himself in the groin, beats two opponents.   

Geon-woo beats his opponent, then rushes to see if he is ok (a really nice guy, apparently).  

Next the guys fight each other.  Rowdy Woo Jin loses, and is devastated.  How could this by-the-books upstart beat him?  He is dishonored forever.

Scene 4:  Geon-woo waits for Rowdy Woo Jin outside the locker room, and invites him to dinner.  "Why, to rub it in?  You won, now get lost!"  But he consents.

Dinner consists of ten minutes of flirting, being way over-impressed by each other's back stories, and figuring out ways to touch each other.   The sexual tension is intense, but the conversation is boring.  

The only statement of interest is when Woo Jin reminisces about being in the marines.  He loved "taking showers together...soaping each other up..."  Geon Woo, surprised, says "So you're...."  Woo Jin: "Of course not!  I was just messing with you."

Scene 5:  They walk to the bus stop very slowly, each trying to figure out how to get the other into the bedroom; instead, Woo Jin just asks for a second date.  They discuss the loan sharks who are exploiting everyone, now that COVID is making everyone lose their businesses.  Like Geon-woo's mother, who can't make the rent on her coffee shop.  

Scene 6: Mom on the phone to her creditors. Geon-woo comes in, all excited over the money he won today, and the cute guy he met, not in that order.  But Mom won't take the money to cover the rent: it would be dishonorable.  

Cut to the loan shark crew going from business to business, grinning hungrily as the owners sign the papers.

Scene 7:  Geon-woo's gym is closed due to a COVID exposure!  But his coach tells him to take a week off anyway, and rest after his big tournament.  So he calls Woo Jin.  So early in the morning? If you're too over-eager, you'll scare him off.  "I'm sleeping!"  Woo Jin tells him. "But I'm bored.  Let's hang out."  "So clingy! Ok, you can come over and sleep with me."  

On the way to Woo-Jin's house, Geon-woo stumbles upon a guy getting beat up.  He chases the assailant, who fights back with a taser.  "Who sent you?" the guy wants to know.  "No one -- I just wanted to help."  The guy lets him go.

Cut to a lady trying to pay back an old guy in a library for the loan that allowed her to get her daughter some life-saving surgery.  He refuses: pay off your urgent debts first.  Is this a comparison of "nice" loan guys with evil loan sharks?  When she leaves, he takes out his ledge and cancels the loan.

Scene 8: The assailant, who turns out to be a girl, returns to headquarters and reports that the client didn't have any money, so she took his gold watch instead.  Gasp -- she worksfor the nice library guy, her Grandpa!  "But the watch is worth 20 million won, and I only loaned him 10 million!" Grandpa exclaims, demonstrating his honesty.  

They discuss the evil loan shark gang.  Granddaughter wants to do some recon, but Grandpa thinks it's too dangerous.

Scene 9:  The guys having breakfast, discussing boxing, and finding new ways to touch each other. They end up wrestling or hugging or something, and chase each other off-camera, where presumably they are kissing. 

Cut to the wealthy Mr. Park celebrating his birthday with dinner and a show: can Kang in-beom (Tae won-suk) smash a watermelon with his bare hands?  He can.  His gift is some golden turtles worth billions of won, and so clean that no one will know they are stolen.  

Scene 10: Kang in-beom also works for the loan sharks: he is tasked with taking fifteen goons and smashing the storefronts of business owners who aren't paying up, including Mom!  

 She calls Geon-woo for help.  He jumps out of Woo-Jin's bed, runs home, and fights the goons.  After he finishes clobbering them, head loan shark Myeung Gil shows up to explain the loan agreement and send in Kang in-beom, who bashes him repeatedly with his head, strangles him, and squeezes him into unconsciousness.  Myeung Gil then slashes his cheek while "laughing sinisterly" according to the subtitles.  The End.

Beefcake: The guys box shirtless.

Gay Subtext:  I went through a couple of episodes on fast-forward. By Episode 3, they're all living with the friendly librarian.  They always appear as a pair.  Neither ever expresses any interest in a girl.  And at the end of the adventure, they (and Mom) go home together.  

That's every characteristic of a gay subtext.  It's almost text, except there are no overtly romantic displays of affection, like holding hands, kissing, or having sex, and the lack of expressed interest in women is not unusual in Korean dramas.  

"The Silence":What Do Barry Van Dyke, Boxing, and "Jurassic Park" Have in Common?

Netflix already had a horror movie, Bird Box, about sight:  alien monsters compel anyone who sees them to commit suicide, so you have to walk around wearing a blindfold.

Next comes The Silence, about monsters attracted to sound, so you have to keep your mouth shut.

There are more senses.  Will we be getting monsters attracted to taste?  And smell?

The premise is patently ridiculous: blasting through an ancient rock formation releases millions of vesps (Jurassic Park-style flying raptars) who have eyes but prey on noise.

What have they been doing in that cave for 7 million years, with no food or air?

So the focus character, a deaf girl namedAlly (Kiernan Shipka), gets into a car and heads out of town.

The flying raptars will be attracted to the sound of the engine, you idiot!

She is accompanied by her father, the engineer responsible for the mess (Stanley Tucci channeling Walter White of Breaking Bad);  his best friend Glenn (John Corbett, top photo); Mom; kid brother; coughing, terminally ill Grandma; and barking dog.

They rush through a Walking Dead world, except with flying raptars instead of zombies.  There are casualties. They encounter a weird religious cult that has removed their tongues, led by The Reverend (Billy MacLellan). 

You can make noise in other ways,you idiot!

Eventually the last three surviving members of the family (Ally, Dad, and kid brother) make it to The Refuge, where Ally reunites with her boyfriend.  The two go hunting vesps.

The only redeeming features of this mess are:
1. Best friends are never included in "family fighting monsters" movies, so John Corbett's character is unique.  Maybe he's gay.  Of course, he's the first to die.

2. Dempsey Bryk, who plays the boyfriend, is an amateur boxer (Ontario Bronze Gloves).  He also received his IB and an OSSD diploma
and won an AEO scholarship at UWO.  I guess Canadians know what all of that means.

3. The screenplay was written by Carey and Shane Van Dyke, sons of buffed actor Barry Van Dyke and grandson of the great comedian Dick Van Dyke. But it's not their fault; they were adapting a young adult novel by British writer Tim Lebbon .

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

Teen Tristan Strong's father and grandfather were famous boxers who want him to follow the family tradition -- he has the physique for it --but he would really rather do nerd things with his best friend Edward.  They make up stories, which Edward records in a journal.

You've got my attention.  

When Edward dies,Tristan is so distraught that he starts to hallucinate, seeing a green light glowing from the journal.  No one else can see it. His parents send him to Grandpa's farm in Alabama, hoping that a change of scenery will help.

Definite gay subtext!  I'm listening.

On his first night on the farm, a strange doll-like being, the Gum Baby, appears in his room and steals the journal.  Tristan pursues her to a Bottle Tree, and accidentally punches one of the bottles, opening up a hole in the sky.  They fall through into a scalding-hot ocean, pursued by ships made of human bones.  They are rescued by Ayanna, a girl-warrior...

Uh-oh.  The Girl!  I'll just skip ahead to the last chapter to see if they fall in lo--ooo---ove.  

All clear.  Tristan is talking to the Gum Baby and someone named High John (High John the Conquerer Root from African-American voodoo?)

Ayana is piloting a boatload of survivors from a disaster of some sort, including humans and talking animals. Like Brer Fox....

What the heck is going on? 

Tristan is trapped in the Midpass, a world populated by figures from African-American folklore. Such as the old trickster god Brer Rabbit.  And John Henry, the super-muscular 19th century railroader with the powerful...um...hammer.  

His story actually involves convict leasing (African-American men were arrested for the crime of being black and put to work on railroads and in coal mines, basically slavery by another name).

Whoa, heavy.  African-American folklore was born in adversity.  

When Tristan meets John Henry, he has to stop himself from asking to touch  his..um hammer.  

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.  Is this kid canonically gay?

That would be telling.  It's a nonstop race, with things trying to kill or eat them every moment, to the Warren, a temporary haven against the darkness that threatens to encroach all of the land.  There a council consisting of Brer Rabbit, John Henry, and a lesbian couple from the folktale "The People Could Fly" discuss the Book (which has been lost) and discover that Tristan is...guess what...the Chosen One.  

Tristan has to be the Chosen One, or else he couldn't participate in the adventure. The adults would just say "Wait here where it's safe."

He has to travel to the other side of the world to convince Anansi the Spider to come out of hiding and repair the hole in the sky. But there are complications.  

Of course.  Otherwise be lousy story.

When he meets High John the Conqueror, the ultimate Power, Tristan finds him him obnoxious, irreverent, and arrogant.

Whoa.  Now I know Tristan is canonically gay!  I'll check out the author, Kwami Mbalia.

Ok, but that's another story: he's  "a husband, father, writer, New York Times bestselling author, and pharmaceutical metrologist, in that order."  He grew up in the Midwest, graduated from Howard University, and now lives in North Carolina. This is his debut novel.

Nothing jumps out at me saying "I'm going to make the protagonist of my young adult novel gay."  But you never know....

Boxing: Your Grandfather's Beefcake Sport

During the first half of the twentieth century, boxing was very popular, probably more popular than what would become the big name sports of baseball, basketball, and football.

It makes sense during the Depression: you don't need a lot of expensive equipment, there's no team demanding salaries, just two guys duking it out in a ring.

They had their shirts off, of course, and they usually wore skimpy boxing trunks, giving your grandfather's generation their beefcake quot. 

The homoeroticism of two muscular, sweaty guys putting their hands on each other is obvious.

It was a male-only sport, but boys of all ages played.

It wasn't unusual to see elementary school kids in the ring.

Every high school had its boxing team.  So did boys' clubs, the YMCA.....

Military bases, summer camps, the Civilian Conservation Corps...

...and private boxing clubs in every city.























The Golden Gloves, amateur boxing competitions, were held in New York and Chicago beginning in 1925, although the National Golden Gloves didn't get its start until 1962.

Today you rarely see amateur boxing clubs.  Only one or two high schools offer boxing, and those are from recent attempts to restore the sport.

It seems old fashioned and decidedly Eurocentric in an era of caopeira, Muay Thai, Mongolian bokh, and mixed martial arts.

The Gay Journalist and the Three Beefcake Boxers

I love researching the people in old beefcake photographs.  These three specimens, for example:

Left, with long arms: Joe-Claes

Center, with basket: Petit Riquet ("Little Riquet." because of his height?).

Right, tall, buffed: F. Sybille

The two guys in suits are "Their managers, Graf = Brothers."

The inscription reads: "Friendly memory to Mr. Francis Soulie, Liege, February 24, 1927."

Apparently they were all boxers.  Lightweight Joe Claes is 24 years old, and has been boxing since 1922.  He retired in 1929 after 46 bouts and 28 wins.

20-year old bantamweight Nicolas Petit-Biquet, "la petite merveille liegeoise," began boxing at age 15 by falsifying his papers, and knocked out his first opponent.  He fought in 109 bouts, with 59 wins and 14 knockouts.  In 1932 he became European bantamweight champion.  He lived in Liege through his life, and died in 1959.

The most famous of the three is 21-year old Francois Sybille, a bantamweight called "La rapière liégeoise."  He won 99 fights and represented France in the 1924 Olympics (this is the Argentine boxing team for that year).  He died in 1968.

What about Mr. Francis Soulie?  A gay right-wing journalist and surrealist writer, suspected of ghost-writing Le Regard du Roi (1954) for his Guinean boyfriend Camara Laye (1928-1980).  

I wonder what happy memories Mr. Francis Soulie shared with the boxers of Liege


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Pete and Nick Spanakos, the Boxing Twins

Identical twins Petros (Pete) and Nicholas Spanakos were born on July 26th, 1938 in the working-class Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.  They were the youngest of eight boys born to Greek immigrants Michael and Stella Spanakos, who owned the Paramount Restaurant on Court Street.

Topping off at 5'3", and the only Greek kids in Red Hook, Pete and Nick were often targeted by neighborhood bullies -- the Italians one day, the Irish the next.  Bigger guys were always calling them out, insulting them.

One day when they were 14 years old, they walked into a gym, and someone said "You guys want to try punching the big bags?"  They did.  They strapped on pairs of boxing gloves, and never took them off.

In 1952, they entered the Golden Gloves competition for amateur youth, making sure that they had different weights so they wouldn't have to fight each other (although they usually entered the same tournaments).

On February 21, 1955, they both won boxing matches on the same night.

They were fast and energetic, not hard-hitters.  But what they lacked in strength they made up for in sheer enthusiasm.  Over the next 10 years, they won 17 Golden Gloves titles.

Pete competed the 1959 Pan-American Games in Chicago, and Nick won a bronze medal at the  1960 Olympics. His roommate was the future Muhammad Ali.

  Later he fought the Greek champion in an exhibition round in Athens.

Pete and Nick used their boxing prowess to get scholarships to the College of Idaho, a private liberal arts college that has produced governors, journalists, and Nobel Prize winners, and then went on to graduate school.

Pete got a law degree and moved back to New York, where became a school counselor, later opening a school for South Bronx kids who had been expelled.  He bought a historic house in Sea Gate, Coney Island, and founded the Sea Gate Historical Society.

One of his close friends was Joe Rollino (1904-2010), the "strongest man in the world," who used to perform at Coney Island, lifting 635 pounds with one finger.

Nick got a Ph.D. in Business Administration and taught at SUNY for many years.   He recently retired to Miami Beach.

I can't find a lot of gay connection in their biographies, just some same-sex friendships.  But the beefcake was spectacular.