"Adventure Beast": We Live on a Queer Planet

 

Big bear Bradley Trevor Greive, the "Tasmanian Grizzly," has sold over 25 million copies of his self-help and inspirational books like Dear Dad, Friends to the End, and The Simple Truth about Love.  He is also involved with print cartoons, tv, movies, stage shows, nature conservation, Russian cosmonaut training, and...well, he's written a book titled The Book for People Who Do Too Much.

He's married to a woman, and his books don't seem to be gay-inclusive: they're all about male-female romance and male-male friendship, no male-male romance.  A search on "Bradley Trevor Greive" and "gay" revealed only a comment from his book Looking for Mr. Right, advice for women on how to find a man:  "just because you're caring and sensitive doesn't make you gay."  But his new animated series, Adventure Beast, has an episode entitled "We Live on a Queer Planet," so I watched.

Scene 1:  Bradley (voicing himself), an "international animal expert," in the green room of a late-night talk show.  His niece/assistant Bonnie wrangles the animals: bats, a cave louse, cassowary, black swans.  Nerd assistant Dietrich (Josh Zuckerman, left) is star-struck over another guest, Canadian reality show star Nolan Tremble, twice voted Canada's sexiest man (so Dietrich is gay?).  Bradley's tuxedo is too tight, so he changes into his field clothes in front of them (no skin).  They are disgusted.  I guess Dietrich isn't gay after all.

Scene 2: The stage manager sees the black swans cuddling, and exclaims "Men and women!  It never works out."  Bradley explains that they're both male.  25% of male black swans are gay.  They mate for life, and raise a female's fertilized egg as their own.  Stage manager doesn't believe it, so he continues: almost every animal species exhibits queer behavior. 

Scene 3: We switch to see cuddling giraffes.  Bradley; "90% of male giraffe's behavior is 'homosexual.'"  (Yes, he uses the h-word).  Bonnie: "Just like me in high school."  Bradley is upset by the revelation, but goes on to show us male lions, water buffalos, mountain goats, and elephants screwing for fun and to achieve social harmony.  Female hyenas engage in oral sex (both male and female hyenas have penis-like organs).   Bonobo chimps are all bisexual, and use sex for conflict resolution.

More after the break

Crikey, It's the Croc Hunter's Kids, All Grown Up and LGBT Allies

Remember Steve Irwin, the Croc Hunter, the naturalist who devoted his life to preserving and de-mythologizing Australian wildlife, especially crocodiles?  Sure, they're ancient predators, but if you treat them with respect, they probably won't eat you.  When he died in 2006, he left his widow, Terri, and two young children, Bindi and Robert.  Both grew up to be conservationists and tv personalities in their own right.

Bindi, now 22 years old, has starred in several tv series: Bindi the Jungle Girl, Bindi's Bootcamp, Steve Irwin's Wildlife Warriors, and most recently Crikey, It's the Irwins (2018-).  Plus she has competed in Dancing with the Stars and recorded several music albums.  In 2018 she received a LGBT Ally Award

She is married to Chandler Powell, a Florida-born professional wakeboarder (like water skiing).

I assume that the guys on the left are both Chandler, although the second one looks far more buffed than the first.

Robert (no connection to the Arabic literature specialist) is also multi-talented.  He has co-written a series of books, Robert Irwin: Dinosaur Hunter.  He is an award-winning nature photographer.  He has brought interesting animals to guest on The Tonight Show 11 times, including a "gay" ostrich in November 2018.  Co-host Kevin Hart freaked out, thinking that the ostrich wanted to have sex with him.

And he has starred in several tv series, including Robert's Real Life Adventures, Wild But True, and of course Crikey, It's the Irwins.

That's quite a lot for someone who is only 16 years old.

Robert has such fey mannerisms that I wanted to know if he was gay in real life.  I found a promising Reddit: "What is the connection between Robert Irwin and Anduin Wyrnn?  Are they dating?"

Anduin Wyrnn is a character in the World of Warcraft, and not canonically gay.  Did they mean Josh Keaton, who does his voice?  No -- Josh is over 50, married, with children.

So that question is nonsense.

Crikey, It's the Irwins doesn't help.  It's more about wrangling rattlesnakes in Arizona than who Robert is inviting to senior prom.  So I still don't know if Robert is gay or not.

No doubt his Mom and big sister will be fine with it, either way.

The Top Ten Nature Show Hunks

When I was little, the only nature program we had was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (1963-1985), with a grandfatherly host, Marlin Perkins, who didn't actually go into the field; he just narrated, and occasionally lapsed into a commercial: "Just as lions provide for their young, you need life insurance...."

Today's nature show hosts have learned that ratings depend on two things: you have to get out there, pat an elephant, shake hands with a tiger.  And it's hot in the jungle.  Take your shirt off! (And maybe get your crew to take their shirts off, too).

Here are the top 10 nature show hunks:

1. Troy Dann (left) of Outback Adventures (1998-99).  More buffed and less heterosexist than Steve Irwin, and he added aboriginal culture to the mix.

2-3. Nick Baker and Steve Backshall (left) of Britain's long-running Really Wild Show (2004-2006).

4. Australian herpetologist Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter (1997-2004).  He had the annoying habit of calling female crocodiles "darlin" and referring to them as his girlfriends, but his khaki shorts left little to the imagination.

5. Mr. Greenjeans of Captain Kangaroo (1955-1984).  He only played with cute domesticated animals, like bunny rabbits, but at least he had a boyfriend.

6-7. Surprisingly muscular brothers, Chris and Martin Kratt, who hung out with creatures on Kratt's Creatures (1995-96) and Zooboomafoo.  They also got animated.  Do a search for them on Deviant Art -- it's amazing how often they're shipped (made into romantic partners) by eager fans.

8. Jeff Corwin (left) of Going Wild with Jeff Corwin, The Jeff Corwin Experience, and so on.  He strips off his shirt at the drop of a script, and is rumored to be gay, in spite of his wife and kids.  Maybe because of the episode where he frolicked in Cambodia with Anderson Cooper.

9. Jim Fowler of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.  He never showed any muscles, but we saw him occasionally in the field. And I figured that he was Marlin Perkins' boyfriend.

10.  Stan Brock, man-mountain same program.

11. Dave Salmoni, a big-cat specialist who hosted Living with Tigers, Animal Face-Off, Expedition Impossible, Rogue Nature, and Into the Pride.   He loves his gay fans, and often poses semi-nude for them.

Honorable mention goes to Chris Pontius and Steve-O of Wildboyz, and Mark Trail, actually a comic strip character.

Mark Trail: A Substandard Tarzan

This is not a parody beefcake cover; it's the real thing. Mark Trail Magazine, the Magazine of Adventure for Boys, gave Boys' Life some strong competition during the 1960s, with articles about rough-and-tumble activities like camping, horseback riding, shooting, skiing, and fishing.

And, apparently, building rafts in your underwear.

It was based on Jack Elrod's comic strip Mark Trail, started in 1946 and still syndicated in 175 newspapers.

Mark Trail was a sort of North American Tarzan, an adventurer more at home among redwood trees and grizzly bears than in the city.  He lived in Lost Forest National Forest, where he shot pictures for Woods and Wildlife Magazine (a take on Field and Stream).  His assignments got him into jams involving rampaging grizzly bears or (more often) villainous poachers, gun-runners, and...well, um poachers.

His comic strip was very popular during the 1950s and 1960s.  There was a radio series, a tv pilot starring Todd Armstrong (Jason and the Argonauts), and even a series of books, from Mark Trail's Book of Animals to Mark Trail's Cooking Tips.  

But Mark Trail was no Tarzan.
1. Darkest Africa offered much more interesting animals than the United States.  Lions, jaguars, 20-foot pythons, crocodiles vs. grizzly bears and...um...squirrels.

2. Darkest Africa had cannibals, leopard cults, and lost civilizations.  The United States had....um, poachers.





3. Outside of the MGM movies, Tarzan worked alone, or with a teenage sidekick.  Mark Trail had a girlfriend, Cherry Davis, and a series of flirtatious female photographers, damsels in distress, and villainesses to contend with.

4. Tarzan was loincloth clad and muscular.  For that matter, real naturalists tend to be quite muscular, like Stan Brock of Wild Kingdom.

But Mark Trail almost never took his shirt off, and when he did, he displayed a scrawny, unimpressive physique.

Artists have the choice of drawing muscular physiques or not.  Why wouldn't they?

See also: Top 10 Nature Show Hunks.

Jackass: The Gayest Show on TV

The MTV reality series Jackass (2000-2002) and spin-off movies (2002, 2006, 2009, 2011) were about guys (including "Wee Man" Jason Acuna, left) engaging in crazy stunts:

 Bam Margera uses Steve-O as bait to fish for sharks.
Steve-O stuffs raw chicken in his underwear and crosses a tight-rope over a pit of alligators.

A house falls on Johnny Knoxville (left).

Or practical jokes, often involving nudity or revealing thongs.

Chris Pontius (left) walks through a hotel lobby naked.

Wee man invades a board meeting naked.

The guys hugged, kissed, and climbed all over each other while naked, a big, bold, in-your face homoeroticism that had nothing to do with subtexts.

When Vanity Fair asked if Jackass was "a smidge gay,"  Johnny Knoxville retorted that it was a lot gay: "We're over here sitting on rainbows!  We're a gay pride parade!"

One could interpret the homoeroticism as just another "gross out" factor for the intended audience of heterosexual male adolescents: "Look, Chris just put his mouth on Steve-O's junk!  Sick!"  But it was so gleeful, unself-conscious, and endearing that you couldn't be cynical.

Jackass received a lot of criticism, mostly about how it was crass, vulgar, idiotic, dumbed-down, not nearly as intellectually stimulating as King Lear.  

Ok, it wasn't King Lear.  But you got to see more penises.  A lot more.

Steve-O and Chris Pontius went on to the nature program Wildboyz (2003-2006), which involved frolicking naked with wild animals, not to mention partying down with Australian aboriginal dudes.  And got them on my list of Top 10 Nature Show Hunks.