The gay couple of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."

I never watched The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68).  First it was on past my bedtime, and then there were too many competing choices (The Time Tunnel, Hogan's Heroes).  But I had more than one friend who thought it was "good beyond hope."

What are you measuring, Mr. Mad Scientist?

 It was a buddy spy series, like I Spy and Wild Wild West, but with an interesting twist.  In the heart of the Cold War, we heard over and over that "Russkies" were all evil monsters plotting our destruction.   But one of the secret agents was Russian.

The premise: The USSR, the United States, and other countries have set aside their differences and formed U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) to fight the evil THRUSH (acronym unknown), which wants to "subjugate the human race."

The plots were much more extravagant than anything seen on Mission: Impossible, rivaling Batman in campiness:
THRUSH tries to bring Hitler back to life.

Invents a deadly hiccup-inducing gas.

Invents an exploding hula-dancing doll.

Pat Harrington, Jr. (later on One Day at a Time) steals a rare book containing THRUSH code.

Sonny and Cher play clothes designers with THRUSH codes hidden in one of their dresses.

But the main draw was the "The Man" of the title,  American agnet Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn, previously seen shirtless in Teenage Caveman), and his partner, the Russian Illya Kuryakin (Scottish actor David McCallum).

  They were not only spy partners: they seemed to live together (and when traveling always took hotel rooms with just one bed).

More after the break

Daniel DiMaggio: The queerbaiting son on "American Houswife" grows up to play Count Chocula and post selfies

 

Link to the NSFW version

You may be familiar with Daniel DiMaggio, no relation to Joe DiMaggio, as Oliver Otto on American Housewife (2016-21).  I never heard of it, but I wouldn't have watched anyway.  Who wants to watch a sicom about June Cleaver or Donna Reed?  

It starred Katy Mixon as Katie Otto, a housewife who, although not pretentious herself, is immersed in the ultra-pretentious world of ladies who lunch in Westport, Connecticut, along with her husband (Diedrich Bader), two daughters, and son Oliver (Daniel). 

She has a lesbian best friend, and there's a gay character (Jake Choi) in Season 5, so there's a bit of representation.  The main problem fans had was queerbaiting Oliver.  

He is presented as gay, with everything from pictures of muscular men on his bedroom wall to an interest in ballet to a boyfriend, the wealthy, femme Cooper (Logan Bell).  Everyone thinks they are boyfriends, including Cooper, who is upset every time Oliver claims that they are not dating.  But then he backs off and gets a girlfriend.  

Logan Bell (the femme one) is gay in real life, and states that he played Cooper as gay.  So why five seasons of "crumbs" that led nowhere?  Fans were irate when the showrunners were too cowardly to let Oliver come out.

Daniel already has two strikes against him (baseball metaphor, har har) for five years of queerbaiting.  Let's check on his other projects.

He was born in 2003 in Los Angeles, and began acting at age nine in the short Geisho (2010): a man (Horatio Sanz) wants to become the world's first male geisha.  Kind of gender-fluid.

Next, a 2013 episode of Burn Notice, which, I discovered today, is not about a hospital burn unit, in spite of the misleading title.  It's about a spy who was "burned" (fired). How the heck are potential viewers supposed to know that?   Daniel plays the young version of focus character Michael (Jeffrey Donovan). 

More after the break

Ken Clark: "South Pacific" Stewpot, Sword and Sandal Baddie, Bodybuilder on My Sausage Sighting List

I've seen live performances of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific (1948), about American sailors in love with South Pacific islanders during World War II, but never the 1958 movie. Until now.

Colonialist, imerialist, and highly heteronormative plotlines.  I already knew that.

But I didn't know that beefcake abounds -- and sausages.  Wait until the minor character Stewpot leads the sailors in a paeon to heteronormativity, "There's Nothing Like a Dame."

There ain't a thing that's wrong with any man here

That can't be cured by putting him near

A girly, womanly, female, feminine dame

Was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing?

Fast forward to Stewpot's only other scene, a weightlifting contest.  Darn, he's wearing grapes.

But when you see him in jeans, his beneath-the belt gifts are obvious.  Maybe he was even cast for them.  Henry Slate played a skinny, fully-clothed Sttewpot on Broadway, but for the movie, director Joshua Logan wanted to reflect the 1950s muscle craze, so he cast 31-year old bulging bodybuilder Ken Clark. 

I checked some of Ken Clark's other works, to see if more sausages were evident.

He was born in Neffs, Ohio, a tiny town near the West Virginia border, in 1927.  After high school he enlisted in the Navy, and then worked jobs as a coal miner, construction worker, and model while trying to break into acting.  

The modeling included some of those nearly-n*de photos published in "fitness" magazines like Physique Pictorial.  We have a backside, but I couldn't find any frontsides.

His acting career begins in 1955, with a string of two-fisted man's man roles: The Proud Ones, The Last Wagon, the True Story of Jesse James.

South Pacific did not propel Ken into stardom, in spite of his physique and sausage.  The guest spots continued: A cop in Suspicion, an FBI agent in The Shaggy Dog, a cop on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (left).  But at least he got a chance to showcase his talent.  And stuff.

He starred in Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) as a Florida game warden who teams up with a local physician (Walter Kelley).  They take off their shirts, fight giant leeches, and win the Girls.  

More after the break

Daryl Sabara: Juni grows up, fights cannibals, bikers, and Satanists, and show his stuff, but I'm still depressed

Link to the Daryl and Antonio Banderas n*de photos

Spy Kids (2001) stars gay actor Antonio Banderas (left) and Carla Gugino as a husband and wife spy team.  Well, actually, their son and daughter, Juni and Carmen (Daryl Sabara, Alexa Vega), who get swept up in an age-appropriate diabolical plot involving tv host Fegan Floop (Alan Cummings, who is bisexual in real life).   

Although everyone is ostensibly heterosexual, some reviews call the film a queer classic due to the extremely hot Dad -- and Mom, apparently, which led to the "queer awakening" of an entire generation of lesbians; the shy, bullied, gay-coded Juni; the kick-ass Carmen; and the gay-coded villain who turns out to be not all that villainous.

There were 3 sequels:

Spy Kids: The Island of Lost Dreams (2002) strands Juni and Carmen on a Jules Verne-Dr. Moreau "mysterious island," where they run afoul of a mad scientist creating animal hybrids.  Carmen gets a boyfriend, but Juni remains gay-coded.

I didn't see Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003) where Juni must venture into a video game to save his sister, but the queer coding ends with him meeting The Girl.  He also meets two guys, video game teammates Ryan Pinkston and Bobby Edner.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

The 2011 Spy Kids: All the Time in the World minimized Juni and Carmen in favor of a new sibling team.  The brother is played by Mason Cook, who would go on to Speechless.

During the Spy franchise, Daryl Sabara appeared in the usual one-shot tv spots: Will and Grace, Fatherhood, House, American Dragon: Jake Long, and so on.

He has a starring role in the animated lion-drama Father of the Pride (2004-05) as Hunter, a shy, anxiety-ridden Lord of the Rings nerd. That is, basically Juni as a lion.  In one episode, his grandfather Sarmoti thinks that he is gay, or as the fan wiki says, "homosexual; but this is absolutely not true."  Rather homophobic, aren't you, fan wiki?

In a 2006 episode of Criminal Minds,  Daryl plays a teenager who charges men to watch him make videos.  So he has an OnlyFans site?  The agents convince him that what he is doing constitutes prostitution, and will put him in danger from predators.  It is all presented as extremely sleazy, and one can't help but conclude that being gay is always seedy and sordid.  

Normal Adolescent Behavior (2007) is an anti-hookup cautionary tale,with no gay content: three girls and three guys in a friendship group pair off randomly.  Daryl appears as Nathan, who crushes on the mother of one of the girls. Ugh.

Raviv Ullman, formerly Phil of the Future, plays one of the guys in the friendship group.

Next Daryl played Tim Scottson in 7 episodes of Weeds (2005-12), about suburban marijuana growers. He shot his stepmother Nancy Botwin because he assumed that she was responsible for his father's death, but she recovered and hired him as her assistant.

Worst. Prom. Ever. (2011) has Daryl planning the perfect prom for his girlfriend, but when her two friends tag along, things go crazy, with a car crash, armed thugs, Satanists, and an amorous lady biker.

In The Green Inferno (2013), some student activists go to the Peruvian jungle for ecological stuff, and are captured by cannibal tribe.  

A cannibal tribe?  I thought the "spear-throwing savages" trope went out with Johnny Quest. But at least the guy dragging Daryl toward the cooking pot has nice abs and a basket.

Daryl gets a girlfriend and shows his stuff before being eaten.

More Daryl after the break

"The Secret of Boyne Castle": Kurt Russell, a dreary November night, and the smile that changed the world

We usually went to church on Sunday nights, but for some reason I was home one night in the early 1970s to see the last half of the best movie ever made, The Secret of Boyne Castle, on the anthology series Wonderful World of Color.
This was former child star Kurt Russell's only movie as a Disney Adventure Boy (others included Peter McEnery, Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine, and Jeff East) before he moved on to playing oddball outsider Dexter Riley in a series of Disney comedies.

Here Kurt plays Rich, an American exchange student in Dublin who learns that his older brother Tom (bisexual muscleman Glenn Corbett, previously a model for Physique Pictorial and star of Route 66) is not a steel company executive after all, but a spy charged with delivering essential information to Boyne Castle, in the west of Ireland. When Tom is captured by Russian agents, Rich must take over the mission, racing through the quaint villages and lush green hills of Ireland, hoping to elude capture and reach Boyne Castle before the Russians. Fellow student Sean (long-faced, steely-eyed Patrick Dawson) tags along, throwing himself into deadly danger for no logical reason except that he rather likes Rich.

The two are presented as more intimate than mere buddies, framed in tight shots, their faces together in close ups. While they are sleeping on the heather, Rich hears a suspicious noise, and wakes Sean by moving his own body slightly. Although all we see are their faces and necks, to wake someone with such a small gesture means that they must be cuddling together. They rescue each other a dozen times, and are eventually rescued by big brother Tom.

But the most important scene, the scene I have remembered fondly for 40 years:

At an inn, Rich flirts with a waitress.

“You didn’t tell me you had an eye for the ladies!” Sean exclaims, as if he hadn’t anticipated any competition.

Rich responds by asking the waitress if she has any rooms to rent for “for a few hours.” Suspicious, she wants to know why the two boys would need a room for such a short period.

Rich looks at Sean and smiles.

I was entranced by that smile. I knew that it was a clue to the secret. If only I could decipher it, I could find my way to that other world, Oz or Living Island or Middle Earth, the world where boys could fall in love and got married.

How might we account for the not-so-subtle homoerotic bantr between the Rich and Sean? Certainly Glenn Corbett might be a gay ally: he began as a model for the Athletic Model Guild, the Advocate Men of its day, and made a career as a buddy-bonding “man’s man. Kurt Russell was never particularly gay-friendly.

Patrick Dawson works mostly in Irish radio, but his limited filmography includes the gay-vague Ginger in The Jigsaw Man (1983). We should look at the director, Robert Butler, who in the 1960’s specialized in dramas with strong male leads, such as Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, and I Spy, and later directed such hunk-fests as Remington Steele, Moonlighting, and Lois and Clark. Whether he was working with Bruce Willis, Dean Cane, Pierce Brosnan, or Kurt Russell, Butler neither minimized nor hid their physicality, allowing and even directing them to be open as objects of desire, both to male viewers and to each other.

Robert Conrad Dares You

We're used to thinking of Robert Conrad as a two-fisted action hero, but he originally wanted to be a singer.  During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the former professional boxer released a number of teen idol-style crooner records, but the market was overcrowded with Paul Anka, Fabian, Elvis, Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone, and nearly everyone else who could hold a tune.

Bob's records didn't sell, not even with the color shots of his impressive physique.

In 1959, Bob landed a role as Tom Lopaka, the half-Hawaiian partner of detective Tracey Steele (Anthony Eisley) on Hawaiian Eye.  Many of the cases took place on the beach, allowing Bob to strip down to a swimsuit or short-cut jeans.  The buddy-bonding was intense, and there weren't a huge number of episodes in which Tom meets a girl.


When Hawaiian Eye ended in 1963, Bob's singing career was forgotten; after starring against type in the beach movie Palm Springs Weekend (1963), he moved almost into the program that Boomers remember fondly: Wild Wild West (1965-69), a combination of the classic Western with the 1960s spy craze (other examples include Get Smart, The Secret of Boyne Castle, I Spy, and Mission: Impossible.

In the 1870s, special agents James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) travel through the Old West on the orders of President Grant. They use disguises and weird science fiction gadgets to foil spies, mad scentists, enemy agents, rebels, and miscellaneous high-tech scalawags.

West is tied up shirtless in nearly every episode.  He usually frees himself, but sometimes Gordeon storms to the rescue.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much buddy-bonding. West and Gordon were coworkers, not buddies, and they both leered at women nearly as often as they fell in love.









Bob had found his niche: tongue-in-cheek adventure.  During the next two decades, he was never very far from a tv series: The D.A. (1971-72), Assignment Vienna (1972-73), Black Sheep Squadron (1976-78), A Man Called Sloane (1979).  Although he had time for two buddy-bonding movies with Don Stroud.

When tongue-in-cheek adventure went out of style during the early 1980s, Bob switched to comedy (Wrong is Right, Moving Violations) or drama (Assassin, Charley Hannah).  But he rarely forgot to include a shirtless scene or two.

He parodied himself in a series of commercials for Ever-Ready Batteries in the 1980s, daring the viewer to knock a battery off his shoulder (traditionally one starts fights by daring someone to knock a chip off one's shoulder).

The rumor mill suggested that he was bisexual, and during the 1950s had liaisons with some of the great closeted actors in Hollywood, such as Tab Hunter, Wally Cox, and Rock Hudson.  Bob denied the rumors, stating to the press "I'm not gay" several times.

Bobby Edner: gay-positive child star grows up, joins a boy band, posts beefcake photos

In the short film The Seventh Sense (2001), a boy named Kyle (Bobby Edner) develops the mystical ability to see gay people.  The only problem is, they don't know they're gay.  With the help of benevolent psychiatrist, he puts his ability to good use, helping people to see themselves as they really are.

 

Bobby Edner was one of the most popular child stars of the 1990s, playing everything from the young Zack on Saved by the Bell to the "Can I touch your boobs" kid on Ellen, not to mention innumerable victims of child abuse, stranger danger, and incurable diseases.  

He appeared in commercials for Backyard Sports, Home Depot, Taco Bell, KFC, State Farm Insurance, and Fruit Roll-Ups.

He was most famous for The Day the World Ended (2001), about a boy who believes that his father, Randy Quaid, was taken over by an alien and killed his mother.  No one believes him, but it turns out he was right.

And Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003), as Francis, one of the testers of a real-life video game (along with Ryan Pinkston and Daryl Sabara).

In adolescence Bobby only a few screen roles, notably in Welcome to the Paradise (2007), as the son of a  female preacher (gasp!).  

And he voiced Vaan in several Final Fantasy video games.

More after the break

"Alex Rider": A Teenage James Bond, His Goofy Best Friend, and Exquisite Victorian Stickers

 I have seen the first episode of Alex Rider, about a teenage James Bond.

Scene 1:  Establishing shots of New York.  Scruffy Scary Guy drives to a parking garage, takes out a sinister satchel, and does something scary with a hologram.  Meanwhile Parker (George Sear) is just putting on his tie.  He tells his Dad he's going to an exhibition at the Rubin, but they'll get lunch later.

 Whoops, I thought Parker was the main character.  Turns out it's Dad (Michael, played by Steven Brand).  He cancels his lunch with Parker and appointment with the Senator, and calls someone named Brandt: "I need to talk to you about Parker.  It's urgent."  

Then he steps into an elevator and plunges to his death!

Turns out that Scruffy Scary guy has projected a holographic image of an elevator car onto an empty shaft, in order to kill Michael!  Much easier than shooting him!

Parker looks out the window, smiling.  He was in on it!

Five minutes of commercials.  Since when does a streaming service have commercials?

Scene 2: London.  A ritzy school.  Alex (Otto Farrantm left) and Tom (Brenock O'Connor) have stepped out of a 1980s movie, where teenage boys can think of nothing except girls.

Tom: Girls!  There's a party tonight!  Girls will be there!  We just need Jahit to text us the address.  Girls!

Alex: Girls!  Will the Girl of My Dreams be there?  Girls!

Which seems odd, since Otto Farrant starred as a gay teenager in Spool, and Brenock O'Connor played a teenager whose bully has a secret crush on him in Sing Street.  

The teacher confiscates Tom's phone before they can get the address, so after class Alex does some remarkable acrobatic work to break into school and retrieve it.  He's got the spy skills already!

Unfortunatly, he's caught.

Scene 3: Uncle Ian (Andrew Buchan) is driving Alex home and yelling at him for being a screw-up.  He confiscates Alex's phone and grounds him.

Scene 4: At home, Alex complains to Jack that there's no food in the house.  Not to worry, she got take-out (don't tell your Uncle).  

I don't understand Jack's role in the family: an African woman about Alex's age, responsible for the cooking, so housekeeper?  Adopted sister?  But Uncle Ian consults her about how to deal with Alex, so  his wife?  

At dinner, Uncle Ian watches a news story about Michael's death. "He was...um...a client at...um...the bank where I work."  Dude, I could tell in 30 seconds that you are a spy.  Why hasn't Alex figured it out?

Turns out that Alex knows Michael's son Parker from his youtube prank videos.  He used to be fun-loving and outrageous, until his dad sent him to a special school in France (uh-oh, a Stepford son).

More after the break

"Agent Elvis": McConaughey as the King, Cavalero as a drug dealer with a bulge, and Cole as a dick

 

Link to NSFW version

 Agent Elvis (2023) features The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley (Matthew McConaughey) interacting with some of the real people and events of the 1960s, like Timothy Leary, Howard Hughes, and the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, but as a secret agent, working for the mysterious Commander (Don Cheadle).  I reviewed Episode 1.3.

While filming A Change of Habit (1969), Elvis hears about the Moon Landing, and, upset that he's not going, decides to take out his frustration on some drug dealers.   His assistant Bobby Ray (Johnny Knoxville) tells him that Flyboy (Tony Cavalero), who hangs out in the studio parking lot, selling maps to movie stars' homes, actually sells cocaine.   His handler tells him that they still have scenes to shoot, but he rushes down to the parking lot.

Why is Flyboy dressed as a pimp to sell cocaine?  He explains that drug dealing and pimping have an intersecting clientele. 

Who is his cocaine supplier?  Flyboy doesn't want to say, because "snitches get stitches," so Elvis steals his clothes, ties him up in the back seat of his car, and sics his ape companion, Scatter, on him.  Faced with having his head bit off, Flyboy tells him.  

With Flyboy trapped in the trunk, Elvis enters a sleazy apartment building.  His handler appears again, ordering him to get back to the studio to film the remaining scenes. Besides, taking down drug dealers won't get him on the Moon Mission: "No matter what you do, it's not going to turn you into an astronaut."  Elvis doesn't listen: he beats up the drug wholesaler and his henchmen, but Scatter kills them before they can tell him about the big cocaine shipment coming in.

More after the break

"Burn After Reading": or better still, burn before reading

Three days after watching the execrable O Brother, Where Art Thou, the song "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" is still in my head.  My friend suggests that we add to my woes with Burn After Reading.

"I saw part of it before," I tell him.  "I walked out of the theater when something inexcusably horrible happened, turning it from a comedy iinto a monstrosity!"

"Give it a try," he says.  "Watch it all the way through before making a decision."

If I watch with him, there will be cuddling.  If I don't, probably not.  So here goes.

If you want to skip there whole thing and go directly to the butts and dicks, here are some links to:

Nude photos of Brad Pitt

Nude photos of Dermot Mulroney

Burn After Reading (2008) is a Coen Brothers "comedy" about a lot of old, bald, ugly guys in suits who have offices in Washington, DC.  Most have  jobs dealing with government secrets, but there's also a divorce lawyer, a plastic surgeon, and a guy who used to be a Greek Orthodox priest but now runs a gym.  I can't tell them apart, but according to the IMDB, they're played by John Malkovich, Richard Jenkins, David Rasche, J. K. Simmons, Olek Krupa, Michael Countryman, J.R. Horne, Hamilton Clancy, and Armand Schultz. 

I'm going to use the actors' names.  It will be easier to keep track of who's who.

State Secrets agent John Malkovich, who resigns from the State Secrets agency  and writes his memoirs.  Will this be like "The Prisoner," where a secret agent resigns and is sent to the Island?  "We want in-formation."

Nope, his memoirs don't actually contain any classified information.  

Meanwhile his wife is having an affair with fellow State Secrets agent George Clooney

In preparation for asking for a divorce, she copies all of Malhovich's financial information, plus his memoirs, onto a computer disk.  She give it to her lawyer, whose secretary loses it at the gym.

Where it is found by two conniving gym employees, Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand, who I always confuse with Frances Sternhagen, Cliff's mother on Cheers.   They think it contains government secrets, and blackmail Malkovich for its safe return.  When he balks, they try to sell it to the Russians.

Aha, finally we get to the protagonists!  At least the two that are pushing the blackmail plot.

Why are they committing this act of treason, the only crime other than aggravated homicide that can get them the death penalty?  Well, Sternhagen wants money for liposuction for her saggy arm and belly fat.  Even though her doctor tells her that those areas will respond to exercise.  

And she works at a gym.

Pitt  is just an idiot.

Did I mention that Sternhagen also happens to be dating  Clooney, the guy having an affair with Malkovich, the man she's blackmailing?  Do all State Secrets agents go to the same gym?

Sneaking around the house looking for more government secrets,for some reason, Pitt accidentally encounters Clooney, who thinks he's the man that's been following him (in another plotline). 

Caution: horrible plot twist ahead::  Clooney kills him!  WTF?  You can't kill the protagonist, ever, and certainly not halfway through the way through the movie.  How can he have his complications, crisis, denoument, and conclusion?  There's nothing left for the movie to do!  

But it goes on. We switch protagonists -- now it's Clooney.   Sternhagen (who he is dating), complains about her missing friend.     Clooney doesn't realize that he killed the friend, so he agrees to help look for him.  Wait -- wasn't Brad Pitt wearing a gym uniform?  And Sternhagen works at the gym.  How hard is it to figure out?

Malkovich, meanwhile, believes that Sternhagen's boss is the blackmailer, and kills him.

We adjourn to some old, ugly guys sitting around talking about what happened next. It's complicated, but it ends up with with Malkovich  in a coma, Clooney in Venezuela, and Sternhagen agreeing to keep quiet if they pay for her liposuction.

Wait -- the first rule of moviemaking -- show, don't tell.  It's like watching The Wizard of Oz, all the way up to where Dorothy and her companions reach the Emerald City, then adjourning to Dorothy telling Aunt Em "So we went to the witch's castle, with lots of adventures on the way, and in the end we defeated her."

Terrible way to end a terrible movie.

Gay content:  

A tiny bit of beefcake, the rather muscular arms and shoulders of one of the guys Sternhagen has sex with.  Clooney and Pitt are fully clothed throughout.  Coming Up Daisy, the romantic comedy that Sternhagen brings her dates to, stars Dermot Mulroney, but he's fully clothed, too.

One homophobic slur.

One racist stereotype.

Brad Pitt's character is probably gay, but nothing is ever said.  He just fails to express any interest in women.

But at least I got some cuddling out of the deal.

"Rocky and Bullwinkle": A gay couple, fairy princes, and Boris Badenov

Rocky and Bullwinkle (1959-64, and rehashed into many different series during the 1960s) is often praised as genius, a classic of animation. Amazon promises: "the wittiest, most inspired, and relentlessly hilarious animation ever created!"

No one thought it was great in the 1960s.  It was relegated to the Sunday morning ghetto, with Totalitarian Television and Davy and Goliath.

Either of which were preferable to the Moose and Squirrel.

Ok, maybe I was too young to understand the clever satire, so a few months ago I  purchased and watched Season 1 on DVD.

I still hated it.

50% of each episode was devoted to repetitive, incomprehensible filler:

When the mountain they are climbing is destroyed by lightning, Rocky and Bullwinkle fall to their deaths, but are resurrected in a field of daisies.  Why is this funny?

Magician Bullwinkle tells Rocky, "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."  He pulls out a scary monster instead, and quips, "I take a 7 1/2."  I assume that refers to his hat size, but how is it an appropriate punchline?

When you finally got to the story, it was an endless serial cut into five-minute segments.  I never saw the first or the last of them, so I had no idea what was going on.  But the titles were bound to involve incomprehensible puns.
The Treasure of Monte Zoom
Maybe Dick
The Guns of Abalone
Kerwood Derby

I know what most of them refer to now, except "Kerwood Derby."  It's a malapropism of "Durward Kirby," a very, very, very minor tv personality of the early 1960s.

And the animation!  There wasn't any.  Incomplete art, splashes of color instead of filled-in lines, no backgrounds, static scenes with only the tiniest mouth movement or gestures.  Abysmal!

The only things I liked were:

1. The scenes set in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, the home town of the Moose and Squirrel, where they behaved and were treated like romantic partners.

2. Boris and Natasha, the Cold War spies from Pottsylvania assigned to steal the couple's secret or just grift them in various ways.  Although a male-female dyad, they were obviously not a romantic couple, nor did they express any heterosexual interest.

3. Some of the supporting features, like Fractured Fairy Tales, Mr. Peabody's Improbable History, and Aesop & Son.  








4. Some of the parodies of dull poets, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Wordsworth (really, who would write an entire poem in praise of daffodils?)

5. Edward Everett Horton, who narrated Fractured Fairy Tales, played "pansy" roles during the 1930s.

The Moose That Roared (2000), a history of the program, reveals that Bill Scott, Jay Ward's partner and the voice of Bullwinkle, often made homophobic statements.  "Women's dresses today look like they were designed by fags," he would rant.  Or he would tell a voice artist, "for this story, do your Fag Prince voice."

Of course, lots of people in the 1960s were homophobic, but it is shocking how Moose That Roared author Keith Scott (no relation) gushes about the homophobia as if it somehow made him endearing: "'There are too many fags in Hollywood,' Bill said with his characteristic wit."

See also: Peabody and Sherman

Shaken, Not Stirred: The Gay James Bond

I think I've only seen three James Bond movies all the way through: Diamonds are Forever (1972), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and Casino Royale (2006). But I've seen many, many clips of pivotal scenes, plus countless pastiches, parodies, and imitations, on everything from The Flintstones to Family Guy.  

From his introduction in a series of novels by Ian Fleming (1953-64) through fifty years' worth of movies (1962-2012), Bond created the image of the suave, sophisticated spy that has been  imitated over and over, in tv series (I Spy, Get Smart, The Man from UNCLE, Mission: Impossible); in movies (The Bourne Identity, True Lies, The Secret of Boyne Castle, Austin Powers); even in comics (Spy vs. Spy in Mad Magazine).

Bond comes from a generation before the Man-Mountains, when Swinging Bachelors ruled.  He rarely took off his shirt; the producers didn't expect anyone to be looking at his muscles. In the tradition of "everybody's fantasy," the producers expected all women but no men to swoon over him due to his cool savoir-faire, his tailored suits, fluency in French, knowledge of clarets, and hint of danger.

And all men but no women to admire him for his spy expertise, his ability to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, kill an enemy spy on the way down, and land unfazed, unruffled, and ready for sex.

For all his popularity, there is very little for gay men to like in James Bond.

1. Very brief, minimal beefcake shots, only when absolutely necessary -- a part of his chest might peek out over the top of the sheets -- and overwhelmed by endless shots of bikini-clad and nude women.  Sean Connery (left) was a former bodybuilder and Mr. Universe runner-up, yet we saw no underwear, no towels, almost nothng of his physique.  Current Bond Daniel Craig has been a little better, offering an occasional swimsuit shot.

2. Few homoromantic subtexts.  The Bond world is as completely divided into evil men and nice women as Karate Kid.  Every woman Bond meets wants to have sex with him. Some try to kill him also, but usually they have a change of heart and become allies.

And the most a man can feel for him, or for any man, is a sort of grudging admiration. More often they feel raw hatred.  Same-sex friendships do not exist.

3. Intense homophobia.  Fleming wrote his novels for "warm-blooded heterosexuals," and decried the ranks of the "unhappy sexual misfits."  The movies almost invariably pit the heterosexual Bond against gay-vague "sexual misfits" -- or not so gay-vague, as the transvestite Spectre agent in Thunderball, or the hand-holding Mr. Witt and Mr. Kidd in Diamonds are Forever.  Even Jauvier Bardem, the latest villain (in Skyfall), camps it up to ensure that we identify him as a detestable poof.

4. It's hard to find a gay-friendly actor in the corpus of Bond movies.  Sean Connery became irate when he heard that some commentators found a gay subtext in one of his movies.  Roger Moore (left) played a negative stereotype in Boat Trip (2002).  Current Bond Daniel is a little more gay-friendly, but even he became irate at the suggestion that the superspy like both sexes:  "James Bond is heterosexual.  There will never be a gay Bond, ever."

Speaking of violent objections, in 1999 there was a rumor that gay actor Rupert Everett would be the next Bond.  He quickly spoke up, stating that it would be impossible: "Bond fans would burn down MGM if the studios got a gay actor to play James Bond."

So, what's gay about the James Bond movies?

1. A remarkable preoccupation with Bond's sex organs, from the laser-beam in Goldfinger to the chain-thwacking in Casino Royale.  Heterosexuals have never spent so much time envisioning phalluses.

2. Wearing tailored suits, drinking fine wines. dining on  haute cuisine, conversing in Italian and French?  Metrosexual, to say the least.

3. The violent objections incited when you suggest that Bond might be gay -- or played by someone gay -- suggest that he meets a deep-seated desire in heterosexuals to postulate a gloriously gay-free world.  It's fun to discomfort them, to point out that there are gay people everywhere, even in the most homophobic of texts.  So take one of Bond's male allies - Willard Whyte in Diamonds are Forever, Milos Colombo in For Your Eyes Only, Damian Falco in Die Another Day -- it doesn't matter how tenuous the relationship is -- and let the slash fictions roll.