"Crack-Duck": A Gay Couple in a World of Monsters

Danny Lacy (1989-2019), son of actors Jerry Lacy (Dark Shadows)  and Julia Duffy (Newhart), died on April 5th after a long battle with depression.


A 2007 graduate of Agoura High School in Agoura Hills, California, he was a comedian who performed with the Groundlings and Second City.

Here he and James Mastrioanni star in "Douchebag Karma": two douchebags plan to use date-rape drugs to get with some girls.  But they are so stupid that they take the drugs themselves, and pass out.

 Danny's acting credits include such lighthearted fare as  All I Want for Christmas, Correcting Christmas, and a Christmas Reunion.

Rather ironic, given that his most memorable creation was Crack-Duck.

Danny was always drawing weird, surreal, disturbing pictures of monstrous creatures.  Some appeared in a 2017 book he co-wrote with Mike Levine, At Least You're Not These Monsters ("So you hate your body?  At least your body makes sense.")   Crack-Duck was one of his creations, a grotesque wide-eyed duck with a crack in his skull.

In 2014 Danny teamed up with animator Stephen Sloan and various family friends to bring Crack-Duck to life in a series of 5-minute cartoons on Youtube.

Now Crack-Duck is living a life of not-so-quiet desperation, alone, self-hating, and miserable, manager of a down-and-out apartment building, Grungetown Towers.

He interacts with other monstrous beings, like his constantly enraged landlord Skiitch, and Zqiygyxz, an Enlightened dog who performs surgery on the sun.

An ongoing subplot has Skiitch realizing that he's in love with Crack-Duck.  But they're both boys.  How is that possible?

In Episode #4, Crack-Duck is tired of being rejected by countless women, so he walks up to random strangers on the street, screaming at them to love him.  Skiitch comes out as gay and interested.  At first Crack-Duck is leery, as Skiitch is 40 years old!  But he decides to give it a try.

After that, Crack-Duck and Skiitch are presented as romantic partners, fighting their demons together.  Although they're closeted to their friends.

Reviewers, of course, are quick to yell that Crack-Duck isn't gay, just lonely enough to try out a gay relationship.

Hint: that's not how sexual orientation works.  If you're a straight duck, it's women or nothing.  A gay duck, men or nothing.  Crack-Duck is probably pansexual.

All episodes are on Youtube.

Frank Hamer and Maney Gault: The Brokeback Couple Who Brought Down Bonnie and Clyde?

I walked into the living room in time to see the last few minutes of The Highwaymen, about the Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, who tracked down legendary spree killers Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.   Basically all I saw was the bloody car being paraded through the streets of a small Louisiana town, one of the guys refusing an interview, and the two driving off together.  The closing credits stated that they were buried in the same grave.

Driving off into the sunset together!  Buried in the same grave!  Were they a romantic couple?  Time to do research:








Born in 1884 in Fairview, Texas (near Dallas), Frank started out as a cowboy, then joined the Texas Rangers in 1905.  He resigned several times, most notably in 1932, because Texas had just elected a female governor, and he couldn't stand the idea of being bossed around by a woman.  He also worked as a federal marshall, cattle theft specialist, prohibition enforcer (tracking down bootleggers during Prohibition), and strike-breaker.

In 1917, he married Gladys Sims, who was on trial for her husband's murder.  The husband's brother-in-law, Gus McMeans, ambushed them, and in the ensuing shootout McMeans was killed.  There was no investigation.

Frank also stalked and threatened José Tomás Canales, a state representative who was investigating corruption in the Texas Rangers.  He was not charged.

And that's just the summary on wikipedia.  Quite a piece of work.

Frank was married twice, and had two kids, Billy Beckham Hamer and Francis Augustes Hamer (that's how it's spelled).  He died in 1955.





Maney Gault (left, with Frank in 1932) doesn't have a wikipedia article, but I read an article in True West magazine.  He was born in 1886, and worked as a dairy farmer before the Depression; then he found a job in a sawmill.  Frank was his neighbor in Austin, Texas.

They sat up many nights playing cards and playing bluegrass music and um...such.

Frank got Maney a job with the Texas Rangers, and they started going on cases together.  They continued to work together until the Bonnie and Clyde case, whereupon Frank moved on to other jobs.  Maney stayed on as a Ranger  until his death in 1947, finally supervising a vast territory in west Texas.

He was married, too, to Rebecca Johnson Gault (1886-1955).  Two kids, Leona Gault Pannell and Johnson Gullette Gault. 

But marriage and children don't preclude same-sex loves.  Maybe Frank  and Maney had a Brokeback Mountain thing going on. Can you imagine them saying "I won't quit you"?

Ok, I looked up the movie's end credits again.  It says "same small tract," not "the same grave."

Find-a-Grave says that they are buried in the Austin Memorial Park Cemetery. They are the ones with crosses: Maney's grave is in the foreground, and Frank's a row back and to the left, about 10 feet away.

Were then 10 feet apart in life, too?

Or closer?

   

What's Gay About "The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle"?

Who wouldn't want to read a novel called The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle?  (Only 7 in the British edition; in America we rate a half more).

Especially when reviews call it Agatha Christie combined with (insert science fiction great here).

I've been binge-reading it on airplanes for the past few days.  I usually read faster, but in this case I often  have to read the same passage over several times, consult my list of characters, and cross-reference the various plot twists. But here's the basics:

In a bucolic Britain between the Wars, Lord and Lady Hardcastle hold a weekend party and their country estate, Blackheath.  Their young-teen daughter Evelyn is supposed to be watching her younger brother.  But she lets him go off by himself,  and groundskeeper Charlie Carver (who is the boy's biological father) and another person lure him to the lake and murder him. (That's not at all what happened).

Lord and Lady Hardcastle can't forgive Evelyn for "causing" her brother's murder, so they ship her off to Paris (That's not at all what happened, either).

19 years later, it's still a bucolic Britain between the Wars.  Blackheath has fallen into disrepair. The Hardcastles, nearly broke after years of being blackmailed for various misdeeds, invite everyone who was at the original party to return for a masquerade.  To find out who the second person was?  To celebrate Evelyn's forced engagement to an odious banker, which will solve their financial woes? To confront their blackmailers? (Actually Lord and Lady Hardcastle and Evelyn all have different motives).

The guests spend the day hunting, getting drunk, growling at each other, mistreating the servants, exchanging secret notes, going on clandestine meetings, tearing pages out of diaries, eavesdropping on secret plans, taking things from secret hiding places, being assaulted by mysterious assailants, and having dinner. It's like Agatha Christie on speed.   At 11:00 pm sharp, during the masquerade, Evelyn is murdered.  Or commits suicide.  Or both.  Aiden's job is to find out whodunnit.  

To make things more interesting, he must sleuth while reliving the day over and over, bouncing from body to body:

First he is the doctor who has a mysterious locked trunk and a Bible full of cryptic underlining.

Then he's the butler who has been mysteriously assaulted by the estate artist, and is under heavy sedation, but sees various people coming into his room and making cryptic remarks.

Then he's the odious banker who is engaged to Evelyn, and whose servant happens to be the illegitimate son of Lord Hardcastle, and has a hidden agenda of his own.

Next a shy socialite

And the police constable who is dating the shy socialite's sister.

Eight in all.

When Aiden is in a body, he is privy to few of his host's memories, so he has no special knowledge that will help him unravel clues.  But the host keeps trying to regain control.  The worst of all possible possessions.  

Did I mention that he's in all of these bodies at the same time?  So he can consult with his selves in other hosts, who are also working to solve the mystery.

If he is murdered or falls asleep, he returns to the butler.  If he goes through all eight hosts without finding out who is planning to murder Evelyn, everything resets, and he starts over.  Apparently he's done this thousands of times already.  

Other than the various hosts, Aiden's main ally is Anna, who is also reliving the day over and over (and who has a hidden agenda of her own).  

A mysterious man in a Plague Doctor costume occasionally pops in with a cryptic remark.

A mysterious man in a Footman uniform keeps hunting down the hosts and killing them

  (None of these people are what they seem).

This is all very complex, requiring a lot from the reader.  Eventually one wonders why.  The mystery is complicated enough as it is, with two illegitimate sons and a daughter, two dead boys, endless red herrings. and secrets that are never revealed.  Why have Aiden bouncing from body to body in what feels like a giant video game?

Gay characters:   The odious banker is gay.  We learn this through rumor and innuendo (but this is Britain between the Wars, so one can't expect Out and Proud).  Many of the male characters don't express any heterosexual interest.

Evelyn states that someone has abducted a "dear friend" name Felicity, and will harm her unless she commits suicide.  She's lying, but for a good portion of the book, we believe the Evelyn has a lesbian lover. And maybe she does, just not a kidnapped one.

Gay subtexts:  Aiden describes some of the male characters as "handsome." But his same-sex friendships almost always end in betrayal.

Heterosexism: Men are generally odious thugs, while women are generally good, kind, and nurturing.  Aiden bonds with Evelyn, and then with Anna.   A man and a woman walk off into the sunset together.

Beefcake: The odious banker is so bloated that he can barely move. Aiden mentions the physiques of some of his hosts, and the penis of one.

Bottom line: The book is not nearly gay enough.

By the way, the top photo is not what it seems.  It's another Stuart Turton.  Here's the one who wrote the book. He's heterosexual. 

Black Summer: The First Days of a Gay-Free Zombie Apocalypse

Do we really need more zombies, after Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Juan of the Dead, Zombieland, 28 Weeks Later, after zombie comedies, children's movies, and teen romances?

Probably not, but yesterday I still binge watched Black Summer (2019)  (except for a couple of episodes that looked boring), taking the point of view of someone who has never heard of zombies.

It opens with running.  People running fast through a suburban neighborhood (filmed in Calgary), trying to reach the army trucks that will evacuate them.  Something bad happened several weeks ago, and the world is in chaos,  There are marauders everywhere who will steal your supplies.

Plus when people die, they instantly turn into monsters and attack their companions. The monsters are very fast and impervious to bullets unless you hit them in the head, but they can't open doors.

In the first episode, there are five interconnected stories of survivors running, and when the army trucks leave without them, trying to get to the Stadium, where all of the survivors are gathering.

There is a lot of heterosexist rhetoric: "Do you have a family?"  "I'm a good guy.  I have a family."  "I have to find my wife/daughter/husband/ boyfriend."  And no gay characters or male-male bonding to speak of.  Mostly people interact in boy-girl dyads.

Finally they merge into 2 groups.

Group 1 consists of:
1. Rose (Jaimie King), whose husband monsterized, but her daughter got on the truck.

2. Ryan (Mustafa Alabssi, a deaf Syrian refugee).  His character is apparently not  Syrian. Cop-out!

3. Lance (Kelsey Flower), whose girlfriend monsterized.  He and Ryan have a brief buddy-bonding moment, but then Ryan monsterizes and turns on him.

4. Spears (Justin Chu Cary), who was being held by the army when he killed his guard and escaped.  He actually has taken his guard's name.  He hints that he knows something important, but we never find out what.

At least Justin Chu Cary has some beefcake photos.

More after the break