Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers

September 1974: My friends and I are in ninth grade at Washington Junior High, 13 or 14 years old, aspiring to be cool, hip, and intellectual.  So we watch all of the hip sitcoms that would later be lauded as part of the Golden Age of Television.

Like Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers.

Never heard of it?

It was famous in the fall of 1974.

MTM Enterprises was changing the face of television, making it hip, modern, and "real," set in real places like Cincinnati and Minneapolis, starring people with real home and work lives (they even had sex).  It already had two hits, Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart, and Paul Sand looked like a third.

Especially when CBS put it into the fall schedule between its #1 show,  All in the Family and the Mary Tyler Moore/Bob Newhart block

I wanted to like it:

1. Cute, dour-faced comedian Paul Sand starred.
2. He was a bass player with the Boston Philharmonic (I was in the orchestra!).
3. Friends and Lovers sounded dirty.
4. There was a hot athletic older brother (Michael Pataki, left).  Maybe there'd be some beefcake.
5. And a workplace friend (Steve Landesberg, later of Barney Miller). Maybe there'd be some buddy-bonding.

I was only home to see a few episodes, and they weren't very good.

1. Paul Sand was not at all likeable -- his self-deprecating humor was...well, deprecating
2. The brother never took his shirt off, although Max Gail (later of Barney Miller) flexed in one episode.
3. And everyone was obsessed with heterosexual sex.  It was like Three's Company, a few years later.

It actually became the #25 most watched show of the season, doing better than its competition, Emergency! and The New Land, but by January it was cancelled, replaced by the mega-hit The Jeffersons.

Which also suffered from a lack of beefcake.

Twin Peaks: The owls are not what they seem

In the spring of 1990, many tv viewers were persuaded to turn away from the Thursday night juggernaut of The Cosby Show -- A Different World -- Cheers -- and Wings to watch Twin Peaks, a tv series created by surrealist director David Lynch, to learn "Who killed Laura Palmer?"

No one knew that the answer would become so darn convoluted.

The premise: popular high schooler Laura Palmer of Twin Peaks, Washington, is found murdered.

FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan, best known for Lynch's homophobic Blue Velvet) is called in to investigate, and works with local sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean, best known then as the gay guy from Making Love).

Gradually they discover that everyone in town has multiple dark secrets.  There are weird alliances and interconnections.  A middle-aged woman regresses to a teenager.  Laura's psychiatrist commits suicide.

Cooper has a dream of a backward-talking dwarf who is From Another Place, who makes cryptic utterances like "when you see me again, I won't be me" and "everybody is full of secrets."

Laura had several secrets of her own.  One wonders how she found time to hang out with her boyfriend  (played by Dana Ashbrook, left), when she was having affairs with several older men, as well as working as a prostitute to support her drug habit.  (In David Lynch's world, prostitution is the Ultimate Evil).

After seven episodes, the first season ended, with lots of clues but no answers.

During the summer of 1990, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer was published, and became a must-read.  It offered no new clues.

You could also get Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town, with tourist information about the town, including the cafe where Cooper got his "damn fine coffee!" and cherry pie.

In September 1990, the second season began, on Saturday nights.

A giant who may be an alien warns Cooper that "The owls are not what they seem."

Whatever that means.

Laura appears in a vision and says "Sometimes my arms bend back."

Whatever that means.

Cooper learns of Black Lodge, which can manipulate world events.

There was no way to unite all of the plot threads into a coherent whole, so in December they threw in a lame explanation -- Laura was murdered by her father, who was being possessed by a being named BOB, who was working for the Black Lodge, who...or something like that.  And everyone scratched their head and said WTF?  All this to murder a teenager?

This was the homophobic David Lynch, so of course there were no gay characters, other than some leering effeminate villains, and some unintentional gay subtexts in the interaction between Truman and Cooper.

No beefcake to speak of.

So why did Twin Peaks gain so many gay fans?

Maybe it's the sinister small towns.  In West Hollywood many of us came from small towns, and remembered them as prisons where everyone had lots of secrets.


Maybe it was wishful thinking.  We were waiting for one of the "secrets" to be about being gay.

Or maybe it was our own hidden knowledge.  Before the 1980s, and often after, kids grew up unaware that gay people exist.  There was a conspiracy of silence that could be overcome only through seeking out subtexts, euphemisms, things left out, clues hidden from view.  We knew more than anyone that "the owls are not what they seem."

See also: Josh Fadem: From Tulsa to "Twin Peaks," with coffee, zombies, a corrupt lawyer, a glory hole, and his d*ck

Twin Peaks: The Return: Paranormal weirdness 25 years later.  See if you can figure out what's going on.

N*de Photos of Brad Pitt

 

Brad Pitt has been part of our lives since his cowboy hitchhiker took off his shirt in Thelma and Louise (1991). A short list of his most beloved movies has to include Interview with the Vampire, Legends of the Fall, Fight Club, Ocean's Eleven, World War Z, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Only one gay role -- The Normal Heart (2014) -- but lots of gay subtexts, from vampires to con artists to imagniary friends.

Brad is regularly listed as the hottest man alive or the sexist man alive, and he doesn't appear to age -- he's still as buffed todayas he was is 1993.  And, fortunately for us, he's not shy about showing off his physique on camera.

The n*de rear and frontals are on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Joe Gaydar breaks unwritten gym rules, some involving n*de dudes and b*ndage

 

Link to the n*de photos

When Tony Cavalero was staying in Chicago, he got a hotel gym boyfriend, Joe Gaydar.  Not his real name -- I don't post the real names of non-actors , if there's nudity involved - but close.  I imagine that the guy got a lot of homophobic bullying in grade school.

Joe works as a corporate health specialist, "Empowering Your Employees for Optimal Wellness and Unprecedented Success!" The all capped first letters was his idea, not mine. 

But his main claim to fame is an entertaining Instagram, filled with humorous POVs:

 "Old lifters vs. new lifters"

 "Things we all do at the gym"

"When that guy at the gym keeps staring at you"

"When you see Hugh Jackman, aka Huge Jacked Man, looking like a chiseled Greek god."

"When you've already gone to the gym, and the day's main mission is accomplished."

And my favorite, "Breaking unwritten gym rules."  

1. "I don't have to wipe down the equipment or put the weights away. Someone else will do that for me."  I hate walking up to a machine and seeing someone's sweat or that disgusting disinfectant slime on it.

2. "Grabbed two different brand dumbbells.  It's the same weight, right?"  Definitely a violation of an unwritten rule.

3. "Even though it's peak hours, I'm gonna use multiple machines, because my workout is more important than yours."  That's just being a jerk

4. "Let's load the plate with the logo facing in!"  Absolutely unthinkable.

5. "I got a 45 and a 45.  One's iron and one's rubber.  Same difference, right?"  Again, unthinkable.

6. "Looks like somebody left their stuff here.  They can't be trying to reserve the machine, so let's move it."  Wait -- you can't reserve a machine, unless you're standing right next to it.  The guy who left his stuff there is the jerk.

7. "13 reps.  It's ok to end a set on an odd number, right?"  In all my years of going to the gym, I have never ended a set on an odd number.  It just seems wrong.

8."All done with my set, so I'll sit here on my phone for 15 minutes."  Sometimes I walk up to them and say "If you're just resting, can I squeeze in a set?", and they stare like I just grew a second head.

9. "I've got a big d*ck, so I don't need to use a towel in the locker room.  Guys should be happy to get a peek." Not a problem, buddy: show your dick all you want.

More rules after the break.