Josh Mikel: Satanist, zombie chow, boyfriend, drummer. With two important questions answered, and maybe a cock

  

Link to NSFW version

Born in Conyers, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, Josh graduated from Florida State University's Theater and Creative Writing programs.  He has written a number of award-winning plays, many for children:  The Monster Hunters, Pirates!, Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island!.  I looked at some of the scripts, but didn't see anything of particular gay interest.

Josh has 92 acting credits on IMDB, including a lot of fantasy and horror: Renfield, Mayfair Witches, Unhuman, Creepshow, and 50 States of Fright.  It took 17 auditions to be cast on The Walking Dead, as Jared, one of the "Saviours" who demand tribute from surrounding post-zombie-Apocalypse communities.  

 

But a lot of general dramas, too. The Lengths (2014) is of gay interest: Josh's character is in love with both a man and a woman. 

There are several bulge shots, and maybe a butt, but it's obscured and hard to see, so I substituted this fully visible butt.

In Season 1 of  The Righteous Gemstones, the recently converted Keefe returns to the Satanist/Goth Club Sinister, Josh's Daedalus assumes that he's there for "pleasures" and caresses his body and licks his face, while his friend Cryptocore starts to go downtown. This scene establishes that Keefe is gay, and that Daedalus is an ex-lover.

Josh has also done storyboard art and set design for everything from Kirksville to The Little Mermaid.  

If he has any time leftover, he is the drummer for the indie rock band Look, Mexico.  One of their songs, "It's Been a Long Time Since I Smelled Beautiful," might have a gay subtext:

Will you compromise, or will you say what's on your mind this time?

Will you smile for me, or will you say what's on your mind this time?

But we're not, we're not keeping quiet.

So if you think you're ready…

It's our time now.

More Josh after the break

Pee-Wee's Playhouse: Did somebody say "Swish"?

When I was living in West Hollywood, we watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 every Saturday morning, but we stayed away from children's tv.  It was crowded with insipid child versions of adult characters -- The Muppet Babies, The Flintstone Kids -- or insufferably cute furry animals -- Wuzzles, Kissyfur, Care Bears, Gummi Bears.  


But there was one "must see" exception.  At 11:00 am between 1986 and 1990, every household in West Hollywood watched Pee-wee's Playhouse.  It was a surreal, live action series hosted by the androgynous Pinkie Lee lookalike Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens), who would invite various live and puppet characters to play in his playhouse.

It was the gayest show on television.

1. A hunky speedo-clad lifeguard named Tito.

2. Drag queens Ms. Yvonne (right) and Mrs. Steve (left).  They both appeared at the 1990 AIDS Walk. We all assumed that Mrs. Steve was a real drag queen, played by a male actor; I only discovered that she was played by a woman while researching this post. .

3. The extraordinarily feminine Jambi the Genie, who lived in a drag queen's jewelry box and lisped "Wish?  Did somebody say wish?"  Everyone in West Hollywood spend the afternoon saying: Swish?  Did somebody say swish?"

4. Laurence Fishburn as Pee-wee's friend Cowboy Curtis, who informed us that he slept nude, and joked about his penis size: "You know what they say about big feet -- big boots!"

5. The creepy, leering, obviously drunk King of Cartoons, who stumbled across the room and slurred "Let the cartoon begin." And the creepy 1930s cartoon that followed.  Ok, he wasn't gay-coded, but who puts a guy who's drunk, or pretending to be, on a kids' program?

6. A hunky soccer player named Ricardo.

The writers, producers, directors, and cast have always claimed complete ignorance of any gay-coded characters or gay-subtexts.  In fact, according to Inside Peewee's Playhouse by Caseen Gaines, Paul Reubens was homophobic -- if he had known about any subtext, "he would have put a stop to it."

Or maybe he was just closeted.  Paul Reubens has consistently refused to comment on his sexual identity, although when he was arrested for allegedly possessing child pornography in 2002, he stated that he was a collector of muscle magazines and "vintage homosexual erotica."

"Carter": Would You Really Watch Jerry O'Connell In Anything?

99% of viewers will tune in to the Canadian tv series Carter (2018-2020) to see Jerry O'Connell, the mega-hunk of the 1990s, star of Sliders (1995-2000) and a lot of horndog movies that you rented just so see him with shirt off (Joe's Apartment, Tomcats, Buying the Cow, Kangaroo Jack).  What does he look like at the ripe middle age of 44?  (Granted, he's been working constantly, but he hasn't taken his shirt off on screen since 2001).

Carter helpfully obliges with a shirtless Jerry on the beach,first thing.

Jerry plays Harley Carter, a famous tv detective who attacks a guy on the red carpet and finds himself persona non grata in Hollywood.  So he returns to his home town in Ontario to clear his head.  The problem is, the quirky small town residents confuse him with his tv detective character, and keep asking him to solve cases for them:

Not a problem: he wants to be a detective, and the town needs one (a lot of murders going on),  so Carter takes a job as consulting detective under the watchful supevision of The Girl, Sam (Sydney Tamia Potier).  His Huggy Bear is Dave (Kristian Bruun), who runs the local food truck.

I watched an episode because I didn't realize that Sam was a girl, so i thought there would be some gay-subtext buddy-bonding going on.  And because -- Jerry O'Connell...

Scene 1:  Carter and Sam are flirting at a town festival. Dave (right) does something funny.   They see a man in a trenchcoat yelling at a man in a suit,, who was responsible for the mining disaster  (this is important).  He opens the trenchcoat, revealing a bomb that explodes confetti.  Psych -- they're a theatrical troupe advertising their upcoming performance!

Scene 2: Carter and Sam go to work, flirting while nvestigating yet another murder in the small town: a man stabbed to death in a car in a credit union parking lot.   The manager says that he was Dennis, a loan officer until a week ago, when he was fired due to poor work performance.

Scene 3: They flirt/ investigate his house, which is suspiciously neat and tidy, and contains way too much great literature for a loan officer. (Carter reads off the names while looking at an encyclopedia).

Scene 4: At the lab, they flirt/discover that Dennis was killed with a replica medieval dagger, and there was a lot of hair on the passenger side of the car.

Scene 5: Sam interviews some of Dennis's coworkers.  Hey, when Carter's not around and she can think about something other than ripping his clothes off,  she's actually a competent detective.  Angelica, the boss, had it in for Dennis.  She was constantly making fun of him, calling him Pig-Man-Lion...no, Pygmalion!

Scene 6: Carter, relatively competent when he doesn't have an erection, asks "ancient Chinese secret" Koji to hack into Dennis's computer.  They find something shocking.

Scene 7:  Whoops, Carter and Sam are back to "Are you as turned on as I am...um, I mean what clues did you find?"  Dennis's laptop is full of sexy photos of bank manager Angelica!  Also, the hair found on the car seat belongs to her!

More after the break

"The Ropes": An unreliable-narrator Rashomon about nightclub bouncers. Take careful notes. There are some dicks, too.

  

I was looking for some tv shows starring Joel Rush, and found The Ropes, a quickly-canned tv series based on Vin Diesel's early job as a bouncer.  Well, maybe there would be some beefcake. 

Link to NSFW version

Problems: It was impossible to research among 1,300 other series called The Ropes, On the Ropes, and Learn the Ropes.   

It was available on Amazon Prime, but not if you used the Prime Search window -- you had to go through Google.  Even after buying an episode.

Additional problemsNonlinear narration, with people describing an event that happened earlier, then seeing the event from different points of view, and seeing the consequences of the event, but in jumbled order. 

Some of the guys are black/speaking in a stereotyped jive accent, and some are white/speaking in a stereotyped Guido accent, but within those categories, they look, talk, and behave exactly alike. This makes it very difficult to figure out who belongs to what plotline.  But for the sake of a review I'll try to piece it together.

The illustrations are whatever beefcake or nude photos I could find of the actors, in no particular order: Gonzalo Menendez, F. Valentino Morales, Brian Ahern, Brian Hooks, Joel Rush, Danny Abeckaser, Shawn Woods, Robert Ervin, Ramses Jiminez.  Plus a couple of random photos of guys with big dicks.

Setting: A very sleazy nightclub in New York, where they have both ladies dancing on poles and illegal gambling.  A squad of seven or more bouncer/security guards, whom the Boss calls "ladies" although they're actually men, is on patrol every night.

 Big Vic's Story:  Big Vic, who has the biggest dick in New York City, is infinitely attractive to every woman in the world.  He asks the lady bartender to have sex with him; she agrees. On the same night, or on another night, he's working the door, and lets in a girl who claims to be a model, but not the guy she's with.  He asks if she wants to have sex; she does.

While he is having sex with one or the other the bathroom, someone knocks on the door, saying that he's needed at the bar.  He ignores them.

Later, or on a different night, he goes out into the alley, and sees a sleazoid trying to push an unwilling lady into a taxi.  He intervenes and sends the guy away. Then he friend arrive and accuses Big Vic of taking advantage of her!  They drive away.

Uh-oh, a whole gang of bad dudes rushes into the alley to try to kll him! He's got the biggest cock in New York, not the biggest muscles.  He tries to fight them off, but they prepare to beat him to death when...

A smaller guy wearing a suit rushes in and annihilates them!  Big Vic is not happy to get his life saved by a nerd -- it's a major blow to his masculinity.  Then the nerd asks "Are you Vic Pendejo?" Har-har, pendejo means "asshole" in Spanish!  Big Vic angrily orders him to leave.

Ralphie's Story: One night Ralphie is screwing a lady in the Trash Room (no beefcake, but we see her butt).  And she accidentally butt-phones her Man, so he and his homies show up to kill him.  Big Les, working the front door, pulverizes them, but now they want revenge on him!  They return the next night, mistake Big Vic for Big Les, and attack. So even in-universe, no one can tell these guys apart.

Later, the Boss complains that Ralphie is too feminine, and takes him off bouncer duty.  

The Kid's Story:  One night a Kid shows up at the front door just as they open.  Big Lou, who happens to be working, won't let him in: no action so early anyway.  "Come back in two hours." This guy is actually named White Lou, but I wanted to go with the "Big."

Two hours later, the Kid is waiting in a line that goes around the block.  They've reached capacity, so no one else gets in that night.  

He doesn't want to get in, he just wants to apply for a job, so he cuts line and asks Big Lou what to do.  Big Lou sends him to the back door, where Big Vic is working, and tells him to ask for "Vic Pendejo," knowing that he'll get annihilated.   Instead, the Kid sees "Pendejo" in trouble, being beaten to death by some thugs, and intervenes. 

Big Vic is so impressed that he offers him a job as his "intern."  All of the side deals at the club -- the drugs, hookers, whatever -- will go through the Kid.  For a salary, he'll get some of the bribes and "some ass."  Presumably girls, or is Big Vic offering his own?  

Rashomon after the break