NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

In the fall of 1982, I moved to Indiana University to work on my M.A. in English. One night -- Saturday, September 25th, to be exact -- I bolstered my courage enough to walk the mile or so into downtown Bloomington and go into adult bookstore. The clerk, an obese man in a dirty t-shirt, was watching Love Boat on a small black-and-white tv set. I asked "Do you have anything gay?" and without looking up he jerked his thumb toward a rack near the bathroom. It contained straight softcore porn like Playboy and Penthouse, but also the gay news magazines The Advocate, Christopher Street, and In Touch -- plus, on a bottom shelf, the directory, The Gayellow Pages.

I bought them all, along with a Playboy for cover, and rushed back to my dorm room, and read them all that night. One of the articles listed 10 reasons why Prince Charles was...you know. (They didn't say "gay" for fear of a lawsuit): he was musical and artistic, enjoyed the theater, and often wore the color pink. He was a hunk, with a tight, muscular physique. And more importantly, he was never seen with women, but often seen with attractive men, some of whom worked as his "butlers" or "valets," where they had intimate access to his bedchamber.

But: Prince Charles' fairytale wedding to Lady Diana Spencer last year, in July 1981, was a major event, televised worldwide. Their romance was the subject of two tv movies, both coincidentally airing a few days ago: Charles and Diana: A Royal Love Story on September 17th, and The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana on September 20th. He had a son, Prince William, born July 1982. (Prince Harry, bottom photo) would be born in 1984). How could he be gay?

But he was well over 30 when he married, the article stated, and he picked Diana seemingly at random. His mother, Queen Elizabeth, no doubt pressured him into it. It was a screen.

At the time, I thought that gay people were physically, emotionally, and spiritually unable to engage in heterosexual relations, even as a screen, so I was astonished.

Thirty years later, Prince Charles is still the subject of gay rumors. They may or may not be true. But he was essential to my first realization that the gay world was more vast and complex than anything I had ever imagined.

See also: My First Visit to an Adult Bookstore

I loved the first two seasons of The Crown: the inner workings of Buckingham Palace in the 1940s and 1950s, as young Queen Elizabeth gets her first taste of power. No references to gay people, no beefcake to speak of, not even many cute guys. But you hardly noticed amid the beautifully realized sets and costumes.

I couldn't wait for Season 3, which extends the story into the 1960s and 1970s: the Queen (now played by Olivia Colman) struggling to maintain the facade of respectability as the winds of change sweep around her. The Beatles, Carnaby Street, youth protests, psychedelic drugs, the Wolfenden Report, the rise of the Gay Rights Movement in Britain.

Except none of those things appear. The winds of change involve threats to royal prestige: a new prime minister from the anti-royalist Labor Party; nationalistic fervor in Wales; and endless (but rather dull) financial problems.

But wait -- there were lots of prominent gay people in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. Prince Charles himself was the subject of constant gay rumors. Surely there's some reference?

Nope.

But at least there's more beefcake.

Episode 1: The Queen's art advisor, Sir Anthony Blunt (Samuel West), turns out to be a Russian spy. He's also gay, but the fact is not mentioned.

Episode 2: Britain needs a bail-out from the U.S., but President Johnson is playing hard-to-get. As a last resort, the Queen sends the wilding Princess Margaret to dinner at the White House, where he enjoys her drunken antics and hands over the money. Best line: Lyndon Johnson: "You can't screw a man in the ass and expect him to send you flowers." I guess not. The top usually sends the flowers.

Episode 3: The Queen responds to the October 1966 disaster in the Welsh mining village of Aberfan: a mudslide engulfed a school, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Way too sad for me; I didn't watch. But Jack Parry-Jones plays one of the teachers.

Episode 4: Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice, who has been living in a convent in Greece, moves into Buckingham Palace. Oh, no, the mother-in-law.

Episode 5: England is in a financial crisis. The Queen bonds with her new race horse manager (John Hollingworth, left).

I'd date him.

Episode 6: With Wales clamoring for independence, Prince Charles (Josh O'Connell, left) is ordered to spend a semester studying Welsh at a university in Aberystwyth, so he won't be entirely clueless in his role as Prince of Wales.

Charles is a shy, sensitive young man whose best friend is his sister and who would really prefer to be an actor. All sorts of gay stereotypes -- but nothing comes of it except a little buddy-bond with his Welsh Nationalist tutor.

Episode 7: The 1969 moon landing results in Prince Philip getting a midlife crisis. Look for Andrew Lee Potts as Michael Collins.

Episode 8: Camilla Shand's boyfriend, Andrew Parker Bowles (Andrew Buchan), dumps her for Princess Anne, so she revenge-dates Anne's brother, Prince Charles. Isn't there any room for Charles-Andrew in this love rectangle?

Episode 9: A coal miners' strike. Meanwhile the family breaks up Charles and Camilla. So much for the gay rumors.

Episode 10: Princess Margaret starts an affair with Roddy (Harry Treadaway, top photo), which leaks to the tabloids, and results in divorce.

The show is nice to look at, but becoming somewhat tedious for those of us not enthralled by British economic history. And would it hurt to include just one reference to gay people: "The tabloids are saying that Charles is what????"

I just read a clickbait article about the 25 worst tv shows of all time, and it occurs to me that the writers probably didn't watch many episodes. They're going by reputation, or by sheer plot synopsis. Some of my childhood favories are on the list.

And they forget that sometimes we don't watch a tv show for a compelling, dynamic, intellectually stimulating plot. The most horrible premises can be redeemed by a gay subtext or the lack of heterosexual interest. Sometimes we want to just "veg out." Sometimes we want something flickering in the background while we chat, read, or do homework. And sometimes we just want to look at cute guys.

1. The Jerry Springer Show. I assume that they are going in order from the worst. Jerry Springer has often been heralded as a sign of the end of civilization, but at least it wasn't bear-baiting.

Ok, it was terribly exploitive: "Your best friend is having sex with your wife and your mother and your teenage daughter, and he thinks you're a jerk, and here he is." But there was something satisfying about watching rednecks assault each other. Besides, some of them had physiques. And Steve Wilkos, the guy in charge of separating the pairs -- sigh.

2. My Mother the Car. One of the many "my secret" shows of the 1960s. Is a car inhabited by the soul of your mother more farfetched than witches and genies? Or warp drive?

Besides, Jerry Van Dyke was a lot cuter than his brother Dick.

3. Cop Rock. Who wants to watch a mash-up of serious drama and songs? Well, maybe opera-goers. But there are worse ways of spending a half an hour than looking at Peter Onorati.

4. After MASH. I hated MASH, the half-episode I saw of it, so of course I wasn't about to be watching the characters let loose in a stateside veteran's hospital.

5. The Flying Nun. One of the "unconventional nun" programs of the 1960s. My first view of Roman Catholicism that didn't paint it as evil incarnate. And the nun thing made hetero-romance impossible, so she and the very cute Carlos (Alejandro Rey) could be "just friends."

6. Hello, Larry. Another MASH veteran, but playing a different character, Larry has a phone-in psychology radio show in Portland, Oregon. Another ten years and a few hundred miles to the north, and he could be Frasier Crane. Except no gay brother, dad, or coworkers. Larry is surrounded by women, except for John Femia of Square Pegs. But surely he was enough to make the viewing a pleasure.

7. The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer. Everybody thinks it's about a slave in President Lincoln's household, but actually it's about a free black man who flees from Britain to America to avoid his gambling debts. Why America, of all the fugitive-slave-law-cockamamie ideas? And a gay-stereotyped Lincoln.

I'd like to know why Chi McBride took the job. Let me guess: a job is a job.

8. The Chevy Chase Show. As in "I'm Chevy Chase, and I'm better than you?" Aren't talk show hosts supposed to be likeable?

9. Homeboys in Outer Space. Americans don't do humorous sci-fi well, especially when the premise is that the two space explorers are black stereotypes. But I am interested in seeing Flex Alexander flex.

10. Cavemen. The cavemen from a series of Geico Insurance commercials, who protest the slogan "So easy, a caveman could do it." Now they're an oppressed minority dealing with prejudice and discrimination in the modern world. A one joke series, no gay people anywhere, and you can't see any physiques under all the makeup.

11. Killer Instinct. Finally, one that is not a sitcom. Dramas can be horrible, too, you know. It was about cops investigating "deviant crime." After a lifetime of being called "deviant" for being gay, I was not interested in finding out what types of crimes those were. But here they are: death by spider, a serial killer who targets sex offenders, Egyptian mythology-inspired murders, death by crossbow,

12. Woops. The hilarious shenanigans of refugees from a nuclear holocaust. They search for food, try to reproduce, elect a leader, celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, and, later find a new teenage survivor to draw in the kiddie crowd (played by teen idol David Lascher). It doesn't sound much different from The Last Man on Earth.

I'm going through the clickbait list of the worst tv programs of all time, trying to dispute the idea that they were somehow worse than everything else on tv. The plotlines may not have been scintillating, but they sometimes offered other pleasures, like gay subtexts or beefcake.

13. Co-Ed Fever. Well maybe all of them. Co-Ed Fever was of the three Animal House clones that appeared in 1979 (t=the others were Delta House and Brothers and Sisters). Only one episode aired in the U.S., six in Canada, and the set was co-opted for the first season of The Facts of Life. The premise: a women's college goes co-ed, and some guys enroll, looking for babes.

14. Baywatch. Huh? 10 seasons of lifeguards running across the beach in slow motion, chests glistening, bulges bouncing around. What else would you watch on Friday night in 1989 to get you horned up before heading out to the bars? Not Full House and Family Matters, certainly.

15. The Powers of Matthew Star. An androgynous teen idol and his older...um...coach traveling around in a van to fight evil. Gay subtext! So he changed from exiled alien prince to secret agent halfway through, who cares? Nobody was watching for the plot. Besides, one of the stars was family.

16. Galactica 1980. Never hearrd of it, but then, I never watched the original Battlestar Galactica. Wasn't a Mormon theology meets Star Wars, with Lorne Green at the helm?

17. Black Scorpion. Lady puts on a tight black scorpion suit to fight supervillains like Adam West. But the costar was Family Ties hunk Scott Valentine, seen here on the cover of a 1988 Playgirl (this is as much as he shows).

18. Ghost Whisperer. Lady solves crimes by talking to ghosts (comes in handy in murder cases). She also runs an antique store and has sex with David Conrad.

19. Flying High. Stewardesses with boobs get sexually harassed by their captain, back in the days when sexual harassment was considered by inevitable and funny. But this wasn't a comedy. Take a look at the plotlines: The plane is out of control when the flight crew becomes ill; an escaped prisoner takes one of the attendants hostage; the attendants stop a drug smuggling ring; the Captain becomes blind.

20. Hogan's Heroes. World War II was horrible, but there are parts that soldiers look back on fondly. The buddy bonding. The Andrews Sisters. This was a POW camp with plants working for the underground. It was clever, funny, and homoerotic. I still have a crush on LeBeau (who, by the way, was played by a Holocaust survivor who found nothing wrong with the show).

21. The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. That group of people should not have been in a variety show. But as long as they were, watch the Brady Boys. They have grown up, and they are packing. SeeL Razzle Dazzle: Variety Shows of the 1970s

22. Hee Haw Honeys. A spin-off of the hayseed Hee-Haw, which, as you recall, featured fat men and thin women telling hayseed jokes.

23. Manimal. Shapeshifting professor solves crimes. How is this more unrealistic than Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It starred Simon MacCorkindale, an action/adventure/sword and sorcery star of the era.

24. Life with Lucy. Ok, at 78 years old, Lucille Ball should not have been doing the broad physical comedy that was her signature. She had three successful tv series -- isn't that enough for anyone? Apparently not. Lucy returned as the mugging, pratfalling grand-dame of a stick-in-the-mud family, with a daughter married to former Mr. Mooney Gale Gordon's son. Everyone was worried that she was going to break a hip.

25. Murphy's Law. The law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. It has been the title of three tv series, but the writers probably meant the 1988-89 series, with George Segal as an insurance investigator. He has a Japanese-Italian girlfriend named Kimiko Fanucchi, an ex-wife, and a daughter. But the cute Charles Rocket is hanging around somewhere.

Our older brothers and fathers were in Vietnam, where casualties were mounting every day, but at home we watched wacky soldiers: McHale's Navy, No Time for Sergeants, F-Troop, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, and, the wackiest of all, Hogan's Heroes (1965-71), which also drew from the spy and "I've got a secret" craze.

It was set in a World War II prisoner of war camp, Stalag 13, where the "prisoners," deliberately captured, were all spies:

Back row: LeBeau, covert operations; Colonel Hogan (Bob Crane), the leader; Kinch (Ivan Dixon), communications.

Front row: Newkirk (Richard Dawson), impersonations and con games; Carter (Larry Hovis), explosives and all things scientific.

The commandant, Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer, right), was an incompetent bureaucrat. The only guard was Sergeant Schultz (John Banner, left), a sweet-tempered toymaker in civilian life, who turned a blind eye to the unusual activities ("I see nothing!"). Both were victims of circumstance, not actively evil; the villains were the Nazi higher-ups, who might discover the secret operation and shut it down.

What was the attraction for gay kids, other than the fact that the only other choices on Saturday night were The Lawrence Welk Show and the first half of a movie?

1. Lack of displayed heterosexual interest. Other entries in the spy genre, such as I Spy and Wild Wild West, involved its heroes in endless leering at bikini-clad women, but the POW camp was an all-male world, with no women visible except for Colonel Klink's secretary and an occasional female resistance agent. Hogan occasionally smooched with a woman, but no episodes involved hetero-romance.

2. Dreamy guys in the cast, especially Robert Clary. No beefcake, unfortunately -- no one as much as unbuttoned a button, even while lying around in the barracks. In fact, it's almost impossible to find nude shots of any of the cast members, even in other projects.

3. Hogan and Klink certainly weren't buddies. Klink was constantly annoyed by Hogan's irreverence. Hogan found Klink stuffy and old-fashioned (another 1960s clash between the establishment and the counterculture). Yet as they strategized against each other, or more often worked together toward some common goal, they developed a love-hate bond that one could easily see spinning into a forbidden romance. It was a pleasure to watch them interact every week.

Bob Crane (1928-1978) became so famous as Colonel Hogan that it's hard to remember his many other roles. He starred in the Disney movie Superdad (1973) and his own short-lived Bob Crane Show, guest starred on everything from Ellery Queen to Love Boat, and worked extensively in theater.

He was married twice and had five children (shown: his son Scotty), but he also had relationships with many women, and occasionally men. He was reputedly a BDSM bottom; however, no BDSM scenes appear in the hundreds of tapes he made of his sexual encounters.

When he was murdered in 1978, people speculated that it was a BDSM scene gone wrong.The main suspect, his friend John Carpenter, was acquitted on lack of evidence.

Greg Kinnear played Bob Crane in the 2002 movie Auto-Focus.

When I was a kid, I hated variety shows like Carol Burnett. even though the dancers wore tight pants. So I tried my best to avoid the several thousand comedy-variety hours that populated the late 1970s.
But sometimes it was impossible. They kept featuring movie superstars, or they were squeezed in between shows I wanted to watch, or my brother, a big fan of 1970s music, thought they were cool.

After a tv special in November 1976, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour appeared in January 1977. It was a must-see because I wanted to know how the Brady kids had grown up. Barry Williams and Christopher Knight were dreamy, of course, but the big surprise was Mike Lookinland, still a kid when The Brady Bunch ended, but now, three years later, grown into a teenage hunk who was poured into his white leisure suit. Bobby Brady is packing!

You could almost overlook the tacky costumes, weird numbers ("Do the Hustle") and crazy plot twists (Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett asleep in the Brady living room?).

And the 1970s guest stars they kept trotting out to boost ratings: Vincent Price, H.R. Pufnstuf, The Hudson Brothers, Paul Williams.

But really it was about the blossoming of Michael Lookinland.

By the way Michael was the only Brady to do a lot of non-Brady projects during the 1970s, including The Mighty Isis with Tommy Norden of Flipper, a Disney movie with Mitch Vogel, and this commercial, apparently about putting him into the tighest pants they could find.

On Saturday mornings in 1974, after Shazam!,there was nothing on but The Pink Panther and the laughtrack-infused Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, starring three middle-aged men with blatant bulges and disco shirts opened to reveal slim hairy chests.

About those bulges....the one on the right might as well be naked. You know exactly what he's packing.

The Hudson Brothers, Bill, Brett, and Mark, had some minor hits such as "So You Are a Star" and "The Truth About Us," but in the Leif Garrett era they weren't pretty or androgynous enough to draw a lot of teen idol attention, even though they made a whopping 16 episodes.

Brett, the youngest of the group (only 24 in 1977) has been the subject of some gay rumors.

The Keane Brothers had the opposite problem -- they were aged 11 and 12 when their show (called The Keane Brothers, naturally) appeared in the summer of 1977. The youngest kids ever to host a prime-time variety series, they were too young for most teenagers to consider adequately dreamy.

How did they get big names like Burt Reynolds, Betty White, and Andy Williams to guest star?

And whose idea was it to put them up against Donny & Marie on Friday nights? No wonder they just lasted four episodes.

Teen magazines sort of skipped over them. I don't know what this photo is about. Maybe the photographer talked Tom into a shirtless shot, but he chickened out at the last minute.

And then there was Tony Orlando and Dawn, The Bay City Rollers Show, Sonny and Cher, The John Davidson Show, The Jacksons, Shields and Yarnell, Pink Lady and Jeff.

See also: The Brady Bunch Dad

I'm not in the habit of watching Christmas movies, especially those with dumb pun titles like A Knight Before Christmas (2019). But I couldn't resist nitpicking. Sir Cole (Josh Whitehouse) is zapped from 14th century Britain to Small Town Ohio in the present day. Sort of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in reverse.

But there were no knight back then (except as ceremonial titles), and the Middle English of the era would be nearly incomprehensible:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

Sir Cole (Josh Whitehouse) is upset because he hasn't proved himself a "true knight" yet (but that's what the title "sir" means). His younger brother, Sir Geoffrey, is having a knighting ceremony in a few days, so he feels left out.

Harry Jarvis is buffed, but I can't figure out a way to copy his instagram post.

In the woods on a snowy day, Sir Coloe is nice to an Old Crone (who actually looks like a middle-aged faded beauty). She promises to guide him to where he can prove himself, and zaps him into a 21st century Small Town.

Meanwhile Brooke (Vanessa Hudgens) is not one of these liberated Disney princesses who fight alongside the prince. She's longing for a "knight in shining armor," a "happily ever after" Camelot. Instead of the black best friend traditional in rom-coms, she has a single-mom sister and niece (not to worry, Officer Stevens, the only cop on the Small Town police force, is black, so the producers could check off the "racial diversity" box).

Cole and Brooke have a meet cute when she hits him with her car. Feeling guilty, she takes him in, and humors his contention that he is a time traveler. His wonderment over 21st century marvels like TV and coffee ensues, and plot complications...

Well, no real plot complications. Sir Cole does challenge her ex-boyfriend (Neil Babcock) to a duel because he's not as chivalrous as he should be, there's a girl stuck on thin ice who needs rescuing, and a teenage pickpocket to be subdued (the latter gets Cole a job offer. Apparently you don't need to go to the police academy in Small Town Ohio. Just show up, and they strap on a gun).

Oh, and a Christmas party to prepare for. Did I mention that it's Christmastime?

Some indecision on Cole's part, but Vanessa tells him: You can be anything you want in life, if you try hard enough.

The main "tension": Will Cole go back to the past after he learns to "believe in himself", or stay in Small Town Ohio with Brooke?

What do you think?

Well, he does go back, for a few minutes, to see Sir Geoffrey, and give him some advice on how to become a true knight: "Be kind to all you meet."

Wait -- how does he go back and forth in time at will?

Beefcake: Almost everybody in town is female, and the men keep their clothes on. But check out stuntman Alex Armbruster, who played "Young Husband at Tree Farm."

Buddy bonding: Almost everyone in town is female.

Gay characters: Evan, whose daughter Cole saves from the thin ice, hugs him. But Cole is mystified by the gesture: "Is this some sort of Christmas wrestling match?). He's unfamiliar with the concept of men hugging. (Evan has a wife)

There's also a single dad (Jean-Michel Le Gal) who is struggling financially, so Vanessa give him money to buy his kids presents. He has a slew of kids, so I'm thinking dead wife rather than gay.

I guess rom-coms are the final frontier for queerness. I imagine that Netflix bigwigs feel thatt the rom-com audience is "not ready" for gay characters hanging around and being gay at Christmas time. Everybody knows that gay people flash out of existence just after Halloween and don't return until Oscar Night.

The summer of 1978: I was 17 years old, a new high school graduate working at the Carousel Snack Bar at the mall and getting ready for college. I had just figured "it" out, but I hadn't yet met any gay people. I went to a lot of movies: Big Wednesday, Corvette Summer, The Cheap Detective, Foul Play, The Revenge of the Pink Panther, Hooper, Animal House. But I didn't see Jaws 2, in spite of its iconic tagline: "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water."

I figured it was just another another 1970s disaster movie like The Towering Inferno, and probably infused with the heterosexual male gaze. Who wants to watch a bunch of bikini babes getting chomped?

Turns out that the original is a masterpiece of gay subtext, While tracking a rogue shark, Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) and impish grad student Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) sizzle with "will they or won't they?" erotic intensity. They don't actually kiss in the final scene, but close enough.

I recently watched the sequel to see if the homoeroticism continues. Steven Spielberg chose not to direct, so Jeannot Szwarc stepped in. He did mostly tv dramas and horror, like A Summer Without Boys (well, that sounds like horror to me).

Hooper is absent, off doing research in Antartica (aw, does he send love letters back to Amity?), and Chief Brody is more heterosexual, actively involved with his wife. But he has little to do besides yell "You kids get off the beach!" The star is his teenage son, Mike (Mike Gruner), who goes sailing in spite of the admonitions, and has to rescue his friends from getting chomped.

As several reviewers note, it's like the prototype of a 1980s teenkill, with ineffectual adults, horny teenagers off by themselves, and a psycho-slasher shark.

But let's take a closer look at those kids. 7 boys and two girls in four boats. One boat contains a boy-girl pair, and another Mike's so-called "love interest" and his little brother.

Hardly a heterosexual outing.

And the 6 boys (excluding Little Brother) are divided into bff dyads, guys who put their hands on each other a lot, grab each other a lot, and don't necessarily express any hetero-horniness. They can easily be read as gay couples.

1. Juvenile delinquent in training Mike and wisecracking sidekick Andy (Gary Springer)

2. Nerds Timmy (G. Thomas Dunlap) and Doug (Keith Gordon)

3. Eddie (Gary Dugan) and Polo (John Dukakis).

Only Eddie , who leaves his bff to go off with a girl , gets chomped . I guess having a girlfriend is a major transgression in a homoerotic world

AThe Chief is more heterosexual this time around, with his wife taking a major role, but he does take the time to put his hand on the shoulder of Larry (David Elliott)

There is surprisingly little beefcake ; this beach has no shirtless studs walking around . But no bikini babes either , which only adds to the homoerotic vibe.

See also: Jaws and Gay Romance

November is my favorite month. The air is brisk and cool but not too cold for jogging, it gets dark at a normal hour, tv and the theater are going strong. Even though there's my birthday and Thanksgiving to celebrate, it's still relaxed and easygoing.

Then suddenly it's December, cold and dark all the time, people scatter, the campus is deserted, you have 1000 papers to grade, and you spend two weeks running around at breakneck speed buying and wrapping presents, putting up decorations and a tree, addressing cards, planning and going to about 1000 parties, getting sugar overload. Then you get on an overcrowded airplane to spend two more weeks doing it all over again back home with the relatives.

All the while you're expected to be deliriously happy. If you lose that robotic grin for an instant, you're ostracized as a Scrooge and a Grinch.

To facilitate your delirious happiness, you are subjected to a constant barrage of music specific to the season. The problem is, most Christmas songs are not happy. They're wistful, nostalgic, mourning lost youth and long-gone friends, or else bemoaning the fact that time is passing, we're all getting old and going to die soon.

How are you supposed to be joyful when all of the songs you hear are about loss and despair?

Here's a list of the worst offenders.

1. White Christmas. "Just like the ones I used to know." A bittersweet look at Christmas past, in our long-gone childhood, before global warming, with a slow, lugubrious melody that makes you want to cry.

2. The Christmas Song ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire"). Humorous lyrics with a wistful, sad melody. Talk about mixed signals! Mel Torme, who is Jewish, wrote this on the beach in Florida. There was no Jack Frost nipping at his nose.

3. The Little Drummer Boy. There are actually no lyrics to this song, or just a few. Mostly it's nonstop onomatopoeia ("rum tum tum"), and a slow, wistful melody.

4. Home for the Holidays. You've got to be kidding. When you see your relatives only once a year, they're strangers, and they've suddenly gotten a lot older, thus reminding you of your own inevitable progression toward death. Oh, wait, the singer isn't really going home for the holidays; it's just a masochistic fantasy.

5. Holly Jolly Christmas. Horrible heterosexist lyrics.

6. Good King Wenceslaus. A beggar freezing to death finds his way through the snow by following the king's footprints. All with a horrible ponderous melody.

7. We Three Kings. The third king brings myrh: "bitter perfume, breathes a life of gathering doom." You got that right.

8. We Need a Little Christmas. Life is hard. We've grown a little older, grown a little colder. Holly and mistletoe won't help. I heard this for the first time on an episode of The Facts of Life 30 years ago.

9. Blue Christmas. Goes without saying.

And the worst of the worst:

10. Have Yourself a Merry...well, you know. About the swift passage of time and the inevitability of death. Judy Garland refused to sing the first version -- it was too depressing even for the Queen of Sad Songs.

I've seen Moonlight, the 2016 multiple Oscar winner about a gay black man. I didn't like it. It mostly involved people staring at each other, and it strained incredulity every step of the way.

There are three parts, with the main character as a boy, teenager, and man.

1. Little

Chiron, called "Little," is about 8 years old, living with his crackhead mother in a drug-infested Miami neighborhood. Juan (Mahershala Ali), Mom's drug dealer, finds him hiding in a crackhouse and brings him home to his girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monae).

There is obviously something wrong with Chiron, maybe autism. He displays no emotion and he rarely speaks. The other kids call him a "faggot" because of the way he walks (I didn't notice anything). The extremely gay-positive Juan explains that "faggot" is what kids call gay people to make them feel bad about themselves.

"How do you know if you're gay?" Chiron asks.

"You just do."

Chiron has only one friend his own age -- well, not really a friend, someone who tries to talk to him: Kevin (Jaden Piner), who teaches him how to fight so he won't get picked on.

2. Chiron

I thought there was going to be a romance between Juan and the grown-up Chiron, but no, in Part 2, Juan is absent, casually referenced as dead (no grief, no "I still miss him," just dead. Chiron doesn't really feel emotions).

The teenage Chiron (now played by Ashton Sanders, left), still hangs out with Teresa. He still displays no emotion and rarely speaks. I can hear the director: "Above all, you must never smile.")

Kevin (now played by Jharrel Jerome) still tries to talk to him, and doesn't mind that he doesn't talk back. One night on the beach they kiss and masturbate each other. It's no big deal for Kevin; he has sex all the time, with boys and girls both. But Chiron has never done it before.

The school bully, Terel (Patrick Decille), still thinks that Chiron is gay because he wears tight pants and doesn't speak (although if I was judging gayness by feminine features, Terel would definitely win).

One day Terel talks Kevin into beating Chiron up. In retaliation, Chiron attacks Terel, and is sent to a juvenile reformatory.

3. Black

About ten years later, the adult Chiron (now played by Trevante Rhodes) is a drug dealer living in Atlanta (don't you have to speak to sell drugs?).

Kevin (now played by Andre Holland) calls him out of nowhere and invites him down to Miami for a visit. They haven't seen each other since that day in school.

He's been in prison, too, but he has turned his life around. He has a job in a restaurant, an apartment, and a five-year old son (who lives with his mama).

Chiron tells Kevin that he hasn't been intimate with anyone since the night they kissed and masturbated on the beach.

Ok, I don't believe that for a second. Did you see the guy's physique? He must get dozens of offers, in spite of never speaking or smiling. Unless his autism makes it impossible for him to make human connections. But professional drug dealers are constantly interacting with people. How could he...

And if he's gay, why doesn't he just come out?

Kevin has had a lot of partners, but he's always had a crush on Chriron. They hug. Apparently they are about to begin a romantic relationship. Fade out.

Stray observations:

1. There are no white people in the film. And no reference to gay culture, gay organizations, gay anything. Did the director believe that there is no black gay community?

2. No way I believe that the super-skinny Ashton Sanders morphed into the super buffed Trevante Rhodes, I don't care how many push-ups he did in prison.

3. The title Moonlight has nothing to do with the story. It refers to black bodies looking blue in the moonlight, sort of like revealing your true self. What's wrong with black bodies looking black?

If you're not from the U.S. you might not be familiar with Thanksgiving, a holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November (it's also celebrated on different dates in Canada, Liberia, and Grenada).

It's my favorite holiday. And the gayest:

1. It's in November, so it's cold outside, and dark at night like it's supposed to be. No one is forcing you to go out and "enjoy the outdoors."

2. There are no tv commercials depicting heterosexual couples giving each other gifts or watching in rapt joy as their children unwrap gifts.

3. There's no religious significance, so you won't feel guilty if you accidentally say "Happy Thanksgiving!" to someone who is Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, or atheist. Although sometimes vegans will lecture you.

4. Gay men spend many extra hours at the gym in anticipation of over-indulging on Thanksgiving. As a result, at Thanksgiving they're more buffed than at any other time of the year.

5. Everyone gets to demonstrate their culinary skill.

6. You only get Thursday and maybe Friday off work, so there's no time to take a plane ride 2000 miles to the place you grew up. Thus, "home" is no longer in the past, it's the place you are today, and "family" is what you make of it.

This Advocate cover shows Howard Cruse's character Wendel being served Thanksgiving dinner in bed. But why is the kid wearing a mask? Is he the famous Thanksgiving character, Zorro?

7. If you do go home to visit extended family, Thanksgiving dinner is the traditional time for making Big Announcements, like "Guess what? I'm gay."

8. Most of the bars, clubs, and bathhouses have special Thanksgiving Day events, so you don't have to waste all Thanksgiving afternoon watching football.

9. The origin story, about 17th century Pilgrims and Indians coming together to share a meal, is an imperialist myth, masking a history of conquest and genocide. But it does lend itself to some interesting ideas for homoerotic revisions (picture from Crow821 on deviantart.com).

10. Gay people have a lot to be thankful for. They grew up in a culture where they told, over and over, that "discovering the opposite sex" was inevitable and universal, that no gay people existed except for grotesque monsters. And they survived.

I didn't think there were any more sharks for Riverdale to jump over, after 3 seasons of serial killers, gangs, drugs, cults, organized crime, and weird mash-ups of all of the above. But in Season 4, we go off even more deep ends. Most of the recognizable characters -- Moose, Dilton, Ethel, Reggie, Mr. Weatherbee -- are gone or only appear once in a blue moon, while the Gang (Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead) is split into a dozen or more crazy storylines.

Jughead

1. The aspiring Kerouac (I still think the whole series is his purple-prose novel) enrolls at snooty Stonewall Prep, where he butts head with rich kid Brett Weston Wallis (Sean Depner,top photo.) That's Riverdale-world Brett Easton Ellis, by the way. Brett snubs his work and plays fun pranks like locking Jughead in a coffin all night.

2. Meanwhile Jughead stumbles onto a mystery involving the authorship of the Baxter Brothers series (Riverdale-ese for the Hardy Boys). And an associated secret so terrible that teacher Mr. Chipping (Sam Witwer) commits suicide rather than reveal it.

3. Jonathan (Alex Barima), s relatively indifferent to Jughead. I think he's mostly there to be black and pretty.

Betty

Other than making out with Jughead, Betty's job is to find out who is sending videotapes of her house and calling and claiming to be her dead serial-killer father. She also worries that she has a "serial killer gene." She is assisted by:

4. Charles Smith (Wyatt Nash), her older half-brother, who claims to be an FBI agent investigating serial killers (lots of them in Riverdale), but has his own secret agenda. He's in a relationship with Chick, who pretended to be Betty's half-brother ages ago. So maybe Kevin will get someone to date after his previous boyfriends have vanished.

Archie

The allergic-to-shirts redhead and his bff Mad Dog turn their boxing gym into an all-around community center for homeless and at-risk kids, which draws the ire of:

5. Dodger (Juan Riedeger), a small-time drug dealer. He gets mad when Archie tries to draw his boys into the straight-and-narrow. Hint: It was Fagin who had a stable of boys, including the Artful Dodger.

Turns out that Dodger is a younger son of a crime empire (another). When he is beat up, some relatives arrive to shoot up the community center, including:

6. Ta-da! A Fagin, except it's spelled Fagan (Adam Klassen),

Veronica

Other than pouring money into whatever crazy scheme Archie proposes and running her nightclub in the basement of Pop Tate's, Ronnie's main job this season is to yell at her parents, who are variously on trial, running for mayor, and introducing previously unmentioned siblings with agendas of their own.

7. Oh, she also kills a serial killer known as the Family Man (Ben Cotton), who attacks her in the diner. I would be talking about that for the rest of my life,but Veronica never mentions it again. I guess there are so many serial killers in Riverdale that one more doesn't even rate a mention when friends ask "So, what's new?"

Cheryl

Cheryl Blossom (of the maple syrup empire) and girlfriend Toni spend most of their time in their mansion, doing creepy things like talking to dead people, having premonitions, and keeping the corpse of her dead brother in a secret room downstairs. Three relatives show up, trying to get Cheryl to sign over her fortune, including:

8. Alexander Lowe as Cousin Fester (It's not a nickname: about 30 years ago, someone named their kid after the Addams Family character)

So Cheryl kills him and serves him to the other relatives to get them to back off. Or not really?

Toni also hires:

9. The uber-muscular Darius (Austin Miklausch) to take care of things, but Cheryl can't stand the idea of a stranger in the house, so she sends him packing

Whew. They own businesses, sign contracts, witness in court, kill people, scheme, sleuth, and otherwise forget that they are children. Does anyone even think about attending class at Riverdale High anymore?

10. Someone must, because there's a new Principal, with unlikely name Mr, Honey (Kerr Smith), who has his own secret agenda...well, never mind.

Spending Christmas with The Relatives on the other side of the world is always stressful: stuck in a house for two weeks with no exercise unless it's nice enough to jog outside, forced to watch...ugh...sports and eat...ugh...meals prepared by people who think potato chips are vegetables, all the while deflecting conversations about religion, politics, Muslims, and homa-sekshuls (you don't want the Family Bigot to start screaming).

Spending Christmas with the boyfriend's relatives is even worse, since you have to switch instantly from boyfriend to "roommate" depending on which member of the extended family knows. And sometimes you aren't informed in advance. I once spent an entire afternoon being "the roommate" for my boyfriend's aunt, only to hear "Oh, she's known since I was 12."

So when I saw that Netflix released Merry Happy Whatever, an entire eight-episode tv series about the horrors of meeting The Relatives at Christmas, I planned to watch. No doubt it would be infinitely heterosexist. So what? It would still be a good cure for the Day After Thanksgiving malaise, with The Visit looming.

It's a traditional multi-camera sound-stage sitcom, with a couch downstage center facing what is supposed to be a tv set. With a laugh-track yet. How retro!

L.A. hipster and aspiring musician Matt (Brent Morin, below) agrees to fly cross country to small-town Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to spend a 10-day Christmas vacation visiting the Family of his girlfriend Emmy.

10 days? That was his first mistake.

Family Patriarch Don Quinn (1980s hunk Dennis Quaid), a small-town Sheriff, seems to be channeling Tim Allen on Home Improvement, or maybe William Shatner on S* My Dad Says. Sports, tools, cars, grunting, flee from anything feminine.

He's got ancient gender-based hangups on everything from women working to men wearing the wrong kind of shoes, plus a few that I never even heard of, like "only women should decorate the Christmas tree."

And he has three children (not counting Emmy) who are totally on board with his cave man machismo, and three in-laws who are trying hard to avoid his wrath by pretending to be:

1.Dimwitted jock son Sean (Hayes MacArthur, top photo) is generally a success: wife, house, job, kids, the litany of male accomplishments that I heard incessantly while growing up. Then he loses his job, and is afraid to tell his wife, Joy (Elizabeth Ho), because a man who can't support his family is not a real man.

And their 12-year old son, Sean Jr. (Mason Davis), ha a heart-to-heart about "feelings" that he's been "trying to hide." They brace themselves for a coming-out, but Sean Jr. means that he's an atheist. Almost as bad for this conservative Catholic family!

2. Chirpy housewife Patsy is married, but has been unable to conceive a child.It must be due to the less-than-manly sperm of her husband Todd (Adam Rose). Also he's Jewish, but terrified of suggesting the most innocuous dreidel to augment the Birth of Baby Jesus.

3. Aggressive, controlling Kayla (Ashley Tinsdale) is married to mild-mannered Alan (Tyler Ritter, left). But when they arrive for the first of 10 traditional holiday gatherings with the Family, he announces that he wants a divorce. They're arguing all the time, and they haven't had sex in a year.

Kayla begins dropping broad hints that the reason they broke up is: she is not attracted to men. In fact, she likes women -- a lot. She comes out as a lesbian to Matt, but is afraid to tell the Family. Wouldn't you be?

When Matt falls into this maelstrom, Dad immediately labels him "a woman" because he is a musician, doesn't like sports, faints at the sight of a needle, and is from California. Aren't they all sort of iffy out there? The rest of the Family, sensing that he' the weakest member of the pack, fall in line:

Matt: Where is everybody?
Patsy: The men all went out to get a Christmas tree.
Matt: Well, not all the men.
Patsy: All the real men.

At first Matt tries to macho up and bond with Dad, but then he changes his tactics, pushing back against Dad's gender-role malarky. Men can be sensitive, artistic, intellectual, non-sports enthusiasts.

Energized, the others start pushing back, too. Todd gets the nerve to suggest adding some Jewish traditions to the household.

Sean gets the nerve to tell Dad that he lost his job, AND that his son is an atheist.

In the last episode, set on New Year's Eve, Kayla comes out. The Family gathers for a group hug, and Dad gives her a rainbow-flag keychain. Matt's intervention has worked wonders.

I think I'll watch this show again in a couple of weeks, when I'm back home visiting The Relatives.

When I met Peter Barton, he was guest starring in some tv shows, doing live theater, and calling his agent every day, trying to transition to a macho 1980s leading man. But just a few years before, he had been a soft, androgynous teen idol.

Born in 1956, the former medical student started his acting career in 1979, as the teenage son on the short-lived sitcom Shirley! Only 13 episodes were filmed, but that was enough for the teen magazines to adulate Peter as the Next Big Thing. He was handsome, muscular but not a bodybuilder, and just androgynous enough to meet the gender-bending expectations of the era of Culture Club and ABBA.

Dozens of shirtless, speedo, and semi-nude shots followed, plus a starring role in Hell Night (1981) with Vincent Van Patten, in Leadfoot with Philip Mckeon, and in a movie-of-the-week, The First Time (1982). Peter also appeared in a tight swimsuit in an episode of Battle of the Network Stars. Many gay boys found in him a kindred spirit, gazing at his movies or swimsuit spreads and thinking "He's one of us."

Then his big break came: The Powers of Matthew Star, one of the many kid-friendly sci-fi series in the 1982-83 season (others included Voyagers!,The Greatest American Hero, and Knight Rider). Strangely, it aired just before the drag queen-friendly Madame's Place.

The plot was similar to Shazam!, which aired on Saturday mornings a few years before: teenager with superpowers lives with an older man. In this case, Matthew, or E'Hawke (Peter Barton) was a prince from a planet orbiting Tau Ceti, hiding out on Earth from enemies who wanted him dead. He went to Crestridge High School and lived with his guardian, Walter, or D'hai (Louis Gossett Jr.), who was working undercover as a science teacher.

I watched occasionally, but it was a little too "Saturday morning tv" to draw a big audience. Besides, Matthew had a girlfriend, there was no homoerotic buddy-bonding, and there was not enough beefcake. Most gay kids quickly changed the channel to The Dukes of Hazzardon CBS. Powers was cancelled after only 22 episodes.

Peter's teen idol fame ended shortly thereafter, as more muscular actors like Willie Aames and Scott Baio rose to the limelight.

In 1988, he got his big break, a starring role on The Young and the Restless. Other soaps followed, plus the detective series Burke's Law.

Today Peter lives in upstate New York with his daughter. He has never married.

See also: My Celebrity Dates, Hookups, and Sausage Sightings

When I searched online for Nemo Schiffman, this photo came up, with the byline "Melanie Thierry et Raphael, fin de partie."

I don't know who those people are, but obviously neither one is Nemo Schiffman, the 19 year old singer/actor who is starring in Mortel (Deadly), a French drama about two teenage boys fighting supernatural evil.

Here's a guy who goes to Gay Pride Parades, records songs without "girl! girl! girl!" lyrics, and is the bff of queer singer Bilal Hassani, "an icon to queer youth." There must be a gay subtext! Or maybe even a canonical gay couple!

It's worth a shot.

Episode 1:

Sofiane (Carl Malapa), a student at a run-down high school in a working-class arondissement of Paris, has been a wreck since his older brother Reba (Sami Outalbali) disappeared four months ago. He even tries to commit suicide. He starts getting visions of a supernatural being with dreadlocks and fiery glasses (Corentin Fila), who explains that he is Obé, the Voodoo god in charge of transporting murdered souls to the other world. Reba is trapped in limbo, but Sofiane can release him by murdering someone else.

Release him to the other world, or bring him back to life? And why is he trapped? Can't Obé just transport him over?

Sofiane chooses Victor (Nemo Schiffman), the outcast weird kid who's been in and out of mental hospitals. He lures him onto a roof, and, with Obé egging him on, tries to strangle him. But Sofiane can't do it. Maybe Obé would accept his brother's murderer instead?

The god agrees.

Episode 2:

Sofiane receives the power of physically moving people (handy for getting bad guys to punch themselves), and Victor receives the power of reading minds, and they get to sleuthing. They seek out the help of classmate Luisa (Manon Bresch), whose grandmother is a Voodoo priestess (I didn't know there was a large Afro-Caribbean community in France). She suggests that it might not be a good idea to trust a being who claims to be a Voodoo god.

Uh-oh. The Girl. Will one of the two boys demolish the gay subtext by falling in love?

Victor invites Sofiane home for dinner: middle-class household, conniving little sister, stepfather who makes Pad Thai.

"When we met, it was friendship at first sight," Sofiane explains.

The family is delighted, and implicitly assumes that they are a gay couple.

But I'm concerned about The Girl, so before I commit to watching the whole series, I'd better skip to the last episode to see if the two walk off into the sunset together.

Episode 6:

Bad things went down last night, and Victor is incoherent, drawing monsters in his underwear and screaming at his family. Sofiane sends them all away and grabs and hugs Victor as he cries.

So far so gay.

They decide to storm the building where Luisa is interviewing the Bad Guy. Sofiane has to use his powers to fight off several armed guards. It's difficult and very painful. Victor hugs him.

Great, but what about the very last scene:

Victor and Sofiane sitting on a bench. It's all over, so now they can get on with their lives, walking side by side into the future, right? Victor says that he still has issues to work on, so he's going back to the mental hospital. Sofiane starts to cry.

Wait -- they're breaking up? But it's not permanent -- he'll be out in a few months. And besides, mental hospitals allow visitors. Why....

And now Victor has to say goodbye to Luisa.

Uh-oh, they're hugging. Luisa tells him how much she cares for him.

In a Platonic, brotherly way, right?

Right?

Wrong. Their foreheads press together. Victor says "I want to show you the life we can have together."

Boo!

That's two hours of my life that I'll never get back.

I should stick to tv series where the description specifically states "This character is gay. He likes men. He doesn't fall in love with a woman."

Like Being 17, starring Corentin Fila (Obe) as a teenager who is gay and falls in love with his mother's houseguest, who is also gay.

In spite of the beefcake on the posters and lobby cards, The Explosive Generation (1961) doesn't offer many swimsuit, underwear, or locker room scenes, though there are lots of clean-cut 1950s teens in tight pants.

It does offer some significant gay subtexts, as rich kid Bobby (Billy Gray of Father Knows Best, right) moons over basketball star Dan (the muscular Lee Kinsolving, left), and invites him to a wild party at his parents' beach house.

They dance, drink beer, and Bobby tries to talk Dan into having sex with his girlfriend Janet (Patty McCormack, center, best known as the murderous little girl in The Bad Seed).

Wait -- why does Bobby care so much about whether Dan has sex with a girl? What kind of vicarious pleasure can he get from. . .oh, right, the subtext.

That's why this poster shows the two of them dragging her toward a three-way triangulation.

Janet is reluctant -- how far should a girl go to prove her love to a boy?

So she brings up the subject in class. Fortunately, she has one of those hip, caring, hunky teachers who are always trying to make a difference: Peter Gifford (William Shatner), who is as horny as Captain Kirk meeting an alien princess, making every statement a double-entendre and putting his hands all over the bodies of both male and female students (not to mention dragging a boy out of a girl's arms so he can have him for himself).

Gifford decides to conduct a survey about students' attitudes toward sex. Parents find out, and become apoplectic with outrage. The principal starts screaming. The cops get involved. Gifford is asked to apologize (that's all?)

Bobby leads a student protest -- but not one of those loud protests of the hippie generation. They give the teachers the silent treatment. And the principal backs down. Problem solved.

The Explosive Generation is not very explosive, but it provides an interesting view of how histrionic parents got -- and still get -- over the idea of their teenagers having sex.

You asked about the hunk on the left in this publicity shot from The Explosive Generation (1961).

Short answer:

He's high school student Dan Carlyle (Lee Kinsolving), helping classmate Bobby Herman (Billy Gray) hold up a girl in a scene that doesn't appear in the movie (it's about teaching sex education).

You're probably more interested whether there are any more beefcake shots.

So am I.

Long answer:

Arthur Lee Kinsolving Jr. was born in Boston on August 30, 1938, son of Rev. Arthur Lee Kinsolving, Rector of Trinity Church, and Mary Kemp Blagden. He had three younger siblings (born in 1940, 1942, and 1948). In 1947, Rev. Kinsolving became Rector of the extremely prestigious St. James Episcopal Church at Madison and 71st in Manhattan.

Going by "Lee" to distinguish himself from his father, the younger Kinsolving graduated from Episcopal High School, an exclusive private boarding school in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1956.

He enrolled at Trinity College, an exclusive private college in Hartford, Connecticut. The summer after his freshman year, he was performing at the Westchester Playhouse, when a Broadway scout signed him on to star in Winesburg, Ohio (which ran from February 5th to 15th, 1958, at the National Theater). He played Seth.

Next Agent Richard Clayton, the gay agent who signed on such gay and gay-vague stars as James Dean, Tab Hunter, and Richard Chamberlain, signed Lee on and got him gigs on some East Coast tv programs (Playhouse 90, Alcoa Theater).

I wonder if Richard Clayton had a casting couch.

After graduating from Trinity in 1959, Lee moved to Hollywood, and appeared in a variety of tv programs, mostly in dramatic roles and Westerns (Have Gun -- Will Travel, The Rifleman).

His movie credits include: All the Young Men, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (which won him a Golden Globe nomination), Ah Wilderness, and The Explosive Generation.

He retired from acting in 1966 due to "personal frustrations with the business." That is, he hadn't worked in 2 years.

He managed the hip restaurant Toad Hall in Manhattan from 1968 to 1969. I wonder if it's the same Toad Hall in Soho today.

In 1969 he moved to Palm Beach, Florida, where he managed the Lillian Phipps Gallery and later the Wally Findlay Gallery, which "became the opulent setting for flamboyant openings for socially prominent artists."

Must have been some gay people wandering around. Wally Findlay himself died in 1996 at the age of 92, never married.

Lee also raced speedboats and acted as the captain of the DuPont Family yacht.

This guy was well-connected!

He was linked romantically with Tuesday Weld and Candace Bergen, and was married to model Lillian Bishop Crawford from 1969 to 1972. I don't know what "linked romantically" means, but such a short marriage may indicate that he was gay and closeted.

Sometime in 1974, he contracted a respiratory disease that didn't display any symptoms, so no one was aware that he was sick until, on December 4th, he collapsed at his apartment and died. He was 36.

The Photos of Celebrities Website claims that the following shirtless and nude photos are of Lee Kinsolving. Which ones are real?

1. Doubtful.

2. No way.

3. Not even the right hair color.

No kid actually dies in Dead Kids (2019): it's a Filipino slang term for outsiders, aliens, the kids who sit by themselves in the cafeteria and never get invited to parties. The central character is Mark Sta Maria (Kelvin Miranda), a senior at a private high school in Manila, a shy, sensitive drama major whose every attempt at acquiring prestige is co-opted by the arrogant rich kid Chuck Santos (Markus Patterson, below).

He wanted the lead in the school play, but Chuck got it.

He has a crush on it-girl Janine (Sue Ramirez), but Chuck is railroading her. (The two actors are dating in real life.)

Plus Chuck has 50,000 Instagram followers, fancy clothes, and a car.

And he's an entitled, snobbish, bullying asshole.

Somebody has to take him down a few notches.

Enter three other dead kids:

1.Flamboyant schemer Blanco (Vance Larena)

Vance Larena starred in the gay film Bakwit Boys, and is apparently gay in real life. According to the Filipino press, he has a boyfriend named Mark.

2-3. The bff gay-vague couple Paolo (Khalil Ramos, left) and Uy (Jan Silverio). Khalil Ramos starred in the gay film 2 Cool 2 B Forgotten. When asked about his "gender identity," he stated that he was "straight," but supported "gender equality."

Do they think gay is a gender in the Philippines?

Back to the story: the four Dead Kids (along with Paolo's girlfriend sometimes) get the idea of kidnapping Chuck and holding him for ransom. They'll make some money, and the arrogant asshole will get his comeuppance. So they put on pig masks, burst into the brothel where Chuck is awaiting his 18th birthday blow job, put a bag over his head, tie him up, and sequester him in Mark's apartment.

You know what's going to happen next, right? Complication, complication, dead guy (an adult), drug lord, arguments, harrowing something or other, the end. We've seen it before 20,000 times. Feel free to fast forward to the good parts.

Except there really aren't any good parts.

Beefcake: None.

Gay characters: Maybe Blanco, but he's underdeveloped.

Filipino culture: No interesting shots of the Manila cityscape. The characters speak mostly in English, with some Tagalog thrown in here and there. I guess speaking English is cool for Pinoy youth.

Heterosexism: Surprisingly little. A couple of the boys have girlfriends, but there's no Girl of His Dreams rhetoric, no girl to be rescued, no fade-out boy-girl kiss.

Homophobia: None. The characters have foul mouths, but never use homophobic slurs. They all apparently support gay equality (or rather, gender equality). Notice the LGBT hate-free zone sign on the wall behind them.

My grade: D. Watch some of the actors' gay movies instead.

I'm not a big fan of Christmas. I dread seeing the first Christmas ads of the year, in August or September. The decorations going up in stores in October. And the day after Thanksgiving, when the onslaught begins in earnest, a full month of gaudy decorations and tinny music and exhortations to be merry.

It's the most heterosexist time of the year.

Here are 15 reasons to just skip it and spend December hiding out in yurt in Mongolia.

1. The Animated Specials: Unrelenting in their zeal in pairing up Santa Claus, Rudolph, and Frosty the Snowman with their female counterparts, while Burl Ives sings "Somebody waits for you -- kiss her once for me."

2. The TV Movies. Christmas Magic, A Christmas Kiss, A Bride for Christmas, Undercover Christmas. A lonely woman finds love with an unexpected man in a "Holiday Miracle." Over and over and over again.

3. The Nutcracker Ballet. Ok, so there are ample bulges and biceps to be seen, but it's a hetero-romance composed by a gay man.

4. The Commercials. 15,000 tv commercials show young heterosexual couples in expensive bathrobes giving each other elegant gifts and then kissing. 15,000 more show kids ecstatically upwrapping the gift du jour, while their heterosexual parents hug each other fondly. No same-sex couples, not even pairs of friends.

5. The Songs. Men and women endlessly meeting each other under the mistletoe. Kids getting gender-polarized presents. And "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the most depressing song ever written, part of the repertoire of Judy Garland, who believed -- with many gay people of her era -- that to be gay was to be constantly sad.

Did you know that the song was originally much more depressing? I'm not sure how that's possible, but the maven of depressing songs refused to sing it until it was cheered up from "throw yourself in front of a bus" to a mere "sob uncontrollably."

6. "Don we now our gay apparel." A reminder that the word "gay" previously meant something like "happy, giddy." Except today it's regularly censored, lest anyone's holiday celebrations be ruined by the recognition that gay people exist.

7. The Visit. You are required to wait at a crowded airport, sit in a packed airplane made even more cramped by bulky coats and packages, and go "home" to visit your birth family in the Straight World. But your heterosexual brother and sister are excused. The message is clear: they have their own home, but you don't. No matter how long they have lived in a place, no matter what social and emotional connections they have made, gay people have no "home."

8. The Dinner. Christmas Dinner back "home" involves endless discussions of heterosexual husbands and wives, boyfriend and girlfriends, but you are cautioned not to tell Aunt June about your boyfriend, lest her holiday be ruined.

9. The Breakup. There are an extraordinary number of breakups just after Christmas. People who don't like their boyfriends or girlfriends always think things like "I can't ruin their Christmas by dumping them. But the day after..."

My problem has always been going "home" for 10 days and leaving the boyfriend back in West Hollywood or New York or Florida. The vultures start circling immediately, bulging and flexing and cruising, and when I get back, I'm welcomed by "I didn't plan on it -- it just happened."

10. The Parties. They never end. Various offices, departments, schools, organizations, miscellaneous groups of friends. 10 or more before the season is over -- if you're lucky.

Roomsful of people who don't know you're gay, forcing you to come out endlessly and get surprised reactions, or else endure heterosexist small talk and flirting from every heterosexual Cougar in sight.

And endless supplies of cookies, candy, cakes, bars, and whatever other high-fat, high-sugar horrors that can be decorated in gaudy colors.

11. The Fashions. After all the parties, no wonder people dress in bulky sweaters and coats. Primary colors, gaudy designs, knit fabrics. It's the worst time of the year for showing off your muscles, or getting a glimpse of a Cute Young Thing's biceps and bulge.

12. Santa Claus. Fat, elderly, married, and wearing red. The antithesis of a gay icon.

13. The Salvation Army, which teaches that gay people should be stoned to death, is out in numbers ringing those little bells, and people are tossing money in gladly, emphasizing how thin the veneer of tolerance is -- at any moment, "I don't have any problem with you people" could change to screaming.

14. "A Perfect Holiday Gift." TV commercials and ads call it "the holidays," but they mean Christmas only, showing only Christmas traditions and ending summarily on December 26th, even though there is still New Year's Eve, Kwanzaa, and sometimes Ramadan and Hanukah left.

Gay people hear quite enough of this "universal" means "only us" claptrap:

She's every man's fantasy.
Every woman wants him; every man wants to be him.
There's not a man alive who wouldn't want to get with her.
Every boy "discovers" girls during adolescence.

15. "Cheer up, it's Christmas." You are required to feel ecstatic all the time. Even the most upbeat person can't be up all day, every day, but if you experience even a moment of melancholy, there are 3000 people waiting to tell you that there's something wrong with you, you're a Scrooge or a Grinch.

Gay people hear quite enough of this "You must feel a certain way" claptrap:

You're not really gay. You just haven't met the right person yet.
How do you know you're gay if you haven't tried it with a woman?
Ok, so you're gay, but don't tell me you would kick her out of bed!

But at least there are Pantomimes in England, and the Santa Speedo Run in Boston.

See also: Are the Pantos Gay; and My 12 Christmas Boyfriends

Born in 1947, the boyish, good-natured John Hamill began his career as a physique model, one of the first to pose fully nude. Sometimes he even had a partner, in explicitly homoerotic scenes aimed at the increasingly visible gay male audience. He also appeared in both gay and heterosexual "blue movies."

But he aspired to become a serious actor, so he studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts and began appearing on stage, notably in the gay-themed Boys in the Band in 1969 (presumably as the hustler hired to become a "birthday present").

His film career began in 1970, with starring roles in the thrillers The Beast in the Cellar (not as the beast), Trog (not as the rampaging caveman), and No Blade of Grass. He also had some guest spots on tv series such as Paul Temple, The Befrienders, and Crossroads.

But, like many bodybuilders, especially those with a "gay reputation," John found himself stuck in minor roles as threatening bad guys or inarticulate hunks. In Tower of Evil (1972), for example, his character is introduced, takes off his clothes, flexes his muscles and gets killed, all in about thirty seconds.

Anxious for work, he agreed to star in the sex comedy Girls Come First (1975), as an artist asked to paint nude models. Released in both hardcore and softcore versions, it was popular enough to lead to two sequels, and parts in similar movies, like Hardcore (1977).

But nothing else. After a two-parter onSpace: 1999in 1978, he retired from acting and became a furniture refinisher.

Being so open about sex, and so nonchalant about both male and female partners, limited John's career, but left him -- and his fans -- with many fond memories.

You can see the nude photos on Tales of West Hollywood.

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