NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

January 18th, 1982, a Monday night, the second week of classes in the spring semester of my senior year. I'm lying on the bed in the attic room my brother and I once shared -- he's married and gone -- reading Ciro Alegria's El mundo es ancho y ajeno (Broad and Alien is the World) and watching tv on our small portable set. Nothing on network but two boring tv movies and MASH, so I turn it to PBS.

And I find Brideshead Revisited, an adaption of the Evelyn Waugh novel about 1920s Oxford undergrad Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons) falling in love with the flamboyant, teddy bear-toting, alcoholic Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews).

They run away to Venice together; they go slumming in Soho, along with Sebastian's sister Julia. Then Ryder begins a romantic entanglement with Julia, and the outraged Sebastian dumps him and runs off to Morocco. Later he hooks up with a sleazy German named Kurt, and later still he dies. Ryder can't marry Julia because she's Catholic and he's an atheist, so they just live together. Later he becomes Catholic.

I'm mesmerized. Sure, no one Says the Word, but it's obvious to everyone around them, even Sebastian's mother, Lady Marchmain. And in 1981, surrounded by the hetero-horniness of workplace sitcoms and the murderous drag queens of dramas, just seeing two men involved in a romance was a triumph. And they walked arm in arm, cuddled, kissed, even went nude sunbathing.

Thirty years have passed. I've studied a lot of LGBT history and literature, and watched a lot of gay movies, and I've found that you can't go home again. Today I strongly dislike Brideshead. Sebastian is certainly gay, but a decadent wastrel who ends up dead. Ryder may fall in love with him, but then he moves on to Julia. Evelyn Waugh, who wrote the original novel, believed that gayness is a phase -- adolescents, newly potent but forbidden access to the opposite sex, naturally turn to each other. Their brief period of quasi-romance ends when they move on to "mature" heterosexual love.

In 2008, the BBC aired a new version of Brideshead, with Matthew Goode (left) as Charles Ryder and Ben Wishaw (right) as Sebastian. This time there's no subtext: Sebastian is gay. But there's also no romance: Ryder is heterosexual but pretending to be interested in Sebastian to gain access to his vast wealth.

It's more honest -- and there's a lot more nudity -- but nothing can match the joy of seeing overt same-sex romance on tv for the very first time.

See The Death of Peter Pan, about another doomed love in 1920s Oxford.

The Dravidian languages, spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, have no connection to the familiar Hindi, Bengali, and Punjabi of northern India.I don't think I've ever heard a Dravidian language spoken in mass media before, so of course I'm going to watch the Tamil sitcom Time Enna Boss ("What time is it, Boss?").

Time narrates. He's been around "from dinosaurs to dubsmash," and seen a lot of idiots. He has decided to screw with the life of Bala (Barath Srinivashan), just for kicks.

Barath is a famous Tamil actor, and if ths is the right one, quite built. But he doesn't take off anything, at least not in the first episode.

A newly-minted IT professional, Bala has just moved into his own apartment in the big city of Chennai. His crazy rural family is helping him move in. They don't know how a microwave works, and toss water off the balcony onto the security guard Sandosham (Alexander Babu), who is a pantomah (google doesn't know what that means).

After about five minutes of rural-family antics, they all leave, and Time explains his plan: he's going to grab people from various time periods and force Bala to interact with them. They come in through the bathroom pipes:

1. Dr. Barathi (Prya Shankar), from 1975, quickly realizes that she's in the future

2. Killi (Robo Shankar, right), from the 10th century, thinks he's in the palace of the court astrologer

3. Buggy (Karunakaran), from 2075, thinks that the time-travel app on his watch has malfunctioned.

4. Hannah (Sanjana Sarathy), a British girl from the Colonial Era (1895), is a bit dotty

The rest of the episode involves trying to hide the four interlopers from the security guard and explain them to the apartment manager (who thinks that they are ghosts), while Time giggles and makes sarcastic comments. In the end, they realize that they are stuck in the 21st century, so they will make the best of their situation. They will live with Balu, get jobs to help pay the rent, and try to adjust to 21st century culture.

Speaking of culture, I was surprised by how much English they used, although some of the references are a bit hard to understand: "Last night when I was drinking sherbet,I heard someone asking for a peg. I didn't mind -- I thought it was my liver." Or it may be some subtitle snafus.

I did not like the snarky narrator calling everyone "retards" (another subtitle snafu), or the annoying laugh track. They accept their situation too quickly for either suspension of disbelief or humor-- surely the point of ths series is "fish out of water" shock. It even took the Beverly Hillbillies a few episodes to become accustomed to television sets and "cement ponds."

But there was a gay reference:

When the security guard. Sandosham (Alexander Babu) investigates, they all hide. From off stage, Hannah says "What a darling!"

Sandosham: Stop calling me darling. Just because I am cleanshaven doesn't mean I am not into women. Let me show you a picture of my wife and kids. (Shows the picture). I am standing far away from them because it was the Lenten season (sure, that's the reason!).

Bali: Very cute.

Sandosham: Of course I am cute.

Bali: I meant the kids.

Later Killi, looking for a place to sleep, climbs into bed next to Sandosham. He runs away, thinking that Killi is a ghost,but still, there's a homoerotic subtext, more than I expected in a Tamil sitcom.

I can start the research for articles on this website with an interesting city, and then look for physique photos of local residents to illustrate it, or I can start with photos of small-town guys, and hope that their town has something interesting about it.

In this case, I found some photos of the hunkitudinal wrestlers from "Clinton-Massie."

Some extraordinary physiques on display.

The rest of the extraordinary physiques are on A Gay Guide to Small Town Beefcake

H.R. Pufnstuf (1969-70) was by far the most popular of the Krofft Saturday morning tv shows about boys trapped far from home (others included Lidsville and Land of the Lost). Today I can’t watch H. R. Pufnstuf anymore. The lightning-quick takes, psychedelic colors, lame wise-cracks, and aggressive laugh-track are annoying. But in 1969 I looked forward to it all week.

In the opening segment, a cute, androgynous sixteen-year old named Jimmy (Jack Wild, fomerly of Oliver), with a Beatles moptop and a cowboy hat, is prancing through a bucolic mountain countryside, playing with his golden flute (it is not really gold in color but dark bronze, thicker and blockier than real flutes, and extremely phallic later, as it peeps out of Jimmy’s pocket).

A “kooky old witch” named Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes), passing by on her supersonic Vroom-Broom, spies Jimmy and decides that her drafty old castle could use his youthful vitality – and his ten inches of flute. She instructs a sentient boat to lure Jimmy aboard with the promise of a pleasant journey to Living Island. But when the trip commences, the boat develops arms and claws to hold Jimmy securely in place, while the witch laughs maniacally, and:

The sky grew dark
The sea grew rough
And the boat sailed on and on and on and on

In a scene that is still frightening today, Jimmy manages to free himself from the grasping claws, and dives into the dark, choppy sea. He crawls onto a distant, desolate beach and collapses, half-drowned and exhausted. Then – somewhat too late – help arrives. A tall green-and-yellow dragon named H. R. Pufnstuf resuscitates Jimmy, moves him into his cave, and dresses him in a garish Fab Four outfit (one wonders where the dragon got human clothes. Have there been other Jimmies, lost boys washing up on the beach over and over forever?). Then Pufnstuf introduces Jimmy to the citizens of Living Island, various animals, plants, and inanimate objects, all sentient and wise-cracking, almost all male.

Since Jimmy is well protected, Witchiepoo turns her attention to the flute, now sentient and named Freddy. Most episodes involve Witchiepoo’s grandiose, impractical schemes to steal Freddy, or, when she succeeds, Jimmy and company’s equally grandiose, impractical schemes to retrieve him. Jimmy also mounts a few half-hearted escape attempts, but it is obvious that he has no real desire to leave Living Island. Witchiepoo is more cranky than evil, promising excitement more than threat, and Jimmy is having the time of his life, dancing, singing, putting on plays with a group of caring, attentive friends who tolerate all of his many gender transgressions.

The feature film Pufnstuf appeared in July 1970. In a new back story, Jimmy has recently moved from England to a resort town (Big Bear Lake, California), where he plays the flute in the school band (rather a fairy choice of instrument, I thought). During a practice session on the front lawn of a gaudy, baroque junior high school, the other boys insult him, mock his accent, and finally trip him, and he knocks over some music stands. True to junior high form, the teacher concludes that Jimmy is the troublemaker, and kicks him out of the band. Jimmy runs away, through a town of small brown cabins and autumn-orange trees that, for all its beauty, promises nothing but brutality and viciousness. Eventually he stops by the lake to rest. Suddenly his flute grows longer and thicker, changes from gold to brown, and starts to move of its own accord – an awkward moment for Jimmy to enter puberty!

Witchiepoo happens to be flying overhead, and the plot proceeds as in the series. But now she has a homosocial motive for her designs. She believes that Freddy the Flute will be a perfect trinket to impress the other witches, especially Witch Hazel (Mama Cass Eliot of The Mamas and the Papas), with whom she has a sort of Auntie Mame/Vera Charles rivalry.

All of the many witches we meet in the film are female, and all are aggressively heterosexual. Witchiepoo tries to sneak into Pufnstuf’s cave by flirting with him as vampish dance instructor Benita Bugaloo, and when she telephones Witch Hazel, their conversation consists mostly of gossip about which female witch is dating which man. The film makes Living Island, conversely, a veritable Fire Island, inhabited by ten men (or male beings) and only two women, Pufnstuf’s sister and Judy the Frog (a parody of gay icon Judy Garland).

None of them is married or involved with the other sex, nor do any of the male residents “boing” with lust over Witchiepoo in her bodacious disguise. It was not unusual for children’s films a generation ago to omit heterosexual content, but quite unusual to place it squarely in the laps of evil witches while infusing the hero and his friends with a blatantly gay sensibility.

Certainly Jimmy’s cherubic cuteness and sexy Cockney accent made the show a must-see for me in 1969, but there is more. The crux of the action is a competition between the female Witchiepoo and the male Pufnstuf over control of Jimmy’s phallus ( Freddy the Flute), and it ends unequivocally in the male camp. Witchiepoo lives in a dark, sinister castle dug-through with dungeons and pits, and Pufnstuf in a gaudy psychedelic Arcadia, with living trees and flowers. Witchiepoo barks out orders to cowering servants, Pufnstuf offers advice to dear friends. Who would disagree that the Dragon is far superior to the Witch?

There's a gay hookup story about Jack Wild on Tales of West Hollywood.

During the mid-1970s, I occasionally saw pictures of the Bay City Rollers in teen magazines, but I knew nothing about them, except that Ian Mitchell got the lion's share of semi-nude and bulging swimsuit photos, even though he was a member of the band for only about seven months.

I figured they were from Bay City, Michigan and performed on roller skates.

No, they were Scottish, trying to capitalize on American chic by throwing a dart at a map of the U.S. and naming themselves after wherever it hit.

And "roller" meant "rock and roll."

Consisting of Alan and Derek Longmuir, Eric Faulkner, Stuart Wood, Les McKeown, and for awhile Ian Mitchell (with Tam Paton as their manager), they were so big in Britain that they were compared to the Beatles. There were also big stars in Australia, Canada, and Japan. They established an entire "Bay City Rollers" lifestyle, complete with costumes and slang terms.

In the U.S., they charted in 1975 and 1976, but had only one #1 hit: "Saturday Night," which I remember only vaguely:

Gonna dance with my baby till the night is thru
On Saturday Night, Saturday Night
Tell her all the little things I'm gonna do
On Saturday night, Saturday Night

Maybe that's why I don't remember it; incessantly heterosexist.

In 1978, they appeared on The Krofft Superstar Houron Saturday morning tv, along with such Krofft superstars as Witchiepoo from H.R. Pufnstuf (which had been off the air for years).

The program was even renamed, briefly, to The Bay City Rollers Show, making it one of the famous short-lived 1970s variety shows, along with The Brady Bunch Variety Show and The Hudson Brothers Show.

By the end of 1978, Les McKeown and Tam Paton left the group, and the remaining guys renamed themselves The Rollers, and then the New Bay City Rollers. Their last official concert was in 2000. But today there are two competing groups: Les McKeown's Legendary Bay City Rollers, plus The Bay City Rollers Featuring Ian Mitchell.

In spite of their largely heterosexist lyrics, there are some gay connections. Tam Paton was gay. In 2009 he faced charges of child sexual abuse for alleged incidents with under-aged boys. He was cleared, but the stress weakened his health, and he died shortly thereafter.

Les McKeown came out as gay on tv in 2009. He states that no one knew, not even his wife of 25 years.

I used to go to Paris every spring. It's my favorite city in Europe, maybe in the world, so of course I'm going to watch a tv series called Emily in Paris, even if it is terribly heteronormative.

Scene 1: Establishing shot of Chicago. Emily (Lily Collins) is jogging (5.3 miles in 40 minutes, not bad..) Then she goes to work in a skyscraper. Her boss, Madeleine, who does something in advertising-marketing-moving and shaking, has just been offered a job in...Paris! She loves Paris because "young French men love older women." Heteronormative!

They try on a new perfume that makes Madeleine sick.

I know where this is headed.

Scene 2: Emily meets her sports-speak-spouting boyfriend (Roe Hartrampf, who has 3,000 shirtless and underwear shots on Google Images, and about 1000 more on his instagram page).

Madeleine is pregnant, so she won't be taking the job in Paris, and Emily volunteered. Boyfriend is not happy with the prospect of a long-distance intercontinental relationship. Besides, Emily doesn't speak French. Heck with that, she's going!

Scene 3: Emily is in Paris! (You can tell because of the Eiffel Tower, which you actually can't see from everywhere in the whole darn town.) Her taxi also takes her past the Luxembourg Gardens, the Musee d'Orsay, the Arc d'Triomphe (hey, that's back in the other direction!), the Palais Royale (back the way we came!), and finally to her apartment building in what looks like the Invalides, on the Left Bank across from the Louvre.

She is met by the rental agent, who escorts her up to the fifth floor (sixth, in American terms) to her crappy apartment. The 5.3 mile in 40 minutes runner is out of breath. But at least it has a nice view. He then asks her out, but she refuses: "I have a boyfriend." Besides, it's like 5 am her time, and she's been up all night. I can never sleep on that plane.

Aerial view from her apartment window across Paris. Hey, I was right. The Invalides.

Scene 4: Emily goes to the office, a quaint old building, where the receptionist, Julien (Samuel Arnold, left), doesn't speak English. He flirts with her anyway. She meets the boss, Sylvie, who is shocked at the Ugly American expecting to work in France without speaking French.

Paul Broussard, the founder of Mode...um, I mean Savoir (a fashion and "luxury product" company), complains about American food (pizza is "like quiche made of cement"), asks why all Americans are so fat, complans about American pharmaceutical companies inventing diseases just to cure them, and so on. Spot on! When I visiting Europe, I always claimed to be Canadian, to avoid spending the entire trip apologizing.

Sceene 5: An office meeting around a quaint round table instead of those shiny rectangular monstrosities. Emily alienates everyone by not speaking French, and by "shouting" (Americans talk too loud). She wants to crank up the company's social media presence...but wouldn't that all be in French?

Scene 6: M. Broussard and Sylvie argue in the hallway. Who is that girl? She knows nothing! What idiot sent her here? Sylvie points out that they are stuck with her -- unless she decides to leave. Cue the sinister laughter.

Scene 7: Unaware of the evil scheme, Emily stands on a deserted bridge at night. I think the Pont des Artistes. She sends a photo to the boyfriend in Chicago: "Isn't it amazing -- the entire city looks like Ratatouille"Ugly American!

Wait -- this is the evening of the day she arrived? She's been up for 36 hours!

Scene 8: Back at her building, she accidentally tries to get into an apartment on the wrong floor. A hunk answers. Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) from Normandy. She says: "I know that beach from Saving Private Ryan." Has she looked at a map? He flirts with her.

Scene 9: Establishing shots of Paris, including, of course, the Eifel Tower. Emily stops at a bakery, where the shopkeeper corrects her French. Arriving at the office, she finds the door locked. Oh, you didn't know -- we start work at 10:30 am here.

She alienates the social media director by being brash and American, and not speaking French. She invites her coworkers to lunch, one at a time, but they all reject her.

Scene 10: At lunch in the park, Emily meet-cutes Mindy (Ashley Park), a Chinese-Korean girl working as an au pair, who flirts with her She loves everything about Paris except the people -- "So mean." Wait - when I was in Paris, everyone was super-friendly. Of course, I spoke French.

On the way back to the office, Emily sees all the coworkers who refused lunch with her, having lunch.

Scene 11: Coworkers have a new nickname for Emily -- La Plouc (the hayseed).

Scene 12: At a cafe near the Pont des Artistes, with the Louvre across the river and the Eifel Tower in the distance. Emily sits by herself. A hunk asks "Is this seat free?", and when she says "Yes," takes it to sit somewhere else! I hate it when that happens.

Luc from the office (Bruno Goery) stops by and apologizes for the La Plouc nickname. He says that everyone is afraid of her because of her big, brash American work ethic -- starting at 8:30 am! 45 minutes for lunch! For Americans, their work is their life -- everything else is trivial. The French want to enjoy life.

Darn -- he was going to ask her out, but decided to insult her instead!

Scene 13: Boyfriend calls at 3:00 am, unaware of the time difference (really?). Nice chest shot, and we finally get his name -- Doug. They begin cybersex, but get cut off. Fortunately, she brought a vibrator --- Emily, no! You need an adapter!

She shorts out the electricity all over the neighborhood. The end.

Beefcake: Just Doug having cybersex.

Other Sights: Lots of exteriors of Paris landmarks. I could usually tell exactly where they were filming.

Gay Characters: Mindy strikes me as a lesbian, but it's probably just subtext.

Heterosexism: Lots of boy-girl stuff. The second episode is entitled "Masculin-Feminin"

The Ugly American: I kept being embarrassed for this poor girl making one faux pas after another. Did she really get on that airplane knowing nothing whatever about France?

The Fashion Industry: This reminds me very much of The Devil Wears Prada and Ugly Betty.

Will I Keep Watching: Maybe to feel nostalgic about those days and nights in Paris.

Here's another Roe for the road.

Finding the beefcake and then checking the city is turning out to be fun. Take these photos from the Facebook page of a high school wrestling team. "Ok, guys, take off your shirts, and let's get a nice shot of your chests and abs."

Same guy, different match, same attention to detail.

There are about 50 more physique pics of that guy, but let's move on to some others. The rest of the photos are on A Gay Guide to Small Town Beefcake

When I was a kid in the 1960s, my favorite comics were the Harveys (Casper, Richie Rich), followed by Gold Key jungle heroes (Tarzan, Korak, Brothers of the Spear), and then Archie, and maybe some Marvel and DC if I could get them. Disney's Donald Duck was not as low on the list as Bugs Bunny, but it was down near the bottom.

The problem was that Donald led a double life. I liked the stories where he was an adventurer, brave, resourceful and intelligent, setting out with his rich Uncle Scrooge to explore lost Atlantis, the Yucatan, Tibet, Antarctica, or the Seven Cities of Cibola, in plotlines as macho as Treasure Island, as passionate as Time Tunnel. It was a man-only world, with no damsels in distress to be rescued and no girls waiting back home at the story’s end.

In fact, no one expressed any heterosexual interest at all, though the nephews sometimes swooned over male crooners and teen idols. (During the 1990s, Don Rosa retconned the characters to give Uncle Scrooge a long-ago romance with dance-hall girl Glittering Goldie).

But in other stories, Donald transmutated like a zombie into a single father living in the town of Duckburg, where he was saddled with a series of dismal jobs: janitor, gas station attendant, door-to-door salesman, delivery boy. And he had a girlfriend, Daisy Duck, who was constantly natting her disapproval of every single one of his interests, hobbies, goals, and dreams (precisely like Poil's disapproval of Spooky's passion for scaring).

The two could not be more different. Donald exuded toughness and aggression, Daisy was dainty to the point of idiocy. Donald bellowed at baseball games, Daisy drank tea at the Tuesday Afternoon Ladies’ League. Donald puttered around in junkyards, Daisy puttered about in her petunia bed.

It was disgusting! Donald had not only abandoned his life of swashbuckling adventure, he could not even enjoy the simple pleasures of boxing matches and working on cars. Instead, he sat bored on a frilly white chair at the Bon Ton, while Daisy tried on hats. Why would he do it? If they shared no common interests whatsoever, why would he even want to hang out with her?

In "The Double Date," Daisy and Donald go on a double date with Clara Cluck and Rockhead Rooster. Donald and Rockhead exhibit an instant, eye-bulging attraction to each other, and become so engrossed in discussions of cars and sports that they ignore the girls. They even dance together at a party. Daisy and Clara agree that "They shouldn't see each other again."

One rainy afternoon in the summer of 1971, when we were sitting on the floor in Bill's family room, reading comic books, I brought up my concerns. "I don't get it. Donald Duck has a lot more fun on his adventures with Uncle Scrooge, and he doesn't anything that Daisy likes. Why does he hang out with her? What's the big deal?”

Bill's older brother Mike happened to be passing through on his way out, wearing a raincoat and tossing his keychain in the air. He pulled the comic from my hands and leafed through it, murmuring “Hmm…very eenterest-ing,” like the Nazi spy on Laugh-In. Then he returned it with a grin. “Een mine professional opinion, Uncle Scrooge ees a boy, und Daisy Duck ees a girl.”

“So what?” I asked.

Mike laughed, and reached down to tousle my hair. “So what!” he exclaimed in his normal voice. “Just wait ‘til you discover girls. Then you won’t ask ‘so what’? You’ll say ‘gimme her number!’” And he was gone. I heard him repeat “so what!”, chortling to himself, as he clomped through the kitchen and out the back door.

Suddenly chilled, I scooted over to sit next to Bill, our backs against the couch. He smiled, and we sat together, quietly.

Abandon the Seven Cities of Cibola to drink tea from fragile cups and discuss poetry! The idea was absurd!

See also: Heterosexualizing my Childhood Hero

The movie The Boys in the Band, based on Mart Crowley's 1968 play, appeared in 1970. I watched it on VHS sometime in the 1990s, and even with some leeway for being pre-Stonewall, I hated it. A party with a bunch of screaming queens oozing with self-hatred, sniping viciously at teach other, obsessed with straight guys who don't know that they exist, trying to seduce a strraight guy who stumbled in by accident. Yuck!

I just saw the 2020 Netflix version, and liked it a lot more. The tone was more upbeat and positive, thanks to some subtle changes to the script (the line "if only we didn't hate ourselves quite so much" is gone) and additions to the mise en scene. For instance, we see the characters interacting after the party, eating in a restaurant, attending Mass, cuddling in a cab, having sex, building a life in spite of their homophobic society.

Bob still thinks that Boys is "gay misery porn," but remember, it's 1968. "Homosexuality" is a psychosis, so you are in psychotherapy searching for a "cure." Sodomy is an imprisonable offense, gay bars are illegal and underground, and there are no gay organizations except for the highly-closeted Mattachine Society. The world hates you. But you are still determined to live, so you throw a birthday party.

1. Michael (Jim Parsons), who is in debt up to his eyeballs and suffering from Catholic guilt, hosts the party. He gets a shocker when a straight college friend, Alan (Brian Hutcherson), calls out of nowhere and wants to stop in "for a drink." You never tell straights (the term "coming out" means acknowledging that you are gay), so he asks the other guys to act straight.

When Alan figures it out anyway yet doesn't run away screaming, Michael introduces a party game to compel him into coming out: you have to call the one person you have always loved and tell them. He assumes that Alan will call his other college buddy, now out, whom he was obviously in love with. But the plan backfires when Alan calls his wife.

So Alan was straight all along? Or is he still in the closet? Michael is devastated. But after the party, he goes to midnight Mass and feels better.

2. Donald (Matt Bomer, right), Michael's best friend and former lover, is visiting for the weekend. He doesn't play the game. But he does take a shower, giving us a nice beefcake scene that did not appear in the original movie.

3.-4. Hank (Tuc Watkins, left) is in the process of divorcing his wife so he can be with Larry (Andrew Rannells). Larry recoils at the thought of heterosexual-style monogamy, but still calls Hank during the game. They decide to try an open relationship.

5. Bernard (Michael Benjamin Washington), who is black and has to deal with racist jokes (even from his friends), has always loved the first guy he had sex with, the son of the rich family his mother used to work for. In a flashback, we see them frolicking naked in a pool, butts and cocks visible. He calls, gives the message to the mother, and is devastated.

6. Benard's best friend is the campy queen Emory (Robin de Jesus), who was outed and ridiculed when everyone at his high school discovered his crush on an older boy. Later he apologizes to Bernard for his racist quips, and they are shown having dinner together.

7.-8. Harold, (Zachary Quinto) the guest of honor, is a "32 year old ugly pock-marked fag Jew" who takes lots of weird drugs and constantly picks at imaginary facial blemishes. They seem to all love him, but he strikes me as threatening, observing and criticizing the events like a petty tyrant. I kept wondering what he had on them.

The Cowboy (Charlie Carver, top photo) is a dimwitted hustler hired as one of Harold's birthday presents. They get more romantic interactions than in the original movie, kissing, cuddling, and, in the last scene, having sex (Harold has a surprisingly nice butt).

The "call someone you've always loved" game still seems too cruel to foist upon your friends (and you can only play it once), but at least the self-loathing is gone.

Bob: "It was awful! Gay life as endless misery!"

Me: "But it wasn't all misery. They had friends. They had lovers. Any day that ends with a naked man in your bed is a good day, in 1968 or 2020."

I'm a big fan of the paranormal, especially mysterious disappearances, people who suddenly and inexplicably vanish.

You and a friend are hiking in the woods. He's a few paces ahead. You see him go around a bend, but when you arrive, a second later, he's not there.

Your father walks out the front door of your house to go to the mailbox, a journey of 10 yards. He is never seen again.

A man boards an airplane. He is served by the flight attendant in flight. When the plane lands, he is gone.

But the greatest of the "they never came back" stories happened on November 25th, 1809. Benjamin Bathurst, a 25-year old British diplomat, was on the way to Vienna for a meeting with Emperor Francis II. He and his assistant, Krause, stopped for dinner at an inn in Perleberg, Germany. When it was time to continue the journey, he walked around the horses to climb into his carriage. Except he never made it to the carriage.

He was never seen again.

It was a journey of 10 feet. He was out of Krause's sight for only a few seconds.

A few days later, his coat was discovered on a farm a mile north of Perleberg. And his pants, in the woods near the town of Quitzow.

The gay connection:
1. Bathurst and his servant sharing a room.
2. Wherever he went, he was naked when he arrived.

The story didn't get much press in 1809, but when it was rediscovered by Charles Fort in the 1920s, paranormal enthusiasts went wild. It was repeated in every compendium of the unexplained.

Maybe he was abducted by aliens, or zapped into a parallel world. Maybe he became a time traveler. Or a vampire.

Many science fiction writers, including Poul Anderson, H. Piper Beam, Robert Heinlein, and Robert Bloch, have covered his story.

Recently debunkers have been pushing a more mundane explanation: that Bathurst was dragged back into the inn and murdered, with robbery or political assassination as the motive (it was a rough part of town, in the middle of the night).

An adaptation of H. Piper Beam's story He Walked Around the Horses appeared in February 2015, written and directed by Claude Miles, who also played Benjamin Bathurst. Miles has also appeared in such films as Trouser Snake (aka Penis Monster), The Last Temptation of Fluffy, Cow Tippers from Outer Space, Flying Saucers over Fetishland, and Tarzan's Teenage Daughter, so I'm going to guess that this was not a serious production.

See also: Richard Halliburton

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, I loved Harvey Comics, in this order:

1. The Ghosts (Casper, Spooky, Ghostland, Spooktown), whose weird paranormal and science fiction adventures were full of gay subtexts.

2. Hot Stuff the Little Devil (Hot Stuff, Sizzlers, Devil Kids). Sometimes he had paranormal and science fiction adventures, too, but more often he was stuck in crazy pun-ridden lands that made no sense.

4. Richie Rich. Usually he was insufferable, with joke stories about how rich he was. Who cares? But sometimes there were fun adventure and spy stories.

5. The Girls with Halfway Interesting Adventures (Little Lotta, Little Dot).

6. The Girl with Incredibly Boring Adventures (Little Audrey).

7. Baby Huey. Only if I was desperate.

Baby Huey was a gigantic duck toddler in a diaper and bonnet who got involved in slapstick shenanigans. He had super-strength, like Little Lotta, but combined with basic lack of understanding of how anything worked. The result was mayhem. He rarely if ever saved the day, although sometimes he succeeded through pure dumb luck.

He sparred with three normal-sized ducks who disapproved of him, and a fox who kept trying to eat him. (Although the ducks were civilized and lived in cities, they were still likely to be victimized by predators.)

And he had an annoying lisping girlfriend, Matilda. What did she see in the baby giant? "You're so big and shtrong, Huey!" I get it -- he was three times the size of a normal duck, so if he was proportional beneath the belt...

Who'd believe that there were 92 issues of Baby Huey (1956-1972), plus compendium titles Baby Huey Duckland (1962-66) and Baby Huey and Papa (1962-68).

As in all of the Harvey comics, there was a big change in theme and emphasis after 1966. Baby Huey was still wearing a stupid bonnet and diaper, but he was older, able to go out on adventures by himself.

He was often accompanied by his Cousin Dimwit: an adult duck, rather cute as anthropomorphic ducks go, with a shirt that extended beyond his hands (a sign of stupidity, I suppose).

A sort of inventor, Dimwit popped in out of nowhere and announced "I want to take Cousin Huey on a trip to the Moon!" Huey's parents would, strangely enough, permit this.

My favorite Huey/Dimwit stories:

1, They build a mechanical Frankenstein that terrorizes the town.
2. Trying to fly to Florida, they end up at the North Pole
3, They're hired by the governmnt to take top-secret pictures.
4. They use dehydrating pills to foil a criminal gang.
5. They take a wrong turn and end up kidnapped by spies.

Still humorous/slapstick, but with enough buddy bonding and nick-of-time rescues to create at least minimal gay subtexts.

Boy, I could really find it everywhere, couldn't I?

By the way, here are some people and businesses who have taken the nom de plum Baby Huey:

1. James Ramos (left), the front man for Baby Huey and the Babysitters, 1970s precursors to the hip hop style. He weighed 350 pounds.

2. MMA fighter Tito Ortiz (top photo). He's not fat at all.

3. Hell's Angels motorcycle club member George Wethern.

4. "Baby Huey," the host of the Saturday night show on The Bone (KSAN, 107.7 FM). He also does the podcast "The Second Shift" with cohost Chasta.

Baby Huey is also:

1. A popular dance club and hipster hangout in Toronto

2. A moving company in Katy, Texas, and

3. A barbecue restaurant in Fremont, Nebraska.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, my favorite comic titles were Harvey (gay-vague Casper the Friendly Ghost), Disney, Archie, and the Gold Key jungle adventures.

Comics featuring Warner Brothers cartoon characters Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Bugs Bunny were low on my list. Not as low as Woody Woodpecker, but low.

The art was amateurish, with minimal backgrounds, or just blank space. This is one of the best covers,depicting Bugs opening a door leading to another planet, where a cowboy-rabbit is racing across the desert on a camel.

And instead of the anarchic outsiders of the cartoons, the characters were stable, stolid suburbanites, with houses and jobs and girlfriends. Porky was a single dad, raising his nephew, Cicero, like a Donald Duck knockoff.

But sometimes Bugs and Porky or Bugs and Yosemite Sam teamed up for adventure stories. Maybe they stumbled upon a haunted inn. Or they answered a job ad for "undersea explorers" Or a telegram arrived about "trouble at the ranch." Buddy-bonding, captures, and nick-of-time rescues followed.

A continuing series had Bugs and Porky working as Indiana Jones-style adventurer-archaeologists, investigating the myth of Pegasus or discovering a lost civilization hidden under the ice of Antartica. With no girlfriends in sight, and no damsels in distress to be won.

Even when there was no buddy-bonding, the adventure stories offered opportunities for gay misreadings. In "The Kingdom of Nowhere" (Porky Pig 4, 1965), Porky wins a contest to re-name a Medieval kingdom (he suggests Boovaria). But he must fight the other winner, the Black Knight.

When I first read the story, probably in in third grade, I didn't realize that this small, short-haired person was grabbing the king's cape, or that it was supposed to be his queen. I thought he had a tiny boyfriend grabbing his rump.

When Porky and the Black Knight learn that, as an added bonus, the winner will marry the Princess, they drop out of the contest and run away. Porky, because he already has a girlfriend.

But why does the Black Knight run away? Could it be that he doesn't particularly care for girls?

Later we get an explanation: the Black Knight was really his girlfriend Petunia in drag! Porky exclaims "No wonder you weren't interested in winning the hand of the princess!"

But this quick-fix doesn't detract from the image of a boy not interested in girls.

And it adds a new question: why, precisely, did Petunia disguise herself as a man?

For that matter, why are Bugs and Porky so comfortable in drag?

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I was jealous of the comics they got across the river in Davenport, Iowa. They got Peanuts, we got Winthrop. They got The Wizard of Id, we got Apartment 3-G. I sort of liked Alley Oopand Prince Valiant, but what was up with the single-panel strip, Out Our Way?

It was about an unnamed family -- mom, young adult daughter, teenage son, younger son -- drawn in grotesquely realistic detail.

They spoke in nearly incomprehensible slang and had bizarre customs. There was an "ice box" instead of a refrigerator, a gigantic radio instead of a tv. They bathed in a tub in the kitchen.

The older son had a job, though he looked barely fifteen.

Confused, repelled, yet fascinated, I tried to decipher the strips day after day, week after week. The world they portrayed was vastly different from the world I knew.

Boys in my world were always fully clothed, except in locker rooms, but in Out Our Way, they stripped down for baths and for bed and to swim. They were naked in front of each other! They displayed a remarkable physicality, an awareness of the way their bodies looked and felt and moved.

Boys in my world did not touch each other, except during sports matches and fights. We were expected to find physical contact abhorrent. But in Out Our Way, boys un-selfconsciously pressed against each other, draped their legs over each other's bodies, hugged, slept in the same bed

In my world, every trait, interest, and concern was gender-polarized. Boys carried their books at their waist, girls across their chest. Boys said "p.e." but "gym class,"and girls "gym" but "p.e. class." And the punishment for transgression was severe. But in Our Our Way, boys un-selfconsciously wore dresses. The teenager performed "women's work," cooked (in an apron), cleaned, tended to his young brother.

Boys in my world were expected to groan with longing over the girls who walked in slow-motion across the schoolyard, their long hair blowing in the wind. They were expected to evaluate the hotness of actresses on tv, discuss breasts and bras, and claim innumerable sexual conquests. But boys in Out Our Way never displayed the slightest heterosexual interest. Instead, they consistently mocked the silliness of heterosexual romance.

What sort of world was this?

Many years later, I found that the comics I read in the 1960s were reruns from the 1930s and 1940s, and even then, many had been nostalgic, evoking the author J.R. Williams' childhood at the turn of the century.

I was gazing into a time capsule, into a era when heterosexual desire was expected to appear at the end of adolescence, not at the beginning, so teenage boys were free from the "What girl do you like?" chant.

In gay neighborhoods, Halloween is all about the beefcake. Your costume should be clever and creative, but it should also display your biceps or bulge to good advantage: the stressful Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year season is coming, and you need a full social calendar.

But what can you do if you don't have the money for a fancy store-bought costume, and can't sew?

It's easy to improvise with clothing you already have around the house, or a few props from the hardware store.

1. What could be easier than boxer underwear, with a twin-sized unfitted sheet tied around your neck for a cape? It's good for being Conan the Barbarian, an ancient Greek philosopher, or a Roman centurion (make a helmet out of a paper bag reinforced with tape).

2. Draw a big letter Z on the cape to become Zorro (sword optional).

3. For Disney's Aladdin, you need white pants, tied with a rope instead of a belt, house slippers, and a leather vest. Toy monkey can be taped to your shoulder.

4. To be a cowboy, you'll need jeans, a belt with a large buckle, boots (snow boots are fine), and a cowboy hat.

5. Add a plaid shirt, and substitute a baseball cap, and you're a farmboy (don't try it in the Midwest).

6. You can easily stencil a Superman logo onto a plain blue t-shirt, but you might have to do something with your hair.

7. Another easy superhero is Aquaman, who wears red shorts and green boots.

8. Tarzan's loincloth can be improvised with an old pair of brown pants ragged-cut in front and back. Be sure to wear regular underwear, too.

9. Most people doing the Rocky Horror think of Rocky, who wears only gold lame shorts.

10. But if you don't have a Rocky physique, you can do an easy Brad with white briefs (extremely well packed) and horn-rimmed glasses.

11. A white handkerchief, a black bow tie, black dress slacks, and you're a Chippendale Dancer. For added effect, wear a white shirt pre-cut and sewn up so it can easily be ripped off.

12. It's never too early to get into the spirit of Christmas, and you can evoke Santa Claus without wearing the whole ensemble. Black boots, red shorts, and a Santa Claus hat are more than enough.

I started watching Spell on Amazon Prime, thinking it was another movie, about a cop buddy-bonding with a comic-book fanboy -- so many one-word titles get confusing. So I didn't read the plot synopsis, and I fast-forwarded past the film company logos to minute 2.59.

Scene 1: A scruffy bearded guy, probably the comic book fanboy, is trying to pick up a hustler . "Are you working/" he asks. And "Where do people go?" The hustler: "They usually go to hotels." "Great, let's go there."

Scene 2: Scruffy bearded guy checks into a hotel. Wait -- what about the hustler? He licks all of the fixtures and the window. He then puts pills in his ears and takes a shower fully clothed. Ok, I'm fast-forwarding.

Scene 3: When is the fanboy going to meet the cop? Establishing shots of Reykjavik. He buys a sweater, then goes to the Penis Museum (and licks a silver dildo. Schoolboys on a field trips stare at him.

Scene 4: He goes to the Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft, where the guide is talking about magic in early Viking Iceland. Practicing magic then could have gotten you burned at the stake (no, it couldn't, not in Iceland, anyway). The most famous story is about a magic student named Loftur, who created a spell so powerful that it could control Satan (the Vikings weren't Christian, so no Satan). He died before he could complete the spell, but one day he will return and....

Scruffy Bearded Guy begins trembling and jerking uncontrollably, and runs out. Guide texts someone: "I think I've found Loftur."So everyone with cerebral palsy is a dead magician?

Scene 5: I've figured out that this is not hte comic book fanboy movie, but I keep watching. Scruffy Guy goes to a pharmacy, but they won't renew his prescription, so he calls his psychiatrist and leaves a message: "My OCD is getting worse" Obsessive-compulsive disorder: that explains why he obsessively licks things.

Scene 6: Scruffy Guy goes to a bar, where a hot babe flirts with him while her boyfriend looks on. Eventually she dumps the boyfriend to kiss Scruffy Guy.

It's what I get for starting a movie without reading the plot synopsis: "After the death of his fiance, Scruffy Guy is drawn into a supernatural world." Or watching the trailer, which shows him kissing a girl 3,248 times.

But he goes on some sort of spirit quest into the Icelandic wilderness with an old guy, so maybe there are some homoerotic scenes. I'll fast forward.

Scene 7: Girl kissing, girl kissing, girl taking, getting a tattoo of the Loftur rune, girl kissing, naked girl kissing, girl sexing. Poor boyfriend, left at the bar. He was much hotter than Scruffy Guy, too.

Scene 8: The girl stole a bunch of important stuff from Scruffy Guy, so he goes to see the Old Guy she mentioned before, to try to track her down. Old Guy promises to help, but first he wants to take Scruffy Guy on a trip: "You will eat what I cook, sleep when I say. You will see beautiful things." (Nice sized dick, huh?)

Scene 9: In the Icelandic Outback, Old Guy shows Scruffy Guy a runestone (Idiot doesn't know what a runestone is? I learned that when I was about six!) Powerful magic, yada yada yada.

Scene 10: They look at mountains. Scruffy Guy opens up about how hard it is to control his OCD. Old Guy: "Then don't control it. Let it be."

Scene 11: Scruffy Guy draws a comic strip about a boy named Psketti and his dog Ketchup. The long-dead Glen Bean originated the strip, so Scruffy Guy has to imitate his style and subject matter, and can't do his own stuff. Aww, stifled creativity. Old Guy: "No, it is a beautiful thing. A man wants greatness, so he completes the work of another great man."

Scene 12: They get naked (butt shots) and sit in a thermal pool. Scruffy Guy doesn't like the idea of being naked "with a creepy old guy drinking vodka." Maybe when you see his penis, you'll like him better. Old Guy sees his Loftur tattoo, says that he chose it, and orders Scruffy Guy to accept his destiny. He attacks, they fight (penis shots), Scruffy Guy drowns Old Guy.

Darn! So much for buddy bonding.

The Girl and her Boyfriend jump up out of nowhere and revive Old Guy. They yell at Scruffy Guy: "You are Loftur! We've been waiting for you for a long time! Get busy!" They drive off, leaving Scruffy Guy alone, naked, in the wilderness.

Scene 13: Scruffy Guy wanders around the wilderness, thinking about his dead girlfriend. He ends up in a house where The Girl is waiting for him. They chat, drink tea, kiss, have sex, kiss, have sex, kiss, kiss, and chat.

Scene 14: Back in the wilderness, he hears The Girl's voice: "You're so close. Go to the water." So he goes in the water and drowns.

It was all a feverish hallucination in the last moments of his life. And no buddy bonding!

Beefcake: Scruffy Guy is naked for about half of the movie. Old Guy is naked for awhile, too.

Other Scenery: The Icelandic outback looks horribly bleak

Gay Characters: Scruffy Guy is intensely, aggressivly, nauseatingly heterosexual. Old Guy might be gay.

Supernatural: It was all in Scruffy Guy's head. But then, how do you explain things happening when he is not around?

My Grade: F

How do they decide which water polo player will cover up? Physique? Bulge?

Seriousness of expression?

They are from Buchanan High School in Clovis, California, a suburb just east of Fresno (it actually abuts California State University Fresno).

Clovis has the Big Dry Creek Museum and an Old Town that is "a collector's dream," with more antique shops per square mile than anywhere else in California. Including three antique malls.

The Hmong, a Miao-language speaking people of southern China and Southeast Asia, form 5% of the population, so there are Hmong restaurants and stores, and you can take Hmong 101 at Buchanan High.

The rest of the jocks are on A Gay Guide to Small Town Beefcake

Bob Hope (1903-2003) was probably the most famous and beloved entertainer of the 20th century, from the 1940s Road movies with Bing Crosby (Road to Morocco, Road to Singapore) to 30 years as a radio staple to a series of tv specials in the 1950s and 1960s.

He was known for his snide, snarky one-liners -- over 500,000 through his career, contributed by an army of over 100 writers on his payroll. Most commented on current fads, fashions, Hollywood stars, and politics.

From the 1950s:

Eisenhower admitted the budget can't be balanced and McCarthy says the communists are taking over. You don't know what to worry about these days ... whether the country will be overthrown or overdrawn."

From the 1980s:

Everything Reagan does, Gorbachev does him one better. Reagan wears the flag of his country on his lapel. Gorby wears the map of his country on his forehead.

During the 1970s and 1980s, gay activists often complained about the raw homophobia in his jokes, but Hope shrugged them off: "They're threatening to get together and hit me with their purses."

Until July 4th, 1986.

Hope was performing at a dinner to commemorate the hundredth year anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. The aging entertainer told the audience of patriotic Liberty enthusiasts, who paid $1000 apiece to be there ($2000 today):

I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS. No one knows if she got it from the Mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy.

Ronald and Nancy Reagan laughed, but the rest of the audience sat in stunned silence, horrified by the slur against Miss Liberty's sexual habits. The Los Angeles Times said:

Hope's "joke" was worse than obscene. It was abusive and unworthy...It is both sad and shameful that a man who many have considered a national treasure should think it would be funny to besmirch Miss Liberty on her 100th birthday.

Gay activists complained again about the raw homophobia,, and AIDS activists complained about the horrifying misinformation. Hope didn't actually apologize, but he said: "I've known so many people like that over the years, worked with so many. But it's different now. Now they fight back."

Hope continued to make homophobic jokes until 1988, when a reference to "fags" on The Tonight Show prompted GLAAD to demand an apology. Hope agreed to participate in an PSA, which aired only on local gay tv programs:

"I was amazed to discover that many people die each year in anti-gay attacks, and thousands more are left scarred, emotionally and physically. Bigotry has no place in this great nation, and violence has no place in this world."

He was amazed to discover that anti-gay violence exists? Really?

Gay people are not mentioned in the 2015 biography, Hope: Entertainer of the Century.

See also: Bing Crosby

I haven't seen any of the American Pie movies, presuming that they are entirely heterosexist, obsessed with guys "becoming men" by having sex with girls, or pies. But I figured, it's Netflix, there may be some diversity, and there will probably be some cute guys, so I turned on American Pie: Girls' Rules.

Scene 1: Annie, naked in a trenchcoat tries to climb over a fence. She trips, falls, and we see her butt. A lot. She climbs into Jason's bedroom for goodbye sex before he leaves for college. Jason (Zayne Emory, left) strips (nice chest). She puts a condom in her mouth so she can slide it onto his penis. It looks like she is gagged.

His parents knock on the door, with his grandparents on video chat. Trying to escape, Annie chokes on the condom and needs to be Heimliched. Then she falls backwards out the window. This is funny? The poor girl is being brutalized.

Meanwhile, Kayla is in bed with Tim (Cameron Engels, below) , asking her to "smash her pussy." Rather a violent image. The younger brother is filming them. Tim gets up to chase him (chest and shoulders shot).

Meanwhile, Michelle is masturbating to a video of President Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Stephanie has "agreed" to have sex with the pervy Principal Shankman. Instead, she films him and threatens to let it go viral unless he retires. "Never fuck with a Stifler," she says. That's supposed to mean something, I guess.

Scene 2: The four girls are in bikinis on a powerboat, discussing last night's events. They end up on a beach full of fully-clothed guys and bikini-clad girls, where a girl in a bikini announces "The East Great Falls Back-to-School Party!" It involves drinking, swimming, pontoon-boating, playing frisbee with dogs, and walking around high-fiving each other.

Stephanie is hit on by it-boy Brett. She criticizes his dick and his body spray.

Kayla and Tim fight. He breaks up with her due to her psycho jealousy.

Annie calls Jason at college, and is uptset to discover that he is at a party (Well, so is she.)

Michelle reveals her extensive collection of masturbation aids, while they look on in disgust.

Scene 3: The girls agree that they are deficient in hetero-romance. They set the goal of each finding the guy they need by Homecoming:Sc

Kayla: a guy who is not so woke, who "just wants to fuck."

Michelle: a guy who is smart and socially conscious.

Stephanie: a nice guy, who buys you presents and asks about your day.

Annie: true love.

I'm pretty sure that Stephanie is going to turn out to be gay.

Scene 4: The girls are walking in slow-motion through the school, while everyone stops and stares. I don't see how they are unusual. They reject a number of eyeglass guys (glasses! the height of ugliness!) and fat guys (Michelle is rather plump, so what's the problem?)

Michelle is late, running down the hall, when she crashes into the janitor's cart (janitor is apparently someone we're supposed to recognize). Grant (Darren Barnet, top photo) helps her up.

Kayla tries to get back together with Tim

This is getting boring. I fast forward. Only one more half-naked jock scene. Nope, Stephanie is straight. She gets Edd Quinn (left).

It looked for a moment like Tim was going to be gay, bu nope.

Everyone gets a heterosexual romance.

Yuck.

I was complaining about the one-word titles on Netflix. How about a one-letter title?

H is a French sitcom about wacky doctors, sort of like Scrubs, but with a bigger, more sitcom-like set and fewer dying patients.

Scene 1: Two female doctors (mousy eyeglassed and blond glamorous) in the reception area. Blondie is upset because she's not invited to Sabri's birthday party. Mousy assures her that it's just an oversight.

Scene 2: In the lounge. Aymé (black, bald) is talking on his phone when Sabri (tall, Middle Eastern) comes in. Ayme says "We're going to have fun tonight. It's Friday night -- a long time since we've gone out." So you're pining for your boyfriend? Tell me more. Sabri can't make it -- he has to go to his uncle's house.

Ayme tries to invite himself along ("your uncle loves me!"), but no dice: "It's time you learned how to sleep alone."

So Sabri is going to be at the uncle's all night?

Next Ayme cruises Jameel (short, Middle Eastern, ginormous bulge), but is rebuffed.

Officious Boss comes in and complains that his stamp collection has been stolen. If they don't find the thief, he's cancelling Sabri's birthday party (can he cancel a private party?).

Scene 3: Reception area. Sabri tells Hung that he used the stamps from Boss's collection for his party invitations, not realizing that they were valuable. Now they have to break into the post box and retrieve them.

Scene 4: Hospital room, night. Ayme is annoying a patient by telling jokes. Mousy comes in. Ayme confesses that he's spending the night with the patient because he doesn't like to sleep alone. So Sabri is not his boyfriend; he sleeps with a different guy every night. I remember doing that.

Meanwhile, Hung and Sabri try to break into the post box (holy cow, that's a bulge for the record books). They press their hands together "to see whose fingers are more telescopic." Sure, that's the reason.

Blondie comes in and tells Sabri that she's scheduled him to work on the 13th, the night of his party, out of spite.

Scene 5: Sabri opens up to Mousy about the psychological trauma that makes it impossible for him to sleep aone. She offers to let him sleep with her.

Meanwhile, Hung and Sabri are still working on the post box (left)

Scene 6: A hospital room. Ayme, naked (top photo), in bed with Mousy. They're both nervous. She turns on the tv; it's porn. "It's nice that two friends can sleep together...without any expectations." Suddenly they're all over each other. Wait -- I thought Ayme was gay! Is he bi, or is he straight, and wanted Sabri to literally sleep with him?

Scene 7: After sex, the two look uncomfortable. Sabri comes in; Ayme hides Mousy under the covers. So his boyfriend won't find out? No -- Sabri realizes that there's someone else in bed, and asks "Do I know her?" with a grin.

Scene 8: Hung and Sabri are still working on the post box. Officious Boss comes in and shows them how the box opens easily. But they still can't have the letters -- that would be stealing.

Scene 9: Morning, in the lab. Mousy forgives Ayme for not being very good in bed (well, it was his first time with a woman, so...) Blondie comes in. She's talking about the birthday party, but Ayme thinks she's talking about the sex: "I wish you had invited me. When people have fun, I like to join in."

Scene 10: Officious Boss tells Sabri that he was planning to give him the stamp collection as a birthday present. Now "your life is ruined." Sabri assures him that it's not a big deal.

Scene 11: Ayme tells Hung that he slept with Mousy last night, and she didn't like it. Hung advises him not to worry about "something so small"(well, compared to you, everybody is tiny).

Scene 12: Reception. Blondie is angrily tearing up party invitations. Sabri finally invites her to the party.

Scene 13: The party. Wall-to-wall heterosexual couples dancing.

Jameel is dancing with a girl.

Ayme asks Bea to dance, and promises that he'll be better in bed next time. She rejects him. He propositions Blondie. She rejects him.

Sabri kisses a random girl, for no reason other than to demonstrate that he, too, is heterosexual, that gay people absolutely do not exist.

This sitcom made me sad.

Kim's Convenience (2016-) on Netflix,is a popular Canadian sitcom adaption of a play that has run since 2011. It's about a Korean-Canadian family running a convenience store in a diverse neighborhood of Toronto.

It seems a bit retro: in each episode, the curmudgeonly, old-fashioned Mr. Kim (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) rams head-first into something about modern society that he doesn't understand. In the first episode, it's gay people.

He refuses to allow a gay pride poster to be placed in his shop window, because why do gay people have to advertise themselves with a parade? Koreans don't march down the street yelling "I'm Korean!" If they're gay, why can't they be quiet, respectful gays?

I started to cringe, having heard this complaint a dozen times, even from gay people. It is a standard homophobic misconception that gay pride is about proclaiming that you have gay sex rather than celebrating survival in a hostile world.

Accused of being homophobic, Mr. Kim backtracks by offering a 15% discount to gay people during Pride Week. Through the rest of the episode, he decides who warrants the discount and who doesn't.

He tells Boy Toy (Alexander Nunez) "You're not gay, you're just pretending." Boy Toy returns with a flamboyant friend as proof, but Mr. Kim merely asks him what his favorite movie was in college. Caddyshack. Straight.

But when a guy (Andy Yu) drops in to apply for a job, Mr. Kim offers him the discount. He protests that he is straight, but Mr. Kim wink-winks "Sometimes it takes awhile for the gay to come out."

He does give the discount to a drag queen after a conversation about "Why you dress like a woman?" She actually seems pleased by the question, and replies: "It feels comfortable. It feels like home."

The episode was not exactly offensive, at least not offensive enough to turn off, but it made me uncomfortable. It was like watching people talk about me behind my back.

No gay people appear, or are referenced, in any of the other episodes I sampled. Evidently the gays were the problem of the week, and the show moved on:

A friend asks Mr. Kim to become a "wingman" on a double date.

A kid runs wild in the convenience store, and the mother refuses to discipline him.

Mr. Kim gets a crush on the new female pastor, and insists on not charging her for anything.

After the first few episodes, the convenience store was relegated to the B plot, while the primary plot involved the problems and relationships of the two Kim children:

Janet (Andrea Bang), a photography student at OCAD University, struggles to achieve independence by moving out, getting a job, and refusing to "marry a nice Korean Christian boy." .

Jung (Simu Liu), who hasn't talked to his father in years, works at a car rental company, where he has a crush on his female boss. He doesn't appear to own a shirt.

The writers play up Jung's hunkiness deliberately, as a remedy to the countless sexless Asian characters in media.

Simu Liu has also appeared in the play Banana Boys, about the stereotypes Asian Canadian men face, such as "they are bananas (yellow on the outside, white on the inside)."

Other male characters include:

Kimchee (Andrew Phung, center ), a clownish slob, Jung's roommate, coworker, and bromantic life partner.

Gerald (Ben Beauchemin), their nerdish, self-depricating coworker, and eventually Janet's platonic roommate.

Terence (Michael Musi), another coworker at the car rental place, who Kimchee doesn't like.

Alex (Michael Xavier), Jung's childhood friend who briefly dates Janet.

Enrique (Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll), a regular customer at the convenience store.

Alejandro (Mark Grazzini), who dates Jung's boss.

Roger (Kevin Vidal), who briefly dates Janet's friend.

Raj Mehta (Ishan Dave), who dates Janet.

Peter (Zach Smadu, left). I don't know who he plays. I just had trouble finding beefcake photos of the other actors.

I like the fact that the Canadian locale isn't closeted: this is definitely Toronto. The scene where a guy tries to rob the convenience store with a knife instead of a gun made me want to move there.

But I don't like the exclusion of gay people from the universe, after the first "gay problem" episode.

Revisiting Brideshead Revisited

Time Enna Boss: Tamil-Language Sitcom with a Gay Subtext

Clinton-Massie: Sometimes the Beefcake is Enough

Pufnstuf

The Bay City Rollers

Emily in Paris: If You Can't Visit During the Pandemic, This Is Your Best Bet

Miami Beach: Art Deco Capital of Beefcake and Bulkitude

Summer 1971: Donald Duck's Double Life

"The Boys in the Band": Any Day that Ends with a Naked Man is a Good Day

He Walked Around the Horses

Baby Huey and Dimwit: Bottom of the Barrel Buddy-Bonding

Bugs and Porky meet a Drag King: Warner Brothers Comics

Out Our Way: Teenagers Before Girl-Craziness

Making Your Own Bulgeworthy Halloween Costume

Spell: Buddy-Bonding Tease and Non-Homoerotic Male Nudity

The Naked Jocks of Clovis, California

Homophobic Moment in History: Bob Hope's AIDS Joke

"American Pie: Girls' Rules": As Heterosexist as it Gets

H: Horrendously Heterosexist Humor, a Hung Hospital Hottie

Kim's Convenience: Gay People are the Problem of the Week