NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

I was looking forward to the new Walking Dead spinoff, The World Beyond. It reputedly had a big time jump from the original two series, so some rebuilding would be evident, with new societies rather than just ragtag groups of survivors holed up in soon-to-be-destroyed baseball stadiums and theme parks. Plus it promised some answers to the big questions, like what was Jadis (Anne)'s doing, living in a garbage-labyrinth, dividing people into A and B and sneaking them away on helicopters?

First disappointment:No Time Jump. Only 10 years have passed since the zombie apocalypse began. This is the same time as the last season of The Walking Dead.

Second disappointment: No New Society. Well, there is a new society, on the grounds of Nebraska State University. 9,000 people, high school and college classes, zombie-proof doors, Memorial Day celebrations. But it is soon-to-be-destroyed.

Third disappointment: No answers. Well, we do find out that the helicopters belong to the ominous-sounding Civic Republic Military, which has a secret "you don't need to know" base and rules/administers the colonies of Nebraska State, Omaha, and Portland.

Portland, Oregon? On the other side of the continent? Are there no other survivor settlements in the whole U.S.? Come on, there are four near Alexandria in The Walking Dead.

Occasionally Elizabeth (still no last names) drops in for "We love you, Fearless Leader" homage, but she is not really a leader at all. She can't reveal anything about the CRM, or she will be "fired" (more likely zombified).

Fourth disappointment: Bizarre coincidences. Teenage sisters Iris and Hope were only six years old when "the sky fell" (an airplane crahed, and all of the occupants got zombified and tried to eat them). They both feel guilty over that night, one (I don't remember which) was separated from their mother; the other watched mom being shot by a pregnant lady, and then shot the pregnant lady. As a result, Iris has become an over-achiever, and Hope a juvenile delinquent.

Their father has been taken/volunteered to work for the CRM, which means they cannot contact him. But he is sending secret messages anyway, even though if anyone found out, he would be "fired" (probably shot out of a cannon). When he sends a message saying that he is in trouble, they decide to go help out.

Fortunately, Elizabeth gives them a forbidden map with his location, even though if anyone found out, she would be "fired." He's in upstate New York, a thousand miles away.

And there appear to be no cars or horses, nor any patrolled trade roads between Nebraska State and Omaha, so they have to walk through overgrown, zombie-infested suburbs.

And they have no experience with killing zombies, except some useless classroom instructioon.

Plus leaving the colony is forbidden, so they will have to sneak out.

Fifth disappointment: No beefcake

Two other teens offer to go with them:

1. Silas (Hal Cumpston), a shy, bookish, rather fey young man who dresses in a 1970s leisure suit. He's been sneaking out anyway to look for a dinosaur tooth that he lost on the night the sky fell. His mother was pregnant, and he had been planning to give it to his baby sister.

Pregnant...ulp...one of the sisters killed his mom!.What a coincidence!

2. Elton (Nicolas Cantu), a hulking, quiet, slow-moving boy who doesn't seem to be all there. Maybe autistic, maybe bipolar -- just what you want on a long journey.

The minute they leave (and Silas finds his dinosaur tooth! What a coincidence!), head security guard Felix (Nico Tortorella) rushes out in hot pursuit, accompanied by a woman named Huck, who has a dumb name and a crazy accent.

At least Felix is gay. A flashback in the second episode shows him as a gay teenager being kicked out by his homophobic father just before the zombie apocalypse begins. And, wouldn't you know it, the trip takes them right past his old house, where zombified Mom and Dad are still tromping around (what a coincidence!)

But for beefcake, I had to go with recurring characters played by Al Calderon (top photo) and Ted Sutherland (left)

Final disappointment: Genocide.

The moment they all leave, Elizabeth orders the colony destroyed and everyone killed. They then go from house to house, looking "for her."

Heck, Liz, if you didn't want "her" to leave, why did you give the girls a map?

Aside from the logistic impossibiity of four soldiers killing 9,000 people, even with machine guns, why destroy one of the three survivor colonies left in America, a third of its population? Just because one of the residents knows where the CRM is, becauss you gave her a map?

It doesn't matter anyway. I didn't come here to see genocide.

Just six years ago, there were no gay characters on children's television at all. Then it was only adults, an occasional girl with two moms shoved far, far into the background.

Now it is almost customary for child-adventure teams to include a gay kid. But the word "gay" is typically just a word. The gay kid doesn't actually do anything to indicate gayness, like stating that someone is cute, or asking them for a date.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, on Nickelodeon, managed to have the gay kid actually being gay, although they eased in very gradually over the course of three seasons.

It's set in a post-Apocalyptic world, where all of the surviving humans live in an underground burrow, leaving the surface to various mutated animals, some monsters, some organized into human-style communities.

Season 1: Kipo, a 12-year old girl, heads to the surface to search for her missing father, and joins forces with two humans who live there: Wolf (a little girl raised by wolves) and Benson (a 13-year old boy whose back story is a mystery).

In Episode 6, Kipo gets a crush on Benson, and he reveals that he is gay. Of course, fighting monsters and mutant tyyrants leaves him little time to date, but in Episode 10, when they finally make it to Kipo's burrow, he has an eye-glistening falling-in-love moment with Troy (the only human near his age in the burrow-- good choice!).

Season 2: You'd expect Troy to stick around, become a member of the team, right? He appears only in the first episode, where they promise to get together at the end of the adventure, and he kisses Benson on the cheek.

In Episode 10, he appears to help Benson escape from the latest threat, a volcanic eruption.

Season 3: The plot arc is about stopping the series Big Bad, Dr. Emilia, who is trying to stir up anti-mutant fervor. Troy participates in the adventure in Episodes 1 and 2, and appears in background shots in Episodes 5 and 6.

Episodes 8 is about the preparation for the PRAHM, a Party Reconciling All Humans and Mutants. Benson keeps trying to ask Troy, but loses his nerve or is interrupted by a crisis. Finally he ends up asking him in front of everyone (which sounds like it would take even more nerve). Troy reveals that he had been planning to ask Benson. They hug and kiss, while everyone applauds.

Episode 9 features the party, which is interrupted by Dr. Emilia's final threat. Troy and Benson manage a dance before the crisis starts.

Episode 10 concludes the story with Kipo's showdown with Dr. Emilia, followed by a flash-forward five years.

The humans and mutants have formed a society together. Benson owns a restaurant. Troy takes over when he leaves; they kiss.

Giving up a life of rip-roaring adventure for capitalism and domesticity? Isn't that the way every adventure story ends?

This was the only romantic plot arc in the series, not an add-on in the shadow of a heterosexual romance.

In spite of gradually easing into it, Kipo went farther toward gay inclusivity than any other children's animated series.

In the spring of 1969, my friends and I began running home from school as fast as we could (my house was the closest) to catch the last ten or fifteen minutes of Dark Shadows (1966-71), a soap opera about the brooding, guilt-wracked vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) and his immensely wealthy, occult-obsessed family.

He enters the story when the slim, stuttering ne’er-do-well Willie Loomis (John Karlen, left), prowling around the Collins estate on the stormy coast of Maine, discovers a secret room in the old mausoleum, and inside it a chained coffin. At this point, most people would flag down the next bus to Boston, but the none-too-bright Willie decides to open the coffin. A bejeweled hand shoots up and grabs him by the neck.

The next day Barnabas Collins presents himself as a long-lost “cousin from England” and talks his way into possession of the ancient, decrepit Old House.

Willie inexplicably moves in with him, telling his friends that he has taken a job as Barnabas’ servant; yet he is obviously more than a servant. The two spend an inordinate amount of time together, and are on an altogether chummy first-name basis, a liberty taken by no other servant on the estate.

The truth, of course, is that Barnabas bit him, and now they are co-conspirators if not secret lovers. What is a vampire’s bite, after all, but a form of sexual congress?

Gossip about the early years of the series reveals that the producers were so skittish about potential homoerotic readings of the relationship that they gave Willie a heterosexual crush, and mandated that same-sex neck-biting must always occur off-camera.

Eventually the strain of living with a vampire is too much for Willie; he has a nervous breakdown, and is confined to Windcliff Sanitarium. Later, Barnabas misses Willie, and asks him to return. Willie eagerly agrees. Later that evening, their friend Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) is sitting alone in the drawing room of the Old House, evidently keeping guard, when someone comes to the door. “Barnabas isn’t here – he’s with Willie,” she says with a diffident glance upstairs – to the bedrooms. Exactly what is Barnabas doing up there to welcome Willie home?

When Barnabas announces his plans to cure his vampirism by transferring his spiritual essence into a different body, Willie worries that the new Barnabas will not be attracted to him (or, perhaps, that he will not be attracted to the new Barnabas):
Willie:Suppose he don’t like me?
Barnabas: He will be exactly toward you as I am.
Willie:You don’t know that! You might come out of this all different. . .It won’t be the same.

Although Barnabas barely acknowledges his affection, Willie obviously cares deeply for him, with an unstated and perhaps unconscious homoerotic desire.

As Barnabas zapped back and forth between time periods and parallel worlds, he encountered different characters played by the same cast members, and John Karlen managed to infuse all of his characters with a sometimes frivolous, sometimes dark and passionate attraction to the vampire hero.

When Barnabas visits Collinwood in the year 1897, he meets Karlen as Carl Collins, a fop only slightly toned down from Oscar Wilde’s green carnation crowd. Carl grabs his shoulder, touches his hand, takes his arm, and whispers softly in his ear “You look so nice! We’re going to be close friends, aren’t we? We’re going to be buddies!” And thereafter, whenever he has a problem (usually involving ghosts or werewolves), he throws himself into Barnabas’s arms, overtly presenting himself as a lover.

Many of the cast members were gay, including Joel Crothers, left (who played Maggie Evans' boyfriend and remained her best friend in real life) and Louis Edmonds (patriarch Roger Collins).

When Don Briscoe (werewolf Chris Jennings) took time off to appear in the gay-themed Boys in the Band (1969), he brought Chris Bernau and Keith Prentice back with him.

Most of the others were gay friendly, including Grayson Hall (who was nominated for an Oscar for her role as a repressed lesbian in Night of the Iguana), Katherine Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans), Roger Davis (who went on to star in Alias Smith and Jones), and the vampire himself, Jonathan Frid.

Most soap operas, like One Life to Live, were unremittingly heterosexist, requiring us to seek out subtexts, but Dark Shadows had ample male characters who were immune to the charms of eyelash-fluttering governesses and sought out each other: David Collins, heir to the family fortune; the fey Noah Gifford (Craig Slocum), who has an unspecified and “sinister” relationship with the golddigging Lieutenant Forbes (Joel Crothers); Aristede (Michael Stroka), a brooding, androgynous “manservant”; the nerdish mad scientist Cyrus Longworthy (Christopher Pennock); and the darkly sensuous Gerald Stiles (Jim Storm) who was not shy about expressing his devotion to werewolf/man-about-town Quentin Collins (David Selby).

No wonder we ran home from school as fast as we could to watch.

I was suspicious of The Haunting of Bly Manor, on Netflix. Take the classic Gothic horror story by gay author Henry James and transpose it to 21st century California? Whatever for? But I heard that there were gay characters, so...

Scene 1: Northern California, 2007. An unnamed middle-aged woman goes to a wedding rehearsal dinner at a huge Gothic mansion (they have some of those in the wine country). None of the guests are identified (the groom is played by George Sestero, left). I wonder if they're all ghosts. After dinner they sit around telling ghost stories, and she volunteers one.

Scene 2: London, 1987, but the time period is irrelevant, except to keep them from being able to use cell phones. Grade-school teacher Dani has relocated from America to escape her demons, although they seem to have followed her -- she sees figures with glowing eyes in mirrors. She interviews with the extraordinary wealthy Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas, who starred in E.T. years ago) for a job as an au pair for his niece and nephew. He has been their guardian since their parents died, but he apparently hates them, so he shoved them onto his country estate and never calls or visits.

The interview goes very badly. But later, Dani runs into Wingate in a pub and asks why the job ad keeps appearing, over and over. He says that no one wants the job because the last au pair killed herself. Unstated: the kids creep everyone out. She assures him that creepy kids don't bother her.

Scene 3: The amiable, upbeat estate cook and groundskeeper, Owen (Rahul Kohli), picks up Dani and drives her to the estate. He grew up in town, "escaped for a bit," but returned to take care of his sick mum (lives with his mum; no flirting with Dani; gay).

Scene 4: On the estate, Dani meets 9-year od Flora, who seems pleasant except she leaves little voodoo dolls lying around everywhere; 10-year old Miles, who likes playing scary pranks; Hannah the housekeeper, who fills her plate with food at every meal but never eats any of it (she must be a ghost!).

Miles gives Dani a welcoming gift: a barette shaped like a spider. This will be important later.

Scene 5: Dani is giving Flora a bath. Flora gets upset when she sees the barette: "it's not yours. It belongs to her." She gestures at an unseen presence.

Flora also says that it's very important to not leave your room at night, so she doesn't see you.

Flora has a large doll house full of figures representing Bly Manor residents. Lots of residents. Ulp.

Scene 6: Dani leaves her room in the middle of the night to make tea, and sees a mysterious figure.

Scene 7: On a walk before breakfast, Dani sees a mysterious figure on the parapet (he will turn out to be Peter Quint, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen.)

At breakfast, the others tell her that sometimes they get intruders, tourists who think the house is open to the public, but no one could be on the parapet without going through the deserted, off-limits wing (they have a forbidden wing? Big deal -- Collinwood on Dark Shadows had two).

Dani meets the gardener, Viola, with whom she shares an instant connection (aha! lesbian lovers!).

Scene 8: Dani goes through the forbidden wing to the parapet. It looks perfectly stable; there are lawn chairs. She finds one of Flora's voodoo tokens

Scene 9: There's a church on the grounds. Inside, Dani finds Hannah the Housekeeper lighting candles "for the dead." Apparently Flora was the first person to see the old governess after she killed herself, and it screwed her up considerably. She wouldn't speak for weeks, and now she puts voodoo tokens around to protect the family.

Scene 10: Bedtime. Miles asks Dani to go into the walk-in closet to retrieve an electric fan. Then, apparently obeying an unseen presence, they lock her in! Plus there's a mysterious ghostly figure in the mirror!

The house isn't that big; couldn't the housekeeper or gardener hear her yelling? Unless they're both ghosts.

After awhile the kids let her out and apologize; the key didn't work. I would be packing my bag and getting out of there, but Dani just says "We'll talk about it in the morning. Go to bed."

Then she sees muddy footprints. While she was trapped, the kids went outside!

Beefcake: None so far, although I imagine there will be some shirtless scenes later. If this photo is of the right Henry Thomas, I wouldn't mind watching him strip down.

Other Sights: Not really. Dani keeps ooh-ing and aah-ing over how beautiful the estate is, but it''s mostly just boring English countryside. We don't see much of Bly Manor except the kitchen and the bedrooms.

Gay Characters: No one has a heterosexual partner or flirts with anyone of another sex. I think they're all gay. This is a Gothic, so there has to be a doomed romance. Wouldn't it be cool if it was gay?

Ghosts: In the original novel, you were never sure if the ghosts were real or not. Here, there's also a question. Dani was seeing ghostly figures before she ever went to Bly Manor. Could it all be in her mind?

Will I Keep Watching? Sure.

The Netflix series "The Grand Army" was on my list of "Emotional LGBTQ Shows," so I put it on without any research.

Scene 1: Establishing shots of subways, graffiti, a bloody dumpster, and black women saying "I'm still here." In a locker room, the black girls are dancing and giggling on on side, and the white girls on the other. A white girl goes into a bathroom stall and tells Gracie, "I got you. It will be fine" while reaching ..into her vagina....I think I'll fast forward.

The black girls criticize Gracie for whatever happened, and White Girl yells "I don't have time for this shit right now. I'm drowning in APs."

Scene 2: Black Girl yells at White Girl about how she handled the situation. "You're the Dance Captain! You should do better." They go out to the gym and cruise John Ellis, a hot boy walking by.

He walks out into the hallway, and passes Asian Girl, who is texting someone about how "I fucking hate it here." Girl, everybody hates high school! It's all about cliques, exclusion, bullying, hostility, and heteronormativity.

She bumps into some hot South Asian guys, who tell her to "Relax! Slow down." Then one of them, Sid the Harvard Boy (Amir Bageria, left), gets ribbed by his friends for being a virgin (maybe he's the gay one?)

Teacher grabs Sid and tells him he needs to finish his essay for "the deferment." So many characters, so few names....

Scene 3: Class. Asian Girl is presenting on Jews in China, while the Chinese girls criticize her for not being Chinese enough.

Scene 4: Washington Square in New York. Two black kids get shwarma from a halal truck (I wish they had halal trucks in my neighborhood!) and discuss their saxophone auditions. Jay (Maliq Johnson) has had a lot of privileges, so he is sure to get in; his friend is not so sure. Not a gay couple -- they discuss sex with girls. They talk to an elderly guy who is apparently a 60-year old high school senior, heading for the University of North Carolina.

Scene 5: Just as they get to school, there's an explosion outside. The school goes into mandatory lockdown. Students rush to their designated hubs (apparently they have a lot of drills), while continuing to discuss the party tonight, complain that Grace's "vag pulled the condom right off," google "abortion," and look at pics of naked girls on their phones ("I jerked off to her for like two weeks"). This is really disgusting. And wildly heterosexist.

One of the vagina boys is Luke, played by Brian Altemus (top photo).

Sid the Harvard Boy gets permission to go down the hall and sit with his sister.

Scene 6: On the way, he finds Asian Girl crying in the hallway: she hates this school, and she doesn't want to die. Darn, I thought he was the gay one I fast forward past their interminable falling-in-love conversation.

Scene 7: Sid and his new girlfriend finally reach his sister. His friends text him. A lot of "pussy" and "cunt" words. I ignore them.

Scene 8: Still in lockdown, students are texting furiously and reading news reports: Brooklyn Bridge bombing, two dead. I fast forward through their long, boring, "pussy" and "cunt"-filled conversations.

Scene 9: Lockdown is finally over. Joey, who hasn't been introduced before, has a trivial conversation with his sister and her best friend about staying with Dad instead of Mom. He's played by Odessa A'zion, and gets top billing in the cast list, so I guess he's important. Also, Odessa is a girl, but Joey is a boy. Or is she secretly a transgender girl?

Or maybe Joey is one of the girls, and I just assumed it was a boy.

Whatever. I'm outta here.

Beefcake: No. Some of the actors on the IMDB list have shirtless photos posted on their instagrams.

Gay Characters: Heck, no. Every boy spends every second of his life either doing things inside vaginas or discussing vaginas with his friends. I had no idea that vaginas could even do all those things. I thought they just sort of sat there. Of course, I have never spent so much time hearing about vaginas before.

Racial Diversity: The students seem segregated into black, Chinese, South Asian, and white cliques, and rarely interact with anyone else. There seems to be one main character from each racial group, which makes identification easy, especially since there is an almost complete absence of names.

Names: Your first job as a filmmaker is to get the main characters identified -- by name. Here that just doesn't happened. Minor characters like Gracie are named. Abdulla the Halal Truck vendor is named. But the main crew, not. How hard is it to have someone say "Hi, Jay?" Or in this series, it would be something like "My man Jay the Vagina Fan, how many vaginas have you had today? Vaginas!"

The Terminator series (how many have there been so far?) is about machines taking over the world in the near future, trying to kill all humans, and sending a bot back in time to kill the mother of the person who will eventually thwart their plans. Timelines change, the future is changed, evil cyborgs become good, and it all starts over again. This time, it's Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). Well, maybe we'll see Arnold naked.

Scene 1: A teen couple, Miguel (Daniel Ibanez) and Maria, are kissing under a bridge. Suddenly a blob opens up in the sky, and a naked lady falls to the ground. They rush to help her.

Ugh! Naked lady! But Miguel is cute. Maybe he'll be her ally, and we'll get some beefcake

The police arrive, think they are abducting her, and attack. She revives and kill s them-- naked lady fight. Then she co-opts Miguel's clothes.

And Miguel and Maria vanish from the story! Boo!

Scene 2: A cute domestic scene, with grown-up brother and sister Diego (Diego Ramos) and Dani (Natalia Reyes) , Dad who makes breakfast, and cute dog. Whoah, Diego has his shirt off for about five minutes. Six-pack abs! Things are looking up!

They go to work at a factory, where they discover that Diego's job has been taken over by a robot. Foreshadowing!

Meanwhile another blob opens up, and a naked man falls out. Things are really looking up! He knocks on Dani's door and talks to her father.

Scene 3: The naked man, now clothed, turns out to be a cyborg named Rev 9 (Gabriel Luna, below). He goes to the factory and starts killing people. Naked Lady (Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis) fights him, while explaining that he has come from the future to kill Dani.

Dani, Diego, and Grace flee through the streets of Mexico City...

Hey, Mexico City. There will be interesting location shots for a change!

And out into the desert, which could be anywhere. Boo!

Diego is killed, and vanishes from the story. Double boo!

Scene 4: Dani and Grace hook up with an elderly but still kick-ass Sarah Connor. I like her call-backs: "Come with me if you...don't want to die"; "I'll be back."

For the last 20 years, she has been getting occasional transmissions telling her where and when a terminator will appear, so she can kill it. Now she's ready to help them by killing the Rev 9.

Three women together. I'll bet Grace and Dani fall in love. Or Dani and Sarah. Or Sarah and Grace. Or all three.

Scene 5: Grace needs some kind of medicine, so they raid a pharmacy. The pharmacy tech offers to help, and carries Grace outside. Hey, he's cute. Maybe he'll join them, and....

he vanishes from the story. Boo!

Scene 6: They decide to go to the source of Sarah's messages, in Laredo, Texas.. Across the border.

You realize that all of Mexico is not "across the border," right? It's 600 miles from Mexico City to Laredo.

Coincidentally, Dani's uncle is a coyote, illegally transporting people across the border. He's a bit crotchety, but there's a cute guy sitting on the couch, reading a magazine. Maybe he will...

He accompanies them to the border without saying anything or getting a face shot. They are all captured by the ICE. Sarah breaks them out -- well, Dani and Grace, anyway. She leaves the guy to his fate. Hey, he was helping you, and you abandoned him! Boo!

Scene 6: They reach the source of the transmission -- a cabin in the Laredo forests, occupied by Arnold! The original terminator, a thousand years old but still buffed, retired, going by the name Carl. He has started a family with a single mom (their relationship is not sexual, he specifies).

Arnold! Things are looking up!

Plus his adopted son Mateo (Manuel Pacific) is cute. Maybe he'll join them....

Nope, he vanishes from the story. Boo!

Scene 7: Carl helps them destroy the Rev 9. Grace dies. I guess she and Dani won't become lovers. Which is probably a good thing, because:

Spoiler alert!

Scene 8: Fast-forward to the future. Sarah and Dani are living together, in what I assume is a romantic relationship, and Grace is their daughter!

That must be why they missed so many beefcake opportunities. What lesbian wants to look at hot guys? Bring on the kick-ass babes!

Apparently they are not a canonical lesbian couple because the producers are homophobes or cowards, or both. But the lesbian community has latched onto them anyway.

I hope you have a lot of time, because we're going to be here for awhile.

It started with this ordinary -- albeit nicely revealing -- photo of a wrestling match from "General McLane High School."

After some research headaches -- is it MacLane, McLane, McLean, MacLean? Why are there 7 high schools named after this obscure Civil War General? -- I pinpointed General McLane High School in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, a small town about 20 miles south of Erie, known primarily as the home of Edinboro University.

General McLane High is not particularly noteworthy -- 800 students, no Gay-Straight Alliance, no unusual classes or clubs, the standard sports.

Then I started checking out its archive of wrestling team photos.

An hour later, I was still there.

The team name is the Lancers, which is why these wrestlers are holding medieval weapons. Leading to double-entendre jokes about swords.

To be fair, the photographers crop most pictures above the waist. But "most" only means 3,000. There are another 500 with everything on display.

A lot more biceps, bulges, pecs, and abs on A Gay Guide to Small Town Beefcake

Why does Amazon Prime keep thinking that "I'll like" fundamentalist films?

"Pass the Light follows a 17-year old student Steve (Cameron Palatas) who runs for congress because he is disturbed by the message of hatred and intolerance espoused by popular candidate Franklin Bauman. Steve and his friends start a campaign called Pass the Light in order to unite the community and spread the message of tolerance and love."

I'm pretty suer that "hatred and intolerance" means "supporting equal rights for LGBT people," and the :message of tolerance and love" means "tolerating and loving homophobes."

Steve is attending Northfield Christian Academy in eastern Illinois, although the "Skeeter in the Morning" radio program gets calls from Moline, on the other side of the state, and it's very bright and sunny all the time. Everybody at the school is bright and eager, smiling that brainwashed "I want to eat you" smile, and very, very shiny. They're all perfect in every way, but Steve is more perfect than the rest -- he spends his time volunteering at a Christian homeless shelter, praying, buddy-bonding with his football teammates, praying, advising hot girls about staying pure until marriage, and praying, all while smiling, smiling, smiling, smiling.

I really want to punch him in the face..

Enter Franklin Bauman, who is running for Congress on a "send all the fornicators and homa-sekshuls into exile" platform. Where, exactly, will he exile them to? Kick them out of the state? Is that legal, even under the Trump Adminstration? Maybe he wants to restore the sodomy and fornication laws, and send them to prison?

Steve and his friends believe that this is contrary to the true message of Christianity. You are supposed to "witness" to the sinners, demonstrate that you were experiencing ecstatic happiness all the time, while the fornicators and homa-seksuls are living with endless guilt, shame, and despair. They will then ask how they can get happiness like yours, and you can lead them to Jesus. How can that happen if the fornicators and homa-seksuls are in prison, or running away because you are screaming at them?

Steve discovers that Trevor (Lawrence Saint-Victor), who runs the Christian homeless shelter, is a homa-seksul, but won't go to church because he's afraid of getting screamed at rather than witnessed to.

That's it! The last straw! He's got to stop the only Christian in the state who screams at fornicators and homa-seksuls!

But Franklin is running unopposed. So Steve runs on a ticket of "loving the sinner, being nice to them, inviting them to parties, pretending not to be disgusted by their lifestyle," and gets everyone in the school to work on his campaign. They make t-shirts, pass out fliers, and smile -- a lot of smiling. And he wins by a landslide (naturally).

Oddly, I did a post about Cameron Palatas a few years ago. He has no qualms about posting hot beefcake photos to his Facebook and Twitter pages. He doesn't actually hate gay people -- he just thinks they are ridiculous. How stupid does a guy have to be to decide to do it with another guy, when there are so many hot girls around? Ridiculous!

See: Stay Away from this Disney Channel Hunk

Dalpre Grayer, who plays Steve's best friend, is a bit less forthcoming with the beefcake photos.

But Charlie DePew, who plays Wes (the guy the hot girl is fornicating with), has lots. He also is a bit more gay-friendly, joking that "Henry Cavill turned me gay."

And let's not forget Lou Wegner ("Calvin"), an animal rights activist with a most excellent physique.

A few years ago, when I was visiting Europe, I met Andrej, an economics student from Oradea, in western Romania near the Hungarian border. Of course I took out a few extra days to visit him.

Oradea is a beautiful old city with some interesting art-noveau style buildings, a baroque palace, and some gay clubs; Romanian is an interesting language, Romance but with a strong Slavic inflection; and Andrej was cute.

I visited a couple more times, before Andrej moved to Budapest. And somehow I have managed to make a lot of friends in Oradea and Budapest, some face to face, some via social media, some gay, some straight. A surprisingly large number of bodybuilders.

Your job is to determine which three of the ten I have been intimate with, either in person or in cybersex chat rooms. (Andrej is not on the list.)

1. (Top Photo). Does something boring in an office in Budapest, works out two hours a day.

2. A career soldier in the Romanian army.

3. A doctor specializing in cancer research. I didn't believe it, either.

4. A journalism student. Well, he's graduated by now, and works for a Hungarian news service.

5. I have a dozen pictures of the guy on the left, but none shirtless. He's studying environmental science.

The rest of the hunks, and your chance to vote, are on A Gay Guide to Small Town Beefcake

What can you do with a movie that encouraged a generation of LGBT people, "Don't dream it -- be it"?

That encouraged the audience to participate by talking back, throwing things, and playing along with the characters?

That audiences played along to, week after week, year after year, until they had every image, every word, every gesture memorized?

That spawned a dozen catchphrases and a warehouse full of tie-in books, magazines, cards, and toys?

What's left to do with the Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Revive the original play, which ran in London from 1973 to 1980.

It's considerably different from the movie -- new songs, different dialogue, Magenta and Columbia have different characters, and most interestingly, Rocky talks. A whole new take on the Rocky Horror universe (you can read the script here).

Revivals began in 1990 in Britain. In the U.S., a Broadway revival played from 2000 to 2002, with every beefcake hunk imaginable cast as the underwear-clad Brad, the gold-lame muscleman Rocky, and sweet transvestite Frank-n-Furter: James Royce Edwards, Luke Perry, Micah Thompson, Jonathan Sharp,

There are new costumes, new cast dynamics, new subtexts -- being gay or transvestite is not nearly as shocking today-- and a raucous evocation of the long ago disco- and sex-obsessed era of the 1970s.

It's now playing everywhere, in high schools, colleges, community theaters, little theaters. Halloween season is most popular, but it can be seen at any time. According to the official show blog, here's where it's coming up in 2014:

The Grandview Playhouse, MA, April-May
The Bangor Opera House, ME, June
The Ivory Theater, MO, October
Downtown Theatre, CA, October
World Trade Center Theatre, OR, October
Oh Canada Eh?, Niagara Falls, October

So even if you've had some terrible thrills many, many times before, it's always exciting to go down to the lab and see what's on the slab. Let's do the Time Warp again.

A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting (2020) is part of Netflix's "Representation Matters" collection, so I figured there were gay characters. Besides I erroneously believed that it was a Halloween-themed sequel to the LGBT-inclusive Babysitter's Club. So I went through the whole movie on fast-forward, looking for the representation.

The plot: Kelly (Tamara Smart) discovers that her charge has been kidnapped by a monster named Grand Guignol (played by Tom Felton), who intends to gather his nightmares for a nefarious purpose. A secret society of monster-fighting babysitters led by the kick-ass Liz Lerue (Oona Laurence) rushes to the rescue.

Liz has a score to settle with the Grand Guignol: years ago he kidnapped her brother.

Meanwhile Kelly has a problem torn straight from the teen-nerd movies of the 1980s: a crush on Victor (Alessio Scalzoto), who is dating a girl so mean, bullying, and downright cruel that you can't imagine anyone wanting to spend more than five seconds with her. Obviously the only reason they are together is so Kelly can "win" him.

Curtis (Ty Consiglio) is the only boy babysitter in the league, so could he be gay? Nope -- upon meeting Kelly, he immediately hits on her. "Cool it, Casanova," Liz tells him. Apparently he flirts with girls all the time.

Well, maybe Liz is a lesbian?

In search of a monster, Liz and Kelly go to a teenage party -- but Kelly's crush Victor is there! She's afraid to go in looking all scuzzy from monster-fighting. "It's just a dude," Liz says dismissively.

Then "He's eye candy. I get it. But whe have more important things to worry about."

Eye candy? Maybe Liz is straight.

But Kelly and Liz seem to buddy-bond extensively. They have to rescue each other a few times.

The movie ends with Kelly joining the Babysitter's Guild (naturally) and promising to help Liz rescue her brother (in the sequel, naturally).

Wait -- not exactly the last scene. Kelly goes up to her room, and her crush face-times her and asks her out on a date -- the middle school equivalent of a fade-out kiss! Heterosexist!

I guess "representation matters" means that the cast is multi-ethnic.

But at least there are some "dreamy boys" for the gay kids in the audience to crush on.

Like Ashton Arbab.

Ben Cockell

And Ricky He.

See: The Babysitter Club

Amazon Prime recommended Redneck Roots (2011) about a woman introducing her big-city boyfriend to her redneck family. I can relate: I have lots of beer-guzzling, card-playing, country-western, red pick up truck, feed store cap redneck relatives. Besides, I wanted to see how homophobic it was.

Scene 1: Establishing shots of the redneck town Stanley: an over-the top eye-crossed, slack-jawed, yee-hawing inbred yokel dj=ing at WPIG radio; a hand-clapping gospel choir at the fundamentalist church; the barber shop; kids jumping on a mattress in a front yard cluttered with old cars; the police station; fat people with butt cracks visible.

Cut to Chris (Crystalyn) having dinner with her boyfriend Ben and his New York Jewish mother. He has just proposed. She runs into the bathroom, cries, and asks herself "How will I explain my family?" She told them that her dad is a "mechanical engineer"; he's actually attaches tv sets to riding lawnmowers.

Scene 2: Chris and Ben in bed. Whoa, spectacular physique! Sister Amber Jo, a school bus driver, calls to invite her to her high school graduation (you can drive buses as a minor?). She's class salutatorian, in spite of talking like "We ain't seen y'all for two years. You is coming, right?"

Amber stops the bus to break up a fight between Rowdy Boy (Austin Filson, below, with a slack jaw and terrible acne) and Loretta, who dresses like a boy and yells "My name is Lou!" Could there be a transgender kid in the hills?

Lou is played by lesbian actress Abby Corrigan.

Scene 3: Crazy DJ tells about the bus incident: the Ledford boy tried to touch "ol' lesbo Lou Lou. He found out right quick that some clubs is ladies only."Does everybody know everything about everybody in this town?

Meanwhile, four rednecks are working on a motor and scratching their butts, discussing roller derby. One is planning to bring his ex-wife/cousin to Amber Jo's graduation party. Another is Crystalyn's Dad.

Scene 4: The hugely successful Chris is having a high-power meeting in a glass-and-steel office. Ben, coworkeras well as boyfriend, invites her to the beach this weekend. but she has a "sorority thing" to go to. She means Amber Jo's party.

Later, Chris calls her sister and complains that she's not living up to her potential, staying in redneck land instead of going to college. Then she tells Sis and Mom that she doesn't have "a special fella." Just as Ben comes in!

Scene 5: Back in Redneck Land: cars, trains, horses, dogs, and Crazy DJ on the toilet,discussing his constipation (on the air!). He calls for his Mama, and she comes downstairs and takes over the broadcast.

Meanwhile, the school bus comes to pick up Lou,but she refuses to go because of the bullying. Amber Jo tells her "You got to love and respect yourself. You may be a little different, but that ain't a bad thing." A tolerant redneck? Isn't that a contradiction?

Scene 6: Ben in his underwear again! He steals Chris's phone to call back whoever she was talking to last night. Rowdy Boy answers: "You want me and you know it. I'm so hot for you. I'm your boy toy." Um...who does he think he's talking to? Has he even met Crystalyn? Ben doesn't say anything.

Meanwhile, Dad is at the feed store in Redneck Land: a black lady is the salesclerk. He tries talking to her in rap, so she gives him a book, Jive Talk for Crackers.

Scene 7: Chris arrives in Redneck Land in her fancy red convertible, causing a commotion. Everybody in town starts yelling "It's Crystalyn! Hey, it's Crystalyn!" Come on, no town is that small. She is so distracted by the shouts and praises that she accidentally runs into the Crazy DJ, who has been carrying an unrequited torch since second grade. Ben is much hotter!.

Meanwhile, Ben is on the phone to a friend, complaining that he freaked out Chris with the impromptu marriage proposal, and now she's off with some dude. Fortunately, he has a stalking app on his phone, so he can follow her to Redneck Land, North Carolina and "rip the guy's balls off."

Scene 8: At the house, with redneck Dad, his disapproving brother, and Grandma, who is on oxygen but not planning to die until after Amber Jo's party. The house is actually quite nice. Chris arrives.

Meanwhile Ben starts out from the big city. Redneck Land is only 200 miles away.

Meanwhile DJ Darrell announces Chris's arrival on the air. Mom yells at him for "starting this up again."

Scene 9: Getting close to town, Ben calls the number. Amber Jo is still driving that bus -- does she just drive the kids around all day? Rowdy Boy picks up her phone again and starts breathing heavily. Wait -- he doesn't know who it is.

Meanwhile, at the house, Dad's brother turns out to be a limp-wristed, sassy, sashaying gay stereotype, like Jack Tripper pretending to be gay on Three's Company in the 1970s. He lists his "friends:: "Cory, Samuel, Xavier, Marshall, Mitchell, Philip, John..." Dad yells "No! I don't want to hear it."

He owns a flower shop yet. Can you believe this?

Sure, everybody except Dad likes him, but still...I can't even....

I'm fast-forwarding through the rest. Ben somehow hooks up with DJ Darrell. His Mom shows up in Redneck Land

Turns out that Amber Jo and Swishy Queen are co-hosts of an antique show on the Homo Garden Shopping Network. That's what he says. And the homo shoppers are wild over the art produced by Crystalyn's rednedk Dad.

And Lou the Lesbian doesn't appear again except in a crowd scene.

Most of the cast was drawn from local Charlotte, North Carolina actors, except for Dean Napolitano, who is a New York-based stand-up comedian. He does a schtick about how he told a gay joke once and a swishy queen came up after the set and said " That was offensive! You're homophobic!" But he's not homophobic (he says). You can joke about various groups. That's what brings us together.

Gee, I never realized that jokes, slurs, and name-calling signified that you were a gay ally.

He also has a song, "Gay Days at Disney Land," in which someone tells him it's Gay Day, and he says "Are you shittin' me? Every day is Gay Day at Disney Land because when you pay $110 for a ticket, you're really taking it up the ass."

Maybe I should have researched Napolitano before I watched the movie.

The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the 1960s line of hayseed comedies (others included Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Gomer Pyle, and The Andy Griffith Show), slogged on from 1962 to 1971, and your parents watched every week, so you couldn't avoid it. It was amazingly popular with adults: some of the regular episodes -- not even Christmas specials -- became the most watched episodes of all time.

The basic premise: a hillbilly from Bugtussle, Tennessee or Arkansas, Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen), becomes unbelievably rich when oil is discovered on his property, so he moves to a mansion in Beverly Hills, along with his crotchety mother-in-law Granny (Irene Ryan), his daughter Ellie Mae (Donna Douglas), and his dumb-lunk nephew Jethro (Max Baer Jr.).

Though they became marginally assimilated after nine years, they still wore hillbilly clothes, ate possum pie, and referred to their swimming pool as a "cement pond." Plots usually involved big city types trying to dupe and manipulate them, but their backwoods wisdom, orneriness, or dumb luck win out in the end.

The message: big city life is dehumanizing. Only in the country can real be real.

Other plots involved Ellie Mae's dating, Jethro's get-rich quick schemes (odd, since he already was rich), and Granny's dislike of all things big city.

There was never much beefcake in hillbilly comedies. Max Baer Jr., son of the famous boxer Max Baer, had a nice physique, but rarely showed it on camera. We were supposed to laugh at his dopiness, not sigh over his muscles.

Bonding was also rather uncommon. Most of the primary relationships were platonically male-female: Jed and Granny, Ellie Mae and Jethro, bank president Mr. Drysdale and his secretary, Miss Hathaway (Nancy Culp, who incidentally was gay in real life.)

But gay-vague was everywhere.

1. Mr. Drysdale's son, Sonny (Louis Nye) is sophisticated, well-educated, and not interested in girls. His parents keep trying to hook him up with Ellie Mae (so he will eventually inherit the Clampett millions), but he will have none of it. He and Ellie are just friends.

2. Hollywood star Dash Riprock (Larry Pennell), a parody of Rock Hudson, is handsome, suave, and not interested in girls. He vaguely courts Ellie Mae, but his heart isn't in it, regardless of how much his studio pushes them together.

Apparently the producers thought it hilarious to keep having Ellie Mae run into men who were not interested in girls.

3. Jethro had a "twin sister," Jethrine. She stayed back in the hills, and didn't show up often, but when she did, it was obvious that it was Jethro in drag. I got the distinct impression that everyone was just playing along, responding to his drag persona as if she was a different person.

See also: Petticoat Junction; Green Acres

Dracula (2020), on Netflix, is advertised as a tv series, but it's actually three feature-length films revising the Bram Stoker classic.

Film #1: At a convent in Transylvania, the extremely elderly, grotesque, fly-eating, and dead Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan) is being interviewed by Sister Agatha Van Helsing (Dolly Wells). Six months ago, a young, strong, handsome lawyer, he came to Transylvania to help Count Dracula (Claes Bang, left) sell off his properties in preparation for a move to England.

I'm sorry, I know they don't realize who he is, but everytime he says "I am...Count Dracula," I laugh.

Count Dracula is extremely elderly and grotesque, but as the two spend time together, he becomes younger, stronger, and more handsome, while Harker grows older and weaker. Obviously draining his life essence.

"Did you have sexual intercourse?" Sister Agatha asks.

Yes. And when Harker finally turns into a vampire, Dracula asks him to stay on as "one of my brides." But it wasn't consensual. This was an abusive, predaotry gay relationship, a stark contrast to the heterosexual "true love" of Harker and his fiancee Mina.

Surprise! Mina is in the interview room -- she came looking for him. And she still loves him, in spite of his grotesque looks and being undead, yada yada yada.

Film 2: Dracula and his slave/lover.nemesis Sister Agatha book passage on a Russian ship headed for England. The other passengers are a microcosm of diversity:

1.-2. Dr. Sharma (Sacha Dhawan), who is traveling with a deaf-and-mute girl.

3.-5. Lord Ruthven (Patrick Walse-McBride) is gay, newly married as a screen, and travenling with his lover (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who is pretending to be his valet. It's all done very subtly; a "blink and you'll miss it" half-scene here and there.

6. The elderly Duchess Valeria, whom Dracula danced with on her 18th birthday 60 years ago.

Dracula seduces and kills or just kills them all, and most of the crew as well. The same-sex seduction/murders are handled cautiously, a hand on the knee, an off-camera neck-bite, whereas the heterosexual seduction/murders are done in full-fledged "We are meant to be together!" mode.

In the end the only survivors are comic relief pair Olgaren (Youssef Kerkour) and Piotr (Samuel Blenkin), a young man who defrauded his way onto the ship. They have a gay-subtext buddy bond.

Sister Agatha and the Captain manage to sink the ship so Dracula can't "infect" England. He ends up on the bottom of the ocean, but being undead, he just start walking toward the shore.

Film 3: Apparently Dracula took a wrong turn. When he emerges from the surf, 123 years have passed: it's 2020. He seduces/kills a couple, moves into their house, and starts adjusting to life in the future.

He gets a new slave/lover, Frank Renfield (Mark Gatiss), who works for the same law firm that sent Jonathan Harker over years ago. And he meets Dr. Zoe Von Helsing, Sister Agatha's grand-niece, who is studying the undead, financed by the foundation set up by Harker's fiancee Mina years ago.

See how neatly everything works out?

Meanwhile Mina's descendant Lucy is a party girl, dating around, leading on lovestruck Jack (Matthew Beard), who is working for the Harker Institute (see how neatly everything works out?), and then rich playboy Quincey (Phil Dunster, left).

That all changes when she meets Dracula. The two begin a consensual vampiric relationship. When she dies from a botched feeding, he eagerly awaits her returning as his bride, only to discover that Jack body has been cremated!

That leaves Zoe, who for some reason has all of the memories of Sister Agatha, the only woman who was ever strong, powerful, and intelligent enough to be Dracula's equal. They fall in lo-oo-oove, deep, everlasting, soul-changing. Heterosexual.

Moral: Same-sex desire is always destructve, predatory, downright wrong. Only true, real, "normal" heterosexual romance can lead you to salvation.

Yuck.

When I was studying for my M.A. in English I had to select two adjacent historical eras for my Comprehensive Exams. The problem is, gay content seems to go up and down, a homophobic wasteland (Medieval, Restoration-Augustan, early Victorian) followed by a period of homoerotic exuberance (Renaissance, Romantic, late Victorian).

For my first period, I chose the Victorian Era (1830-1910), mostly because the professor of my graduate seminar, was gay-- or at least we thought he was. For my second period, I chose the Romantic Era (1770-1830), because the poets were young and cute, and their lives seemed informed by homosocial and homoerotic bonds. Later I discovered that several were gay in real life.

The top 13 gay or gay-subtext literary figures:

1. Hugh Walpole (1717-1797), who built a pseudo-Medieval castle, Strawberry Hill, to entertain the A-list gays of the early Romantic era.

2. and 3. The Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Charlotte Butler (1739-1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1831), who eloped, set up housekeeping, and entertained many of the artistic and literary greats of the era.

4. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), who forged a series of Medieval poems during his teens, and upset over his lack of recognition, committed suicide. Many of the other Romantic poets revered him as a beautiful youth martyred by an uncomprehending world. He has only appeared on screen once, in a 1970 German movie, played by Ulrich Faulhaber.

5. William Blake (1757-1822), who advocated for "free love" and illustrated his poetry with lovingly-detailed, super-muscular male nudes

6. William Beckford (1760-1844), who built his own pseudo-Medieval castle, Lansdowne Tower, where he kept his huge art collection.

7. William Wordsworth(1770-1850) and 8. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who roomed together and walked across England together (in the company of William's sister Dorothy).In Pandaemonium (2000), they are played by John Hannah and Linus Roach.

9. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), who hung out with attractive men, especially Greeks and Italians, and shared a house in Rome with fellow poet Percy Shelley. I hadn't yet read Byron and Greek Love (1985), but I thought Manfred highly homoerotic. In Gothic (1986), Byron was played by Gabriel Byrne (seen here holding hands with Shelley, played by Julian Sand).

10. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), who cohabitated with Byron and wrote Adonais to mourn the death of the beautiful young poet John Keats (check out the beefcake in the Star Trek episode "Who Mourns for Adonais". Besides, his wife, Mary Shelley, wrote Frankenstein. In Frankenstein Unbound (1990), a scientist goes back in time to meet Shelley (gay performer Michael Hutchence, top photo) and the real Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia).

11. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), who introduced the gay-coded Dandy to England.

12. John Keats (1795-1821), whose love for Charles Armitage Brown overwhelmed his love for Fanny Brawne (which was never consummated), and wrote of pure beauty much more often than the beauty of women. In Bright Star (2009), which makes the romantic triangle overt, Keats is played by gay actor Ben Whishaw (left), and Brown by Paul Schneider.

13. Gay artist Henry Fuseli.

Frankenstein, vampires, gay subtexts, and beefcake. It beats boring, 800-page long Victorian novels about who is in love with whom.

The September 22nd, 1967 episode of Star Trek had the cryptic title "Who Mourns for Adonais?"

Even when I grew up and studied English literature, the title was still cryptic. It comes from "Adonais," an elegy written by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley for his dead friend, John Keats.

He took the name from Adonis, the ancient Greek god of masculine beauty.

So audiences were supposed to expect a god of masculine beauty?

They got one: 37 year old Michael Forest as Apollo, an alien who was mistaken for a god by the ancient Greeks, and who still expects worship. It takes a femme fatale scientist to subdue him.

The heterosexist plotline didn't detract from the image of Michael Forest as Apollo, clad in a toga, with a laurel leaf, his bare chest, shoulders, and arms visible, one of the iconic beefcake shots of the Boomer generation.

Although never a beefcake star of the Henry Willson stable, Michael managed to display his bare chest several times during the 1950s, in guest-spots in Westerns (as an Indian) and swinging-bachelor dramas, and in horror-sci fi movies like Beast from Haunted Cave (1959),

He fell somewhat short of the superlative physique necessary to cash in on the 1960s bodybuilder craze; his only peplum was Atlas (1961), directed by Roger Corman.

But he worked steadily through the 1960s, with guest spots across the tv dial, and starring roles in movies.

One of his most important was Deathwatch (1966), based on the Jean Genet play about two prison inmates, Maurice (Paul Mazursky) and Lefranc (Leonard Nimoy) competing for the affections the hot, muscular Green-Eyes (Forest).

That's right, Leonard Nimoy playing a gay character, a year before he became Spock.

(This actually wasn't his first; he played a hustler in Jean Genet's The Balcony in 1963)..

After Star Trek, Michael continued to take off his shirt a lot, playing Achilles (1972), a motorcycle thug (1972), a spaghetti Western Man with No Name (1972), and Agamemnon (1973). Plus theater and lots of voice-over work (look for him in the 2008 documentary Adventures in Voice Acting).

In 2013, he reprised the character of Apollo on the web series Star Trek Continues (2013).

Apparently heterosexual in real life, he has retired to Walla Walla, Washington.

When I popped into Netflix this morning, it burst out with The Queen's Gambit, a tv series about a chess prodigy. I'm sort of interested in chess, so I started watching:

Scene 1: A young woman with carrot-red hair wakes up in a French hotel room, late for something. She rushes to dress (no nude scene, thankfully), runs to an elevator (where she stares at a little girl who is staring at her -- it's not rude in France) -- and rushes past reporters and photographers to start an important chess match with a glowering older man.

Scene 2: Someplace rural and antiquated. A pile-up of old-fashioned cars, and a little girl standing by herself on a bridge.

Scene 3: A matron tells her that her mother has "passed away" and drives her to a children's home. No Dickensian orphanage, it's well-appointed and quite comfortable. She meets the headmaster, the etiquette teacher and Mr. Ferguson (Akemnji Ndifornyen). We don't hear what he does at the home.

Suddenly a resident yells "You're all a bunch of fucking cocksuckers!"

A homophobic slur?

Mr. Ferguson goes to tell her to shut up, and she yells "You fucking cocksucker!"

Another homophobic slur? I'm out.

Ok, it's the 1950s, and the unnamed character might not necessarily be a good guy, but still, a homophobic slur is unnecessary and offensive.

In their review, the AV Club calls this a "humorous scene." Would they think it was humorous if the girl was bandying around the n-word? It's the same thing.

I understand from the review that there's a blink-and-you-miss it gay character later on, and there are a lot of hunks in the cast, like Matthew Dennis Lewis (top photo) and his twin brother Russell Dennis Lewis; Jacob Fortune (left).

Elvis Nowatzki

And let's not forget big bear Bill Camp, who teaches the girl how to play chess.

Yes, she calls him a "cocksucker."

I'm definitely not watching this.

I'm having a bad week in mass media, looking for gay representation and finding heterosexism or homophobia: Pass the Light, A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting, Redneck Roots, The Queen's Gambit...and now it's Saturday night, when we watch the X-Men movies in order (Bob's idea, not mine).

The X-Men are mutants with an X-gene that gives them varying types of superheroic powers. Tonight: The Wolverine (2013) features the hard-drinking, hard-fighting, annoyingly surly Logan (Hugh Jackman), whose ability to instantly regenerate cells makes him immortal. And depressed. Plus his hands sprout Freddy Krueger-style blades whenever he's angry or upset, or sometimes at random and inopportune moments.

Logan still feels pain, so one would expect him to spend his immortality in quiet contemplation of the Divine, or take a nice teaching job at Dr. Xavier's X-Men Academy, but no, he enlists in whatever war is going on at this moment: American Civil War (even though he''s Canadian), World War I, World War II.

Scene 1: Logan in a pit, a prisoner of war in Nagoya, Japan on July 26th, 1945. Everyone is evacuating or committing ritual suicide as the Enola Gay approaches with nuclear bombs. Young soldier Ichiro Yashida (Ken Yamamura) tries to release Logan, but he states that the pit is the safest place, and shields Ichiro with his own body.

A homoerotic buddy bonding scene! Things are lookng up. Maybe Ichiro will stick around, and they will go on adventures together. Wouldn't that be great! Even if they're not a gay couple, just heterosexual life partners.

Scene 2: Logan in bed with a woman, kissing and hugging.

Way to burst my bubble in the first five minutes! Ok, same-sex relationships are trivial and disposable, heterosexual romance eternal. I get it!

Scene 3: After some machinations to demonstrate that he likes woodland creatures, Logan looks up with a kick-ass babe, who tells him that the now-elderly and dying Ichigo wants to see him again, to "say goodbye."

So he has fond memories of their time together, after all these years? Memories of a homoerotic buddy-bond? Things are looking up.

Scene 4: Logan and Kick-Ass Babe fly to Japan on a private jet. Turns out that Ichigo is a multi-billionaire electronics mogul, and also a bit of a kook: he likes to pretend that he's living in traditional Japan, with rice-paper walls, samurai swords, and women in kimonos.

He actually doesn't want to say goodbye: he wants to modify Logan's X-gene so he can experience cellular decay. He will therefore age normally and eventually die, and in the meantime "fall in love, get married, raise a family."

Ok, ok, the sole purpose of existence is heterosexual marriage and reproduction. Same-sex friendships are worthless. I get it.

Scene 5: Logan meets Ichigo's snarling, surly, ninja-fighting son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada) and quiet, passive, impossibly virtuous granddaughter Mariko.

Uh-oh, Ichigo is dead. That means that Mariko inherits everything, and everyone wants to kill her, including her dad.

And her fiancee, corrupt finance minister Norobuku Mori (Brian Tee)

Geez, are all the men in this movie evil, and all the women good?

Well, slinky Bond Girl scientist Dr. Green is evil, a mutant whose super power involves poisoning men to death by kissing them. Fortunately she's not attracted to men, so she doesn't have to worry about kiss/killing someone she likes.

No heterosexual interest means evil? This is getting very close to stereotyped gay villain territory. Do we have to keep watching?

To be fair, I got the "no heterosexual interest" from the line "I'm immune to men." In the comics the character is heterosexual, and even marries Logan at one point.

Kenouchi Haruda (Will Yun Lee) may be the only male character other than Ichigo who isn't evil. According to Wikipedia, he's a ninja "sworn to protect the Yamada family." I don't really remember him, though. I stop paying attention.

I wish I was watching whatever movie this photo is from, instead.

I start paying attention again in the final scene plot twist:

Spoiler alert:

Ichigo is alive! He has transformed into a man-machine supervillain, Logan's arch-nemesis.

Moral: All men are evil, they wiall same-sex relationships are destructive and dangerous. But women -- at least heterosexual women -- are unfailingly good, kind, and supportive.

I suppose you're going to tell me that this director is gay

Naked festivals are held in many cities around the world, but in most parts of the United States, public nudity is a criminal offense.

Back during the freewheeling 1970s, it was merely a violation, or at most a misdemeanor -- lots of high school and college kids participated in the fad of streaking. But now we've become even more puritanical, and it's often a felony.

So what do you do if you want to participate in a nude run?

You put a pumpkin on your head.

At Halloween 1999, over 100 University of Colorado students ran through the streets of Boulder wearing only shoes and pumpkins, or sometimes other masks.

They carried on the tradition for a decade, but in 2008, the police threatened to arrest participants, charge them with indecent exposure, and have them registered as sex offenders, along with the rapists and child molesters.

15 runners were arrested.

In 2009, Boulder passed a new anti-nudity ordinance, mandating fines rather than jail time, but people were scared off, and the runs have not resumed.

However, runners are taking up the tradition in cities which permit public nudity as part of a "festival or performance, such as Portland, Oregon and Arcata, California.

In Seattle, Washington, there's a full week of activities, including day and night runs and skinny-dipping.

Skinny dipping? The temperature is usually in the 40s!

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, everyone was watching Movie Macabre (1981-86), starring Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (Cassandra Peterson). A throwback to the horror movie hosts of the 1950s and 1960s, Elvira was vampire-like being with a Valley Girl accent ("As if!") and a revealing Morticia Addams outfit.

She showed bad movies like The Fall of the House of Usher (with peplum star Mark Damon not taking his clothes off), Horror Hospital (with Robin Askwith threatened by gay psycho surgeons), and Werewolf of Washington (with Dean Stockwell, werewolves, hippies, and hippie werewolves).

In a tradition that would extend toMystery Science Theater 3000, Elvira made snarky comments about the movies. And in the tradition of drag queen performers, she made lots of self-referential jokes about her sexual escapades and cleavage ("I'm glad to see you're back...and you're glad to see my front!").

Gay fans loved her, and she returned the affection, appearing at AIDS benefits and Gay Pride parades through the 1980s.

And not only gay fans. She was everywhere, branding her image to sell everything from beer to Halloween costumes.

The feature film Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988) sends Elvira to the small town of Falwell (named after Jerry Falwell, the poster boy for 1980s homophobia), where she befriends all of the town's outcasts, butts heads with local bigots and romances an uptight theater manager (professional hunk Danny Greene).

Since Elvira is immortal, she continues to perform, cleavage and all. She continually hosts new versionfs of Elvira's Movie Macabre., on cable in the 2000s and now on Amazon Prime.

"The Walking Dead: The World Beyond": Five Disappointments and One Genocide

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Farther Toward Gay Inclusivity than Any Other Cartoon

Dark Shadows: Barnabas and Willie

The Haunting of Bly Manor: Lots of Gay Ghosts in 1987 England

"The Grand Army": Nameless Cute Boys Discuss Lady Parts in This LGBTQ Drama

"Terminator: Dark Fate": Lesbian Triangle, 5 Missed Beefcake Opportunities, and Arnold

The McLane Lancers: Make Some TIme, This Will Take Awhile

The Fundamentalist Beefcake of "Pass the Light"

Which Hungarian Hunk Have I Hooked Up With?

Rocky Horror Show Live: New Brads, Janets, and Rockies in Gold Lame Shorts

The Dreamy Boys and Teen-Nerd Girl of "A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting"

How Homophobic Can "Redneck Roots" Go? Ask the Star

The Beverly Hillbillies

Dracula: Dead and Homophobic

13 Writers and Artists of the Romantic Era That You Didn't Know Were Gay

Michael Forest: Playing a God of Masculine Beauty

"The Queen's Gambit": Eight Minutes to the First Homophobic Slur

The Wolverine: In a World of Evil, Backstabbing Men and Kind Supportive Women, Who Are You Gonna Date?

The Naked Pumpkin Runs

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark