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Cheers: Where Nobody Knows Your Name
In the mid-1980s, Americans were afraid. We had a crazy president who wanted to start a nuclear war (not as crazy as the Orange Goblin, though). People thought that AIDS could be transmitted through...
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Naked in the Shower with Randy Travis
Born in 1959, country-western singer Randy Travis has a face that would send me running for the exit: long and narrow, with a gigantic forehead and tiny, beady eyes -- and he wasn't much cuter when he...
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Sandy Ricks in Trouble
It's been 50 years since Sandy and Bud Ricks appeared on the Boys with their Shirts Off Show, aka Flipper (1964-67).It was about two boys and their dad living in the Florida Everglades. In each...
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Dorno of the Herculoids, Grown Up and Tied Up
These are The Herculoids, Zandor (middle), Tara (left), and Dorno (right), protectors of the planet Amzot in a Saturday morning cartoon series that ran 18 episodes from 1967 to 1969. A few more...
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The Most Boring, Stupid, and Heterosexist State Songs
At every school assembly when I was a kid in Rock Island, we had to sing the state song. You were also forced to sing it at football games, wrestling matches, and political rallies:By thy rivers...
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West Side Story: Stick to the East Side
When I was in high school, we had to read West Side Story in conjunction with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. They were even bound together, in the same book. Plus the orchestra played highlights...
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Jonathan Taylor Thomas
Born in September 1981, Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT) became a star at age 11 through Home Improvement (1991-1998), playing Randy, the middle son of macho tool-show host Tim Allen. He was passive and...
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70 Years of Archie Beefcake
For over 70 years, Archie Andrews and his pals and gals have been presenting an idealized portrait of the American teenager, with countless thousands of comic book stories, plus cartoons, tv series,...
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12 Current and Future Beefcake Stars of "Freaks and Geeks"
Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) was a high school comedy-drama created by Paul Feig and Judd Apatow. Although it won a lot of critical acclaim and regularly appears on "best tv" lists, it couldn't find...
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Richard Thomas: Falling in Love with a Photograph
When I was in junior high and high school, this was one of the most recognizable faces in America: Richard Thomas, who played Depression-era teenager John-Boy on The Waltons (1971-77).I never saw a...
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10 Gay Things You Didn't Know about "White Christmas"
1. White Christmas is not about Christmas. It's a backstage musical that just happens to end at Christmastime. Backstage movies were well-known for gay subtexts.2. The songs are by Irving Berlin, who...
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Danny Kaye was Gay
When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, one of our traditions was watching White Christmas (1954), actually a backstage comedy about rival singing acts, with nothing to do with Christmas except...
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Spring 1983: Reading Faulkner: Redneck Muscle and Boys in Drag
Nothing brings back my memories of college literature classes more than William Faulkner. Other authors I can return to with respect, even with pleasure, but Faulkner is mostly incomprehensible, and...
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William Faulkner and His Boyfriend Paint Robert's Penis Green
Call me Artie. Your story about visiting Lynchburg, Virginia, the "scariest place on Earth," made me laugh. I grew up in Marion, Virginia, about a hundred miles away, and Lynchburg was our beacon of...
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Captain Barbell, the Filipino Superman
I never heard of Captain Barbell before, but in the Philippines he's as well-known as Superman.Created by Mars Ravelo, he first appeared in Pinoy Komiks in 1963, and has been saving the world in...
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Seminole Boys, Alligator Wranglers, and Weightlifters
Although the Seminole are the most famous Indian tribe of Florida, they were not among the 20 or so tribes living there when Europeans arrived in the 16th century. They are the descendants of Creeks...
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Holy Mortadella, Batman: The Boy Wonder's Beneath the Belt Bulk
Every Baby Boomer boy knows why we couldn't wait to see Batman (1966-68), with Adam West and Burt Ward as campy, corny Caped Crusaders. It wasn't the over-the-top villains, or the "Zap! Pow!" fights,...
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Nutcracker Beefcake
Heterosexist plotline aside, every year The Nutcracker gives us the opportunity to see traditional, family-friendly, school-sanctioned, Christmastime ballet written by a gay man.And loaded to the brim...
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A Hookup with Robin on the "Batman" Set
On Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons in the spring of 1991, after my course in Biblical Hebrew at UCLA, I often drove up to Brentwood to visit Cesar Romero, the actor best known as The Cisco Kid in the...
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Jim Elliot, Through Gates of Spendor, and Amazonian Beefcake
When I was growing up in the ultra-fundamentalist Nazarene church, we had no saints, no folk heroes. We couldn't name a single famous person who was Nazarene -- of course not, Sunday school teachers...
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