Clik here to view.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: Beefcake and Homophobia in the Worst Movie...
Long before he became nationally famous with Sneak Previews and Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, back when he was still a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert collaborated with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Not a Chris Demetral Hookup Story
In West Hollywood in the 1990s, gay men of certain level of affluence watched Dream On (1990-1996) on the premium cable channel HBO. It was a quirky comedy-drama about an affluent New Yorker (Brian...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What's Gay about Beany and Cecil?
Beany, a grinning 10-year old boy with blond hair, freckles, and a magic beanie that allowed him to fly, first appeared as a puppet on the local Los Angeles tv series Time for Beany (1949-1954). A...
View ArticleClik here to view.
King of the Golden River: Boy Meets Dwarf
Shortly after I was born, my parents bought a set of Colliers Encyclopedia and The Junior Classics, an anthology of mostly Victorian-era stories like Alice in Wonderlandand Jackanapes. During my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Peter McEnery: The First Gay Teenager
In Victim (1961), 21-year old Peter McEnery played the first explicitly identified gay teenager in film, a working class boy named Boy who commits suicide in prison. His affluent, middle-aged lover,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gay Connections of the "Christmas Story" Kids
A Christmas Story (1983) is not just about Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) lusting after a rifle and a lady-leg lamp. There are other plots and gag bits, other actors who are forever known as for their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wilton's First Time was with Captain Kirk
Millions of Baby Boomer kids got their first glimpse of beefcake on Star Trek (1966-69) where, week after week, Captain Kirk would take his shirt off to fight alien monsters or kiss alien babes. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Searching for Beefcake in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
I've only been to Idaho once, crossing the northern panhandle on Interstate 90, not stopping for anything. I was terrified.1. The penalty for same-sex relations in Idaho was life in prison, the same...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Searching for Beefcake in Grand Island, Nebraska
When I left Rock Island for the safe haven of West Hollywood, I took Interstate 80 through Nebraska. You go through the big city of Omaha and skirt around the college town of Lincoln without seeing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sausage Sighting of Prince Harry
The second son of Prince Charles, fifth in line to the British throne, Prince Harry was born on September 15, 1984, and educated at Eton (1998-2003) and Sandhurst (2005-2006) before serving in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Searching for Beefcake in Mayberry
Mount Airy, North Carolina, in the northwest part of the state near the Virginia border, is famous as the inspiration for idyllic small-town Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68) and Mayberry...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dan Shor Takes Off His Pants and Changes the World
Sometime in the 1990s we rented Strange Behavior (1981), mainly because the cover blurb said something about Galesburg, Illinois, which is near the Quad Cities. We weren't aware that it was written by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Gay Content of "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"
The View Askew peeps, Kevin Smith, Scott Mosier, and their friends, tend to make movies with a lot of subtle or not-so-subtle homophobia. I try to avoid them whenever possible, and when I can't, I go...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sandy Baron's "God Save the Queens": The First Gay-Positive Comedy Album
I knew Sandy Baron as the hot, shirtless, allergic-to-women John Marino in If This is Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969), and, thirty years later, as the irascible next-door-neighbor of Jerry's...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Keanu Reeves Bottoms for Drake
When I was living in West Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s, everybody "knew" that Keanu Reeves, star of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, My Own Private Idaho, Little Buddha, and Speed, was gay, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A World War II Photographer Finds Beefcake in Japanese Internment Camps
You know that 120,000 Japanese-Americans were "evacuated" from their homes and placed in internment camps during World War II. You may not know that the Farm Security Administration confiscated over...
View ArticleClik here to view.
David's Hookup with Scott Baio and Ron Palillo
This is a Scott Baio hookup story that I never heard before, from Jason in Florida. Apparently he heard it from his ex-lover, David, sometime in the 1990s.West Hollywood, October 17th, 1979The end of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Adam Mastrelli Reveals "Untold Secrets"
Watching tv on the treadmill at the gym during the daytime is usually awful. Endless reruns of Friends. I get it: Joey is stupid, Chandler is neurotic, Phoebe is judgmental, and none of them are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Junior Durkin and Henry Willson: Hollywood's First Gay Romance
When 15-year old New York boy Trent Durkin was contracted by Paramount Pictures, his name was changed to "Junior" to make him seem more wholesome and All-American. The ploy worked: Tom Sawyer (1930)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Toy Soldiers: Muscle on Parade
Every once in a while, a movie producer hires all of the teen hunks he can find, puts them in an all-male environment, and orders a script that involves fighting a common adversary with their shirts...
View Article