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The Top Teen Idols in the World, #11 to #20
Time to look at Teen Idols #11-20, to see if they can hold a candle to the teen idols of the Golden Age, such as David Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy, and Robby Benson.11. Brooklyn Beckham. Another of soccer...
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Robby Benson's Six Pack
Was there any 1970s teen idol more dreamy than Robby Benson? Sure, David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, and Leif Garrett were cute, but Robby's blue eyes, coiffed hair, and soulful pout could cause thousands...
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The Boys of Carson Beach
This photo says: "Carson Beach, South Boston, 1940"My only question is, why didn't they have classes like that when I was a kid?"First, kneel in front of your partner. Use his legs to steady yourself....
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Your Grandfather's Beefcake: Circus Strongmen
Today every gym is crowded with guys with 60-inch chests and 20-inch biceps, but 130 years ago, they were rare. Poor nutrition, poor hygiene, and a lack of understanding of kinesiology limited the...
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Lance Kerwin
Born in 1960, the sandy-haired, scruffy Lance Kerwin was very busy in the early 1970s playing in After School Specials and "problem of the week" tv moves such as The Loneliest Runner (about a teenager...
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Watching TV in 1978 and 2018: Plus ça change...
July 20, 1978: a Thursday. I am 17 years old, a new high school graduate looking forward to starting college next month, living in a small town in the Midwest with my parents, brother Kenny (age 15),...
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Shane Haboucha
Shane Haboucha got off to a heterosexist start. In the music video "Stacey's Mom," the 13-year old played a kid obsessed with the breasts of his school friend's mother.Nothing for gay boys to like in...
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The Brown-Skinned Beefcake of Bronson Harmon's Home Town
No doubt you've heard about Bronson Harmon, whose wrestling scholarship to California Polytechnic (San Luis Obispo, CA) was revoked after a video surfaced of him at a Families Belong Together rally....
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The Men on the Tightrope
Just look at the beefcake, and don't look down. This is Mich Kemeter walking a 99-foot tightrope across Taft Point in Yosemite National Park.Why? Because it's there.He's followed by Dean Potter.Jerry...
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The Boys of Torzhok
This photo on Bygone Boys states:Football team “Novotorzhskaya sports mug” the Russian Empire. Torzhok, 1913.Torzhok is a popular tourist town in Tver Oblast (previously Kalinen Oblast) about 200 km...
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Hans Christian Andersen: the Gay Writer of Fairy Tales about People Dying
Of all the authors that teachers foisted upon me as a kid to embrace Rock Island's Scandinavian heritage, the absolute worst was Hans Christian Andersen. I hated fairy tales anyway -- who needs fairy...
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Staging the Male Nudity in "The Emperor's New Clothes"
Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" (1837) is a fairy tale with no fairies in it, about two scoundrels who tell an Emperor that his new outfit will be invisible to people unfit for...
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The Bodybuilders of Mordor
When I was growing up in Rock Island, we thought of the north as evil.If you drove straight north on the I-61, you passed towns with disturbing names like Grand Mound, Lost Nation, and Temple Hill,...
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Frank Finds What We're All Looking For
Since 1996, readers of independent comics have been treated to the adventures of Jim Woodring's Frank, a bipedal "funny animal" who looks like he escaped from a 1930s Max Fleischer cartoon.Frank...
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Spencer Horsman, the Buffed Escape Artist
Spencer Horsman is not a character on Bojack Horseman. He's a professional magician.He learned performing at an early age from his parents, both circus clowns. Kenneth Horsman (1958-2016) performed...
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The Abs of the Top 10 Teen Idols
When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, teen idols were popular for three or four years, about the time it took for their earliest fans to enter high school and move on to adult stars. Today, it's...
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Chico and the Man: Anglo-Hispanic Gay Couple
There were lots of African-American characters on tv in the 1970s, but Hispanic actors continued to find themselves cast as Anglo or Italian. Freddie Prinze was one of the first to be cast as...
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Tales of Boys and Men: Robert Louis Stevenson
Strangely, I always associate Christmas Day with boredom. Opening and playing with your presents takes about an hour, Christmas dinner takes another hour, leaving fourteen hours to sit around the...
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The Beefcake of New Lexington
Since most of Ohio consists of suburbs of Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Toledo, there's always a gay neighborhood nearby. New Lexington is about as rural as you're going to...
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Jack Larson and other TV Jimmy Olsens
In an April 1940 episode of the radio Adventures of Superman, the Man of Steel helped a young boy named Jimmy Olsen protect his mother's shop from racketeers. Sensing audience identification, the...
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