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Fall 1982: Prince Charles is Gay, And Other Things I Learned in College
In the fall of 1982, I moved to Indiana University to work on my M.A. in English. One night -- Saturday, September 25th, to be exact -- I bolstered my courage enough to walk the mile or so into...
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"The Crown", Season 3: More Hunks, Fewer Gay People
I loved the first two seasons of The Crown: the inner workings of Buckingham Palace in the 1940s and 1950s, as young Queen Elizabeth gets her first taste of power. No references to gay people, no...
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The Worst TV Shows of All Time, #1-12
I just read a clickbait article about the 25 worst tv shows of all time, and it occurs to me that the writers probably didn't watch many episodes. They're going by reputation, or by sheer plot...
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The Worst TV Shows of All TIme, #13-25
I'm going through the clickbait list of the worst tv programs of all time, trying to dispute the idea that they were somehow worse than everything else on tv. The plotlines may not have been...
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Hogan's Heroes: The Wackiest POW Camp in Germany
Our older brothers and fathers were in Vietnam, where casualties were mounting every day, but at home we watched wacky soldiers: McHale's Navy, No Time for Sergeants, F-Troop, Gomer Pyle USMC, The...
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Razzle Dazzle:1970s Variety Shows
When I was a kid, I hated variety shows like Carol Burnett. even though the dancers wore tight pants. So I tried my best to avoid the several thousand comedy-variety hours that populated the late...
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"A Knight before Christmas": Time-Traveling Christmas Rom-Com
I'm not in the habit of watching Christmas movies, especially those with dumb pun titles like A Knight Before Christmas (2019). But I couldn't resist nitpicking. Sir Cole (Josh Whitehouse) is zapped...
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The 3 1/2 Gay Couples of "Jaws 2"
The summer of 1978: I was 17 years old, a new high school graduate working at the Carousel Snack Bar at the mall and getting ready for college. I had just figured "it" out, but I hadn't yet met any...
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The 10 Most Depressing Christmas Songs
November is my favorite month. The air is brisk and cool but not too cold for jogging, it gets dark at a normal hour, tv and the theater are going strong. Even though there's my birthday and...
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Moonlight: Gay Autistic Kid and Gay-Friendly Drug Dealer
I've seen Moonlight, the 2016 multiple Oscar winner about a gay black man. I didn't like it. It mostly involved people staring at each other, and it strained incredulity every step of the way.There...
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10 Reasons Why Thanksgiving is the Gayest Holiday
If you're not from the U.S. you might not be familiar with Thanksgiving, a holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November (it's also celebrated on different dates in Canada, Liberia, and...
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Riverdale, Season 4: More Over-the-Top, More Hunks
I didn't think there were any more sharks for Riverdale to jump over, after 3 seasons of serial killers, gangs, drugs, cults, organized crime, and weird mash-ups of all of the above. But in Season 4,...
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"Merry Happy Something": Watch it with the Family Bigot
Spending Christmas with The Relatives on the other side of the world is always stressful: stuck in a house for two weeks with no exercise unless it's nice enough to jog outside, forced to...
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Peter Barton's Powers
When I met Peter Barton, he was guest starring in some tv shows, doing live theater, and calling his agent every day, trying to transition to a macho 1980s leading man. But just a few years before, he...
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"Mortel": Gay-Tease Teenagers Fight Voodoo Gods in Paris
When I searched online for Nemo Schiffman, this photo came up, with the byline "Melanie Thierry et Raphael, fin de partie."I don't know who those people are, but obviously neither one is Nemo...
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The Explosive Generation: Billy Gray in Love
In spite of the beefcake on the posters and lobby cards, The Explosive Generation (1961) doesn't offer many swimsuit, underwear, or locker room scenes, though there are lots of clean-cut 1950s teens in...
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The Mystery of Lee Kinsolving Solved
You asked about the hunk on the left in this publicity shot from The Explosive Generation (1961).Short answer: He's high school student Dan Carlyle (Lee Kinsolving), helping classmate Bobby Herman...
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"Dead Kids": Gay Friendly Outsider Kids Plan a Caper
No kid actually dies in Dead Kids (2019): it's a Filipino slang term for outsiders, aliens, the kids who sit by themselves in the cafeteria and never get invited to parties. The central character is...
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15 Reasons to Skip Christmas
I'm not a big fan of Christmas. I dread seeing the first Christmas ads of the year, in August or September. The decorations going up in stores in October. And the day after Thanksgiving, when the...
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John Hamill: The First Nude Physique Model
Born in 1947, the boyish, good-natured John Hamill began his career as a physique model, one of the first to pose fully nude. Sometimes he even had a partner, in explicitly homoerotic scenes aimed at...
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