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"Happy Endings": I Was Happy When It Ended
Happy Endings, on Amazon Prime: When Alex and Dave break up, their friends (Max, Brad, Jane, Perry) have to choose sides.I assume that Alex is a girl with a boy's name, since this problem would never...
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"The Mess You Leave Behind": Nude Gay Teenagers and a Galician Mystery
The Mess You Leave Behind, on Netflix. I'm a sucker for Spanish language dramas, and this one is set in Galicia. Maybe we'll hear the Galician language spoken (quite different from Spanish, a lot of...
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David and Goliath: From King James Bible to Gay Men's Bedrooms
The Philistine warrior Goliath was BIG: nine feet nine inches (enough about the nine feet, let's hear about the six inches). His suit of armor weighted 125 pounds. He challenged King Saul and the...
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Jose Orozco:The Beefcake Murals of Mexico and New Hampshire
After the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), a number of artists tried to restore the Mexican national identity through muralismo, distilling their anxieties over modernism, industrialization, human...
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Tiny Toon Adventures
Everyone misunderstands Tiny Toon Adventures. They weren't kid versions of classic Warner Brothers characters -- Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and so on. They weren't the offspring of the classic Warner...
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Gulliver's Travels
When I was a kid in the 1960s, books were strictly divided into "boy" and "girl." Boys got tales of swashbuckling adventure: Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe. Girls got families and...
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Mixing Deathbeds and Magic Swords
I cannot understand movies about terminal illness. Who could possibly write such a thing, or agree to perform in it? Who on Earth could want to watch it? Maybe people who are suicidal. The...
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Time Travel Movies: Winning the Girl of Your Dreams with Science
I love time travel stories. Remember "Vintage Season": time traveling tourists visit some of history's greatest disasters. So why are they visiting this bucolic small town?Or "The Men Who Murdered...
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The 9 Worst TV Series Finales in History
If you watch every episode of a 100-episode sitcom, you've spend 2300 minutes or nearly 40 hours, not including reruns. That's the equivalent of 19 feature-length movies or 11 novels. A suzeable chunk...
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David Seville and the Chipmunks
When Wiliam Saroyan's play The Time of Your Life (1939) was first performed, Willie the Pinball Player was played by his 20-year old nephew, Ross Bagsadarian.But while the elder Saroyan specialized in...
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The "Saved by the Bell" Reboot: Racial DIversity, Queer Diversity, and...
Saved by the Bell (1989-93), about wealthy slacker students at Bayside High, was a big hit among kids and teens. Not so much in West Hollywood. Granted, teen operator Zack (Mark-Paul Goesselaer) and...
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Netflix in February: "After His Wife Died" and "Girl Walking in Slow Motion"...
If's February 1st. Christmas movies are finally over (for a few months). What's next, a plethora of Valentine's Day romcoms with gay best friends of the female lead? Let's take a look at Netflix's...
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Sunday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week
Back in West Hollywood, Sunday was my favorite day of the week. Morning service at the Metropolitan Community Church, brunch at the French Quarter (we called it brunch even though it started at about...
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Let's Get Physical
I heard Olivia Newton-John a lot during the 1970s. Her easy-listening, feelings-drenched songs appealed mostly to girls. "If Not for You" (1971) and "I Honestly Love You" (1974) didn't specify...
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Joe Weider: My Bodybuilder Boss
When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I landed a job as a "contributing editor" for Muscle and Fitness. It was actually a part-time job fact-checking and proofreading articles, but it looks good on...
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Yogi Bear and Boo Boo
A few years ago I published a scholarly article outlining the homodomestic relationship between Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. And Ruff and Reddy. And Spongebob and Patrick. People immediately started...
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Stan Brock: Man-Mountain, Adventurer, and Philanthropist
When I was a kid, we were in church ever Sunday from 9:30 to 12:00, and again from 6:30 to 9:00, with exceptions only during our annual family vacation or when we were sick. And don't try that "stomach...
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Kid Cosmic: Boy and Teenager Fight Aliens in the Worst Animation Since Adult...
Kid Cosmis ia a new Netflix animated series created by Craig McCraken, whose Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Chowder had plenty of gay subtexts. as well as an interesting animation style. So...
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"Ok, K.O.": Six Gay Characters in Search of a Subtext
OK KO, Let's Be Heroes! is a Cartoon Network series (2017-2019) set in a future world where there are many superheroes. K.O. is a young boy who hangs out at Lakewood Plaza where his mother works,...
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"Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn": Have You...
When I opened Netflix envelop to see what Bob had chosen for this week's Movie Night -- Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn , with an animated cover and the word...
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