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"Crazy Lovely Cool": Beefcake and Bonding at a Prestigious Nigerian University
Nigeria is one of the least gay-friendly countries in the world, but I still wanted to check out the Nollywood teen drama Crazy, Lovely, Cool (in spite of the silly title). It's a "coming of age...
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Everybody's Talking about Jamie: A 16-Year Old Aspires to Drag Stardom
Bob always chooses the movie for Friday Movie Night, and it's almost always post-apocalyptic, garbled sci-fi, or Marvel Comics Universe. But last night, he chose a musical: Everybody's Talking About...
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"Soul": Almost a Gay Subtext in the Afterlife
In the Disney-Pixar animated Soul (2020), Jamie Foxx plays Joe Gardner, a middle school band teacher who dreams of making it big as a jazz pianist. On the day of his big audition, he falls into an...
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Looking for the Beefcake in All of the 2020-2021 Movies Entitled "The...
The Inheritance (2021), on Amazon Prime: A woman inherits a house in Europe where strange things happen. She has a husband with her -- nice body! I don't want to see the movie -- sounds derivative...
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What's Wrong with the Word "Homosexual"?
Some people who comment on this blog actually use the term "homosexual." I delete their comments. The word makes my ears hurt. I will not permit it to be said in my classrooms. I never use it in my...
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A Gay Spider-Man in a Video-Game?
This picture seems to depict Spiderman on the subway looking at his cell phone, while his seatmate leans his head on his shoulder. A romantic gesture. Are we seeing a gay Spiderman and his...
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Pen15: My Middle School was Not Nearly as Sex-Obsessed. Or Homophobic
Nostalgia tv is usually set about 20 years ago, when the producers were kids: Happy Days in the 1950s, That 70s Show in the...um, 1970s, The Goldlbergs in the 1980s. Today's nostalgia is Pen15, on...
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The Omen
The gay romance in The Omen (1976) begins in the first scene, when paparazzo Keith Jennings (David Warner) waxes indignant at the excess with which Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck), celebrates the birthday...
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"Black as Night": Black Vampires in New Orleans, with a Doomed Gay BFF
Black as Night: a teenage girl "driven by revenge" fights inner-city vampires. I hate it when a movie title tells you nothing about the movie itself, but over 90% of movie trailers feature...
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"Midnight Mass": No Beefcake, No Bonding, Pentecostal Catholics, and Dead...
I stopped watching Mike Flanigan's The Haunting of Bly Manor at the scene with the dead kitten -- I was too busy rushing to the bathroom to continue. How could anyone associated with the film...
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"Blood and Water": Two Guys Kissing in Cape Town
The teaser for Season 2 of Blood and Water, a Netflix series about an elite private school in Cape Town, South Africa, depicts two cute shirtless guys awkwardly talking to Mom and Dad. Could they be...
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"La Brea": As Many Plot Holes as "Lost," But Not as Much Beefcake
I've been dying to watch the first episode of La Brea, the new tv series on Hulu: according to the horrendous reviews, a "cliched, amateurish, inept rip-off of Lost" with "a cliche gay couple." 11%...
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Monsterland: More Heterosexuals Than Monsters
Monsterland is an anthology series based on the book North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrad. about "ordinary people" having encounters with supernatural beings like mermaids and...
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"Band of Robbers": Modern Day Tom and Huck with a Gay Subtext, Sort Of
Scalawag Tom Sawyer and social commentator Huck Finn have been pushed into adulthood several times, most notably by Mark Twain himself (in Tom Sawyer, Detective). But I'm not familiar with anyone who...
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Allan Kayser: the Bodybuilder of Mama's Family
During the 1970s, a series of sketches on The Carol Burnett Show featured the young Vicki Lawrence in old-lady drag as the abrasive matriarch of a dysfunctional Southern family. In 1983 she spun off...
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"There's Somebody Inside Your House": Derivative Horror with LGBTQ+ Characters
There's Someone Inside Your House (2021) sounds like that old campfire story: "The calls are coming from inside the house!" But the plot description is aboit someone revealing all of the high...
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"Pretty Smart": Pretty Stupid
Any program with this opening scene is going to get my attention. Unfortunately, it failed to keep my attention.The program is Pretty Smart on Netflix, about Harvard grad student/aspiring novelist...
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"The Kids Are Alright": None are Gay, But Some Have Physiques
"The Kids are Alright" is a 1966 song by The Who, about a guy who is leaving his girlfriend in the care of his friends because "Sometimes I feel I gotta get away, and I know if I don't, I'll go out of...
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"Books of Blood": Not Much Clive Barker, A Lot of Beefcake
Any movie trailer that starts like this is bound to get my attention, even if the naked guy is caressed by a woman before collapsing amid threatening graffiti in his cell. Besides, it's Books of...
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Charlie Brown, Linus, and Gay-Coded Peanuts
I didn't read Charles Schulz's Peanuts in the newspaper; our Rock Island Argus offered only a cheap imitation called Winthrop. My knowledge of Peanuts came through Fawcett paperbacks acquired at...
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