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Inclusivity Alert: Gay References on "The Middle"!
In a jaw-dropping development, The Middle, the most aggressively heterosexist tv program since Fringe, featured not one but two gay references in Wednesday night's episode.In case you haven't noticed,...
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Summer 1986: The Cowboy of Kangaroo Island
In West Hollywood, relationships happened fast. After three dates, or hookup plus two dates, you were officially a couple, listed in address books together, invited to parties together, off-limits for...
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Are You a Top or a Bottom?
People are always asking if you're a fan of masculine backsides or frontsides.Backsides have their allure. Glutes are pleasantly shapely, and hamstrings and calves have an appeal. Besides, you can...
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Summer 1985: Marcus's Beneath-the-Belt Mystery
Even in a gay community as big as West Hollywood, the new kid in town always gets noticed.I arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 3rd, 1985. Before July 10th, when I started my new job at Muscle...
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Aubrey Beardsley: Closeting the Phallic Artist
When I was in college, gay people were never, ever mentioned in class. Professors refused to assign the works of gay authors, artists, and musicians, or if that was impossible, tried their best to...
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The Collegians: Muscle and Gay Symbolism of the Silent Movie Era
The Silent Movie Blog has an interesting post on The Collegians, a series of silent movie shorts (1926-1929) directed by Wesley Ruggles, about buddy-competitors at Calford College, Ed Benson (George...
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The Boys of Lassie 1: Jon Provost
As a kid, I liked Flipper and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, but I wouldn't be caught dead watching Lassie (1954-73). The soppily sentimental theme song, the collie's maudlin whines, the heart-tugging...
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My Top 10 Reader Suggestions
I always write about my real memories, but in order to change incidents into stories, I leave things out, switch things around, make up conversations, change details. So what you read isn't exactly...
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The Boys of Lassie 2: Tommy Rettig
A major child star of the 1950s era, Tommy Rettig appeared alongside some of the greats of cinema, including Jimmy Stuart (Jackpot), Mickey Rooney (The Strip), Eve Arden (The Lady Wants Mink), Marilyn...
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The First Gay Couple on Children's TV
Children's cartoons are a vast wasteland, not only erasing gay people from the world, but erasing any hint of family structures other than heterosexual husband-wife-and-kids. Think of Fairly...
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Spring 2000: Cruised by a Man in Black
I can't write this story while alone in the house. I have to wait for Jeremy to get home. It freaks me out.When I was living in Manhattan, I always got off at the Christopher Street Station, even...
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The Homophobic Gay Ally of "The War at Home"
All in the Family hit the heights of television glory in the 1970s with bigot Archie Bunker. He hated blacks, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, Poles, women's libbers, gays, and just about everyone else,...
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Michael Moorcock: Bisexual Decadence at the End of Time
Michael Moorcock was a leader in the British "new wave" of science fiction, confusing mishmashes of sci fi, fantasy, and James Joyce.. I liked the beefcake covers, and his name was...um, appealing....
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The Slave Boy of Castro Street
The Castro may have been Gay Heaven, but the rest of San Francisco was not. You might see an occasional hand-holding gay couple or rainbow flag, but mostly you were deluged by heterosexual...
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Jerry Lewis Falls in Love
In 2007, aging comedian Jerry Lewis called someone a "fag" during his telethon, and apologized the next day for his "bad choice of words." In 2008, he referred to cricket as a "f-- game" during an...
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Which Has More Beefcake: "Fringe" or "How I Met Your Mother"?
I was finding a lot of beefcake among the guest stars and "security guard #1" roles of Fringe, but I began wondering: was Fringe unique -- a casting agent with an eye for male beauty -- or was every tv...
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Bob's Burgers: The Most Gay-Positive Sitcom on TV
Since 2011, Bob's Burgers has been airing on Sunday night, in the company of Family Guy and American Dad. But it is quite different from those programs.1. The father and mother in the nuclear family...
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Spring 1996: The Leatherman Who Never Left South of Market
South of Market was a San Francisco neighborhood of warehouses, factories, car repair places, tattoo parlors, dive bars, drug deals, graffiti, and general decay. And Mickey, a tall, buffed leatherman...
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The Gay Boy of "Soup to Nutz"
Soup to Nutz (2000-) is a newspaper comic strip about a working-class Roman Catholic family, with a truculent, clueless Dad, a faux-cheery Mom, dopey older son Royboy, and self-possessed daughter Babs....
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Hi, Guy!: Cruising in a 1970s TV Commercial
Between 1969 and 1972, and then again in 1978, Right Guard deodorant aired a series of commercials in which an unsuspecting apartment dweller (Bill Fiore) opens his medicine chest, only to discover...
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