Rainer Dawn: Was his kiss with Harlan real? Is Aidan his boyfriend? Is that really his d*ck? And three more questions

When I was researching Nickelodeon teencom star Robert Ri'chard, this photo of someone named Rainer Dawn (not Rainier) appeared.  Never heard of him, but he must have been on Nickelodeon at some point, and his Instagram features a lot of pictures with his boyfriend, Aidan, in formal wear, visiting Italy, having a romantic moment on their boat, and so on.  

An actor, gay, with abs.  That's enough for me.

Rainer and his partner have the same last name -- they must have chosen "Dawn" when they married.  Which will prove a problem for research, since most of their acting will be under their previous names.     

But I'm up to the task.

I have six questions.

Question 1: Is Rainer Dawn a Yale grad?

Here Rainer, wearing a Yale jacket and giving his husband his leg, is promoting  or about to see The Game, presented by the Yale Sigma Nu fraternity in 2023.  He must be a Yale man.

Time for a Google search. 

He is from Santa Cruz, he does runway and fashion modeling, and when he was 15, he sailed through Indonesia in his uncle's catamaran.  

So Dawn is his birth name.  The boyfriend must have adopted it when they married.

Rainer graduated from Santa Monica College in 2022 with an Associate's Degree in Economics. One doesn't usually transfer from a community college to the Ivy League.

Answer: Probably not

Question 2: Did Rainer star in a teencom on Nickelodeon?

No Nickelodeon.  Only two acting credits are listed on the IMDB: 

Noah in The Wrong Blind Date (2022), one of those "The Wrong ___"  damsel in distress movies directed by David DeCoteau.  Noah dated focus character Laura in high school, and now gets targeted by the "blind date" trying to kill off the competition.

Cody in five episodes of Wolf Pack (2023), a one-season teenage werewolf series on Paramount Plus starring Rodrigo Santino (left).  According to the blurb: "A teenage boy and girl get their lives changed forever when a California wildfire awakens a terrifying supernatural creature."

Answer: No.

Question 3: Was his kiss with Harlan real?

The fan wiki entry for Cody has him seeing main character Harlan (Tyler Lawrence Gray) at the gym, selling him drugs later, and then flirting with him at a party, causing another guy to get jealous and ask if he likes boys or girls.  Cody replies that he "doesn't like labels," which means that he's gay but doesn't want to come out.

But fans describe them starting a relationship, and the kiss as "perfect."  

Answer: Real

 

Question 4: Is Aidan his boyfriend?

Here's where it gets tricky.  There are so many photos of Rainer and Aidan acting like romantic partners, and they have the same last name.  Surely they're married.

But a post on X reveals a rumor that Rainer is dating Olivia Rodrigo, the singer/songwriter who got her start on Disney Channel teencoms, Bizaardvark and High School Musical: the Musical: The Series.  She has released 8 multi-platinum songs.  I never heard of her, but then, I don't follow popular music.

Left: Ethan Wacker, Olivia's costar in Bizaardvark

More after the break

"Deli Boys": Pakistani-American brothers learn a secret about their Dad. With a lot of gay characters and some bonus Pakistani d*cks

 

This is just to get your attention.

Deli Boys (2025), a new comedy on Hulu, features two Pakistani-American brothers, studious, hardworking Mir (Asif Ali, left) and irresponsible cokehead Raj (Saagar Shaikh), who find out a secret about their father's business activities after his death.  

I doubt that a tv series written by and starring Pakistani-American guys will have any gay characters, but there's bound to be some beefcake.

Scene 1: I was right.  The brothers chase a guy in his underwear, with a bag over his head, and a bulge in his shorts, out of the deli.

Three days earlier: Baba Dar records a commercial for his investors.  He came to American in 1979 with three dollars in his pocket; he worked at a deli, and lived above the store with nine other guys, with six shirts between us  (we see a photo; four of the guys are indeed shirtless).  Today DarCo owns 40 delis around the Philadelphia area, plus Caca brand Achar (a Pakistani relish).  Next he wants to buy some golf courses.

Scene 2: Cokehead Raj in bed with the Shaman Prairie (yes, that's her name) and a clump of around ten people, mostly women but two other guys.   I'm going to guess that he is straight but curved around the edges. 

 They get up and smoke hashish, and then she applies leaches to his back, a sort of New Age thing.

Meanwhile, Drexel Grad Mir tells his father that he learned a lot about business from him, even more than at Drexel University (which he is very proud of), so he's ready for the top spot in the organization. The Girlfriend comes in and tells him that he's ready to give the speech to his father.  

Next he works out, straining with a triceps pushdown.  

Trainer: "I haven't even put the pin in yet."  Dude is weak, har har. 

The Trainer is played by Calvin Thomas (not the queer theorist, the model).

Scene 3: The guys head to the golf course.  They are arguing over who deserves to become president of DarCo when Dad Baba retires.  He shows up to play golf. 

He is upbraiding them for being immature when a golf ball hits him in the head!  He drops dead.  His Caddy, Matthew, screams

Scene 4: As the brothers put a sheet over their dead Dad, Lucky Auntie bursts in.  She was Dad's business partner for thirty years. 

They ask, "Are you going to take care of us now?"  An odd question for grown men in their 30s, but she agrees.

On to the funeral.  The brothers can't do the Muslim prayers right, embarrassing everyone.  

The Caddy ends with "Amen!", har har, and bursts into tears.  Was he, like, Dad's boyfriend?

At the reception afterwards, Ahmad Uncle (Brian George) and Lucky Auntie spar with each other.  Each thinks that the other is out to undermine them and seize control of the company.

I recall Brian George as Babu on Seinfeld, the one with the gigantic waggling finger, but he has 325 acting credits listed on the IMDB. 

Scene 5: While each brother is petitioning to the DarCo board about why each should be named CEO, the feds raid and start making arrests.  They were investigating Dad for fraud, inside trading, tax evasion, and so on, but he had powerful friends.  Now that he is dead, they are able to act.  Lucky Auntie is led off in handcuffs.

More after the break

Reacher, Episode 2.6: Is Reacher homophobic? With a Ritchson p enis, a Bertchtold butt, and my new favorite catchphrase

In Season 3 of Reacher, the iterant do-gooder (Alan Ritchson, below) mentors shy, troubled college student Richard Beck (Johnny Berchtold).  Richard has a lot of queer codes, such as lack of expressed heterosexual interest and a preference for lavender.  When he stands in Reacher's bedroom doorway after a crisis and asks "Are you ok?", I expected them to hug...or maybe kiss.

I wanted to know if he is canonically gay, so I did a Google search.

Nothing came up about Richard, but some Reddit discussion board posts complained that Reacher was homophobic because he roughed up a gay guy during Season 2.  

Reacher often expresses a disdain for actions, interests, and behaviors that fail to meet alpha-male hegemonic masculinity ("Help you with your flower arrangement?  Nope, nope, I'm teaching you to box"), so I could see him being homophobic.  Let's check out the scene.

It's Episode 2.6, "New York's Finest."

The Story So Far:  A member of Reacher's former military investigation team is murdered, and the whole team may be in danger, so the Man-Mountain and his buddies investigate, from Atlantic City to New York to Denver and back, as the players become more and more powerful.  There are corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, enemies that turn out to be friends, and friends who turn out to be enemies. 

When two hitmen target Reacher and his buds, they kill one and interrogate the other.  He was hired by Swan (Shannon Kook, left), assistant head of security at the defense company New Age (dumb name, innit?).  

They go to the New Age company to ask about Swan.  Director of Operations Marlo arranges a meeting at a warehouse, but when they arrive, it explodes!  She set them up! 

I don't know who plays the hitman, but it could be Kyle Mac, seen here tied up next to Craig Henderson on Hemlock Grove (2013)

In Episode 2.6, the team will look for Marlo, who has gone into hiding.

Opening Ad: Why you should join the army, har har.

Scene 1:  Reacher's team consists ofL

1. Francis Neaghley, his former partner (a woman)

2. The Hacker, a young woman.

3. David O'Donnell (Sean Sipos, below), below, a lawyer and heterosexual "family man."

They find Marlo and her teenage daughter on the security cam of a convenience store run by a sleazy, hetero-horny clerk.  Noting that the daughter is a gamer, the Hacker suggests tracking her down through her gamer tag.  First they have to wait until she begins playing. 

Scene 2: While they are waiting, Reacher has sex with team member Francis.

More after the break.

Big Boys: A gay university freshman tries to make friends, get laid, and find his tribe. With a lot of Dylan d*cks

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Gavin MacIntosh: Gay middle schooler, bullying brother, scary sleazoid. With Gavin's goods and a hung Hayden.

 I was asked to profile Gavin MacIntosh.   Never heard of him, but he's got some nice lats, so I'm willing to do the research.

Problem: there six photo collections of Gavin Munn and his friends and relatives, so another Gavin will play havoc in the Actors A-L Index.  

Maybe if I call him Mac.

Instagram first: photos of Mac riding a motorcycle, in Athens and Hong Kong, a lot of muscle selfies.

Are those bodybuilder photos for inspiration or aesthetic enjoyment?

For inspiration, probably.  He has a lot of photos with a girl: dude is straight.

Is he a little too young for a profile, or does he just have that sort of face?

IMDB next: 

Gavin is an actor and Ford model (so he posed on top of cars?), born in Tucson in 1999.

  His role as Connor on The Fosters (2013-16) brought him "world wide social media attention, both for his acting accolades as well as for his social stance on equality."

So who is Connor to get world wide social media attention?

Fan Wiki next:

Connor appears in 25 episodes, from 2013 to 2016.  He starts off as a middle school student, the only one in the whole school who doesn't bully Jude (Hayden Byerly) for being a foster.  Eventually the two start a relationship, in spite of his homophobic father.

Their kiss got worldwide media attention because they were so young.

Due the difficulties of living with a homophobic father (and to bring the gay storyline to an end), Connor moves to Los Angeles to live with his mother, and the two break up. 

Jude stayed on for two more seasons.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Gemstones Episode 3.2: Kelvin's butt buddies, gay Percy, two toxic families, and some military dicks

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Gemstones Episode 3.1 Continued: Kelvin withholds sex, Judy cheats, and Jesse fights, with some random butts

Previous: Episode 3.1:  Kelvin collect cocks, the Simpkins smirk, and Dusty flirts.  With a Brazilian boner bonus

Left: Alessandro Borghi.

The Book Signing: Eli is at a bookstore, signing copies of his "definitive autobiography" -- his third. Did you mention having a gay son?  Suddenly May-May, who attacked his wife Aimee-Leigh back in 2000, hands him one of his earlier books: Y2K: When the World Goes Dark. 

In 1999. many claimsmakers worried that computers were only set up for the 1900s, so on January 1, 2000, they would all reset. Bank accounts would empty; airplanes would fall from the sky; the world would descend into chaos. Some evangelists, like Eli Gemstone, made money by connecting the Y2K bug with end-time prophecies.

Eli is not happy to see his May-May -- he has a restraining order against her.  But she needs his help.  Wait -- you storm in and throw his old book at him to ask for help?  

Later, Eli records the section of his autobiography about Y2K: when the world didn't end, he and Aimee-Leigh had to face anger and ridicule. 

Marital Squabbles: A commercial: after a montage of heterosexual couples arguing and then being deliriously happy, Amber introduces her System (stupid name): for $500, you get a jar and some beads.  Or go to Wal-Mart and buy the set-up for $10. 

She doesn't explain how to use them, just "if your marriage is important to you," you need the System. 

Cut to some marital problems. First, Judy's husband BJ is at the Gemstone Welcome Center, talking to a group of potential church members about how to get their tithes automatically deducted from their bank accounts. Judy, feeling guilty about withholding sex, brings him some gifts and tells him what a great husband he is, BJ thinks that things are a little off in their marriage, but Judy gaslights him: "Things are fine. Why are you being weird?"  Check out his hot-pink ruffled outfit, part of the ongoing joke that couple is gender-transgressive, with Judy as the masculine partner, and BJ the feminine.

Next,  Jesse drops Kelvin and Keefe's house. Keefe is melting down some weird phallic objects on the grill in the back yard.  When he asks what they are burning, Kelvin, morosely lying on the diving board of the pool, responds "Devils' objects."

Why is he morose?  The last we saw of him was at Dusty Daniels' racetrack. But this scene is coming directly after the Judy/BJ marital problem scene, and since the two relationships usually appear in tandum, we have to conclude that we just missed a "Things are fine.  Why are you being so weird?" conversation. 

There is a nude woman on the urn pedestal next to them.  Apparently Kelvin and Keefe are too closeted for back yard sculptures with nude men.

Keefe is wearing a BDSM fetish outfit: several chokers, a slave collar with padlock, a vinyl top with built-in pecs and abs, and vinyl pants (I think). This again suggests that something has gone wrong. He wanted "cuddling," but Kelvin refused, ordering him to burn some sex toys instead -- destroy some penises?   

Notice that while Kelvin and Jesse are discussing their anxiety over leading the church, Keefe grabs a toy to use for anal sex from the pile, tries to hide it, and brings it into the house.  

Aha!  Kelvin is specifically refusing to take the passive role in anal sex.  The random butts in the illustrations demonstrate Keefe's main erotic interest.

Many gay men consider oral  and other non-insertive acts trivial, used for recreation or to alleviate sexual tension.  Even a straight guy will go down on a buddy to "help him out." But anal is "real sex," "going all the way."  Kelvin is refusing "real sex." Why?

Left: Connor MacGregor

We cut to the reason Judy has been withholding sex with BJ: she is having an affair with her guitarist, Stephen (Stephen Schneider, below).  

Trigger alert: they engage in a quasi-sexual act to disgusting to describe here.  

Since the couples' stories are usually parallel, viewers may conclude that Kelvin, too, is having an affair.  Actually, he is not -- yet.  Then why is he withholding sex? 

Unless you are asexual and work something out, romantic partners must balance eros and phileo.  Eros, sexual desire, leads to that intimacy, intensity, and passion that keeps the couple focused on each other. Phileo, friendship, keeps the couple focused on the outside world, leading to discussions of art, music, or sports, placing them in a friendship group, a family, and a society.

Last season Kelvin tried to eliminating the phileo, being all about sex. Every word, every image evoked the homoerotic. His physique, butt, and bulge were constantly on display, presenting him as the Messiah of Muscle, leading his followers to a paradise of masculine beauty. Until it didn't work: you can't build a society, or a romantic relationship, on sex alone.

This season he seems to be eliminating the eros, withholding sex, or maybe permitting "fooling around" only -- no smut, no lust, no coconuts.  We see no pecs, no butt, no bulge this season -- not until Episode 3.8, when he realizes that this won't work, either.  The problem is, a romance without physical intimacy looks and feels very much like a platonic friendship, until eventually you wonder if you are really in love at all.

More Stephen after the break

Knox Gibson: Australian swimmer, model, "Hunger Games" baddie, disability advocate. With some n*de co-stars and random twinks

As of this writing Knox Gibson. aka Captain Knoxie,  is 17 years old,  so I won't be searching for n*de photos. But he's not shy about showing off his physique.

And I have some n*de photos of his co-stars, like Clemons Schick (left), and some random Australian twinks (after the break).

Knox grew up in Orange, NSW, a small town about 250 km (150 miles) from Sydney.  His first love is swimming: he was selected for the Australian Age National Championships four times, and placed for the breast stroke  (2021, 2024) and the individual medley (2023). 

He also swims for his high school, St. Stanislaus College in Bathhurst. In 2024, he represented NSW in the all-Australia School Sport Games, and won the silver medal in the breast stroke.

Knox's second love is modeling, both fashion and runway. 

In  2020, he wore Tommy Hilfinger for New York's Fashion Week.  

In 2023, the Bonds company did a "As Worn By Us" campaign, showing Australians of every age wearing their clothes.  Knox appeared as  "Age 16."

Knox moved into acting with episodes of the Australian children's shows Teddies and Creature Mania (2017). 

 Three episodes of Lap of Honor followed (2018), then starring roles in the shorts Midnight Gun (2019), about a journalist and "masked hero" tracking down kidnapped children, and Forgive Us Our Trespasses (2022), about a boy in Nazi Germany, where people with disabilities are murdered, running for his life.

He has also starred in two music videos, "Handyman" by Triple One (2020) and "The Road," by the Zela Margossian Quintet (2022), and commercials for Kmart, NSW Transport, and Breeze Singapore

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Gemstones Episode 3.1: Kelvin collects cocks, the Simpkins smirk, and Dusty Daniels flirts. With a Brazilian beefcake bonus.

Previous: Season 2 Finale: The Godfather, Butch and Sundance, random nude dudes, and "My love for you will never die"

The Season 2 finale of The Righteous Gemstones  aired in February 2022.  Season 3 premieres in June 2023, sixteen months later, but the timeline in the Gemstone universe doesn't fit.  Plus personalities and back stories are different.  As with Season 2, it will be more profitable -- and more fun -- to enter fresh, pretending that we have never seen or heard of these people before.

Title: "For I Know the Plans I Have for You."  Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." I hope so, because word on the street is that this season gets very dark.

Rogers County Fair, 2000:  The teenage Jesse Gemstone is announcing a demolition derby featuring his monster truck, the Redeemer, while his parents, megachurch pastor Eli Gemstone and his wife Aimee-Leigh, argue: the Redeemer is putting butts in seats, but is this really appropriate for a Christian ministry?   What are we going to do next, sell beer?  At that moment, a muscle hunk comes by selling beer!

Eli and Aimee-Leigh's three kids look very young, but according to the fan wiki, Jesse is 19, Judy is 15, and Kelvin is 9 or 10.

While Aimee-Leigh is off smoking a cigarette, May-May, a shabbily-dressed middle-aged woman, approaches, furious: "You pretend to be all sweet and caring, but I know the truth -- what you done to my family."  She attacks; Aimee-Leigh runs through the crowd, screaming for help, but May-May catches up and hits her with a wrench. As she lies bleeding on the ground, a car hits -- May-May! 

Eli Retires: Present day. Time to introduce the main conflicts of the season.  First up: the now-elderly Eli is hanging out with his Mason-like Cape and Pistol Society. They ask how he's enjoying his retirement.  Actually, he's only semi-retired: he's writing another autobiography and taking speaking engagements, but his kids are running the church. Gulp!  His friend: "You scared your kids are gonna blow it?"  

Cut to Zion's Landing, the Gemstones' Christian-themed resort. The 42-year old Jesse and his crew confront Eli's driver.  In joke: his name is Walker!  He squealed to the press about the dwindling membership and donations since the kids took over, so they beat him up and fire him. Pretending to have never seen these characters before, I am shocked.  Christian ministers are often shady and hypocritical, but violent? What if someone sees?

A Cold Fish Kiss: Eli's second child, Judy, is now a famous singer.  She has just returned from a tour, and her husband BJ wants to snuggle, but she yells at him for pressuring her, gives him a "cold fish kiss," and runs out again.  Uh-oh, marital trouble.

Smut Busters: The primary conflict, judging from the amount of air time it gets: someone named Keefe is showing the youngest son, 32 or 33 -year old Kelvin, a giant novelty dildio.  He exclaims with glee, "That is gonna hurt!"  So he's abottom, and Keefe is his boyfriend, showing him their new toy.

We pan out to see kids examining a pile of s ex toys, mostly dildos and butt plugs of various sizes and shapes, intended for gay men.  Notice the "Size Queen" dildo. 

Psych!  Kelvin and Keefe are actually youth ministers, running an anti-sex toy project.  I guess: notice the t-shirts, with the name "Smut Busters" over a splatter of...jizz?   They buy out the inventory of local adult stores, to force them into bankruptcy.  Wait -- anyone know basic economics?  

The youth group kids, also in Smut Busters t-shirts, are just examining the latest haul.  Do they take the kids to the adult stores?  They wouldn't be allowed inside.  Besides,  "exposing children to sex" is a misdemeanor.  

They ask the kids and adult volunteer Taryn to join them in the Smut Buster chant: "No smut (touch nipples),  no lust (feminine hip wiggle), no coconuts (hands to waist, grimace)." No one joins in.  

After extensive research, I conclude that "coconuts" doesn't have a symbolic meaning, except maybe to evoke testicles.  It was chosen for  its near-rhyme. The chant reflects the playground phrase "no butts, no cuts, no coconuts" (no cutting in line), and its variation, "No ifs, no buts, no coconuts" (no disagreeing).

Left: coconuts

Pretending to have never seen these characters before,  I conclude that they are a gay couple: notice how Kelvin plays with Keefe's nipple, an intimacy that platonic pals would not enjoy, how Keefe gets all bitchy around Taryn, and how most of the sex toys they buy are for gay men.  They can't conceive of something used by straight men as erotic: "There's a naked lady on the box.  Keefe, I said sexy, not disgusting!" 

So the main conflicts of the season will involve the transition of power, marital problems, and coming out. 

The Primitive Tribe: At church, the siblings are bragging about their missionary trip, where they brought Lasik Surgery to an isolated tribe in the Amazon.  They are completely clueless; surgery to correct astigmatism must be the most trivial of the group's medical needs.  Plus the depiction of a "primitive tribe" veers uncomfortably close to racism.

Left: An Amazonian.

More after the break

Gemstones Season 2 Finale: The Godfather, Butch and Sundance, random nude dudes, and "My love for you wil never die"

 

Previous: Episode 2.9, Continued: A perfect Christian, the Lion King, naked twinks, and lovers in old photographs

The series finales on The Righteous Gemstones are meant to tie up any remaining loose ends and say goodbye to the characters, so we should expect little or no plot development, just a lot of hugging: everyone who has had lost, frayed, or troubled relationships during the season, lovers, friends, parents and children, siblings, will be reconciled.

Hold on tight to the one you love the most:  A blackened stage. Suddenly a spotlight on Jesse.  He begins the country-western song "Some Broken Hearts Never Mend," by Don Williams.  Then Kelvin, lying on a platform, raising a finger to Heaven.  Then Judy and the choir, as she walks up stage.  Then all three siblings together. 

 Coffee black, cigarettes. Start the day like all the rest. 

First thing every moning that I do, is start missing you.

Some broken hearts never mend.  Some memories never end.  

Some tears will never dry.  My love for you will never die. 

Except this song is not about lost love, it's about mended hearts.  You're supposed to look at or point to a loved one. Kelvin starts out by pointing at audience stage left, obviously at Keefe, who points to himself and then back. My love for you will never die,

BJ waves, presumably at Judy.  Cut to Amber and the kids; then Baby Billy, Tiffany, and the baby; he looks back at Harmon, his no-longer estranged son; and finally Eli looks out at the audience. 

In the middle of love's embrace: Flashback to the Alaska Commercial Company, a grocery store chain with 33 locations in Alaska, mostly in rural areas. The Lissons, in hiding after their murders and attempts, are buying -- coffee to go?  Martin has them under surveillance

Left: random nude dude

Back in church, Eli looks at the band as the siblings sing the second verse together.  Then Jesse and Kelvin, looking up to heaven.

 Rendezvous in the night.

In the middle of love's embrace, I see your face

Wait -- they see God while their partners Amber and Keefe are going downtown?  Makes sense.

Cut to the Lissons in their cabin, watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where the gay-subtext bank robbers, played by Robert Redford, top photo, and Paul Newman, left, are trapped, with no escape, so they go out shooting. 

 Some broken hearts never mend.  Some memories never end.

Some tears will never dry.  My love for you will never die.

The Cycle Ninjas:  Cycle Ninjas on glittering metallic snowmobiles zoom through the woods.  

Lyle looks out the window and yells "Get the guns!"

Back at the church, the siblings point at each other. Eli smiles. 

The First Chorus: The congregation rises to sing the chorus.

We see Chad and his wife, who have been having marital problems since Season 1; Martin and his often seen, never-named wife; Judy and BJ;  Junior and Tan Man, Baby Billy and Tiffany, Amber and the kids.  Then the siblings again.  Wait, I thought the Tan Man was just Junior's assistant.  Is there a gay relationship going on back in Memphis? 

In the flashback, the Lissons get out their guns and tell each other that God believes in them: "God will see us through, for we are the Chosen."  Where on Earth did Lyle get that idea?  

More broken hearts after the break