Zach Galligan: The "Gremlins" guy ruined my childhood, sort of. Plus his dick, Michelangelo's David, and Bubba's bulge

The spring of 1984 was dark and dismal, endless days and weeks and months of trying and failing.  A degree in English and Modern Languages with professors who said "You can do anything you want. Go into advertising, or public relations, or book publishing."  A hundred resumes sent to advertising agencies, public relations firms, and publishing houses all over the country, with no answer or "no openings."  By the end of May, my friends had all gone home for the summer or graduated, so I walked the streets of Bloomington alone, looking up at the cross on the tower of a distant church and wondering if there was anything ahead but dead ends.

On the evening of June 15th, I saw Gremlins,  starring 20-year old Zach Galligan as a teenager who accidentally feeds his mogwai after midnight, thus turning it into a rampaging monster.

 The movie itself was of minimal interest. Zach may have had a buddy-bonding friendship with fellow mogwai enthusiast Corey Feldman on the way to winning the Girl of His Dreams.

It was Zach's jaw-dropping handsomeness that convinced me that there was some good left in the world, leading to a job in Texas and eventually to West Hollywood.

During the next years and decades, I didn't learn much more about Zach.  I never saw him in any other movie or tv show, except maybe a 1998 episode of Star Trek: Voyager, where I didn't recognize him.

There was an occasional photo or reference on one of the gay celebrity websites that we had back in the days of America Online and Myspace.  They revealed that: 

1. Zach was tied up in a lot of his movies.  This shot appeared over and over.  

And:

2. He was gay in real life.  I never questioned this.

A few days ago, I noticed a run on my earlier profile of Zach Galligan, so I started researching him for a new profile.   

First, n*de photos.  

A butt pic was easy.

A frontal, a little harder to find.  I don't think this is him.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Stephen Geoffreys: The quirky queer teen from "Fright Night" and "976-Evil" bulks up and becomes a gay porn star

If you've seen Heaven Help Us (1985), about boys in a Catholic boarding school (on HBO Max) or found screenshots online, then you've seen Stephen Geoffreys' d*ck and backside.  He's the short guy standing just to the right of the priest.

Also in the line up: Andrew McCarthy, Kevin Dillon, and Patrick Dempsey.

Stephen was born in Cincinnati in 1964, attended a performing arts high school and New York University, and made his mark as a theatrical actor.  In 1984, he was nominated for a Tony for his performance in The Human Comedy, based on the William Saroyan novel.  

Then he humped...I mean jumped into movies:

After Heaven Help Us, Fraternity Vacation (1985): Two frat brothers (Tim Robbins, Cameron Dye) take their nerdy pledge Wendell (Stephen) to Palm Springs, where they compete over a bikini babe.  It got lousy reviews, even for a teen sex comedy, but at least Stephen showed us his bulge.

Fright Night (1985): Evil Eddie (Stephen), sidekick to high schooler Charlie (William Ragsdale), is heavily queer-coded; as heavily as you could be in 1985.  The Vampire (Chris Sarandon) seduces him like a potential boyfriend. Then eats him.

Queer-coded guys in horror movies!  Stephen had found his niche!  

During the next few years, he played queer-coded guys in episodes of Amazing Stories and The Twilight Zone, and in 976-EVIL (1988), his second most famous movie.  

Unfortunately, in the 1980s, queer-coded usually meant evil.  He found himself playing a nasty prison inmate in The Chair (1988), a nasty drug dealer in Moon 44 (1990), where he didn't even get to kiss Brian Thompson, and a nasty rent boy in Wild Blade (1991), reviewed as "a painfully awful piece of sludge."  

But he had performed Shakespeare and William Saroyan!  At this point Stephen gave up.  

On Hollywood, that is.  

He had developed a muscular physique, so why not find his new niche in gay porn? First as Larry Bert, then as Sam Ritter, Stephen appeared in 29 pornos over the next decade.  

More after the break. Caution: Extremely explicit

Gemstones Episode 4.5, Continued: Kelvin crashes, the Monkey fumes, and we find out who is bigger, Adam Devine or Joey Stefano

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Ted Prior: Man-mountain hero of the macho 1980s, Chippendale dancer, Playgirl model. Any gay content?

 

N*de photos of this guy have been sitting in my "to profile" file since March, and since I have some free time today (and my pageviews are down by about 70%)," I'll give him a try.

His name is Ted Prior.  He was active primarily during the 1980s Reagan-Bush era  man-mountain craze, when Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and a dozen lesser lights -- Chuck Norris, Reb Brown, Steven Seagal, Michael Pare -- stormed into POW camps and drug lord lairs, got tortured while shirtless, single-handedly defeated entire armies, and won The Girl, thus demonstrating the "supremacy" of white heterosexual America.

Born in New Jersey in 1959 and raised in Baltimore, Ted originally planned to become a professional bodybuilder -- he states that he won Teenage Mr. Maryland and "ten other awards" before he turned 19.  He moved to Los Angeles, in fact, so he could train at Gold's Gym.

But he worked in theater, too, and once he hit L.A., a walk-on as a bodybuilder in an episode of The Incredible Hulk (1981) convinced him to try his hand at acting. His first starring roles were in  Sledgehammer (1983) and Killzone (1985), written and directed by his older brother David.

Most of Ted's work for the next twenty years would come from David's production company, Action International Pictures: Operation Warzone (1988), Jungle Assault (1989), The Final Sanction (1990), Raw Justice (1994).

Ted's most famous film, Deadly Prey (1987) is a sort of The Most Dangerous Game. People are being kidnapped and taken to a secret jungle enclave, where the evil Colonel Hogan (David Campbell) has his mercenaries hunt them down.  Vietnam Vet Mike (Ted) is grabbed while taking out the garbage, brought to the enclave, stripped, greased, gawked at, and forced to run naked through the jungle.  Uh-oh, they kidnapped the wrong guy.

He is shirtless throughout: a major draw of the film, as you can see from the VHS tape cover.

In November 2024, the Lyric Hyperion Theater in Silverlake, the second gay neighborhood in Los Angeles, held a "Deadly Prey" day, and promised Ted Prior "in the flesh," har har.

The only other Ted Prior movie that I reviewed was Lost at War (2007): five soldiers are trapped in a foxhole while mysterious creatures force them to re-live painful moments of their past.  It is heavy with gay subtexts.

During the 1980s, Ted worked as a Chippendale dancer.  This led to modeling gigs in the  October 1983 and March 1984 issues of Playgirl.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Glenn Scarpelli: the star of "One Day at a Time" and "Jennifer Slept Here" grows up, comes out, and gets a husband

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"Mid Century Modern," Episode 1.6: "Golden Girls" with gay guys. Plus Bomer's butt, Adam's cock, and Tommy's bj

In West Hollywood in the 1980s, every Saturday night at 9:00 pm, you could hear "Thank You For Being a Friend" coming from every apartment:

Thank you for being a friend

Traveled down a road and back again

Your heart is true

You're a pal and a confidant

as gay men sat down for a surcease from the AIDS crisis to  watch the adventures of The Golden Girls, four golden-aged ladies sharing a house in Miami.  Somehow they always ended up with cheesecake, and we did too.

Then they would head out to the Rage or Mugi or the Faultline, hoping to end up like Matt Bomer in the top photo.

180 Saturday nights with cheesecake, hookups, and Sophia's one-liners.  I'm misting up.

From left to right: Ditzy Minnesotan Rose, beset-upon Dorothy, horny Southern belle Blanche, and hanging back because the kitchen table only seats three, wisecracking Sophia.

Hulu has just dropped a 2025  homage to The Golden Girls, except it is set in Palm Springs rather than Miami, and it features gay men: ditzy Jerry (Matt Bomer), horny Arthur (Nathan Lee Graham), beset-upon Bunny (Nathan lane), and wisecracking Sybill (Linda Lavin).  Lavin died in December 2024, but she appears in all ten Season 1 episodes.

I'm going to review Episode 1.6, "Maid Serviced," in which the guys hire a "sexy but unqualified" housekeeper.  

Scene 1:  I watch with the sound off to avoid annoying laugh tracks, but I'm imagining "Thank You for Being a Friend" as we zoom into Bunny's mansion (Bunny?  what kind of name is that for a guy, regardless of how swishy he is?).   It's the kitchen where the Girls ate cheesecakes, but now it's Arthur and Bunny at the table, Jerry cooking.  Arthur complains about the leaky sink; Bunny, busily sorting his pills "by Jew," ugh, assures him that a plumber is working on it now, and Jerry says that he dated a plumber once, with no details or dirty double entendres.  Come on, Blanche, say something about your pipes!

The pill-sorting turns into a girl-group song: "He had it coming."   This is painful to watch.  Why is it that gay guys on tv act nothing like any gay guy I've ever met in real life?  

Scene 2: Jerry asks if it's ok to store his energy drinks in the fridge.  Arthur: "I can answer for her.  Miss Havisham wants everything arranged like it was when she still had hope."  Calling gay men she?  Come on, is it 1958?  

Left: Jerry's junk.

Mom enters and announces that the housekeeper quit.  She said she didn't sign up to clean for three men. "I told her, what three men ?  They're gay. Together they barely add up to one."  Being gay makes you a woman, I get it.   The Will and Grace gang used to say the same thing. 

Bunny wants to prove that it's the other guys' house, too, so he suggests that the three of them work together to hire a new housekeeper.  Mom: "What about me?  Did women lose the right to vote?"  Not right now, but by summertime, probably.

Scene 4: Interviewing an applicant who podcasts about her cleaning hacks.  "I'm obsessed with cleaning.  My friends say I'm a little anal." Jerry: "My friends say that, too."  He has gay sex, har har.

She demonstrates her trick for opening a jar.  "There's nothing too tight for me to open."  Looking at you for a dirty double entendre, Jerry.  Nope, Arthur says it.

"We're all impressed, and think you would be perfect..."  The next applicant, hunky Bo (Adam Hagenbuch), comes in..."Sorry, the job is filled."  I saw that joke coming a mile away.  Jerry, I said "coming."  Where's your dirty double entendre?

The complement him: "You're so handsome, you should have a one-man show, Bo on Broadway.  People would come to that.  I'd come every night."  There it is.

The interview: He's been in Palm Springs for two months.  He came with his boyfriend, but they've broken up, so he's single. 

Gay and single!  The guys squeal and shriek with absurd over-eagerness, as if they've never seen a hot guy before.  Come on, this is ridiculous.

They're ready to hire him, but he's confused.  "What about the push-ups?  In every other job interview, I have to do push-ups."  Naturally.

While they are watching with absurdly over-eager glee, Mom calls Bunny into the kitchen and warns, "Never hire someone that you want to schtup."  It's ok if you don't pressure them into it.  Bunny insists that he is the best qualified.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Who is Bradley Cooper, and why is he "ultra-famous"? With his gay/sort of bi characters , backside, and d*ck

 

Danny McBride promised an ultra-famous guest star for Righteous Gemstones Episode 4.1, the Civil War prequel, but kept him a super secret, so his appearance would be a shocking reveal.  I watched the entire episode, wondering who the ultra-famous guest star was.  

Turns out that it was....BRADLEY COOPER!!!!!

Who the heck is that? 

It's such a generic name, it could belong to anyone.

The main Bradley Cooper has  75 acting credits on the IMDB. I've seen six:

Wet Hot American Summer (2001), watched to review.  Bradley plays Ben,  a gay guy at the summer camp who gets a boyfriend.  His peers are horrified: "Ben is a fag!" But they give him a wedding present anyway.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Avengers: Infinity Game, and Avengers: Endgame, where he voices the the sentient raccoon character.  

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves, where he plays a loveable rogue.

No wonder I didn't recognize him, or his name.

You can't really blame me. Who'd want to see Alias (2001-06), about a lady spy with a  "you're arrogant!" bickering partner?

Or Bending All the Rules (2002), about a woman juggling two boyfriends, David Gail and Bradley?  Even though he shows us his backside.

Or The A-Team (2010), a remake of a 1980s tv show that I never saw.  Even though it shows us Bradley's impressive physique.

Or Wedding Crashers, He's Just Not Into You, The Hangover, or The Hangover II?  They sound like nontstop heteronormative sleaze fests.

I might have gone to see Valentine's Day (2010), if I knew there was a gay plotline in the ensemble: Holden (Bradley) dumps his boyfriend, pro football player Sean (Eric Dane) because he's closeted, but after his career is over, the guy comes out, so Holden takes him back.

More after the break, including some c*ocks

David Faustino: Bud on "Married with Children" is star-ving, humiliated, butt-nekkid, and a gay ally

 

Everybody in West Hollywood watched Married..with Children (1987-1997) for its savage skewering of the heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, kids.  Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill, later patriarch Jay of Modern Family) is working at a soul-destroying minimum-wage job and, although he likes women in general, hates having s*x with Peg (Katie Sagal, later Leela on Futurama), a housewife who never cooks or cleans (although the house is always spotless).  His daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate) is constantly lambasted for being a "slut," and his son Bud (David Faustino), for being a "virgin."

Gay people only appeared in one or two episodes, always with a "har-har, they're gay!  Isn't that ridiculous!" comedic edge.  

But at least they weren't sleazoid serial killers.

When David began to bulk up, the writers obliged by making him extremely attractive, but still unable to acquire girls due to his abrasive personality.

After Married, David played a gay character in Get Your Stuff (2000), about a gay couple wanting to adopt a baby as a fashion accessory, and instead getting preteen brothers.  According to the trailer, there are a lot of jokes about the dads accidentally getting n*ked and the boys trying to get with a hot older woman.

In Killer Bud (2001): two down-and-out buds (David, Corin Nemec) try to burglarize a convenience store.  My first Faustino profile said that he played a gay character, but I can't see it in the synopsis.

Inn Ten Attitudes (2001), he played "himself," not gay but on the gay dating circuit (for a sleazy reason).

In 2008 he was cast as the lead in The Gay Robot, a pilot for a tv series about...um, a gay robot.  The project was never filmed, but the script might have been tweaked into the movie Robodoc (2009)

David hasn't played any specifically-identified gay characters since, but he often introduces gay subtexts deliberately into his work.

A lot of his movies feature stoner buddies, often David and Corin Nemec: Pucked, High Hopes, Puff Puff Pass, The Hustle, Not another B Movie.

In his web series Star-Ving (2009), he plays"himself" as a has-been, starving actor whose only source of income is a sleazy video shop.  There are cameos from various actors with a sleazy reputation, including Seth Green, Coolio, Ron Jeremy, and Kato Kaelin. 

There is a again a deliberate gay subtext in his relationship with Nemec, and a lot of backside shots, mostly an attempt to humiliate David or demonstrate how "ugly" he is. 

Here he wakes up after a night of debauchery with Ron Jeremy and some ladies.

More after the break

Everybody Loves Greg: Vincent Martella grows up, plays Phineas, dates some guys. With some d*cks and Skyler Gisondo

 We've been watching Everybody Hates Chris (2005-2009) on Hulu: a nostalgia sitcom featuring the  childhood adventures of comedian Chris Rock, who provided the commentary.  In the 1980s, young Chris (Tyler James Williams) attended an all-white middle school, where everyone hated him, except his teacher, who pitied him for..stereotype of the week.  

He had a bully with an endless supply of racist terms (Travis Flory), a white best friend (Vincent Martella), and at home, Dad with about 35 jobs (Terry Crews), way overbearing Mom (Tichina Arnold), bratty little sister (Imani Hakim), and a little brother (Tequan Richmond), who was bigger, and far more attractive: everybody was in love with him, which was usually fine,but a problem around Valentine's Day, when the truckloads of cards, candy, and wedding proposals arrived. 

It was quite homophobic, even for the 2000s.  Chris Rock's commentary displayed revulsion and disgust whenever he could: "Hey, this ain't Brokeback!"  One episode featured Chris befriending a gay student, but they called him "androgynous."

Nearly 20 years later, the cast varies on their level of homophobia, from Terry Crewes and Tyler James Williams (ugh!).

To Tequan Richmond and Imani Hakim (allies)

 To Vincent Martella, seen here at a Clippers game with  Mikey Reid.

After Chris, he became the voice of Phineas in the animated Phineas and Ferb, which is endless: 140 episodes from 2007-2025, plus thousands of movies: Christmas Vacation, Across the Second Dimension, Mission Marvel....

Vincent has done some other animation work, like the video game Final Fantasy XIII, Batman: Death in the Family, and Disney Infinity

Left: Vincent and Mikey have fun during the COVID quarantine.

Vincent's live-action work includes Patrick in three episodes of The Walking Dead: he is a member of a zombie holocaust survivor community in an abandoned prison. Then he get sick, dies, zombifies, and creates a new zombie infestation.

I have a question about this Cupid costume.  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Poltergeist, the Gay Connection: Gay actors, skeletons, AIDS awareness, some dicks, and "They're he-ee-ere"

This week for Movie Night we saw Poltergeist, 1982. which I saw sometime in the 1990s, when you still rented movies at Blockbuster. After so many years, the plot was still familiar, although I forgot a few details, like the last 20 minutes.

You know the plot:  the five-year old Carol Ann talks to "tv people," and one day they burst out of the tv set to the iconic line "They're he-ee-eere."  After some relatively harmless poltergeist activity, she is swallowed into a vortex that opened in her bedroom closet,  occupied by lost souls and a malevolent presence.  The family brings in psychic investigators to help, but things only get worse. Finally they call in diminuitive firecracker psychic Zelda Rubenstein, who sends Mom into the vortex to get Carol Ann back.

Little does she know. Afterwards the stupid family plans to move, but they stick around for a few days so Mom can take a gratuitous-nudity bath, and move Carol Ann and her brother back into the room with the vortex-closet!  It opens again, the malevolent force is stronger, and skeletons start popping up out of the ground.  

Turns out that the evil corporate guy built the housing development on a cemetery.  He moved the headstones, but not the bodies! The souls aren't lost, they're angry over being disturbed!

Finally the whole house implodes.  The family escapes through a maze of coffins and skeletons, drives to a Holiday Inn, and in a kicker, ejects the television set from their room.

The gender-polarized, heterosexual nuclear family myth is pushed as blatantly as the roomful of Star Wars merch that executive producer Steven Spielberg ordered, or the book about Ronald Reagan that Dad reads in bed.  And it only gets worse.

Dad Craig T. Nelson went on to star in Coach, which lasted for nine seasons.  In a 1991 episode, Coach discovers that one of his football players is gay, and is shocked, dismayed, angry, and finally accepting, the standard "friend/brother/ coworker comes out" plotline of the era.

Oliver Robins, who plays the 10 year old son, went on to write and direct heterosexual sleaze such as Dumped and Wild Roommates.

But there is also a critique of the heterosexual nuclear family myth.  The suburb, meant to be bucolic, actually looks awful, little houses "made of ticky-tacky," and it is literally built on the dead -- the bodies of the marginalized and oppressed, the racial minorities, the poor, the LGBT people who are excluded from "Paradise."

The housing development is named "Cuesta Verde," which sounds nice, but "cuesta" means "cost, price."  The price you pay for your cushy suburban lifestyle.

And there are some gay connections.

1. Dirk Blocker, son of Bonanza famed Dan Blocker, plays a benevolent neighbor.  He went on to star in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which has a gay character.

2. Max Casella plays Marty, in the first trio of paranormal investigators.  He tries to enter the vortex room and gets bit -- rather a bad injury, but he sticks around through the night anyway.  Hungry, he goes into the kitchen and lays a raw steak on the counter -- not even on a plate -- but it gets all maggoty, and his face comes off. It's just a vision, but he's heading for the door...

Poltergeist was the 22-year old Cal Arts grad's first on-screen role.  During the 1980s, he had a few guest spots, playing a yuppie, a lawyer, and a cop, but he was mostly involved in a theater company that he started with some fellow CalArtians. 

He notes that "we hung out, had fun.  We all used to smile a lot more."  West Hollywood in the 80s and 90s, when everything was bright and new, and magical.  The best of times.  

 

In 1993 Martin moved to New York to continue his playwright career.  He and his brother Matt wrote the book on Paper Moon, starring hunk Gregory Harrison -- seen here nude in The Harrad Experiment 

More after the break