Maxwell Jenkins: The "Lost in Space" guy and his boyfriend visit Paris, with travel tips and n*de Parisian dudes

 

When I last profiled Maxwell Jenkins, in April 2025,  the former Lost in Space Will Robinson was starring in The Bondsman with Kevin Bacon and majoring in Global Studies at UCLA.  He had a lot of beefcake and guy-hugging photos on his social media, leading me to conclude that he is "probably gay."

The Bondsman is finished, leaving Max free to concentrate on his studies, plus cheerleading and acrobatics.  In August 2025, he posted some cute and romantic photos of his holiday in France with his boyfriend (so we can move from probablement to sans doute)

I've been to Paris several times, so I immediately recognized the Pompidou Centre, an event venue and art museum. in Les Halles. The Krash Bar, two floors of cavernous corridors of hookups, is right around the corner.

Everybody who visits Paris for the first time has to see the Eifel Tower.  After that, you give it a miss

Same with the famous Moulin Rouge in Montmarte. But they have an interesting artists' market nearby, in the Place du Tertre.

Max's boyfriend is Shawn J., a Global Studies major at UCLA who runs the program Refugee Connect, offering direct assistance to refugees around the world.

You're supposed to do that with wine glasses, guys.

N*de Parisian dudes and travel tips after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Searching for gay-subtext buddy-bonds on "The Really Loud House." With gay Dads and a heck of a lot of butts

Lately I've been nostalgic for one of those old-fashioned gay-subtext buddy couples, not interested in girls, invested only in each other, that we used to see everywhere: Jonny and Hadji, Terry and Raji, Alix and Enak, Ricky and Alfonso on Silver Spoons, Larry and Kennard in Darkover.   I even bought a new book, The Town with the Butterfly Problem, because PJ and his best friend Grant are traveling through the fantasy world together, and no heterosexual romances are mentioned in the plot synopsis -- but in the very first paragraph, he's trying to impress a cute girl. Ugh! Right into the trash!

Paramount Plus recommended The Really Loud House, a live-action sequel to The Loud House (2016-2025).  You know, the one with a nuclear family consisting of mom, dad, 3,000 girls and one boy.  

The live action version centers on the boy, Lincoln Loud  (Wolfgang Schaeffer), having adventures with his best friend, Clyde McBride (Jahzir Bruno).  No doubt a classic gay-subtext buddy couple!

The original had some LGBT representation.  Clyde has two dads; one of the girls expresses a "blink and you'll miss it" interest in a girl; another has a gay friend, Miguel (queer actor Tonatiuh Elizarraraz), who appears in four episodes but only alludes to being gay once, when he gets a boyfriend (Vladimir Versailles) in another "blink and you'll miss it" moment.

So maybe Lincoln and Clyde will have more than a gay-subtext buddy-bond.  Maybe they'll be boyfriends!  

I'm reviewing episode 1.6, "School Dance," to see if the boys go together.  Or if there are any same-sex couples dancing.  Or both.

Scene 1: The kids are making decorations for the Big Dance at their middle school, the Kangaroo Hop, while journalist Liam (Gavin Maddox Bergman) films interviews with them.  

Gavin Maddox Bergman played Oliver Twist in Spirited (2022), young Ben in Salem's Lot (2023), and Cal Starr in Americana (2024).  I'm getting a gay vibe from him, but the character of Liam is heterosexual.

First interview: Rusty Spokes (Nolan Maddox) and his girlfriend Charlie (named after a boy to provide a gay tease for those of us reading episode synopses).  They discuss how much they love each other.  "My favorite color is your eyes..." Rusty exclaims.  Holy sh*t, these people are twelve years old. Were they, like, born horny? 

Nolan Maddox (Rusty Spokes) is now 18, but this is not his butt. 

Strikingly femme Lincoln watches mournfully.  Best buddy Clyde consoles him over Rusty dating Charlie.  Wait -- you're into Charlie, femme boy?  Did you not notice that she's a girl?.

When it's Lincoln's turn to be interviewed, he notes that he was going bring "just friend" Stella (figures you have a lot of girl "just friends").  But she's at a science fair, so it will be solo.  

And Clyde will be going with dad's chiropracter's daughter.

Scene 2: Interview with Best Buddy Clyde's dads.  They are concerned that their son has not yet found his First Love.  He's in middle school, much later than most kids.  They are so desperate for him to click with "that someone special" that they arrranged for Clyde's date with the chiropracter's daughter.  So he hasn't expressed any heterosexual interest, yet the two gay guys never consider for a minute that he might be gay.  That's awfully heteronormative of them.

Ray Ford (Dad Harold), seen here at his godson's graduation, doesn't mention kids of his own, but half of his Instagram photos show him cheek-to-cheek with various ladies, so I'm guessing straight in real life.

Stephen Guarino (Dad Howard) kisses a boy in Eastsiders, and makes out with a dude while naked in Bearcity, so I'm going to guess that he's gay in real life.  Left: his butt.

Yes, I know that having two dads as a focus of the episode rather than just hanging around is a step forward. On Ducktales (2020), they just stood on stage, not speaking, for a moment at their daughter's award ceremony.  But they're heteronormative bias is still annoying.

I'm skipping over a plot about baseball or something.

Scene 3: The Dads were looking forward to taking the pre-dance photos at their house, memorializing Clyde's move into his heterosexual destiny forever.  I feel your pain, Clyde: my parents still have a photo of me and the girl I brought to the Harvest Dance about a year before I figured it out -- five boyfriends and a gay marriage later, it's still on the dresser in their bedroom!  

Uh-oh, Best Buddy Clyde calls: the pre-dance photos will be taken at the Loud House, to take advantage of the appetizers provided by Femme Lincoln's dad.   "No problem, have fun," the Dads say as their hearts are crushed.

Now they become irate:  "The Louds have burglared our milestone -- the most important moment of our child's life."  Most important moment?  Really?  Why are you so anxious for your son to be heterosexual?  What's wrong with gay people, gay dudes? 

More butts after the break

Ryan Potter: Nude and j/o photos of the Supah Ninjah, Beast Boy, Hiro Hamada, mystic, gamer, and bisexual buddy

 

Ryan Potter is best known as Gar Logan, aka Beast Boy, in the DC Comics Universe series Titans (2018-23).

These aren't the Teen Titans from your Daddy's comics collection.  The original Robin the Boy Wonder is still around, but the team also includes two oof his successors, Jason Todd and Tim Drake, as well as Connor Kent, the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor.

Plus there are gay and trans characters, and quite a lot of backsides on display, including Ryan's.

Born in 1995, Ryan lived in Tokyo for the first seven years of his life, and then moved to Los Angeles.  He started his acting career in Supah Ninjas (2011-13), spelled wrong on purpose, playing a shy, quiet student who discovers that he is...um...a super Ninja.  His best friend and the Girl of His Dreams join the team, tutored by his grandfather, George Takei.

More movies about shy, quiet students who learn martial arts followed, plus some Disney teencoms and a lot of animated series about martial arts.

In the various Big Hero 6 movies  and tv programs (Baymax and..., Big Chibi 6, Baymax Dreams, Big Hero 6: The Series, Baymax!), Ryan plays Hiro Hamada, a teenage robotics genius who creates a snowman-like inflatable robot named Baymax.  He and his friends and the Girl of His Dreams form the superhero team Big Hero 6.

One of the versions has a gay character named Mbita, and  another has Brooks Wheelan as Fred, "team mascot at SFIT."

The animated Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020-22) follows teens at a summer camp on Isla Nubar who get stuck when the dinosaurs take over.  There are two lesbian teens among them, but Ryan's character is straight.

That's a lot of straight guys, but in his private life Ryan is a gay ally:

He was the youngest celebrity to speak out on the No H8 campaign in 2012, favoring the legalization of same-sex marriage

In 2021, he tweeted that his Titans character, Gar, was bisexual.

In 2022, he came out as bisexual himself.

More after the break

Ten Nude Dudes from Rejected Reviews, Part 2: From Ben Affleck to Bill Skalsgard

 

Every day I check the new releases and my recommendations, beginning with Netflix, and then going on to Hulu, MAX, and, scraping the bottom of the barrel, Amazon Prime, looking for movies or tv series to review.   They should be in a genre that I like, with gay characters, gay subtexts, or at least some beefcake. 

Most are easy to reject, icons with ladies only, a man and a woman gazing at each other, or guys shooting things. 

Sometimes I just jump in, but usually research is necessary to ensure that there are no nasty surprises, like queerbaiting or homophobic jokes. 

The result is a lot of n*de dudes with no review attached.  

1. Garrett Clayton, top photo, in Reach, 2018.  Socially awkward band geek Stephen, Garrett Clayton,  is planning to kill himself due to the constant bullying, until the new k*d at school, Jordan Doww, falls in love...um, befriends him.   According to a review, it's supposed to be a gay romance, but they "staunchly refuse to say the word," although there are a lot of homophobic slurs thrown around...at a performing arts school in 2016?

2. Stephen Luca in Blame the Game, 2024. Three male-female couples gather for their weekly game night. Two of the guys, Stephen Luca and Dennis Mojen, get naked, but nothing comes of it. In fact, the new guy gets tormented by his girlfriend's ex.

3. Ben Affleck in Going All the Way, which just appeared on Netflix, even though it's from 1996. After returning from the Korean War, two men, Jeremey Davies and Ben Affleck,  search for love and fulfillment in Middle America. Sounds fine, except in the icon, they're in the background of a shot of a woman's breasts, and according to the plot synopsis, they don't become a gay couple.

Left: Ben dick.  You already know what his face looks like.

4. Jaeden Martel in Mr Harrigan's Phone, 2022.   A teenager makes friends with an elderly hellraiser, who dies, but continues to call him, and arrange for the deaths of his enemies. No girls in the plot synopsis or trailer, but the wikipedia page reveals that he has a crush on a girl.  Why do they hide that? To lure queer viewers in?

5. Nicholas Alexander Chavez as a hunky priest in Grotesquerie, 2024. I actually started watching. The detective arrives at the house.  The cop tells her that they should let the FBI handle it, because it's a hate crime.  "Hate crime against what?" she asks.  "Everything."  

A nuclear family Mom and two preteen boys have been killed and placed at the dinner table.  Dad's body parts are scattered all over.  The timer goes off: whatever is cooking in the pot is read.  I'll bet it's Dad's head.

I fast forward...it's women talking to other women for 45 minutes, and then the detective in bed with her boyfriend. And it turns out to be a tv show, not a movie.  Next!

More Chavez after the break

Fifty million Frenchmen can't be straight: Eight Bayeux boyfriends, Aix amis, and Parisian cocombres

 

You've probably heard the song "Fifty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong":

They say the French are naughty

They say the French are bad

They all declare that over there

The French are going mad.

They have a reputation of being very gay

I just got back from Paris, and I just want to say:

It's true.

I spent a summer in Paris in grad school, and visited regularly until COVID squashed international travel, so I have quite a lot of memories of Parisian cocombres.

Images of people I know are posted with their permission

1. The Ballet School at the Opera National.

Go in the winter -- no crowds.  On Christmas Eve, the Louvre is deserted.

2. A Turkish musician

3.  On the train

Shakespeare and Company on the Left Bank, my favorite place in Paris.  Well, aside from that bar near the Centre Pompidou...

4. Garz dans le placard -- guy in the closet

More après la pause -- after the break.  Caution: explicit.