Joel Rush: Why does everybody else in his movies get naked?

 

It's difficult to research Joel Rush: no instagram or personal website, only a minimal Facebook page, a Twitter page that hasn't been updated since 2012, a wikipedia page that just tells us that he was born in Logansport, Indiana on August 26, 1981, worked as a software salesman in Tampa, did some modeling, and broke into acting after being runner-up on the reality show True Beauty in 2009.  

He's been in several gay-themed movies, including Eating Out: Drama Camp, Eating Out: The Open Weekend, and Love or Whatever, but I can't tell if he's gay in real life. True Beauty judged your inner beauty; it didn't hook you up with a romantic partner.

I noticed something else unusual about Joel: he's been in a number of movies and tv shows where other guys got naked, but he did not.

In Eating Out: Drama Camp, we see Aaron Milo's cock and Ronnie Krell's butt, but Joel just takes his shirt off.

In Eating Out: Open Weekend, we see Michael Vera's butt and Alvaro Orlando's dick, but no Joel.

In Love or Whatever, Corey, played by Tyler Poelle, is distraught when his boyfriend John, played by David Page, dumps him.  They get naked, but new romance Joel Rush does not.

We do get a butt  in the anthology series Femme Fatales, but Jon Fleming gives us the Full Monte.

More Joel after the break

"The Ropes": An unreliable-narrator Rashomon about nightclub bouncers. Take careful notes. There are some dicks, too

 

I was looking for some tv shows starring Joel Rush, and found The Ropes, a quickly-canned tv series based on Vin Diesel's early job as a bouncer.  Well, maybe there would be some beefcake. 

Problems: It was impossible to research among 1,300 other series called The Ropes, On the Ropes, and Learn the Ropes.   

It was available on Amazon Prime, but not if you used the Prime Search window -- you had to go through Google.  Even after buying an episode.  

More problems: Nonlinear narration, with people describing an event that happened earlier, then seeing the event from different points of view, and seeing the consequences of the event, but in jumbled order. 

Some of the guys are black/speaking in a stereotyped jive accent, and some are white/speaking in a stereotyped Guido accent, but within those categories, they look, talk, and behave exactly alike. This makes it very difficult to figure out who belongs to what plotline.  But for the sake of a review I'll try to piece it together.

The illustrations are whatever beefcake or nude photos I could find of the actors, in no particular order: Gonzalo Menendez, F. Valentino Morales, Brian Ahern, Brian Hooks, Joel Rush, Danny Abeckaser, Shawn Woods, Robert Ervin, Ramses Jiminez.  Plus a couple of random photos of guys with big dicks.

Setting: A very sleazy nightclub in New York, where they have both ladies dancing on poles and illegal gambling.  A squad of seven or more bouncer/security guards, whom the Boss calls "ladies" although they're actually men, is on patrol every night.

 Big Vic's Story:  Big Vic, who has the biggest dick in New York City, is infinitely attractive to every woman in the world.  He asks the lady bartender to have sex with him; she agrees. On the same night, or on another night, he's working the door, and lets in a girl who claims to be a model, but rejects the guy she's with.  He asks if she wants to have sex; she does.

While he is having sex with one or the other the bathroom, someone knocks on the door, saying that he's needed at the bar.  He ignores them.

Later, or on a different night, he goes out into the alley, and sees a sleazoid trying to push an unwilling lady into a taxi.  He intervenes and sends the guy away. Then her friend arrive and accuses Big Vic of taking advantage of her!  They drive away.

Uh-oh, a whole gang of bad dudes rushes into the alley to try to kill him! He's got the biggest cock in New York, not the biggest muscles.  He tries to fight them off, but they prepare to beat him to death when...

A smaller guy wearing a suit rushes in and annihilates them!  Big Vic is not happy to get his life saved by a nerd -- it's a major blow to his masculinity.  Then the nerd asks "Are you Vic Pendejo?" Har-har, pendejo means "asshole" in Spanish!  Big Vic angrily orders him to leave.

Ralphie's Story: One night Ralphie is screwing a lady in the Trash Room (no beefcake, but we see her butt).  And she accidentally butt-phones her Man, so he and his homies show up to kill him.  Big Les, working the front door, pulverizes them, but now they want revenge on him!  They return the next night, mistake Big Vic for Big Les, and attack. I guess people in-universe have trouble distinguishing the guys, too.

Later, the Boss complains that Ralphie is too feminine, and takes him off bouncer duty.  

The Kid's Story:  One night a Kid shows up at the front door just as they open.  Big Les, who happens to be working, won't let him in: no action so early anyway.  "Come back in two hours."

Two hours later, the Kid is waiting in a line that goes around the block.  They've reached capacity, so no one else gets in that night.  

He doesn't want to get in, he just wants to apply for a job, so he cuts line and asks Big Lou what to do. Yes, this is a different character, actually named "White Lou."    Big Lou sends him to the back door, where Big Vic is working, and tells him to ask for "Vic Pendejo," knowing that he'll get annihilated.   Instead, he sees "Pendejo" in trouble, being beaten to death by some thugs, and intervenes. 

Big Vic is so impressed that he offers him a job as his "intern."  All of the side deals at the club -- the drugs, hookers, whatever -- will go through the Kid.  For a salary, he'll get some of the bribes and "some ass."  Presumably girls, or is Big Vic offering his own?  

Rashomon after the break

"Join Kelvin's God Squad": Recruitment video gives us the dirt on the muscle cult, with a lot of muscles and a dick or two

  

In Righteous Gemstones Season 2, Kelvin starts a God Squad, musclemen who perform strength-stunts "to serve the Lord."  But their goals are far more complex: they want to establish a new society based on homoerotic desire, a cult of the penis that excludes not only "females," but emotional connections, romantic love, and family. The plan starts to go wrong almost immediately, due both to Kelvin's tyrannical leadership style and the difficulty of excluding romantic partnerships from the new world.  

 In universe, he posted a recruitment video, "Join Kelvin's God Squad."  How clearly does it reveal the true purpose of the Squad?.

Shot 1: As Torsten (Brock O'Hurn) meditates, Kelvin asks "Are you looking for salvation?" 

 

Flexing, he continues: "Salvation is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration."  This contradicts the evangelical doctrine that salvation (from the wages of sin) is a gift; you don't have to work for it. But apparently here we're looking for salvation from something else.

Scene 2: A wide shot of the God Squad camp, followed by a close up of Cody's chest.  

Kelvin:   "I'm Kelvin Gemstone, and I'd like to share my love of Jesus Christ, and Jesus' love of a beautiful body." Beautiful, not strong. Objects of desire, not admiration.

Scene 3: The men work out with wooden barbells.  One says: "I want to be a warrior for the Lord." Keefe: "You might be a perfect candidate for the God Squad."

Scene 4: The men climb a wooden ladder and sniff fresh vegetables. Kelvin: "Nature is the Lord's gym."  Kelvin has a huge house, easily big enough for twelve men, but he wants to emphasize that he is the leader, structurally "above them."  Plus nature represents the pre-Fall Eden, before Adam succumbed to the temptations of "the female."  

 Shot 5: Two guys grin at each other. Keefe: "We will welcome you into our workouts as if we were friends."  Not a lot of friendships are forged in the God Squad camp.  There is no pairing-off.  The guys are atomized, each competing with the others.

Shot 6: Titus does chin-ups.  Kelvin: "Use your body to get closer to the Lord."   Because he's rising toward heaven. get it?

Shot 7: Keefe: "You will also learn to accept the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into your heart, and what happens when you accept him, Jericho?  Do the tit thing."

Jericho flexes his nipples. Big deal -- any man with a moderate physique can do that.  But apparently we need to know about Kelvin's interest in men's chests.

More muscles and maybe a hidden cock or two after the break

Joel Rush: Beefcake and nude photos, including the glory hole scene

Joel Rush, playing Sky, was one of the most popular and sadistic members of the Season 2 God Squad.  He undermined Kelvin's authority, forced him and Keefe to move out of the master bedroom, and then subject Keefe to various tortures while he was confined in the tiger cage.  But some of the tortures provided beefcake pleasures for viewers.

When Keefe is imprisoned in the tiger cage after the cross-raising challenge, the God Squad uses a glory hole to sexually assault him.  Since it looks out onto the main quad, Keefe also uses it as an eye-hole.  When Sky shoves his dick through, hoping for a blow job, he accidentally stabs Keefe in the eye.  Or was it deliberate?

Photos from that scene after the jump.