Skyler's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 4: A baseball bat, a hickey, a little dog, and a chub with a chubby
"And Just Like That": Carrie's return has elitism, bisexuals, dongs, musems, marital spats, s'mores, and shoes. Lots of shoes.
I never watched Sex and the City when it first aired on HBO (1998-2004), although I knew about Mr. Big (Chris Noth), for obvious reasons. Who wants to watch four super-entitled New York-centric ladies having lunch? The only episode I watched featured Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) investigating bisexuals for her "Sex and the City" newspaper column.
So much for bi representation.
Researching this review, I discovered that Carrie has a stereotypic gay best friend with the incredible name Stanford Blatch (why, was Bruce Van Swishington taken?).
Having never watched the original, I've never been interested in the 2021-25 sequel, And Just Like That (presumably the title means that 20 years have passed "just like that"). But I've seen n*de guys parading around on occasion, and the plot synopses mention several LGBTQ characters. We'll see if the portrayals are cringy.
I'll identify the five main ladies by their careers. From left to right, Filmmaker Lisa, Art Dealer Charlotte, Columnist Carrie, Realtor Seema, Lawyer Miranda.
Episode 3.5, "Under the Table," has three main plot threads.
The Charlotte/Lisa Plot:
Scene 1: The Guggenheim. I love that museum. Wait -- they didn't visit, they're just walking past. Art Dealer Charlotte's boyfriend Harry (Evan Handler) reveals that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but they found it early, so he has a 98% chance of full recovery.
In other news, they're going glamping (glamor camping) with the kids at Governors Island this weekend.
Scene 2: Nuclear family breakfast in a huge, super-elegant kitchen. Filmmaker Lisa won't be back from filming her documentary until late Friday, so she tells her husband, Herbert Wexley (wow, what unrealistic entitled name), to take their children to Governors Island for glamping with Charlotte and her boyfriend.
Husband is played by Chris Jackson
"You can do the 'regular guy' shoot on Monday, " Filmmaker Lisa commands. "This weekend we're going glamping with the Goldblatts."
Scene 3: Art Dealer Charlotte is trying to cook, but she's too distracted. Her friend Anthony (Mario Cantone, left) asks if she's ok.
Her children, a girl and a nonbinary person, ask if they can skip glamping. "No, you're going" It's important because her boyfriend has prostate cancer, but he doesn't want them knowing that.
Scene 4: Governors Island (no apostrophe), just south of Manhattan, with views of the skyline. The nonbinary child notes that there's a spa and go-karts.
Art Dealer Charlotte's boyfriend complains about the mosquitos.
Filmmaker Lisa bursts in, and her husband criticizes her for being late. "Well, four hours ago, I was in Atlanta." Then they bicker because one of them told the other to buy chocolate to make s'mores. This couple is on the outs.
Scene 5: A tent big enough for three beds and a living room set. The boyfriend and the kids are lounging around, playing on their cell phones, when Art Dealer Charlotte bursts in and complains that they should be doing outdoor activities. They refuse. My parents used to say that on family vacations. "You shouldn't be lounging around the cabin reading comic books. Go enjoy the outdoors."
How does one "enjoy" the outdoors? It's a place you go through on the way to enjoying things.
Meanwhile, Filmmaker Lisa and her husband bicker. She takes a photo of him and their kids. When he looks at it, he accidentally scrolls to the last one she took: a selfie with her editor Marion (Mehcad Brooks).
"Are you having an affair with Michael B. Handsome? Talk about getting your chocolate in Atlanta!"
"No, it's just a work crush."
He continues to growl, so Lisa stomps off, and runs into Charlotte at the pier. They complain about their partners, and decide to ditch them and take a spa day.
Cut to the spa. Close up of ladies in bikinis. They're really pushing the heterosexual male gaze.
Carrie/Miranda and Seema after the break
"The Cat and the Moon": An almost canonical gay couple and a gay-subtext romance on the Mean Streets of New York
The Cat and the Moon (2019) was advertised as a "coming of age" movie with Alex Wolff (left) playing an updated Holden Caulfield. So I went in expecting depression, drugs, suicide, heterosexual machinations, and rampant homophobia. I found lots of drugs, suicidal ideations, insanity, and heterosexual romance, but no homophobia, and so many gay subtexts that I couldn't keep track of who was in love with whom.
New Guy (Alex Wolff) moves to New York City while his mom is in rehab, stays with his dad's old buddy (Mike Epps, who reputedly belongs to one of these cocks). He gets involved in a lot stuff. This review will only cover the gay subtext scenes.
Scene 1: New Guy's first day in school. Boyfriend (Giulian Yao Gioello, left), hot for the new guy, befriends him and shows him around.
Scene 2: In algebra class, two stoner buds are playing a game involving fluttering their hands together.
Scene 3: New Guy is in the restroom, trying to get high with a bong made of a toilet paper roll, when the stoner buds come in, bickering like an old married couple and talking like "he got into my motherfuckin' grill, yo."
One stands at the urinal; the other doesn't have to go, so he just stands nearby to get a peek at his bud's penis.
They introduce themselves as Seamus and Russell (Skyler Gisondo, Tommy Nelson). I'll call them Gay Guy and Straight Friend. They invite New Guy to a party Friday night.
"Wait -- will your girlfriend be there?" Gay Guy asks.
"Yes."
"Fuck! You never pay attention to me when she's around." To New Guy: "His balls just evaporate when she's around." That must make sex difficult.
Scene 4; The party was cancelled, so Gay Guy and Boyfriend (from Scene 1) invite New Guy to a club . Straight Friend and his Girlfriend will also be there. So when they go out, it's Straight Friend-Girlfriend and Gay Guy-Boyfriend?
On the way, Gay Guy and Straight Friend argue and break up. The Girlfriend tells New Guy not to worry: they break up all the time, but get back together again. "Honestly, I think they just secretly want to fuck each other." Ok, so it's not a subtext.
They end up partying on the roof. Gay Guy and Straight Friend kiss. Wait, I thought you had other partners.
Later, while the guys are dealing with an overdose, New Guy and The Girlfriend bond.
More after the break
The Four Seasons: Elitist New Yorkers discuss True Love, with a gay couple, a lumberjack, Vivaldi, and a n*de Len Cariou
I lived in New York for four years while studying for my Ph.D. One thing that bothered me was the parochialism, like that New Yorker cover come to life ("View of the World from 9th Avenue," by Saul Steinberg). Literally everywhere else in the world was a cultural wasteland.
As the clickbait links say, the answer will surprise you. Or not. It's the theme of every romantic movie ever made.
Couple #1, Nick and Anne (Steve Carrell of The Office, left, Kerri Kenney): What if you no longer love your soulmate?
Couple #2, Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead, famous playwright Marco Calvani, left): What if your soulmate dies?
"The Other Two," Episode 1.6: Cary goes shirtless, Chase twerks, and there's enough bulges and butts for everyone
Matthew William Bishop: Leatherman, muscleman, actor, LGBTQ advocate. With nude bodybuilder bonus.
If you saw this guy standing outside a brownstone in New York, would you
a) Run away screaming;
b) ask for his phone number;
c) just drop to your knees.
How about now?
He's Matthew William Bishop, who gave up a career in corporate public relations in 2021, when the acting bug bit. His Some Kind of Wonderful, about four gay guy looking for love in Palm Springs, won four awards for Best LGBTQ Film.
Then he hit the big time playing the silent supernatural Big Daddy, a symbol of AIDs in American Horror Story, NYC. (Set during the first years of the AIDS epidemic.)
Matthew is also a bodybuilder, obviously. He took first place at the 2023 Miami Muscle Beach Contest in the NPC Open Super Heavyweight Category.
And a philanthropist, devoted to recovery, AIDS awareness, and LGBTQ advocacy. 10% of the sales of this "Make the Deposits" shirt go to the New York LGBTQ Community Center, so it's probably not dirty.
This isn't supposed to be dirty, either, although a lot of the comments on his Instagram page were from people willing to "choke on it."
What they want to choke on, from his fitness model days.
More of "it" after the break
Northern Exposure, Episode 1.2: Progressive homophobia, three guys in a sauna, and much ado about a toilet.
We're watching old shows that we missed back in the day, like Northern Exposure (1990-95), about a young doctor forced to relocate from New York City to Cecily, Alaska, population 814. It received 39 Emmy nominations and two Golden Globes, but I never watched back then because I figured it was just another "disease of the week" drama, and because of the opening: an ear-grating harmonica plays while a baby moose ambles down Main Street.
Plot 1 features Ed (Darren E. Burroughs), an Indian youth, who is trying to be Joels' best friend, even though Joel treats him with unabashed contempt (but Joel treats everyone in town with unabaslhed contempt, so how could he tell?).. His problem: Uncle Anku has blood in his urine, but refuses to see a Western doctor. He was a medicine man for 40 years; he believes in traditional Indian medicine.
Plot 3: Chris in the Morning (John Corbett, left), the radio DJ, tells us that when he was 15, he broke into a house intending to steal stuff, and found a book that changed his life: Walt Whitman's poetry. Later, in juvenile hall, a guard beat him up for reading it, yelling that "unnatural, pornographic, homoerotic poetry" was forbidden. Chris hadn't realized that Whitman "enjoyed the pleasures of other men," and had to rethink his habit of beating up "queers."
Beefcake: Joel, Ed, and Uncle Anku in the sauna. Joel in the shower.
Gay Characters: Of course not, although in a few years, the town will host the second gay wedding on network television.
Homophobia: Everyone seems to agree that calling someone gay is a defamation. Even Joel the New Yorker.
My Grade: Even taking into account its historic context, this was a very difficult episode to watch. And that grating harmonica solo opening! D.
Above: Rob Morrow's butt in Private Resort. Left; Grant Goodeve, who plays Maggie's boyfriend (before she dumps him).
"Sun in My Mouth": A depressed twink rides the subway, has explicit sex. And what he's been up to lately.
While looking at random cocks on AZ Nude Men, I came across Sun in My Mouth, with Artem Shcherbakov as a skinny, dissolute-looking twink who takes off his clothes on the beach while looking depressed, and then returns to his empty apartment to j/o on the phone while looking depressed. Photos after the break
Black and white, extremely washed out, amateurish, with random close-ups of body parts and nonsequiter images. It looked like one of those 1960s "stag films," or one of the early Gay Liberation movies like A Very Natural Thing. But it is dated 2010.
Extremely mysterious. Russia is a puritanical country. How was it even permitted? And what is the meaning of "sun in my mouth?" A Russian proverb?
According to the IMDB, "It's a film about how we attempt to connect and understand other people by understanding ourselves."
I couldn't find the film itself, but the trailer is very artistic/experimental, black and white. Artem rides a subway -- wait, those signs are in English -- walks on the beach, takes off his clothes, broods, goes home to an empty apartment, and beats off with a phone sex operator.
Is it even Russian? Jessica Yatrovsky has nothing else listed on the IMDB. The phone sex operator is played by Andrew Yang -- not a Russian name.
A man. So this is a gay film? So Artem is depressed because he's struggling to come out?
Artem has only one other acting role listed on the IMDB, A Four Letter Word, 2007: "hook-up artist Luke considers becoming monogamous" for the "smug and handsome" Stephen (Jesse Archer, Charlie David). He is listed as Vlad.
His Linkedin says that he is the founder of ROAR Games and Zheeshee in Brooklyn.
His Facebook says that he was born in Minsk, Belorussia. He attended Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn and Touro College, where he majored in psychology. He married Brian in 2021 and now lives in Washington DC.
More after the break. Caution: Explicit.
"The Deuce": The top ten penises of the mafiosi, porn stars, and gay activists in 1970s New York
Tbe Deuce stars James Franco as Vincent and Frankie Marino, twin brothers who run a Mafia front in New York City during the 1970s. There's an adult film studio nearby, which means a lot of naked guys. Usually while they're having sex with women, but still, a dick is a dick. Here are the top 10 contenders.
1. Gbinga Akinagbe as a pimp turned actor.
2. John Paul Harkin as an adult film performer.
3. Jarrod Goolsby as a Viking in an adult film.
4. Gary Carr as a bad-guy pimp.
5. Chris Coy as the owner of a gay club.
Joseph Cali: Nude model before Stonewall, John Travolta's disco buddy, soap opera hunk, Adonis Male
In 1968, a year before Stonewall, 18-year old Joseph Cali was playing chess and cruising in Washington Square Park in Manhattan when he was approached by George Haimsohn, author of Stories of the Homosexual Life, The Gay Psychedelic Sex Book, The Gay Coloring Book, A Summer on Fire Island, and the book and libretto for the musical Dames at Sea, which was currently playing off-Broadway.
His first full frontal photo appears in a 1968 issue of Go Guys. The text says that Joe is a "fast shooting star on the physique horizon....well equipped to handle himself in any tight spot." Tell me more, tell me more, did he get very far?
Joe's big break came in 1977, when he was cast as Joey, best buddy of John Travolta's Tony in the disco drama Saturday Night Fever
He got 19 episodes of Today's FBI in 1981-82 as Nick, the "Ethnic" member of the team according to Wikipedia. I'm not sure what his ethnicity was.