"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.  

Her conclusion: they are all gay, and fooling themselves.  Bisexuals don't exist. 

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

Wait -- this is the first he's heard of it. "No, I've told you several times." "No you haven't."

 

"Sorry, I can't do it.  I have a photo shoot for my campaign."  He has to pretend to be a "regular guy," eat one of those...um...frankfurter sausage things...and ride on the...you know, the poor people train...the subway.  

"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 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.

 Everyone always asked "Where are you from?", assuming that the answer would be "Scarsdale" or "Astoria."  I said Illinois:  "Oh, Chicago!  Now that's a second rate city!  Did you eat hot dogs at (snicker, snicker).baseball games?"

"No, my town was on the other side of the state, on the Iowa border."

"Iowa!  Ma and Pa Kettle chawing tobaccy!  How old were you (snicker, snicker) when you first saw one of those newfangled auto-mobiles?"

So I started saying "Los Angeles":   "How dreadfully superficial!  All about mindless movies and puerile television!  Do you watch (snicker, snicker) the A Team?"  

The Four Seasons, on Netflix, gave me a similar vibe: parochial, elitist, condescending, so I never made it through an episode.  But from what I can gather, it features three couples who leave the City (there's only one city) for a weekend getaway Upstate (there's only one state) four times a year.  There they talk in Woody Allen witicisms and discuss romantic love.

The main question is stated in the first episode:  Does each of us get a soulmate, someone chosen by the Universe to make our lives infinitely happy forever, or do we fall in love based on physical attraction and social compatibility, and then work to maintain the relationship?   Each couple will face a crisis that illustrates some aspect of the question.  

As the clickbait links say, the answer will surprise you.  Or not.  It's the theme of every romantic movie ever made.

But you may be surprised to find that one of the couples is gay.

Couple #1, Nick and Anne (Steve Carrell of The Office, left, Kerri Kenney):  What if you no longer love your soulmate?

Nick shocks everyone when he announces that he no longer loves his wife.  "Impossible!  You're soulmates!  You're destined to be together!"

When he dumps her anyway and starts dating the much younger Ginny ("The penis wants what the penis wants), his friends are all devastated.  If a married couple can break up, how does anything have meaning?

 His daughter, who attends an Ivy League College Upstate, maybe Vassar, writes a play in which her callous, unfeeling monster of a father announces: "I hate my daughter so much.  What could I do to cause her the most pain?  I know -- I'll leave my wife, thus destroying the family and making my daughter's life meaningless forever!"

The universe also disapproves of leaving your soulmate, and retaliates by killing Nick.  This leads to the discomfort of having the ex-wife and the horrible trollope he destroyed her life for showing up at the funeral.  Such a negative attitude toward divorce seems extremely retro.   

Couple #2, Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead,  famous playwright Marco Calvani, left): What if your soulmate dies?

When Danny is diagnosed with heart disease, he leaves Claude to spare him the agony of seeing his decline and death, but Claude insists on getting back together: they're soulmates, in sickness and health. Someday one of them will die and leave the other alone, but the bereaved spouse will still find infinite happiness in the memory of their time together.

By the way, they have an open relationship, and have their "I'm leaving you so you won't feel pain" argument in the midst of a threesome with the Lumberjack (Jacob Buckenmyer).

Jacob Buckenmyer, seen here in Chippendales, is straight in real life.

More after the break.

"The Other Two," Episode 1.6: Cary goes shirtless, Chase twerks, and there's enough bulges and butts for everyone

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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.

Three episodes in, and it turns out I was correct: it's a "disease of the week" drama with laconic jokes. Trigger warning: the first three episodes feature gunshot wounds,  cancer, death, and suicide.  And two different old guys who refuse to follow the doctor's instructions because they've always been independent.  The jokes are mostly of the "this town is so small!" and "it's so isolated!" sort.  

Joel (Rob Morrow, left) thought he was being sent to Anchorage, and  complains bitterly about being tricked into moving to a "hellhole" where you have to chop your own firewood and no one has ever heard of a bagel.  He does this in front of townsfolk, but it's ok, many of them are refugees from the Lower 48. Some came to escape from big cities, and some came for a visit and got stuck.  It's like "Hotel California": you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Episode 2 does something unheard of in 1990, in the heart of the AIDS pandemic and homophobic backlash: it mentioned LGBT people! Actually, 18 tv episodes in 1990 featured gay characters, but they were usually AIDS patients, murderers, or making a pass at a straight person. This episode was praised for its "progressive, gay-positive" message. Let's see how well it holds up in 2024.

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.  

 Ed invites Joel over for dinner (KFC, flown in from Anchorage) and a sauna, hoping that he can convince Uncle Anku to get an examination.  Nope.  Joel visits several more times -- maybe he just likes being half-naked in the sauna with other guys?  Still no.  Finally he lays down the law: come in for an examination, or no more visits.  Psych!  Uncle Anku has seen a specialist in Anchorage!  Why keep it a secret, and put Joel and your family through so much anxiety?

This plotline has some gay subtexs.  Ed's interest in Joel seems more profound than "I'm lonely, and need a friend."

Plot 2: features Joel's toilet.  It doesn't work, but his landlord/love interest Maggie is still in the "I hate you!  You're arrogant!" stage, and refuses to fix it because what idiot doesn't know how to fix a toilet?  Oh yeah, prissy, elite, entitled, arrogant, sexy...um I mean arrogant New York snobs.  Joel tries to hire someone, reads a book on plumbing, and so on.  Eventually Maggie gives in.  Tenant law: you have to provide a working toilet. 

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."

Minnefield (Barry Corbin), who literally owns the town, hears the broadcast, and is irate. Making disgusting accusations about America's greatest poet!  He throws Chris through a plate glass window and fires him. Hey, that's criminal assault!.  He takes over the morning radio himself, and devotes it to "normal" music, like the soundtrack to Kiss Me, Kate (hey, Cole Porter was gay!).  Then Oklahoma! and Carousel.  The townspeople hate it; they prefer Chris's philosophical musings.  So the macho, homophobic guy likes gay-coded show tunes, har har.

Interestingly, a review of the episode calls Barry Corbin a "Broadway Superstar," but I can't find him listed in anything but Henry V.

At a town meeting to complain about the new radio format, Minnefield stands his ground: "Chris made a mistake, and he has to pay for it.  A breach is a breach." Seriously, why doesn't anyone call Minnefield out on his homophobia?  Do they all agree that it's wrong to mention gay people on the radio?  They demand that Chris be re-hired.  Nope!

After consulting with Joel, Minnefield gets back on the radio to explain.  "Whitman was a pervert, but he was the greatest poet America ever produced," and we shouldn't try to destroy him.  He mentions several other American heroes with personality faults: alcoholic, gambler, crossdresser...but we aren't allowed to discuss the terrible things they did.  We need to concentrate on the positive.  We need heroes.   "If Whitman were standing here today, and someone called him a fruit or a queer, that person would have to answer to me." So you're saying that it's ok to know that he was gay, but not to disrespect him by aying that he was gay?  

This, by the way, is a heartfelt speech, telling the audience what they should take away from the episode: being gay is horrible, but we should ignore it, because "we need heroes."   From the vantage point of 2024, it seems incredibly homophobic, but in 1990 it was a plea for tolerance.

Chris in the Morning apologizes. He didn't mean to defame Walt Whitman, but now he understands that it was wrong to mention that he was gay.  He gets his job back.

And the town library/general store has a run on requests for Walt Whitman's poetry.  

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).

Set in the same time period:

The Feast of the Seven Fishes: all the tropes I hate, but I still liked it.

Wet Hot American Summer: Skyler in a satyr costume, gaslit gay guys, and how to use your penis

"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.

More after the break.  Caution: it gets explicit, sort of.

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.

Haimsohn was also a photographer, working under the name Plato, and invited Joe to model. 

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?

  

The photo set and magazine work paid for Joe's tuition at Siena College, where he led anti-war protests, starred in the play Drunkard, and worked as a stage manager for The Gingham Dog. 

 

He moved to Los Angeles in 1973, and continued to pose for the Model of the Month Club and Photozique, while making the rounds of auditions.

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

More Brooklyn-disco roles followed, including Flatbush, a tv series about a gang called the Fungos.  Joe starred as Presto opposite Adrian Zmed as Socks.  It only lasted for six episodes.

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.

More Joseph Cali after the break. Warning: Explicit

Skyler's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 4: A baseball bat, a hickey, a little dog, and a chub with a chubby

 

This is a collection of cute/cool or hot/humorous photos of  Skyler Gisondo, star of The Santa Clarita Diet and The Righteous Gemstones, and Jimmy Olson in the upcoming Superman: Legacy. As far as I know, he's over 18 in all of them.  He doesn't have any verifiable nude photos online, but some of his friends do, and there are some interesting chatroom and hookup app possibilities.

1. You'll never get to first base that way, Sky. At least not during the game.

2. Long-term bud Wyatt Oleff.  The two starrred together in the tv pilot Middle Age Rage (2013), and stayed friends, bonding over abs.

3. And stuff.  Actually, Wyatt says that he doesn't remember who he's giving a hickey to. It could be Skyler, but then, he makes out with so many guys....

4. Skyler grooving on some stars and stripes.  And his little dog, too.

5. Skyler's "just guys" vacation in New York.  He didn't say who he went with, but they look very comfortable together.  Hanging out in their underwear.

6. And out of their underwear.

More after the break

"Difficult People": Billy pretends to be straight, Julie pretends to be Italian, and the guest star's son takes his shirt off

 

Yesterday on the treadmill, I watched Difficult People, a two season sitcom about two jerks, the Jewish Julie and the gay Billy (Julie Klausner, Billy Eichner. below). I've had a file of photos for a long time, so why not write a review?

Julie and Billy are trying to break into stand-up comedy as a pair. We only see snippets of their act, but it seems to involve insulting people.  Plots often involve pop-culture name dropping or the pairs' crazy relatives.  Among the famous guest stars are Amy Sedaris, Lucy Liu, Tina Fey, Mark Consuelos, and Kathy Lee Gifford.

Rounding out the cast are James Urbaniak as Julie's business suit-wearing husband, who works for PBS; Andrea Martin as her yenta mother; and Cole Escola, left, as the swishy queen who works with Billy at his coffee shop gig. 

This episode, "Italian Piñata," begins with the pair walking past the Stonewall Tavern, where the Gay Rights Movement began: queens upset over the death of Judy Garland weren't going to take the police harassment anymore, and fought back.  The Judy Garland angle has been completely discredited.  These were young adults in the 60s. They were into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, not some singer from their grandparents' generation.

Billy notes that it's National Coming Out Day, when super-hot A-gays who spend the rest of the year snubbing everyone who isn't a Greek god do their public duty by offering to introduce newly-out guys to the culture.  It doesn't even matter if they're ugly or have a horrible personality -- or both, like Billy -- if you're newly out, you're in. 

Julie Turns Italian: On their way to a horrible party that Julie's husband had to plan for his PBS job, in Hoboken, the pair drops into an Italian meat shop, where some ladies like Julie's jokes about "meat in my mouth."  They have big hair, eat everything in sight, carry purses that "fell off a truck," and discuss what they'll do to the penises of boyfriends who betray them.  Julie is in love!  She announces to her mother and husband that she's coming out -- she now identifies as Italian!  The two are horrified.

Mom works as a therapist whose client -- the famous Mink Stole -- has a daughter in a cult.  They discuss deprogramming -- kidnapping the brainwashed girl and yelling at her until she "believes what I want her to believe." Mom thinks this would work on Julie.  

Billy Turns Straight: Meanwhile, Billy and Julie go to a New Jersey gay bar, where he gets the idea of pretending to come out.  He announces that he was straight until today, and Julie is actually his soon-to-be ex-wife.  The gay guys, including bartender Pasha Pelosie, left, all want to welcome him into the gay community.  

More beef after the break