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

Michael Seater: The "Life with Derek" guy grows up, gets a boyfriend, and displays a Derek dick

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Noah Galvin: 7 gay characters, a husband, a Pride cake, lots of dick pics, and guys still think he's straight?

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"Christmas on Cherry Lane": Three families, including a gay couple, with a big plot twist that you won't see coming

 

Christmas on Cherry Lane (2023) stars Vincent Rodriguez III, the muscular, bulging actor who specializes in family-friendly gay guys.  I figured I would watch in the background while doing other things on my laptop, but no, it requires you to pay attention.  There's a major plot twist.  I'm giving only the character names, not the actors' names.

There are three families on Cherry Lane on Christmas Eve

Family 1: John and Lizzie, who is due in two weeks,  just moved into the house, and are planning a quiet Christmas alone. They put up the tree and sing "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful," with a Hallmark Tree Trimmer ornament.  This will become important later.

Suddenly Lizzie's Mom and Dad arrive, and announce that they invited her brother and his family!  But Johnand Lizzie haven't even unpacked. Where will they put all those people?  

Left: Dad Frank 

Family 2: Regina and her friend Daisy, not shown, unpack Christmas decorations.  Her back story: she's a widow with adult children, and a boyfriend named Nelson.    

The adult kids, Winnie and Conrad, arrive in a horrible car.  Why does he keep it, now that he's making a ton of money?  Because his Uncle Ham gave it to him after Dad died. This will be important later.  

Sister Winnie doesn't have a job, except singing at open-mike nights for tips, but she'll be a famous singer one day, she says.  Mom wants her to try business school.

Mom announces that she's getting married to her Boyfriend, and she's selling the house and moving to Florida.  The adult children do not like this at all, and plot to break them up.

Family #3: Zian, left, and Mike, who works as a chef at a restaurant called Repair. They just moved into their house, too, and they're planning a Christmas Eve party tonight with twelve people.  Except contractor Quinn and his crew haven't finished remodeling the kitchen yet.  He brings them a plate of Christmas cookies, complements them on what a cute couple they are, and asks if "that famous singer" is coming to the party.  This will be important later.

Mike is freaking out.  Maybe they could move the party to the restaurant?  No, this is the first Christmas in their new house, where they're going to raise their family, so it's important to hold it here.  They walk outside and sit on lawn chairs in the cold and sing "Silent Night."  All of it.

Speaking of starting a family, the lady from the adoption agency tells them that the foster family they were placing a girl with backed out, so they're getting a child tonight -- on Christmas Eve.  With twelve people coming for a party.  Hopefully a family-friendly party.  How are they going to get a bedroom ready?

More plot complications after the break.  Spoiler alert: it's a big plot twist.

Les Demi-Deux: Danny Fitzgerald, Richard Bennett, and the beauty of the male form

 

In the days before Stonewall, when gay erotica was usually closeted under the guise of fitness magazines, you may have come across Demi-Gods, published by the Demi-Deux studio.  A French import?  Exotic, seductive, and maybe more legal than the American variety.

The Demi-Deux promoted the beauty of the male form itself. You don't have to pretend that you're looking for muscle-building tips.  It's ok to gaze in awe.

You may have been surprised to discover that the Demi-Deux was not a French studio.  It was the work of Danny Fitzgerald, who lived in his parents' house in Carol Gardens, Brooklyn, and his model and collaborator, Richard Bennett.

Born in 1920, Danny Fitzgerald photographed scenes of everyday life during World War II and the 1950s. Some of the subjects had their shirts off, adding masculine beauty to the scene.

 

In 1958, Scranton, Pennsylvania native Richard Bennett moved to New York to become an actor/model. He sent his portfolio to Danny Fitzgerald, who invited him to do a photo shoot.  The two became lovers, and stayed together until Danny's death in 2000.

It was a new world.  Allen Ginsberg described gay sex acts in "Howl," 1956.   Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms, 1958, featured a gay teenager. Why not publish photos for an audience of open, out gay men?

Calling their studio Les Demi Deux, they published erotic photos in many of the gay-closeted physique magazines of the era, such as Physique Pictorial, The Young Physique, and Muscles A Go-Go, and, beginning in 1963, nude photos in their own Demi Gods.

More after the break

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

Santa Clarita Diet, Episode 1.9: A Medieval Serbian book, a gay subtext, daddy/twink porn, and maybe a Skyler dick

 

I haven't reviewed an episode of Santa Clarita Diet for awhile, mainly because the first episode I watched was kind of gross.  Also, after posting reviews of twelve of Skyler Gisondo's movies, four photo collections, and a lot of stuff on Gideon Gemstone, I'm running out of pictures of Skyler with his shirt off. 

And no cock shots at all, unless you count the one in the bonus photos, below.  So we'll have to make do with a fully clothed Skyler.

The premise: Suburban housewife Sheila has become a zombie.  She's fully sentient, but she lacks impulse control, is unusually horny, and has to eat human flesh.  While looking for a cure, her annoyingly amoral family helps her find victims. Skyler plays the guy who knows their secret, next-door neighbor Eric, who happens to be an expert on zombies.

I'm reviewing Episode 1.9, "The Book," because it involves the search for a medieval Serbian manuscript, and who wouldn't be interested in that? 

Scene 1: While Zombie Sheila bags up human meat for later, Husband Joel (Timothy Olyphant, left) has had a breakthrough: Anton, who owns the Medieval Serbian book that mentions a zombie cure, has finally responded to his emails and texts. He can meet them at a paranormal conference in Oxnard today.

But then a cop appears with daughter Abby, who was arrested for runing a stop sign in a motorcycle with no plates or VIN number, wearing a jacket saying "Pussy Magnet."  Hey, the "Pussy Magnet" is legal. The girl likes what she likes.

Abby is obviously in psychological pain from dealing with the zombie situation, so Sheila will spend the day with her.  Husband Joel can go to the paranormal conference with ally Eric. 

I'll review the two plotlines separately.

Mother-Daughter Bonding

Scene 1: Zombie Sheila and Abby return the motorcycle of a guy she killed to his brother, Lonnie (Alex Scuby), who runs a chop shop out of a storage locker. He took Abby's money but didn't fix her bike, so she wants her money back.  Wait, I thoiugh it belonged to the dead guy? Were there two bikes?

Lonnie tells them that his brother was a "stupid fucking idiot" who ripped people off, so they're out of luck.  He closes the garage-door and won't let them in. He's not responsbile for his brother's debts, ladies.

Left: Alex Scuby has appeared in a porno about two older-younger gay couples who swap partners.

Scene 2: In their storage locker, which is the size of a small apartment, Sheila and Daughter Abby look for something to use to get the money back from Lonnie.  There's teargas that Abby stole from Eric's stepfather before Dad killed him, but Sheila wants to teach Abby a life-lesson and use a non-violent solution: how about Raffi, that annoyingly repetitive kids' singer?  What makes you think Lonnie is still in there?

Scene 3: Hours  of playing and singing along to Raffi later, they give up, but Lonnie yells from inside "Turn Raffi back on!" They decide to tear gas him instead, but when they drop the tear gas canister down the vent, it hits the wrong storage locker!  Two innocent guys rush out.

Scene 4: Abby wants to know why Mom  Sheila is so dead-set, so to speak, on teaching her life lessons.  She explains that she is slowly decomposing, so she won't be around much longer, and has to make sure Abby will be ok.  Aww.

The Paranormal Conference

Scene 1: When Dad Joel arrives to pick up Eric, his mom announces "You have a gentleman caller."   Gay joke, har har.  Embarrassed, Eric tells her to not make everything sexual.    

He asks for advice on how to pack a hoodie, and claims to be upset over Joel murdering his stepfather with a shovel, but he's joking: the guy was an asshole. Is this casual attitude toward murder supposed to be humorous?

Scene 2: At the conference, Eric buys a churro-saber, but it's too long to be phallic.  

When Joel is rejected by the first person he talks to, Eric explains: these are all introverts with low self-esteem, and he scares them away by being too aggressive and too handsome: "with those piercing eyes and perfect posture."  So you think he's hot, Eric? 

Scene 3: They find Anton, Derek Waters, talking to a crowd about government conspiracies: During the 1950s, they exploded thousands of nukes over Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific.  In 2012, a man in Florida eats another man's face.  Coincidence?  "If you believe that, I've got a Japanese sex doll to sell you. Unused."  Because he gets so many partners that he doesn't need it?

Nerd Ryan, Ravi Patel, asks about an outbreak of the undead in 19th century Poland.  Yep: Rybik, 1870. Three priests walk into a tavern, and get eaten.

Joel asks about the Medieval Serbian book.  Yep, Pozica, 16th Century.  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Adam Stevenson: Vampire's boyfriend, sailor's husband, ghillie dancer, possible bondage bottom, true Scotsman

 

When I reviewed A Discovery of Witches, I was impressed by the overwhelming cuteness and strong gay vibe of Adam Stevenson, who plays the gay-tease boyfriend of the vampire Marcus.  He is killed off two minutes after he is introduced, and Marcus is turned straight, but that two minutes is loaded down with erotic and romantic moments.  So of course I had to do a profile.

Born in Glasgow in 1990, Adam is a major proponent of Scottish independence: "If we are truly heading into a society of tolerance and democracy, if we are moving in the direction of equality and harmony...then I see one obstacle in our way, and that is being bound to the United Kingdom."

Super-cute, and a political activist.  What else do you need?  

Oh, right -- nude photos.

After high school, Adam worked in the hospitality industry, engaged in political activism, and discovered an interest in acting.  He performed in Bordering on Shakespeare with the National Theater of Scotland, and started the theater company Little Bohems, bringing "modern and contemporary plays to small audiences in  unique settings throughout the Central Belt and Borders."  That's the region between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Adam's passion for acting led him to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he received his degree in 2017.  He was immediately cast in Episode 2.5 of  The Crown: the Queen attends the traditional Ghillies Ball at Balmoral Castle. "Ghillie" means "Gameskeeper" in Scots Gaelic; you perform Scottish Highland dances.  In a kilt, of course.

Next came the gay-tease buddy in A Discovery of Witches, 2018

And a role as Urie Campbell, a young soldier who has a gay-subtext bond with his buddy Hector in Mary, Queen of Scots, 2018.  He has some lines in Scots Gaelic.

Andrew Rothney, left, plays King James I. 

In 2019, COVID hit, and with the lockdown the acting roles dried up.

In 2021, Adam started a Kickstarter campaign to fund My Friend Jame,  a COVID-era film about the relationship between a homeless man and an autistic boy,  written by Marina McQueer, his boyfriend Paul's sister (not pictured).

Yes, McQueer is a real name. 

More Adam and Paul after the break.  Caution: explicit.

Hung Harvey: I hook up with the boyfriend of Sabrina the Teenage Witch

I was back in West Hollywood for my friend Larry's annual Oscar party.  On March 25th, the night before, Lane and Randall the Muscle Bear with the Pierced Penis took me out to all our old haunts: Bodhi Tree, Different Light, the French Quarter, the Gold Coast, and the Faultline.

But we never made it to the Faultline.

I was struck by a twink sitting at the bar in the Gold Coast. A little shorter than me, broad shoulders, very handsome round face with sandy hair and glasses, kind of a Harry Potter look except for the lumberjack shirt.

I sat next to him.  He said "Howdy, pardner," and held out his hand to be shaken.

I made a quip about Hogwarts.  He countered with a quip about Lemony Snicket's Unfortunate Events.

Our legs pressed together under the bar.  "Can I buy you another beer?" I asked.

"Heck, I'll buy you a beer.  I'll buy everybody a beer.  Drinks are on me!"

"Well, I don't really drink."

"A virgin margarita, then.  You have to let me buy you something.  I can afford it.  I'm Harvey, and I'm always going to be Harvey, no matter what they say!"

Was that name supposed to mean something?  All I could think of was Harvey the Giant Rabbit in the James Stuart movie. 

 "Ok, Harvey, a Coke will be fine."

He seemed a little soused, but not unbearably so.  I reached out, unbuttoned a couple of buttons of his lumberjack shirt, and slid my hand down to feel his firm, hairy chest.  Few twinks have that much hair -- I was hooked!

I reached down and groped him.

Nice bulge.  Maybe an 8-incher beneath the belt.  I was even more hooked!

"Hey!" Harvey exclaimed.  "This place is dead!  Let's go to the Rage!"

The notoriously noisy twink bar? But I was over 23

"Well, I'm here with my friends.  We were going to the Faultline.  We're a little old for the Rage."

"Nonsense.  You're with me.  Harvey can open every door."

The Rage was only a few blocks from our old apartment.  Maybe it would be fun.

It wasn't.  The music was blaring, the air was thick with cigarette smoke and poppers, and there were swarming munchkins everywhere.  It was uncomfortable for everyone, especially the bears I dragged along.

They sat at one of the little round tables, Lane with a soda and Randall with a beer, while Harvey and I danced.  Or did whatever swaying movements we could with the press of gyrating twinks.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.  It was Randall.

"Hey, either seal the deal and let's go home and screw," he yelled, trying to make himself understood over the roar, "Or drop this twink and let's go home and screw!"

"Ok, ok."  I took Harvey by the hand and led him to a dark area where couples went to kiss.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked, grinning.

"What do you think?"  I put my arms around him, and we started kissing.  He allowed only a brief kiss-- not very impressive.  I reached down and groped him again.  His Kielbasa became aroused, but he didn't t grope me in return.

A bit cool, but I was too into him to notice.  "Let's go back to my place.  I'm staying in my friends' guest room."

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Andrew Matarazzo: Gay icon, geographer, werewolf hunter, wacky model. Even his butt pics are a little wacky.

 

I've had some beefcake and nude photos of Andrew Matarazzo in my files for a long time, without knowing who he is or what he's been in.  

When you're hung, what's the difference?

Finally I got around to checking him out on the IMDB: 27 acting credits, including the gay themed Geography Club and West Hollywood Motel, plus guest spots on Girls, Royal Pains, Speechless, Jane the Virgin, and Solar Opposites. 

 He had a seven episode story arc on Teen Wolf as Gabe, a student at Beacon Hills who plays on the lacrosse team and turns out to be a Hunter. His character didn't have much time for relationships, but he did have a gay-subtext buddy bond with Nolan, played by Froy Guttierez.

Andrew appears to be gay in real life, although there weren't any shot of boyfriends on his social media.

Just some nudes and fashion modeling.

More nudes and fashions after the break