Mark Povinella: Two circus performers, a Snow White dwarf, a gay-subtext boyfriend, Ibsen's "Doll House," and two dicks

Several years ago, we gave up on Modern Family, the comedy about three interrelated "modern families,"  somewhere around Season 5.  But now we're starting it up from the beginning.  Last night was Episode 2.12, "Our Children, Ourselves" (2011).  In the B plot, gay couple Mitchell and Cam run into Mitch's old high school girlfriend, Tracy. She's married now, and she doesn't want anything to do with Mitch. 

1.  He came out on the night of their senior prom, ruining it for her (poor heterosexual lady, gays are such a problem!).

2. Nine years later he had sex with her at their high school reunion, and then cut off all contact, refusing her calls and texts 

Hold on -- they had sex?  Mitch explains that he wanted to see if he could do it.  Apparently dude is bi-curious.   

After Tracey brushes them off, the guys see her getting ice cream for a male person, then kissing the top of his head.  From their brief, obscured view, he looks like an eight-year old boy with red hair -- obviously Mitch's son!  You didn't use a condom for your hetero experimentation?  

After the usual agonizing and recriminations (but he hadn't even met Cam nine years ago), they decide that they want to be part of the boy's life, and show up at Tracy's house. After an embarrassing conversation where they are talking about different things, they discover that the person they saw was not  Tracey's son -- he was her husband  (the 3.9" Mark Povinelli). Well, they really pushed the misdirection -- why didn't the guy get his own ice cream?  

Cam and Mitch unfortunately brought a gift: a "Little Slugger" baseball glove.

With my usual interest in short guys, I wanted to know more about Mark Povinella.  I discovered that:

1. He has an impressive physique, as seen here playing Torvald in Mabou Mines DollHouse, an adaption of the Ibsen classic (on stage, plus filmed in 2009).

2. From 2017 to 2023, he was President of Little People of America, an advocacy group with 7,500 members in 70 chapters.

3. He has 51 acting credits on the IMDB, including episodes of The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, Pushing Daisies, ANT Farm, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Criminal Minds, and Deadtime Stories, but he is most famous for:

Water for Elephants (2011): during the Great Depression, Jacob (Robert Pattinson) joins the circus, and rooms with Kinko (Mark), with whom he develops a strong gay-subtext friendship while pursuing a heterosexual romance.

Mirror, Mirror (2012): A postmodern retelling of the Snow White story, with Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen, Armie Hammer as the Handsome Prince, and seven dwarfs.

Are You There, Chelsea? (2012), based on the drunken-humor memoir of Chelsea Handler, with Laura Prepon as the recovering alcoholic.  She works at a sports bar, with Mark and Jake McDorman as the bartenders.

Left: There are several videos of Jake McDorman's j/o sessions online.

More after the break.

Adam Devine's House Party, Episode 1.1: Adam shows his tree-trunk, eats fro-yo, and flirts with Andrew Santino

In 2013-2014,  while Adam Devine was starring in Workaholics and Modern Family and guesting on  Community, Arrested Development, Sanjay and Craig, and American Dad, he somehow managed to find the time for Adam Devine's House Party.  He plays an insecure, jerky, penis-obsessed version of himself, hosting a huge party in a mansion.  Each episode has a brief plot framing the sets of three up-and-coming comedians. I'm reviewing Episode 1.1, "Ex Girlfriend."

Scene 1:  Adam checks the food, booze, and comedians.  Whoops, there's some poop on the floor.  He covers it with a dollar bill. Gross! Everything is ready!  A hundred people burst in.  

Scene 2: To demonstrate how wild he is, Adam smashes a beer bottle on his head.  Uh-oh, too far.  We cut to him with his head bandaged, blood sopping down. Can they keep filming?  Director Kyle says it's fine.

Adam introduces the concept: "Comedy Central gave me a bunch of money to throw an awesome comedy show, and I blew it all on this house party."

Nope, that doesn't work.  Let's try repeating the opening amid gyrating butts --- a boy and a girl.  The boy's is obscured by the title, but that's the one he gawks at. Adam likes boy butts, and he cannot lie.

Scene 3: Andrew Santino invited Adam's ex-girlfriend to the party!  Adam gets all jealous and threatens to not let him perform. Santino claims that he didn't know, and the girl says that they just went out on one date, so who cares?  He counters: "We should have grown old and died together, but someone thought that someone was strange."

Scene 4: The first comic "won't stab you in the back by f*king your ex girlfriend: Ahmed Bharoocha. 

"Gay marriage is still illegal.  Can we get a boo for that?  Aha!  If you booed, you're gay!"  Wait -- anyone who supports gay marriage is gay, and that's a bad thing?   

He continues that it's crazy that gay marriage is still illegal. How can they allow someone who doesn't know any gay people to "vote on their happiness."  It's like going to a restaurant and ordering cake, but the guy at the next table cancels your order: "I don't like cake, so no one gets cake."

More riffs on a teenage God having kids too early, and baby crows.

Scene 5: Montage of a guy drinking, a guy kissing a girl, and so on. Ahmed and Adam discuss his head injury and the likelihood that Santino "won't get out of here alive."  

Scene 6: Adam introduces Andrew Santino, "a shit dog of a human being, but he's super funny."  

He riffs on his father's objections to him moving to California, with all the gay slurs: "you gonna roller blade and give blow jobs for cash."  "That's ridiculous.  Not everybody in California is gay."  

Then his friend asked him to go sky-diving.  The first time, you go tandem, which means that another adult male is strapped against you, his genitals against your butt.What if the parachute fails, and they both die, and his Dad comes to identify the body: a guy's dick in his ass!  He turned gay after all!

Santino lives in West Hollywood, the "gayest place in the world."  His apartment is at the intersection of Rainbow Avenue and Butthole Road.  You know, not all gay men are into anal sex.  His neighbor is a bear, but he eats penis instead of pic-a-nick baskets.  

If Santino was gay, he'd be a power bottom.  He demonstrates how he would clench to guide the action.  That's not what a power bottom is, but I'm surprised that Santino knows about the clenching. 

Scene 7: Adam asks the ex-girlfriend why she prefers Santino.  "Is his dick bigger than mine?" She doesn't know, having never seen Adam's dick.  Don't you go to movies?  Everyone's seen it.    

"Adam, you just took me out for fro-yo, and didn't pay for it.  You don't love me...you just get obsessed, and can't think of anything else."

"I do not get obsessed...wait, fro-yo?  I forgot about that."  He calls a fro-yo - frozen yogurt -- shop and orders enough for everyone.

Scene 8:  Next comedian: Barry Rothbart (top photo.  At least, he claims that's him).  He riffs on why he's so good at sex; ordering in a restaurant using hand signals: and dolphin sex.

Penises after the break. Caution: arousal.

"The Eyes of Tammy Faye": A gay-positive light in the homophobic 1980s, with nude photos, not of the televangelists

 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) takes us back to the golden age of televangelism, when the big names were world-famous celebrities with huge political and social influence.  They had dinner at the White House.  They were parodied on Saturday Night Live.  

1. Jerry Falwell (Vincent D'Onofrio) turned his Moral Majority into a seething- ground for anti-gay hatred.  He blamed them for everything.  An airplane crash in Peru -- must have been some gays on board.  Rise in teen pregnancy -- gay rights make our kids think they can do anything they want.  Your basement is flooded -- God is punishing you for not hating gays enough.  "A homosexual will kill you as soon as look at you."

2. Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) proclaimed that God was punishing all of the gays by giving them AIDS, but they wanted to infect as many straight people as possible, with the goal of destroying society before becoming extinct.   They had special rings that, when you shook their hand, would prick you with a little of their blood, so you would catch AIDS and die.  They would spit on your food or cough on you on purpose

3. Jimmy Swaggart (Jay Huguley) said that he would kill any gay man who looked at him romantically.  He saw his huge tv ministry decimated after two prostitution scandals, in spite of his famous "I have sinned" speech. 

4. Oral Roberts managed to build a whole homophobic university with sleazy fundraising techniques, like claiming that if viewers didn't send in $8,000,000, God would kill him.

More after the break

Devon Werkheiser: Ned's Declassified gay panic, gay friends, bare butts, and a nude Nolan Gould

20 years ago, when LGBTQ people could never be mentioned on kids' tv, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide (2004-2007) was a gay-subtext classic.

Ned (Devon Werkheiser) offers tips for surviving middle school, always saying "When you like someone" rather than "When a boy likes a girl."

An episode about puberty discusses hair in weird places and sudden fits of rage, but not "discovering the opposite sex."

The bully Loomer (Kyle Swann), who has a gay-subtext friendship with his crony, struggles to "come out" about his interest in fashion design -- as close to "gay" as they could get.

Buddy Jennifer is afraid to ask the school hunk (Alex Black) for a date, so Ned volunteers to do it.  The hunk believes that Ned wants the date, and replies “Sure, but just as friends. I like you, Ned, but not in that way," boldly implying that gay dating is commonplace at Polk Middle School.

Ned tries to cheer up the depressed Marc Downer by getting him a date with a cheerful boy.  When that doesn't work, he tries a depressed girl.

A Buzzfeed article on "21 Actors Who Came Out after Playing LGBTQ Characters" states that Ned was gay, but Nickelodeon was not permitting gay characters at the time, and I seem to recall Ned getting a girlfriend.  It also states that Devon is gay in real life, but he's married to a woman, so probably not.

Let's see if Devon has done anything gay-inclusive since.  

After the School Survival Guide, Devon capitalized on his teencom fame with Shredderman Rules, Christmas in Paradise, and Love at First Hiccup, where his characters win the Girls of their Dreams.

Seven episodes of Greek, a drama about a college fraternity.  He played Peter Parkes, aka "Spidey," a new pledge in Season 4. 

In the 2010s, he moved into thrillers with Beneath the Darkness, about a group of teens trying to find their friend's murderer, and The Wicked, about a group of teens fighting a witch.

California Scheming sounds like a comedy, but it's actually a thriller: "A teen seductress pulls three other privileged Malibu kids into her devious scheme, and unforeseen consequences force the group to face their own fears and mortality." Sounds awful, but at least it gives us an underwear bulge.  

The guy running away with him is Spencer Daniels.

According to the reviews, Sundown (2016) starts out a teen sex comedy and turns dark.  Plus it's "strictly offensive...trans- and homophobic and downright degrading," according to the L.A. Times.  

Devon and his buds show their butts during a "gay panic" scene.

More after the break

Steve Howey: Gay ally happy to show his dick on screen. And his butt. And his elephant.

 

  

I've been following Steve's career since he starred in Reba (2001-2007) as the boyfriend of Reba's teenage daughter. It was a country-western sitcom, so I figured that "Howey" was a stage name that made him sound more countrified: "Steve Howdy, y'all!"

He went on to guest on many comedies, like Psych, New Girl, Jennifer Falls, and Workaholics: In Episode 6.15, "Gramps Demamp is Dead," he plays Adam's cousin "Blue Knight" Demamp.  At Gramps' funeral, Blake brings up a happy memory of having a "sword fight" with their wieners, and seeing the Blue Knight's balls. 

Steve had aa long run on Shameless as Kevin Ball, a bartender (and occasional stripper) who is friends with the shameless Gallagher family. 

Shameless gave him many opportunities to show his bulge, dick....

And butt.

More after the break