Showing posts with label gay subtext. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gay subtext. Show all posts

Pablo the Penguin's penis: Jake Goldberg from "Backyardigans" and "Grown Ups" grows up to corporate, cooking, and some cock shots

 


Remember Pablo?  He was one of the backyard buddies on Nick Junior's Backyardigans (2004-2013) a high-strung, frenetic blue penguin best-buddying with the laid-back orange moose Tyrone.  Their friends included Tasha, a yellow hippopotamus best-buddying with the tomboy Uniqua, who has no animal species; and Austin, a purple kangaroo. 



Contrary to what commentators believe, gayness doesn't suddenly appear when you see your first drag queen. You are gay as a preschooler.  You may not be interested in physical intimacy yet, but you find some people and not others attractive, and form romantic bonds, early on.  In Backyardigans, Pablo and Tyrone were queer coded, although Pablo is more often paired with Austin on Archive of Our Own. 


A decade later, Nicholas Barasch, who played Austin in 20 episodes (2009-13), showed his physique on Riverdale.



Leon Thomas III, who played Tyrone in 25 episodes (2006-09), gave us a butt shot on Insecure.

 But Jake Goldberg, a long running Pablo (60 episodes, 2006-13), has given us one better: shots of his penis. 









Born in 1996, Jake grew up in New York, except for five years spent in Israel.  As a child and teenager, he appeared in episodes of 3D Rock, Law and Order: SVU, and Bull, and he played Adam Sandler's son in Grown Ups (2010) and Grown Ups 2 (2013)

Jake is second from the left.  Notice David Henrie of Wizards of Waverly Place on the right.


.   

His character crushes on girls, but also buddy-bond (and gets naked) with Nadji Jeter as Chris Rock's son. He was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award, which may have turned him off acting as a career choice.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"Teacup": Body-jumping aliens, two heterosexual romances, a gay subtext boyfriend betrayal, and Rob's knob


Probably-gay actor Jackson Kelley notes that he had a starring role in the paranormal horror Teacup, on Peacock. I figured he would be playing a gay character, so I checked it out.

The premise: On a farm full of good country folk, animals start behaving strangely, then people start trembling and speaking in riddles.  The power and WIFI go out. 

An invisible "teacup" trap marked by a blue line appears around the property; any person or animal that crosses it dies a horrible death.  A guy in a gas mask keeps patroling and gesturing.  Sound doesn't get through, so he uses a board to say things like: "Stay behind the line" and "Trust no one" 


The people trapped inside the "teacup" are divided into heterosexual nuclear families:

Family #1: James (Scott Speedman, left, from Animal Kingdom), his wife (a veterinarian), sick elderly mother, teenage daughter, and preteen son.

Family #2: Ruben (Chaske Spencer from Twilight), his wife, and his teeange son, trapped there when they brought their horse to see the veterinarian.   

Soap opera plotlines: The wife is secretly having an affair with James, and the son has been in love with James' daughter since he was in second grade, but is trapped in the Friend Zone (but not for long). 


Family #3: Donald Kelley (Boris McGiver. left) and his wife from the farm next door also happen to be there when the teacup is  put up.

The Newcomers: While everyone is dealing with the crisis and soap opera stuff, preteen Arlo (Caleb Dolden) tells his sister and her not-boyfriend that the Assassin is coming to kill them all.  The only way they can escape is with a multicolored liquid from a crashed meteor, so they gather a vial full.

Gas Mask Guy wants the vial, and crosses the blue line to get it, whereupon they stab him.  

Meanwhile, James finds the injured Travis (Jackson) hiding in the basement, worried that he's "one of them" and ready to shoot.  As they have a standoff, Travis tells his story:


Gas Mas Guy at a Bar: Flashback to Travis as the new guy working at the bar, mesmerized by Gas Mask Guy, McNab (Rob Morgan).  Wouldn't you be?


















Left: Rob Morgan having coffee n*ude.  But he doesnt' have a lot of tattoos; maybe it's his breakfast companion?

He's telling about the aliens who set force-field "teacup" traps that incinerate any complex organism that tries to get through.  They're non-corporeal, using human bodies as hosts.  They can jump from body to body.  Often the humans aren't even aware of it, so anyone could be hosting an alien.

Bartender Big Al tells Travis to pay attention to the other customers; he'll wait on McNab himself.




More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Lenny Rush: Doctor Who's buddy, the Artful Dodger's boyfriend. a gay-vague vampire. With a lot of acting awards and co-star d*cks




In the 2023-24 season of Doctor Who, Episodes 1.7 and 1.8, the time-and-space zapping Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his latest companion Ruby Sunday visit UNIT, the time-and-space anomaly-investigation agency, to solve two mysteries:

1. Why does an elderly woman pop up in various guises in all of their recent adventures?

2. Ruby's mother left her on a church doorstep on Christmas Day.  They want to go back in time to discover who she is, but the Doctor can't use his regular time-traveling power, for reasons, so they use one of UNIT's experimental devices.

Things go terribly wrong, of course, and they release Sutekh, the Great Beast, the Abomination, the Destroyer, the Bringer of Death, the One Who Waits...who actually looks rather like a giant dog.  He intends to destroy all life in the universe.  Well, it's better than yet another visit from the Dahh-leks.




UNIT is staffed primarily by the Doctor's retired companions, all ladies, but there are a few hunks wandering around: 

Tachia Newall (left) as Col. Chidozie, who gets sanded to death by the Giant Dog



Alexander Devrient as Col. Ibrahaim, whose muscles are praised by the Doctor (bisexual this season): "You've been working out!"

 Aneurin Barnard (butt in candlelight, left) as Roger ap Gwillam, who will become the most evil Prime Minister in the history of Britain.  




And a cute kid: Lenny Rush as12-year old super-genius Morris Gibbons, who runs the time-travel device, fights the Giant Dog, gets dusted and resurrected, and after the Dog's demise, invites everyone out to a pizza party.

Lenny was originally cast in Episode 1.1, as one of the sentient babies running an orbiting space nursery, but he was so great that they decided to cut his scene and cast him in this much bigger role.




As of this writing, Lenny is 16 years old and looks a bit younger, so I won't be searching for beefcake or n*de photos.  I'll post some of his co-stars instead.

But at  3'2" he's a perfect addition to the Short Guy Brigade, so I'm going to research the other usual questions of a profile:

1. Has he played any gay characters?

Lenny has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, beginning with 4 episodes of the animated Apple Tree House (2018-19) and 7 episodes of The Dumping Ground (2021-22), about children "dumped" in a foster home.

There were two lesbians in The Dumping Ground, but no gay boys.



Dodger
 (2022-23) featured the Victorian-era pickpocket Artful Dodger (Billy Jenkins, left) and his mentor Fagin (Christopher Eccleston) before their adventures in Dickens' Oliver Twist.  Lenny (right) played Morgan the Crossing Sweeper, the Dodger's gay-subtext boyfriend.

More after the break

"Best Foot Forward": Boy negotiates middle school with a prosthetic leg, a hung dad, a bodybuilder brother, a gay buddy, and no annoying girl-craziness

 


We just dumped Peacock in favor of Apple Plus, so now we can watch Best Foot Forward (2022), based on childhood experiences of  "Paralympian, comedian, author, disability advocate, and Halloween enthusiast" Joshua Sundquist.  

Focus character Josh has been home schooled since he lost his left leg at age nine, but he finally convinces his parents to allow him to start seventh grade in public school.  He faces the standard junior high problems of friends, math tests, soccer practice, movie night, and school dances.



Josh is played by Logan Marmino, fifteen years old in 2025 and thinking about college.  Maybe Johns Hopkins?

He's an accomplished athlete, competing in Paralympics track and high school basketball and baseball.  Plus surfing and skateboarding. 

When showrunner Joshua Sundquist invited him to audition for Best Foot Forward, he had no acting experience, not even a school play.  And he doesn't really seem interested in an acting career -- he hasn't appeared in anything since. Sports and disability activism keep him busy.


While Josh is experiencing the joys and hassles of junior high, Dad and Mom (Stephen Schneider, left, Joy Suprano) have B plots of their own, like when they tried to order two pizzas, and accidentally ordered twenty. "Sometimes older people can't see the order screen very well," the delivery guy explains, to Mom's consternation.

Stephen Schneider may be best known for a five-minute long n*de fight scene in The Righteous Gemstones, but he has 37 acting credits on the IMDB, including three tv series reviewed here: You're the Worst, Broad City. and Nobody Wants This.





Josh's younger brother Matt (Roger Dale Floyd) mostly tries to help, or feels left out when Josh gets all of the attention.

Roger Dale Floyd, 13 years old in 2025, has appeared in The Walking Dead, Doctor Sleep, Greenland, and Stranger Things.  He is a junior bodybuilder, interested in promoting fitness among teens and tweens. 






In Greenland (2020), Roger and his Mom and Dad (Gerard Butler, left) must flee cross-country to safety after a comet-Apocalypse.  Whoops, they forgot to bring his insulin. 







Josh makes two friends, Kyle (Peyton Jackson, left) and Gabriella (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss).

More after the break.  Yes, I'm getting to the review.

Chi Lewis-Parry: The "28 Years Later" zombie, kickboxer, gladiator, and Gelf has gay fans and a lot of inches.

 Now that 28 Years Later is streaming, we can get better screen shots of Samson, an Alpha: a bigger, stronger, more sentient, and well-nigh indestructable zombie, who strides across the ruins of Scotland with his semi-sentient pack,  tearing off survivors' heads, chasing Jamie and his son Spike (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams) and being studied by Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). 



Did you notice the homoerotic energy in the interactions between Samson and Dr. Kelson? A definite appreciation of the muscleman beneath the zombie.  Under other circumstances, they might have become boyfriends.


Samson caused a lot of pearl-clutching among skittish heterosexuals because he was naked, with his gigantic Samson penis swinging around. Um...he pulls people's heads right out of their bodies, and you're traumatized by a penis?






The gays loved it, of course.  Even Erik (Edvin Ryding) seems impressed.  Under other circumstances, he would be giving Samson head (so to speak). 


 


Left: Edvin getting head as Prince Wilhelm in Young Royals (2021-24).













Actor Chi Lewis-Parry notes that he used a prosthetc.  There's a British law that, when there are kids on the set, you can't show your real willie.  Besides, he's "always hugging people," and you can hardly do that "fully in the nip." 

But in real life he's "Six foot eight inches."

Funny, according to the biography on Tapology, Chi is only 6'7", not 6'8"...oh, right.  Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more. 



Chi was born in 1983 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and began his career as basketball player before moving on to kickboxing  and MMA (mixed martial arts).  Using the stage name Chopper,  he competed with the United Arab Emirates Warriors before signing on with the American UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship).  Here he fights the Egyptian Hulk, Mahmoud Hassen, for an eight-second knockout.

In 2015, he posted "I am tenacious, I'm unanimous, I'm infamous, I'm superb, dashing, marvelous, gargantuan, heroic, furious, greatness, fearsome, a winner! Well, that's what my mum told me growing up, so it must be true."

More after the break

Bryce Gheisar: "Wonder" bully, Nickelodeon astronaut, cursed boy's boyfriend, gay Iranian-American Baha'i bodybuilder


Discouraged over the low pageview count of my profile of Nolan Gould -- it was friggin' Nolan Gould!  With a friggin' hard-on!  -- I wanted a sure-fire thousand-page view draw.  Former teen stars always draw the most interest, so I checked on the teen idol site, and found Bryce Gheisar, with over 1,000 photos! 

No idea who he is.  From the name and general appearance, I'm guessing Turkish.  Probably a singer, since singers tend to draw more fan attention than actors.

I usually profile only actors, but he's got a cute face, a very muscular physique....




And he is obviously gay, with lots of photos of hugging, cuddling, and sleeping with guys.

A basic internet search reveals that Bryce was born in 2004 in Plano, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), not Turkey.  His father owned a fitness gym and is now a realtor, his mother runs a chimpanzee refuge, and his older brother is a gymnast.  











They are Iranian-American, and adherents of Bah'ai, a religion founded in Iran in 1844 by the Prophet Bahá’u’lláh.  It teaches the essential unity of all religions and all people. 

Bryce is an actor, best known as Ethan in A Dog's Purpose and Julian in Wonder.

And I haven't even checked the IMDB or his social media yet. Dude is famous.

He bursts onto the screen in 2017, singing the theme song to the new Duck Tales and starring in three movies.


In A Dog's Purpose (2017), a dog is reincarnated several times over five decades, always ending up with Ethan (Bryce as a kid, KJ Apa as a teen, Dennis Quaid as an adult).

Left: Former Archie Andrews KJ Apa in the shower.










In Wonder (2017),  Auggie (Jacob Tremblay), who has a facial anomaly, attends public school, gets a gay-subtext boyfriend  (Noah Jupe), and draws the wrath of bully Julian (Bryce), who eventually has a change of heart and apologizes.  Owen Wilson (left) plays Auggie's Dad.

Bryce reprised the role of Julian in White Bird: A Wonder Story (2024): his grandmother tells him a story about hiding from the Nazis during World War II, and falling in love (with a boy, of course), thus convincing him to try to be a better person. "Heterosexual romance exists, so stop your bullying!"  Auggie does not appear.






Later Bryce starred in The Astronauts, on Nickleodeon (2021-22): Five kids sneak into a spaceship, and it blasts off!  Grround Control can communicate with them, but otherwise they are on their own, with an AI that can't be trusted. Athletic Elliot (Bryce, right) and science nerd Will (Ben Daon, center) compete to become group leader.  No heterosexual romances are mentioned in the episode synopses, so there are probably some gay subtexts.


In Season 2 of the new Are You Afraid of the Dark (2022), Bryce plays Luke McCoy, a high school wrestler and skateboarder.  His best friend Connor (Parker Queenan) is captured by the Shadowman, and Luke enlists the Midnight Society to help rescue him. According to the fan wiki, "it is heavily implied" that the two have romantic feelings for each other.  Don't beat around the bush: they're canon.

More after the break

Max Casella after dating Doogie: Christian Bale's buddy, Tony Soprano's driver, Timon, Bottom, bi. With a small d*ck bonus.

 


In the early 1990s, if your parents belong to a certain socioeconomic class, you were required to watch ABC's ultra-conservative programming block on Wednesday nights: 

The Wonder Years, with Fred Savage as a boy winning the Girl of His Dreams in the 1960s.

Home Improvement, with Tim Allen grunting with tools.

Coach, with Craig T. Nelson as a...football coach.

And Doogie Howser, MD, with Neil Patrick Harris as a 16-year old who somehow managed to finish medical school, become a doctor, and get girls.








I wasn't of a certain age, I was not living with parents of a certain socioeconomic class, so on Wednesday nights I was watching Seinfeld.   Not Doogie Howser, because of its ridiculous premise and "Girls are the meaning of life!" ideology.  

 But I did notice Max Casella, who played Doogie's buddy: 22-26 years, "cute as a bug's ear," as the oldsters would say, and a member of the Short Guy Brigade at 5'7".








As everyone knows, Neil Patrick Harris came out a few years after Doogie, and for some inscrutable reason agreed to play "himself' in the homophobic Harold & Kumar movies and heterosexual horndog Barney on How I Met Your Mother (2005-14).  More recently, in Uncoupled (2022), he played a gay man dealing with the death of his partner and suddenly becoming single at midlife. 

But what has Max Casella been doing?

I'm researching the three standard questions: 

1. Any gay roles?
2. Gay in real life?
3. Any n*ude photos?  





1. Any gay roles?

In Newsies (1992), a Disney movie about the newsboys' strike of 1899, Max plays Racetrack Higgins, who may be gay or bisexual.  When focus character Jack (Christian Bale) says that they can't beat up the newsboys who refuse to join the strike, he "jokingly" suggests kissing them.





In Ed Wood (1994), the biopic of the director known for crossdressing, Glen or Glenda? and Plan 9 from Outer Space, Max plays Paul Marco, the gay actor who often starred in Wood's films.  His sexual identity is not mentioned here.

Later Max moved into animation, voicing characters on Pepper Anne, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Kim Possible; and video games such as Jak and Daxter (a humanoid elf and his previously-human otter-weasel buddy) and Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony (he doesn't voice Gay Tony).

He appeared in 28 episodes of The Sopranos (2001-07) as Benny Fazio, who is partnered with Chris Moltisanti and sometimes works as Capo Tony's driver.  He's married with children.

Inside Llewelyn Davis (2013) depicts a day in the life of the folk singer (Oscar Davis) in the early 1960s Greenwich Village scene.  Max plays Club Manager Pappi Corsicato, who has sex with Llewelyn's girl.


Tulsa King
 (2024-): Sylvester Stallone plays a mob boss who tries to start a new cosa nostra among the Oklahoma cowboys.  Max plays Manny Truisi, formerly a soldier in the Invernizzi Family, who tried to assassinate Stallone's Dwight, then fled. and started a new life working on a horse ranch.  He's got a wife and kid.

More after the break.  

Jonny Gray: Researching the "Max and Shred" skater and Boots boyfriend. With Jake's junk, Daniel's dick, and a bonus Priestley butt


 I have so many guys waiting to be profiled that I forget who some of them are.  Today I looked in a folder entitled "Johnny Gray,", with a lot of screen shots, probably taken from the IMDB or his Instagram before I moved on to other tasks. They haven't even been adjusted (converted to .jpgs, cropped, reduced,  brightened, desaturated).  

Problem: I have no idea who Johnny Gray is.  

But he's obviously gay (this photo is entitled "JohnnyBoyfriend"), and probably an actor, so I don't mind conducting the research.  



The research sent me down quite an internet rabbit hole. Various configurations of John/Johnny and Gray/Grey yielded:

A famous brand of guitars.

A runner who won at the Olympics four times and holds the record for the 600 meter sprint.

A rugby player who received the Sir Willie Purves Quaitch Award in 2014.





The author of the gender-polarized and heteronormative best-seller Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

A Wall Street broker, played by Mickey Roarke, who gets involved in heterosexual BDSM games in 9 1/2 Weeks.

A "secretly gay" 18th century gentleman, played by Oscar Kennedy and David Berry (left), in the tv series Outlander.




Returning to the folder for clues, I found photos of two n*de guys.  Maybe boyfriends or co-stars?

1. Brazilian actor Daniel Rangel, who appears mostly in telenovelas like Novo Mundo (2017) and Amor Perfeito (2023-205).

2.  Jake Goodman, left, best known for the Disney Channel teencom Max & Shred (2014-16):  he plays the superego in the gay-subtext buddy bond, science nerd Shred, who must mentor a professional skateboarder, the indefatigable id Max (Jonny Gray).  

Found him. 

Our Jonny Gray was born in 1999, and grew up in a suburb of London, Ontario   His on-screen career began in 2012, when he reported on the King's Cup Elephant Polo Tournament in Hua Hin, Thailand.

It's to support elephant conservation, but it still looks strange.

Next came Disney stardom with Max & Shred, and three Bruno & Boots movies: Go Jump in the Pool (2016), This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (2017), and The Wizzle War (2018).


Based on the Macdonald Hall book series by Gordon Korman, the movies feature two students at an exclusive private school near Toronto.  Jonny changes from superego to id as the impulsive "let's put an iguana in the headmaster's bed" Bruno, who buddy-bonds with the wet-blanket "but I have to write a report on thumbtacks" Boots (Callan Potter).  

The book series seems to push up the gay subtext and eliminate the hetero-romance.  I'm not sure about the movies.

More after the break