Josh Zuckerman: The teenage Faust saves Christmas twice, plays nebbishes and sinister ghosts. With his butt and Nick's dick

 

In the Disney Channel's Twas the Night (2001), irresponsible Nick Wrigley (Bryan Cranston of Malcolm in the Middle), fleeing from gansters, takes refuge at his brother's house.  While delivering presents, Santa gets clocked on the head, and the gangsters steal the time-dilation device that allows him to visit 1.3 billion households in a single night.

So Nick and his mischievous 14-year old nephew Danny (Josh Zuckerman) must deliver all of the presents and subdue the gangsters.

It differs from the standard "saving Christmas" plot in the real peril, and in Nick and Danny, who move from stereotyped uncle and nephew to classic 1930s Adventure Boy and adult companion. 

It was enough to pay attention to this guy, born in 1985 in Stanford, California, and guesting on every conceivable tv series: Get Real,  Once and Again, The West Wing, Judging Amy, and so on,  Surely he had more gay-subtexts or maybe even gay roles in his future.

Nope.  Next he starred in  I was a Teenage Faust (2002), about a 15-year old boy (Josh) who sells his soul to the devil in order to win The Girl of His Dreams.  Heterosexist tripe.

I didn't have the stomach to see Josh in anything else for a few years, but evidently he starred with Ben Affleck in Surviving Christmas (2004): a rich dude pays a family to pretend to be his at Christmastime, and develops real feelings for them, of course.

And Balthazar Getty in Feast (2005): Bar patrons fight monsters.

 But the heterosexism continued, as Josh found his niche as a nebbish who can't get girls, but sometimes can.

He had a recurring role on Kyle XY (2008-09) ,  starring Matt Dallas as a teenage boy  who appears out of nowhere with no memory and no belly button. I think he's a clone or alien or something.  Josh plays a nebbish with a crush on his adopted sister.  Eventually he wins her.

The Desperate Housewives (2004-13) were desperate due to their 15-year history of lies, scandals, murder, and semi-nude scenes.  Josh plays Eddie, a barista and aspiring comedian who kills the girls who reject him -- and they all do.  They're usually mean about it, laughing at the ridiculousness of the nebbish thinking he was worthy of human contact, but still, it seems a bit much. 

The s*x comedy S*x Drive (2008) is all shot through with homophobia and gay stereotypes. It's got Seth Green in it, so you know there's going to be trouble.  Ian (Josh) goes on a road trip to Chattanooga to win the Girl of His Dreams, Ms. Tasty (her stage name). He borrows the car from his "fag" and "homo"-spouting brother Rex (James Marsden): 

When Ian reaches Chattanooga, Rex appears and refuses to let him get with the girl.  So he pretends to be gay, and Rex changes his mind: getting with a girl could cure him!  In the end  Ian marries The Girl, and Rex is revealed to be gay (but he doesn't get a boyfriend). 

But at least we see Josh nude.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Vincent Webb: Mexican model/actor hugs, dates, and sticks out his tongue at guys, so he's gay, right? With bonus n*de Hispanic dudes

 

18-year old Vincent Webb appeared on the teen idol website with 5,169 photos. He must be super-famous for acting, singing, or...I hope not social influencing. 

Usually I check the guy's movie and tv roles to see if he's played any gay characters, and then his Instagram to see if he's gay in real life.  But this time I'm going to save time by going to go through the pages on the teen idol site to see if he's gay first.  No point in continuing if he's straight. 

There are 173 pages, each with 30 photos. I'll just check the first 10-15.

Page 1: Just shirtless and modeling photo.  .

Page 2: Ulp, he's hugging a girl.  But there's just one girl-hugging photo on the page, and neither is sticking their tongue out.

Page 3: Two guy-hugging and three girl-hugging photos.  

And many more shirtless modeling photos.

Page 4: A guy-hugging photo with his tongue out, usually a bragging gesture ("I'm so much better than you because I get to have sex with this hunk, and you don't).

Left: Vincent only just turned 18, so I'm not going to look for nude photos.

Page 5: More shirtless shots, plus gazing at a guy.

Page 6: Obvious dates with a guy to a ball game, to the beach, and out to dinner, plus two where the tongues come out to brag about each other's hotness. I've about decided that Vincent is gay.

Wait -- Page 9: More girl-hugging photos. 

I'm stumped.

Maybe the IMDB offers some clues:

After the break

Daryl Sabara: Juni grows up, fights cannibals, bikers, and Satanists, and shows his dick, but I'm still depressed

Spy K*ds (2001) stars gay actor Antonio Banderas (left) and Carla Gugino as a husband and wife spy team.  Well, actually, their son and daughter, Juni and Carmen (Daryl Sabara, Alexa Vega), who get swept up in an age-appropriate diabolical plot involving tv host Fegan Floop (Alan Cummings, who is bisexual in real life).   

Although everyone is ostensibly heterosexual, some reviews call the film a queer classic due to the extremely hot Dad -- and Mom, apparently, which led to the "queer awakening" of an entire generation of lesbians; the shy, bullied, gay-coded Juni; the kick-ass Carmen; and the gay-coded villain who turns out to be not all that villainous.

The Banderas dick is just to draw your attention.  This profile features the shy, bullied, gay-coded Daryl Sabara.

There were 3 sequels:

The Island of Lost Dreams (2002) strands Juni and Carmen on a Jules Verne/Dr. Moreau "mysterious island," where they run afoul of a mad scientist creating animal hybrids.  Carmen gets a boyfriend, but Juni remains gay-coded.

I didn't see Game Over (2003) where Juni must venture into a video game to save his sister, but the queer coding ends with him meeting The Girl.  He also meets two guys, video game teammates Ryan Pinkston and Bobby Edner.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

The 2011 All the Time in the World minimized Juni and Carmen in favor of a new sibling team.  The brother is played by Mason Cook, who would go on to Speechless.

During the Spy franchise, Daryl Sabara appeared in the usual one-shot tv spots: Will and Grace, Fatherhood, House, American Dragon: Jake Long, and so on.

He has a starring role in the animated lion-drama Father of the Pride (2004-05) as Hunter, a shy, anxiety-ridden Lord of the Rings nerd. That is, basically Juni as a lion.  In one episode, his grandfather Sarmoti thinks that he is gay, or as the fan wiki says, "homosexual; but this is absolutely not true."  Rather homophobic, aren't you, fan wiki?

Then things start to go downhill.  In a 2006 episode of Criminal Minds,  Daryl plays a teenager who charges men to watch him do bondage videos.  So he has an OnlyFans site?  The agents convince him that what he is doing constitutes prostitution, and will put him in danger from internet predators.  It is all presented as extremely sleazy, and one can't help but conclude that being gay is always seedy and sordid.  

Normal Adolescent Behavior (2007) is an anti-hookup cautionary tale,with no gay content: three girls and three guys in a friendship group pair off randomly.  Daryl appears as Nathan, who crushes on the mother of one of the girls. Ugh.

Raviv Ullman, formerly Phil of the Future, plays one of the guys in the friendship group.

Next Daryl played Tim Scottson in 7 episodes of Weeds (2005-12), about suburban marijuana growers. He shot his stepmother Nancy Botwin because he assumed that she was responsible for his father's death, but she recovered and hired him as her assistant.

Worst. Prom. Ever. (2011) has Daryl planning the perfect prom for his girlfriend, but when her two friends tag along, things go crazy, with a car crash, armed thugs, Satanists, and an amorous lady biker.

In The Green Inferno (2013), some student activists go to the Peruvian jungle for ecological stuff, and are captured by a cannibal tribe.  

A cannibal tribe?  I thought the "spear-throwing savages" trope went out with Johnny Quest. But at least the guy dragging Daryl toward the cooking pot has nice abs and a basket.

Daryl gets a girlfriend and displays his dick before being eaten.

More Daryl dick after the break

Marcus Scribner: Junior on "Black-ish" and "Grown-Ish" grows up, plays gay-ish characters, shows his stuff in some n*de photos.

Black-ish (2014-22) starred Anthony Anderson as Dre Johnson, the head of an upper-middle-class Black family.  They are black-ish because they have to figure out how to maintain their Black identity while living in a ritzy all-white neighborhood.

Son Andre (Marcus Scribner) announces that he's converting to Judaism so he can have a Bar Mitzvah like his friends.

He starts dating a Republican girl, to the consternation of his liberal parents.

The kids hate Dre's favorite restaurant back in the hood.

They go on their annual Martin Luther King Day ski trip.

There were no gay characters other than Dre's lesbian sister (played by Raven Simone of Raven's Home), who visited once or twice per season, but Junior was queer-coded in spite of his occasional girlfriends.  He was an outsider, with quirky tastes, interests, and mannerisms that his family variously ridiculed, ignored, and worried about. Sounds like my parents, with their "Go to work in the factory!" and "Get married and have kids!" rants.

He had gay-subtext buddy-bonds with several guys, notably Zach (Nick Carson, who has a lot of muscular men but no women on his Instagram).

Marcus Scribner continued to play Junior on the spin-off Grown-ish (2019-24), which sends the kids to college.  Although he has a "will they or won't they" romance with a girl named Annika, Junior also has a gay-subtext buddy bond with Doug (Diggy Simmons).  Oddly, Doug is involved with his own "will they or won't they" romance. 

Fans continue to speculate that Marcus is gay in real life, so I checked his non-Black-ish work for gay characters.

Marcus has 27 acting credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of Castle, New Girl, American Dad, and most recently, rookie cop Jonah Silver, a regular on Boston Blue (2025). 

TV Insider says that he "became close friends" with Sean Reagan (Mika Amonson) after they were both injured in a fire, and now he is a regular guest at the Silvers' shabbat dinners.  Sean has a female "love interest," so he's straight.  Jonah doesn't have any hetero-romances listed in the plot synopses, so maybe he is gay-ish.

Marcus has also done a lot of voice work:

Bell Zettifar in 5 episodes of Young Jedi Adventures: Nothing specified.

D'Angelo Baker in 38 episodes of Dragons: The Nine Realms:Gay according to the fan wiki, but straight according to Reddit.

Bow in 57 episodes of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: a female "love interest," but according to an interview in Queerty, he's "sexually fluid."  So gay-ish, but they couldn't say anything.

So, Question #1, any gay roles?  Just some subtexts and closets

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"The Feast of the Seven Fishes": All of the tropes I hate, but I still liked it. With Skyler Gisondo and bonus Italian dicks

 

The Feast of the Seven Fishes just dropped on Netflix.  All I know is that it's a Christmas movie starring Skyler Gisondo, so the likelihood of gay characters or even subtexts is minimal.  I'm going to watch anyway.

Scene 1: Beautiful establishing shots of a mining town in West Virginia, winter 1983.  I loved that year!  Madonna, Michael Jackson, "I'm Coming Out," Tom Cruise, Family Ties, Mama's Family.  Tony (Skyler Gisondo) is painting by the river and gazing at his acceptance letter from a prestigious art school.  Angelo (Andrew Schultz, below) and his penis, "Mr. Boner," stop by to tell him about a party with girls desperate to have sex with any guy who asks. 

 "Nope, I'm not going."  Not interested in girls, buddy?

Well, how about coming along on his date?  There will be extremely horny girls there, too. "Nope."  If I didn't know from the plot synopsis that he has two girlfriends, I'd have pegged Tony as gay.

"Please. My penis hates being alone with girls."

"Ok, I'm in. Just to please your penis." He doesn't really say that.

Scene 2: Back in his shabby working-class home, someone named Pap tries to get Tony drunk on homemade hooch.  There's no one named "Pap" in the cast list, but he could be Tony's dad, played by Paul Ben-Victor.

 We cut to a super-elegant mansion, where a super-elegant rich girl named Beth yells at her even-richer  boyfriend Prentice (Allen Williamson, left) for backing out of his promise to spend Christmas with the family.  He's going skiing with his friends instead. Prentice, baby, the first rule of relationships -- never leave them alone at Christmas. They'll be screwing someone else by Boxing Day. 

Mom is upset: "You'll never land a rich husband with that attitude!  Like all men, he prefers the company of other men."  So all men are gay?  

Beth wants a husband who will spend time with her.  That's what gay bffs are for, girlfriend.

Scene 3: Beth hanging out with her Italian-American friend, complaining about this whole "get a rich husband" thing.  They smoke pot.  

Meanwhile, Tony's Uncles Carmine and Frankie, brothers, not a gay couple(Ray Arbruzzo, left, Joe Pantoleone) are stocking up on booze, when they see Tony's Ex throwing herself at a truck driver.  They discuss her boobs for several minutes before getting around to complaining about her post-breakup downward spiral.

Cut to Tony's cousin Juke (Josh Helman, left and below), the family intellectual, telling his buds about the Feast of the Seven Fishes, although they obviously already know: it's a traditional Christmas Eve dinner consisting of seven types of seafood.  I thought it was a religious thing, Jesus with the loaves and fishes.

He stops to complain about not having a girlfriend, which is especially tough at Christmas. Foreshadowing -- ten to one he gets with Tony's Ex-Girlfriend, the one who throws herself at truck drivers. 

Scene 4: Rich-girl Beth and her friend,  incredibly high, stare at the menu at a hot dog restaurant, trying to decide what to order.  How about hot dogs?  They discuss going to a party tonight, but all of the parties are full of girls desperate to have sex with any boy who asks, so they'll get groped and prodded all the time. "Well, maybe I'll do a little groping," the friend jokes.  So she's a lesbian?

Nope.  "I've been dating this guy and his penis." Wait -- her boyfriend is "Come along on my date tonight" Angelo and his penis Mr. Boner.  And Angelo  has this cousin: "Cute, nice, smart..."  A gay guy would immediately ask "How big is his cock?"  

"Maybe you could come along on my date tonight, and dump your Christmas-hating boyfriend for Tony? Or at least seduce him and then dump him on New Year's Day?"

"Sure, I'll give it a shot."

Left: Juke butt.

More after the break

How fans deny queerness in "The Righteous Gemstones" and other tv series. With examples and dicks.

 

New book on fan reaction to queer codes in tv series, especially how and why some fans on social media refuse to admit that a character is gay.

Gideon Gemstone's room is plastered with pictures of musclemen.

He's obviously straight.  He wants to look like them, not at them.

On The Middle, Sue's friend Brad begins "I'm...."  and is cut off when she says "I know" and hugs him.  

Obviously he was going to confess his love for her.

On What We Do in the Shadows, Guillermo tells the vampires, "I was about thirteen when I realized that I was..." and is cut off.

Obviously he was going to say "shy around girls."

On The Hollow, Adam has a Pride flag in his room.

So what?  Lots of guys like rainbows.

He tells his friends, "I'm gay."

Obviously he didn't mean it like that.

Gideon and Scotty have a romantic candlelight dinner while the background song tells us: "The way you look when you get down, you knock me out."  

Straight guys can go out to dinner.  There's such a thing as friendship, you know.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Owen Vaccaro: Marky Mark's son wins three Girls of His Dreams, posts girl-hugging photos, but is he gay? With Marky butt and twink cocks

 In the short Silver Fox (2024), not to be confused with the 2017, 2018, 2023, and upcoming movies with the same name, famous gay comedian Joe Fox (writer/director Julio Vincent Gambuto) returns to his home town for a show, and in his dressing room, announces that he's going to do it in drag.  His oldster friends, Nick and Brian (Dan Butler of Frasier, Alec Mapa of Ugly Betty), disapprove: the audience is coming for gay jokes, not a political statement.  

But his twink assistants, Chris and Rocco (Logan Rozos, Owen Vaccaro), think that the idea is fabulous.

The conversation moves from outfits to gay assimilation, straightwashing, the younger generation's debt to the gay people who came out during the homophobic 1980s and 1990s, their debt to the Civil Rights Movement, how gay stereotypes have changed over the years,  how we should handle the newly revived homophobia and transphobia of the fascist state...

Wait -- Owen Vaccaro?

Could there be another one?

If you see every movie that Mark Wahlberg is in, because he's friggin' Marky Mark, then you've seen Daddy's Home (2015): Mild-mannered Brad (Will Ferrell) is trying to be a good father to his wife's kids.  When their biological father Dusty (Mark) shows up, he assumes that the guy is a jerk because he's muscular and rides a motorcycle.  The two try to one-up each other in being The Good Dad.    Eventually they decide to co-parent.  

It was not a great movie. But Marky Mark took his shirt off...

And Will Ferrell's not bad, either.

10-year old Atlanta-based actor Owen Wilder Vaccaro played their son Dylan.  He displays the interest in basketball and girls that characterizes all preteen boys in Hollywood movies. 

I didn't see the sequel, Daddy's Home 2 (2017), regardless of the possibility of Marky Mark with his shirt off, but I just went through it on fast-forward. The dads' Dads show up for Christmas, and try to one-up each other in similar situations.  12-year old Dylan gets "the talk," tries to impress the Girl of His Dreams, and finally kisses her.   

The only queer-coded moment comes when various girls line up to kiss him under the mistletoe, and a boy is #8 in line (maybe Colton Osorio).  It's a throwaway gag: a boy wants to kiss a boy?  How ridiculous!

Owen's next film, The House with a Clock in its Walls (2018), is a fantasy based on the 1973 novel by John Bellairs: an orphaned boy (Owen) goes to live with his uncle (Jack Black) in a mysterious old house, fights an evil sorcerer, and gets a girlfriend. Annoyingly heterosexist.

There are two posts with gay content in Owen's social media.  In May 2018, he poses with pride merchandise and says "Hooray for Target! Love wins!" (This was before the department store chain gave in to the Orange Goblin and removed LGBT people from its website and its shelves).  

And in December 2018, he is shown hugging a girl named Carly.  His shirt depicts an astronaut with a pride flag on his visor.  Comments mostly assumed that they were a romantic couple, but one said "I think it's a platonic friendship."

But there's nothing of gay interest in his movie roles:

More after the break

Madden Zook: 5 soul-winning movies and 3,000 girl-hugging photos prove that he's straight, right? Plus some nude ballet dudes

 

Madden Zook, who just appeared as #50 most popular on the Teen Idol website, looks like a model -- a little skinny, but with one of those "ratboy" faces that are all the rage. 

No question that he's straight in real life. 90% of his photos show him hugging, kissing, smooching, and licking girls.  Oh, here's one where she is just sniffing his bicep.

The girl-hugging would usually disqualify a guy from further research, but I was fascinated: the heterosexism was so very, very over the top, absurdly excessive.   Lots of straight guys devote most of their social media to hugging and kissing The Girl of Their Dreams, but every single photo on his Instagram and Facebook?  Dozens of them? What are you trying to prove, buddy? 

Ok, I found one with no girl. She must be taking the photo.    

So, how did Zook become a teen idol? Hugging and kissing girls won't make you famous. He must have done some acting or singing at some point.    

He has five acting credits on the IMDB:

Laps (2018): Swimmer Mitchell (Brayden Benson, center) is being bullied, so he tells the swim coach (Ian Lang).  That's progressive.  When I was a kid, the teachers said "You have to settle your own disputes," and my Dad enrolled me in judo lessons.  Didn't help.

Zook (left) and Cameron Judd (right) play the bullies. 

It was written and directed by Ian Lang, whose Internet biography reads: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to his purpose" -Romans 8:28. 

Maybe Zook is fundamentalist, and hugs and kisses a lot of girls to prove that he's not "that way" in spite of his swishiness? 

Answer after the break

Jake Satow: Saving Christmas, a Christian horse, a nonbinary internet celebrity, and the Baywatch guy

 

I was looking for actors who played nonbinary characters, and the name "Jake Satow" popped up.  Never heard of him, but he's attractive, so I checked the listing on IMDB.

He has 18 acting credits.  The most recent is Saving Christmas Spirit, 2022.  

How many times does that holiday need saving?

Spoiler alert: Christmas Spirit is a store that needs saving.  Jake plays a teenager who gets a girlfriend.

Adeline, 2022, is about a horse that heals people in a small town.  I swear, I'm not making this up.  Presumably a Christian movie, since one of the IMDB reviews says something like "Stop the insanity. The Bible isn't real." 

It stars 1980s hunks John Schneider from The Dukes of Hazzard, bottom photo, and David Chokachi from Baywatch, butt left.

Jake had a busy 2022.  Other roles include Howard Hunt's son in Gaslit,  which has a maddenly misleading title.  You expect the gaslit Victorian era, with hanson cabs clattering down cobblestone streets.  It's about Watergate.

Hockey Trophy Jake in Breathing Happy, about a recovering drug addict celebrating his first year of sobriety on Christmas Day, naturally. Other characters are named the Mysterious Door, the Golden Door, and Salvation Elf.  Another Christian movie, I imagine. 

Christian Holmes at age 14 in The Dropout, about a woman dropping out of college to start a tech company that revolutionalizes the health care industry.  Christian Holmes at age adult is her husband.

This is all terribly heteronormative. 

Before 2022, Jake was starring in a lot of shorts: a clown with marital problems, the morning announcements at a middle school, an alarm clock going off an hour early, dad dying, and Christmas.  They all have about the same cast, so I'm guessing local productions.

His website lists a theatrical production, The Honorary Counsel, performed with the actors in Zoom rooms, plus modeling on runways for Columbus Fashion Week and for Macy's and Homage.  

No indication of nonbinary, trans, or otherwise LGBTQ roles.  Maybe in real life?

Jake has 17,000 followers on Instagram.  His profile says says "Christian"...uh-oh, probably homophobic... SAG/AFTRA....The Dropout, and Saving Christmas Spirit.

More after the break