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

"Happiest Season": Christmas romcom with lesbian couple, pansexual Patrick, Jake's junk, and Candy Cane Lane

Happiest Season, on Hulu, is advertised as "A Holiday romcom about being true to yourself and trying not to ruin Christmas."  The icon shows three heterosexual couples, an unattached woman, and what looks like a lesbian couple, but ten to one they're bickering sisters.  

But the husband on the left is Dan Levy, Patrick on Schitt's Creek, and the hunky Jake McDorman, top photo, is at the top of the cast list, so I'll give it a try.

Opening:  They're a lesbian couple!  The opening consists of watercolor-type pictures of two women, a blond and a brunette, meeting, falling in love, going to a family Christmas, celebrating Halloween and Thanksgiving, exchanging gifts, and moving in together.  They kiss twice, so it's unlikely that viewers will identify them as "just close friends."

Scene 1: A residential neighborhood decked out for Christmas, called Candy Cane Lane.  A tour guide gives its history: it was started by Herb Flack, with his nephew Otis playing Santa Claus "until he was arrested for child endangerment."  A pedophilia joke?   The ladies are taking the tour. 

The rich brunette is named Abby, and the poor blonde is Harper.  Somebody goofed --  Harper absolutely has to be the rich one.  It's impossible to keep their names straight, so I'll call them Rich Brunette and Blondie. 

Uh-oh, Blondie doesn't like Christmas, a major crime in these movies, and in real life during the month of December. Rush her to a re-education center, stat!  Brunette argues that it's impossible to not love Christmas -- I've heard that argument a lot -- but Blondie stands firm.

Next Brunette drags Blondie to a house that's not on the tour and up to the roof, so they can look down on the lights.  "Now you love it, right?"  Sure, trespassing makes any holiday more festive.

They complain about being separated for the holidays, kiss and...uh-oh, the homeowner hears them.  They slide off the roof, destroying an inflatable snowman, and run away.  The homeowner is a Santa Claus dominatrix and her reindeer-costume sub, har har.

Brunette has an idea: why not come to her parents' house for the holidays?  Wait -- the water-color intro already showed them with the parents at Christmas.  Blondie agrees.  They kiss for like five minutes. 

What happened to Herb Flack and Otis?  You can't name characters and then have them not appear.  We don't even see Candy Cane Lane again.

Scene 2:  The ladies' elegant brick house in downtown Pittsburgh.  Blondie works as a pet sitter?  Girlfriend must be an heiress. An old-fashioned phonograph playing a new song, "Jingle Bells" by Bayli, as Blondie says "We need to talk."  Uh-oh.  

It's nothing bad.  She just wanted to say that she got a substitute pet-sitter, John, so she can go.  Um...the first rule of fiction, even in frothy gay-positive fiction: there has to be conflict.

Cut to a coffee shop, where Blondie is giving John (Dan Levy) pet-sitting instructions.  Wait -- in the intro, he's celebrating Christmas  with the ladies and the parents.  I thought he was the Brunette's brother-in-law, married to the scary-looking sister.   

John is distracted because he left last night's hookup alone in the apartment, so he has to keep tracking him to make sure he leaves.  

Takeaway: he tracks all of his friends.  This will become important later.

In other news, Blondie is planning to ask Brunette to marry her.  John is against it: they're a perfect couple right now, so why spoil things with an archaic assimilationist ritual, trapping her girlfriend in "the iron box of heteronormativity"?

Also: she wants to ask Brunette's dad for his blessing first. You've been reading too many Jane Austen novels, girlfriend.

Scene 3:  Establishing shots of their trek out of the city into the deep, dark wilderness.  You know Pittsburgh is just an hour's drive from West Virginia, right?

Big reveal: When Brunette said that she was out to her parents, she was lying.  They think she is straight, and Blondie is her "roommate."  So, you're about 30, you haven't mentioned a guy in 15 years, and you're  living with a woman. Girl, they know.

And they can't come out now, because Dad is running for mayor, and he's trying to impress this important, homophobic doner.  Sounds like the plot of La Cage aux Folles.

Besides, he has made it very clear over the years that he will only love his children if they are perfect, and being gay is by definition imperfect, so she has a fake boyfriend played by Jake McDorman (butt left).

When they arrive, it turns out that there are three sisters and a scheming ex-girlfriend, all with long black hair, so I can't tell them apart.  But apparently they all have imperfections that they're keeping secret so Dad won't stop loving them:

Eldest sister and her husband are separated and divorcing, but pretending to be together.  The husband is played by Burl Mosely, seen here on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where he sings "Don't Be a Lawyer."

Brunette is an imperfect lesbian.

Youngest daughter is writing a Harry Potter-like young adult fantasy novel in secret. 

 Pop Quiz: What happens next?

1. T/F: Brunette dumps Blondie for her ex-boyfriend.

2. T/F: John agrees with Brunette's decision to stay in the closet.

3. T/F: John gets a romantic partner

4. T/F: There are several other LGBT characters.

5.T/F: When Brunette comes out, her parents are fine with it.

Answers and Jake's dick after the break.  Caution: explicit.

Phil of the Future's future: Former Disney Channel teen Raviv Ullman on the Torah, wearing dresses, and his penis

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

Allan Hyde: Roman-era vampire boy with one dude-on-dude kiss and a lot of frontal nudity on Danish tv

 

We're watching True Blood (2008-2014), about vampires coming "out of the coffin" in contemporary Louisiana.  They have a very bureaucratic organization: focus character Sookie is dating Civil War-era vampire Bill, who has to kowtow to the Sheriff of Area 5, Viking-era vampire Eric, who has to kowtow to the much more important Sheriff of Area 9, Dallas, Roman Empire era Godric (Allan Hyde).

Godric turned Eric, back in the day, and since vampires have a permanent erotic bond with their makers, the two lived as lovers for many years.  In the present day, he is a pacifist, pushing for human-vampire equality, and tired of eternal life after 2,000 years, ready to "meet the sun."

Allan Hyde was born in Copenhagen, with an English father and a Danish mother, so most of his 41 acting credits on the IMDB have been in Denmark:

6 episodes of 2900 Happiness, about rich people with scandals.

24 episodes of Juleønsket, about a girl and Christmas magic.

5 episodes of Gidseltagningen, about people being held hostage on the subway.  He really has a lot of range.

You and Me Forever, 2012, centers on a girl-power friendship, but it gives Allan's character a fyr på fyr kiss.  That's dude-on-dude.

This one is on Amazon Prime.

In Sommerin 92, 2015, the Danish football team is competing for the European championship, and Allan is showing his dick.  Not for the last time.

Allan wrote, directed, and starred in Cold Hawaii, 2020, which is not set in Hawaii, but in a Danish seaside community of that name, where two heterosexual couples decide to swap partners and spend 8 episodes getting around to it.

More nudity after the break

Blake Michael: The "Dog with a Blog" brother starts a band, stalks a teacher, vanishes into corporate. With Blake and Dano dicks

 

I haven't been watching Disney Channel programs regularly since the days of Hannah Montana, so all I heard of Dog with a Blog (2012-15) was buzz about how ridiculous the premise was: three kids discover that their dog is sentient, can talk, and actually has a blog where he discusses his experiences and tries to find other dogs.  How is that more ridiculous than a pop star pretending to be a regular girl, both daughters of a famous country-western music singer, and no one suspecting for an instant?

Critics lambasted the show for its "lackluster writing' and absence of any actual blogging, but it averaged 3 million viewers in the first season, and was nominated for three Emmies.  The main players appear to be Chloe and Avery, two tween sisters from a blended family, but there was also a teenage brother, Tyler (Blake Michael).

Plus Dad Bennett (Regan Burns) and Avery's enemy/crush (L.J. Benet), who now has abs but smiling smugly as girls in bikinis surround him. 

Besides, I haven't found any n*de photos of L.J.  But there are some of Blake.

Blake got his start in modeling at age three, and had his first on-screen role at age eight, playing a restaurant patron in Chosen (2004).  Small parts in October Road, Out of Jimmy's Head, and The Mortician followed.

He had a starring role in Lemonade Mouth (2011), which I never saw because I thought the term referred to some kind of terminal cancer.  It's actually the name of a bad that five high schoolers who start a band -- I guess disgusting names are de rigeur for rock bands.  The boys are Charlie (Blake) and Wen (Adam Hicks).  Both get girlfriends, and the remaining girl gets a boyfriend, and so on, and so on.  Heteronormativity fulfilled. 

Sorry, this is the only photo I could find where the two guys are together, not bookending the three girls.

It's a little tangential, but Adam Hicks is known as one of the Disney Channel's skateboarding dudebros on Zeke and Luther (2009-12).  His partner, Hutch Dano, has retired from acting to become a painter.

And post photos of his d*ck (after the break).

Cody Kearsley: Metis actor with two gay roles, Moose Mason and a post-Apocalyptic zombie. Plus Cody and another Metis guy n*de

 

Having found success with one Riverdale hunk (well, his penis), I thought I'd check on the others.  How about Cody Kearsley, who actually did play one of Kevin Keller's boyfriends: Moose Mason.

You remember Moose from the comics: stupid and muscular (the two usually went together in the media of the day), and so insanely jealous of his girlfriend Midge that he pulverized any guy who even glanced at her. 

In the kinder, gentler 1990s, he was modified to be less violent, and his "stupidity" was explained as undiagnosed dyslexia.  

On Riverdale, the Moose-Midge relationship is troubled by mutual cheating, Moose with Kevin and Midge with Fangs Fogarty of the Southside Serpents.  After Midge is murdered, Moose dates Kevin for awhile, but is afraid to be outed as bisexual.  Eventually he leaves town, and Kevin moves on to the also-bisexual Fangs before getting dumped for Toni, Cheryl's ex girlfriend, and Moose come back to town...well, basically everyone hooks up with everyone.   It's a soap opera, after all.

Let's go back to Cody Kearsley.

Cody belongs to the Métis people, descendants of First Nations members and French settlers from the early days of European colonization. There are 587,000 Métis in Canada, and a smaller number in the U.S..  Like many First Nation people, they have a tradition of Two-Spirits, adding 2S to LGBTQ and celebrating Gay Pride.

There are three Métis languages, with only a few thousand native speakers but many more learning them to embrace their cultural heritage.  Cody is learning Heritage Michif, spoken primarily in southern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Montana, and North Dakota.  It is a French-Cree hybrid, with some vocabulary from English and Western Ojibwa.

Can you see the French origin of the days of the week? (Hint: lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche)

Cody actually grew up in Oliver, British Columbia, in the Sylix Okangan Nation that comprises seven communities on the Canadian-U.S. border.  He attended the Southern Okangan Secondary School, then moved to Vancouver to complete his senior year.

He was active in community and school theater, starring as Bobby Child in Crazy for You and Danny Zuko in Grease.

After his graduation in 2009, Cody moved to L.A. to attend the EDGE Performing Arts Center on a dance scholarship, and then spent three years at the Theater of Artsr.  He worked mainly in theater, as his work visa did not permit tv or movie roles. 

In 2015 he returned to Vancouver and started a theater company that specialized in the work of Metis artists.  He starred in Borealis (2016), a short about a guy who returns to his small town to convince his buddy Vikram (Rajen Toor, who is actually from Oliver) to travel through northern British Columbia with him.

Then it was back to Los Angeles with a new work visa, a shy selfie, and Riverdale (2017-22)

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Gavin MacIntosh, Part 2: From gay middle schooler to car salesman to OnlyFans j/o hunk

This was a big deal in 2013: On the first season of The Fosters, a soap opera about the "gloom, despair, and agony" befalling a family of fostered and adopted kids, Jude (Hayden Byerly) starts a romantic relationship with his classmate Connor (Gavin MacIntosh).  They were both thirteen, making them the youngest out gay kids on television at the time. 

Homophobes squealed with outrage -- when they kissed, Youtube put an age advisory on the clip.  Gay fans kept a careful watch to see if unconscious  or conscious homophobia in the writer's room would lead to the couple being "punished" with more than their fair share of tragedy.  

Turns out that lots of horrible things happened to them, but nothing worse that the horrible things happening to the other characters -- this was a show about agony, after all. 

About halfway through Season 3 in 2016, Connor announced that he was moving to California to live with his mother, and Gavin MacIntosh left the series. The bio of Jude on the fan wiki ends abruptly, but according to Wikipedia, he eventually gets another boyfriend and breaks up with him, reuniting with Connor in a 2021 episode of the spin-off Good Trouble.

Fans spent a lot of time on social media speculating about why Gavin left.  Was tired of the constant agony his character was going through?  Squabbling over his contract?  Planning to go to college?  He did attend Long Beach City College in 2016-17.

Whatever the reason, Gavin finished up guest spots on Bosch (2014-2016) and Bones (2016-17), and then retired from acting.

Today he is a car salesman at a dealership in Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, where he grew up.

And he has an OnlyFans page where subscribers can see him doing stuff (by himself, not with his lady friend) for $33 per month.  Here are some free samples:

The Arizona Cardinals are a professional football team based in Phoenix, where they play at the State Farm Stadium.

Admit it, you were thinking "cool boxers," not "cool dick."

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Luke Benward: Fried worms, Disney movies, Christian music, gay friends, a j/o video, and a n*de Cameron Monaghan

How to Eat Fried Worms (Thomas Rockwell, 1973) is one of the classic novels of my childhood: Billy brags that he can eat anything, so when his friend Alan offers him $50 to eat a worm a day for 15 days...  He can prepare them any way he wants, but Alan will provide the worms. The parents are in on the scheme, there is no bullying involved, each of the boys has a buddy-bonding best friend, and the only girl is Billy's sister.  No one wins the Girl of His Dreams.

 Remembering the buddy-bonds and the absence of the heterosexist trajectory, I eagerly tuned in to the Disney Channel version (2006).  But now Billy (Luke Benward) is confronted by a gang of  bullies led by Joe (Adam Hicks), he fors a group of friend instead of a special buddy, and there is a Girl of His Dreams.  

A rather disappointing start to Luke Benward's career.  Let's see if he has redeemed himself since with some gay roles.

According to the IMDB, Luke was born in 1995 in Franklin, Tennesse.  

He first appeared on screen playing Mel Gibson's son in We Were Soldiers (2002).  

The infamous homophobe Mel Gibson?  That's even worse. 

After roles in the revamped Family Affair (2002) and Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), Luke hit Disney gold with Fried Worms (2006).  

His Disney stardom assured, he continued with Mostly Ghostly (2007): A shy boy (Sterling Beaumon) encounters a a ghost boy (Luke) and his sister, who has a crush on him.  He must figure out how they died before it's too late, and win the Girl of His Dreams. 

Left: Luke and Sterling Beamon strangling Miles Heizer.  Neither has actually worked with Miles Heizer.  Maybe they're friends?

Minutemen (2008): A teen nerd (Luke), his buddy, and the Girl Next Door become time travelers, allowing him to best the obnoxious jock who is dating the Girl of His Dreams. Guess who he ends up with.

Dog Gone (2008): A boy (Luke) rescues a dog from bumbling thieves, bests the school bully (Cameron Monaghan, left),  and wins the Girl of His Dreams.

Things are not looking good for you, Luke Baby.

Let's skip past Girl v Monster and Zombies and Cheerleaders to Luke's first major tv role in Good Luck Charlie (2013).  Charlie is a girl, not a boy, and she doesn't bring good luck; she's the subject of a video diary filmed by her father.  Luke plays Beau Landry, an employee at Bob's Bugs Be Gone who meets, falls in love with, and eventually becomes the boyfriend of Teddy (another girl.  What's with this show?).

Ok, what about Ravenswood (2013-14), a teen mystery series featuring dark secrets in a small town?  Luke plays Dillon Sanders, who is dating focus character Olivia but is secretly plotting to prevent her from discovering the dark secrets.  Oh, and he kills her father.  That sort of ends the relationship.

Cloud 9 (2014): A snowboarder and her obnoxious boyfriend are trained by snowboarding great Will Cloud (Luke).  The boyfriend gets dumped, and...well you know the rest.

Measure of a Man (2018): Dude gets a girlfriend.

Life of the Party (2018): Middle-aged Deanna, newly dumped by her husband, returns to college, and has s*x with a fratboy (Luke), who becomes obsessed with her.  Guess what?  He's the son of the woman Deanna was dumped for. 

I'm tired of this.  Let's see what else Luke has been up to.

He's done some music, such as the theme song for Cloud 9, and he has appeared in the music videos of several other artists, including Martina McBride and Jason Aldean.  

Wait -- he's the son of Christian country-western singer Aaron Benward, shown here with his boyfriend...um, I mean singing partner Scott Reeves -- and the grandson of Christian music producer Jeoffrey Benward.  They have won Dove Awards, and Jeoffrey was inducted into Christian Music Hall of Fame.  Why didn't anyone tell me this before?  Luke Baby is too fundamentalist to play a gay character, and if he's gay in real life, he's got to be extremely closeted.

According to the  Who's Dated Who website, Luke has been in several relationships with women, and is currently dating Ariel Winter (Alex Dumphy on Modern Family).  You know there were gay characters on that show, right?

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Ryan Potter: Nude and j/o photos of the Supah Ninjah, Beast Boy, Hiro Hamada, mystic, gamer, and bisexual buddy

 

Ryan Potter is best known as Gar Logan, aka Beast Boy, in the DC Comics Universe series Titans (2018-23).

These aren't the Teen Titans from your Daddy's comics collection.  The original Robin the Boy Wonder is still around, but the team also includes two oof his successors, Jason Todd and Tim Drake, as well as Connor Kent, the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor.

Plus there are gay and trans characters, and quite a lot of backsides on display, including Ryan's.

Born in 1995, Ryan lived in Tokyo for the first seven years of his life, and then moved to Los Angeles.  He started his acting career in Supah Ninjas (2011-13), spelled wrong on purpose, playing a shy, quiet student who discovers that he is...um...a super Ninja.  His best friend and the Girl of His Dreams join the team, tutored by his grandfather, George Takei.

More movies about shy, quiet students who learn martial arts followed, plus some Disney teencoms and a lot of animated series about martial arts.

In the various Big Hero 6 movies  and tv programs (Baymax and..., Big Chibi 6, Baymax Dreams, Big Hero 6: The Series, Baymax!), Ryan plays Hiro Hamada, a teenage robotics genius who creates a snowman-like inflatable robot named Baymax.  He and his friends and the Girl of His Dreams form the superhero team Big Hero 6.

One of the versions has a gay character named Mbita, and  another has Brooks Wheelan as Fred, "team mascot at SFIT."

The animated Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020-22) follows teens at a summer camp on Isla Nubar who get stuck when the dinosaurs take over.  There are two lesbian teens among them, but Ryan's character is straight.

That's a lot of straight guys, but in his private life Ryan is a gay ally:

He was the youngest celebrity to speak out on the No H8 campaign in 2012, favoring the legalization of same-sex marriage

In 2021, he tweeted that his Titans character, Gar, was bisexual.

In 2022, he came out as bisexual himself.

More after the break