Fabrizio Guido: The vampire hunter's gay bestie becomes a juggalo, poses nude, joins a basketball franchise. With Drew Tarver and Mendoza dick

Black as Night (2021) stars Asiha Cooper as a teenager girl in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, who discovers that vampires are targeting the homeless population, including her own mother. She and her crew, crush Chris (Mason Beauchamp), gay bff Pedro (Fabrizio Guido), , and the local It-Girl, become vampire hunters.  

Director Mariette Lee Go tried to break away from the gay bestie stereotype with Pedro, and give him motives and goals of his own: he has to choose between going to a prestigious college and staying home to take care of his family.  Of course, he vampirizes at the end, in a bury-your-gays cliche, but you can't have everything.

Fabrizio Guido is a Short Guy with a nice physique.  And he's playing a gay character in his first major role?  I wonder if he's gay in real life.

He weas born in Los Angeles in 1999, the son of actress Jacqueline Calderon-Guido, who put him to work almost immediately, in the shorts Juan the Brave (2004), Transa-Action (2005), The Monster (2008), and 116 Seconds (2009).  

His first movie role was in World War Z (2013) as Tomas, a young boy whose parents die in the zombie Apocalypse.  He joins Brad Pitt's family as they flee from zombie-infested Los Angeles, and ends up on the rescue ship. He was named "best scene stealer" by the other cast members.

Then came Welcome to the Family (2013), about a Hispanic boy who marries an Anglo girl, each with bickering family members. Fabrizio played Demetrio, the boy's brother.  Ten episodes were filmed, but the series was yanked after three due to the terrible reviews.

Family (2018) is on the list of Fabrizio's "known for" roles: An "emotionally stunted aunt" tries to bond with her teenage niece, who wants to run away and become a juggalo.  I thought that juggalo was a misspelling of gigolo, a male prostitute, but it actually means a groupie of the band Insane Clown Posse. So why the generic name that tells you nothing of what the movie is about/? Why not Juggalo?

Niece Maddie meets juggalo Dennis (Fabrizio), and brings him home.  He explains that the juggalos are a "supportive community of misfits," and Auntie Kate allows him to stay.  So, are they friends, or dating?  The wikipedia synopsis doesn't clarify.

Mr. Iglesias (2019-22), starring comedian Gabriel Iglesias, was a modern day Welcome Back Carter, with Fabrizio in 22 episodes as a hetero-horny student.

 

Meanwhile, Fabrizio appeared in some film shorts.  I don't see a lot of gay content in them.

He wrote and directed Dog Days (2018): Brandon (Nick Alvarez) is invited to a party by a "potential love interest."  The description doesn't specify, so it could be a guy, right?  Wrong, it's a girl.

College Town (2019): The "hottest girl in town" agrees to hook up with John (Michael Shackett) if he can get some weed.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Matlock 2024: Kathy Bates barges in like Columbo...I mean Andy Griffith. With Tony Danza, some Greek dicks, and a Cheers reference

  

Matlock (1986-1995) starred Andy Griffith as an elderly attorney who represents clients charged with murder (all innocent, of course). I didn't watch: it aired opposite Who's the Boss (Tony Danza, sigh), and besides, who wanted to watch a oldster attorney clunking around? 

I did see part of one episode, because it promised LGBT representation: Matlock goes into a gay bar for some reason, and a young guy instantly pops up and asks him to dance.  An old guy in a gay bar is hit on?  Is this science fiction?

"Me, dance with you?" Matlock repeats, horrified.  Then "No-ooooo-oooo!!!!", shaking his head so vigorously that I'm surprised it didn't fall off.  Geez, it wouldn't hurt you to be a little gracious, homophobe!  How about "No, thanks, I'm working."

There was also an episode with a murderous drag queen, rather old fashioned in the 1990s.  

30 years later, Matlock has been revived in the form of a retired lawyer (Kathy Bates) with the nickname Matlock or Mattie, because the show was big when she was first starting out. I'm not particularly interested -- again, who wants to watch an oldster attorney clunking around -- but I understand that this version has a bona fide gay character, so I'll take a look.

Episode 1: In a coffee shop, a cute but jerky businessman (Marcus Rosner, right) talks about closing on his phone.  He overhears Mattie struggling with using the tap function, and hands the barista a $20 bill to pay, and keep the change.  Mattie is pleased; "Isn't this a nice way to start the day."   But I'm not pleased; I figured this guy would be a main character. 

She enters the building at 450 5th Avenue in New York, in Midtown, about five blocks from the Empire State Building, and talks to the lady on the elevator about hard candy: she resisted, but when she turned 65, she had no choice but to buy some.  "We become exactly what people expect us to be."

Into the office on the 21st floor, where she suspiciously looks at a floor plan and enters a conference room full of suit men talking about the Mets.  Boss Elijah (Eme Ikwuakor, top photo) asks Olympia about the police corruption case; she needs more resources to get it done, but he tells her to close it now.

Next Julian (Jason Ritter) brags that they can get his case up to $19 million.  Mattie interrupts that he can get a lot more.

"Who are you?"

Matlock. She's come to apply for an associates job, but she can't get an interview due to her age, so she barged into the meeting. 

"How do you know how much he is willing to pay?"

She's been tailing his attorney, and "accidentally" overheard their phone conversation in the coffee shop earlier.  Old people are invisible, and can get away with a lot of spying.

"Fine, you're hired.  You can assist Olympia on the case she's been working on for six months."

Left: Jason Ritter's butt

Scene 2: Olympia is upset, but she has no choice.  She introduces her other assistants.  The woman complains that they should be working with senior associates, not senior citizens, but Billy  (David Del Rio) befriends Mattie and gives her a tour of the snack station and back patio for crying (I've had jobs like that).  

Left: David Del Rio is sort of swishy, and he pretends to be gay in several of his Instagram posts, but he announces right off that he's just joking: he's actually married to the most beautiful woman in the world, and they have two beautiful daughters.  I hate it when straight guys jerk us around like that.

The case: Raymond Harris spent 26 years in prison for multiple rapes and a murder.  He's been exonerated by DNA tests, thinks that the police suppressed evidence, and wants the State of New York to pay damages.  Olympia has a tip: while Raymond was in custody, a prostitute escaped from the real killer, but the police report proving his innocence vanished.  They have to track her down, but they have no name or description, and it was 26 years ago.   

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Carlin James: The third thug, a gay three-way, a queer romance, and Pretty Dudes.

In Episode 4.5 of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off starring Bob Odenkirk as a sleazy lawyer, a flashback to 2003 shows the young Saul/Jimmy McGill working in a cell phone store.  He starts a side-business selling stolen burner phones (popular with drug dealers, gang members, cheating husbands, and so on). 

While scoping out customers at the Dog House, a sleazoid-favored hot dog stand, he approaches teen thugs Peewee, Skipper, and Scooter. They don't need any phones, but they'll wait until he's done for the evening and beat him up for his profits. Jimmy kicks himself for not being able to foresee that the interaction would go bad.

In the next episode, Jimmy approaches the guys at their laudromat-hangout and offers to give them a cut if they let him sell without harassment: a more reliable dividend stream than robbing him just once.  They decide that they prefer robbery, and chase him -- into a trap!

Jimmy's allies, Huell Babineaux and Man Mountain, tie them up, gag them, and hang them upside down in a piñata warehouse.  They begin smashing the piñatas with baseball bats.  Jimmy asks the teen thugs if they prefer to be smashed to death quickly or slowly.  

The thugs are so terrified that they promise not to bother Jimmy anymore, and to tell all the other thugs to leave him alone.  He calls off the smashing, but his goons pretend not to hear him until the bat comes withn inches of Peewee's face.  "You get one warning," Jimmy tells him as he whimpers.  "And that was it." 

Other than the gay-subtext potential of the three guys hanging out without chatting up girls, I was interested in this scene because I have profiles of two of the actors: Tommy Nelson, left, and Cory Chapman, center.  

Both would go on to roles in The Righteous Gemstones, but in different seasons, and both have a substantial amount of gay and gay-subtext work.  

So what about the third thug, Scooter?  

He's played by Carlin James, a Filipino-American actor from Long Beach.  His on-screen career begins in 2009-11, playing college students in dramatic shorts and guys who get killed in thrillers.

His first mainstream role was in a 2016 episode of  How to Get Away with Murder: he plays Martin, one of the guys that main character Connor, played by Jack Falahee, invites home for a three-way.

More Carlin after the break

"A Man in Full" or "The Fullness of Man" or "Filling a Man." Whatever, it has a wild penis scene

 

While I am scrolling through my new photo feed, I am shocked to find two that are extremely explicit (after the break).  In the first, an older man wearing a suit catches a young man having anal sex with his boyfriend.  So Dad didn't know that he was gay?  In the second, the young man confronts the older man -- while fully aroused, and huge!

The caption says Tom Pelphrey, whom I've never heard of, in the movie A Man in Full.  It must have a gay theme -- gay men being accused of being "not really men," and all that.

Tom Pelphrey has 10,000 photos on the internet, but he usually looks much older, so this must be a movie from early in his career.  Probably European -- what American movie would show full arousal?

More research reveals that he starred in Ozark, but I can't tell which character.  An article in People says Perry Abbott, but a Reddit feed says that he was AMAZING as Ben.  The Ozark wiki mentions Ben, "a major antagonist in the third season," but not Perry Abbott, so People must be wrong.

Here's a long shot of Ben's butt.

Next I try to look up A Man in Full, but it's such a nonsensical title that I keep searching on A Full Man and The Fullness of Men instead.   When I finally get the title right, it's not an artsy European movie from the early 2000s, it's a tv series that dropped on Netflix in 2024!  Atlanta real estate mogul Charlie Croker, played by famous actor Jeff Daniels, goes bankrupt, and has to defend his empire. Isn't that, like, "Succession"?  

Jeff Daniels is best known for the adulation of 1990s stupidity Dumb and Dumber. Here he shows a bulge in Something Wild (1986).

Tom Pelphrey plays "Raymond Peepgrass" Ridiculous name! This guy is a voyeur of lawns?

Wikipedia doesn't say who he is, so I'm assuming from the photo, the rich guy's lawyer?  Why would he care if his lawyer is gay?

Looking for a photo of Croker and Peepgrass -- Peepgrass? --  together, I get the name of the series wrong again!

Reviews mention "a wild scene" and "a shocking scene," but fail to say what episode, so I surmise the last, "Judgment Day."  I fast forward to the very last scene of the series.

A peep at Peepgrass after the break. Warning: Explicit.