Blake McIver: The "musical" kid from "Full House" grows up, sings, snoots, and shows us what Superman is packing

Full House (1987-95) was a TGIF sitcom set in an annoyingly gay-free San Francisco.  The premise: sportscaster Danny (Bob Saget) loses his wife (don't worry, it's a 1980s death, with no grief).  He can't take care of his three daughters on his own, so his friends Joey and Jesse (Dave Coulier, John Stamos) move in to help. 

I didn't watch -- in West Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s, who was home on a Friday night?  But I recognize the iconic Full House house, 1709 Broderick Street, about two miles from the Castro, and I know that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson, who played Danny's infant daughter Michelle, became pop culture icons, starring in a string of movies before starting their own fashion company.  

If you watched, you may have noticed Blake McIver Ewing, who played Derek, Michelle's "musical" friend and fellow thespian, during Seasons 6-8.  From the clips I watched while researching this profile, I gather that he is quite femme.  A contemporary blogger references "the blinding supernova of Derek's undeniable gayness," but on the show itself no one ever suspects.  Michelle's friend Lisa even asks him to the Big Valentine's Day Dance. 

The grown-up Blake's primary interest is music -- his IMDB biography effuses over its "wonderful power to be cohesive, moving, influential, emotive, subdued, deferential, caustic, achingly beautiful, full of character, simplistic, complex and/or virtually any other adjective one can think of."  Like overwritten?   He has 44 music credits and 15 composing credits on the IMDB, and nine songs available on Apple Music, including the gay anthems "It Gets Better" and "This is Who We Are."

He was recently cast in The Boy from Oz, a musical about the life of bisexual singer/songwriter Peter Allen.

But Blake also has 31 acting credits, beginning with the six-year old Ned, played as a grownup by Gabriel Olds, in Calendar Girl (1993) -- which everybody in West Hollywood went to because of the opportunity to gawk at the backsides of Gabriel and Jason Priestley, but not Jerry O'Connell, darn it.

Other than Derek, Blake is best known for playing Waldo Aloysius Johnston II in the Little Rascals movie (1994).  He sabotages the Big Go-Kart Race and steals the girlfriend of preteen Lothario Alfalfa (future homophobe Bug Hall).  Don't worry, she dumps him and returns to Alfalfa after discovering that he is a jerk.

What Superman is packing 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).

Ian Winningkoff: From "Sulphur Springs" to "Grease," with some teen idol costars and hunky Danny Zukos

 

The New Orleans-based actor, model, and basketball star Ian Winningkoff has eight acting credits on the IMDB.

Including Secrets of Sulphur Springs, a Disney Channel teen thriller about kids who travel back in time to uncover the secrets. Preston Oliver plays focus character Griffin.

And several locally-produced shorts, including Revelation, Dies Irae, Good Girl, and Birthday Surprise. Eli Barron is his usual costar.

Ian's most famous role to date is Young Chuck Montgomery in Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones.  In a flashback to 2000, he plays a sort of backwoods Tom Sawyer/ Barefoot Boy with Cheek of Tan terrorized by his hard-core  fundamentalist parents.  He grows up to become one of his father's most loyal militia men, played by Lukas Haas. 

Ian is also deeply involved in local New Orleans theater.  He has appeared in Legally Blonde, The Addams Family, Shrek, and Into the Woods, Jr.

Most recently Ian played Kenickie, focus character Danny Zuko's best bud, in Grease.  

More Ian after the break

The Baptist Student Union: two Baptist boys give in to temptation

 

Naperville, Illinois

When I finally managed to drop out of the Nazarene church, my parents told me, "You don't have to be a Nazarene, but you can't be a heathen!  Find another church to go to!"  

So I tried Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, and, during my senior year at Augustana College, the Baptist Student Fellowship.

My parents were not pleased.

Nazarenes thought that Baptists were the most evil of the "so-called Christians." At least the Lutherans were open about worshipping idols, and the Presbyterians about tearing apart the Bible, but the Baptists were almost identical to Nazarenes.

The only differences that I could see:

1. Baptism.  The Nazarene Manual mentioned baptism, but in all my years as a Nazarene, I had never seen it done. Baptists required it for everybody.

2.  "Once saved, always saved."  Nazarenes believed that after you got saved, you could backslide -- commit more sins -- and have to be saved all over again.  For Baptists, once was enough -- after you were saved, you would go to heaven no matter what you did.  

When I was a kid, the older boys at church whispered that due to "once saved, always saved," Baptists had no morals: hey would "put out" for anybody.  So if you wanted a "sure thing" on a date, ask a Baptist girl.

What about Baptist boys?  I joined the Baptist Student Union to see if they were also  "easy," willing to "put out" for anybody.  Willing to get a BJ from a dude.

At first glance, they seemed nearly as strict as the Nazarenes, exhorting each other to "stay pure" and "resist their urges."  Like the Nazarenes, they taught that God hated homa-sekshuls, plus premarital sex and masturbation, any sexual act that wasn't intended to make a baby.

The main project of the Baptist Student Union year was putting on a  musical about a guy who makes obnoxious come-ons to every girl in sight, until one of them invites him to church, where he gets saved and vows to "stay pure" until his wedding night.  I only remember one song:

The Devil is alive and well on the Planet Earth.
The Devil is alive and well, and he can make you feel like hell....

Feel like hell was code for Having erotic desires or giving in to them.  But church elders disapproved of the bad language, so we changed the line to "send your soul to hell."

Beginning just after Christmas, we performed for youth groups at various Baptist churches in the area.  Not only in Rock Island, but in Kewanee, Galesburg, Princeton, cities up to an hour's drive away.

Then one Sunday in the spring, we were booked by a church in Naperville,  about three hours away -- too far to get home after the evening youth group.  So we car-pooled on Sunday afternoon, and after our performance, church members gave us dinner and put us up for the night.

The four boys in the cast stayed with an elderly couple whose sons had grown up and moved away.

More Baptists after the break