"Welcome to Plathville": Beefcake and bulges of a hard-core fundamentalist family, including the Boylicious model

 

Welcome to Plathville, originally on TLC but recently streamed to Hulu, is a six-season long reality series about the Plaths: "A strikingly blonde, blue-eyed Quiverfull family with 9 children in Southeastern Georgia, who are very passionate about traditional roles, their courtship rituals, music, God, and domestic life."

Brr.  Sounds too scary.  They must be wildly homophobic, but I imagine that they agreed to appear only if there were no "homosexuals" in the crew, so maybe they won't mention them at all.  Episodes appear to be soap-opera like, with marital problems, career troubles, treks into secular civilization, and lots of clickbait "dark secrets" and "startling revelations."

The elder Plaths belong to the No Greater Joy Ministries, an out-of-the-box fundamentalist cult that, other than hating homos, teaches that women must always be subservient to men -- working outside the home is a major sin, and will turn her into an evil lesbian.  Plus you must beat your children to ensure their subservience -- if you don't, they'll start to talk back and turn gay.

I'm definitely too squeamish to watch, but I'll check the Plaths for fundamentalist beefcake.

The parents, Barry and Kim, have broken up and gotten a divorce.  In my childhood church, that would have gotten them kicked out.

Their oldest child, Ethan,left,  married the outsider Olivia, who works as a photographer.  A woman working outside the home!  Shocking!

They got divorced, also.

Ethan and a buddy at the gym.

Daughter Hosanna refused to appear on the show.  She has left the family, moved to Ohio, and married an outsider.  Shocking revelation!

Daughter Moriah visited San Francisco and had sex with her boyfriend Max Kallschmidt. A dark secret revealed!

 The younger children are Lydia, Isaac, Amber, Cassidy, and Mercy.  

Micah works as a model, which means he has to work with gay people.  Uh-oh, he's doomed. 

Wait -- a model?  He must have some n*de photos out there somewhere.

More after the break.

"Bad Ideas with Adam Devine": When you need to f*k the Sadness in a hurry. With bonus buddy bulges and butts

Sometimes you need to f*k the Sadness in a hurry, and your best bet is Adam Devine.  Not (just) because of his hotness, because his stuff is always upbeat, with no hatred, no tragedy, no angst, not a lot of heteronormative mishegas, just whimsical problems, humorous braggadoccio, and homoerotic bonds. 

But you don't have time for a whole movie, or an episode of  Workaholicsor   The Righteous Gemstones. What do you do?

The reality series Bad Ideas with Adam Devine, streaming on Roku, is a perfect solution. In each episode, Adam. "the world's greatest movie star, the world's greatest lover, the guy who clearly writes his own intros," teams up with one of his comedian buddies to do something dangerous:

1. Compete in the World's Hottest Pepper Eating Contest, in the Bahamas. With Thomas Middleditch from Solar Opposites

2. Compete in a demolition derby, the Night of Destruction, at Perris Auto Speedway, near Riverside, California. With Blake Anderson from Workaholics

Blake bulging as a cop-stripper

3. Become stunt performers in a Western movie (after seven minutes of training). With Rebel Wilson from Pitch Perfect

4. Drive an ice cream truck up highway P3 in Peru, called "the Death Road" for its hairpin turns and 1000 foot drops. With Anders Holm from Workaholics

More after the break

"The Strongest Man in History": Robert Oberst and his pals recreate Viking challenges. With bonus Danish dick

  

In The Strongest Man in History, on the History Channel, four contemporary strongmen try to recreate the stunts of legendary strongmen:

William Bankier, who lifed a piano in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Thomas Topham, who lifted three barrels of water weighing over 5,000 pounds in 1749.

Monte Saldo, who lifted a motorcar and five passengers in 1903 

The guys: 

1. Brian Shaw, "Shaw Strength"

2. Eddie Hall, "The Beast"

3. Robert Oberst, "Strong and Pretty"

4. Nick Best

I watched the first episode, where Nick takes the guys on a tour of Moorhead, Minnesota, across border from Fargo, North Dakota, the "center of Viking culture in the United States."

 Nick is a devotee of all things Viking, even going to Renaissance fairs wearing a horned helmet.  His signature stunt is the Viking Press.

They visit the stave church at the Hjelmkomst Center, go ice fishing, and hear about how the days of the week are named after Norse gods.  But for some reason they skip the biggest tourist attraction in Moorhead, the Hjelmkomst Viking Ship.  It's a replica built by Robert Asp in the 70s that sailed across the ocean to Norway before being housed in the Clay County Cultural Center

Most of the episode is devoted to the guys introducing themselves, explaining what they're going to do, discussing how difficult it will be, and then doing it:

1. Carry a 345-pound boulder. All Viking boys had to carry one to achieve fullsterkur, full strength, and be considered a man.  In Iceland, they still use the 409-pound Húsafell Stone as a test of strength.

Left: 18 year old Billy Crawford, the youngest person ever to lift the stone.

2. Thow a 13-pound hammer, with an ice bath penalty for the guy with the shortest distance. Nick loses, at 70 feet. 

3. Pull a 12,000 pound Viking ship.

4. Hoist a 1,433 pound mast. 

Some of the challenges in other episodes are interesting.  In Stoke-on-Trent, Eddie Hall's home town, they named an oat cake, sort of a savory stuffed pancake, after him.  It has six sausages and three pounds of cheese.  The challenge: whoever finishes first without throwing up wins.

In the last scene, the guys gift Nick with an authentic Viking-era axe, leading to a group hug and: "So, we all going to get on the bed and start making out?"  They jump on the bed, but we cut before the make-out session.

Beefcake: The guys are fully clothed most of the time.

History: Snippets.

Gay Subtexts: Deliberate.  An extraordinary amount of buddy-bonding, with the guys often discussing how attractive they find each other.

Reality TV: The breathless "It's 12,000 pounds!!!!" and the constant repetition become annoying.  I might watch this on the treadmill at the gym, but for regular viewing, it's too darn fluffy.

Bonus Danish dick and other Scandinavian guys after the break.  Warning: Explicit.