"Malibu Rescue": Ricardo Hurtado hits the beach for a retro 1980s nerd-jock battle, with bonus lifeguard photos

After Country Comfort, my next  foray into the works of Ricardo Hurtado led me to Malibu Rescue (2019), a pilot for a tv series on Nickelodeon.  I went in with some trepidation: most teen movies are heteronormative, with all adolescent passions and intrigues omitted in favor of "Girls are the meaning of life!  If we win this race (or whatever the Maguffin is), we'll get Girls!"  

But Savage Steve Holland's movies tend to go easy on the girl-craziness, so I gave it a try.


In the middle-class San Fernando Vally, teen operator Tyler (Ricardo Hurtado) plays one too many pranks, and as punishment, is assigned Junior Lifeguard Training.  I'd rather be saved by someone with an interest in lifeguarding, not a high school kid on detention.

 The training will take place in Malibu, home of ultra-rich, bullying snobs.This will become important later.

 

Tyler's fellow Valley Kid trainees, The Flounders, are woefully unprepared.  Have they ever actually seen a beach before?  They include two girls and the nerd Eric (Alkoya Brunson, who has beefed up since 2017).  Their trainer is a blond lady.  Not much beefcake potential so far.

Meanwhile, the rich townie snobs look down on Valley kids, and resent their intrusion into "our beach."  They include Tower Captains Brody (J.T. Neal, left) and Spencer (Cameron Engels).

Plus Garvin (Ian Ziering), the program director, hates Valley kids, and invited the Flounders just so they would fail the training and get ridiculed.

So it's on, nerds vs. jocks in a battle royale to see who gets to become real Junior Lifeguards. Wait -- do they really choose lifeguards via team competitions?

There is, indeed, a pleasant lack of heterosexual interest.  No one gawks at any girl, even for an instant.  There is no Girl of His Dreams for Tyler to pursue, nor a Girl Next Door Who Supported Him All Along for him to end up with. (There's heterosexual romance in the tv series.

However, there are no gay subtexts, either.  Tyler appears to have no friends.  There is no buddy-bonding, anywhere.

And a surprising lack of beefcake. This is a beach.  These are lifeguards.  Where are the muscular physiques?

Every guy on the beach, child, teenager, or adult, lifeguard, junior lifeguard, or civilian -- every guy -- wears a t-shirt and shorts.  Even in crowd scenes.

Have you ever heard of a beach where no male chests on display?  It's like the 1930s, when taking off your shirt in public would get you a citation for public indecency.

Ricardo Hurtado takes off his shirt exactly once, in a rescue scene where you can't see anything.

The lack of girl craziness is nice, but sometimes you need a little more than that.

My grade: D.

Bonus: Real life guards, or at least guys from California, after the break.

Ewan McGregor: Are there penises in all of his movies, or in just most of them?

 

There are lots of famous penises among Hollywood stars.  Among the old guard, Milton Berle's comes to mind, although there aren't any actual photos of it.  Rob Lowe accidentally gave us a glimpse of his, fully aroused.  Christopher Atkins displayed his several times, on screen and off.  But Ewan McGregor wins the prize for displaying his on screen all the time.

I've seen a lot of his movies.  Some I liked, some I hated: 1. Trainspotting (1996)

2. The Pillow Book (1997)
3. Velvet Goldmine (1998) was good.
4. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) and its sequels, where he plays a young, gay Obi-Wan Kenobi.
5. I walked out of Moulin Rouge (2000) when they started singing 20th century songs in 19th century Paris.

6. Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2003): He appears for five seconds.

7. Doctor Sleep

8. Halston (2021)

But one thing you can always count on.  There will be a penis. 

Usually his.

More dicks after the break

The Preacher Pops a Boner

 

Kankakee, Illinois

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, we spent a lot of time at Olivet, our college on the prairie of eastern Illinois.  The church wanted to make sure that we went there after high school instead of some secular university where we would be taught liberalism, atheism, and evil-lution.

So there were ball games and special concerts  for high school students, plus an annual Olivet Weekend, with a party, a nature hike, a church service, classroom visits, a lot of "come to Olivet" sales pitches, and a night in a college dorm.

It was actually sleeping bags on the floor of the lounge in the freshman men's dorm, but still, I was surrounded by cute college men!

When I was in ninth grade, our host was David, a senior religion major (and baseball player) who told us how he was hoping to be called to a church near his home town, and his girlfriend Ruth, who mostly bragged about how she had scored the "handsomest guy on campus."

Only about half of the boys on campus wanted to become preachers, but almost all of the girls wanted to become preacher's wives, leading to some hefty competition.

On the Saturday night of our visit, David took us to a basketball game, and then to the Student Union for hamburgers.

The Red Room, Olivet's student restaurant, was packed with other kids and their escorts, so he took us to a nearby lounge: six couches and about a dozen chairs, most full, but one empty right next to the monitor's desk.  It looked into a little alcove with a yellow couch, where two college couples were kissing.

"Hey, what's that -- a kissing booth?" I asked.

"Kissing corner!"  David said with a grin.  "The only couch the monitor can't see.  Boy, I've had some good times there!"

He told us that at Olivet, boy-girl relations were strictly regulated.  You couldn't set foot in each other's dorm rooms, and in common areas, kissing was  forbidden.  They had monitors watching all the lounges, but that couch was hidden from the monitor's view, and so very popular.

"You have to take a number to get it," David said.  "But once you're there, you can do what you want.  Anyway, I'm going to park you guys here, so we don't lose our place.  Back in a while with our burgers.

We sat down facing the kissing couples.  Kissing girls -- gross!  But I was interested in one of the guys -- cute, dark haired, broad shoulders, handsome preacher's face.  He leaned toward his girlfriend, put his arm around her, and they started kissing.

He had a sizeable bulge in his pants.

And he began to rise.

And rise.

And rise.

More rising after the break