Saturday, March 9, 2024

Joshua Mikel: Pirate, Satanist, zombie chow, boyfriend. With two important questions answered, and maybe a cock

 


You may be familiar with Joshua Mikel as Daedalus in Season 1 of  The Righteous Gemstones.  When the recently converted Keefe returns to the Satanist/Goth Club Sinister, Daedalus assumes that he's there for "pleasures" and caresses his body and licks his face, while his friend Cryptocore starts to go downtown. This scene establishes that Keefe is gay, and that Daedalus is an ex-lover.

Born in Conyers, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, Josh graduated from Florida State University's Theater and Creative Writing programs.  He has written a number of award-winning plays, many for children:  The Monster Hunters, Pirates!, Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island!I looked at some of the scripts, but didn't see anything of particular gay interest.


Josh has 92 acting credits on IMDB, including a lot of fantasy and horror: Renfield, Mayfair Witches, Unhuman, Creepshow, and 50 States of Fright.  It took 17 auditions to be cast on The Walking Dead, as Jared, one of the "Saviours" who demand tribute from surrounding post-zombie-Apocalypse communities.  

 

But a lot of general dramas, too. The Lengths (2014) is of gay interest: Josh's character is in love with both a man and a woman. 











There are several bulge shots, and maybe a butt, but it's obscured and hard to see, so I substituted this fully visible butt.

Josh has also done storyboard art and set design for everything from Kirksville to The Little Mermaid.  

If he has any time leftover, he is the drummer for the indie rock band Look, Mexico.  One of their songs, "It's Been a Long Time Since I Smelled Beautiful," might have a gay subtext:


Will you compromise, or will you say what's on your mind this time?

Will you smile for me, or will you say what's on your mind this time?

But we're not, we're not keeping quiet.

So if you think you're ready…

It's our time now.


Underwear and dick after the break

Thursday, March 7, 2024

"The Ropes": An unreliable-narrator Rashomon about nightclub bouncers. Take careful notes. There are some dicks, too

 


I was looking for some tv shows starring Joel Rush, and found The Ropes, a quickly-canned tv series based on Vin Diesel's early job as a bouncer.  Well, maybe there would be some beefcake. 

Problems: It was impossible to research among 1,300 other series called The Ropes, On the Ropes, and Learn the Ropes.   

It was available on Amazon Prime, but not if you used the Prime Search window -- you had to go through Google.  Even after buying an episode.  

More problems: Nonlinear narration, with people describing an event that happened earlier, then seeing the event from different points of view, and seeing the consequences of the event, but in jumbled order. 

Some of the guys are black/speaking in a stereotyped jive accent, and some are white/speaking in a stereotyped Guido accent, but within those categories, they look, talk, and behave exactly alike. This makes it very difficult to figure out who belongs to what plotline.  But for the sake of a review I'll try to piece it together.


The illustrations are whatever beefcake or nude photos I could find of the actors, in no particular order: Gonzalo Menendez, F. Valentino Morales, Brian Ahern, Brian Hooks, Joel Rush, Danny Abeckaser, Shawn Woods, Robert Ervin, Ramses Jiminez.  Plus a couple of random photos of guys with big dicks.

Setting: A very sleazy nightclub in New York, where they have both ladies dancing on poles and illegal gambling.  A squad of seven or more bouncer/security guards, whom the Boss calls "ladies" although they're actually men, is on patrol every night.

 Big Vic's Story:  Big Vic, who has the biggest dick in New York City, is infinitely attractive to every woman in the world.  He asks the lady bartender to have sex with him; she agrees. On the same night, or on another night, he's working the door, and lets in a girl who claims to be a model, but rejects the guy she's with.  He asks if she wants to have sex; she does.

While he is having sex with one or the other the bathroom, someone knocks on the door, saying that he's needed at the bar.  He ignores them.

Later, or on a different night, he goes out into the alley, and sees a sleazoid trying to push an unwilling lady into a taxi.  He intervenes and sends the guy away. Then her friend arrive and accuses Big Vic of taking advantage of her!  They drive away.

Uh-oh, a whole gang of bad dudes rushes into the alley to try to kill him! He's got the biggest cock in New York, not the biggest muscles.  He tries to fight them off, but they prepare to beat him to death when...

A smaller guy wearing a suit rushes in and annihilates them!  Big Vic is not happy to get his life saved by a nerd -- it's a major blow to his masculinity.  Then the nerd asks "Are you Vic Pendejo?" Har-har, pendejo means "asshole" in Spanish!  Big Vic angrily orders him to leave.


Ralphie's Story:
One night Ralphie is screwing a lady in the Trash Room (no beefcake, but we see her butt).  And she accidentally butt-phones her Man, so he and his homies show up to kill him.  Big Les, working the front door, pulverizes them, but now they want revenge on him!  They return the next night, mistake Big Vic for Big Les, and attack. I guess people in-universe have trouble distinguishing the guys, too.

Later, the Boss complains that Ralphie is too feminine, and takes him off bouncer duty.  


The Kid's Story
:  One night a Kid shows up at the front door just as they open.  Big Les, who happens to be working, won't let him in: no action so early anyway.  "Come back in two hours."

Two hours later, the Kid is waiting in a line that goes around the block.  They've reached capacity, so no one else gets in that night.  

He doesn't want to get in, he just wants to apply for a job, so he cuts line and asks Big Lou what to do. Yes, this is a different character, actually named "White Lou."    Big Lou sends him to the back door, where Big Vic is working, and tells him to ask for "Vic Pendejo," knowing that he'll get annihilated.   Instead, he sees "Pendejo" in trouble, being beaten to death by some thugs, and intervenes. 

Big Vic is so impressed that he offers him a job as his "intern."  All of the side deals at the club -- the drugs, hookers, whatever -- will go through the Kid.  For a salary, he'll get some of the bribes and "some ass."  Presumably girls, or is Big Vic offering his own?  

Rashomon after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.8 Continued: Macaulay Culkin grows up, the Cycle Ninjas break out, and Jussie Smollett shows his stuff



Baby Billy's Baby Boy: Harmon the special-needs son who Baby Billy abandoned at Christmas 1993. has grown into a special-needs adult (Macaulay Culkin), But nevertheless he has achieved the heterosexual nuclear family trajectory of job, house, wife, and kids.Actually, his wife has the job (a lawyer, "an educated breadwinner") but close enough. 

They are all watching Family Feud: "almost everyone has had their bottom ___ at least once." Sexual innuendo, har har.  The answer: spanked.



Suddenly the doorbell rings: it's a card with a photo of Harmon on Santa's lap the day his Daddy abandoned him.  Then his Daddy!  






Baby Billy wants to fix things between them, so he can move forward with his new son.  So it's not about Harmon, it's about you?  Harmon says just don't make the same mistake again, and "Can I hit you with a closed fist as hard as I can in the face?"  That's rather precise, but Baby Billy agrees, and gets walloped.

Out in the car, the ghost of Aimee-Leigh laughs at his bloody nose with kleenix affixed. 


Jesse Smollett and K-Fed: Back stage before Eli's  "welcome back" service, the siblings are in makeup and practicing their enunciation. They agree to make Daddy proud by showing how much they love each other. Judy says that she loves "Jesse Smollett" and "K-Fed," whereupon Kelvin makes a strange feminine gesture. 

Some vaguely-relevant dicks after the break