Gemstones Episode 3.3: Baby Billy sings forever, Kelvin can't say the word, BJ poses nude, and I'm depressed

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Spring break in Iceland: A hookup with a Nordic god

Augustana, Junior Year

Augustana was a small college, so there weren't many choices for Modern Language Majors: Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Latin, Greek, and occasionally Russian. We had to "become fluent" in two languages and "competent" in a third, so I chose Spanish and French, which I studied in high school, and German, because I spent the fall quarter of my sophomore year in Regensburg. 

We also had to participate in at least one language club, but the Spanish, French, and German clubs were kind of boring, with bake sales, foreign-language films, and field trips to the Goethe Institut or the Alliance Française in Chicago.

Everybody joined the Scandinavian Club -- they had an endowment from a wealthy alumnus, and paid most of the way for members to go on annual field trips to Scandinavia!  A different country every year, alternating between Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.

In my junior year, it was Iceland.  I would have preferred Norway, but I wasn't about to turn down ten days in the land of the Old Norse sagas and Nordic hunks.

There were 12 of us, eight boys and four girls, plus two chaperones. We stayed in a youth hostel, four to a room, but everyone got a single bed, so there wasn't any late-night fondling, just a couple of less-than-spectacular sausage sightings.

No one came out willingly in the 1970s, so if any of the other guys were gay, they didn't let on.

Iceland was interesting, but not quite interesting enough for six days.  After you see the National Museum and the  Árbæjarsafn, an open-air museum of Icelandic history, there's nothing but glaciers, geysers, rocks, and scraggly mountains.  I've never found natural wonders as interesting as museums.

We never made it to Akureyri, famous for its annual strongman contest.

One day we took a bus to Hveragerði, about 45 minutes from Reykjavik, to visit Reykjadalur, "Steam Valley,"  an unearthly-looking region of volcanic boulders, spurts of steam, rocks, waterfalls, pools of water, and hot springs with wooden footpaths around.

Our guide told us that some intrepid souls jumped into the hot springs, but you had to be careful -- in some of them, the temperature got up to 80 degrees (175 fahrenheit), and would scald you.

None of us was brave enough.  Besides, it was cloudy and damp, with a cold wind blowing -- who wanted to strip?

When it came time to get back on the bus, we discovered that Erik was missing!

He was a junior Scandinavian Studies major, short, slim, sandy-haired, blue-eyed, with a round handsome face.  We had known each other since high school, but we didn't interact much: he was a fratboy, several levels above me on the social scale.

We went up and down the paths, calling his name.  No answer.

He couldn't have fallen into a crevice.  It was all open -- we would see him.

Could he have wandered off the path, into the wilderness of volcanic rocks?

We searched for 45 minutes.  Then, just as our chaperone suggested we drive back to town and stop at the police station, Erik appeared -- on a path we had just searched!

Seeing our anxious and angry faces, he said "What?  Chill out -- I was just looking at something.  We're only in Iceland once, right?"

He didn't believe that he had been gone over 45 minutes: "I guess I lost track of time.  Sorry."

More after the break

Jason Schwartzman: Lots of quirky guys winning the Girl of Their Dreams, with two gay/bi roles and one penis

Jason Schwartzman broke into film with Rushmore, 1998, which I didn't see: the plot synopsis sounded decidedly creepy, not to mention obsessively heterosexist.  A 15 year old boy tries to get with one of high school teachers, but she refuses to sexually assault him, so he fixes her up with his older buddy and finds an age-appropriate girlfriend.  Shudder.

He played a few more disaffected, deviant, and dangerous teenagers, in  Freaks and Geeks, Slackers, and Spun, then moved on to some well-received independents, such as I Heart Huckabees and The Grand Budapest Hotel

Looking through the list on the IMDB, I realize that out of Jason's 87 movies and tv shows, I've seen four: 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 2010:  An adaption of the graphic novel, with Scott (Michael Cera, who I watched to see) trying to win the Girl of His Dreams by clobbering her evil exes.  One is a girl; plus Scott has a gay roommate, played by Kieran Culkin. Jason plays one of the exes, Gideon G-Man Graves.

Wet Hot American Summer, 10 Years Later, 2017, reunites the gang from the movie and add some new characters, such as Deegs, "the new Andy" (Skyler Gisondo, who I watched to see). Jason plays Greg, the head boys' counselor at the summer camp.

In The Righteous Gemstones Season 2, Jason plays Thaniel, a sleazy journalist digging up dirt about "sexual impropriety" among clergy.  He is especially interested in taking down Eli Gemstone, the most famous televangelist and mega-church pastor in the world. Eli's children, hoping to talk him into backing off, go to his cabin, and find him shot to death!  "Who killed Thaniel?" is one of the main mysteries of the season.

Jason plays a gay guy in Asteroid City, 2023: Augie Steenbeck, a World War II photojournalist who stars in the play based on the movie we're watching, and dates the playwright, I think. It's all very confusing, and not really worth it: the two are on stage for only about 30 seconds, and vanish after a single, so-distant-that-you-can-barely-see it kiss.

More Jason after the break