"It's Always Sunny," Episode 7.10: Mac gets fat, Charlie refuses sex, and Michael O'Hearn flexes. With bonus Sunny butts


Looking for Michael O'Hearn muscle, I found an appearance in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Episode 7.10 (2011).  It's been on for like a century, so you've probably seen it: four sociopathic pals and their anti-father figure run a sleazy, always-deserted bar in Philadelphia, where they argue, fight, scheme against each other, and work together on elaborate money-making scams



Dennis (Glen Howerton, right), the bartender, prides himself on his attractiveness. .

His sister Dee (Kaitlyn Olson), the bar's waitress, fancies herself an actress.

Mac (Rob McElhenney, left), the bouncer, is obsessed with muscles, and rather homophobic.  He gets a lot of "is he or isn't he?" jokes, until he finally comes out, then goes back in, and comes out again.

Frank (Danny DeVito, the moon), Dennis and Dee's rich con-artist sort-of-father, bankrolls the schemes.

He and Charlie (Charlie Day, center), the bar's janitor, live together, share a bed, and get a lot of "are they or aren't they?" jokes, but it's also hinted that Frank is Charlie's biological father, not his boyfriend.

None of the cast is homophobic in real life. In 2018, they all appeared on a Paddy's Pub float at the LA Pride Parade, giving Mac a chance to show off his new ripped bod.

Scene 1: Mac is in a Catholic confession booth (where you confess your sins to the priest, who gives you a penance to perform).  His confession: he's fat. Not a sin, dude.

Scene 2: Next Mac asks the priest to have God smite his enemies...um, friends...well, friends who want to destroy him.  Not what confession is for, dude. He explains: they became wildly successful, which made them monsters (um...they've been monsters since Season 1), which made them want Mac to be fat. Confused?

Flashback:  Frank, the anti-father, returns from a trip to sell illegal fireworks in North Carolina to find the bar packed.  What happened?  Mac thinks that they just "tipped": if you make the right decisions long enough, eventually things tip in your favor.  Charlie thinks it's his cleaning, Dee her jokes, Dennis his hotness.  They don't know which it is, so they have to continue doing everything.


Scene 3: In
bed that night, Charlie just wants to go to sleep so he can work tomorrow, but Frank wants to blow up a lamb with his remaining fireworks.  They argue until Charlie makes a barrier between them, so they can't have sex, which hurts Frank's feelings.  Mac calls and invites them to go on a rager, but they can't because they're fighting.

Left: Frank, Danny DeVito.

Scene 4: The next day, Dennis won't come out of the bathroom, so Charlie has to bartend, which he's not qualified for. Meanwhile, Dee tries to be funny, ignoring customers' orders to tell lame half-jokes and berating them when they don't laugh, and Mac comes late in after a rager involving three bottles of champaign and a stray dog. Everything is in chaos. 

They all go into the bathroom to see what's wrong with Dennis: he found a couple of gray hairs and tried to eradicate them, ending with a terrible haircut.  He's afraid to be seen in public. 

Scene 5: After bartending all night, Charlie is exhausted; plus he hasn't had time to clean. Frank has come up with a new prank: four stop signs at an intersection, so no one can move, har har. Charlie points out that he built a four-way stop, actually making the neighborhood safer. "Ok, then, why don't we go around and hit people with sticks?"  Charlie doesn't want to do that, either.  Not the best ideas for Date Night, buddy.


Scene 6:
Mac is planning places to avoid when he sails around the world with the profits from their new successful bar.  He'll avoid Africa -- too poor, the Middle East -- too hot, and well, everywhere.  Meanwhile, Dennis applied a chemical peel to his face, and now looks disfigured, so he can't be the attractive bartender anymore.

Left: Dennis, Glenn Howerton

Dee suggests hiring  replacements, or avatars, to do all the dirty work, so they can concentrate on being attractive, funny, and successful.  Of course the avatars have to look like the gang.


More sunny after the break

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