Gemstones Episode 1.4: Keefe looks for love in a sports bar, and Kelvin meets a girl. Plus Blair Jackson and a random hunk.

Previous: Episode 1.3: Gideon acts like a woman, Kelvin acts like a man, and chubby guys show their dicks
 

Episode 1.4 is pivotal to the Kelvin-Keefe relationship, establishing that they both are gay, and that they have similar life goals: treated as babies in their subcultures, they long to prove themselves men.

Title: "Wicked Lips," from Proverbs 17.4: "An evildoer listens to wicked lips, and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue."  I wonder who will be listening to wicked lips.

The Satanists:  Keefe is walking through downtown Charleston, eating an ice cream cone -- a childlike activity, maybe signifying that he has been "born again," started life anew.  He had to give up his old Satanist friends and lovers to follow Christ, and now he's looking for new friends -- and a boyfriend (he does not yet think of Kelvin as a potential partner).

He looks longingly at a hot guy through the window of a sports bar (it's Kyle Walsh, who has been Adam Devine's assistant  in 10 of his movies and tv shows).  Then the hot guy turns around, stares at Keefe, and licks through a v-symbol: a vulgar offer of oral sex, usually aimed at a woman, but apparently aimed at Keefe).  Offenderd, Keefe moves on.

Next Keefe runs into his old Satanist buds, especially Daedalus and Cryptocore (who wears a gas mask and doesn't speak).  They heard the he was hanging out with "those Gemstone weirdos," but he denies it.  Then he refuses their invitation to a party at Club Sinister Friday night. 

"Keefe's a fucking nerd now!" Daedalus exclaims.  The slurs he uses, "nerd" and "weirdo," suggest the taunts of a high school bully rather than critiques of Christian believers.

As Keefe leaves, the Satanists demonstrate their new dance number.  They look like they are having fun; he is tempted to join them.

Money is on my mind:  While Quincy Jones' "Money Is" plays in the background, Martin and Judy (his secretary in this season) are showing Gideon how they separate the donations from the prayer requests (these are handled by paid prayer teams.  Imagine being a professional prayer).  The requests are then shredded, for liability reasons.  Anything important, or a donation over $10,000, goes straight to Eli.  The cash is then sorted and placed in the vault.  Gideon's eyes light up as he gets an idea.

Fancy Nancy:  "Gay, you know..." Wait, is Amber talking about Kelvin?  

No, it's Sunday dinner at Jason's Steakhouse with major donors Dale and Gay Nancy, owners of Fancy Nancy's Chicken. They are parodies of Dan and Rhonda Cathy of the notoriously homophobic Chick-Fil-A, but let's take a closer look at those those names: Dale's wife is named "Gay," and " "Nancy," and "fancy" are long-standing homophobic slurs. The whole scene is a play on homophobic slurs, calling attention to the problems that Kelvin and Keefe will have if they come out

The Nancys' problem: their teenage daughter Dot is on the wrong path, hanging out with an older, decadent boyfriend -- so they won't let her use the family helicopter anymore.  Everybody volunteers to intervene, but Eli notes that Kelvin is the Youth Minister, so he should do it.  He is thrilled: a way to earn his Daddy's respect! 

Script problem: Shouldn't it be Kelvin's job by default?  Why is there even a question? This seems to be a holdover from an earlier draft, when Dot was older. 

Gay slur: Angry at being passed over for the job, Jesse criticizes Kelvin's glasses: "You look like Jeffrey Dahmer."  The gay serial killer.  Kelvin takes the glasses off.

What happened in Atlanta: We cut to Chad's wife Mandy telling the ladies that she broke into his email and found a message he received from Jesse last March: "Atlanta was dirty, dirty, for sure-y!" Other emails describe "titties," suggest getting tested, and ask how much he owes for the prostitutes. 

Amber insists that it's none of their business. There are any number of innocent explanations.  Later, she confronts Jesse, who gets mad at Mandy "for lying." 

Timeline note: This episode takes place shortly before Easter 2022, which fell on April 17th.  Mandy probably means March 2021, or she would have said "last month." So about a year has passed since Jesse's sex-and-drugs party.

The Semen Load: At the Nancy Estate, Kelvin announces that he and Keefe will be performing a Satanic Sweep  (Keefe demonstrates by sweeping at his crotch.  Satanic sweeps are about sex.)

Keefe connection: Jade Pettyjohn (Dot) starred with Tony Cavalero in School of Rock.

In Dot's room, they destroy: posters of the dark metal groups Bauhaus and Ministry; an ashtray; a "fidget spinner" (toy) that almost hypnotizes Keefe; two Ken dolls (used for gay play?); and a used condom. They bring everything out to their SCU (Spiritual Collections Unit) trailer.  Lots of questions here: did they get a whole Satanic Sweep system started in just the few weeks since Keefe was saved (converted)?  Wouldn't a real Satanist know that those so-called Satanic influences are bogus?  And why are the Satanic Sweeps never mentioned again?  

Keefe apologizes for displaying the used condom; Kelvin advises him that if it contains a semen-load, "don't even touch it."  This queasiness about touching semen appears again in Season 2 with Judy and Jesse.  Here Kelvin seems to be trying to steer Keefe away from his gay "lifestyle," which involved touching a lot of semen-loads.  To emphasize his heterosexual manliness, he tries to draw Keefe into a play-fight.

Suddenly Dot's boyfriend Austin (Blair Jackson) appears.  "I bet you money that was his semen-load," Keefe says.  As they are drawn instinctively to thoughts of his penis, Kelvin decides to "Snip him right out of this situation." Castration joke, har har.

Blair bod after the break

"Warm Bodies": A zombified Nicholas Hoult meets a girl. With Rob Conddrey cock

 

I'm going to have to stop this "Give me four movies to select from" strategy for Movie Night.  Last night my choices were:

Stand by Me: Same-sex love among homophobic kids vanishes when they grow up and get married. Geez.

Bad Hair: A horror movie about hair care products?

All of Us Strangers: Bereaved gay gay falls in love with a ghost? F*k the Sadness.

Warm Bodies.  Nicholas Hoult, on the icon, was cute, and how could a movie about zombies go wrong?

A zombie (Nicholas) narrates. He can't remember his name, but later his human girlfriend names him R, as in Romeo or ARRR!  His limited cognitive ability means that he doesn't remember what happened, sparing us scenes about the origin of the zombie Apocalypse. 

Left: Nicholas butt.

ARRR spends most of his time plodding around the Montreal-Trudeau airport with the other zombies, hanging out with his friend MMM (Rob Conddry) -- all they do is grunt at each other, but isn't that what living guys do, har har -- and filling his airplane-lair with knicknacks that he scavenged.  

Next door, behind a wall much too high to be even slightly believable, the humans live in a refugee camp and scrounge for food. Except for the evil President, who lives in a palace.

Some of the town teenagers, including the President's daughter Julie -- Juliet, get it? --  and her boyfried Perry -- go beyond the wall to scrounge for medical supplies, and the zombies attack. ARRR sees Julie, and gets the most exaggeratedly corny "love at first sight" look that they ever taught you not to do in acting school.  He notices Perry, and gets rid of the competition by eating him.  

But in this world, when you eat someone, even a tiny piece, you absorb their memories.  ARRR absorbs Perry's memories, all of which involve Julie: falling in love when they are toddlers, their first kiss, their first sexual experience, their declaration of love, and so on ad infinitum. 

Through the entire movie, I thought Perry was being played by Zac Efron.  No, it's someone named Dave Franco, who could be Zac's identical twin.  Seriously, they look exactly alike. 

The other teens just hide until the zombies leave, but ARRR tricks Julie into thinking that he has to save her.  He takes her to his airplane, and they proceed to fall in love.

Eventually Julie wants to return to human society, mainly because there's almost nothing left to eat at the airport, so ARRR tries to sneak her out.  The other zombies want to attack,but he holds her hand and -- get this -- they instantly calm down. "Oh, you're in love.  Why didn't you say so?  Even brain-dead zombies understand that heterosexual romance is the most important thing in the universe.  Go on through."

More heterosexism after the break

"Love and Anarchy": A prank war at a Stockholm publishing house, with gay teases and Bjorn Mosten's penis

 

 Love and Anarchy appeared on my Netflix recommendations.  I clicked to see what it was about, forgetting that on Netflix, "click" means "start."  And since I was eating a bowl of Cheerios, I let it continue.

Scene 1: A harried middle-aged man and woman in a fancy house coordinating their calendars and telling their preteen son "No gaming at the breakfast table."  Dad is played by Johannes Bah Kuhnke, sweating below.

The woman chugs some espresso, talking about how this is her first day on the job. Teenage daughter comes in, not wearing the coat Dad bought for her.  This causes a crisis. Nuclear family squabbles.  Yawn. 

The woman goes upstairs, locks herself in the bathroom, and masturbates to porn on her cell phone.  Are we supposed to be titilated or judgmental, or are we to assume that she's having marital problems?  Everybody masturbates, but nobody admits that they do.

Scene 2: She is walking through a square in downtown Stockholm, at dusk or pre-dawn, checking her cell phone.  An older guy welcomes her to his publishing house.   He shows her to her new office, which is a disaster-area of books and manuscripts: the former senior editor was a bit of a hoarder.  

The older guy may be Ronni, the Publishing Company CEO, played by Bjorn Kjellman. He didn't have much of a physique in the 1990s, but he was rather well hung.

Scene 3: The woman -- Sofie -- giving a speech to the staff.  She's an independent consultant who saves publishing companies from bankruptcy by pushing them into the digital age, whether they like it or not. As she is ignoring a question about layoffs, a hot young guy comes in late and accidentally spills his drink over his crotch.  While he is dabbing at his bulge with a napkin, Sofie stares, mesmerized.

Scene 4: Sofie in her office, grimacing at the clutter.  Books --- ugh -- they might as well be stone tablets! As someone with a library of about 4,000 books, I am not amused.

 She piles some armloads of the relics outside her door to be trashed, and sees the hot young guy (Bjorn Mosten, top photo, left, and below) on a ladder drilling (and drilling...and drilling).  Receptionist tells her that he's Max, the IT Guy.  

"He doesn't usually do much drilling." 

 "Well, tell him to drill quietly!"

Max scoffs.  "How am I supposed to do my job?"  Receptionist doesn't answer; she's staring at his butt.  He storms out.

Max nude after the break