"Teenage Bounty Hunters": Two girls at a high-power Christian Academy get a side gig. With Mackenzie Astin and the guys sans pants

 

Teenage Bounty Hunters. on Netflix, gets 4.6 out of 5 stars on Rotten Tomatoes.  Sure, I could use something mindless and trashy, as long as the girls keep their clothes on.  So I'll review Episode 1.1.

Scene 1: In a parked car, a teenage girl convinces a highly religious "But it's a sin!" boy, Luke (Spencer House. left), to do it with her by quoting scripture. She quotes John 3:16 and the Shepherd Psalm while mounting him.

I should have tried that when I was a Nazarene!

In the next car over, another teenage girl finishes giving a hand job to Stoner Dude Jennings (Nicholas Cirillo), and then  interrogates him on her technique.

Scene 2: The two girls turn out to be twins, Sterling (religious) and Blair (stoner), who discuss their sexcapades on the way home.  Suddenly they hit a car.  "Jesus, Mother of God!" Religious Sterling cries. Well, she's not Catholic, so how could she know that it's "Mary, Mother of God"?

The guy they hit brandishes a gun, but they quickly subdue him.  He thinks they're bounty hunters (hired to track down people who skip bail).

The real bounty hunter shows up: Bowser (Kadeem Hardison, who you might remember from A Different World).  Dude runs, and Bowser is too fat to give chase, so the girls grab him.    Believing that they are professional bounty hunters, Bowser agrees to share the fee with them.

Scene 3: "What I did for my summer vacation" at a Christian Academy.  An entitled girl says: "I was so blessed that my Daddy let us use his helicopter to fly to his lake house for a discipleship week."  Gak!

Religious Sterling is chosen to be this year's Christian Discipleship Student Fellowship Leader.  But she doesn't want to do it because she's...um...as pure as the driven slush? 

Scene 4: Outside the scary Gothic-castle school, Religious Sterling is fake-congratulated by a Mean Girl: "But I'm glad I didn't get it, because I'll be so busy this year with the Young Republicans, Latin Club, the Straight-Straight Alliance..." Har-har

Studdenly Stoner Dude bumps into Religious Sterling.  She drops her purse, and a condom falls out.  Everyone is shocked!  Sin!  Abomination!

Sceene 5: The girls go home to their mansion, where Supermodel Mom has made brownies.  Dad comes in (bisexual actor Mackenzie Astin, brother of Sean).

Left: Searching for "Mackenzie Astin" and "body" yielded this photo of Scott Bakula and someone who doesn't look like Mac Astin.

And brother Sean in Toy Soldiers.

Scene 6: I'm not sure what the point of Scene 5 was.  They call Dad "sir," but otherwise he seems perfectly nice, interested in their activities, not authoritarian or abusive.

They walk through the grounds to the garage to pick up a car, so they can meet with Bowser the Bounty Hunter to collect their $2,500 (don't they get that much allowance every week?)

Scene 7: Yogurtopia, where Bowser the Bounty Hunter has his day job.  He gives the girls their money, but it will take a lot more to fix their Dad's best huntin' truck that got wrecked in Scene 2.   So he offers them a new job: a richster named John Stevens was arrested for solicitation and assault (he beat up a hooker), and skipped bail.  Now he's hanging out in the Men's Parlour, a super-exclusive section of the super-exclusive (that is, white only) country club.  Bowser is black, so he can't get in; could the girls do it?

The girls discuss:  They know John Stevens -  he's Mean Girl's Dad!  He's made  inappropriate comments about their' bods, so he's a creep.  But why would a bajillionaire be a bail jumper?  Couldn't he just hire a famous attorney and bribe the jury to be found not guilty?

More bounty hunting after the break

The Baptist Student Union: two Baptist boys give in to temptation

 

Naperville, Illinois

When I finally managed to drop out of the Nazarene church, my parents told me, "You don't have to be a Nazarene, but you can't be a heathen!  Find another church to go to!"  

So I tried Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, and, during my senior year at Augustana College, the Baptist Student Fellowship.

My parents were not pleased.

Nazarenes thought that Baptists were the most evil of the "so-called Christians." At least the Lutherans were open about worshipping idols, and the Presbyterians about tearing apart the Bible, but the Baptists were almost identical to Nazarenes.

The only differences that I could see:

1. Baptism.  The Nazarene Manual mentioned baptism, but in all my years as a Nazarene, I had never seen it done. Baptists required it for everybody.

2.  "Once saved, always saved."  Nazarenes believed that after you got saved, you could backslide -- commit more sins -- and have to be saved all over again.  For Baptists, once was enough -- after you were saved, you would go to heaven no matter what you did.  

When I was a kid, the older boys at church whispered that due to "once saved, always saved," Baptists had no morals: hey would "put out" for anybody.  So if you wanted a "sure thing" on a date, ask a Baptist girl.

What about Baptist boys?  I joined the Baptist Student Union to see if they were also  "easy," willing to "put out" for anybody.  Willing to get a BJ from a dude.

At first glance, they seemed nearly as strict as the Nazarenes, exhorting each other to "stay pure" and "resist their urges."  Like the Nazarenes, they taught that God hated homa-sekshuls, plus premarital sex and masturbation, any sexual act that wasn't intended to make a baby.

The main project of the Baptist Student Union year was putting on a  musical about a guy who makes obnoxious come-ons to every girl in sight, until one of them invites him to church, where he gets saved and vows to "stay pure" until his wedding night.  I only remember one song:

The Devil is alive and well on the Planet Earth.
The Devil is alive and well, and he can make you feel like hell....

Feel like hell was code for Having erotic desires or giving in to them.  But church elders disapproved of the bad language, so we changed the line to "send your soul to hell."

Beginning just after Christmas, we performed for youth groups at various Baptist churches in the area.  Not only in Rock Island, but in Kewanee, Galesburg, Princeton, cities up to an hour's drive away.

Then one Sunday in the spring, we were booked by a church in Naperville,  about three hours away -- too far to get home after the evening youth group.  So we car-pooled on Sunday afternoon, and after our performance, church members gave us dinner and put us up for the night.

The four boys in the cast stayed with an elderly couple whose sons had grown up and moved away.

More Baptists after the break

"Unstable: Rob Lowe and son are grieving, the Pilgrim Twins have small dongs, and there's a gay sycophant

 

 I haven't watched many of Rob Lowe's recent tv shows or movies; I had the impression that he wasn't entirely gay-friendly.  But he stars with his son, John Owen Lowe (below),in the 8-episode Netflix sitcom, Unstable.  I reviewed Episode 4, "Pilgrims and Sex Parties," since sex parties are a gay community thing.  

Premise: "Unstable genius" Ellis (Rob), who owns a biotech company, spirals out of control after the death of his wife (red flag!), so he brings his son Jackson (Johnny) aboard to smooth things out.  Except Jackson is a flautist.  How would that even work?

Scene 1: The biotech company.  A lady in a business suit complains that a photo of Ellis with a hawk on his head has gone viral, creating a meme where he's called the Wizard of Odd.  Ellis doesn't care: he's busy channeling his inner child and monkeys. 

Left: Lowe butt

Meanwhile, the obsessive Smithers to Ellis' Mr. Burns, Malcolm (Aaron Branch), has a meet-cute with the new HR Guy, but is too flustered about HR regulations to flirt.  A gay character in the first scene!  I stand corrected.

Scene 2: Ana, Ellis's main ally on the board of directors, asks how he's handling the grief over his Dead Wife.  Not well , he says: after losing the most wonderful person in the world, life is meaningless. After four episodes?  Usually Dead Wives are mentioned once to establish that the guy is heterosexual, then dropped.  Is this a show about grief?  

"So," Ana says, changing the subject, "About the hawk-on-your-head story, that reporter screwed you in the ass with a King Kong dick?"   Sounds like a fun date, but I think it's just a homophobic reference to the hawk-on-the-head story.

Scene 3:  Ana the Board Member runs into Ellis's son Jackson, the flautist-biotech scientist, and asks how he's handling the grief over his Dead Mother.  Not well;, he says; the grief comes in waves.   She notes that she's still playing the harp, so why doesn't he stop by with his flute for some "pluck and toots."   That sounds dirty.

Scene 4:  In the lab, scientists Luna and Ruby are looking through microscopes, trying to shame some cells into dividing.  They discuss Luna's never-seen "loser" boyfriend Brian and Ruby's ex-boyfriend - Jackson!  A heterosexual flautist?  How odd!

Sycophant Malcolm comes in all flustered over his meet-cute, so the scientists offer to create a litmus test to determine if HR Guy is actually interested. 

Ellis enters the lab, announcing that he's ready to go back to work: "If we can get some reductive oxidant on the anode..."   Uh-oh, he peers into a microscope and starts crying.  Too soon.  Strange -- usually working helps you deal with the grief.  Maybe the Dead Wife was a scientist.  

Scene 5:  Business-Suit Lady approaches the mansion of JT and Chas (JT Parr, Tom Allen, left), who are trying to destroy Ellis.  Boyfriends? No, brothers: they mention their father.  She orders them to back off, or she will post an embarrassing video. 

 "The sex parties?  We don't care -- everybody in tech goes to sex parties."  

No, actually she has a film of the two pretending to be Pilgrims.  If it gets out, no girls will come to their sex parties, so they'll have to have sex with guys.  "Ugh!  Gross!  Ok, we'll back off."  So these are heterosexual sex parties?  I've never heard of such a thing.

More grief after the break

Rob Lowe: Nude photos of James Dumont's classmate, the Brat Pack prettyboy and bad guy with a dick.

Rob Lowe got his start as an androgynous prettyboy in Brat Pack classics like The Outsiders (1983), The Hotel New  Hampshire  (1984), and St. Elmo's Fire (1985).   

He played a teenage operator who buddy-bonds with the naive Andrew McCarthy in Class (1983).

He did the "Yank skewers the pretentions of stuffy Brits" thing in Oxford Blues (1984).

In Youngblood (1986), he gave us not only a butt shot, but a revealing near-frontal.  

Millions of heterosexual girls and gay boys had his posters on their bedroom walls. Corey Haim's Sam had one in The Lost Boys (1987), leading to widespread speculation that Sam was gay.

.We all figured that Rob was gay.  Why else would he infuse his movies with  so much buddy-bonding amid the 1980s homophobic slurs?  Why else would half the guys in West Hollywood, including my friend Mario, claim to have dated him?  

Why else would he show his butt so often?  

Then something happened that changed Rob Lowe's life and career forever.  During the Democratic National Convention in 1988, Rob and his friend Justin Morrow filmed themselves having sex with two women. It was blurry and grainy, but you could see Rob fully aroused.  (Photos after the break) 

The scandal marked him as  dangerous, deviant, and overtly sexual.  You knew things about him that you didn't about any other celebrity.

Hollywood insiders figured that his career was over, but Rob managed to capitalize on his new aura of danger in Bad Influence (1990),  luring a yuppie (James Spader) onto the Dark Side while showing us his butt again.  And in 

The Dark Backward (1991), a dark comedy about a pair of garbage collectors who want to become standup comics.  

He starred in a BBC adaption of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, about a decadent gay guy whose "perversion" leads to a gruesome and ridiculous death.

By 1994, Rob had bounced back enough to play Nick Andros, one of the "good guy" survivors of a plague that destroys the world, in an adaption of Stephen King's The Stand  (1994).  

He appeared in  comedies like Wayne's World and Austin Powers, murder mysteries (often as the murderer), and tragedies. But he kept his infamous penis under wraps, except for a nude scene in I Melt with You (2011).

Today Rob is a fixture on television, for audiences who never heard of his sex tape, or don't care.  He has starred in The Grinder, Code Black, Wild Bill, 911 Lone Star, and Unstable.  No gay characters, but we still can see an occasional butt.

Ready for the sex tape dicks?  Warning: they are explicit