"The Things We Do For Love": Based on the 10cc song

 

Too many broken hearts have fallen in the river. 

Too many lonely souls have drifted out to sea. 

You lay your bets and then you pay the price -- the things we do for love.

Communication is the problem, not the answer. 

You've got his number and your hand is on the phone. 

The weather's turned, and all the lines are down -- the things we do for love.

Like walking in the rain and the snow, when there's nowhere to go.

And you're feeling like a part of you is dying.  

And you're looking for the answer in his eyes. 

You think you're going to break up, then he says he wants to make up.

A compromise would surely help the situation.

Agree to disagree. but disagree to part.  

When after all it's just a compromise of the things we do for love.

More after the break

Peder Lindell: Gay skater from Montana, gay Catholic guy, magician, zombie, and pilot, with possible Peder penis

Ok, this time I checked in advance, so I don't get tricked by another interloper on the red carpet. 

The Disney wiki lists Peder Lindell in the cast of  The Rise of the Red as Morgie, the teenage son of Morgan Le Fay from the Arthurian mythos.

The character does not appear in earlier "Descendants" movies or tv shows, but he looks like he might be gay.

Peder grew up in Northfield, Minnesota, and began acting at age 11. with a role in a stage version of On Golden Pond at the Minnesota Jungle Theater.  He went on to star in Gypsy, and then as Jason, a closeted gay student at a homophobic Catholic school, in Bare: A Pop Opera. 

Jordan Luke Gage played Jason in the West End revival.  Spoiler alert: the gay dude dies.

Peder is currently a theater arts major at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.  

He has his pilot's license and certification as an Advanced Rescue Diver and Emergency First Responder.

 And he has a boyfriend and a little dog.

Of his six acting credits on the IMDB, three are shorts: 

Out of My Hands, about a guy with a gun, aired at the Catalina Film Festival.

Leak seems to be about a guy in a jar.

Scraps depicts a gay romance between skateboarders in Montana in the homophobic early 2000s.  It's the "first Montana LGBTQ skate film."

Peder penis after the break

"Goosebumps: The Vanishing": Ross from "Friends" as a crazy botanist, some gay teens, a monster, and Sam McCarthy's....

 

Goosebumps: The Vanishing has dropped on Hulu, the second season of the Goosebumps series, based on the popular children's books.  I can't tell if it is episodic or not at this point, so I just clicked on Episode 1, which stars David Schwimmer, Ross from Friends; and teen idol Sam McCarthy.

Scene 1: Brooklyn, 1994. Bill Clinton is in the White House, I'm in West Hollywood, Mariah Carey is topping the charts, and Friends premieres on CBS: 

So no one told you life was gonna be this way

Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A

 Four teens (Sameer, Matty, and two girls) descend into eerie catacombs, until they come to the room where "they conducted medical experiments."  They're doing a "truth or dare" thing where they have to spend the night.

Sameer: "I'm not scared.  I just like to sleep naked, and it could get a little awkward."  

Uh-oh, Matty's younger brother Anthony followed them!  Mom's going to be furious.  Matty forces him to leave.

Suddenly a machine switches on, gas squirts out, and Matty's face dissolves.   A gruesome image.

Scene 2: Brooklyn, 2024.  Teen twins Devin and Cece (Sam McCarthy, Jaden Bartels) exit the subway and complain about having to leave their friends in Manhattan to live with Dad, the grown-up Anthony (a craggy, dissolute-looking David Schwimmer). He picks them up in a car.  Are you sure this is Brooklyn?

At home, Dad Anthony yells at neighbor Trey, also called James Junior, for blocking his driveway. "But your mom always let me park there."

"She didn't have a car."

Inside, the living room is crowded with boxes.  Back story: Dad has moved into this house after his mother went into assisted living with dementia, and he's going through her stuff.

In other news, "I've really been looking forward to your aunt's brain surgery."  WTF?  Who looks forward to that?  He means because then they can come live with him.  

Wait -- the twins are living with their aunt, not their father?  What's wrong with him?

The micromanager passes out his extensive list of rules, but emphasizes that the main rule is: "Stay out of the basement." He gives them a tour: he's a botanist, working on a lot of plant types that will revolutionalize the botany world.  Shouldn't you be working in a lab somewhere?   But stay out!

Scene 3: Dinner at Gwendolyn's restaurant.  Gay couples at the tables behind and in front of them. Back story: Cece is starting debate camp tomorrow. She hates it, but you need "a thing" to get into college. 

Next up, Devin: He claims to be ok, given "everything that happened," but he was suspended for getting into a fight.  Nope, not gay.  

CJ drives up on his motorcycle.  Dad introduces him to the twins. Back story: he's working here, at his parents' restaurant, for the summer.  Dad suggests that maybe Devin would like to work there, too.  Playing matchmaker, buddy?  I don't have any hope that he'll be gay, but there may be a gay-subtext buddy-bond between him and Devin.

He has to make a delivery, but the guys are all meeting at the park later. "Y'all should come."  Maybe specify which park, and what time?

Scene 4:  On the way home, Dad sends the twins inside so he can chat with a crying woman in a car. She notes that the father of Trey/JJ, the neighbor who Dad argued with, stopped by the police station to file a harassment complaint. According to the Google AI, harassment consists of repeaed acts that cause the victim to "fear for their safety,"  Telling someone to not block your driveway certainly doesn't count.

The woman promised to talk to Trey/JJ's Dad, but "be careful.  He's big on conspiracy theories." 

In other news, she managed to pull some strings and retrieve his brother's things from the night he and his friends dissolved.  . Moldy clothes with dissolved Matty all over them, from 30 years ago? 

The woman has been thinking a lot about that night, but Dad doesn't want to hear it.  He cuts her off and heads inside.

Scene 5: The twins come downstairs while Dad is arguing with his ex wife on the telephone. Wait -- they were living with their aunt, but she's having brain surgery, so they moved in with Dad.  Why weren't they living with their mother?

Dad assures them that although they hate each other, they both love the twins.  He made burnt waffles, which they reject.  It's the next morning. What happened to meeting the guys in the park later?

Left: This show is a little beefcake-light, so here's a photo of Sameer, one of the melted teens (played by the 28 year old Arjun Athalye).

More Sameer after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.1 Continued: Keefe's kiss, Kelvin's boner, and a thug with broken thumbs. With Jonah Hauer-King and some boners

Previous: Episode 2.1: Junior likes dicks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f*k yeah, we got both!

In the last scene, Keefe is excluded from Sunday dinner with the family.  Now we see what he missed:

Judy and BJ accused of betraying the family because they got married at Disney World (by Prince Eric, the "hottest guy in the Disney catalog").

There's also a jab at Kelvin's muscle obsession. But it’s not just homoerotic desire.  Heterosexual desire is also incompatible with the family: when Jesse disses Judy for not being a mother, she argues that she's trying to keep her body "foine" to incite BJ's desire.  Nope, they need to have a family. 

Left and below: Jonah Hauer-King, who played Prince Eric in the Litle Mermaid movie.

More Disruptions: We cut to Eli playing croquet, gazing at women's butts, and flirting with a lady.  Suddenly Junior, his friend from his wrestling days, appears amid sinister music!   Eli ignores him and drives away.  A homoerotic disruption of Eli's heterosexual dalliance, parallel to the God Squad disrupting the nuclear family procession earlier. 

Next, the Jesse-Amber plot, a new Christian-themed resort, Zion's Landing, proposed by their megachurch pastor chums, Lyle and Lindy Lissons.  Jesse doesn't have any money of his own, so he'll have to convince Eli to invest.  He's got a job at the church; he should get a salary.  Daddy Eli is super over-controlling, like his daddy was, and like Kelvin will be with his homoerotic Band of Brothers.

My Mans:  The family flies to Florida to inspect the site of the Lyssons' proposed resort.   When they return, Keefe and the God Squad meet them at their private airfield.  The family is shocked: didn't they know about the God Squad? 

"Uh-oh, my mans!" Kelvin exclaims, rushing forward to tell Keefe "You are looking great!"  In Southern Coastal grammar, "mans" is singular, "mens" plural.  He means Keefe.

Keefe tries to move in for a kiss, but Kelvin blocks him with an awkward hug.  He tries again, and Kelvin blocks him again. Finally he makes a blatant "enough!" gesture and backs off.  Judy finds this little dance hilarious.   It reflects the couple's conflict this season: Keefe wants to join the family as Kelvin's partner, the equivalent of BJ, sitting at the dinner table being criticized, while Kelvin isn't sure that same-sex romance is even possible.  His muscle cult is about desire: no love allowed. 

We cut to Eli in his office, watching a tv news show: Thaniel Block being interviewed about the "salacious scandal" story that took down Pastor Butterfield.  How famous was this guy?  I thought he was just the anonymous pastor of a satellite church.  They preach "sex only between married heterosexual partners, or you're going to hell," but privately they do everything under the sun.  Who will he target next?   Maybe Kelvin-- "Secretly gay youth minister holds wild orgies with his stable of muscle boys."  Ulp.   

Damn, we got old: Later, Eli is standing at the docks, worrying, when Junior approaches him and grabs him from behind, another homoerotic intrusion into his heteronormative life.  Junior complains that Eli forgot that he existed. 

Then: "We got old.  I look like a piece of shit, but damn!  You look sturdy!  Still got that mass going on!"  He grabs Eli's butt to check. Sort of presumptuous, dude, thinking that your ex will still be into you after fifty years. 

Eli thinks that Junior plans to blackmail him over revealing their days as loan enforcers (and lovers?), but he claims that he's just there for nostalgia, looking up an old friend.  "Why you all nervous, Eli?  Why are you bein' all weird?"  In this series, "weird" usually refers to sexual frustration.

Junior tries to hug him again, but Eli pushes him away.  On a scale of 1 to 100, how certain are you that these guys spent the psychedelic 1970s enjoying free love?  

As Eli walks away, Junior guilts him into a dinner invitation.

Sticky Stephens:  Nuclear families are  eating at Sticky Stephens, a parody of the Sticky Fingers Restaurant in Charleston that closed down in 2020.  Both sound dirty. The 1972 Rolling Stones album of that name  depicted a pair of jeans with an enormous bulge, leaving no question about why the fingers are sticky.

Junior points out a kissing couple: "Damn, look at that piece of tail he's with!" Ok, so he's bi.  Everybody watches as the man, Randall (Rene Rivera), lifts his girl onto the counter so they can have sex right in the restaurant!  Why doesn't someone on staff intervene? Eli yells at him to "tone down romance," and Randall yells "Suck my dick, Grandpa." But the couple leaves.

Over dinner, Junior reveals that he's now a wrestling promoter: "I got a stable full of fellas I keep working."  Tell me more, tell me more.  What do they do besides wrestling? Stripping?  Sex work?

"I wonder what my Daddy would think about you and me being reunited," Junior says.  Eli answers: "He put us together, so he would think he did a pretty good job."  Except they were separated for a lifetime.  That's not a great job of matchmaking.

Junior says that his Daddy just disappeared one day, setting up a major mystery of the Season: Did Eli murder Glendon Marsh?

Proper erections after the break.  Warning: explicit