Gemstones Episode 3.1 Continued: Kelvin withholds sex, Judy cheats, and Jesse fights, with some random butts

Previous: Episode 3.1:  Kelvin collect cocks, the Simpkins smirk, and Dusty flirts.  With a Brazilian boner bonus

Left: Alessandro Borghi.

The Book Signing: Eli is at a bookstore, signing copies of his "definitive autobiography" -- his third. Did you mention having a gay son?  Suddenly May-May, who attacked his wife Aimee-Leigh back in 2000, hands him one of his earlier books: Y2K: When the World Goes Dark. 

In 1999. many claimsmakers worried that computers were only set up for the 1900s, so on January 1, 2000, they would all reset. Bank accounts would empty; airplanes would fall from the sky; the world would descend into chaos. Some evangelists, like Eli Gemstone, made money by connecting the Y2K bug with end-time prophecies.

Eli is not happy to see his May-May -- he has a restraining order against her.  But she needs his help.  Wait -- you storm in and throw his old book at him to ask for help?  

Later, Eli records the section of his autobiography about Y2K: when the world didn't end, he and Aimee-Leigh had to face anger and ridicule. 

Marital Squabbles: A commercial: after a montage of heterosexual couples arguing and then being deliriously happy, Amber introduces her System (stupid name): for $500, you get a jar and some beads.  Or go to Wal-Mart and buy the set-up for $10. 

She doesn't explain how to use them, just "if your marriage is important to you," you need the System. 

Cut to some marital problems. First, Judy's husband BJ is at the Gemstone Welcome Center, talking to a group of potential church members about how to get their tithes automatically deducted from their bank accounts. Judy, feeling guilty about withholding sex, brings him some gifts and tells him what a great husband he is, BJ thinks that things are a little off in their marriage, but Judy gaslights him: "Things are fine. Why are you being weird?"  Check out his hot-pink ruffled outfit, part of the ongoing joke that couple is gender-transgressive, with Judy as the masculine partner, and BJ the feminine.

Next,  Jesse drops Kelvin and Keefe's house. Keefe is melting down some weird phallic objects on the grill in the back yard.  When he asks what they are burning, Kelvin, morosely lying on the diving board of the pool, responds "Devils' objects."

Why is he morose?  The last we saw of him was at Dusty Daniels' racetrack. But this scene is coming directly after the Judy/BJ marital problem scene, and since the two relationships usually appear in tandum, we have to conclude that we just missed a "Things are fine.  Why are you being so weird?" conversation. 

There is a nude woman on the urn pedestal next to them.  Apparently Kelvin and Keefe are too closeted for back yard sculptures with nude men.

Keefe is wearing a BDSM fetish outfit: several chokers, a slave collar with padlock, a vinyl top with built-in pecs and abs, and vinyl pants (I think). This again suggests that something has gone wrong. He wanted "cuddling," but Kelvin refused, ordering him to burn some sex toys instead -- destroy some penises?   

Notice that while Kelvin and Jesse are discussing their anxiety over leading the church, Keefe grabs a toy to use for anal sex from the pile, tries to hide it, and brings it into the house.  

Aha!  Kelvin is specifically refusing to take the passive role in anal sex.  The random butts in the illustrations demonstrate Keefe's main erotic interest.

Many gay men consider oral  and other non-insertive acts trivial, used for recreation or to alleviate sexual tension.  Even a straight guy will go down on a buddy to "help him out." But anal is "real sex," "going all the way."  Kelvin is refusing "real sex." Why?

Left: Connor MacGregor

We cut to the reason Judy has been withholding sex with BJ: she is having an affair with her guitarist, Stephen (Stephen Schneider, below).  

Trigger alert: they engage in a quasi-sexual act to disgusting to describe here.  

Since the couples' stories are usually parallel, viewers may conclude that Kelvin, too, is having an affair.  Actually, he is not -- yet.  Then why is he withholding sex? 

Unless you are asexual and work something out, romantic partners must balance eros and phileo.  Eros, sexual desire, leads to that intimacy, intensity, and passion that keeps the couple focused on each other. Phileo, friendship, keeps the couple focused on the outside world, leading to discussions of art, music, or sports, placing them in a friendship group, a family, and a society.

Last season Kelvin tried to eliminating the phileo, being all about sex. Every word, every image evoked the homoerotic. His physique, butt, and bulge were constantly on display, presenting him as the Messiah of Muscle, leading his followers to a paradise of masculine beauty. Until it didn't work: you can't build a society, or a romantic relationship, on sex alone.

This season he seems to be eliminating the eros, withholding sex, or maybe permitting "fooling around" only -- no smut, no lust, no coconuts.  We see no pecs, no butt, no bulge this season -- not until Episode 3.8, when he realizes that this won't work, either.  The problem is, a romance without physical intimacy looks and feels very much like a platonic friendship, until eventually you wonder if you are really in love at all.

More Stephen after the break

Peter Scolari: Wacky inventor, gay dad, Tom Hanks' bosom buddy, and an icon of my childhood. With bonus dicks.

It's sad when you discover that one of the icons of your childhood has died.  Sadder when you discover that he died in 2021.  

Peter Scolari was short, blond, muscular, handsome -- perfect.  Born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1955, his tv career began in 1978, with some guest spots and a starring role in the short-lived Goodtime Girls, with such future stars as Annie Potts, Scott Baio, and Adrian Zmed.  It was set during World War II, so the "good time" was just a gushy tagline, like the tv shows Happy Days and..um..Good Times.

In 1980, Peter hit television fame with Bosom Buddies, pitched to the network as a "witty Billy Wilder-style buddy comedy, like Some Like It Hot."  The network only heard Some Like it Hot, and put the buddies, Peter and then-unknown Tom Hanks, in drag. They explain in the intro that it's just so they can live in an all-female residential hotel; they're heterosexual, so "it's all perfectly normal."

In the second season, they minimized the "they're guys in dresses, har har!" jokes to concentrate on the buddy-bonding.  The two became lifelong friends off-camera, too. Tom Hanks states that they were "connected at the molecular level."  Today we would call it a bromance.

 The theme song, Billy Joel's "This is My Life," was an anthem for all of the gay boys of the 1980s who fled homophobic small towns for the freedom of West Hollywood or New York:

I  don't need you to worry for me, cause I'm all right, 

I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home. 

I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life. 

Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone.

Next came episodes of Steambath, which was Loveboat at the baths, with no gay characters; Finder of Lost Loves, which was Loveboat with private detectives, with no gay characters; and Love Boat.

The next tv show I saw Peter in was Newhart (1984- 90), with Bob Newhart as the proprietor of a rustic New England bed-and-breakfast, later the host of a tv show, Vermont Today. Peter played his producer, Michael Harris, who falls in love with heiress-turned-maid Stephanie.  No beefcake -- in an interview, Peter said that he never takes his shirt off because Michael "doesn't have biceps like this"; no gay characters, and it ends horribly, when the whole series turns out to be the dream of the psychiatrist Bob Newhart in his old show. 

Still, as it bounced around the schedule with Designing Women and Kate and Allie, it provided some glimpses of gay potential, like the three buddy-bonding brothers, Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.

I didn't see much of Peter after Newhart. I was living in West Hollywood, then New York, and not interacting much in the Straight World.  He had some guest spots on Empty Nest and Burke's Law,  voiced Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, and had a starring role in Dweebs, another short-lived series about computer nerds.  Future queer-friendly comedian Kathy Griffin also appeared.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Series sounds awful, but it won two Emmies, a review calls it "the best-written kids' show on television," and it lasted for 68 episodes. Peter played the guy who shrinks kids, and Thomas Dekker, who would grow up to have a chest, played the kid who gets shrunk. 

Actually, the shrinking in the title was just to draw in audiences from the movies. Peter's character invents a lot of things: glasses that allow you to see the dead; a time machine; a brain-swapping device, a clone machine; a love drug.

More tv shows follow:Touched by an Angel, Ally McBeal, Reba, The West Wing, Commissioner Loeb in Gotham, Peter in Madoff, and then his magnum opus, Girls, 2012-17.

The Girls are in their 20s, living in New York City, and, according to wikipedia, having "post-feminist conversations around the body politic and female sexual subjecthood." 

There are various men in their lives, including Andrew Rannells, who dated Hannah in college before coming out as gay in Season 4, and Peter as Hannah's father Tad, who comes out as gay in Season 4 also, and starts dating Keith, played by Ethan Phillips.  

More after the break

Knox Gibson: Australian swimmer, model, "Hunger Games" baddie, disability advocate. With some n*de co-stars and random twinks

As of this writing Knox Gibson. aka Captain Knoxie,  is 17 years old,  so I won't be searching for n*de photos. But he's not shy about showing off his physique.

And I have some n*de photos of his co-stars, like Clemons Schick (left), and some random Australian twinks (after the break).

Knox grew up in Orange, NSW, a small town about 250 km (150 miles) from Sydney.  His first love is swimming: he was selected for the Australian Age National Championships four times, and placed for the breast stroke  (2021, 2024) and the individual medley (2023). 

He also swims for his high school, St. Stanislaus College in Bathhurst. In 2024, he represented NSW in the all-Australia School Sport Games, and won the silver medal in the breast stroke.

Knox's second love is modeling, both fashion and runway. 

In  2020, he wore Tommy Hilfinger for New York's Fashion Week.  

In 2023, the Bonds company did a "As Worn By Us" campaign, showing Australians of every age wearing their clothes.  Knox appeared as  "Age 16."

Knox moved into acting with episodes of the Australian children's shows Teddies and Creature Mania (2017). 

 Three episodes of Lap of Honor followed (2018), then starring roles in the shorts Midnight Gun (2019), about a journalist and "masked hero" tracking down kidnapped children, and Forgive Us Our Trespasses (2022), about a boy in Nazi Germany, where people with disabilities are murdered, running for his life.

He has also starred in two music videos, "Handyman" by Triple One (2020) and "The Road," by the Zela Margossian Quintet (2022), and commercials for Kmart, NSW Transport, and Breeze Singapore

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Gemstones Episode 3.1: Kelvin collects cocks, the Simpkins smirk, and Dusty Daniels flirts. With a Brazilian beefcake bonus.

Previous: Season 2 Finale: The Godfather, Butch and Sundance, random nude dudes, and "My love for you will never die"

The Season 2 finale of The Righteous Gemstones  aired in February 2022.  Season 3 premieres in June 2023, sixteen months later, but the timeline in the Gemstone universe doesn't fit.  Plus personalities and back stories are different.  As with Season 2, it will be more profitable -- and more fun -- to enter fresh, pretending that we have never seen or heard of these people before.

Title: "For I Know the Plans I Have for You."  Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." I hope so, because word on the street is that this season gets very dark.

Rogers County Fair, 2000:  The teenage Jesse Gemstone is announcing a demolition derby featuring his monster truck, the Redeemer, while his parents, megachurch pastor Eli Gemstone and his wife Aimee-Leigh, argue: the Redeemer is putting butts in seats, but is this really appropriate for a Christian ministry?   What are we going to do next, sell beer?  At that moment, a muscle hunk comes by selling beer!

Eli and Aimee-Leigh's three kids look very young, but according to the fan wiki, Jesse is 19, Judy is 15, and Kelvin is 9 or 10.

While Aimee-Leigh is off smoking a cigarette, May-May, a shabbily-dressed middle-aged woman, approaches, furious: "You pretend to be all sweet and caring, but I know the truth -- what you done to my family."  She attacks; Aimee-Leigh runs through the crowd, screaming for help, but May-May catches up and hits her with a wrench. As she lies bleeding on the ground, a car hits -- May-May! 

Eli Retires: Present day. Time to introduce the main conflicts of the season.  First up: the now-elderly Eli is hanging out with his Mason-like Cape and Pistol Society. They ask how he's enjoying his retirement.  Actually, he's only semi-retired: he's writing another autobiography and taking speaking engagements, but his kids are running the church. Gulp!  His friend: "You scared your kids are gonna blow it?"  

Cut to Zion's Landing, the Gemstones' Christian-themed resort. The 42-year old Jesse and his crew confront Eli's driver.  In joke: his name is Walker!  He squealed to the press about the dwindling membership and donations since the kids took over, so they beat him up and fire him. Pretending to have never seen these characters before, I am shocked.  Christian ministers are often shady and hypocritical, but violent? What if someone sees?

A Cold Fish Kiss: Eli's second child, Judy, is now a famous singer.  She has just returned from a tour, and her husband BJ wants to snuggle, but she yells at him for pressuring her, gives him a "cold fish kiss," and runs out again.  Uh-oh, marital trouble.

Smut Busters: The primary conflict, judging from the amount of air time it gets: someone named Keefe is showing the youngest son, 32 or 33 -year old Kelvin, a giant novelty dildio.  He exclaims with glee, "That is gonna hurt!"  So he's abottom, and Keefe is his boyfriend, showing him their new toy.

We pan out to see kids examining a pile of s ex toys, mostly dildos and butt plugs of various sizes and shapes, intended for gay men.  Notice the "Size Queen" dildo. 

Psych!  Kelvin and Keefe are actually youth ministers, running an anti-sex toy project.  I guess: notice the t-shirts, with the name "Smut Busters" over a splatter of...jizz?   They buy out the inventory of local adult stores, to force them into bankruptcy.  Wait -- anyone know basic economics?  

The youth group kids, also in Smut Busters t-shirts, are just examining the latest haul.  Do they take the kids to the adult stores?  They wouldn't be allowed inside.  Besides,  "exposing children to sex" is a misdemeanor.  

They ask the kids and adult volunteer Taryn to join them in the Smut Buster chant: "No smut (touch nipples),  no lust (feminine hip wiggle), no coconuts (hands to waist, grimace)." No one joins in.  

After extensive research, I conclude that "coconuts" doesn't have a symbolic meaning, except maybe to evoke testicles.  It was chosen for  its near-rhyme. The chant reflects the playground phrase "no butts, no cuts, no coconuts" (no cutting in line), and its variation, "No ifs, no buts, no coconuts" (no disagreeing).

Left: coconuts

Pretending to have never seen these characters before,  I conclude that they are a gay couple: notice how Kelvin plays with Keefe's nipple, an intimacy that platonic pals would not enjoy, how Keefe gets all bitchy around Taryn, and how most of the sex toys they buy are for gay men.  They can't conceive of something used by straight men as erotic: "There's a naked lady on the box.  Keefe, I said sexy, not disgusting!" 

So the main conflicts of the season will involve the transition of power, marital problems, and coming out. 

The Primitive Tribe: At church, the siblings are bragging about their missionary trip, where they brought Lasik Surgery to an isolated tribe in the Amazon.  They are completely clueless; surgery to correct astigmatism must be the most trivial of the group's medical needs.  Plus the depiction of a "primitive tribe" veers uncomfortably close to racism.

Left: An Amazonian.

More after the break