Jackson Kelly: A killer doll, a killer pumpkin, a paranormal trap, nude Hicks, and a year of dicks

I was interested in profiling Jackson Kelly, who played one of the dying Civil War soldiers in Righteous Gemstones Season 4.  He was somewhat difficult to research, since there are a lot of Jackson Kellys out there, including a female adult video actor, but I finally I found some newspaper articles and podcasts from our Jackson's home town. 

Jackson grew up in Waco, Texas, the heart of the homophobic Bible Belt, and had trouble pursuing his dream: the nearest acting class was two hours away, and for auditions, his parents had to drive him six hours to Austin.  There are three theaters in Waco.

In April 2020, COVID hit, and the Vanguard College Preparatory School went online. They have a Latin Club, but no GSA, and no mention of LGBT non-discrimination.    So he packed his stuff and moved to L.A., with the full support of his parents.  If I liked to wear evening gowns, I'd be getting the heck out of Waco regardless. 

Jackson's first industry job was a production assistant for a company making commercials -- a lot of manual labor, moving stuff from here to there.  Then he began appearing in commercials and "zero-budget" independent films:

My Year of Dicks, 2022: he has one of the dicks that the girl tries to get.

Splinters, 2022: after the death of his father....f*k the Sadness

Witch Mountain, 2022: Two teens, male and female, develop psychic powers.  You see where this is heading.

Portrait of a Young Man, 2022: Jackson, the Young Man, is struggling with "his identity."  Sounds like a coming out story, but in the trailer he kisses a girl.

Hard Miles, 2023: Matthew Modine plays a social worker who organizes a 1,000 mile bicycle trip to the Grand Canyon for a group of teen convicts, including Smink, played by Jackson.

Left: Matthew Modine's butt.

The Western The Warrant: Breaker's Law, 2023, with Dermot Mulroney as the villain. Jackson plays someone named Brig Farkus.  At least he has some interesting character names.

Five episodes of Lucky Hank, 2023, a quickly-cancelled series about college English/creative writing professor Bob Odenkirk having a midlife crisis/meltdown. 

Jackson plays an aspiring novelist named Barstow Williams-Stevens. In the trailer, he throws shade at the prof during class: "You haven't said anything for an hour and a half. Would you please say something?  Your only novel isn't even available in your own campus bookstore."  The prof responds in kind, and gets in big trouble.

More after the break

The Four Seasons: Elitist New Yorkers discuss True Love, with a gay couple, a lumberjack, Vivaldi, and a n*de Len Cariou

I lived in New York for four years while studying for my Ph.D.  One thing that bothered me was the parochialism, like that New Yorker cover come to life ("View of the World from 9th Avenue," by Saul Steinberg).  Literally everywhere else in the world was a cultural wasteland.

 Everyone always asked "Where are you from?", assuming that the answer would be "Scarsdale" or "Astoria."  I said Illinois:  "Oh, Chicago!  Now that's a second rate city!  Did you eat hot dogs at (snicker, snicker).baseball games?"

"No, my town was on the other side of the state, on the Iowa border."

"Iowa!  Ma and Pa Kettle chawing tobaccy!  How old were you (snicker, snicker) when you first saw one of those newfangled auto-mobiles?"

So I started saying "Los Angeles":   "How dreadfully superficial!  All about mindless movies and puerile television!  Do you watch (snicker, snicker) the A Team?"  

The Four Seasons, on Netflix, gave me a similar vibe: parochial, elitist, condescending, so I never made it through an episode.  But from what I can gather, it features three couples who leave the City (there's only one city) for a weekend getaway Upstate (there's only one state) four times a year.  There they talk in Woody Allen witicisms and discuss romantic love.

The main question is stated in the first episode:  Does each of us get a soulmate, someone chosen by the Universe to make our lives infinitely happy forever, or do we fall in love based on physical attraction and social compatibility, and then work to maintain the relationship?   Each couple will face a crisis that illustrates some aspect of the question.  

As the clickbait links say, the answer will surprise you.  Or not.  It's the theme of every romantic movie ever made.

But you may be surprised to find that one of the couples is gay.

Couple #1, Nick and Anne (Steve Carrell of The Office, left, Kerri Kenney):  What if you no longer love your soulmate?

Nick shocks everyone when he announces that he no longer loves his wife.  "Impossible!  You're soulmates!  You're destined to be together!"

When he dumps her anyway and starts dating the much younger Ginny ("The penis wants what the penis wants), his friends are all devastated.  If a married couple can break up, how does anything have meaning?

 His daughter, who attends an Ivy League College Upstate, maybe Vassar, writes a play in which her callous, unfeeling monster of a father announces: "I hate my daughter so much.  What could I do to cause her the most pain?  I know -- I'll leave my wife, thus destroying the family and making my daughter's life meaningless forever!"

The universe also disapproves of leaving your soulmate, and retaliates by killing Nick.  This leads to the discomfort of having the ex-wife and the horrible trollope he destroyed her life for showing up at the funeral.  Such a negative attitude toward divorce seems extremely retro.   

Couple #2, Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead,  famous playwright Marco Calvani, left): What if your soulmate dies?

When Danny is diagnosed with heart disease, he leaves Claude to spare him the agony of seeing his decline and death, but Claude insists on getting back together: they're soulmates, in sickness and health. Someday one of them will die and leave the other alone, but the bereaved spouse will still find infinite happiness in the memory of their time together.

By the way, they have an open relationship, and have their "I'm leaving you so you won't feel pain" argument in the midst of a threesome with the Lumberjack (Jacob Buckenmyer).

Jacob Buckenmyer, seen here in Chippendales, is straight in real life.

More after the break.

What has Jak Kristowski, last seen at the Citadel with Kelton Dumont, been up to lately? Hopefully n*de modeling and meeting German guys

 

Jak Kristowski is an actor and producer who spent a day at the Citadel, South Carolina's military college, playing a cadet against Kelton Dumont's Pontius in Righteous Gemstones Episode 3.9.   His scene was cut, but he liked the military life so much that after high school he enlisted.

I didn't have enough n*de photos for a full profile, so I posted this in one of Kelton Dumont's photo collections.

Jak is still a producer, the CEO of Barn Door Productions, with Spider Man: The Dark Age (2023), which I reviewed, plus two upcoming projects:

A Letter to Let Go: "Lola is living a two-faced life," but a letter from her sister "becomes a beacon of light."  I'm going to guess that the two-faced life does not mean that Lola is a lesbian, and the letter will help her find God.

Banner: To Seek Refuge, a fan retelling of the Incredible Hulk mythos.  On the run from a federal agent obsessed with his capture, David Banner (Cal Nguyen) meets a fellow refugee. The IMDB entry doesn't say who it is.  The third person listed in the cast is Vin Massi, "bad actor, bad model, part time bodybuilder," so maybe David meets a guy for a gay-subtext buddy-bond.  

But Jak's main job now is the army.  He trained in the exclusive K-9 unit.

He is currently stationed in Germany, where he goes to all the theme parks and takes pictures of the statues of naked men.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Rob Lowe: Brat Pack prettyboy, bad guy with a dick, cowboy cop, grieving biochemist

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).

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.