Jake Satow: Saving Christmas, a Christian horse, a nonbinary internet celebrity, and the Baywatch guy

 

I was looking for actors who played nonbinary characters, and the name "Jake Satow" popped up.  Never heard of him, but he's attractive, so I checked the listing on IMDB.

He has 18 acting credits.  The most recent is Saving Christmas Spirit, 2022.  

How many times does that holiday need saving?

Spoiler alert: Christmas Spirit is a store that needs saving.  Jake plays a teenager who gets a girlfriend.

Adeline, 2022, is about a horse that heals people in a small town.  I swear, I'm not making this up.  Presumably a Christian movie, since one of the IMDB reviews says something like "Stop the insanity. The Bible isn't real." 

It stars 1980s hunks John Schneider from The Dukes of Hazzard, bottom photo, and David Chokachi from Baywatch, butt left.

Jake had a busy 2022.  Other roles include Howard Hunt's son in Gaslit,  which has a maddenly misleading title.  You expect the gaslit Victorian era, with hanson cabs clattering down cobblestone streets.  It's about Watergate.

Hockey Trophy Jake in Breathing Happy, about a recovering drug addict celebrating his first year of sobriety on Christmas Day, naturally. Other characters are named the Mysterious Door, the Golden Door, and Salvation Elf.  Another Christian movie, I imagine. 

Christian Holmes at age 14 in The Dropout, about a woman dropping out of college to start a tech company that revolutionalizes the health care industry.  Christian Holmes at age adult is her husband.

This is all terribly heteronormative. 

Before 2022, Jake was starring in a lot of shorts: a clown with marital problems, the morning announcements at a middle school, an alarm clock going off an hour early, dad dying, and Christmas.  They all have about the same cast, so I'm guessing local productions.

His website lists a theatrical production, The Honorary Counsel, performed with the actors in Zoom rooms, plus modeling on runways for Columbus Fashion Week and for Macy's and Homage.  

No indication of nonbinary, trans, or otherwise LGBTQ roles.  Maybe in real life?

Jake has 17,000 followers on Instagram.  His profile says says "Christian"...uh-oh, probably homophobic... SAG/AFTRA....The Dropout, and Saving Christmas Spirit.

More after the break

"Rock Paper Scissors": Paper meets the Girl, Rock proves that he's a Dave. With two gay characters, four Danny dicks, and Mickey from "Seinfeld"

"Rock Paper Scissors" is a game where players turn their hands into the objects, hoping that theirs will cover, crush or otherwise defeat their opponents.  

Here Kramer and his gay-subtext buddy Mickey (Michael Richards, Danny Woodburn) play on an episode of Seinfeld.

Want to see Danny's dick? 

I feel bad about the misdirection, so I put a really Danny dick on top:  Danny Hobson, who hopes to Win the Girl on Naked Attraction (2017).  Plus some explicit photos after the break.

When Paramount Plus recommended a tv series called Rock Paper Scissors, I figured it was for preschoolers, like Bananas in Pajamas.  But the fan wiki states that there are two walk-on gay characters, Hipponoid Commander (Episodes 1.1) and Dave (Episode 1.14), and Common Sense Media (the homophobic one) says that it is "completely inappropriate," with "strong LGBT undertones."  Can't let gay kids know that they exist!  So we'll check it out.

Episode 1.1, "Paper's Big Lie"

Intellectual Paper (Thomas Lennon), trying to invent something, is annoyed by the loud ninja practice of his roommates, athletic Rock (Ron Funches) and hipster Scissors (Carlos Alarazqui).  There's a knock on the door: it's their new neighbor, a female Pencil.

Cliche shot of Pencil walking in slow motion, her long hair blowing in the wind, while Paper gushes in "girl of my dreams" ecstasy.

She works for a high-tech company, so he pretends that he has a high-tech job, too.  His brain objects: "You work at a crappy store that sells technology."  But his nether parts outrank his brain.

Even when Pencil asks for a tour: Paper puts up a poorly drawn sign and claims that she can't go inside because they're working on a top-secret device that will produce unlimited food out of nothing. 

The human boss yells: "I don't pay you to talk to girls, I pay you to unravel the pile of wires in the back room."

This makes Pencil a bit suspicious, but not the President of the United States: she saw the sign and figured that Paper must be super-smart.  The world needs his help. Lady is not too bright, is she?

Problem: The Hipponoids, "the most dangerous species in the galaxy," have the Earth surrounded.  The  Commander (Darin de Paul) explains that their planet is low on food, so Earth must hand over its supply. 

Perfect!  Pencil announces that Paper can make a device that will produce unlimited food, with no raw materials needed.

Paper's brain begs him to admit that he knows nothing about technology, but no, he thinks he can still find a way to fix this and Win the Girl.

In the workshop, Pencil praises Paper's tech expertise while building the device herself.  She seems to be just as invested as Paper in keeping up the Big Lie.  There must be some "Boy of My Dreams" going on.

When they show the device to the Hipponoid Comander, Paper tries to take credit, but accidentally breaks it.  He lies about that, too.

New plan: he'll bring his ninja roommates Rock and Scissors to the ship, and they'll knock out the aliens before they can invade the planet.

That doesn't work.  Finally Paper decides to come clean: "I was just trying to impress someone that I like, and the lie got out of control."

The Commander is sympathetic: back on the home world, he was an office drone, but he lied that he was  a great warrior to impress his crush.   Then he had to join the space force, and somehow he rose up in the ranks to become commander.

"There he is -- handsome, huh?"  The crush looks rather goofy, but Paper agrees.

"I've had to keep up this lie for 50 years!"  You'd better seal the deal soon, buddy. "And I can't invade Earth because then he'll find out that I lied, and never speak to me again."

Paper and the Commander find a solution that permits them to retain both lies: they pretend to use hand-to-hand combat to decide the fate of the Earth.  Paper wins, but "Your Commander is so tough that he 'accidentally' destroyed the device."

Whoops, Rock just fixed it. 

Gay Representation: The Commander as a muscular being fights stereotypes, and Paper responds nonchalantly to his crush on a male.  The writers could easily given him a crush on a female warrior, so this is a positive step.  But how about a scene where the Commander actually interacts with the crush? B

Episode 1.14, "The Character Quiz"

The guys' favorite tv show is The Gang's All Here, with 27 people living under one roof.  They take a quiz to see which character they are.  Paper and Scissors got Stephernie, so they are invited to the Stephernie Party next door (hosted by this muscular mouse).  Rock wants to be Dave, "kind, stylish, and made of granite," but he gets Creepo the Stinkboy.

"That can't be right!  I know who I am!"

At the Stephernie party: one of the guests brought the wrong kind of pizza, so is obviously just a wannabe, not a real Stephernie.  Each guest is quizzed about details that only a true fan would know, like her last name.  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Weird Science, the movie and tv show: three gay-subtext couples, two gay-vague guys, and a lot of bulges and butts. Plus Lee's dick.

Weird Science (1985) is a John Hughes brat pack comedy with a paranormal twist. Nerds Gary and Wyatt's (Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan-Mitchell Smith) are discouraged because the Girls of Their Dreams are dating a pair of belligerent, obnoxious preppies (Robert Downey Jr., Robert Rusler), and won't give them a chance (maybe they're not into three-ways?  Try asking them out separately).  So they use a computer to create their perfect dream girl, Lisa: she is not only hot but super-smart, plus she has magical powers.

I forget most of the plot after 40 years, but wikipedia has helpfully filled in the details, Instead of having sex with them, Lisa conjures them a car, gets them fake ids, and hosts a wild party, where she thwarts their adversaries and their bullying older brother, military-school graduate Chet (Bill Paxton, butt right).

She also summons a pack of rabid bikers to kidnap the Girls, so Gary and Wyatt can mount a daring rescue and win them.

It was cheesy stuff, and entirely heteronormative.  There was a scattering of the incessant homophobia that one sees in every John Hughes movie, but spewed by the evil Chet, not by one of the good guys.  That was a big win in the era.  

Plus some strong gay subtexts between Gary and Wyatt and the prettyboy preppies Ian and Max.  And quite a surprising amount of beefcake, including Ilan Mitchell-Smith's bulge and Bill Paxton's butt.

I wanted to do a "any gay roles/are they gay in real life" profile of one of the guys, but I can't find anything suitable.

Don't pay attention to the femme-half shirt and girly underwear.  Ilan-Mitchell Smith, now a history professor, is straight in real life.

Anthony Michael Hall, the darling of the Brat Pack, appeared in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Johnny B Goode, and as an adult The Dead Zone and Awkward.  Straight characters, with maybe one exception, and straight in real life.

Brat Packer Robert Downey Jr. appeared in Back to School, The Pick-Up Artist, Johnny B. Goode, became famous for Chaplin (playing the silent-era comedian), and went on to play Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes.  More straight characters, with maybe one exception, and....well, you get the idea.

At least we know that Robert Rusler (butt left) is a gay ally: he befriended his Nightmare on Elm Street 2 co-star Mark Patton, and took him to some of the gay bars in West Hollywood (no, we never met).  But his tv work, in The Outsiders, Babylon 5, Snoops, Murder She Wrote, Bones, Ray Donovan...as far as I can tell, all heteronormative.  And...straight in real life.

Let's try the Weird Science TV Series.

It aired on the USA Network from 1994 to 1998. I watched on occasion, usually while on the treadmill at the gym. Gary and Wyatt are now played by Michael Manasseri and John Mallory Asher. Lisa characterizes herself as a "magic genie," and Wyatt's parents are absent, leaving his older brother Chet (Lee Tergesen) to look after/bully them.  

The "winning the Girl of Our Dreams" plotline appeared in just the first two or three episodes; later Lisa turns the boys into girls, clones them,  turns them into rock stars, traps them in a horror movie, traps them in The Twilight Zone, transports them to the Old West, and brings a video game villain to life. 

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.1: Junior likes dicks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f**k, yeah! We got both.

Previous: Gemstones Season 1 finale: Judy and Kelvin begin to heal, and Scotty joins the family

Righteous Gemstones Season 2 is my favorite.  Season 1 muddled the Gideon-Scotty plotline, Season 3 had some infuriating queerbaiting, and Season 4 was rushed and muddled, but Season 2 did the Kelvin/Keefe and Junior/Eli romances exactly right.   

Title: "I Speak in the Tongues of Men and Angels."  I Corinthians 13.1: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." Charity means "love," of course.  We'll see who is lacking.

Memphis Soul Stew: Memphis, 1968. Teenage Eli Gemstone, the Maniac K*d (Jake Kelley), is playing a heel, a pro wrestling villain: "from the wrong side of the tracks, a newcomer to the League, all muscle, all attitude."  He fights dirty, pretending to reconcile with opponent Kyle Hawk, then throwing him out of the ring.  

As he fights, his manager Glendon Marsh (Wayne Duvall) cheers. Glendon's teenage son Junior (Tommy Nelson) watches, sometimes happy but usually disturbed.  Is he jealous of the attention Eli is getting?  Is he a rebellious teenager during the era of the Generation Gap?.

Nice Cock:  In the locker room, Glendon offers Eli "some bonus pay on the South Side," while Junior looks on, smoking a cigarette, still either jealous or angry. As they leave, they pass a naked guy. "That's a nice cock, Ernie," Glendon says.  Junior is so busy looking that he trips, and then looks back again.  The teenager is definitely into cocks and butts.

The Loan Enforcer: Glendon is a loan shark as well as a wrestling manager: the job involves beating up a deadbeat.  Eli and Junior both go, squabbling over who's the boss.  

"Kill 'em!" we hear.  Psych!  It's the tv.  We meet a slovenly, drunken, foul-mouthed, abusive jackass of a husband.  While Junor subdues his wife and son, Eli punches him a few times and asks for the money, and when he doesn't have it, breaks his thumbs. Junior laughs "derangedly" (according to the subtitles).

Afterwards Glendon drops Eli off, hands him some money, and tells him, "Buy yourself something nice." This is a feminizing statement. 

As Eli drives off on his motorcycle, we hear Buck Owens' "Tall Dark Stranger":

 They say a tall dark stranger is a demon, and  that a devil rides closely by his side.

 So if Junior is the demon, Eli must be the devil riding beside him.  How long will they ride together?

Abusive Daddies all the way down:  Eli drives to the Gemstone residence (it's not a stage name, apparently), where his abusive dad chastises him for being late for dinner. So they're eating after Eli's wrestling match?  Like at 11 or 12 pm?   There's also a mousy, skittish mom and a little sister, May-May (important in Season 3). 

Ordered to say grace, Eli jokes: "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," which makes May-May laugh.  Dad slaps him.  End of flashback.

We're fine with the f*ggots:  In 2022, elderly Eli Gemstone is a megachurch pastor and televangelist.  He and the satellite church ministers are discussing the case of Pastor Butterfield (Victor Williams), caught videotaping his wife and another woman having sex in a dance club restroom, while they were all high on Molly ("we thought they were Sweetarts").  The story made the front page of The New York Times, thanks to reporter Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman), who has made a career of publicizing ministerial sex scandals.  Eli wants to be lenient, but the others object.  (Left: random pecs)

A Spanish speaking pastor explains: "My church is ok with the maricones (roughly f*ggots), but we're not ready for swinging and tropus."     Pastor Diane translates: "His church is really cool with the gays and the queers, but not so much about the swingers and the thruples."  They fire Pastor Butterfield; he tries to commit suicide.  

Left: God Squad pecs

Tell the girls:  A young man rides a motorcycle to the Gemstone Compound, doing crazy stunts (this will be important later), while the background song advises:

Tell the girls that I am back in town.  They'd better beware

They may run, and they may hide.

I'll follow, and I'll be there.

A stalker?  At least we know that he's not the closeted gay minister.  He turns out to be Eli's grandson Gideon, back from a job as a stuntman to assist with the Gemstone ministry.  He's going to move into the house that Eli built for his abusive dad.

In other news, Gideon's younger brother Abraham has been masturbating, and leaving "semen loads" all over the house, like in the freezer next to the Dreamsicles.  

Left: Selfie. Not Gideon or Abraham

We cut to a church service with Eli Gemstone, Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin, announcing the start of their streaming service, GODD.  We see Jesse's wife Amber, their sons, and Judy's husband BJ in the audience.  No partner for Kelvin. He must be single

F*ck, yeah:  After the service, the family drives in a caravan to Jason's Steak House.  They get out of their cars in slow motion and walk past the al fresco area, heterosexual couples reveling in their nuclear family conformity, the "job, house, wife, progeny" litany of my youth made visible. The background song brags about their heteronormative success:

Turn your head when I walk by -- I got the world at my feet.
All I want out of every day, is to wake up every morning
Sun is shining, smiling, and we've covered every room 

 Wait -- where's Kelvin?

Suddenly the record scratches off. Two vans pull up with a flexing muscle Christ and the logo "Strength above All Else." Twelve muscle men emerge, wearing identical canvas gis: the God Squad! Biceps and pecs, abs, bulging flexing intruding on the smug primness of the nuclear families. Wait -- where are the bulges.  They wear cargo pants that don't show anything.

There is no romance here.  There is no heterosexual desire.  It is raw homoerotic power. The song changes to:

Fuck, yeah!  Fuck, yeah!  Fuck, yeah!

More after the break