Gemstones Episode 2.3, Continued: The darkness of roller coasters, hookups, club bulges, and apples. With lots of n*de musclemen
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Modern Family Episode 8.14: Alex is promoted, Cam is injured, and Phil dreams of parking lots. With a dozen gay actors, two short guys, and Fillion butt
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We've been watching Modern Family, even without Adam Devine as Andy. Last night's episode was 8.14, "Heavy is the Head" (2017) -- a little dated, but it had a lot of gay representation and beefcake.
The Phil/Jay Plot
Scene 1: Phil (center) and his father-in-law Jay (right) are at the groundbreaking for his lifelong dream of building his own apartment complex, Dunphy Towers. Corporate guy Jared Cook approaches with an offer to buy the property for 20% more than they paid. Phil says no, but Jay wants to play with him for a bit and get the offer up.
Left: Jonathan Chase's butt, sexing his boyfriend in Another Gay Movie (2006)
Scene 2: Foreman Pete (Robert Baker, left) found a sewer line running through Phil/Jay's property, so they can't dig the basement of the new apartment building. Shouldn't they have checked that first? Plus there are pockets of methane gas everywhere, bursting into flame at random moments. The project will have to be scrapped.
Scene 3: Phil and Jay approach Jared Cook, the corporate guy who wanted to buy the property, and accept his offer. Nope, he heard about the structural problems, and the deal is off the table.
Scene 4: They decide to turn the space into a parking lot. Problem solved. Phil announces that this was his dream all along. Really?
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Scene 1: Claire has to be careful around her birthday, because her stepmother Gloria (who is the same age) keeps giving her dumb gifts, then complains that she doesn't appreciate them. This year Gloria is giving her a spa day, which is ridiculous -- she hates that girly stuff. So she claims that she's too busy.
Scene 2: Claire is the new CEO at her father's company, Pritchet's Closets and Blinds. Her marketing manager, Ben (the incredibly cute Joe Mande), complains that the workers are going ballistic about the budget cuts. No overtime pay? No bagel?
"We didn't have the Christmas sales we expected." Do people usually put closets under the tree?
"Maybe we could fire someone, like Kenny in the warehouse."
"No, I love him. He makes fun of you."
Claire holds a staff meeting and claims that she's making sacrifices, too, like flying coach. And she's taking off her office door to indicate that she's always available.
Ulp, when she enters her office, Gloria is there, with a huge gourmet lunch. Now the staff won't believe that she's cutting corners!
Scene 3: While Ben stands guard, Claire rushes through her caviar-and-champaign lunch. She thinks she's done, but no, Gloria has arranged for the spa to come to the office. And Claire can't say anything, or Gloria will get hurt feelings.
When the swishy masseur Joshua (Artie O'Daly) appears, a worker asks who he is. "Um..he's applying for a job as a forklift operator. There are lots of gay forklift operators."
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Joshua: "I'm not gay!"
Left: Artie O'Daly is gay in real life. He is currently starring in the youtube sitcom Bad Boy, with Blase Maffia III.
Scene 4: The massage, plus a manicure. Claire is starting to unclench, but assistant Ben is having more and more trouble keeping the workers out: "Your girlfriend's office smells like truffles."
"My girlfriend is your boss, and she is not my girlfriend."
More after the break
Gemstones Episode 2.3: Kelvin topples, Keefe cuddles, and Titus is caged. With bonus semen loads
Previous: Episode 2.2: Kelvin clenches,Keefe dances, and everybody flirts with Eli.
Episode 2.3 explores the darkness at the heart of Eli and Kelvin's empires.
Title: "For He is a Liar and the Father of Lies." In John 8:44, Jesus complains that the Pharisees are children of the Devil, "for he is a liar and the father of lies." I wonder who the liar is here.
Four guys in the steam showers: A montage of the God Squad in their compound outside Kelvin's house, working out with wooden equipment, shaving with an axe, growing crops. Performers that Kelvin hired would have apartments in town and ordinary social lives, with friends and families. This is a whole society, a homoerotic alternative to the mundane world of men constrained by wives and children, imprisoned in small square houses "made of ticky tacky."
In literature and film, the adventure ends with marriage. The hero is domesticated, exchanging his battles and intrigues for a mortgage and a briefcase, his band of brothers for the Eternal Feminine. The God Squad offers an escape: "no women allowed," either in the Squad or hanging about outside, hoping to "civilize them."
Kelvin congratulates Keefe on his leadership, then says "I'll meet you in the steam showers, but bring Titus and Odd Chris. I could smell them during worship." Every guy working in the hot sun all day will be pungent; in-universe, he is obviously inviting the other men so he and Keefe can each have a sex partner. The leaders of many messianic cults require sex with random members.
No one named Odd Chris appears in the cast list, but Titus will be the first God Squad member to rebel. Interestingly, in the Bible the Apostle Paul set Titus to Corinth to deal with a challenge to his authority.
After Keefe leaves to prepare the orgy, Jesse drops by to reveal his theory that Eli murdered Thaniel Block and the other men. Kelvin refuses to hear it, and wants to defend Eli's honor. "You ain't as tough as you think, boy!" Jesse exclaims, putting up his fists. Then he sees the God Squad preparing to defend Kelvin, and backs off. Messiah Kelvin has some loyal followers!
Junior Threatens Brock: We cut to Eli at home, putting his bloody pants from last night into the hamper and watching a news report about the murders. Security guard Brock calls to tell him that Junior wants in. "Tell him I'm not here." Was Junior his partner in the murders, or did he do the job on his own?
Junior blusters and threatens him, but finally he drives away. You may recall that in Season 1, Scotty flirted with Brock to gain access to the Gemstone compound. But Junior has moved away from his gay-subtext flirting; he is pure threat.
The Human Pyramid: We see the God Squad perform before an audience of teens. Kelvin introduces the strongest member, Torsten, who dated a "female" in high school before she tried to seduce him, and he had to decide on "his celibacy or his soul." It is clear that by "celibacy," Kelvin means much more than avoiding sex with women. You must reject the entire heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, and kids, the nuclear family myth, the domestication and civilization threatened by the "female." The way to salvation lies in the beauty of male bodies, in homoerotic desire unhindered by emotional connection.
But when they move on to a human pyramid, with Kelvin on top, it topples. The House of Cards collapses. Maybe it can't be all about the penis after all. Keefe behaves like a concerned boyfriend, rushing onto the stage and embracing Kelvin -- to protect him from plummeting musclemen?
Kelvin Wants to Spoon: What follows is very difficult to read. Fans are likely to shake their heads and say WTF? during their first, second, and third viewing. The showrunners want us to be unsure whether the guys are actually gay, of course, but that's been obvious since Episode 1 to anyone with a basic knowledge of queer codes. The real question: is Keefe Kelvin's assistant and acolyte, or his romantic partner? Are they friends with benefits, or are they in love?
On the surface, it seems easy enough. Kelvin, in underwear, is looking out the window at the God Squad below. Keefe enters, having drawn him a bath, and tells him that both Liam and Titus were injured in the human pyramid debacle. Kelvin thinks that it's their own fault for being soft on the fundamentals and skipping leg day. "Something might have to be done about Titus," he says menacingly, an action-adventure movie villain.
Keefe: "I completely agree." Note that he is not an assistant, or his opinion would be irrelevant. They are equal partners in the God Squad Cult. "But some of the others have been questioning their place here as well. That's the downside of assembling an entire group of alpha males. As they grow stronger, they grow more defiant." The men are not content with being mere objects of desire; they want autonomy and control.
Kelvin slips off his underwear and hands them to Keefe, who helps him put on his bathrobe -- from behind. He has to press his body against Kelvin, crotch to butt. Then he caresses Kelvin's thighs instead of breaking away. It would be much easier from the front. Why does he go in from the rear?
When he is finished, Keefe walks over to the mirror, but Kelvin isn't having it, and moves in front of him to get into the butt-to-crotch position again.
Their gestures and positions are blatantly erotic. Kelvin is in physical and emotional distress, and wants to be comforted. In a society where romance is forbidden, this is how lovers cuddle.
Kelvin turns around to reveal that his Daddy may be a murderer. Their faces are only a few inches apart, far too close even for lovers, unless they're about to kiss. One of them must back up to a comfortable conversational distance. Kelvin is right against the mirror, so it's up to Keefe to back up. Why doesn't he back up?.
We see here Keefe struggling with his desire to move the relationship from "erotic partners" to "boyfriends," struggling with his urge to kiss Kelvin. Notice that he says "Are we in trouble?", not "Are you in trouble." He is not an employee, who could just find another job if the church went down. They are romantic partners; they are in this together.
Eli lays down the law: In the next scene, Eli notes that Liam (Peter Kaasa), who was injured during the human pyramid stunt, is suing the Gemstones. They don't need another scandal right now.
He tells Kelvin to "stop acting like a child" and "grow up." It's time to "put on your big boy pants, and stop playing with your muscular boys." Kelvin yells "They're muscle men, Daddy," but he has missed the point.
Eli thinks that Kelvin's erotic play is immature and childish. Adults can't be all about desire, about doing things behind closed doors; they need connection to the greater society. His talk omits the usual "find a girl, get married, and have kids" part of the heteronormative litany, since he knows that Kelvin will never relate to a woman in that way. But he still needs relationships based on love as well as desire. He needs to be part of a family.
Sorry, I ran out of space, so Titus will be caged and do the coming in the next section. But I included a few photos of guys depositing semen loads to put you in the mood.
Bonus semen loads after the break. Warning: explicit.
Madden Zook: 5 soul-winning movies and 3,000 girl-hugging photos prove that he's straight, right? Plus some nude ballet dudes
Madden Zook, who just appeared as #50 most popular on the Teen Idol website, looks like a model -- a little skinny, but with one of those "ratboy" faces that are all the rage.
No question that he's straight in real life. 90% of his photos show him hugging, kissing, smooching, and licking girls. Oh, here's one where she is just sniffing his bicep.
The girl-hugging would usually disqualify a guy from further research, but I was fascinated: the heterosexism was so very, very over the top, absurdly excessive. Lots of straight guys devote most of their social media to hugging and kissing The Girl of Their Dreams, but every single photo on his Instagram and Facebook? Dozens of them? What are you trying to prove, buddy?
Ok, I found one with no girl. She must be taking the photo.
So, how did Zook become a teen idol? Hugging and kissing girls won't make you famous. He must have done some acting or singing at some point.
He has five acting credits on the IMDB:
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Laps (2018): Swimmer Mitchell (Brayden Benson, center) is being bullied, so he tells the swim coach (Ian Lang). That's progressive. When I was a kid, the teachers said "You have to settle your own disputes," and my Dad enrolled me in judo lessons. Didn't help.
Zook (left) and Cameron Judd (right) play the bullies.
It was written and directed by Ian Lang, whose Internet biography reads: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to his purpose" -Romans 8:28.
Maybe Zook is fundamentalist, and hugs and kisses a lot of girls to prove that he's not "that way" in spite of his swishiness?
Answer after the break
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