Jamie Mayers: Absurdly hot Short Guy, LARPer, ghost, with a trans mom, a gay dad, a BFA, and a boyfriend. And maybe a cock

 

We've been watching the American version of Ghosts (2021-26), about a disparate group of ghosts who are trapped between worlds in a bed-and-breakfast in upstate New York.  I'm not happy with the way they approach the Revolutionary War soldier Isaac being gay.  At least in Season 1, he'll say that a man is attractive, and the other ghosts will stare, mystified, as if same-sex desire cannot possibly exist.

But I like the buddy-bonding and the beefcake. 

In Episode 1.7 (2021),  Samantha, who can see ghosts because she was dead for a few minutes, encounters early 20th century newsboy Winky.  He was only 12 years old when he died, but the actor is obviously an adult --- 21 year old Jamie Mayers, now 25, and at 5'3", an outstanding member of the Short Guy Brigade who deserves a profile.

Well, he's also absurdly hot,  and gay in real life.  But mostly because he's 5'3". 

Jamie has several well-stocked social media pages, plus Linkedin and a professional website, so we can piece together a biography:

He was born in Montreal in 1999, and began acting in 2010, with some shorts, commercials, and Lies My Father Taught Me at Theatre Calgary: a Jewish boy's bittersweet memories of 1920s Montreal.

In 2012, Jamie played the son of gay-vague werewolf Ray (Andreas Apergis, left) in an episode of Being Human, about ghost, vampire, and werewolf roommates.

And he voiced the young Connor in the Assassin's Creed III video game.  He returned in 2017 to voice Pharaoh Ptolemey in Assassin's Creed: Origins.

Teencoms followed: the bratty little brother of Live Action Role Playing Gamer Brittany in seven episodes of LARPERS (2014-15)

The gay-vague best friend of a teenage boy whose life is narrated by sportscaster-like beings in Game On (2016-17).

And a drama: four episodes of This Life (2015-16), about a woman dying of cancer while her teenage sons have soap opera problems.

But his most famous role is in Venus (2017):  Indo-Canadian trans woman Sid (Debargo Sanyal) is just starting to transition, when a teenage boy shows up on her doorstep, a son from a high school girlfriend.  He's fine with having a trans mom, but what about her conservative Indian parents?   She also finds the time to fall in love with Pierre-Yves Cardinal (butt left).

In high school Jamie spent several summers at Stagedoor Manor, a performance camp for youth in Loch Sheldrake, New York, playing:

Patsy in Spamalot: the one who makes the sound of horses' hooves.

Arthur in Half a Sixpence: the draper's assistant who gets rich and finds love.

Otto in Grand Hotel: a dying bookkeeper who wants to spend his last moments in luxury.  He gets a girlfriend. (Played by Daniel Evans, probably not this Daniel Evans, in the West End revival).

Tobias in Sweeney Todd: the mentally challenged assistant to the murderous barber.  Played by Neil Patrick Harris on Broadway.

Jamie graduated from high school in 2017, and spent his gap year in London, where he performed in two plays with the St. George's Players, Avenue Q and Into the Woods.

Life after high school after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"After the Hunt": Pretentious philosophy professors have problems, with some penises and Will Price

After the Hunt (2025), on Amazon Prime: A college professor with a dark secret. I'm in academe, and I love movies set in The Halls of Ivy.  Plus it stars Will Price, who I've had a crush on since I saw his gay-subtext role in The Chair Company (seen here with his favorite drag outfits).   I'm in, even with the two minutes of commercials that Amazon Prime makes you watch before the movie (in addition to the $100 per year fee).

Scene 1: Maggie, a middle-aged black woman, stares forlornly at some African art that shows a man and a woman getting it on. Actually, she's bored stiff at a faculty party while icy cool, incredibly pretentious Alma (Julia Roberts) is lecturing on how there are no universal standards of morality.   Uh-oh, she's going to be a murderer.

Horndog Hank (Andrew Garfield), who is sprawled across the couch with his legs spread, grabs Maggie and says that her dissertation on performative dissent will be the best thing ever written, sure to become a classic in philosophy. But she's only given them a few passages.  "You're too tight.  You need to loosen up."  

This shocks Arthur (Will Price) so much that he drops his drink.

Left: Garfield butt.

"So, when are you going to defend?" Maggie's elderly mentor (Michael Stuhlberg) asks.  (Defense is where your committee asks biting, unnerving questions about your dissertation and then decides whether to grant your Ph.D. or send you home with four to six years wasted).

"I haven't decided yet."

He chides her for having self-doubts.  This dissertation will make her name as the greatest philosopher of our generation, so why wait?

Hey, Michael Stuhlberg played a 26-year old grad student in Call Me by Your Name (2017). . Eight years later, he's playing a guy in his 70s?  Correction: Google said that this was a picture of Michael Stuhlberg, but it's actually Armie Hammer.  Stuhlberg played the boy's dad.

Maggie has to use the restroom. Incredibly Pretentious Alma says: "Don't use the usual one -- Frederick has a project in there. Use the guest bath at the end of the hall."  I'm guessing that Frederick is her son.

Scene 2: Maggie drifts folornly down the long, scary hallway, finds the bathroom, and slowly shuts the door.  Whoa, horror movie tropes.  Something sinister is waiting for her in there!

Back at the party, Alma and Horndog Hank are grabbing and fondling each other.  Apparently they're married, and going up for tenure at the same time. 

Elderly Mentor tries to talk them out of it:  "I don't want to be a contrarian, but sometimes a wish fulfilled can be more baffling than the longing."

Alma disagrees: "It's not some egoitic teleological pursuit, it's a threshhold."  Professors don't talk like that.

"If you get tenure and I don't, I'll be rageful," Horndog Hank jokes while grabbing and fondling her.  "Well, if you get it, and I don't, I'll be furious."

I'm expecting a scream, as Maggie is eaten by a monster. Or maybe she has offed herself, and the maid discovers her body. Nope, no scream.  The only problem: No toilet paper.  Looking for some, Maggie finds an envelope taped above the cleaning supplies.  Inside, a handkechief, a photograph, a letter, and a newspaper article.  But someone is coming, so she pockets some and puts the rest back. 

More after the break

Ferdia Shaw: From a Disney Channel flop to Chekhov, best friends with an Elf, Gaiety grad. With his Kilkenny cock and a Dwarf bum

No offense to aficionados, but I have never been able to get into Irish literature. It's either vaguely disturbing or incomprehensible.

Ulysses: "Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls... which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine"

Dude is into water sports?

"The Isle of Innisfree": "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made."

Or you could use bricks. 

The Unamable: A novel consisting of the ruminations of a featureless entity living (if you can call it that) in a jar. 

Nuff said

Artemis Fowl: The first of an 11-volume series of young adult novels about a teenage richter, a villain who eventually reforms, in a world where goblins run organized crime syndicates and fairies have a police force.

It sounds interesting, but it put me to sleep.

In 2020, a movie version appeared, starring Ferdia Shaw as 12-year old Artemis, Tamara Smart as his girlfriend, Colin Farrell as his kidnapped Dad, Laura McDonnell as an 800-year old Elf cop, and Josh Gad (below) as a Dwarf giant who joins the Fellowship of the...um.... 

The plot had little connection to the book series, which enraged fans, and it was too convoluted to draw in new viewers.  It got an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Critics called it a "confused, muddled, sloppy mess of bad intentions and worse execution."  

Disney expected a theatrical hit that would lead to a long-running franchise.  Instead, Artemis Fowl was plopped onto the streaming service Disney Plus, and after a few years quietly removed.  

Ferdia Shaw, who beat out 1200 hopefuls for the chance to play Artemis and become a Disney star, was born in Dublin in 2004, but grew up in Kilkenny.   Although he comes from a show biz family (grandson of famous actors Robert Shaw and Mary Ure, nephew of Ian Shaw, some sort of relation to "angry young man" John Osborne), he has only two other acting credits listed on the IMDB:

Poster Boys (2020): Petty thief Al (Trevor O'Connell) and his smart-aleck nephew (Ryan Minogue-Lee) go on a cross-country road trip. Ferdia plays a hooligan.

 Wellness (2025): a group of wellness influences attend a team-building exercise in the wilderness that goes terribly wrong. He plays minor character Duine Aisteach.

 More after the break

Owen Vaccaro: Marky Mark's son wins three Girls of His Dreams, posts girl-hugging photos, but is he gay? With Marky butt and twink cocks

 In the short Silver Fox (2024), not to be confused with the 2017, 2018, 2023, and upcoming movies with the same name, famous gay comedian Joe Fox (writer/director Julio Vincent Gambuto) returns to his home town for a show, and in his dressing room, announces that he's going to do it in drag.  His oldster friends, Nick and Brian (Dan Butler of Frasier, Alec Mapa of Ugly Betty), disapprove: the audience is coming for gay jokes, not a political statement.  

But his twink assistants, Chris and Rocco (Logan Rozos, Owen Vaccaro), think that the idea is fabulous.

The conversation moves from outfits to gay assimilation, straightwashing, the younger generation's debt to the gay people who came out during the homophobic 1980s and 1990s, their debt to the Civil Rights Movement, how gay stereotypes have changed over the years,  how we should handle the newly revived homophobia and transphobia of the fascist state...

Wait -- Owen Vaccaro?

Could there be another one?

If you see every movie that Mark Wahlberg is in, because he's friggin' Marky Mark, then you've seen Daddy's Home (2015): Mild-mannered Brad (Will Ferrell) is trying to be a good father to his wife's kids.  When their biological father Dusty (Mark) shows up, he assumes that the guy is a jerk because he's muscular and rides a motorcycle.  The two try to one-up each other in being The Good Dad.    Eventually they decide to co-parent.  

It was not a great movie. But Marky Mark took his shirt off...

And Will Ferrell's not bad, either.

10-year old Atlanta-based actor Owen Wilder Vaccaro played their son Dylan.  He displays the interest in basketball and girls that characterizes all preteen boys in Hollywood movies. 

I didn't see the sequel, Daddy's Home 2 (2017), regardless of the possibility of Marky Mark with his shirt off, but I just went through it on fast-forward. The dads' Dads show up for Christmas, and try to one-up each other in similar situations.  12-year old Dylan gets "the talk," tries to impress the Girl of His Dreams, and finally kisses her.   

The only queer-coded moment comes when various girls line up to kiss him under the mistletoe, and a boy is #8 in line (maybe Colton Osorio).  It's a throwaway gag: a boy wants to kiss a boy?  How ridiculous!

Owen's next film, The House with a Clock in its Walls (2018), is a fantasy based on the 1973 novel by John Bellairs: an orphaned boy (Owen) goes to live with his uncle (Jack Black) in a mysterious old house, fights an evil sorcerer, and gets a girlfriend. Annoyingly heterosexist.

There are two posts with gay content in Owen's social media.  In May 2018, he poses with pride merchandise and says "Hooray for Target! Love wins!" (This was before the department store chain gave in to the Orange Goblin and removed LGBT people from its website and its shelves).  

And in December 2018, he is shown hugging a girl named Carly.  His shirt depicts an astronaut with a pride flag on his visor.  Comments mostly assumed that they were a romantic couple, but one said "I think it's a platonic friendship."

But there's nothing of gay interest in his movie roles:

More after the break