Josh Zuckerman: The teenage Faust saves Christmas twice, plays nebbishes and sinister ghosts. With his butt and Nick's dick

 

In the Disney Channel's Twas the Night (2001), irresponsible Nick Wrigley (Bryan Cranston of Malcolm in the Middle), fleeing from gansters, takes refuge at his brother's house.  While delivering presents, Santa gets clocked on the head, and the gangsters steal the time-dilation device that allows him to visit 1.3 billion households in a single night.

So Nick and his mischievous 14-year old nephew Danny (Josh Zuckerman) must deliver all of the presents and subdue the gangsters.

It differs from the standard "saving Christmas" plot in the real peril, and in Nick and Danny, who move from stereotyped uncle and nephew to classic 1930s Adventure Boy and adult companion. 

It was enough to pay attention to this guy, born in 1985 in Stanford, California, and guesting on every conceivable tv series: Get Real,  Once and Again, The West Wing, Judging Amy, and so on,  Surely he had more gay-subtexts or maybe even gay roles in his future.

Nope.  Next he starred in  I was a Teenage Faust (2002), about a 15-year old boy (Josh) who sells his soul to the devil in order to win The Girl of His Dreams.  Heterosexist tripe.

I didn't have the stomach to see Josh in anything else for a few years, but evidently he starred with Ben Affleck in Surviving Christmas (2004): a rich dude pays a family to pretend to be his at Christmastime, and develops real feelings for them, of course.

And Balthazar Getty in Feast (2005): Bar patrons fight monsters.

 But the heterosexism continued, as Josh found his niche as a nebbish who can't get girls, but sometimes can.

He had a recurring role on Kyle XY (2008-09) ,  starring Matt Dallas as a teenage boy  who appears out of nowhere with no memory and no belly button. I think he's a clone or alien or something.  Josh plays a nebbish with a crush on his adopted sister.  Eventually he wins her.

The Desperate Housewives (2004-13) were desperate due to their 15-year history of lies, scandals, murder, and semi-nude scenes.  Josh plays Eddie, a barista and aspiring comedian who kills the girls who reject him -- and they all do.  They're usually mean about it, laughing at the ridiculousness of the nebbish thinking he was worthy of human contact, but still, it seems a bit much. 

The s*x comedy S*x Drive (2008) is all shot through with homophobia and gay stereotypes. It's got Seth Green in it, so you know there's going to be trouble.  Ian (Josh) goes on a road trip to Chattanooga to win the Girl of His Dreams, Ms. Tasty (her stage name). He borrows the car from his "fag" and "homo"-spouting brother Rex (James Marsden): 

When Ian reaches Chattanooga, Rex appears and refuses to let him get with the girl.  So he pretends to be gay, and Rex changes his mind: getting with a girl could cure him!  In the end  Ian marries The Girl, and Rex is revealed to be gay (but he doesn't get a boyfriend). 

But at least we see Josh nude.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"It's Florida, Man," Episode 2.2: Guy gets high, gets naked, trashes a pizza place. With Adam Devine, pizza guy cock, and Swardon butt

 

Since Righteous Gemstones ended in May 2025, we've seen Tony Cavalero in two tv shows, a series of commercials, and his daily Instagram posts.  Adam Devine, not so much.  He played a dog who doesn't want to get snipped, did some commercials for water, and his Instagram is mostly theoretical.  So of course I jumped at the opportunity to see him in Episode 2.2 of It's Florida, Man, a reality tv show on MAX about people doing really stupid things because "it's Florida."  While they tell their stories, comedians act them out (like Drunken History)

Preview:  Pensacola, Florida: on the panhandle, more Deep South than Miami Beach.  A trashed Little Caesar's Pizza.  Chad Corn tells us that he was so high, he didn't know what had happened: he just woke up naked, with the alarm blaring.   

Scene 1: Chad works as an appliance technician. He began drinking and using drugs to help overcome his Tourette's Syndrome (involuntary tics), but he didn't like the version of himself while high, which he called Bad Chad: a belligerent partyboy.

One day he is at work, scrolling through the profiles on...um...Facebook (you mean Grindr, buddy?), and he sees that his friend Jimmy has a show coming up (drag or music?).

Jimmy is an "artist, singer, concrete finisher, starseed, generational curse breaker," and Jimmy V on stage. 

I wanted to see if the musician is bisexual, based on the "woman or man" lyric, but Google searches are overwhelmed by other famous Jimmy Vs: one worked on the Conan O'Brien show, and the other is a music producer in London.  

Scene 2: Chad goes to the Jimmy V show, tries unsuccessfully to pick up a girl, and then calls his drug dealer.  Bad Chad emerges, and they do more drugs and get "wired to the max."  The bartender cuts them off. 

He gets paranoid, thinks the cops are at the club.  Should he flush his remaining drug supply down the toilet?  Bad Chad points out that the drugs can be traced through the pipes. Better eat the rest!

Chad is played by Adam Devine, and Bad Chad by Nick Swardon (butt left)

Scene 3: Chad leaves the bar, still thinking that he is being chased by the cops, so he goes through the swamp to throw them off his trail.   He loses one shoe in the mud, so of course he has to throw away the other. 

More after the break

Wake Up Dead Man: Daniel Craig's gay detective solves a locked-room murder, with a hot priest, some MAGA suspects, and a lot of Catholic cocks

 

For movie night this week, we saw Wake Up Dead Man (2025), the third of the Knives Out mysteries starring Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, left), a posh Southern-accented detective who draws inspiration from classic murder writers like Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh.  

This one involves Father Jed (Josh O'Connor), a boxer who accidentally killed his opponent in the ring, and became a priest to expiate his guilt.  When he loses control and punches an a*hole deacon, he is assigned to a struggling parish in upstate New York. 

Left: Exteriors were filmed at the Anglican Church of the Holy Innocents, in Epping Forest, near London, built in 1873, praised as a masterpiece of Gothic Revival architecture.

It is struggling because of Monseigneur Wicks (Josh Brolin).  Monseigneur is an honorary title bestowed by the Pope, but this Monseigneur has bestowed it upon himself.  He has turned the congregation into an evangelical cult, preaching about the End Times and the War against Christianity, promising eternal damnation to anyone who challenges his authority, and screaming at visitors who he thinks are disobeying God's law: first a single mother, and then a gay couple.

The gay couple is played by HIV activist Hugh Wyld and Matthew Jacobs-Morgan, who runs Coven, a queer bar and art venue in Hackney.  

Father Jed thinks that the Church should be about love and forgiveness, a place where "everyone is welcome," but the Monseigneur sneers that he is ridiculously naive: why would you open the Church to the enemies of God? This is War!

In fact, the Monseigneur has only seven True Believers left:

1. Lee Ross (gay actor Andrew Scott), a formerly best-selling author who has retreated into conspiracy theories, and is currently writing a 6,000 page biography of Monseigneur Wick.

2. Vera Draven, a lawyer who was suddenly told "you're going to raise this boy," with no further explanation. 

3. The boy, now grown up, Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack).  He tried to jump start a career in politics by blogging against everything the Orange Goblin hates from trans people to Portland, but he couldn't get any doors open.  Being black won't help you win over MAGA, buddy.

4. Simone Vivane, a concert cellist who had to give up music due to chronic pain, and is handing over thousands of dollars in the hope that Wick will cure her. Faith healing is evangelical thing, not really Catholic.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Daryl Sabara: Juni grows up, fights cannibals, bikers, and Satanists, and shows his dick, but I'm still depressed

Spy K*ds (2001) stars gay actor Antonio Banderas (left) and Carla Gugino as a husband and wife spy team.  Well, actually, their son and daughter, Juni and Carmen (Daryl Sabara, Alexa Vega), who get swept up in an age-appropriate diabolical plot involving tv host Fegan Floop (Alan Cummings, who is bisexual in real life).   

Although everyone is ostensibly heterosexual, some reviews call the film a queer classic due to the extremely hot Dad -- and Mom, apparently, which led to the "queer awakening" of an entire generation of lesbians; the shy, bullied, gay-coded Juni; the kick-ass Carmen; and the gay-coded villain who turns out to be not all that villainous.

The Banderas dick is just to draw your attention.  This profile features the shy, bullied, gay-coded Daryl Sabara.

There were 3 sequels:

The Island of Lost Dreams (2002) strands Juni and Carmen on a Jules Verne/Dr. Moreau "mysterious island," where they run afoul of a mad scientist creating animal hybrids.  Carmen gets a boyfriend, but Juni remains gay-coded.

I didn't see Game Over (2003) where Juni must venture into a video game to save his sister, but the queer coding ends with him meeting The Girl.  He also meets two guys, video game teammates Ryan Pinkston and Bobby Edner.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

The 2011 All the Time in the World minimized Juni and Carmen in favor of a new sibling team.  The brother is played by Mason Cook, who would go on to Speechless.

During the Spy franchise, Daryl Sabara appeared in the usual one-shot tv spots: Will and Grace, Fatherhood, House, American Dragon: Jake Long, and so on.

He has a starring role in the animated lion-drama Father of the Pride (2004-05) as Hunter, a shy, anxiety-ridden Lord of the Rings nerd. That is, basically Juni as a lion.  In one episode, his grandfather Sarmoti thinks that he is gay, or as the fan wiki says, "homosexual; but this is absolutely not true."  Rather homophobic, aren't you, fan wiki?

Then things start to go downhill.  In a 2006 episode of Criminal Minds,  Daryl plays a teenager who charges men to watch him do bondage videos.  So he has an OnlyFans site?  The agents convince him that what he is doing constitutes prostitution, and will put him in danger from internet predators.  It is all presented as extremely sleazy, and one can't help but conclude that being gay is always seedy and sordid.  

Normal Adolescent Behavior (2007) is an anti-hookup cautionary tale,with no gay content: three girls and three guys in a friendship group pair off randomly.  Daryl appears as Nathan, who crushes on the mother of one of the girls. Ugh.

Raviv Ullman, formerly Phil of the Future, plays one of the guys in the friendship group.

Next Daryl played Tim Scottson in 7 episodes of Weeds (2005-12), about suburban marijuana growers. He shot his stepmother Nancy Botwin because he assumed that she was responsible for his father's death, but she recovered and hired him as her assistant.

Worst. Prom. Ever. (2011) has Daryl planning the perfect prom for his girlfriend, but when her two friends tag along, things go crazy, with a car crash, armed thugs, Satanists, and an amorous lady biker.

In The Green Inferno (2013), some student activists go to the Peruvian jungle for ecological stuff, and are captured by a cannibal tribe.  

A cannibal tribe?  I thought the "spear-throwing savages" trope went out with Johnny Quest. But at least the guy dragging Daryl toward the cooking pot has nice abs and a basket.

Daryl gets a girlfriend and displays his dick before being eaten.

More Daryl dick after the break