Justin Ellings: Kyle from the awful clown episode of "Modern Family" plays Corey Haim and Sean Giambrone, shows his physique and his d*ck

 

In Modern Family Episode 11.1 (2019), high school vice principal Cam invites a group of "wayward teens" to his house to gain their trust by being the "cool mentor."  Things go wrong when his beloved, awful clown figurine goes missing, and he accuses them of stealing it, horrifying the viewers and his husband Mitchell with his increasingly vituperative insults: "You're trash! You're garbage!  Everyone has given up on you!"   Finally Mitchell can't stand it anymore, and announces that they are innocent: he threw out the figurine because it was incredibly ugly.  

Then Cam comes clean -- the kids are actually the high school drama club, playing wayward teens to force Mitchell to confess.  

I'm not happy with the plotline.  Seeing Cam lash out was rough.  And why would  you destroy something that your husband valued?  Something that was on prominent display in the living room?  But it was worth it to see drama club member Kyle, played by Justin Ellings.

19 years old when he filmed the episode.

A Short Guy, 5'6"  Forget the five feet; tell me more about the six inches. 

Endless beefcake photos on his Instagram and Facebook pages. 

Including one where he squirts.

Interestingly, Justin's official website shows a map of his location (so you can stalk him?).  He's on Cahuenga just north of Lexington, near my old gym in West Hollywood.  Cue the nostalgic reminiscences of my years in the gay mecca.

Justin grew up in Milwaukee, where he starred in The Music Man (2011) and The Sound of Music (2012) at the Skylight Opera Theatre Center.  He graduated from Arrowhead High School at age 16, then moved to L.A. to pursue his acting career.

His first major acting role was on the Nickelodeon teencom Sam & Cat (2013): he played Jarvis, one of the kids that the former ICarly star and her girlfriend babysit.  According to the fan wiki, Jarvis is gay.

I doubt that a Nickelodeon show would have a canonical gay character, but even if it was subtext, it's a great beginning.  Unfortunately, Justin's characters in other tv programs, on Girl Meets World (2015). Game Shakers (2017), American Housewife (2018), and Wandavision (2021), don't appear in the plot synopses. 

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Justin is primarily interested in stunt work.  He has 33 stunting credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of The Middle, Young Sheldon, 13 Reasons Why (where he was presumably Miles Heizer's butt double), 9-1-1, Stranger Things, and The Fabelmans.

 He was Sean Giambrone's stunt double on 19 episodes of The Goldbergs.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Shayne Topp: Nickelodeon teen, Barry's buddy, bodybuilder, sketch comedian who pretends to be gay and have a massive d*ck. We'll see.

 

The Goldbergs (2017-23) was a nostalgic look at showrunner Adam F. Goldberg's childhood experiences in the 1980s, with Sean Giambrone (here being murdered in the shower) as a stand-in for Adam.  I wasn't a fan: most of the experiences involved attempts to meet, impress, or win The Girl of His Dreams.  But it aired in the same block with Speechless and Modern Family, in the days before we went to all-streaming services, so we had no choice but to watch.  

I liked Adam's older brother Barry (Troy Gentile), a muscular wrestler, and in Season 2, the gay-vague hippie-chill Matt (Shayne Topp), who struggles become his friend and join the Jenkintown Posse.  As far as I remember, he never displayed any heterosexual interest, and he had a queer-coded attraction to Barry.

Plus he was exceptionally cute,  and at 5'7", he was a member of the Short Guy Brigade.  Who could ask for anything more of actor Shayne Topp?

How about a muscular physique?

And other parts of interest.

Into tie-up games.

And a reader.

Born in 1991 in Florida, Shayne played the unrequited crush of a Yu'pik girl in Dear Lemon Lima (2009).  He was a regular in the teen variety show So Random (2011-12), and appeared in episodes of ICarly, Henry Danger, Sam & Cat, and Fred: The Show.  He also did some fashion and n*de modeling. But he is best known as a sketch comedian.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

"Run Away": Creepy Dad investigates his daughter's disappearance. With a hot hitman, a gay drug dealer, some cute guys, and Pointing's penis

  

The Netflix movie and tv adaptions of Harlan Coben's novels all have the same plot: a nuclear family starts to fall apart when a "dark secret" from the husband or wife's past emerges.  There are no gay characters, and all of the professional and friendship pairs are men and women -- no gay subtexts.   But the location shots are very pretty, there are ample hot guys wandering around the swimming pools of elegant mansions, and it's fun to watch a critique of the family structure that so aggressively erases gay people.  So I'm reviewing Run Away (2026):

Prologue: A girl walks across the campus of Lanford College, climbs a lot of stairs, and enters her room, where a guy wearing a mask is waiting.  She remember him dying, or killing someone, and screams. So she didn't run away, she was kidnapped?

Scene 1: A Nuclear Family Dad (Coben movie regular James Nesbitt) complains about his daughter spending all her time doing "TikToks," talks to his son, away at university (played by Adrian Greensmith, who is gay in real life), and gets a text from someone named Dan Divine telling him to go to the park.   Are you being blackmailed by a drag queen, buddy?

He goes to a park full of frolicking people, waits on a bench, and looks at some videos of his missing daughter, Paige.  A lady wearing a Lanford College jacket is playing the guitar, just like Paige used to.  Could it be?  Yep -- the guitar has the sticker he gave her, of a smiling bee.  Where did she get Paige's guitar?  Could it be...

Yep, it's Paige!  The "missing daughter" plotline was resolved very quickly.

But when he calls,  she runs away.  He give chase and grabs her, which doesn't look right to the crowd.  A passing hippie (what is this, 1969?) tells him to back off, so Dad beats him to a pulp.  Other guys intervene, and Dad is arrested.  Looks like aggravated assault. 

Scene 2:  In the lockup.  We really don't need all of these cringe pictures of Paige frolicking with Dad and her friends, while he sings "Kiss me like there's no tomorrow...I love your eyes."  I think this is supposed to display paternal love, but it comes across as extremely creepy.

An Extremely Elegant Lawyer visits. He was filmed, the video has gone viral with the title "Rich Guy Beats Up Homeless Man."  He's not going to get a self-defense for repeatedly kicking the guy in the balls after he collapsed.  

"But he was my runaway daughter's asshole boyfriend, Aaron." So he wasn't a random hippie -- Dad knew the guy.  He was excessively violent because he blames him for Paige's disappearance.  Aaron is played by Thomas Flynn, who was in the gay romance Red, White, and Royal Blue.

Back story: Dad last saw Paige six months ago.  She came home from college a bedraggled mess, screamed at everyone, then left with Evil Boyfriend Aaron.   Are you a reliable narrator?  

Scene 3: Extremely Elegant Lawyer got the judge to dismiss the case before it went to trial.  Well, Dad is rich.  The rich get richer, and the poor get prison.  "By the way, my fee is $2 million."

Meanwhile, a Middle Aged Woman gazes intently at a Vegan Lady walking with her dog and toddler.  She steals the dog, then calls to say that she found him.  "Just give me your address, and I'll drop him off."  Weird way to get someone's address.  How about the Internet?

They do the retrieval at Vegan Lady's restaurant.  Vegan Lady offers her a free meal in gratitude. She picks a table that allows her to gaze creepily  at the toddler.  So you're a kidnapper?  Why not just grab the child?

Phone: A second rich guy, Sebastian Thorpe, asks if she's Elena, the private investigator?  He wants help finding his son.   Big Reveal: she's not a kidnapper!  So what's with the surveillance of the Vegan Lady? 

Scene 4: Dad goes home and reads the comments on the viral video.  They aren't exactly sympathetic.  Mom and the TikTok daughter (who uses a wheelchair, for reasons that I'll bet will become important), get the word and rush home to yell at him for being so stupid -- beating up the Evil Boyfriend in front of hundreds of people with cell phones?

Left: I think this is the Evil Boyfriend's evil butt.

Then Dad goes to work, at an elegant glass office, where the staff appears to be entirely female.  They support him; in fact, they think that the video makes him sexy.  Most Harlan Coben movies have a lot of beefcake, but here it seems to be ladies all the way down.

At his desk, he looks at the reels of his daughter yet again.  Do we really need to see them again? 

Scene 5: Two detectives investigate a murder scene:  it's Aaron, Missing Daughter Paige's Evil Boyfriend! There are two coffee mugs -- he was killed by someone he knew. 

"This is how you end up when you live a life with no rules," Pompous Detective Isaac (Alfred Enoch) pontificates.  Everybody follows rules, jerk.  They're called the norms of your culture or subculture.

When he leaves, one of the investigators (they're all women) comments on how nice he smells.  That's cringe too, lady. You don't discuss people's smells.

Scene 6: Dad and Mom at a parents' event at the school. Teachers say that the daughter is doing well, in spite of the recent...um...distraction.  The other parents stare angrily.  Pompous Detective Isaac and his partner interrogate him about where he was last night, because...gasp...the guy you beat up "in self defense" has been murdered.  We already knew that.

Cut to Dad and the Extremely Elegant Lawyer at the police station, being interrogated again.  Last night he got home at 6:15, took a run, cooked dinner, and watched tv while his TikTok Daughter was in her room and Mom was at work (pediatric nurse).  Pompous Detective finds it very suspicious that he doesn't know the exact time his daughter went to her room. "Normal people know the exact time that their children do everything."  

Dad then describes the scene in the park again, finishing up with "If Aaron is dead, that makes me very happy.  I hope he suffered."  The Detectives don't like that answer -- neither does the Extremely Elegant Lawyer.

Outside the police station, Extremely Elegant Lawyer slams Family Man for saying that he's glad a guy he's suspected of murdering is dead, and he slams her for flirting with the Detective.  "Well, he's sexy."

More after the break

Mustafa Alabbsi: Syrian-Canadian deaf advocate, zombie, hairdresser, Faust, and clown. Is he gay? Can we see his dick? And who is his cute bff?

 

You may recall Mustafa Alabbsi from the tv series Black Summer (2019).  He plays Ryan, a deaf teenage who survives the first few days of a zombie apocalypse and has a brief but obvious gay-subtext buddy-bond with Lance (Kelsey Flower).  It may even have been intentional: Kelsey Flower is "gay af" in real life.  

 Mustafa was born in Madaya, Syria, about 40 km from Damascus, in 2000.  When he was 12 years old, he and his family fled the war, and lived as refugees in Jordan.  He was not able to attend school, so he never learned to read and write Arabic (or English).  When he was 17, the family received asylum in Regina, Saskatchewan.  He tried to make up for the gaps in his education by enrolling in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program at Thom Collegiate. 

There are about 100,000 Canadians of Syrian ancestry.  30% arrived as refugees after 2015.  About 2/3rds are Christian, primarily Roman Catholic.  Many are LGBTQ, sponsored by the Toronto-based Rainbow Road.  Prominent queer Syrian-Canadians include Danny Ramadan, author of The Clothesline Swing (A gay Syrian love story) and The Foghorn Echoes (queer love in war-torn Syria); and Bassel Mcleash, who had been in Canada for only a month when he was invited to walk beside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the 2016 Toronto Pride Parade.

Back to Mustafa: He learned to read and write English and to sign with American Sign Language, and to pursue his  lifelong dream of becoming an actor, joined Regina's deaf theatrical community, The Deaf Crows Collective.  He has appeared in: 

Apple Time (2017) 

The Madcap Misadventures of Mustafa (2022), playing himself as a deaf Syrian clown who arrives in Canada with only a suitcase.

Firebird (2023)

Deaf Settlers (2024-25), about the Indigenous people's response to the first deaf European settlers in Canada.

100 Years of Darkness (2024), about brutal experimentation conducted on deaf people in the 19th century.

The Light of the Deep (2025): "A deaf-led theatrical discovery into darkness and discovery."

The last two were performed at the Inside Out Theatre, written by deaf queer artist Landon Krentz. In March 2025, got a grant to develop his short play, The Confidence of a Deaf Queer Male, into a "full 90-minute theatrical experience."  He explains: "This isn’t just about being visible. It’s about BELONGING. It’s about walking into rooms we weren’t invited into and refusing to shrink."

So, Mustafa is associated with the queer deaf community.  

And in his day job, he's a hairdresser, offering "Mane by Mustafa"

"Working out with Lawson.  Very help.  Hard."

I'll bet Lawson is, too.

I'm going with: gay in real life.

N*de photos after the break.  Caution: Explicit.