Adam Basil: Bodybuilder, gay pirate, gay-subtext creature, gay-icon zombie. Are you getting the idea? With his mushroom, nude Spartacus and Sherlock Holmes

  

In the original stories, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes shows no interest in women and a lot of interest in his "roommate," Dr. Watson.  But most film and tv versions aggressively heterosexualize the guys, sometimes with queerbaiting first.  So I had no faith in the new Amazon Prime series Young Sherlock Holmes. 

With good reason: he meets the Girl of His Dreams almost instantly.  Plus the reviews say that he's nothing like the traditional Sherlock; he's a gormless, idiotic, girl-chasing rapscallion.

Left: The rapscallion's rear.

But there was something of definite interest in the first scene: Mycroft Holmes goes to Newgate Prison to spring his wastrel brother (set up for pickpocketing, although he always returned the wallets after swiping them), and finds him at fisticuffs with the shirtless muscleman Barney (Adam Basil, top photo).  

Pecs, abs, biceps...dude, you're breath-taking.  Why have I never seen you in anything before?

Turns out that I've seen him in a lot of things, but he's playing characters named The Beast, The Butcher, and The Demon, under heavy stage makeup, so you can't really see his face.  Or physique.

Pity.

I didn't find a lot of biographical information, just what is listed on the IMDB: Adam grew up in the east of England, studied acting, and performed traditional British theater.  His "unusually high levels of athleticism" (meaning his muscles?) led him to creature work.

After a few small roles, Adam became Disney-famous for the live action version of Beauty and the Beast (2017) -- as the Beast, before the spell is broken and he turns into Dan Stevens.

Disney today, Marvel tomorrow: in 2021, he starred in Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage as the sarcastic, gay-coded symbiote who shares the body of journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy). Shares the body?  Tell me more.

Left: Tom's dick.

But it was his role as The Bloater in The Last of Us (2023) that sealed Adam's popularity with gay fans.  

Wait -- The Last of Us is about a zombie Apocalypse caused by a mutated wheat fungus.   The Bloater is completely covered with fungal pustules, which act like iron plates, making him impervious to bullets -- and giving him super-strength, so he rips people's heads off their bodies, like the zombie Samson in 28 Years Later.  

They also make him so disgusting that I had to avert my eyes whenever he appeared.  How does a being like that gain gay fans?

But in interviews in Out and The Pink News, Adam states that the Bloater has become a sex symbol in the gay community.  He gets erotic DMs that call him Big Daddy Mushroom.

Are you sure that they are referring to the Bloater, and not your mushroom...

More after the break

Connor Newall: The Hottest Property in Fashion buddies with Alfie Williams, models in homoerotic ads, plays gay guys, shows his....

 

Alfie Williams just posted a photo of his 28 Years Later Family, at a table read.  He's sitting between Chi-Lewis Parry, the zombie Samson (not shown)  and Connor Newall, who played Jimmy Shite, the first cultist to come to the rescue as Spike is facing a zombie hoard (and in Bone Temple, forced to fight him to the death).  Alfie always gravitates toward LGBTQ actors, so it's worth checking him out.

In 2015, Connor Newall was a 16-year old high school student, growing up in the rough neighborhood of Govan, Glasgow, with a dad who worked on the docks and an older brother in the army. He figured that he would join the army, too, until a casting agent visited his school, looking for some scally lads to play in a PSA about knife violence in Scotland: No Knives, Better Lives.

She cast Connor, and then sent his photo to Michael O'Brien at Model Team Glasgow, who called instantly and exclaimed "Get him to my office right now!"

Connor signed on, and had a photo shoot for GQ within a week.  Then "the phone started ringing, and to be honest it never stopped."  He had to get excused absences from his teachers so he could fly off for magazine shoots in London, Paris, and Barcelona.  Every photographer in the business asked for him. He was called "the hottest property in fashion" and "Scotland's Model Teenager." 

What was the attraction?  Connor was shorter than the usual male model, and not muscular, but his striking, angular face could be angelic one moment, demonic the next, move from brooding to whimsical with a glance.

And he was really good at homoerotic ads.

Connor's modeling rarely involves hugging ladies, but the homoerotic is everywhere. Here a four page spread for GQ China depicts him and Bradley Phillips as half-naked lovers.

I don't know what he's trying to sell here, playing with a water hose and his cock.  The underwear? 

Connor's older brother supported his modeling, and quit his army job to join him on the runway.  His father wasn't so sure.  Modeling careers don't last long.  In a few years, his looks will be gone, the media will go on to the next big thing, and then where will he be?  He should train for a back-up career.

Connor chose acting.  To date he has seven credits listed on his CV:

The short Bunny (2018): A teenager (Connor) wears bunny ears to deal with the trauma of his deceased mother.

The music video Gratitude (2018), by Benjamin Francis Leftwitch, a British Indie folk singer: a very upset Connor parks his car in the dark, punches it a few times, rips off his shirt, smokes a cigarette, gets naked, and trudges into the ocean.  

Now I know what I'm praying for
Not to waste anytime like I wasted before
Now I know what I'm staying for
No more

It's nice that nothing in the lyrics or the video shows him upset over a girl. 

 More Connor butts and a dick after the break

Daniel DiMaggio: The queerbaiting boy of "American Housewife" grows up to play Count Chocula and post n*de photos

 

You may be familiar with Daniel DiMaggio, no relation to Joe DiMaggio, as Oliver Otto on American Housewife (2016-21).  I never heard of it, but I wouldn't have watched anyway.  Who wants to watch a sicom about June Cleaver or Donna Reed?  

It starred Katy Mixon as Katie Otto, a housewife who, although not pretentious herself, is immersed in the ultra-pretentious world of ladies who lunch in Westport, Connecticut, along with her husband (Diedrich Bader), two daughters, and son Oliver (Daniel). 

She has a lesbian best friend, and there's a gay character (Jake Choi) in Season 5, so there's a bit of representation.  The main problem fans had was queerbaiting Oliver.  

He is presented as gay, with everything from pictures of muscular men on his bedroom wall to an interest in ballet to a boyfriend, the wealthy, femme Cooper (Logan Bell).  Everyone thinks they are boyfriends, anyway, including Cooper himself, who is upset every time Oliver claims that they are not dating.  But then he backs off and gets a girlfriend.  

Logan Bell (the femme one) is gay in real life, and states that he played Cooper as gay.  So why five seasons of "crumbs" that led nowhere?  Fans were irate when the showrunners were too cowardly to let Oliver come out.

Daniel already has two strikes against him (baseball metaphor, har har) for five years of queerbaiting.  Let's check on his other projects.

He was born in 2003 in Los Angeles, and began acting at age nine in the short Geisho (2010): a man (Horatio Sanz) wants to become the world's first male geisha.  Kind of gender-fluid.

Next, a 2013 episode of Burn Notice, which, I discovered today, is not about a hospital burn unit, in spite of the misleading title.  It's about a spy who was "burned" (fired). How the heck are potential viewers supposed to know that?   Daniel plays the young version of focus character Michael (Jeffrey Donovan). 

More after the break

The mystery of Kaito Daiki Diver's adult video

  

The nude celebrity subreddit had an adult video of someone named Kaito Daiki Diver.  But there is no  diver with that name.  The closest I could find was Japanese swimmer Daiyo Seto.

There is no Kaito Daiki Diver actor, singer, or any other celebrity.

But there's a character named Kaito Daiki in the Kamen Rider franchise.

Created by Shotaro Ishimori in 1971, the Kamen Riders are tokusatsu, special-effect powered superheroes like the Power Rangers.  Motorcycle-riding loners (until they team up), they wear special belts that transform them into masked, muscled, insect-motif beings.

The belt is called a doraiba, or driver in English.  Maybe the "diver" in Kaito Daiki Diver is a misspelling of "driver"?

To date there have been 36 Kamen Rider tv series in Japan (some are streaming in the U.S. on Amazon Prime).  Plus countless movies, video games, manga, toys, homages, parodies, fan conventions....

In the tv series Kamen Rider Decade (2009),Tsukasa Kadoya (Masahiro Inoue) must travel through the nine universes to fight space-time anomalies.  He encounters Daiki Kaito (Kimito Totani, left), a charming interdimensional thief who eventually reforms and becomes Kamen Rider Diend (named after his home world).  

In an interview, Kimito stated that the guys are involved in a romance, but I think it's subtext rather than text. 

Ryota Murai (left) plays Kamen Kuunga.  Dozens of actors have played Kamen Riders, but this is the only guy I could find with nude photos.  

Except for the adult video.  But first I have to research Kimito Totani.

Born in Tokyo in 1990, Kimito  broke into on-screen acting with the martial arts movie Tsubaki Sanjûrô (2007) and a 2008 episode of the teen angst drama Gokusen.  But Kamen Rider sealed his career: he went on to play Daiki Kaito in twelve tv series, animes, and video games.  His most recent Kamen Riders are:

Kamen Rider Zi-O (2018): Sougu Tokawa (So Okuno) wants to become king, so he transforms into the titular Kamen Rider, but this has the side effect of collapsing the universe. 

Kamen Rider Zi-O Next Time: Geiz, Majesty (2020): In an alternate universe, some high schoolers try to achieve their dreams by  Kamen Riders. So Okuno is still trying to become king.

Kamen Rider Outsiders (2023): a cross-over anthology series.

Presumably he's played the character as gay throughout.

Shots from the video after the break