The ten best "Righteous Gemstone" episodes, from "Wicked Lips" to the Season 4 Interlude. Plus the ten worst "WTF?" episodes.

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Jensen Gering: Fans say that he's gay, and played a gay singer on Nickelodeon. Are they right? With his brother, dad, Giovanni Ribisi, and Drake Bell

 

I found a file named "Jason Gehring" at the bottom of my "profiles to do."   There are several Jason Gehrings out there: a baker with a Grindr profile, a nurse from Milwaukee, an artist from Germany, and a history student from Syracuse, but none of them look like this.

Could it be "Jensen Gering" (no h), who has 70 pages of photos on the teen idol site?  A brief google reveals that Jensen is either gay in real life or played a gay character in a teencom called Erin and Aaron, or both, so let's try a profile.

Jensen's bio states that he is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, model (began at age one) and actor (began at age 13), and he's the son of the celebrities Galen Gering and Jenna Gering.

Great, two more people whom everyone in the world has heard of except me. 

Dad Galen Gering (left) was born in Los Angeles in 1971, to incredibly famous parents whom I have never heard of.  

He is a model, filmmaker, and soap opera star, best known as Rafe Hernandez on Days of Our Lives: an FBI agent whose girlfriends are variously are kidnapped, trapped in abusive relationships, sociopaths, and dying of a brain tumor.  

He takes off his shirt a lot, a requisitie for soap studs.

Mom Jenna Gering  got her start as a model at age 14.  Then she studied theater and journalism at the University of Miami, and started her acting career in a 2000 episode of Baywatch.   She has 23 credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of Two and a Half Men, The King of Queens, Castle, Miami Sands, and Bent (not the one about gay men in a Nazi concentration camp).

Brother Dillon (left) hasn't done any acting except for an uncredited hospital kid on his dad's soap, and the reality series Dirty Soap (2011), with the dirt on soap opera stars. Galen and Jenna's dirt: they eloped to Las Vegas instead of having a church wedding.  Quelle horreur!

Jensen grew in a theatrical environment, so he was naturally drawn to acting.  He has six credits, including:

The Confab (2019): Fading child stars Ryker Baloun  and Jensen compete for the last role they'll get before adolescence renders them unemployable.  Poor guy, already a has-been in his first real acting job.

Wickensburg (2022): "an extremely formulaic and predictable mess of a family adventure" about an extremely blond woman and her young son (Jensen) moving to a small town full of extremely silly paranormal secrets.With townsfolk named Willow Darkwood and Mr. Hexenmeister, what do you expect?  

Left: Mr. Wilson is played by Maurice Dean Wint, seen here in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001): he has covered his crotch with Gummi Bears to shows the future Hedwig his erotic interests. 

Wickensburg got two sequels, a Return (2024) and an upcoming Secrets of.   No plot synopses online, but the trailer shows Jensen with The Girl of His Dreams. 

Sigh.  Let's check to see if Google is right about Jensen's Erin and Aaron character being gay.

It was a 2023 Nickelodeon teencom about two polar opposites, the sensitive, artistic Aaron (Jensen) and the wild, uninhibited Erin (Ava Ro), becoming stepsiblings when their parents marry (isn't that the premise of Drake and Josh?)  

Their disparate personalities cause friction, and their shared interest in music (piano and guitar, respectively) results in competition more often than not. For instance, Aaron can't buy a new piano because the music store owner hates Erin.

Annoying next door neighbor Hunter (Luca Diaz) stalks them both: he wants to be best friends with Aaron and date Erin.

Reviews were awful, and viewership was in 100,000 range (in contrast, Drake and Josh episodes averaged 3-5 million viewers).  13 episodes were filmed, but only 11 were aired.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"Big Mistakes": Dan Levy as a gay Christian pastor with a secret boyfriend and a crazy sister. With Patrick and Pacheco nude.

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20 musclemen who guided me through the Age of Innocence, from Bomba the Jungle Boy to the American Psycho

 This is a nostalgic journey through the musclemen who gave me my first hints that same-sex desire existed, and guided me from junior high through college and to West Hollywood. They provided a joy that transcended aesthetic pleasure, telling gay kids that we belonged.  We were welcome. 

Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide.

In your most need I'll be by your side.

1. Johnny Sheffield played Bomba the Jungle Boy on Tarzan Theater every Saturday afternoon when there wasn't a game.  I never actually made it through a whole movie -- they were dreadfully heterosexist.  But there was always time for those gleaming black-and-white muscles, especially when he was tied up.

2. Bruce Lee.  He died in 1973, but his movies were playing constantly on Kung Fu Theater, and everybody's older brother had his beefcake poster on his bedroom wall.

3. Michael Forest played a god of masculine beauty (literally the God Apollo) on an episode of Star Trek which I saw sometime in the 1970s.

4. Denny Miller. Moments of gay promise as a surfer and a jungle man on Gilligan's Island.

5, David Naughton.  The cutest guy of the Disco Era showed us his dick and butt in in American Werewolf in London (1981).  Plus he also gave us a strong gay subtext in spite of the 1980s homophobia.

6. Yukio Mishima.  It wasn't hard to find gay-themed books in the early 1980s.  Just look for "evil" or "hidden" in the title.  So I found Confessions of a Mask, with Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima's obsession with male muscles, sex, and death.  

7. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The 1980s start and end with Arnold, who single-handedly brought bodybuilding into the mainstream and made it respectable.

8.  Sylvester Stallone gave him a little help with his grunting, sweat-soaked Rambo and Rocky.  We saw his dick in The Italian Stallion, a recast of his early porn movie.  

9. John Amos.  Gordy the Weatherman on Mary Tyler Moore, a warrior in a Conan rip-off that we all saw, and my gym buddy.

10. Lou Ferrigno, who played a muscular green Hulk against Bill Bixby's David Banner, dropped by often when I was working at Muscle & Fitness.  Did I mention our hookup?

More after the break