History of the World, Part II: Homophobic jokes, gay subtexts, and Brock O'Hurn. With Ike and Nick nude

History of the World, Part I (1981) was a Mel Brooks vehicle involving sketches parodying various historic periods, from the Stone Age to the Spanish Inquisition, featuring nearly every comedian in the business.  To the infinite confusion of audiences, no Part II was intended.

Until 2022, when Part II appeared as a tv series on Hulu, again (mostly) produced, written, directed, and narrated by the 96 year old Mel Brooks -- who appears "swole," borrowing the body of Brock O'Hurn.  Three or four time periods are parodied, but I'm going to review only the Civil War.

Episode 1: 1865. In the waning days of the War, President Lincoln asks the drunken Ulysses S. Grant (Ike Barinholtz, left) to take charge of his son, Robert Todd (Nick Robinson): the 22-year old Harvard student has been begging to enlist, and now that the war is nearly over, he can do so safely. This is historically accurate: Robert Todd did serve on Grant's staff for several months in 1865.  But he was a "dandy," and Lincoln was gay; both are closeted here. 

Every soldier in Virginia has been ordered to deny Grant alcohol, so he decides to take RT on a "dangerous mission."

"I would follow you to the gates of Hell," RT says. Awww, how sweet.

"It's worse than that.  We're going to West Virginia."  Har, har. 

Episode 2:  In Rock Ridge, West Virginia, stylized as an Old West town out of Blazing Saddles, RT and Grant try to fit in because "They don't like our kind." He means Yankees, of course, but.... In  a tavern, we get a shot of the two holding hands as they both look at the same menu.  That's a queer code.

Left: Ike nude

Their cover is blown when Grant tries to use Union currency, and his face is on the bill!  Grant is on the $50 bill today, but of course he wasn't during the Civil War. "We hate Yankees!"  The scene dissolves when a Red Sox fan starts to complain (the baseball team opposed to the New York Yankees).  

The mob (led by Scotty McArthur) leads them out to be hanged. Actually, West Virginia was almost entirely Union-occupied through the war.

Episode 3: Three expendable Union soldiers  are sent to rescue them. Lt. Henry Honeybeard (Tim Baltz), being white, is made their leader.  The others are the black Mason Dixon (Tyler James Williams) and the Native American Mingoes  (Zahn McClarnon).  As they leave, we see two pairs of legs protruding from a tent (guys having sex, har har).  

They are all dumb as a stump, and can't figure out which way West Virginia is. They end up the Underground Railroad, which is actually a subway run by Harriet Tubman, going the wrong direction.

More gay subtexts after the break

Daniel Benson: The gay-vague Disney Channel teen hunk finds a new career showing gay guys his dick

 

You may see a hundred dicks a day, in porn or real life, but there's a unique pleasure to seeing one of your childhood fave raves grow up, bulk up, and post pics of his penis. It's like solving a mystery: now we know what he was packing all along.

Dan Benson became a fave rave on The Wizards of Waverly Place, a gay-subtext heavy Disney Channel teencom about a family of wizards who have to keep their secret from the world.

Dan (in the back) played Zeke, the goofy best friend of teenage son Justin Russo, although later he started hanging out with younger son Max instead.  He displayed no heterosexual interest until later seasons ,when Disney suits got worried about the barely-hidden gay subtexts and gave him a girlfriend.

There were so many gay subtexts on Wizards that Dan's stories tended to get lost.  And bulking up didn't help to differentiate him: every single male character was a muscle-hunk. So fans tended to forget about him.

After Wizards, Dan appeared in an episode of Smoky Knights and its spin-off Killing Diaz,  and voiced Ethan, the on-off boyfriend of Summer in Rick and Morty. Then he was stung by an invasion of his privacy.

Turns out that some fans didn't forget him after all: during Wizards, "attractive women" kept asking for nude photos and videos, which he obligingly sent.  Then he found them posted on the internet!  He told E Online that it was a "pretty traumatic experience."  He became obsessed with taking them down, and retired from acting altogether.

But then he thought, "Why not?  If people want to see my penis, why not show them?  For a fee, of course."  He changed to the grown-up sounding Daniel Benson, and started an OnlyFans page, with subscriptions running at $20 per month.  He not only shows his dick, he reviews adult products, like this dildo.

And a penis-shaped waffle.

More Dan after the break. Note: the explicit pictures are samples that Dan posted to advertise his pay site.

Picco: A lot of male nudity amid the brutal, homophobic denizens of a German youth prison

 Someone recommended the German psychological horror movie Picco, about the inmates at a juvenile detention center  -- "lots of naked bodies on display."  There's bound to be some buddy-bonding, and maybe some homoerotic relations, right? 

Wikipedia says that it features a "troubled young man" named Jakub, who becomes enmeshed in a "harsh social hierarchy" and "the brutal realities of life behind bars."  That's like every prison movie ever made.

The IMDB doesn't mention a Jakob.  Here it's Kevin, a new boy in the prison, played by Constantine Jascheroff, and his three surly, belligerant, homophobic cellmates. The Variety review names them:

1. The psycho-violent Marc, played by Frederick Lau.

2. His belligerant crony, Andy, played by Martin Kiefer

More after the break

Tony's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 2: A leather jockstrap, an isolation tank, the sausage god, and honeymoon with the hubby

 

This is a collection of hot or humorous photos of Tony Cavalero, best known as Dewey on The School of Rock,  Ozzie Ozbourne in Dirt, and Keefe on The Righteous Gemstones, with a few of his friends.

1. "Wait -- if I'm supposed to be advertising this ball pouch why do you want me to take it off?"

2. When Tony dates other guys, they ski down blue-diamond mountains, ride bikes around the Hollywood Sign, and hang-glide off cliffs.  When he dates Skyler, they go shopping. 

I used this in the Skyler Gisondo photo collection, too.   It fits in with both, right?

3. Dude, they used that isolation tank for one scene.  You don't need to continue using it, unless you have a mummification kink.

4. Ok then, carry on.

5. How did you get that portable sauna zipped up?

6. When you can't take a cold plunge after your sauna, roll around in the snow instead.

More Tony after the break

Shia LaBeouf: From gay-subtext teencom to heterosexual porn. At least he shows us his dick a lot.

Even Stevens (2000-2003) was one of the first, and best, of the Disney Channel teencoms, featuring middle-school boyfriends Louis and Twitty (Shia LaBeouf, A.J. Trauth).  Episode plots emphasize their romance:

Louis becomes jealous when Twitty starts hanging out with a girl.

Louis becomes jealous when Twitty starts hanging out with a boy.

Louis becomes a celebrity, straining his relationship with Twitty.

 I remember an episode where they were sitting together on the couch, not on opposite ends like most people, but squeezed in with their thighs pressing together.  "They're not even trying to hide it," I thought.  

Add Nick Spano as a hunky older brother and Fred Meyers as older sister's swishy bff, and you have a gay-subtext classic. 

Seasons change, teencoms are cancelled, and the actors move on.  Nick Spano, top photo, majored in English literature at UCLA and now runs the Re/Creation Cafe.  

AJ Trauth, left, lives in Ohio. 

Fred Meyers is a paramedic.

As far as I can tell, they're all heterosexual in real life.

And what about Louis Stevens, Shia LaBeouf?

He moved into dark, depressing indies about lost, dying, grieving, and enraged youth:

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints: as his friends are killed or kill themselves, Shia believes that he is protected by the saints.

Bobby: The night of Robert Kennedy's assassination

Disturbia. A teen under house arrest "rear-windows" a serial killer.

When he veered into science fiction, as in Transformers, it was always a boy and a girl gazing into each other's eyes forever.

He shows his penis on screen for the first time in the 2012 music video Sigur Rós: Fjögur píanó, which looks Icelandic but is actually in English.  It's about a boy and a girl gazing into each other's eyes forever.

More dick and a Catholic priest after the break

Robert's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 2: Beefy boyfriend, helicopter penis, and strongman sex

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Mason Cook: The "Speechless" star turns bohemian-hipster, and shows us his biceps and dick

 

You're probably most familiar with Mason Cook as Ray DiMeo, sarcastic younger brother of focus character JJ (Micah Fowler) on Speechless (2015-18).  JJ has cerebral palsy and is nonverbal, "speechless."

Ray gets a lot of gay subtext plotlines, at least in Season 1.  In Season 2, he becomes annoyingly hetero-horny, and eventually gets a serious girlfriend. 

Ray's sudden movement into hetero-horniness was disturbing not only because the gay teases were overturned, but because of the "discovering girls" rhetoric. Mason is over 18 at the time, but his character is 15.  When I was 15, all I ever heard was "You'll discover girls any moment now, and everything you love will become meaningless. You'll join clubs, take classes, choose your college solely in order to see or meet girls. Your buddies will become mere strategists, helping you find, impress, and win girls. You..."

Sorry for the rant, but I really felt betrayed by Ray DiMeo in the second season.  

So you may wonder why I'm posting a profile on Mason Cook

Not because of his gay or gay-subtext performances.

Born in 2000

Guest star in teencoms like Zeke and Luther

Son of the focus charater in the crime drama Legends

Classmate of the focus character on The Middle

 An "eccentric, devout Christian" who has sex with the focus girl, sending her rushing for a "morning after pill," in Plan B.  This was nominated for a GLAAD award because a major character is trans, but Mason is straight.

Not because of his physique.  

The few shirtless photos on Mason's social media suggest that he doesn't spend a lot of time at the gym.

Although he has developed some biceps recently.

Not because of his handsomeness.  

His clean-cut all-American look was sort of cute, but his recent greasy-hair hipster-bohemian look is off-putting

Not because he is gay in real life.

Mason appears to be more LGBTQ-friendly than his fershugenen Speeechless character. Here he invites his fans to "stand up against bullying in the LGBT community" on Spirit Day. 

But in his social media pages, he's hugging girls a lot, and proudly displaying their cleavage, as if to brag: "I get to touch those!"  He has been photographed on dates with several people identified as "girlfriends."  

So, not extraordinarly handsome or built, not a lot of gay or gay-subtext roles, straight in real life, and his Ray DiMeo was upsetting.  Why am I doing a profile of this guy?

Because I was left "speechless" upon discovering videos of Mason showing fans his "joie de vivre" 

More after the break. Caution: explicit.