Solar Opposites Episode 4.9: Skyler Gisondo plays a muscular bat-alien with a human boyfriend, plus Thomas Middleditch penis

 

Solar Opposites is an animated sitcom about a family of sentient slugs that crash-landed on Earth and must look for a way home while adapting to bizarre human customs like gender polarization:  Korvo (Justin Roilland/Dan Stevens), the "man of the house," resistant to assimilation; Terry (Thomas Middleditch), the childcare expert, who eagerly adopts human culture;  Yumyulak (Sean Giambone), the teenage boy, a rebel who hates humans; and a teenage girl and pupa (infant).  

But this is a review of an episode where no one in the family appears except in flashbacks.  I'm including a beefcake photo of Sean Giambone (left) and frontals of Thomas Middleditch (below) anyway. 

Episode 4.9, "Down and Out on Planet X-Non," stars Glenn (Kieran Culkin), the family's snoopy neighbor, who got blasted into space.  He joined the SilverCops Space Force, but they framed him for murder.  He had to flee into the wilderness of an alien planet, fighting monsters and nearly dying many times.  And now his story continues in what seems to be the pilot for a spin-off.

Scene 1: After having an "expositional dream," Glenn awakens in a run-down office, naked.  Zy (Skyler Gisondo, top photo), a muscular being with a bat-head, found him in the wilderness, half-dead.  "What were you doing all alone in the woods?"

"I go there to jerk off," Glenn jokes.  "I got a thing for trees.  Why am I naked?"

"Your clothes were soaked with piss and shit." 

Zy infers that he has a "secred, fucked-up past," so he'll be perfect for their group of multi-species thieves and con-men.  

Glen tries to leave, but outside the door, beings are robbing and killing each other, so he decides to stay.  First queer code; Zy puts his hand on Glenn's shoulder and leaves it there.

Scene 2: The tour.  Most of the group has holograms on their chest, which means "they need extra help." 

"But I don't have a hologram on my chest," Glenn complains.

"I'm sure you have a hologram in your heart."  Awww..getting a little crush on this human, Zy?

Second queer code: Hand on shoulder again.  Third queer code: Again.  Gee, Zy can't keep his hands off Glenn.

Scene 3:  Interview with the group leader, Skeletom, a hippie dude with a glowing green skeleton.  He explains: "This place is for people who don't fit in."  Island of Misfit Toys, huh?  Queer code #3.  "No one else has our backs, so we have to be family to each other."

Scene 4: Glenn, Zy, a cat-being, and a Cthulhu-being on a scam run. Zy explains that the 'Raffs (sentient giraffes) took over and pushed the indigenous population into slums, using SilverCops to break heads:  "They claim they're keeping the peace, but they're racist as hell, and they play the natives against each other."  Cthulhu Lives Matter.  

Uh-oh, their last victim called the SilverCops.  Run!  Hiding in an alley, they discuss how much they hate the Sils.  And Glenn is one!  If they find out, he'll lose their friendship -- or worse.

More after the break

Bill Cable: 1980s nude model and gay porn performer, boyfriend of Elvira and Pee-Wee Herman, rock star in "Basic Instinct"

If you grew up in a heteronormative desert, like most gay boys in the 1970s, with nude and even shirtless guys vanishingly rare in magazines, movies, and tv, West Hollywood in the 1980s was a Paradise.  You could buy a dozen glossy, full-color magazines aimed at gay men with every conceivable taste and interest:

Drummer for leather and BDSM

Blueboy for dating advice

Mandate for muscle

In Touch for humor 

Inches for...well, you get the idea.

All of them were illustrated by full-page and centerfold photos of men, artistic and raunchy, always naked, sometimes aroused.  

You saw this guy everywhere, but probably didn't realize that Cable, Stoner, and Bigg John were all the same model.  Now we know.

He was Bill Cable, born William  Laurence Cumpanas in northern Indiana in 1946.  His grandparents were from Dalmatia (now part of Croatia), and he grew up with a strong sense of his Croatian identity,   

His family moved to Los Angeles in 1950.  He played football at North Hollywood High School and the University of Nevada, but a  massive head injury forced him to quit.  In 1970, he returned Los Angeles to pursue a new career as a model.

Bill modeled in all of the famous gay magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, plus gay porn pictorials for Colt Studios and The Athletic Model Guild.  

He also appeared in straight porn pictorials, mainstream fashion ads, and the influential After Dark magazine.  And in gay postcards, which you bought with no intention of actually mailing.

He posed nude in Playgirl three times, for:

"Long Cool Summer" (July 1973)

Victoriana (November 1974)

"Beauty and the Beast" (May 1975)

Bill's movie career began with a non-speaking role as a leatherman with a whip in the gay porn Bijou (1972).  Next came some collaborations with straight pornographer Carlos Tobalina: Last Tango in Acapulco (1973), Jungle Blue (1978), and Flesh and Bullets (1985).

Sometime in the early 1970s, Bill and Carlos wrote, directed, and starred in  What's Love (restored in 1987), "which deals with the themes of romantic obsession and Christian blasphemy."  From the various synopsses, it appears that, Carlos plays a cop who gets in touch with a magical self.  Bill as Jesus seduces him and his wife. 

More after the break

Shane Gray: Stunt performer, pole vaulter, boy scout, man's man, with a potential p*enis and locker room hijinks

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Jordan Calloway: "Unfabulous" hunk, "Riverdale" jerk, supervillain, firefighter, fundamentalist. With a j/o video

In another instance of seeing the nude photos and then researching the actor, I found the j/o video of someone named Jordan Calloway, then googled his name and "gay."  There were references to his "gay kiss" and "captivating gay scenes."

Next, his Wikipedia article, where I saw that he was on Riverdale, the campy, over-the-top adaption of the venerable Archie comic books.  He played Clay Walker, Kevin Keller's boyfriend during the last season, when the gang was zapped into the 1950s.

By the way, Kevin also dated Joaquin DeSanto (Rob Raco), Moose Mason (Cody Kearsley), and Fangs Fogarty (Drew Ray Tanner, left)

Wait -- Jordan graduated from the fundamentalist Maranatha High School in 2009 and the extremely homophobic Azusa Pacific University in 2013.  How is he playing a gay character a few years later? 

Jordan's first major role was in Unfabulous (2004-07), a Nickelodeon teencom featuring a middle school girl (Emma Roberts) who has a crush on, dates, breaks up with, and reunites with a boy named Jake (Raja Fenske).  Wait -- are all of the boyfriends of teencom girls named Jake?  

Her two friends, girly girl Geena and jock Zach (Jordan), eventually fall in love with each other, so everything is tied up in a neat little heteronormative package.

Next Jordan had guest roles on Reckless, Recovery Road, House of Lies, Beyond, and Pure Genius.

Nine episodes of Freakish (2017), as Zane, who was working at the Keller Chemical Plant the day a toxic fog started killing everyone -- which happened to be the same day that he dumped his girlfriend for cheating on him.  A straight guy.

Six episodes of Riverdale (2017-18).  Except I read the Wikipedia entry wrong! Jordan didn't play Kevin Keller's boyfriend Clay, he played Chuck Clayton.  Clay-Clayton, an honest mistake.

Chuck is a horndog who lies about making it with Veronica on their date, so she and Betty trap him in a boiling hot tub and torture him into making a confession.  A straight guy.

So which of his roles featured a "gay kiss" and "captivating gay scenes"?

An article promises a "gay love story" in Drumline: A New Beat (2014): An upper-class Brooklyn girl defies her rich parents to attend college in Georgia and revitalize the "drumline."  She falls in love with her "he's arrogant!" rival, Jordan!  Straight.

The gay guys are played by Rome Flynn (who plays a straight guy in With Love) and Quentin Flair (who plays a straight guy in Welcome to Chippendales).

Left: Quentin.

More after the break

"The Treasure of Foggy Mountain": Enough beefcake and queer codes? With dicks and a random Adam Devine butt

 

Please Don't Destroy is a sketch comedy group consisting of  Ben Marshall (left), Martin Herlihy (right), and John Higgins (below), who have graduated from the short films of your dad's generation to TikTok videos.  They were hired to write for Saturday Night Live in 2021, and their first movie just dropped on Peacock: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain.  

It's recommended by Adam Devine, but I'd have to subscribe to Peacock to see it, so I've been checking trailers, synopses, and reviews for gay characters, gay subtexts, and beefcake.

The plot: Like Adam, Anders, and Blake of Workaholics, the three play "themselves" as clueless dudebros who live together, work together, and haven't quite made it to adulthood --  which in movies usually means hetero-romance.  Only Martin has a girlfriend.  

Ben wants to impress his Dad by being a business success, and John is content to play video games and drink beer.  They decide to go on one last adventure, searching for a lost treasure, a bust of Marie Antoinette worth several million dollars. 

On the way, they run afoul of a homicidal hawk (who becomes an ally), greedy park rangers, a gang, a cult, fireworks, fist-fights, and danger.  

Heterosexism:  Martin already has a girlfriend, and John falls in love with one of the cult girls.  As far as I can tell, Ben stays unattached.  

Gay Characters/Subtext: None that I could tell from the plot synopsis or reviews, but Bowen Yang, who plays the head cultist, is gay in real life and plays a lot of gay roles.  

There also might be a queer code in this scene of a communal bath: Martin and Ben are being soaped up by men, and John by a woman.  Or it could be a homophobic joke; it's hard to tell.

Beefcake: The guys are shirtless at least twice. Also, when they are learning to glide off mountaintops, with the help of their hawk buddy, John's suit busts open, and we see his penis swinging around.  

Penises after the break

Black Monday Episode 2.4: Downlow financier, closeted Congressman, and a photocopied dick in the homophobic 1980s.

 

Black Monday, October 17, 1987, is named after a stock market crash that resulted in a drop of 22.6% in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and $500 billion in losses in the U.S., 1.7 trillion dollars worldwide.  I didn't hear anything about it at the time: in West Hollywood we didn't concern ourselves with such trivial matters as finances.  But apparently in the straight world, it was a big deal.  

I still find the world of finance immensely boring, but I happened to notice that an episode of the 2019-22 Black Monday tv series showed Andrew Rannells having sex with a guy -- the scene I used as an illustration for my Gideon-Keefe fan fiction -- so I checked out Episode 2.4, "Fore."

Scene 1: Bosses Dawn, a middle aged black woman, and Blair (Andrew Rannells) , a swishy white man, show horndogs Wayne and Yassir(Horatio Sanz, Yassir X) a photocopy of an enormous penis. They've received an anonymous sexual harassment complaint.  Blair yells at them: "The women in the office don't want to look at that, and neither do I."  

And this is a bad time: Congress is about to pass deregulation, so we'll be getting generational wealth. You'll be able to set up your kids' kids' kids If Amerasavings gets wwind of this,.... Ugh, economics and politics.  Let's get some zombies up in here.

The guys protest that it wasn't them, but they are punished by being placed in the "Rubber Room" for a month, and they have to apologize to every woman in the office.  Then Blair leaves --- he has to go play golf with Congressman Roger  (Tuc Watkins, Andrew's real-life boyfriend) to ensure that he will vote for deregulation.  Dawn can't come, because she's not a white man. Wait -- he calls her "babe."  Are they romantic partners, too?

Scene 2:  The horndogs figure that they've been framed, targeted by "some lying bitch" for being the last old-school "women should enjoy getting their butts grabbed" horndogs in the office. Their plan: find out who issued the bogus complaint, apologize, and then "get revenge." 

Scene 3: Blair goes back to his apartment -- still under construction -- and starts making out with his boyfriend -- Congressman Roger!  

Meanwhile, a lady bursts into the office to yell at the "home-wrecking harlot" who's destroying their marriage.  She wasn't expecting a middle aged black lady: "Blair" sounds more like a young, giggly blond, like the girl from Facts of Life.   

"This is a mixup from the tits up," Dawn assures her.  Blair is a man.  He goes golfing with Congressman Roger to push for his deregulation vote.  A downlow romance!  Neither of the wives know!

"But they golf all the time, in Palm Springs, San Francisco, Fire Island,,," Gay meccas, har-har.

"Standard business trips." A perfect example of heteronormativity: gay men cannot exist, so everything must have a heterosexual explanation.

The Wife, Corky, insists: "Blair and my husband are having sex...with other women, and using each other as alibis."  Come on, no one is that stupid!

Dawn calls Blair to prove that he is playing golf -- just as he is about to.... The wives will be driving out to the country club to meet them on the golf course.  "um...what hole are you in?"  Har-har.

Uh-oh, Blair knows nothing about golf, and it's too late to learn!

Scene 4: The horndogs try to play "good cop/bad cop" while interrogating the women. Except Yassir thinks they're supposed to both be bad cops, because "all cops are bad."

Scene 5: On the way to the country club, Wife Corky complains that Congressman Roger has betrayed her with a "nancy."  Dawn insists that Blair isn't gay, but Wife  Corky meant "a Nancy Reagan," who stole future President Reagan away from his first wife, Jane Wyman. Har-har.

She does happen to be the daughter of a Jerry Falwell-like homophobic televangelist.  He sells a special cologne that can "spray the gay away."

More after the break

Maxwell Jenkins: The "Lost in Space" guy all grown up, hanging with Kevin Bacon, doing acrobatics, and showing his abs

 

I was surprised to discover that Kevin Bacon's son on The Bondsman (2025) is played by Maxwell Jenkins, Will Robinson on the Lost in Space reboot, all grown up and rather buffed.

Wait -- how did that happen.  Isn't he a little kid?

Time for a profile.

Born in 2005, Max and his sister Samantha grew up performing in the Midnight Circus with their parents, Jeffrey and Julie Jenkins.  A 2017 newspaper article states that they had raised $900,000 for the Chicago Parks

Max still performs on occasion, but his first love is the theater.  He began appearing on camera in the tv series tv series Betrayal (2013-14), about a woman cheating on her husband.  Probably playing her young son.

Then came guest spots on Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Sensate, Joe Bell, and Family Man.

And Lost in Space (2018-21), a dramatic take on the 1960s camp classic, with many colonists, not just the Robinsons, zapped onto a weird alien planet -- or two or three, as the series progressed.

I didn't actually care for it -- too much angst and agony, and not enough beefcake.

Although Toby Stephens, who played Will's dad John Robinson, has displayed his cock and butt elsewhere.

More after the break