Jasper Keen: From the high desert to the Big Island to a BFA, with some gay and guy-hugging roles and a hung bro

 

I was watching the first episode of Duster on MAX (I guess back to HBO now), a sort of homage to 1970s blacksploitation movies, with Josh Holloway of Lost bicker-flirting with the Get Christie Love-type Nina (who is not credited in the cast list).  While the Crime Boss is congratulating his staff on their latest caper, the long-haired, limp-wristed, femme-ringed Sean criticizes his coworker: "You're telling me you've never had fondue?  That sh*t is clutch!"

An obviously gay guy employed by a crime family in the 1970s?  He only appears in that one scene in an episode cluttered with Duster grinning as he is drooled over by endless scantily-clad women, all of whom have either had the most incredible experience of their life with him or are looking forward to one tonight, if he can squeeze them into his schedule. 

But one scene is enough.  I had to research the actor, to see if he is gay in real life.

His name is Jasper Keen.  When he's fully clothed, he's not much to look at - those long, gaunt "rodent boy" faces are a major turn-off -- but check out those biceps and washboard abs.  

Jasper spent his early childhood Cuyamungua, New Mexico, about 15 miles north of Santa Fe,  helping his parents "fix up properties in the high desert."

In fourth grade he moved with his parents to the Big Island of Hawaii, to live off the grid on a coffee farm, "working the fully off-grid eleven acres of jungle."  (he was home schooled).

He returned for high school enrolled at the  New Mexico School of the Arts.  Before graduating, he was in about 20 plays, from Into the Woods to Little Shop of Horrors.  He received the National Young Arts Award for theater in 2015.

Next Jasper enrolled at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he appeared in the gay-themed Spring Awakening and Cascarones.  He graduated with a BFA in Acting in 2020. 

He also took an Introduction to Shakespeare class in the Orkney Islands, which resulted in roles of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Iago in Othello.

His on-screen acting begins in North Carolina, with the shorts Child's Play, Loser, Interstate 80, and Running, which has a gay theme: a man (Jim Boemio) goes for a run and ruminates on lost relationships, including one with Jasper.

Guest spots on tv followed, including episodes of Walker (2021) and Big Sky (2022).

A minor role in How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022): Some environmental activists, including Lukas Gage, Marcus Scribner, and gay actor Forrest Goodluck, plan to blow up a pipeline. 

More after the break

Overcompensating: Gay college boy wants a hetero bang to prove his worth. With no plot twists but a lot of cute guys.

Ready for another eight-episode autobiographical comedy about the young adult years of a queer comedian?  Ok, let's look at Overcompensating (2025), on Amazon Prime. Episode 1, "Lucky"

Prelude: The preteen Benny pauses and gawks at Brendan Fraser's underwear scene in George of the Jungle (1997, but he's watching a DVD later).  His sleepover friends don't like it, so he pretends that he doesn't either, and switches to Britney Spears singing "Lucky."  A hot lady!  They're all thrilled!

Scene 1: The college freshman Benny, who looks way too old for 18, awakens to athletic trophies and his Mom calling him "My perfect boy."  She means heterosexual, har har.    He climbs out of bed (nice beefcake), announces "I'm Benny, and I love pussy," does push-ups.  Benito Skinner was born in 1993, so this must be around 2011.  

Flashback: football game, prom king, and kissing his boyfriend (Lukas Gage, left who played gay guys in Companion, Dead Boy Detectives, Love Victor, Euphoria, and...well, everything)

Dad (Kyle McLachlan, who played a gay guy in Girls) bursts in wanting to toss a football around. 

Scene 2: Establishing shot of Yates College, no doubt a combination of Yale and Bates, but actually filmed at the University of Toronto.  The show is inspired by Benito's years at Georgetown University.  

Mom and Dad drop Benny off at the same moment that Carmen's parents drop her off. (Carmen is played by queer comedian, Wally Baram).  Her boyfriend  texts: "Sorry about last night. Fell asleep."  She meets giggly, vivacious blond Roommate, who enlists a random hot dad to help them carry their new vanity up to their room. Flirting with men to get what you want?  Carmen is shocked!

Scene 3: Still saying goodbye.  Benny's sister Grace appears with her boyfriend Peter (Adam DiMarco), who does that annoying faux-punch greeting and brags about his summer internship at Hawksworth Financial.  Big deal, I was an intern at Concordia Publishing House.  Grace is upset that Benny will be at the same college, and majoring in business.  He has absolutely no interest in business (secret: no one does.  You major in it to make money.)

"Dad forced me!"

"Only because you never make a choice of your own!"

Cut to Mom in Bennny's dorm room, complaining that she didn't meet his roommate. "He rows crew, so he has crazy hours."  Um...the semester hasn't started yet.  

Hug, hug, whimper, out.  My parents just dropped me off on the curb and said "Bye! See you at Thanksgiving! Or maybe Christmas.  Or...well, we'll call you."

The moment she leaves, Benny grabs his backpack and hustles out of there!  

He passes the table for the LGBT student organization, and stares longingly at the swishy leader (Owen Thiele), but is drawn away by the football of the jock Gabe (Corteon Moore, left, Ellis on From). 

Gabe and his buds note that they are on the football team, and therefore excused from attending all classes permanently.

A girl asks him to take a photo, and the guys howl and congratulate him.  "A hot chick has agreed to have s*x with you!"  Dude, why are you still closeted?  You're at an Ivy League college in 2011!  They have a gay group!  When I was in college, you would be expelled if they found out you were gay. 

He continues to stare longingly at the gay group.  The guys smile and wave, and offer him a free condom. The jocks say that it's ok to take a condom from the gays, since he'll need it for s*x with the hot chick tonight.

Head Gay Owen gives him directions to Freshman Orientation.  Darn, I thought he bolted out for some interesting reason, like that wasn't really his dorm room.  He didn't get the housing deposit in on time, so he'll have to sleep in the library...nope, he was just late.

Scene 4: Benny arrives at Freshman Orientation, ten people cross-legged on the ground, and sits next to Carmen from Scene 2.  Others include Chris (Elias Azimi) and Dean (Charlie Henry Larsen), with the goofy Kevin (Tommy Do) as moderator, almog with the bubbly Courtney and the dour Michelle. 

Whoa, here comes the Boy of His Dreams, walking in slow motion across the quad.  Dream Boy Miles is played by Rish Shah, who played a gay guy in "Torch Song Trilogy" but a straight guy in "Ms. Marvel".

"In college you can be whoever you want to be, so everybody tell the person next to you who you want to be."

Instead, Benny and Carmen give their back stories.  "I'm from Idaho."

"Idaho?  Does anyone actually live in Idaho?"  Bigot.  "Do they have, like, movie theaters? How many of your cousins have you hooked up with?"  That's Kentucky.

But she invites him to a pregame in her dorm room: "A night we won't remember with friends we won't. forgive."

More after the break

Gavin's Cute/Cool Photos, Part 2: splashing in puddles, diving in Tulum, surfing in Costa Rica. With a n*de grown-up bonus

 

Previous: Gavin's Cute/Cool Photos Part 1: Biking, boating, fishing, turning 15. Plus a random naked guy with no connection to his older brother

This is a collection of cute/cool photos of Gavin Munn, who plays Jonathan on Raising Dion and Abraham on The Righteous Gemstones.  He was under 18 in the original post, so no beefcake or nude photos, but I may have included some of his family and friends.

1. Nice sunset.

2.  Interesting mural at the Charleston airport.

3. Gavin's idea for a rainy day activity: sit in a giant puddle and invite passing cars to splash him.  Then he filmed the splashes.

4. In Tulum Gavin is ten feet underwater.  Hopefully he checked out some Mayan ruins, too.

5. Muscle bud

6. Michael Provost

More magnificent Munn after the break

Jackson Kelly: A killer doll, a killer pumpkin, a paranormal trap, nude Hicks, and a year of dicks

I was interested in profiling Jackson Kelly, who played one of the dying Civil War soldiers in Righteous Gemstones Season 4.  He was somewhat difficult to research, since there are a lot of Jackson Kellys out there, including a female adult video actor, but I finally I found some newspaper articles and podcasts from our Jackson's home town. 

Jackson grew up in Waco, Texas, the heart of the homophobic Bible Belt, and had trouble pursuing his dream: the nearest acting class was two hours away, and for auditions, his parents had to drive him six hours to Austin.  There are three theaters in Waco.

In April 2020, COVID hit, and the Vanguard College Preparatory School went online. They have a Latin Club, but no GSA, and no mention of LGBT non-discrimination.    So he packed his stuff and moved to L.A., with the full support of his parents.  If I liked to wear evening gowns, I'd be getting the heck out of Waco regardless. 

Jackson's first industry job was a production assistant for a company making commercials -- a lot of manual labor, moving stuff from here to there.  Then he began appearing in commercials and "zero-budget" independent films:

My Year of Dicks, 2022: he has one of the dicks that the girl tries to get.

Splinters, 2022: after the death of his father....f*k the Sadness

Witch Mountain, 2022: Two teens, male and female, develop psychic powers.  You see where this is heading.

Portrait of a Young Man, 2022: Jackson, the Young Man, is struggling with "his identity."  Sounds like a coming out story, but in the trailer he kisses a girl.

Hard Miles, 2023: Matthew Modine plays a social worker who organizes a 1,000 mile bicycle trip to the Grand Canyon for a group of teen convicts, including Smink, played by Jackson.

Left: Matthew Modine's butt.

The Western The Warrant: Breaker's Law, 2023, with Dermot Mulroney as the villain. Jackson plays someone named Brig Farkus.  At least he has some interesting character names.

Five episodes of Lucky Hank, 2023, a quickly-cancelled series about college English/creative writing professor Bob Odenkirk having a midlife crisis/meltdown. 

Jackson plays an aspiring novelist named Barstow Williams-Stevens. In the trailer, he throws shade at the prof during class: "You haven't said anything for an hour and a half. Would you please say something?  Your only novel isn't even available in your own campus bookstore."  The prof responds in kind, and gets in big trouble.

More after the break

The Four Seasons: Elitist New Yorkers discuss True Love, with a gay couple, a lumberjack, Vivaldi, and a n*de Len Cariou

I lived in New York for four years while studying for my Ph.D.  One thing that bothered me was the parochialism, like that New Yorker cover come to life ("View of the World from 9th Avenue," by Saul Steinberg).  Literally everywhere else in the world was a cultural wasteland.

 Everyone always asked "Where are you from?", assuming that the answer would be "Scarsdale" or "Astoria."  I said Illinois:  "Oh, Chicago!  Now that's a second rate city!  Did you eat hot dogs at (snicker, snicker).baseball games?"

"No, my town was on the other side of the state, on the Iowa border."

"Iowa!  Ma and Pa Kettle chawing tobaccy!  How old were you (snicker, snicker) when you first saw one of those newfangled auto-mobiles?"

So I started saying "Los Angeles":   "How dreadfully superficial!  All about mindless movies and puerile television!  Do you watch (snicker, snicker) the A Team?"  

The Four Seasons, on Netflix, gave me a similar vibe: parochial, elitist, condescending, so I never made it through an episode.  But from what I can gather, it features three couples who leave the City (there's only one city) for a weekend getaway Upstate (there's only one state) four times a year.  There they talk in Woody Allen witicisms and discuss romantic love.

The main question is stated in the first episode:  Does each of us get a soulmate, someone chosen by the Universe to make our lives infinitely happy forever, or do we fall in love based on physical attraction and social compatibility, and then work to maintain the relationship?   Each couple will face a crisis that illustrates some aspect of the question.  

As the clickbait links say, the answer will surprise you.  Or not.  It's the theme of every romantic movie ever made.

But you may be surprised to find that one of the couples is gay.

Couple #1, Nick and Anne (Steve Carrell of The Office, left, Kerri Kenney):  What if you no longer love your soulmate?

Nick shocks everyone when he announces that he no longer loves his wife.  "Impossible!  You're soulmates!  You're destined to be together!"

When he dumps her anyway and starts dating the much younger Ginny ("The penis wants what the penis wants), his friends are all devastated.  If a married couple can break up, how does anything have meaning?

 His daughter, who attends an Ivy League College Upstate, maybe Vassar, writes a play in which her callous, unfeeling monster of a father announces: "I hate my daughter so much.  What could I do to cause her the most pain?  I know -- I'll leave my wife, thus destroying the family and making my daughter's life meaningless forever!"

The universe also disapproves of leaving your soulmate, and retaliates by killing Nick.  This leads to the discomfort of having the ex-wife and the horrible trollope he destroyed her life for showing up at the funeral.  Such a negative attitude toward divorce seems extremely retro.   

Couple #2, Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo from Fear the Walking Dead,  famous playwright Marco Calvani, left): What if your soulmate dies?

When Danny is diagnosed with heart disease, he leaves Claude to spare him the agony of seeing his decline and death, but Claude insists on getting back together: they're soulmates, in sickness and health. Someday one of them will die and leave the other alone, but the bereaved spouse will still find infinite happiness in the memory of their time together.

By the way, they have an open relationship, and have their "I'm leaving you so you won't feel pain" argument in the midst of a threesome with the Lumberjack (Jacob Buckenmyer).

Jacob Buckenmyer, seen here in Chippendales, is straight in real life.

More after the break.

Searching for Brandon Johnston through actors, fitness instructors, Elves, twins, various naked guys, and the mayor of Chicago

 

I've been going through the posts from when this site was specific to The Righteous Gemstones, trying to make them appeal to a general audience. I did it with Dylan B., and I couldn't even use his last name.  But Brandon Johnston turned out to be a problem: 

1. The original post called him  "Johnson"

2. It records his roles rather than titles of his projects: Elf Photo Clerk,  Valet, College Student 2, Audience Member, Golf Caddie Twin, and Genius Clone. 

A search for "Brandon Johnson" on the IMDB yielded this guy, known for Ingrid Goes West and Rick and Morty.  He's middle-aged and black.  My Brandon is young and white.

Although I wouldn't mind researching this Brandon next.

Googling revealed Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago.  Probably not the same guy.

"Brandon Johnston"?  Nothing.

Searching on Facebook yielded 16,000 Brandon Johnsons/ Johnstons, including this fitness coach from Ogden Utah.  

How about "Brandon Johnson/Johnston" and "nude"?  Warning: the first hit is a big-breasted naked lady. 

The second is Bryce Johnston, who must be famous for something, since "Naked Celebrity" websites gushed over a video of him skinny-dipping, showing his butt and a very blurry dick.

But when I googled "Bryce Johnston," all I found was the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles and the heavily tattooed Father Midnight.

More Brandon, probably, after the break

What has Jak Kristowski, last seen at the Citadel with Kelton Dumont, been up to lately? Hopefully n*de modeling and meeting German guys

 

Jak Kristowski is an actor and producer who spent a day at the Citadel, South Carolina's military college, playing a cadet against Kelton Dumont's Pontius in Righteous Gemstones Episode 3.9.   His scene was cut, but he liked the military life so much that after high school he enlisted.

I didn't have enough n*de photos for a full profile, so I posted this in one of Kelton Dumont's photo collections.

Jak is still a producer, the CEO of Barn Door Productions, with Spider Man: The Dark Age (2023), which I reviewed, plus two upcoming projects:

A Letter to Let Go: "Lola is living a two-faced life," but a letter from her sister "becomes a beacon of light."  I'm going to guess that the two-faced life does not mean that Lola is a lesbian, and the letter will help her find God.

Banner: To Seek Refuge, a fan retelling of the Incredible Hulk mythos.  On the run from a federal agent obsessed with his capture, David Banner (Cal Nguyen) meets a fellow refugee. The IMDB entry doesn't say who it is.  The third person listed in the cast is Vin Massi, "bad actor, bad model, part time bodybuilder," so maybe David meets a guy for a gay-subtext buddy-bond.  

But Jak's main job now is the army.  He trained in the exclusive K-9 unit.

He is currently stationed in Germany, where he goes to all the theme parks and takes pictures of the statues of naked men.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.