Snakes and Ladders: A teacher and her gay son squabble with a chocolate heir, the Spanish counsul, and a closeted hunk. With Roque and Nico dicks

 I've never played the game "Snakes and Ladders" but apparently you move your piece up by landing on ladders and down by landing on snakes.  It's the title of several tv series and movies, most recently the Mexican Serpientes y Escaleras on Netflix. The promo shows a femme guy with orange hair at a party, heading for the bathroom, encountering a conservative guy ("on the right"), and having a conversation with awesome sexual tension. Ok, so let's go, Episode 1.1.

Scene 1: Some kids playing in a school yard.  A boy with blue eyeglasses and a girl get into a tussle, while the playground monitor looks horrified and the narrator tells us that "ethics" means "moral character," following the norms of the society. 

Cut to the Playground Monitor, aka the Prefect  putting on her prim schoolmarm outfit and walking through her mansion to kiss her pink-haired son.  He promises to come to lunch later.  She writes "I Deserve to Be Headmistress" in her notebook (aha, a micro-authority position, like Vice Principal), drives past the Millenium Arches that identify her city as Guadalajara, and arrives at the Colegio Andes (a grade school), only to find her friend Roque (Alfredo Gatica) passing out fliers for her competitor.

The Prefect yells at him. He responds: "She asked.  What could I do?"

N*de photos of Alfredo after the break.

Scene 2: She is called to the Headmistress's office to meet the parents of the blue-eyeglassed boy: Dad is the super-handsome Vicente (Martino Rivas, top photo and left) aka His Excellency Don Vicente Garcia, the Spanish Counsul.  Uh-oh, super-powerful.

The girl's father is dorky-looking Mr. Muriel, aka the Chocolate King, the head of Mexico's biggest chocolate company. 

Mr. and Mrs. Counsul claim that the girl grabbed the boy's testicles, which constitutes sexual assault. 

Chocolate King: "No way!  She's six years old,  too young to know about such things!"

The Prefect was there, but couldn't see well enough to affirm or deny that it happened.

Headmistress adjourns the meeting until tomorrow, and then yells at the Prefect: "You will write a statement indicating that you saw exactly what happened, and it will be what the Counsul wants to hear!"

The kids are still friends, but the parents forbid them from seeing each other again. In other news: Mr. Muriel is the ex-lover of Vicente's wife, and thinks that she came back to rekindle their romance. "No, my husband got a job here.".  Maybe he was better looking in the old days.

Scene 3: The Prefect and her friend discuss whether to say that the daughter did it or not.  The Chocolate King is the most popular parent in the school, but the Spanish Counsul!

At home, her bigoted, abusive ex-husband is visiting. There's a problem with their pink-haired son, Antonio: he's been gambling, and owes a lot of people money -- the Mafia!  She doesn't believe him.  They argue about who is the worse parent.  Then Antonio comes in and asks to borrow a little money. They start yelling at him: "I've raised you under the framework of ethics and morality!"

Uh-oh, the Chocolate King arrives in his limo, so Prefect tells them both to go out smiling, as if they're the perfect family.

Scene 4: The Chocolate King wants the Prefect to say that his daughter didn't do it, so she's not stigmatized as a sex offender at age six. 

When the Prefect balks, he gives the back story: Once he was engaged to Mrs. Garcia.  Then he got another girl pregnant, so he had to marry her instead.  She went to Spain, married Counsul Garcia, and now she's back, trying to prove that her husband has a bigger cock.  

"Here's my card. Call me if you have any wish you want me to fulfill.  And believe me, I can fulfill them all."  Whew, this dude is creepy.

Scene 5: The Prefect consults a Tarot card reader, who says that she's not going to make Headmistress. "But a week ago, they said I would make it.  What happened?"  The cards say: "No matter who you decide on, the other parent will try to destroy you."

Pink-Haired Antonio comes in to ask if she's thought about lending him the money. The Prefect: "I'm tired of trying to make you a good person.  I'm done."

"But I'm in danger."

"Tough. I have my own problems."

Scene 6: The second meeting with the parents, where the Prefect has to tell "what really happened."  Her verdict: it was a minor scuffle.  If the girl did it, she had no malicious intent. So we won't do an expulsion, but we'll transfer the boy to another class.

The Counsul is irate: "This is going to reach the King's ears." He means King Felipe VI of Spain.  Are we going to start a war over a testicle-grab?

The parents storm out.  The Headmistress is irate. 

Outside, the Chocolate King wants to know why the Prefect decided the way she did. "It was the right thing to do."  He promises to help her win over the mothers in her quest to become Headmistress: "I'm popular with the mother. I'm handsome, rich, and widowed."  Handsome?  You're a gargoyle, dude.  He's having a party tonight with a lot of mothers.  Maybe she can come?

More after the break

Rob Gronkowski: Football legend eats pancakes, fellates a beer can, shows us his hands, dick, and butt

 

This guy is named The Gronk.  I have no idea what, if anything, he's famous for, but he's apparently gay....and breath-taking.   

Perfect face.  Perfect physique.

Time for some research:

He's a football player named Rob Gronkowski.

 6'6",  265-pounds, hands 10 inches

You got anything else that's 10 inches, buddy?

A tight end: he blocks the running back and protects the quarterback durng passes.  

And fields a lot of jokes about his butt.

His stats, in case you're interested:

9 seasons with the New England Patriots (2010-2018)

2 seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2020-21)

4-time Superbowl champ

4-time First Team All-Pro Selection

On the NFL 100th Anniversary All Time Team, along with some football players that I've heard of: O. J. Simpson, Johnny Unitas, Jim Brown, Dick Butkus (but I always thought he was a joke).

Here Gronk trains with the exceptionally ab-worthy fitness Youtuber Jesse James West.

But Gronk an actor, too, with 23 credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of Family Guy, Entourage, Deported, How I Met Your Father, Animal Control, and The Electric State, usually playing himself.

More after the break

Chad Mountain: Matthew McConaughey's longtime associate, with "Tropic Thunder," "The Righteous Gemstones," pecs, and cocks

 

In his autobiography, Green Light, Matthew McConaughey tells us that he's "tired of being talked about like that guy with a naked torso."  So here's his naked torso.

He thanks Chad Mountain "for listening."  A review refers to Chad Mountain as his "longtime associate," which sounds suspiciously like "longtime companion."  

So who is this Chad Mountain?   He grew up in Washington DC, and is first listed on the IMDB as "Marijuana Jesus" in the Gregg Araki movie Smiley Face (2007).  He has 15 acting credits, including The Righteous Gemstones,  four producing, and one writing: the comedy short Coming Out.  A gay guy comes out to his friends, who are delighted and try to pimp him out with extravagant gay stuff: "flamboyance, impatience, a need for impeccable service, brutal honesty about other people's weight," and so on.

Chad and Matt probably became friends when they appeared  together in Tropic Thunder (2008).  They have also worked together in  Surfer, Dude (2008),  Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009), comedy shorts, and a sitcom pilot

Chad's instagram page is full of hints that he is gay.   A fan responded to the top photo by asking for stories of "your ball hitting the water."

Left: Chad says "two living legends. I'm talking about the men, not my pecs, although those healthy B-cups are getting more notoriety every day." Is it a gay innuendo to refer to your pecs as if they are women's breasts?

Here Chad visits Matt on his 50th birthday in 2019: fans asked where his hand is and why he cropped the photo "just above the bongos." 

I doubt that they are really doing sexy stuff-- Matt is married, after all.  

More after the break

Alexander Polinsky: Adam on "Charles in Charge" grows up, models props, goes Furthur. With Andrew Keegan, Julian Sands, and some d*cks

 I get a lot of page views with profiles of former child stars and teen idols who have gone on to a hunk adulthood, so naturally I was drawn to Charles in Charge (1984-1990), with Scott Baio as a college student working as a live-in nanny in...um...a household full of teenage girls far too old for a nanny.

There were boys around, too, but Jonathan Ward and Michael Pearlman from the 1984-85 version can't be found.  That leaves Alexander Polinsky, who appeared as Adam Powell in 104 episodes in the second version (1986-90).  

The show was focused on Charles, his buddy Buddy (Willie Aames), and the two teenage girls, so Adam didn't get a lot of centrics: he is harassed by a bully, gets a crush on a girl, takes a babysitting job.  I recall one episode where Adam has to explain that he doesn't like playing football.  He starts off with a list of the sports he does like, lest Charles get the idea that he is a sissy/ gay.

Left: Alex with fellow 1990s teen stars Stephen Dorff and Brian Austin Green

After Charles, the 14-year old had guest spots on Billy (about a Scottish comedian), The New Lassie (about a dog), and Joe's Life (about a stay-at home Dad), and starred in Pumpkin II: Blood Wings (1994): teenagers accidentally unleash an ancient demon, who kills them all except the Final Girl.

In Perfect Fit (2000), Dick (Alex) "turns to murder" to satisfy his girlfriend, a blue jean fetishist. 

Former Colt model and soap stud Nick Benedict appears as Thomas, one of the jeans donors.

Since the 2000s, Alex has been involved mostly in his prop modeling and voiceover animation: 

Control Freak in Teen Titans

Garrett in Alpha Teens on Machines

Chameleon Boy in Legion of Superheroes.

Jimmy Olsen in Batman: The Brave and the Bold

Unicorns 1 and 2 in Breadwinners

Several characters in Monster High: the Series

He returned to live action for the the anthology movie Locker 13 (2014).  In Segment 3, Alex plays a mental patient considers jumping off a building, until the fast-talking Jason Marsden tells him about a Suicide Club, where members bet on when and how people will off themselves.

Ricky Schroder appeared in another segment as a down-and-out boxer who finds sinister gloves that let him win every match -- for a price.

Roger Ebert.com tells us: "Rarely do I find a movie that is so appalling if not outright insulting to all of humanity (and particularly, in this case, womankind) that it gives me a stomach ache, but Locker 13 really put me off my Cobb Salad."

Still, Alex highlights his segment in his acting demo reel.

Alex has one writing/producer credit: Going Furthur (2016), 1966-67, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters took a psychedelic bus called Furthur up and down the West Coast, offering Acid Tests to introduce the youth counterculture to LSD. 

50 years later, Ken's son Zane and new Merry Pranksters repeat the trip (without the LSD), visiting "music festivals, community events, tribal festivals, and national landmarks."

This one sounds interesting.

More after the break

The Answer to the Naked Man's Question

 

Today summer lasts for 12 weeks; I can see its beginning and end.  But when I was nine years old, lasted for months or years, or never ended: somewhere it's still that childhood summer, an endless succession of days, all bright green and dazzling.  

A week in Indiana, visiting my parents' family.

A week camping in Minnesota and Canada.  

Nazarene summer camp.  

Swimming lessons at Longview Park Pool.

The bookmobile every Tuesday. 

The Denkmann School Carnival.

  

Malts at Country Style. 

Vacation Bible School

Gold Key comic books at Schneider's Drug Store.

Dark Shadows.  H.R. Pufnstuf.  Tarzan Theater.

Posters of teen idols.

And the Naked Man's Question:

 All on a golden afternoon, probably a Saturday in July, in my Grandma's farmhouse in northern Indiana.  It's a big house, white frame.  The living room is pink, with flowered wall paper and thick drapes.

My brother and I are alone.  I don't remember why.  Maybe Mom and Dad have gone off somewhere, on an expedition of their own, leaving Grandma Davis to babysit, and she has stepped out.

We have just come in from something or other -- puttering around in the apple orchard, playing fetch with the dogs next door, exploring the old barn where Grandpa used to milk cows.  We kick off our shoes at the door.  

Maybe we're going to head up to our room which happens to be Dad's old room, with his pictures and schoolbooks and baseball glove), or up to the attic to sort through the bundles of old magazines in search of comic books.

I stop in front of the tv set, a big piece of furniture, wood-brown, with curved pillars on the sides.  There's an empty candy dish and a photo of my Cousin Phil on top. 

At our house the tv is almost always on, whether anyone is watchng or not, a stable, comforting background noise.  But Grandma keeps it off unless someone wants to watch a specific program.  It seems unnatural, wrong somehow.

I reach down and turn it on.

Kenny asks "What do you want to watch?"

I shrug. "I don't know.  Maybe Tarzan Theater."  On Saturday afternoons in Rock Island, when there isn't a game on, you can see old Tarzan and Bomba the Jungle Boy movies.

The black and white screen flickers, and then pops on.  A game.

I turn it to the next channel.  Some people talking.

"Find some cartoons," Kenny suggests.

There are only three channels, so only three choices.  I turn to the third.

A naked man.

In my memory he's naked, although he was probably wearing a leotard.  Shirtless, though, with taut hard pecs and very thick hard biceps.

You never saw naked or even shirtless men on tv in those days, except in Tarzan movies, so I stand dumbstruck, frozen in place, realizing that I will remember this moment forever.

"What's this?" Kenny asks.

The naked man twirls and high-steps, bulging his bare calves, across a bare stage to a young blond woman.  Then, dancing a sort of tap dance, he asks "Who....are...youuuuuu?"

She starts a tap dance of her own, dances in front of him, and says "I....don't...know. Who...are...youuuuu?"

He stops dancing and glowers at her, his eyes dark, and replies.  "I am the Magic Mushroom."

At that moment, Grandma appears at the window leading to the kitchen.  "There's nothing for kids on now," she says. "Turn the tv off."

"Wait...I..."  I begin.   But Kenny obligingly turns it off.  

"Now who wants to help me bake a pie for dinner tonight?"

All in a golden afternoon.

More after the break

"Sinners": Twin brothers fight vampires and klansmen in the Mississippi Delta. With Jordan junk and O'Connell cock

For movie night this weekend, we actually went to a movie in a theater, for a change: Sinners (2025), about twin brothers fighting vampires in the Mississippi Delta in 1932.

The first hour is quite naturalistic: Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in a dual role) return to the Deep Delta from their gangster career in Chicago with a lot of money and Irish booze, buy the old abandoned mill from a klansman who says he's not a klansman, and organize a juke party. We get the sense of the vast emptiness of the cotton fields, and the terror of everyday life for African-Americans in the Jim Crow South.  

You had to be very careful; glance at or speak to a white woman, accidentally bump into a white man, and you would be attacked.  Gay people live with a similar fear -- hold hands with your boyfriend or display a Pride flag, and you could get attacked or killed.  But at least heteronormativity ensures that most gay people are assumed straight, and can keep hidden in the riskiest situations.  Most African-Americans could not.

Left: Michael B. Jordan

The brothers pick up Preacher Boy (Miles Caton), who is torn between the church and the guitar (which his Preacher father calls Satanic).  After he agrees to perform tonight, they split up.  

Stack and Preacher Boy go to town, where they recurit another performer, the elderly, alcoholic Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo).

They hire shopkeeper Bo Chow (Yao) to make up signs and fry the catfish.

Left: Malaysian actor Yao received a MFA from Yale University in 2023.  He played a gay character in #LookatMe (2022).

They pull Cornbread (Omar Miller) from the cotton fields to act as bouncer.

The brothers are so intimate that I was sure that one or both would be gay, but heteronormativity is running rampant.  Both of them, and Preacher Boy, get girlfriends, whom they have s*x with, one after the other.

1. Stack with his ex-girlfriend Mary, who is an octaroon (one-eighth black), so Jim Crow laws still apply to her.

2. Smoke with his estranged wife Annie (Wummi Musaku).  She's rather old , so I thought she was his mother until they started doing things.  

She's also quite butch, so I figured that the actress must be a lesbian. LezWatch says that she is cisgender, unspecified sexual identity, but she has played at least three queer characters.

3. Preacher Boy with Pearline, a married singer.  Fortunately, her husband isn't around. 

It keeps going like that.  Bo Chow has a wife (we learn their favorite s*xual activity).  Cornbread has a pregnant wife.  Delroy Slim isn't married, but discusses the hetero exploits of his youth.

Left: Michael A. Newcomer, who plays a bartender in a white joint, is gay in real life.  

Vampires after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.6 Deep Reading: a frame-by-frame analysis of the sex scene

 

In case you're new here, The Righteous Gemstones is a HBO Max sitcom about the famous, ultra-rich televangelist Eli Gemstone and his three children, who live in separate mansions on his compound and get into constant squabbles and scrapes.  But of course they love each other deep-down.  Kelvin (Adam Devine) is the youngest son, 29-34 years old during the four seasons, a muscle enthusiast who usually works in the low-prestige teen ministry, and has to constantly prove himself.  Keefe (Tony Cavalero), a former Satanist whom he saved, is his boyfriend.  

Kelvin has a standard fiction coming-out process, one that we've seen a hundred times in movies and tv-shows.

Season 1: Falling in love with his best friend, sexual experiences, feeling guilty, denial, then recognizing that he is gay.

Season 2: Becoming obsessed with the erotic, refusisng to admit that he and Keefe are romantic partners, eventually coming around and coming out to the family.

Season 3: Trying hard to stay in the closet, refusing to call Keefe his boyfriend, leading to their breakup and reconciliation, and a kiss.  

The problem is, up to the Season 3 kiss and even after, many viewers insisted that the two were straight buddies.  The queer codes were all misdirections or misreadings.

Which brings us to Season 2, Episode 6: Kelvin is standing naked in front of the mirror; distraught:  he has lost the respect of the God Squad, his cadre of muscle men; his father hates him; he is worthless, nothing, no better than a beast.  Keefe suggests that he will feel better if he gets dressed for the day.  His hands are broken, so Keefe will have to dress him.

What happens next is about as explicit as a sex scene can get on television, yet some viewers insisted, that Keefe is just helping Kelvin on with his underwear.  Even after Season 4, when they two are out as boyfriends and eventually get married, viewers insist that they were not sexually active until the after the wedding.  

Maybe a frame-by-frame analysis will convince them.

1: Kelvin turns around.  Keefe kneels in front of him, and says "Now step into your Tommy Johns."  Instead, Kelvin reaches out with both hands and pulls Keefe's head forward.  

2: Kelvin guides Keefe's head down, and grimaces and groans as he begins oral sex.  Sometimes it's very sensitive, at first.

 3: A sharp breath, and then Kelvin cries out in pleasure.  Adam is obviously simulating having an orgasm.  Notice that Keefe's head is no longer visible, as he's going way down, but Kelvin is still guiding his actions.  You would steady yourself for putting on underwear by grabbing your friend's shoulders, not his head.

4: Fatigued and disheveled after all his effort, Keefe swallows (you heard me, he swallows) and whispers "Nice."  This is not the point at which you would usually do that, but remember, this is all simulated.

More oral after the break