"The Feast of the Seven Fishes": All of the tropes I hate, but I still liked it. With Skyler Gisondo and bonus Italian dicks

 

The Feast of the Seven Fishes just dropped on Netflix.  All I know is that it's a Christmas movie starring Skyler Gisondo, so the likelihood of gay characters or even subtexts is minimal.  I'm going to watch anyway.

Scene 1: Beautiful establishing shots of a mining town in West Virginia, winter 1983.  I loved that year!  Madonna, Michael Jackson, "I'm Coming Out," Tom Cruise, Family Ties, Mama's Family.  Tony (Skyler Gisondo) is painting by the river and gazing at his acceptance letter from a prestigious art school.  Angelo (Andrew Schultz, below) and his penis, "Mr. Boner," stop by to tell him about a party with girls desperate to have sex with any guy who asks.  "Nope."

Well, how about coming along on his date?  There will be extremely horny girls there, too. "Nope."  If I didn't know from the plot synopsis that he has two girlfriends, I'd have pegged Tony as gay.

Scene 2: Back in his shabby working-class home, Pap tries to get Tony drunk on homemade hooch. We cut to a super-elegant mansion, where a super-elegant rich girl named Beth yells at her even-richer  boyfriend Prentice (Allen Williamson, left) for backing out of his promise to spend Christmas with the family.  He's going skiing with his friends instead. Prentice, baby, the first rule of relationships -- never leave them alone at Christmas. They'll be screwing someone else by Boxing Day. 

Mom is upset: "You'll never land a rich husband with that attitude!  Like all men, he prefers the company of other men."  So all men are gay?  Beth wants a husband who will spend time with her.  That's what gay bffs are for, girlfriend.

Scene 3: Beth hanging out with her Italian-American friend, complaining about this whole "get a rich husband" thing.  They smoke pot.  

Meanwhile, Tony's Uncles Carmine and Frankie (Ray Arbruzzo, left) are stocking up on booze, when they see Tony's ex, Katie, throwing herself at a truck driver.  They discuss her boobs for several minutes before getting around to complaining about her post-breakup downward spiral.

Cut to Juke (Josh Helman, left and below), the family intellectual, telling his buds about the Feast of the Seven Fishes, although they obviously already know.  He stops to complain about not having a girlfriend, which is especially tough at Christmas. Foreshadowing -- ten to one he gets with Katie, the one with the big boobs.

Scene 4: Rich-girl Beth and her friend,  incredibly high, stare at the menu at a hot dog restaurant, trying to decide what to order.  How about hot dogs?  They discuss going to a party tonight, but all of the parties are full of girls desperate to have sex with any boy who asks, so they'll get groped and prodded all the time. "Well, maybe I'll do a little groping," the friend jokes.  Ok, this is a lesbian.

Nope.  "I've been dating this guy and his penis." Wait -- her boyfriends are "Come along on my date tonight" Angelo and Mr. Boner.  And they have this cousin: "Cute, nice, smart..."  A gay guy would immediately ask "How big is his cock?"  

Maybe Rich-girl Beth could dump her Christmas-hating boyfriend for Tony? Or at least seduce him and then dump him on New Year's Day? 

Scene 5: At his parents' grocery store, Tony yells at Vince (Cameron Rostami) for being late. They argue and fight until Dad breaks them up and yells at Tony for being too hard on the kid. So, baby brother?  They discuss his future running the family business.  Uh-oh, Tony hasn't told the folks about art school!   

 Cut to Vince walking home.  His Uncles, who were buying booze and discussing Katie's boobs  earlier, give him a ride. See how intricately everybody is interconnected?

They arrive at Tony's house in time for dinner.  Dad yells at them for not bringing any "v.o."  "Well, you didn't ask for any."  "It's Christmas -- we always get v.o."  The family so far consists of Dad, Mom, Grandma, two uncles,  Juke, Vince. Tony, Cousin Angelo, and his penis.

Meanwhile,  Tony, Cousin Angelo, his penis, and the friend (Sarah) are on their way to pick up Rich-girl Beth.  They discuss the horrors of Catholic school, with those sadistic nuns, and then wonder why Beth would be into an Italian.  "Is she getting extra credit in anthropology class."

How about that? I'm out of space.  But you know what's going to happen, right? Tony and Beth, Juke and Katie, the end.

Beefcake: None.  But no half-naked girls either, not even at the strip club where Katie works (we just see the back entrance).

Other Sights: Beautiful exteriors and a lot of food cooking, mostly the seven kinds of seafood traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve.

Gay Representation:  No, except for an occasional line that could be taken as suggestive.  No homophobia either, except for an occasional "fruit."

Plot: Mostly conversations and food preparation.  Minimal conflict: Grandma doesn't like Beth because she thinks all Protestant girls are prostitutes, Beth's mom and boyfriend try to get her back, Tony breaks the news of art school.  Very predictable, to the point of being clunky. 

My Grade: This movie had most of the tropes I hate: "small towns are superior to big cities"; "family is everything"; "girls are the meaning of life"; "gay people do not exist."  But for some reason I still liked it, maybe because everyone is so genial.  B-

Bonus Italian dicks after the break

Tony's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 1: Boner pills, Death Water, dildos, and "Why the hell not?"

 

This is a collection of hot or humorous photos of Tony Cavalero.  I've already posted the available dick and butt photos, but not to worry, there are some dicks and butts of other guys.

1. "I'll be home late.  They want to re-shoot the scene with my cock out, so half the crew will be asking for a close-up.

2. You post these beefcake photos, and expect me to settle down?  Dude, that's impossible.

3. Tony plays a hijacker on an episode of the spy spoof Archer. Kayvan Novak plays Fabian Kingsworth, the head of a rival agency.

4. In Keep Hope Alive, a progressive senatorial candidate dies, and her aides, Tony and Timothy Granaderos, try to Weekend-at-Bernies her. 

5. "I thought dildos were supposed to be bigger than your dick."

6. You definitely want this photo of Tony in an "American born and bred" t-shirt, his belly and underwear showing, drinking Liquid Death water under the Hollywood sign.  Don't pretend that you don't.

More Tony after the break. Warning: Explicit

Blair's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 2: Only his abs and dick stay the same

This is a collection of hot/hung and humorous photos of Blair Jackson, the actor/model who became Kelvin's nemesis in Righteous Gemstones Episode 1.4, "Wicked Lips." Only one of the nude photos is actually Blair.

1. Teenage abs.

2. Grown-up abs.

3. Austin from "Wicked Lips" goes cruising. 

4. Going blond.

5. Blair's Starry Night.

6. You weren't looking at his face, anyhow.

More Blair after the break. Warning: explicit.

Brad Pitt: Nice abs, but Adam Devine has a bigger dick

 

Brad Pitt has been part of our lives since his cowboy hitchhiker took off his shirt in Thelma and Louise (1991). A short list of his most beloved movies has to include Interview with the Vampire, Legends of the Fall, Fight Club, Ocean's Eleven, World War Z, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Only one gay role -- The Normal Heart (2014) -- but lots of gay subtexts, from vampires to con artists to imagniary friends.

Brad is regularly listed as the hottest man alive or the sexist man alive, and he doesn't appear to age -- in 2023 he's still as buffed as he was is 1993.  And, fortunately for us, he's not shy about showing off his physique on camera.

The only nudity we've seen is his butt, while sexing a lady to detract from the hotness.

Cocks after the break

"You're the Worst" Episode 3.1: A homophobic rapper hooks up with a gay stereotype, plus Stephen Schneider and some butts

 

To see if Stephen Schneider (Stephen Downes of Season 3) has played any gay characters, I googled his name and "gay," and this clip came up on youtube.  He's not in it.

A blond guy and a woman are standing at an apartment door . He asks "He never gave you the key?"  She says no, so he bangs.  

A very muscular black guy in his underwear answers. Shocked, he says "Oh...shit.  Hey guys."

Blondie: "What the hell are you doing?"   

Muscle Guy: "Sorry.  We needed a place."

Woman: "For what?"

A swishy guy appears with a flourish, also in his underwear.  They stare in shock.  

Woman (Disgusted): "You're GAY????"

Muscle Guy (Upset): "No!!!!!  But this n-word's son sucks really good dick."  So the gay guy has a black parent?

The whole exchange -- the looks of shock and disgust, the need to defend yourself against the horrifying accusation, the gay guy's pronounced swishiness --- displays just the sort of jaw-dropping homophobia that I hate running into at 4:00 am.

The caption reads: You're the Worst - Brandon Mychal Smith.  So let's look it up. 

You're the Worst is a tv series that lasted for five years on FX (2014-2019), but was so under-exposed that I don't recall seeing a single commercial.  Most episodes drew between .2 and .5 million viewers.  It featured a romance between two horrible people, writer Jimmy (Chris Geere, the Blond Guy in the clip) and public relations person Gretchen.  

The homophobic scene is from Episode 1.3, "Keys Open Doors."  TO put it in context, I watched the whole episode. 

Scene 1: Morning.  After a night of carousing, Jimmy and Gretchen are lying naked, asleep, on the ground outside his house.

Cut to Jimmy pooping (butt shot) while Gretchen uses the hand nozzle of the shower to masturbate.  Jimmy notes that he uses it too, in his butt.

They've spent six or seven nights together, so Gretchen wants a key to his apartment.  He refuses, so she rushes out in passive-aggressive rage. 

Scene 2: Edgar (Desmin Borges, left and below), Jimmy's horrible roommate, cooks breakfast.  They discuss the key request as a symbol of banality and predictability, leading to "shopping for sconces at Williams-Sonoma."

Scene 3: At the coffee shop, Gretchen and her friend Lindsay discuss the key request,  Lindsay's husband cheating, and "snorting in her vag."  So she's bisexual?  

Her assistant rushes in with a crisis: Sam the Rapper gave an interview to a college newspaper, and used "gay" and "faggot" 37 times!   And the interviewer was the president of the gay student association!  So, if he said all that to a straight person, it would be fine?

More after the break

"The Package": A movie about a penis, with bonus penis pics. What could go wrong?

You recall that Adam Devine rarely goes more than a sentence or two without mentioning his penis?  In 2018, he and the guys produced The Package, a movie about, well, a penis. He didn't write or direct, but still, it's about a penis.  I can't wait. 

Scene 1: Sean (Daniel Doheny) is carefully putting on his pants while in the kitchen, Mom slices up an eggplant (foreshadowing, anyone?).  His bud Donnie (Luke Spencer Roberts, ginger) picks him up for a camping trip.  Uh-oh, he's hacked into the family's tv to show them fat lady porn.  Gross!  He then criticizes Sean's shorts, which cover "your belly button but not your balls."  Sean criticizes his moustache, but Donnie counters that with the 1980s nostalgia craze, he'll be "swimming in puss."  Ok, these guys are hetero, but...a penis!

Left and below: Google says that this is Luke Spencer Roberts.  I think it's really someone else named Luke Roberts.  But I've never heard of either of them before, so what's the difference?   

Scene 2: Next they pick up Jeremy (Eduardo Franco, who you may know from The Binge).  They criticize him for being a virgin, and he counters by pretending to jerk off with a walking stick.  

They are outraged because he invited some girls!  Donnie wanted it to be guys only.  I hear that.  The girls happen to be Donnie's ex and Jeremy's twin sister/

By the way, Jeremy has a girlfriend, too, but only online.  The guys think he's being catfished by a guy.  Ten to one he'll come out as gay.

Top photo: When you google "Eduardo Franco" and "nude," you get Nino Ceperkovic.  I don't understand why.

Jeremy insists that Sean have sex with his sister, because as twins they share a psychic bond, and he'll feel it too.  Sean finds this disgusting, but only because it would be psychic-incestuous, not because it would be homoerotic.  Now I know that Jeremy is gay!

Scene 3: On the way to the campsite, they make fun of Donnie for sharting during blow jobs.  Donnie counters by sending Sean a photo that makes it look like he is giving a blow job to his crush's ex boyfriend.  Thankfully, Sean is not offended; he laughs. 

Jeremy leads them "deep up Mother Nature's puss."  I don't care for the vagina references.  Let's hear more about cocks!

Left: Daniel Doheny, who apparently played a gay character in something called Alex Strangelove.  I haven't seen it.  Who wants to be told that gay love is weird, bizarre, abnormal, strange?

They set up camp and divide into boy and girl groups.  Everyone is obsessed over getting Sean to screw his crush.  He had a chance with her at the Rent cast party: she touched his thigh and invited him onto the roof for sex, but he couldn't stand up because he had a boner: "You were cock blocked by your own cock!"  Rent has gay characters.  These guys know that LGBT people exist. 

The pressure for Sean and his crush to screw continues into the night.  Finally they are eating s'mores around the campfire.  Jeremy goes off to piss; the guys follow to mess with him.  For some reason, he is slicing through his stream with the knife he showed them earlier...and when the guys distract him, he accidentally slices his dick off!  It flies off against the full moon.  

Sean climbs to a cliff, calls 911, and orders a medevac.  Now they just have to keep Jeremy from bleeding out, and find the penis!

Complications:  They find it, but it suffers a lot of damage before the medevac comes.  One of the girls throws up on it.  Another tries to roast it over the campfire (idiot!).  Finally they put it on ice. 

Then the medevac leaves, but they send it off with the wrong ice chest!  They still have the penis!  They have to get it to the hospital within the 12 hour time frame.

Mishap after mishap.  Their cellphones are destroyed.  They get lost hiking down the mountain. They fall into a river.  They run afoul of a hetero-sleazy little boy (Chance Hurstfield, who has grown up a bit).  His Dad attacks, thinking that they molested him.  The penis is bitten by a snake, so Sean has to suck the venom out (fortunately, there are no homophobic "giving a blow job" references).  

A convenience store clerk helps them clean the dick, thinking that Jeremy is a soldier injured in the line of duty.  When he discovers that they are high school students, he goes ballistic and shoots arrows at them. "The only dicks I touch are mine and my husband's."  This is apparently a "Gay people exist!  Hilarious!" joke.

Then the penis is attached to a redneck (Blake Anderson): his own was cut off by his girlfriend!  I don't think that's possible. Fortunately, she comes in and cuts it off again, so they can give it to Jeremy.

Conclusion: The two couples reunite.  Jeremy's on-line girlfriend is real after all.  Darn, I thought he was going to come out as gay.  The end.

My Grade: This movie is not about penises, it's about three heterosexual couples falling in love.  Watching disgusting things happen to a 3-inch cylinder is not as homoerotic as I thought.  Not at all funny.  No gay characters or subtexts -- well, except for the convenience store guy, and he was only gay as the punchline of a joke.  A big, big disappointment. F

Bonus penises after the break

Game Over, Man: Five minutes of Adam's dick. What's not to like?

Shortly after the end of Workaholics, the guys (Adam Devine, Anders Holm, Blake Anderson) played about the same characters in Game Over, Man (2018), moving their shenanigans into a hostage crisis in a high-rise hotel.  The reviews were unfailingly horrible, 18% on Rotten Tomatoes. Their goofiness conflicts with a jarringly grim, violent plotline, there's way too much vulgarity, disgustingly graphic deaths, a severed penis used as a prop, torture by rimming (wait -- is that torture or a pleasant Saturday night?), plus horrifying homophobia.  I'm afraid to watch the whole movie, but I'll review a scene that the Roger Ebert.com reviewer criticizes as featuring "some pretty extreme homophobia."  

Remember, I walked out of Spider-Man (2002) when Tobey Maguire said "Like all stories, this story is about a boy and a girl."  Claiming that gay men and lesbians don't exist, homophobic jerk!  So this will certainly raise my hackles.

The set-up: The terrorist's henchmen, Steve Howey and Mac Brandt, are trying to kill the guys.  For some reason Adam decides to pretend that he has died of autoerotic asphyxiation, hanging in the closet with his dick in his hand. Blake and Anders hide under the bed (it would be too confusing to use character names).

 Finding the "Corpse"

The henchmen burst into the hotel room, examine Adam''s "corpse" (we get a closeup of Adam's hand on his dick).  Steve comments: "Look at this freaky fuck."

Mac: "Rest in peace, you horny bastard."

Steve worries that the job is going badly, but Mac reassures him: "By this time tomorrow, we'll be sipping Coronas in Cabo."  

Steve: "I don't want to see you getting hurt."

Mac: "You're sweet."

Steve: " I love you."

They kiss -- a little peck, then a big smooching thing. Adam, watching, is shocked.  Not homophobic, maybe a little heteronormative: "Wait -- gay henchmen exist?"

The Attack

The henchmen decide to do it "real quick," take off their shirts, and jump on the bed. We don't see any more of their kissing.  Guys, your pants aren't off.  Not going to have a lot of sex that way.

Blake sneaks a peek, then turns to Anders and says "Eww, right?"  Not homophobic.  Blake's character is actually gay and closeted (at this point), so he's trying to determine how a straight guy should react.

To defend themselves, the guys  throw the blanket over the couple and punch and kick them.  Anders grabs a lamp and beats Steve's head.  Blood alert. . Adam, shocked, says "I am so sorry." But you didn't do it.

Mac throws him across the room (cock shot). 

We Killed the Bad Guys

Mac punches Blake and advances on Anders: "You just killed the man of my dreams. Now you're gonna die."  Anders claims that Steve is just knocked out, but Mac throws him across the room and starts to strangle him.

Anders: "I'm sorry I killed him.  I'll be your boyfriend."

Blake throws a lamp.  Mac turns and advances on him. He ducks, and Mac flies into a dresser and is knocked unconscious.  Anders: "I think you killed him!"

Adam: "Sorry I didn't help, but we killed the bad guys!  My plan worked!" He spins his cock around in celebration. Um...so, can I get this on BluRay?

Anders: "Stop it!  Your plan didn't work!  You got them horny, and got me kicked in the chest."  Blake asks if he's all right.  Aww, fraternal love...

More after the break.