Responsibility Unresponsive

Including:

DRAMA SERIES

The Americans The Crown Game of Thrones The Handmaid’s Tale Stranger Things This Is Us Westworld

LEAD ACTOR, DRAMA

Jason Bateman, Ozark Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us Ed Harris, Westworld Matthew Rhys, The Americans Milo Ventimiglia, This Is Us Jeffrey Wright, Westworld

LEAD ACTRESS, DRAMA

Claire Foy, The Crown Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid’s Tale Sandra Oh, Killing Eve Keri Russell, The Americans Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld

SUPPORTING ACTRESS, DRAMA

Alexis Bledel, The Handmaid’s Tale Millie Bobby Brown, Stranger Things Ann Dowd, The Handmaid’s Tale Lena Headey, Game of Thrones Vanessa Kirby, The Crown Thandie Newton, Westworld Yvonne Strahovski, The Handmaid’s Tale

GUEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Hey everyone. James ( @d3monicwolv3s) here. Unfortunately this isn’t one of Scott’s excited movie posts.

Monday he collapsed at work and stopped breathing. He was put in a medically induced coma. Today he was legally declared brain dead and I said my final goodbyes. I stayed as long as I could while they prepped him for organ donation. Listening to music he liked, and reading something I started to write for him for when he would wake up.

I want to thank you all.

All the good times I had with him was because of Tumblr.

I was sick with mono at the time we met. I had been sick for several months barley able to stand, and very light sensitive. Only able to look at my computer or tv for short periods of time. I waited around and didn’t say anything, no one knew. In that time no one messaged me or talked to me. I had never felt so alone at the time.

I started using Tumblr more and I believe I liked one of his posts via another user. We couldn’t remember who followed who first.

I saw he was in Dallas. He saw I was in Arlington.

He liked a bunch of my stuff and he sent me a message right away.

We messaged back and forth on here. I went through his entire blog in a day. I found things that embaressed him that he forgot he even posted. He would call me his Tumblr unicorn.

We progressed to using AIM, and shortly after we met up. He picked me up and drove me to his place (making a joke not even a block away to murder me and throw my body in a ditch lol) to hang out and took really good care of me.

We went to Dennys that first night just a block away from his apartment and he sat mortified that I got the maple bacon sundae and finished it.

I spent the whole week there.

After the weekend he went to work and left me someone he just met alone in his apartment. As he left he said “see you in a few hours.” I half asleep go “sunflowers?” I became his sunflower Prince from that day on.

His cat instantly was in my lap. He was so jealous. He said he never did that. He always chose to sit in my lap and would never sit in his. He would tell me that if anything ever happened to him that I would have to take care of him. (He’s at my house now, going to meet my cat something he always wanted to see) He would tell me how Helo saved his life. How he appeared after his mom died. How he is the reason he was still alive. That Helo and I really pulled him out of the depression of his mother dying and his fiance abandoning him.

How I embarrassed him by calling him my boyfriend first. How he was a little blind sided by it.

When he broke his arm, he felt so guilty and torn up. He said he was so lucky to have me there with him.

When I failed my pharmacy exam by a few questions. I was so upset. I had to leave my job. Even though I was jobless, I stayed at his place and he took up a second job. So we didn’t see each other as much as we’d have liked. I felt like such a failure. I had never felt so worthless. I studied so hard, and felt like I wasn’t good enough. He stayed by my side as I sobbed and beat myself up. He did his best to help me study, and I studied my ass off for two months. The soonest I could retake it. He waited in the parking lot for an hour as I retook it. He jumped and cheered for me when I passed. He told me he was so proud of me.

He always cheered me on. He always believed in me. I never felt lonely. He was constantly messaging me when we were apart. He always took an interest in things I liked, and was never shy to speak his mind. He was always so excited about new movies and tv shows and would draw me in to things I would never have experienced.

I keep thinking how fun he made everything. Even a trip to Wal-Mart. How we were never bored when we were together.

He was the World to me.

I honestly don’t know how to continue without him.

I just keep checking my phone thinking I’ll see a message or a Tumblr picture he sent me.

I keep getting prayers and asking if I need anything. I just need him back. I keep looking to the past. Dreading that lonely feeling that I know will come. The day when people stop talking to me again. How I need him to pull me out of it.

He was the good one. So why do I get to continue?

I keep thinking about our last moments. How I never got to say goodbye. How we left so much undone.

I keep thinking of how things could have been different. What I could have done. How he would still be here if I had. How I let this happen. I feel so incredibly guilty.

I know that’s not what he would want for me. I have to somehow find a way to move on. I have to take care of his cat Helo.

So for him I’ll keep doing my best. Knowing he would be cheering me on.

Because I’m medically never allowed to leave the house again, I’ve been following some strange cinematic inclinations. Last week it was Muppet Treasure Island (not that great!), and then Tootsie (moral dilemmas never solved, time frame strange, inexplicable cameo by Andy Warhol, but otherwise totally hilarious! Sharp dialogue!)

Today I watched Weird Science. Weird Science is the sort of movie that kind of appealed to the guy I used to be. Back when I was “straight” (it’s easier to think of my life as divided into “straight” and gay, even if there is a strong argument to be made for “you were always gay”, so don’t fight me on this. Put “straight” in inverted commas and you’re happy), one of my favourite TV shows was Weird Science. I was eight. I’m not sure if I was in love with Vanessa Angel, as I would later convince myself that I was in love with Melissa Joan Hart and her one-two punch of Clarissa Explains it All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but it’s possible.

Anyway, at one point in my life I was in danger of becoming a horribly outdated John Hughes dweeboid. It never happened, thank God, but it’s strange to watch such overtly “heterosexual” movies in my gay twenties. I’m not sure I ever loved Weird Science as a movie (indeed, I’d only seen it through once before today), but I now see it with distinctly different eyes.

All of this is an incredibly long overture to some pictures illustrating underwear standards. The movie starts with a 20 year old Robert Downey Jr pantsing our heroes Gary and Wyatt, revealing their horrible utilitarian underwear:

Which is the least sexy look in the world. This is the equivalent of Bridget Jones’ safety underpants.

I wouldn’t comment on this were it not for later on in the movie, wherein Wyatt wakes up wearing the following:

The “joke” is that Wyatt is wearing “panties”. Lady’s underwear! Next thing you know he’ll be wearing bras on his head!

Thing is, if the movie hadn’t made a big deal of it, I would never have noticed. In 2011, my eyes don’t parse Wyatt’s underwear as gender inappropriate. Large chunks of the movie are homoerotic anyway, as a lot of movies about guys who hang around with no one but each other in various states of undress are guaranteed to be.

So I basically thought that there was no joke (excepting that the cut off shirt is hilarious), and was surprised that Wyatt was wearing something vaguely sexually appealing (Weird Science is not a sartorially pleasing film). Gary looking at his retreating form in figure 5, that’s just him checking out his friend.

I was wrong. It was “cause for concern” - and the sexiest part of a movie that is actually pretty low on genuine sexual appeal to people of any sexuality. True, it has a few sample Playboy pages in it and a piano playing girl loses her top, but there’s nothing truly titillating for someone of the modern age except for the brief glimpse of Wyatt in the wrong underwear (I am honour bound to point out that Ilan Mitchell-Smith was 16 in this movie).

Of course, the punchline is yet to come: Bill Paxton’s Chet saying “For Chrissakes’ will you cover yourself!?”

Or, as Private Hudson might have put it, “Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen!”

Weird Science really isn’t a very good movie. It is eighties racist and, to an extent, eighties homophobic (“you don’t come into my friend’s house, with your faggot friends …”). It’s definitely dated, and one can’t help but feel that Wyatt and Gary would never have needed to create the perfect woman had they realised they had already found love in one another’s arms.

We easily find the reason for their inability to realise this love: Wyatt’s father is a terrible person. Wyatt greets his parents upon their return, and when he tries to hug his father he shakes his head and says “No no no no no”, then whispers “like a man”, and they shake on it.

Hooray for being ashamed of your feelings!

Not only does Weird Science end with the theme from Rocky (seriously! Bill Conti!), it ends with the worst of cinematic crimes: the WINK AT CAMERA FREEZE FRAME.