ABOVE: John Ericson — a fave — was born on this day.
BELOW: Keep reading for more about Monsters than you ever needed to know and more ...
KENNETH IN THE (212): Hot tennis guys of the week.
NYT: The gay male artists who are queering up ... cross-stitch.
TV INSIDER: Trump has been trying to lay the groundwork for arguing that 59-year-old, sharp-as-fuck VP Kamala Harris is the one with mental decline — not him. And in so doing, he randomly let slip that he believes Johnny Carson is alive.
NBC NEWS: A Haitian group has sued Trump and Vance for their Ohio pet-eating lies.
DEADLINE: Chappell Roan says, “No, I'm not voting for Trump.” It would be interesting, by the way, to hear from other pop divas on this topic.
(Image via video still via ABC News)
If you are watching Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story:
ABC NEWS: Here is a 2017 piece on how Erik ended up posing provocatively for a friend, a detail in the series I suspected was made-up, but was not.
TWITTER: Erik Menendez has responded to the series, decrying its torrent of lies:
DEADLINE: Ryan Murphy is unrepentant about anything in Monsters that is unfactual, demanding that the brothers actually watch the series (kind of a big ask, considering it's easy enough to know the show's approach without seeing it from clips):
We know how it ended. We know two people were brutally shot. Our view and what we wanted to do was present you all the facts and have you do two things: make up your own mind about who’s innocent, who’s guilty, and who’s the monster, and also have a conversation about something that’s never talked about in our culture, which is male sexual abuse, which we do responsibly.
60 to 65% [of the show] centers around Eric and Lyle Menendez talking about their abuse, talking about their victimization, talking about what it emotionally put them through, those two boys in our show get their moment in court. In fact, we have a 30-minute episode that Cooper Koch [who plays Erik] does so brilliantly. Just Erik’s words about what happened to him and why he did what he did.
I think this is pretty disingenuous. I'm watching the show, and while it is very entertaining, is it really necessary to present the brothers — who were very likely sexually abused, and who very much did murder their parents, two realities — as so fucking hot? There are so many gratuitously sexualized scenes, including one working out and his ass popping right into the camera, sensualized prison sex, etc. Makes for great eye candy, but it is jarring when you stop and think about the real story behind it. I think I'm going to wind up having two different opinions of this one. In the past with Murphy, I have either loved or hated his stuff. This one, I think is going to be ... both.
USA TODAY: Nicholas Alexander Chavez had a far kinder response to Erik, saying:
I can only respond with sympathy and empathy in that I can only imagine how difficult it is to have the most traumatic moment of your life put up there on the screen for everyone to see.
OMG.BLOG!: If you have zero qualms about the sex-up storytelling, here are some examples of Cooper Koch (Erik) letting it all hang out:
The prison's shower looks very ... romantic in this thing. (GIF via GIPHY)
US WEEKLY: The Menendez Brothers were among the inmates who sat and listened to Kim Kardashian speak about prison reform this weekend — and she brought Cooper Koch, who plays Erik in Monsters, with her. I can't find any specific reference that Cooper and Erik met, but what a bizarre kind of grandstanding thing to do, no? Feels like promotion.
THR: What's true and what's false about Monsters.
Oh, brothers. (GIF via GIPHY)
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