"Buddy": A homicidal unicorn and two queer-coded kids, but is there any buddy-bonding? With Topher Grace, Michael Shannon, and Sergey

 

I was interested in seeing Buddy (2026), a horror parody of 1980s-1990s children's shows like Barney the Dinosaur  and Pee-Wee's Playhouse,featuring a homicidal anthropomorphic unicorn (voiced by Keegan Michael Key, with Sergey Zhuravsky, left, inside the suit).

I was a Pee-Wee fan back in the day, and it stars Luke Speakman (below) and Tristan Borders, child actors with a lot of gay-positive work.  Maybe there will be some queer codes, or at least some buddy bonding.  But after reading a plot synopsis, I'm going to give it a miss.  Here's why.

Spoiler alert: I go through the whole movie.

In the first scenes, the children's show It's Buddy features the Unicorn and his four child pals: Josh, Wade, Oliver, and Freddy (a girl). Three boys -- ample buddy bonding opportunities.

Then Josh (Luke Speakman) rebels, preferring to read his book rather than going to a dance party.  Buddy kills him, says that he's off on a journey to Diamond City, and replaces him with Hannah. But Freddy finds his blood-stained book in the trash and gets suspicious.  She tells her friend Wade that something is wrong.  A boy-girl dyad.

The new line-up is Freddy, Wade, Oliver, and Hannah.  Two boys, with buddy bonding possible, except that Wade already has a girlfriend. 

Freddy and Wade ask Nurse Nancy to talk to Buddy.  He kills her.

Maybe they could run away to Diamond City?   The kids try to escape in a sentient train named Charlie, but Buddy kills him, and the only other adult character, Mailman Miles.

Then Buddy starts cutting  Wade (Caleb Williams).  Freddy sees her chance and sets the unicorn on fire, but he doesn't die, he just becomes partially melted.  He kills Wade, leaving:

Freddy, Oliver, and Hannah. One boy, two girls.  No buddy-bonding potential left.

 They try to escape with Mr. Mailbox, but Buddy kills him.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Grace hires a psychic to contac the spirit in their house. She has a husband, Ben (Topher Grace, left) , and two sons, Derek and Timothy (Seamus Flynn, Bryson JonSteele, below). 

More after the break

Asher Alexander: Brax's brother makes shrimp fudge, rides a drag queen train, plays a gay judge. With Brax and Brock c*cks

Link to the n*de photos

Asher Alexander is the little brother of Braxton Alexander, who you know as a model, the college boy with the missing t*sticles on Free Bert, and  the gay kid on a flashback episode of The Righteous Gemstones: he rejects the vulgar advances of young Judy, so her brother Jesse retaliates; He hits the boy with a cymbal, then pantses him so the whole class can see his junk...and laugh at him?  Or make it one of the iconic moments of their gay awakening?

It's was a stunt backside, of course, and we didn't see his front.   At least not until he turned 18 (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

 

Asher, born in March 2015, broke into on-screen acting with Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branching Out (2024), a "meta comedy on the holiday horror and romcom genres."  Fleeing from the murderous yule log, Zoe and her gay buddy Jaxter (Chase Steven Allen) are trapped in the romcom town of Mistletoe, where she falls for struggling ornament shop owner Birl and his young son Jaxon (Asher).

She teaches Jaxon how to make shrimp fudge. Talk about horror!

No Good Deed (2024) is about three families, including a lesbian couple, competing to see who will be chosen to buy a house.  Well, it's a very nice house.  Asher plays the young Paul (Ray Romano).

Hal and Harper (2025) is a comedy miniseries featuring siblings who reminisce about their dysfunctional childhoods.  The adult actors play themselves as children.  I can't imagine how weird that must look. Asher appears as Josh, not mentioned in the plot synopses.

Stop! That! Train! (2026): Two drag queen stewardesses on the Glamazonian Express train must deal with a disaster.  RuPaul plays President Gagwell, and we see Jerry O'Connell, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Brock Yurich (c*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Charo (still shaking her maracas at age 75), and Joel McHale (right).  His companion is not identified.

More after the break

Charles Ambrose: Civil War soldier, coast guardsman, martial artist, male model. With some photos of his you-know-what

  

Link to the n*de photos

Charles Ambrose. real name Jason Ambrose, also Jason Charles Smith, is from Sandwich, Illinois, 60 miles west of Chicago. He attended Waubonsee Community College, then studied comedy at the Second City in Chicago.  I wonder if his standup routine is about growing up in Sandwich.

His resume lists several local Chicago-area plays, including The Music Man, The Moon is Down, Act Your Age, The Dating Game, and Julius Caesar.  And skills including combat, archery, horseback riding, firearms, rock climbing, jiu jitsu, and motorcycles.

Plus modeling (n*de modeling on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

23 credits on the IMDB, beginning in 2008 with the short Hell Mary.

Then occasional guest spots on tv, one or two every year.  Most of these characters don't appear in the plot synopses:

Andy on Sons of Anarchy, featuring the backside of Charlie Hunnan.

Zane on Henry Danger

Deputy Jimmy on Lovecraft Country

Donny in Hollywood Vampire

Lucas in NCIS: Los Angeles

Coach Watkins in The Wonder Years update, with Julian Lerner as Brad Hitman.

Union Soldier Stephens in Righteous Gemstones Episode 4.1

His most substantial role to date: 23 episodes of the soap General Hospital, playing Ambrose, henchman of the evil Victor Cassadine.  On Victor's orders, he kidnaps Liesl Obrecht, kidnaps Ace Prince-Cassadine, and almost kills Spencer Cassadine (Nicolas Bechtel).

Coming up: The Legend of Van Dorn, about a Confederate soldier played by Lee Wilson, who was "immensely attractive to women."  Never to men, of course.  He was murdered by a husband upset over his wife's canoodling.  

And Secrets and Yards, about a small town football team with secrets.

More Charles after the break. 

"Loser Day" Jock River Mardesic tears up the Melbourne stage, stars in artsy shorts, buddies up to Knox GIbson. Just don't ask if he's gay.

Link to the n*de photos

The upcoming A Day for Losers stars Dakota Lotus as a military school cadet who can only win the Girl of His Dreams by throwing an epic party.  To do this, he must avoid the bullyin jocks and befriend all of the outcasts and losers. Wait -- the outcasts and losers are invited to the epic party? 

It sounds super retro, with all of that stupid Girl of His Dreams rhetoric, but it also stars Jacob Sartorius and Benji Kroll (left), who is gay in real life, so there might be some LGBT representation.  

Checking through the male cast members for beefcake or gay content, I came across River Mardesic, who plays a "High School Jock."  

Unusual name (it's Croatian), no photo, only a few acting credits, but a full Instagram, with some beefcake photos.  I'm going in for a closer look.  The IMDB is incomplete, so I'll check his Instagram in backwards chronological order.

In 2025, he flies from Australia to the U.S. to appear in A Day for Losers.

 

And he starred in Home Alone: The Australian Musical, "an immersive parody of the classic film with an Australian twist." Jasper McDonald Parsons (center) plays a teenage Kevin, accidentally left home alone when his family flies off to Port Arthur for a Christmas holiday.  

Older brother Buzz (River, next to him) is "an eshay looking for love.  It's a youth subculture given to toxic masculinity and pig Latin, but apparently he gets into a relationship with Gus (John Rochford), an adaption of the Polka king who gave Kevin's mom a ride back to Chicago in the original.

In 2024, River appeared in A Weekend at Nan's, a short film by Matt Harris, which had several local showings before going off to the festivals. The ad says "bring your family and friends."

In 2023, he starred in the short film Speech, directed by Charles Laversha, which won awards at four film festivals. Lloyd (River) has to read a speech by a historic figure to his class.  Then he finds out that the speech was given by a dictator.

In 2022, he was cast in the Wonder Years remake, with the grown-up Dean Williams (Don Cheadle, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), narrating the story of his childhood in Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1960s.  River was going to play the buddy of the teenage Dean, but  due to the COVID lockdown, he couldn't leave Australia. Julian Lerner got the role.

More after the break