Today's date of January 18, is one of significant, if not sentimental importance for followers of the relationship/friendship between actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Austin Nichols.
With each passing year as time lapses further and further, most of their online regular fans have moved on. From regular blogging activity which focused on the pairing, to devoted blogs of either/or Jake or Austin, gone belly up or dormant, and now? Even their one resident active troll gone silent, having also shifted gears.
And even though facial lines have deepened, and grey strands have since appeared at the temples, coffee runs are a thing of the past, no more skateboarding or leisurely newspaper reading al fresco, and since they set the gossip world on fire by being the hot subjects of blind vice whispers, well, their once scandalous stories now dramatically pale to the gaslighting stunts, fake baby bumps and plastic dolls used by those come after them.
Indeed. How closeted times have changed and evolved since 2012 when Jake and Austin knew they were taking their relationship underground and gifted their children and themselves a video love letter goodbye. At the time in January of 2012, Jaustin fans on Oh My Godot blogspot were wondering what Jake was up to as he had left his longtime talent agency, CAA for WME/Endeavor and changed personal managers.
Misguidedly, we all were hoping the change might mean the two men were planning to be more open when there were events such as:
• Jake and Reese Witherspoon "breaking up" and he was still flying solo
• Austin was fresh off of a "break up" with Sophia Bush
• a couple of twitter sightings of them together (when they hadn't even been allowed to both be in Los Angeles at the same time since the arrival of Witherspoon) like this one,
and this one,
The excitement was hard to contain and hopeful predictions for their coming out were flying out the window like dust through open windows on a spring cleaning day.
Trolls quickly arrived and took up residence in the threads, trying to shoot arrows through the sightings. To confuse matters further, there was a sighting of Jake with a baby stroller in Brooklyn Heights, New York.
There also was an L.A. gym visit for Jake on January 16, but the photos appeared on I Heart Jake on the 17th, and then?
Then came the "juice run" photos on January 18.
Oh My Godot blog host Special K, aka the Grand Poobah, noted that she had also seen some of the juice run photos and Jake was driving a truck. Well, guess whose truck it turned out to be?
Austin's.
Jake with four bottles of juice. Driving what turned out to be Austin's truck when he had never been seen driving it, but instead had taken up with the roomier, family-friendly Audi Q7.
Understandably, troll heads were exploding and excitement from OMG'ers was off the charts. Things seemed to be moving at an awfully quick pace.
The photo op was very plain. Very loud.
And then?
Even more new photos! Photos from a lunch outing were released in the afternoon of January 19, an outing that was dated the day before, Jan 18.
Jake and Adam Levine? But wait - there was someone else with them.
Additional old timers even paid a visit via comment, after being absent for awhile. It was Homecoming Home week! 😊
Eventually, a video from the sushi lunch was found on the paparazzi website, x17, brought to the blog, and the rest was history.
At that time, Jake and Austin hadn't been seen together since May 29, 2010 at a gym, with Sophia Bush, Austin's beard (cover) at the time. It had been a dry two (2) years after five previous ones of pap outings and an enthusiastic following of their relationship. Fans began to doubt if the two men even kept in contact anymore, let alone if they were still a couple.
It's understandable that many of us were swept up and carried away on the grand cloud of hope.
This was not the end of the story, of course, but today? We celebrate the video once again, fuzzy as it is.
The video we know as The Sushi Lunch. We were mere benefactors, but what a gift. We did not know at that time that it would be such a special video love letter of goodbye. 😢😭
But since that day, unbeknownst to us, the Grand Poobah Special K's words would continue to ring true.
On that day, the Malibu Boys let the world know.
our pic sources: Oh My Godot, IHeartJake
our playlist: Commitment of the Heart - Clive Griffin
I Say A Little Prayer for You - Whitney Houston w Natalie Cole
I Miss You - Stevie Nicks
Everyday - from High School Musical II
Malibu - Kim Petras
Malibu - Adam Lambert & Kim Petras Live at OUTLOUD
1 comment:
Great stroll down memory lane, PG. I remember this "outing" like it was yesterday. This whole video op really shows how nothing is left to chance when it comes to the closet. This strip mall video was carefully orchestrated and scheduled, paps were called, "actors" casted (e.g., Adam Levine) and movements choreographed down to Austin getting into the back seat of Jake's car. If anything, there is even more tight control regarding what paps can post on sites like X17-online or Just Jared. Remember what we see is what the public is meant to see. That old man chatting with Jake no doubt was the handler assigned to make sure everything went according to plan. Eleven years later, there is even more consolidation of media and more power vested in record labels and talent agencies. Breaking free is a complex, dangerous game. In this case, we at Narnia believe that Jake and Austin chose to stay in the closet for a variety of complex reasons, not least among them, having four children at that time (hence the number of juice bottles in Jake's hand). Jake and Austin used the opportunity to tell their own story to their children. Letting them know that even though they would deny their existence, and deny their relationship to each other, they were still proud of their family, providing a shout out before they slammed the door shut on their lives together.
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