often seen in the street without a hat

Summer is the time when American TV goes away and in a fit of desperation I revisit shows from the past few years that I passed on when there were actual choices.

I watched my way through seven series of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. This wasn't something I had actively chosen against before, just it had never really been on my radar. It turns out it is great. They are all terrible, terrible people and very very funny. I like that Sweet Dee is also terrible and they are terrible to her, she isn't just The Girl standing there being disapproving.

I am quite enjoying Melissa and Joey, which is Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence being a congresswoman and her nanny and quite nice together. They aren't doing any stupid sexual tension (I assume that's a yet, I am only halfway through the first series) between them, and while there are jokes about emasculated man doing women's work it is not the main thing, and they are not all that common.

I am thoroughly enjoying Awkward too, which is a teenage girl who gets high school notoriety when an accident is interpreted as a suicide attempt. It rips off a huge amount of teen films but does it very well. There are boys, which is inevitable but still a shame, but I only had to shout "stop it, he's a bellend" twice. (She didn't listen.) One of her two friends is Asian, and therefore has all the stereotypes of pushy parents and not being allowed out anywhere, so most of the time the show just forgets she exists, which is shit.

Having pretty much hated Gilmore Girls except for Michael DeLuise (oh how I love Michael DeLuise, and Peter DeLuise of course), I am surprising myself by liking Bunheads. ( Spoilers, sorry for not doing that before. )

I'm also somewhat lethargically watching Smash. I quite like it when I'm watching it, but I have no particular attachment to it.

Oh, oh! I downloaded Stacked, which is the sitcom where Pamela Anderson works in a bookstore. I really enjoy it. It's very nineties, and Pamela Anderson is very funny, and her character plays with the bimbo stuff and she is sweet and brave and kind of selfish sometimes. I had heard it was terrible, and it isn't.

I haven't watched The Newsroom, I'm just deciding to believe everything bad I read about it online. It's very convincing criticism.

Shows I am still not desperate enough to watch - Baby Daddy, Men at Work. I have belatedly added Rules of Engagement to that after braving it through half a series. I like the married couple, but David Spade and the engaged couple are SO DIRE that I cannot cope. I am considering starting on Weeds.

Looking into booking my first night's accommodation in Tashkent, I found a recommendation for this place: http://tashkent-apartment.com/ But if you scroll down the page, their last comment is "Note: We allow no harlotry", and while it's not my actual plan to go there and harlot it up, what if that changes and my harlotry is constrained?

( My Two Dads. )

( Class Cruise. )

( Hard Time. )

( Encino Man. )

I am on a bit of a Michael DeLuise kick at the moment. I am still watching Brooklyn South, which is more nuanced than I gave it credit for, and yesterday and today I watched the 8 episodes on youtube of Some of My Best Friends, where Michael DeLuise is the slightly homophobic, if well-meaning, friend of an Italian-American young guy who has initially unwittingly moved in with a gay man, who is played by Jason Bateman. It's just rather cute and lovely, and mostly about Michael DeLuise and his friend learning not to be so prejudiced, and Jason Bateman and his friend making cuttingly funny remarks whenever they forget. (Don't worry, neither of the gay men get to have sex, or even a boyfriend. Phew!)

Also I watched He Was a Quiet Man, because although obviously Christian Slater, William H Macy and Elisha Cuthbert are going to be the stars of that film, Michael DeLuise was listed first, so I figured he'd have a largeish part. NO. After watching the whole thing (which wasn't nearly as clever as it thought it was) I had to go back to the start, as Michael DeLuise was in the credits as the first to appear, but I hadn't seen him. This was because he appears for about FIVE SECONDS behind the credits, in FUZZY BLACK AND WHITE, and DOESN'T EVEN SAY ANYTHING. He unlocked the door to dead Christian Slater's house, though, and really was sort of the focus of the entire film because that's what sets off the flashback. Seriously though, he's described as "starring in" this film elsewhere. He must have... I was going to say a great agent, but as far as I can tell he gets on posters and has billing for films he has almost NOTHING to do with, and it would be much better if he were stealthily in films with really big parts instead.

I saw a very short clip of Peter DeLuise having a cupcake smeared on his face. He took it with aplomb. I am still writing a post about the travesty of a 21 Jump Street film. But I did some link chasing around it, and I found out all this lovely stuff about the proper cast, and I just want to think about it on my own for a bit before I share it. I like reading about and watching Peter DeLuise, and Michael DeLuise (I don't know David DeLuise's work so well but he seems lovely in the family way too) so very much and sometimes things sort of clench at me and I get a little worried about how much I care. Not a lot worried.

Last weekend I went to stay with Jen, and we watched all the Peter Deluise I could find. It was great. I love that he still acts. He's mostly a director now, but he clearly loves acting because he has all these little roles in things (and sometimes bigger roles in littler things), and sometimes he even gets to act in things he doesn't direct!

Children of the Night
Two girls go swimming in the flooded crypt of an old church, and in doing so inadvertently wake up a paedophile vampire. Then we go forward a little bit (I think?) and Peter Deluise is a very kind teacher who has a priest friend who has clearly never got over losing Peter Deluise's love. The priest keeps a vampire woman and her lungs-outside-the-body daughter (one of the swimming girls) in his attic. Peter Deluise goes to rescue the other girl from her vampire grandmother. They have to team up to fight the town, who have all turned into vampires, some of whom have sex in cocoons. The day is mostly saved by an old man in a van with a cross on the front. In the morning everything is magically okay again.

Sanctuary
We watched one and a half episodes of this before realising that imdb had LIED and he wasn't in those. Then we watched the one in which he does appear, as a somewhat dodgy purveyor of weird creatures in fridges after the cryochamber broke. He was beautiful, and helpful, as he sold an audio file that could be used to calm the escaped creature. He directed that.

Painkiller Jane
Painkiller Jane has a healing superpower. I think she uses it to solve crime, somehow? In the episode we watched, models were getting ready to go on a catwalk, then one of them collapsed on a catwalk, and the paramedics came. One of the paramedics was Peter Deluise! Again beautiful, and again presumeably helpful as he is in the medical profession, though we stopped watching after that as he wasn't going to be in it any more. Actually, I think the model might have died, but I bet that wasn't his fault. Her last moments were spent in his company, I'd like that. He directed this episode too.

Engaged to Kill
He didn't direct this! This is a film (based on a true story) where a woman is kidnapped for money, and then later after she is free she is stalked more and it's fairly obvious to everyone except those in the film that it's her daughter's boyfriend, who is the original kidnapper in disguise. Peter Deluise plays a boat-selling douche who takes advantage of the kidnapped family's new penury to hike up his cut of a boat. He wears a bright shirt, and later he gets hit on the head with a metal implement on a dock and ends up in a coma. THE FILM NEVER TELLS US IF HE RECOVERED. I bet he did though. Peter Deluise's wife is in this too, as a hypochondriac woman who is convinced to make a complaint about the kidnapped woman's doctoring skils.

Bloodsuckers
This is about vampires in space, and I thought it was pretty good, actually. We actually watched this because Michael Deluise (Deluise mi) was billed as one of the main stars, with his name on the poster and everything. Having seen the film, we have NO idea why his name got to be anywhere near the poster. He is lovely, of course (he's Jen's Deluise), but his role is very small. None of the four main people get to be on the poster. Peter Deluise has an uncredited cameo as Vondi the German Space Tourist, who leaves what seems to be a brothel called "Hard Eight" leading a man on a leash and saying "disappointing, ladies! not very hard at all". He is a funny man and does this VERY WELL.

Highlander
Peter Deluise is in the second episode of this, as a man called Clinch who is the hired bully of a woman who runs a casino, and breaks fingers and threatens to beat people up after they get fired for not cheating. He does this quite well at first, but then the Highlander comes and defeats him effortlessly, which is a bit embarrassing. But it's necessary for the narrative, it's not Peter Deluise's fault.

I now have an episode of Andromeda to watch, and once I have worked out whether the video player I got from my parents worked, I can work my way through his early oeuvre that is only available on tape.

( A minor success. )

I went to see The Iron Lady with katlinel this week. We did not like it. ( Film spoilers. )

gair very lovelily sent me a HUGE box of teen fic, so I am reading my way through the Sweet Dreams series. They take me almost an exact 30 minutes to read, which is perfect for lunch breaks and bus rides. They are all exactly the same so far - girl feels she is somehow a bit rubbish, meets a boy, thinks he doesn't like her, falls in love with him, is sad that she's not good enough for him, then it turns out he totally likes her after all, they kiss, the end. It's very soothing. Though there's one called Kiss Me, Creep coming up, which might work slightly differently.

Ah! I just looked on imdb to see where I know Cersei in Game of Thrones from, and she was in some episodes of Soldier Soldier. (Her squaddie husband dies, and she has to leave the housing because of it. The wives were very sympathetic about it.) She looked really familiar, and it's all from those three episodes years and years ago. (Though I've seen them more recently than that, as I own the box set of Soldier Soldier. It doesn't disappoint in rewatching.) And now I get to use my Soldier Soldier tag again - especially because Paddy is in GoT too.

I'm wearing blue tights with big white stars on today, so I put on a red t-shirt too as a sort of Wonder Woman homage.

I am watching my way through Caroline in the City. I had forgotten, or not noticed the first time round, that it is just relentless in Richard getting wonderful breaks and chances that are then ruined by the others, mostly Caroline. Oh, and on imdb I found that Andrew Lauer, who played Charlie (the assistant on rollerblades), directed a film called Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer and put Del, Caroline and Annie in it! I find that very sweet for some reason.

I watched an episode of Ruby and the Rockits because it keeps being advertised during Make It Or Break It, and they had a father-daughter dance. Is that something that actually happens in America?? It was INCREDIBLY creepy. It wasn't just a school dance where girls brought their fathers, but a dance where the girls took it in turns to dance soppy formal dances ONE AT A TIME with their fathers in a sort of spotlight while everyone else watched. It was not a good show.

( Television I actually like. Neither spoilers nor insight. )

What else is going to be coming back? What's new that I don't know about especially in the US? What's oldish that I should find and see?

From Jezebel (where else?):



My usual "sophisticated" sense of humour has clearly abandoned me in my weakened state. Ham! Shaped like a penis!

That Mitchell and Webb Look is on again tonight, which I am looking forward to. Last week I unexpectedly laughed myself silly at the Gary Rhodes sketch.

Earlier today we watched Make It or Break It, the new gymnastics TV drama from the US, and it was GREAT. There was gymnastics, obviously, with brilliant cuts between the faces and the actual bodies during their moves. There was a bitchy gymnast who'll happily fuck over her friends to get to the top, a perfect very-in-control gymnast whose only ambitions are to do gymnastics, and a more friendly gymnast who was having an ILLICIT RELATIONSHIP WITH A BOY. There is also a new gymnast, who is a threat, and her leotards are STORE-BOUGHT. The other gymnasts' leotards are not store-bought. They come through sponsorship deals, and they are SO VERY GLITTERY. Dr Malachi from ER was the coach. There were dirty deeds and the wonderful triumph of the will over the weakness of the flesh. I cannot WAIT for the rest of the series. (Before its cancellation, probably.) ALSO why did no-one tell me they were making a TV series of 10 Things I Hate About You? I love that film.


Is there some sort of add-on that will automatically uncollapse the threads on IMDB?

My train was sufficiently delayed that I was unable to attend the recording that was the only reason I came doen to London in the first place. I am trying to buck myself up by being reasonable, and pointing out that I've seen Stewart Lee before, several times, and that in fact I've probably seen this specific material before because Scrambled Egg was a preview for it and I saw that twice, and in any case it's going to be televised, so it's not like I'm not going to see it. It's not helping.

( Extended Wail. )

Those who, like me, miss tmwrnj hugely, can see a tmwrnj reunion gig on youtube, which is lovely. (I didn't get to see that either.)

I thought I would get here and see what theatre was on, but there's nothing I wanted to see. Bill Bailey was £40 and finished too late, and Stewart Francis was sold out. I'm going to find something to eat.


* We will overlook the Johnny Vegas connection for the moment.
** I have decided to embrace this.

I have been trying to remember where I found the link to this story for ages, and in the absence of any sort of inspiration whatsoever, I thought I would ask if anyone can help.

It's a back-in-England Narnia story where ( cut for people who like their childhood memories rather less tragic. )

The Radio Times website says that it was the Buzzcocks I saw being recorded tonight, but I haven't watched it because I was at home with my mamma who I didn't think would like it very much at all.

I have a cough. This is not good. I don't want to be ill on the weekend - still less do I want to disturb other people's sleep when I myself make such a babyish fuss about noise.