I am reading an unpublished manuscript written by an online buddy of mine. He's a recovering heroin addict who tried to make a go as an actor in Hollywood before getting hooked but never rose above extra work (he appeared in a scene in the second episode of True Blood and reports that Anna Paquin was a bitch). The…

I like to think he and Sullivan Stapleton hang out at the NBC Christmas party and reminisce about being on a better show together.

Today In Trebek Is An Asshole! My local NBC affiliate showed a repeat from April 14. While I can't prove it, I am convinced that Trebek engineered it so we would all see him wishing his mother a happy 95th birthday again.
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Jeopardy! recap for Thur., Apr. 14 - Sensational performance by
Margaret, who…

I understand Albee's not wanting to be known as a "gay writer" especially after the hatchet piece theater critic Stanley Kauffmann published in The New York Times in 1966 arguing that Albee (along with fellow gay playwrights Tennessee Williams and William Inge) was incapable of writing authentically about women and…

Where was Vasquez?

The Roseanne episode "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" aired in 1994, some five years before this series debuted. It wasn't the first lesbian kiss on American TV but it was the first one that caught the attention of the media before it aired. ABC initially declined to air the episode. Then, after Barr spoke out publicly and…

In this instance the decision is not based on a hearing of the facts of the case but on the failure of the defendant to appear to answer the charges. Had he bothered to show up he could have argued that she had the autonomy not to take the drugs but since he didn't bother the allegations of the plaintiffs stand…

I'll defend it through the end of season 5 and if the series had ended then I would even have excused the weird self-congratulatory video message the creators tacked onto the end of the S5 finale. The show took a big hit when Dr. O'Hara left at the end of this season and never really bounced back from it. Of course…

Trump is running on a platform? Has he been made aware of this?

Impacted.

Naked Lunch. I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.

She was in an episode of the E! plastic surgery show Botched because of a deformity in her nose that was destroying her confidence and keeping her from wanting to leave the house. It turns out that it wasn't a botched surgery causing her nasal deformity. She had what amounted to an enormous zit that, when cleaned out,…

Phi Phi also said in the first episode that she lost a lot of bookings because she was so awful on the show. Her "I've changed, I'm a good person now" narrative has always been tainted by her desire for the booking fees.

I'm not even sure Phi Phi thought it through that far at the time, despite what she said during the filmed-after-the-fact interview. That was pure "Alyssa broke the rules, Imma punish her for it."

On the Air is a criminally underrated sitcom. Lynch has some serious problems trying to do flat-out comedy and has an unfortunate tendency to rely on repetitive slapstick but when he went surreal on the show it was great, bordering on magical. And Maria Rubinoff as ingenue Betty Hudson was truly wonderful. The episode…

Henry Silva, along with Frank Sinatra, is credited with introducing karate fighting to American film (in The Manchurian Candidate). That alone should have made him number one.

"This Friend, the largest of the Friends, could have simply eaten the other five."

My best friend is having her cat put down later today. He's about 14 and is suffering from catastrophic liver failure. He's still active and seems happy but has stopped eating. The vet gives him about a week otherwise. She's upset but she has had several pets put down previously so she's handling it well. Certainly…

Use a pen, Pop Rivets!

The Loretta Young Show will live on, on the basis of a single possibly Apocryphal anecdote, usually attributed to Ethel Merman. Supposedly Loretta, a very pious Catholic, had a "swear jar" on the set of her series and charged a quarter for every cuss word. Merman was visiting the set one day and let off a swear and…