Andy Hallett/Angel's Lorne: Dead at 33

One of the sweeter elements on a very dark show, Hallett is the the second Angel actor to die young. Glenn Quinn who played Doyle, died from drug related causes in 2002. And 33 is waaaaaay too young to die.

So, a toast to Andy Hallett.

And in a Buffy/Angel/Whedonverse Circle of Life coincidence, Alyson Hannigan/Willow and Alexis Denisof/Wesley had a daughter they named Satyana last week.

What a horrid name...

Irving R Levine: Dead at 86

A toast to the nattiest reporter who ever lived...they don't make them like that anymore.

Sick...again, which explains my lack of posting...

I don't think this climate agrees with me...I've been sick constantly this winter...either that, or I'm getting old and failing at an alarmingly fast rate. I guess this means I should get myself a flu shot next fall and then it's a hop/skip/jump to the senior menu at Old Country Buffet...

The only good thing about being sick is that it gives you a logical excuse to:

1)be lazy

2)eat "bad" processed foods that you are normally too embarassed to buy...like SnackPack Chocolate Pudding and Hostess Ding-Dongs, which are delicious when you feel like shit.

Other than this, nothing new to report in gray, cold, damp Seattle.

Yes, I am bitter.

It's been awhile since we've had any beefcake...

you can check out more of the same here...maybe it's time to visit Austin.

Tonite on Lost: Namaste

Synopsis
Sawyer is forced to perpetuate his lie when some old friends drop in unannounced

Guest List
Guest starring are John Terry as Christian Shephard, Jeff Fahey as Frank Lapidus, Francois Chau as Dr. Marvin Candle, Said Taghmaoui as Caesar, Zuleikha Robinson as Ilana, Reiko Aylesworth as Amy, Sterling Beaumon as young Ben, Patrick Fischler as Phil, Molly McGivern as Rosie, Eric Lange as Radzinsky, Dan Gauthier as co-pilot and Sven Lindstrom as photographer.

Young Ben!

Dr Marvin Candle!

Christian Shephard!

And Sawyer had better not hook back up with that Debbil Woman, Kate...I hate her now.

And, judging by the photo, it looks like we find out why we saw Ben unconscious after the Ajira plane landed: Sun apparently beats the shit out of him!!

Kill it, before it breeds...

(And by IT, I mean a Queerfest celebration, not Mark "Mom" Finley...I never advocate the death of anyone, especially a local gay icon whose column used to be the best thing in the Seattle Gay News...but I digress.)

The morons are at it again...some Capitol Hill clowns are trying to drum up support for another Hill based Pride event...the last time they tried to do this, it destroyed the LGBT Center, (yes, I'm bitter). Bill W has the story HERE at his Seattle Gay Scene blog.

I would fully support someone doing this, if I knew:

1)They had sufficient funding to pull it off, (which in this economic climate, I doubt),

and,

2)They have a strong arts element to the festival with emphasis on queer art, music, theatre...not just Dykes on Bikes, braying drag queens and a performance by one of the gay choirs...that's old and tired. There are dozens of painters, sculpters, dancers, musicians, writers and actors in this town and they are NEVER featured at Pride events because either no one asks them AND even if they were asked, most of them don't want to be associated with the usual lameness that IS the normal pride event.

Would YOU want to be on the same bill with Mark Mom Finley and Aleksa Manila?

The Bitches are coming back to town...

Trannyshack, the San Francisco based punk drag performance group returns to Seattle on Saturday, April 18th at Chop Suey for one night only. Doors open at 9.30pm and the show starts at 11pm with a $12 cover. Trannyshack is NOT your grandma's drag show; at Trannyshack you're more likely to hear a queen sing a live cover of Nirvana's Lithium instead of the more usual lipsyncings to Madonna or Mariah Carey type pop/crap.

And, if you stand in the front, you're likely to get covered in some sort of stage gore...prop blood, or melons, or drinks or poutine or something equally gooey and disgusting...you've been warned.

Poutine Hangover

I had dinner at Smith last night, and it was very tasty but I'm feeling the pain today. Poutine, beer and pulled pork sandwiches are not a healthy meal for an overweight, non-exercising fortysomething year old man. And, as always, I was annoyed that a simple pub grub type meal, for two, came to $42. The price you pay for hipness in Seattle is exorbitant. (OT: Blogger spellcheck didn't recognize the words "poutine" or "exorbitant"....they need to improve their dictionary.)

It was also an enjoyable people watching experience...there was a table of modestly drunken people that would periodically burst into karaoke moments with the jukebox, a couple of gays, one of whom looked like a yupped up, pumped up Andy Dick, (nerdy face and a major gym built body) and what looked like a middle aged MTF tranny trying to pick up a girl young enough to be her daughter...but I could be mistaken because I spent part of the weekend reading Jonathan Ames and his work and sex life are frequently obsessed with the transgendered so I might have trannies on the brain. And, the alleged trannie in question looked a bit like Germaine Greer...
I also rented the newest Futurama direct to video movie, (and like the preceeding 4, it just wasn't that good) and the last disc of Season 1 of Mad Men and I naturally had to watch all four episodes on the disc so I ended up staying up to 1.30 am and as a result, I'm not at my optimal freshness and perkiness.

Oh, and I ate some very rich chocolate cake at home as well last night, so technically I have a poutine/chocolate cake/Mad Men Marathon Hangover...

Local Media Madness

1)Josh Feit ex of The Stranger has a new political blog called Publicola, which sounds disturbingly like Pubic Cola...I haven't looked at it enough to render any sort of judgement of it's writing or reporting, but I will pass judgement on the fact that it's ugly as sin and poorly designed...

2)And world's cutest former Stranger intern Steven Blum has Twittered that he'll soon be writing a column for Publicola...no word on when it will start...(note to Steven: less fucking Twittering and more Blogging!)

I, prophesy...(or is it prophesize?)

that the Republicans are going to make a push for the scheduled minimum wage increase, from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour that is scheduled to take effect July 24th of this year, to be cancelled or at least postponed due to the economic crisis.

And, some dunderhead will blame said economic crisis on the fact that the Democrats pushed through the original minimum wage increase bill and never mind the fact that it was Wall Street and the banking industry which caused this mess. Undoubtedly, the banks went haywire because they were forced to pay their tellers .75 cents more per hour...

Futile Efforts at being up-to-date: The Music Edition

One of the benefits of YouTube is the ability to sample large amounts of music that you would normally not want or bother to listen to. (Yes, I ended that sentence with a proposition...move on.) Like many people over the age of 40, I've stopped making any effort to keep up with popular music; you just reach a certain point when you don't care because it all sounds like rubbish anyway. But, occassionally you do feel compelled to check out what the youngin's are listening to, so I just spent half an hour catching up with Coldplay, the enormously popular British band fronted by Mr Gwyneth Paltrow, aka, the rather cute but scrawny, Chris Martin. My overall impression: pleasant, bland art pop music, but inexplicably popular because it sounds like a thousand other bands formed by dissatisfied, fey, young art school dropouts.

And the chord changes were as skimpy as Mr Martin's wrists.

Yes, but are they going to do a lot of drugs and get drunk and be un-PC?

Pigs are flying...a pilot for an Americanized Ab-Fab starring Kristen Johnson, as Patsy and someone named Kathryn Hahn as Eddy is currently filming after years of attempts, including one by Roseanne Barr/Arnold...Jezebel has a look at the script...it doesn't sound very funny and replacing Bubble with a sensible, African American woman is just silly; the only "normal" character should be Saffy, (but, she has issues as well). I love Kristen Johnson and she might be ok as Patsy, (even though she's a bit too young for the part and a little too ballsy) but Hahn is waaaay too young and thin to be a credible Eddy, and is she even a comedian? You need someone with a lot of comedy skills to fill Jennifer Saunders shoes and she has to be willing to be unlikeable to pull off this part.

And, I'm guessing that the drugging is going to be cut waaaaay back...no shots of Patsy with coke boogers.

Tonite on Lost: NOTHING!!!

There's no new episode of Lost tonite so I'm going to have to make do with a new episode of The Tyra Banks Crazyass Model Show...it's not the same.

oh, and many Lost fans are wondering whatever happened to Olivia Goodspeed...she didn't appear in last week's episode and since she appeared in the previous Goodspeed episode, "The Man Behind the Curtain" and was identified as Horace Goodspeed's wife in the closed captions, AND Team Darlton, the Lost producers have publicly stated that the Goodspeed's story was an important part of the show and future episodes in podcasts from a year ago, it seemed a little strange there wasn't any sign or mention of the character in LeFleur, last week's episode. Instead, we were introduced to a new character, Amy, who was shown giving birth to Horace's son.

I don't think there is a big mystery here, and I'm assuming that we're going to get some sort of explanation to Olivia's fate in an upcoming episode, but I think it all boils down to the fact that it appears that actress Samantha Mathis who played Olivia in "The Man Behind the Curtain" wasn't availbable to reprise her role. The actress just opened a play on Broadway last week, Moises Kaufman's 33 Variations starring Jane Fonda. Obviously, rehersals for this play would have started at the first of the year making Mathis unavailable for filming in Hawaii. And according to IMDB, she's had some recent film work as well, so she was probably unavailable last fall when Lost began shooting this season. I was always a little surprised that they had cast Mathis in the first place; while not a major star, she does work regularly in films and major tv projects. It seemed ill-advised to cast her in the first place...

Next week's episode: Namaste featuring the return of young Ben, (Sterling Beaumon)for at least 4 episodes.

And, spoiler alert, Lost has been reportedly casting for actors to portray Sawyer and Kate as 10 year olds in the season finale...This is in addition to previous castings for young versions of Sayid, Daniel and maybe Miles.

What's up with all the kids? Is a Lost Babies spin-off in the works?

Oh, and a Lost fansite is claiming that one of those characters is dying this season and they have a poll:

Which one of these will be the person killed in Season 5
Ben
Sawyer
Kate
Daniel
Miles
Juliet
Jin

It had better not be Juliet!

Wicked sucks.

There...I've said it. I'm your typical fag who loves musicals, and I somewhat liked the original book (but feel it's a bit overrated), and I like many of the people involved with Wicked, but the music is really shitty.

And the shittiest song in the show is the most popular song, Defying Gravity, which is an anthem for many a young, impressionable, lgbt theater-goer. It's noble sentiments fail to disguise the essential, irritating turgid crappiness of that song.

But I still love Kristin Chenowith. And, I'm still envious that Idina Menzel gets to sleep with Taye Diggs WHENEVER she wants...

the bitch.

For Musical Theater nerds only...

A two year old sings Sondheim...

P.S. Assassins is one of the Great American Musicals because it's about two of America's favorite pasttimes:

guns and celebrity.

Things that make you go, HMMMMMMM.....

Towleroad reports that TMZ ambushed LL Cool J at the airport and asked the actor/rapper:

Asked TMZ's pap: What if you go to a bar and get hit on by a gay guy, does that change your nickname?

Replied LL Cool J: Nah. I guess it just expands your options, huh?

I found this anecdote very interesting...I used to work with a guy who lived in L.A. circa 2001 and he told me that he encountered Mr J in a WeHo bar and that the J that Ladies Love made a pass at him. My co-worker was seeing someone at the time and somewhat relunctantly turned down the offer.

Mr J is definitely cute and has a great body, but personally, he's a little too muscley and tatty for my taste...and I'd be afraid that he'd start rapping in bed, which would be a huge turn-off for me.

And, many years ago, back in the early 80's, a guy I knew who had just previously lived in Honolulu for several years, used to tell me some very, very interesting stories about a certain popular and beloved tv/movie actor who spent a lot of time in a popular Honolulu gay bar of the period and was usually seen with pretty, Gaysian boys...I'm not naming him, because this actor has sued publications for outing him and won those lawsuits, so my lips are sealed.

It would probaly take a magnum of champagne to get me drunk enough to reveal that name...

Tonite on Lost: LaFleur

Synopsis
Sawyer perpetuates a lie with some of the other island survivors in order to protect themselves from mistakes of the past

Guest List
Guest starring are Nestor Carbonell as Richard Alpert, Doug Hutchison as Horace Goodspeed, Reiko Aylesworth as Amy, Christopher Jaymes as doctor, Kevin Rankin as Jerry, Patrick Fischler as Phil, Molly McGivern as Rosie, Carla Buscaglia as Heather and John Skinner as Other #1.

This appears to be a Sawyer-centric episode and it seems like the majority of the episode will cover what happened to our time-hopping Island friends, Sawyer, Miles, Daniel, Jin and Juliet after Locke "fixed" the Frozen Donkey Wheel and left the Island. And judging by the promos, it looks like Locke tyically botched the fix; he was able to stop the time jumps but he left his friends stuck in a past time that looks suspiciously like it might be sometime in the 1970's when the hippy-dippy Dharma Initiative was in control of most of the Island. And the presense of Horace Goodspeed, last scene as a bloody nosed ghost at the Purge mass grave site giving Locke a pep talk, seems to give creedance to this theory, along with episode photos featuring Sawyer in a Dharma jumpsuit and a new character Amy, (Reiko Aylesworth, around for at least 4 episodes)wearing some very hippy-dippy maternity clothes...(uh, how can she be giving birth on the Island; don't the mothers always die? Or, is that a recent thing affecting the Others?)

Lost takes a vacation next week, (no new episode) and returns in two weeks with Namaste, which is rumored to be Ben-centric mainly because the ABC officially announced cast list (which means technically that this is NOT a spoiler)includes Sterling Beaumon who played young Ben in the Season 3 episode, The Man Behind the Curtain, as well as appearances from Christian Shephard and Dr Marvin Candle...)

Here are the titles for the rest of the season, except for the season finale, (Episodes 16/17).

Episode 5.9 - Namaste: Ben-centric featuring those named above plus newbies Ilana and Caesar and Frank Lapidus...

Episode 5.10 - He's Our You: Sayid-centric, with scenes set in Russia and rumored to explain why Sayid agreed to come back to Island. Also, rumored to include scenes with a young Sayid, which seems to be a theme this season...

Episode 5.11 - Whatever Happened, Happened: rumored Kate-centric, specifically why did she come back to the Island and what happened to Aaron. Rumored to include Claire's mom, (and I'm GUESSING that maybe another ghostly visit from Claire MIGHT be in the offering; this is NOT a spoiler, only my own theory/guess!)

Episode 5.12 - Dead is Dead: unknown. Rumored to include a car crash scene set in Long Beach and believed to center around the survivors of the Ajira plane on Hydra Island.

Episode 5.13 - Some Like It Hoth: rumored to be Miles-centric including a scene with a young Miles.

Episode 5.14 - The Variable: rumored to be a followup to last season's The Constant and heavily featuring Desmond and Daniel including scenes with Daniel and his mother and more Oxford flashbacks.

Episode 5.15 - Follow The Leader: unknown/currently filming

Previously on Lost: The Life & Death of Jeremy Bentham

Last week on Lost we found out what happened to Locke after he "fixed" the Frozen Donkey Wheel and returned to Civilization and the episode did answer a lot of our questions, but in typical Lost fashion, it also raised a lot of questions as well...such as:

(1)Why did Ben talk Locke out of committing suicide, then proceed to strangle Locke? Was it the will of the Island that directed Ben to do this? Would a Locke death by suicide preclude him from being resurrected on the Island? Or, was Ben acting on his own impulses? Ben has already attempted to kill Locke, and it was Ben that disobeyed the Island's wishes and went ahead and moved the Island, instead of Locke as Jacob had directed...Is Ben a renegade?

(2)Why were Jack, Kate, Hurley, and probably Sayid whisked away by the white light on the Ajira flight and deposited on the Island sometime apparantly in the Dharma era of the 1970's, while Ben, Locke, Sun, pilot Frank and our new two "friends" Caesar and Ilana were not? Frank was apparently able to land the plane on the airstrip on Hydra Island and it appears that they are NOT in the same time period as the other four and it's alleged that they are in CURRENT/"Normal" time. Does this mean that the Island has special plans for Jack and Company and that Ben, Locke and Sun are out of favor?

(3)The Locke/Walt meet up was very...anti-climatic. All it seemed to establish was that Walt continues to have visions of Island life...still, it seems highly likely that we're not done with Walt...it seems ordained that at some point we have to have a big Walt/Island showdown, not to mention a tearful reunion with Vincent, the dog.

(4)Is Locke's long lost lady love, Helen (aka Peg Bundy/Leela/actress Katey Sagal) really dead? Or was that an Abbaddon/Widmore subterfuge to keep Locke on track?

(5)Kate was a real bitch to Locke in their confrontation scene, wasn't she? Her character really isn't that sympathetic.

(6)Meanwhile, Widmore seemed very sympathetic in his scene with Locke...in fact, Widmore has seemed suspiciously sympathetic in the majority of his scenes this season...are we being set up for a big twist? Is Widmore not so bad, or are we being led up to a confrontation where Widmore does something truly heinous and reveals his darkest colors? (This seems likely; the producers of the show have said that Widmore is the "Big Bad" of Lost). And, when the hell are we getting an entire Widmore flashback/backstory episode?!?!?! (Interesting note: we've never seen Widmore and his daughter Penny in a scene together.) And, if Widmore has contacts with Eloise Hawking, why doesn't she aid Widmore in getting back "his" Island? And, who the hell is Penny's mother and where was Penny born? If Widmore "had" the Island for 30 years, that would mean he would have been in control when Penny was born, which would have been circa 1970. Or, is Penny really his biological child?

So many questions...

What did we ever do without YouTube?

In the last half hour I've watched recut movie trailers, Dusty Springfield and the Pet Shop Boys, and Robert Altman's Nashville featuring Ronee Blakely having a nervous breakdown at Opryland U.S.A....a potpourri of entertainment that sure does help the day go faster!

That's all I got; there's nothing going on right now that either excites me or enrages me enough to blog about it...it was either a YouTube tribute or a diatribe against people who don't trim their nose hair, (I had a horrifying experience on the bus this morning; I had to sit across from a man with obscenely long nasal foliage...which was a pity since he was kind of cute...but I digress.) Or, I could have posted a tribute to the late Paul Harvey, (didn't y'all think he was already dead? the man seemed like he was 90 when I was 10) and a misty eyed reminiscence of going home to lunch in grade school and listening to Paul Harvey on the radio while I ate my tuna salad sandwich, or if I was real lucky, a real pork tenderloin sandwich with globs of SpinBlend on it. And even at 10, Paul Harvey seemed to me like he was a rightwing douchebag asshole...