I watched all eight episodes of VH1's I Hate My 30s over the weekend on Joost and though I could review the show (The Rod Serling bit seemed to lose some of its punch in the middle before coming back toward the end and for one sitting, there may have been too much singing and dancing, but it'd be all right spread over a season), I just couldn't help thinking every time Liam Kyle Sullivan came on the screen, how much he reminded me of David Dean Bottrell.

David Dean Bottrell

Liam Kyle Sullivan

Back before the Emmy® nominations came out, I made a few comments around the web saying that I thought Mr. Bottrell was worthy of a guest star nomination for his portrayal of Lincoln Meyer on Boston Legal. Oftentimes, you can spot the name actors going for a late career nod and I had hoped that the unknown Mr. Bottrell's brilliant work would not be overlooked.

I don't know if anybody submitted his name for consideration, "Hands" got the guest star nom for Boston Legal and he won last year, so I wouldn't hold out hope. And, it seems David E. Kelley submitted the New Orleans episode for the Best Drama category, which of course, it was successful. (If you ask me, I'd say that out of all the New Orleans episodes television did last year, Boston Legal's was among the best, but the producers may have submitted it, hoping to do some variation of James Spader's closing in their speech.)

Suffice it to say, I was disappointed that David Dean Bottrell's name did not go through, but now that we've found someone who could possibly play his long-lost son, perhaps if Mr Kelley reads this, he'll get another chance.

In lieu of a longer post and more in-depth content, here's a quick back and forth.

Part one is an article from Saturday's Washington Post about the problems, a pilot has with clearing airport security because his name is similar to that of a person on the terrorist watchlist, while part two is the summation from a recent Boston Legal which addresses the same issue. As critical thinking, the clip is kind of shallow, but with the argument, it makes a good point.

With about ten minutes remaining in tonight's rerun of Boston Legal, ABC News jumped into programming with a "Special Report", where Terry Moran told us that Gerald Ford had died. I'll admit that the death of a former President is news, but the man was of an advanced age, he was the longest living former President and he has not been well for a while.

Perhaps, if ABC had simply said that Gerald Ford had died and told us to stay tuned for our late local news or for additional coverage on Nightline, I could be giving them credit for possibly being first, but that's not what they did. Instead, Mr Moran did a phone interview with someone I don't remember, then via a telephone report, they reminded us that Charles Gibson is the only anchor old enough to have been working at the time and he only said stuff that most people already know.

There was only a few seconds left in the primetime broadcast, when Mr Moran tossed it back to Nightline for viewers in the eastern time zone, where he said there would be extended coverage. At no point in his broadcast did he say to stay tuned to the late local news for further information, something which would've been relevant to viewers in the other three time zones, nor did he say that they'd be doing another edition of Nightline for the remainder of the country.

Admittedly it was news, but nothing was said that couldn't wait, it was mostly just an exercise in being first and a way to promote Charles Gibson. The story may have warranted an interruption, but the bulk of the message could've been communicated in a minute or two, which would've allowed everyone not in the eastern time zone to finish the program, they had been watching.

In my opinion and with all due respect to the late President, the performance of ABC News mostly showed their lack of regard for everyone not living in the east and for the time we had devoted to watching one of their programs. A quick spin of the dial because they weren't saying anything new, showed that no other broadcast network was pre-empting the full final minutes of any show.

ABC News may or may not have been first, we won't know until later. But, I am willing to bet that their extended interruption, where they simply rehashed ancient history did the network's entertainment division no favors, nor did it serve the local affiliates by failing to mention their upcoming coverage and in the area of viewer loyalty, it could have done more harm than good.

As the wife and I were watching television last night, I offered her my review of ABC's Brothers & Sisters.

In a nutshell, I said that I've always had a thing for Sally Field, ever since those after school reruns of Gidget that I watched in my youth, I've felt that I could listen to her reading from the phonebook and she's still very easy on the eyes. But, though her new show has an all-star kind of cast, it just doesn't flow well after Desperate Housewives. Grey's Anatomy had a similar voiceover narration as the earlier show and it moved at the same quickened pace. While, though I can't argue with anything starring Sally Field, the new show moves at such a slow gait that during last night's final hour of primetime, I was actually watching three different programs.

This morning, I was using the various image searches looking for a couple of pics from Gidget and I clicked over to IMDB to get an idea of how old Ms Field was when the show originally aired and how old she might be today. While there, I did some clicking around and looked for one of my favorite quotes from Smokey and the Bandit to illustrate this post;

Carrie: Don't you ever take off that stupid hat?
Bandit: I take my hat off for one thing, one thing only.
Carrie: Oh...
[beat]
Carrie: Take off your hat.

And, because I can't just read one thing, I also ran across this gem of dialogue;

Carrie: You have a great profile.
Bandit: Yeah, I do, don't I? Especially from the side.
Carrie: Well, at least we agree on something.
Bandit: Yeah. We both like half of my face.

ETA: A few weeks after I made this post, ABC stuck a special showing of Boston Legal into Brothers & Sisters Sunday night timeslot. I have to say that the humor, tone and use of music flowed much better behind Desperate Housewives. And, though it might be ironic for the network to move David Kelley back into the berth he had occupied for years, the Sally Field/Ken Olin show might actually be better served, if it flipped into the Tuesday night slot and tried to capture some of the audience that kept Judging Amy on CBS.

If I posted an update for every entry, I'd never get anything else done.

Sometimes it's as simple as an obscure angle or story getting picked-up by mainstream media; I've occasionally seen a direct reversal and sometimes it's just something neat. For example, last year on "International Darwin Day", I linked to a study about the willingness of Rhesus monkeys to forego juice to look at pictures of their dominate brethren. On the season finale of Boston Legal, the case involved something similar to "Gawker Stalker Map" and in his closing arguments, James Spader outlined the study.

I take no credit for any of these events. All of these scenarios could be motivation for an update, but I usually don't bother. Though at this time, I am going to invoke my "Randomness" method because I think these situations could be noteworthy and possibly as a reward, or because it doesn't merit a post of its own; I'm going to stick something new to the bottom of this post.

÷÷÷
On Saturday, I linked to the beginning of a controversy about default icons depicting breastfeeding. I addressed the root of the situation in the comments, but if you haven't been following the story, I'd say that it's been a shitstorm for Livejournal and lj_abuse.

The boob_nazis organized a letter-writing campaign using an auto-mail system. At the last published count, they had sent almost 1,500 letters of protest, when they called an unilateral ceasefire because they started getting responses from people with authority. If you're interested, you can go back to the beginning and read forward, or you could jump directly to the signed "apology" from a VP of Six Apart, which is now positioned as the topmost entry in the community.

I think the mothers did themselves proud and though many of them were focused on the singular subject at hand, others expanded it to point out other problems with abuse. I only interjected myself via an outside blog. Trolls have been making a game of reporting offending icons and I'm not really sure if mine would pass muster, so I've been "HidingMyself"

My personal position is quite simple; I support the idea of breastfeeding and I agree the icons did not violate the "Terms of Service", as they stood at the beginning of this controversy. I feel that LJ made an egregious error, when they reworded the TOS on Saturday to support their position on the icons and that's one of the things for which Mr Bryan has apologized.

I also feel that lj_abuse needs to be professionalized and this space shouldn't be policed by a bunch of inconsistent volunteers, who must be on some kind of power trip because why else would they do it? I also did not like their response to my only report and as I've said elsewhere, if MySpace had to appoint a safety czar, lj should do something similar. I've seen on one of Mena Trott's blogs, mention of a large influx of capital and I feel that they should spend some of this to professionalize the service.

÷÷÷
I only made a few posts about the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia. As I said at the time, my mother's grandfather actually married a pair of sisters who literally lived down the road from the mine, so it was of special interest to me. Plus, I remember the relief that I felt when they saved those miners in Pennsylvania, so I lived and breathed the story in hopes of a similar outcome.

The WV State Legislature have been holding hearings about what happened and the testimony from the chair of the Mining and Mineral Engineering Department at Virginia Tech, who was hired by the company to investigate, struck me as interesting. So, I'm going to clip from a couple of media reports and put them under a ( cut. )

NPR also offers some audio about the theory, but it's more color than content, when compared to the text links on this topic.

÷÷÷
On Sunday, I juxtaposed a NYTimes story about West Virginians having to seek work out of state, with an LATimes piece on immigration reform. The meat of my little "joke" was based on a woman featured in the Los Angeles paper, who runs a landscape management company. Cyndi Smallwood said she was ambivalent about reform, but she favors a guest worker program because she was having trouble finding experienced people for a $34, per hour job.

An alert corner of the blogosphere did some googling and discovered that she belongs to an activist group, she has lobbied on the subject and has flown to Washington to make her views known. She has also been quoted in the California media on occasion and because her $34 was so much higher than the other wages cited in the article, the very existence of the jobs have been called into question. As of this writing, the LATimes has said that they will not be issuing a retraction, correction or apology for the misleading manner with which she was characterized.

÷÷÷

Something New

"Scientists Create Artificial Penis"

First, an open letter;

Mr Leno,

I have to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of your style. I really wish your monologue writers would read a whole story instead of making a joke from the headline, but I do find you funny and I often watch the beginning of your show.

What has been bothering me lately is your assumption of religion. On last night's "Tonight Show", one of the questions you asked the UNLV graduates was for the first line of the Bible and just before Easter, you did an entire "Jaywalking" bit called "Bible Quiz". It may be true that the majority of people in this country have some religious training and it is usually Christian, but none of your "Bible Quiz" was based on verifiable fact, instead it was based on the myths and faith of Christians, especially Catholics.

As a non-Christian, I am offended.

---

Also, I know in New Mexico they rebroadcast Charlie Rose at noon, the next day. This could be the only place this happens, but if you don't know, you should check your local listings. And, if the second half-hour of the May 16th episode is not rebroadcast in your community and if you have an interest in global politics, plus 99¢ to burn; You may want to consider a rental from Google Video.

The guest was author Michael Mandelbaum and though his book may be a scholarly work, I spent a lot of the interview asking one question; "On which planet does this man live?" I'll admit that some of his theories and reasonings make sense, but it's like he has slept through the past few years. Maybe he started with a treatise and finished his thoughts, everything else be damned or maybe it reads a lot better than than his answers sounded. But as I listened, I couldn't help but think that Mr Mandelbaum is out there.
---

And finally, I really liked the way Tuesday's Boston Legal flirted with the fourth wall toward the end. It may have sounded funny to some because they remained in character, but I felt it showed the audience a lot of respect.