*sigh* Damn you Anthony… you better not make L & O unwatchable for me.
Producers: You’ve kicked other people to the curb pretty quickly when they didn’t work out… fix your mistake and kick AA asap.
Too upset to go to sleep now. It’s just a TV show but then again, my first memory of Law & Order is being back in Pennsylvania with my Grandma and sitting down and watching it with her. Normally she let me pick what we watched. But I started wondering why she kept going upstairs to watch tv in my room. Went up after her and found her watching L & O. I sat down and watched it with her.
I didn’t get hooked on it then but everytime I ever saw mention of the show, I thought of her. Then at some point, I did start watching it and got hooked and have watched it ever since. I’ve been watching since it was Orbach & Noth.
So it’s upsetting to me to think of not being able to watch it anymore. But the memories of K-Ville… are just that bad.
Now to try and soothe the upset with this week’s NCIS.
I settled down tonight to watch an old favorite: Law & Order. When I clicked through the DVR screens to play it, I noticed "new series regular, Anthony Anderson".
NO! Especially not when it looks like it’s Jesse L Martin being replaced! He’s the last long term actor left on that show since Sam Watterson went to DA "cameo" status. I like Jeremy and he works well with Jesse.
But I hated KVille when I tried to watch it because while Cole Hauser was decent, Anthony just was BAD. I know there’s something that AA’s done that I did like him in but when it comes to drama especially cop ones, I just can’t stand the way he plays them. They come off uneducated and ignorant and just general all around trailer trash that it’s impossible to take them seriously.
There’s no room for AA who’s playing an IAB cop in this episode unless either Green or Lupo go. Formula calls for 6 players at all times, 3 in cop and 3 in court side. S. Epatha isn’t going anywhere… whoops I guess she would be the last long term actor since she did always have a definitive presence more so than the DA ever did.
I’m still watching the episode but my heart sank at the dialogue between S. Epatha and AA’s characters where AA tells her that he was "drafted" into IAB and indicated that he was hoping to go to Homicide. Could they make it any more obvious?
I usually hate it when people say that they don’t watch a show anymore because so and so left. I know plenty of people who’ve said that about ER which I still enjoy because even when the characters I love go away, others come along to keep it interesting for me. That’s just the nature of an ensemble show.
But… this is a little too much for me to have changed up the 4 main players within the past year. Besides, the only thing that made it bearable when Lenny Briscoe left (RIP Jerry Orbach) was A) Jerry clearly needed to retire for health reasons and B) we at least still had Detective Green who’d been around long enough to endear himself to us. So much better than Benjamin Bratt!
I guess I can understand that Jesse might be tired of Green and wanting to do other things. Heck I have to wonder if the reason the producers were ok with writing him out temporarily so he could go do Rent was because it was the only way to keep him. If that’s the reason, ok Jesse I’m with ya. But … if it’s the producers changing shit up? NO NO NO NO!!!
Besides, even if it’s Jesse’s plan to leave… I’m still pissed as hell at the producers for hiring AA. If you’re gonna hire anyone off the failed K-Ville show, how about hiring the guy that ISN’T responsible for making it unwatchable?
Going to finish watching the episode now. I pray that I’ve been making much ado about nothing.
Feels weird because Steve’s no longer on the show but even if Marlee gets booted soon, I’ve gotten hooked enough to want to see how it all turns out.
If you’re reading this and haven’t watched the show, the scores are done in order of the judges seats at the table so from left to right, Carrie Ann, Len and Bruno.
I just read it again for the third time and it’s still a very fun and entertaining read. I say fun for Jack’s sardonic personality and the way she does her job and navigates around obstacles.
In the debut novel of the world of Jack Daniels, she is on the trail of a vicious killer who dumped a badly mutiliated body in a garbage can at the 7-11. A shellacked gingerbread man is found in the garbage with the body and so the hunt is on for the Gingerbread Man Killer.
The hardback is rather thin so it was a fast read. I notice this time around that some of the characters are rather one dimensional such as the “feebs”, a pair of FBI agents who are so completely out of touch with reality that you wonder how they manage to get through the day. But I already know from having read some of the other books in the series that just like the Law & Order/CSI serials on TV, character development does happen, just not at all once.
I remember finding Sue Grafton’s Kinsey rather stick in the mud until we started seeing more of her past and background in the later books. I remember the G book being the one where Kinsey finally displayed real human emotions.
Jack feels real right from the start. About what you’d expect for a female detective hitting 40ish, who grew up with a single mother who was also a cop. No nonsense, practical, cynical, but still with hope.
My favorite of the supporting cast is Phinaeous Trott (I know I butchered the spelling) who gets trotted out in the book in what appears to be the obvious set up for a romantic match. Or at least that’s always how it seems to go when you have a single (or about to be) female lead and a strong male character enters the picture with no clear purpose.
We also meet Herb Benedict, Jack’s partner who can’t seem to stop eating. We don’t really learn much more about him in Whiskey Sour but we will later. Then there is also Harry McGlade, a thorn from Jack’s past, and Latham, an accountant with a taste for danger who finds plenty in dating Jack.
The Gingerbread Man is particularly gruesome but it’s an interesting cat & mouse game. I had a hard time putting the book down even though I’d read it twice before and remembered enough of the ending to know how it was going to end. Just following Jack through her days was too much fun to skim through.
Man I love this guy more every day. He really has his head on straight.
“I think there’s so many talented people on it — that’s what’s great,” said Guttenberg. “It’s a chance for everybody in America — we’re in a tough economic time, we’ve got a crazy presidential race going on — so I think that this show is so good for everybody and it makes the world a better place. I was glad to be on it.”
During the interview, Kimmel also asked Guttenberg what he thought about Penn Jillette’s recent comments that he felt it was unfair that Dancing with the Stars casts celebrity participants like Olympic gold medalist figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, who has been atop the judges’ leaderboard two weeks in a row. (Jillette and fellow competitor Monica Seles were eliminated in last week’s initial Dancing with the Stars sixth-season results show.)
“It’s not a real competition,” explained Guttenberg. “In a real ballroom competition, 10 couples dance together and the judges have a clipboard and they never talk. This is more of a television show — an entertainment show — so it’s not a real dance competition.“
If it was on Kimmel (I could have watched it! duh) then it should be on YouTube and sure enough it is:
Steve talks more about the “mango” part at about 2:15 into the clip.
My rough attempt to transcribe it:
“Truth is I knew it would be entertaining. And the funny thing is I just got a bunch of emails from these people… I went down to Katrina and I volunteered. And all these people that I helped when I was down there in Katrina, emailed me what a great [time and song?] when I was dancing with this guy and they just thought it was the [right?] time.”
He did a great job of straddling the fence there about his feelings about the man-man dance and that it’s another small landmark in gay acceptance in the media. Smart man.
The rest of the interview seems to focus on a blind date Steve had some time ago with a producer of the Kimmel show. That was bizarre.
Hope we’ll see more of Steve now… I need to look at what he’s been doing since the 80s. I did see that bad tv movie he did, “Tower of Terror” with Kirsten Dunst (who wasn’t even 16 then). But don’t recall anything else.
And for laughs: Steve in a Seagrams commercial (looks to be from the late 80s/early 90s judging by his hair)
For some reason, my DVR did not record this last night.
I’m nervous to look up who got booted cause I’m afraid it’s Steve.
*looks it up*
Sigh, it was.
And now I’m really mad about missing the episode because of this:
Instead of dancing with his partner Anna Trebunskaya, he performed the smoldering number with Trebunskaya’s husband, professional dancer Jonathan Roberts, in her role.
Oh well, there’s still Marlee to watch for. Now to go see if I can find a clip of this dance online somewhere.
Found it and oh my god, that was hilarious! I think Jonathon deliberately slid hard enough to knock Steve over at the end for the laughs. Wonder if they planned it that way cause Steve after all was the go to comedic actor of the 80s.
He’s an author of yet another detective series but his gimmick is interesting. His detective is an unapologetic middle aged woman who is attractive but has no idea what feminine wiles are. Her name? Jacqueline Daniels, Jack for short.
As you can probably guess, that sets up a lot of liquor related word play and all the books are named for drinks. It was the bright neon orange/yellow cover of Whiskey Sour that led me to pick up that book and I really liked it.
Bloody Mary & Rusty Nail were excellent reads as well. Now that James Patterson has jumped the shark with his Alex Cross novels, it’s nice to have a new author to read.
And JA takes it to a new level with a website that he produced & maintains himself. He really believes in author driven promotion and tries to connect personally with his readers as much as possible. This is what made me “A FAN”. My personal rating system for authors goes like this: “good story that I’ll re-read again and again = own it in pb”, “excellent story that I love and I really like the author’s style as well = BUY IN Hardback”. JA Konrath is a hardback rating and sitting on myself are the first four Jack Daniel books in glorious (and colorful) hardback form.
If you love a good murder mystery/suspense thriller (ie you watch all the Law & Order shows), you can check out the first book for free on his website: www.jakonrath.com. Whiskey Sour is available as a free download (pdf).
Also look on his website for his unpublished novel, Origin. I’ll dig up my previous review of this and post it again but I recommend reading that too.
It’s been a while and Fuzzy Navel (book #5) is coming out soon so I think I’ll re-read the series again soon. I’ll post more in-depth reviews of the books when I do. His latest blog post mentions finishing Cherry Bomb (#6) too! So exciting to know about good books on the horizon.
BTW if you’re at all curious about the world of publishing and how to be a successful author, add his blog to your daily rss reader: A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. He posts every couple weeks or so and they’re always informative and entertaining even if you’re not a writer. All that’s required is a love of books.
Photo: JAKonrath.com (many more hilarious pictures found in the Mug Shots, doesn’t he look like a bookish Jack Black?)
My friend and I were talking about a depeche mode song she wants to be sung in her church this weekend and it made me think of Stryper, the hair band version of Christian Rock, from the 80s.
I had their album. I liked “Always there for You” and while I can’t think of the song titles off the top of my head, there were some others on the cassette tape that I liked too.
Listening to the song again via YouTube, I have to say that I still like the song. I love the wailing 80s hair metal/rock sound and Michael Sweet does wail nicely. He also looks like a young Jay Leno with a bad hairdo.
Clearly not everyone can do big hair.
Now to get the album again and listen to the rest and see if it holds up too.
Finally sitting down to watch the show on the DVR. Again I missed watching it live and being able to vote afterwards. Oh well.
Tonight’s Tango & Jive night. Should be interesting.
Goodie, Marlee’s up first. I love her dresses and tonight’s my favorite one so far.
The girl can jive! Love the under arm passes. Len & Bruno are still just “omg can’t believe you can do this and so well!”. Carrie Ann’s the only one to actually focus on the dance.
And my other favorite is next up so that’s great for me.. my favorites are up first.
Oh man… the slash lover in me just really had fun watching the rehearsal segment where Anna’s gorgeous husband Jonathan steps in for her. Apparently she was really sick.
Tango for Steve and it looks good. Nice finish with her sliding under his leg like that. Hmm what’s this? HAHAH goofball! He needed “to prepare” for the judges. He went and got a metal bowl and goggles and put them on his head.
Cool! The judges all thought he did really well this week. Hope that translates into a decent set of scores. I don’t think he’s gotten a 7 yet? And he just got all 7s! Definitely his best!
BTW the “Gute” really loves his parents. If you can’t tell, every opening sequence where the camera pans over the stars, he always mouths “Hi Mom & Dad”.
Too good to be true? I don’t care. I enjoy him.
It’s downhill from here for me because everyone else is “the competition” for my people.
Owww my brain. I’ve watched some “reality competition” shows such as Fear Factor, America’s Best Dance Crew and even a couple ANTM (blame the last two on little bro) but none of these have an episode dedicated to elimination.
And it is PAINFUL. Because they have to fill an hour and only have 20 minutes of real content.
I’m vaguely aware of the Jonas Brothers. Their performance didn’t wow me. I preferred the dance by the Cirque Du Soleil guy and laughed when I heard the opening line from Meatloaf’s “I’ll Do Anything for Love But I won’t Do That”. MEATLOAF!!
On to the eliminations… YAY!! Steve was first saved. But I noticed there was a pattern in the announcing of the saves. Since they made it clear each time that of the last two couples, one of them was NOT in the bottom two, that means Adam and Marissa were 4th ranked respectively. So who were the 5th rankers? My theory is that they were the first ones called so that makes it Steve (sigh) and Shannon (surprising).
I loved that at the end as the camera moves off Marissa, you can see a pair of silver encased arms throwing themselves around her neck. Awwww! Who made friends? Shannon & Marissa!
Next week is going to be tough, the bottom four as I see it “in no particular order” are Adam, Steve, Marissa & Shannon. I’m betting that Adam will be the next eliminated but at this point I couldn’t safely say who is the next one on the bubble. I would have thought Shannon to be 4th ranked but they were very clear on that Marissa was NOT 5th. I suspect people are being harder on her than the others. Stop it!
Lastly, Cristian…. may end up being crippled by his dance partner because though I barely pay attention to tabloid fodder especially about reality show people, all I could think about when I saw her was … CHEATER. It’s not fair to Cristian but I know I wouldn’t mind seeing her gone either. Too distracting.
Parting thought, Steve is … interesting. I find myself wanting to know more about what he is like. I wonder if my friend’s ever run across him.
I just read it again for the third time and it’s still a very fun and entertaining read. I say fun for Jack’s sardonic personality and the way she does her job and navigates around obstacles.
