RAY QUIPPIN'

I had a dream during the night about the new version of 'Life On Mars', specifically about Michael Imperioli's incarnation of Ray Carling. (Should have tweaked the name slightly for this version to "Carlino".)

No, it wasn't THAT kind of a dream. Not with Imperioli, especially!

What was getting to me were all the one-liners he kept coming up with for each situation. (My favorite: "He's crazier than a fruit bat at a cranberry convention.") At first I thought it was just making him cartoonish. Then I thought - well, he's probably just a figment of Sam's imagination anyway, so he could have two heads at any time as well.

But then I thought - hey, this world of 1973 in Sam's mind is pretty detailed. So maybe this Ray Carling has a reason to spouting all of these wisecracks.

So I'm thinking - what if he wants to be the next Joseph Wambaugh? The next cop to write a major best-seller about his experiences? And so what we're seeing is Ray trying out all of these lines that he might use in a book that he's writing.

They'll probably never use that idea - and they're welcome to it if they stumbled across it here - but it doesn't hurt the overall game plan as is to think that it still might be the case.

BCnU!
Toby O'B