THE HAT SQUAD: ANDY HALLETT & MONTE HALE

Two actors who enriched Toobworld have passed away in the last few days. Andy Hallett died on Sunday of heart failure; he had coronary problems since 2004. He's best known for playing Lorne, a somewhat fey demon who ran a nightclub for the supernatural. (I'm supposing the name Lorne was an in-joke because he was green, although the Toobworld splainin was that it was short for his full name.)

Andy Hallett
"Angel" .... Lorne (76 episodes, 2000-2004)

"The Enforcers" (2001) TV mini-series .... Wallace

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" .... Student
- Hush (1999)

Only a few months ago, I was making the Wish-craft that Hallett should appear as Lorne in an episode of 'Supernatural'; it would have been - ahem! - a natural. But now that can never be....
~~~
Monte Hale may well have been the last of the B movie Western stars, and the last of the Singing Cowboys at that, like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. I'm assuming that the amount of work he did for the movies played a large role in why he didn't show up that often in all of the TV Westerns of the 1950's.

Monte Hale
"America 2-Night"
- Monty Hale (1978)

"Gunsmoke"
- Uncle Finney (1968) TV episode .... Bank Teller
- Blue Horse (1959) TV episode .... Sergeant

"Honey West" .... Sheriff Johnson
- How Brillig, O, Beamish Boy (1966)

"The Texan"
- Image of Guilt (1959)

"Tales of Wells Fargo" .... Sergeant Bergman
- The Deserter (1958)

"Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok" .... Doyle Fetcher
- The Runaway Wizard (1958)

I'd like to think that the Sergeant he played in the 1959 episode of 'Gunsmoke' became the bank teller he played nearly ten years later on the series. And who knows? Maybe that Sergeant was the Sergeant Bergman in the 'Tales Of Wells Fargo' episode. But of course that all depends on their fates in those episodes.

Both Andy Hallett and Monte Hale couldn't have come from two more different genres, but they both shared the same Toobworld. And Toobworld Central tips our toob top to them.

Good night, and may God bless....

BCnU....
Toby O'B

AS SEEN ON TV: SASQUATCH

"As Seen On TV" celebrates those real world people, both living and dead, who are portrayed on Television by actors or drawn for the Tooniverse. Or even portrayed by puppets.

For today's showcase, we're taking a look at the real-life historical figure of Bigfoot, otherwise known as "Sasquatch".

In "The Secret Of Bigfoot", an episode of 'The Six Million Dollar Man', Colonel Steve Austin tangled with the legendary beast-man while searching for some missing seismologists.

Austin fought with Bigfoot which revealed that the creature was bionic as well, and serving as the sentry for an alien encampment to protect them from the outside world which was alien to them.

But even though this Bigfoot was more machine than creature, it didn't negate the Truth - Bigfoot exists!

One of its species adopted a human family named the Hendersons and they gave it the name of Harry.

Another one served as a companion and guardian to a feral teen raised in the forests and known as Wildboy.

And in the alternate TV dimension in which one could find the research compound known as 'Sanctuary', a Bigfoot works for Dr. Helen Magnus at the facility.

SHOWS CITED:

'The Six Million Dollar Man'

'Harry And The Hendersons'

'Bigfoot And Wildboy'

'Sanctuary'

"Bigfoot" (a TV movie)

BCnU!

Toby O'B

SLASH FICTION

When Serena found the list of people her mother Lily had slept with, she said with exasperation, ""Mom. Slash? Really?"

Slash (AKA Saul Hudson) is a musician best known for his connection to Guns 'n' Roses. But he does have a televersion, albeit one with a strange pedigree. He appeared in an episode of 'The Drew Carey Show' and then apparently he crossed over to the Tooniverse. First he made contact with that animated dimension in an episode of 'Space Ghost: Coast To Coast', and then appeared in an episode of 'South Park' and several episodes of 'Kid Notorious', fully animated himself.

I suppose one could consider his appearance in the Kentucky Derby episode of Anna Nicole Smith's reality show to be another notch in his belt for Toobworld appearances, but that's just too sad to think about......

So Slash is just as much a TV character as Serena and Lily, and therefore - like Larry Sanders with Roseanne and Ellen DeGeneres (but not together!) - capable of having sex with Lily.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

SHOWIN' A ZONK WHO'S THE BOSS!

New show started last week on ABC called 'In The Motherhood'. I was going to check it out, but Alan Sepinwall was so adamant about how bad it was in his own blog ("What's Alan Watching?" - the link is to the left, Dahlingks!) that I decided to skip the experience.

But according to TVGal, there was at least one Zonk that needed to be disabled. Because even though I didn't watch it, that doesn't mean the show didn't become part of Toobworld. This is Horatio and Jane and he brought up the Zonk to her:

"I know you have this whole Angela/Tony - 'Who's The Boss' thing going on."

Ooookay.....

Well, I think we could assume that Horatio was referring to two friends of theirs whom we in the TV audience will never get to meet. And the 'Who's The Boss' thing is just a classification nickname given to a situation in which a married couple struggle for dominance over each other.

So their friends Angela and Tony are in a spiritual tug of war when it comes to their relationship.

I know that I usually get tripped up when I try to surmise about a show which I didn't see, but hopefully this splainin will hold up.

And even if it doesn't, I get the feeling that 'In The Motherhood' won't be around long enough to really make any difference.....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

YA CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE

Monday's "Washington Post" took the TV series '24' to task for its inventions of locales in the Washington D.C. area, including a Port of Alexandria, a container shipping facility on the Potomac River. And they had terrorist go scuba diving right up underneath the White House and then tunnel their way in.

Howard Gordon, "24's" executive producer, admitted that he and his writers weren't that knowledgeable about the cartographic details for our nation's capital, but he also argued that they only have to be plausible, not literally accurate.

Linda Stasi of the "New York Post" had a similar complaint a few years ago about the fictional subway lines mentioned in the baseball series 'Clubhouse'.

But I have to argue against the need for an exact recreation of the geography - these shows are taking place in an alternate universe (and from there in separate TV dimensions. 'Clubhouse' is in Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld, and '24' has its own dimension - let's say... "Earth Prime-Time/24".)

I even have a splainin as to why the White House is sitting on top of a body of water. In an old episode of 'The Wild, Wild West' in which Edward Andrews played a villain named The Brain, there were caverns underneath the White House from which he plotted to replace President Grant with a look-alike. At least in that alternate world of '24', I'd argue that those caverns were flooded in order to prevent any other madman from ever trying to attack the Commander-In-Chief from that direction. (Just because '24' and 'The Wild, Wild West' don't share the same dimension, that doesn't mean the world of Jack Bauer and the CTU didn't have Secret Service agents Jim West and Artemus Gordon in its past.....)

In that article, Gordon went on to say that "The only people who really care about this are people with too much time on their hands."

And that would be me.....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

CLAN BORAK

I know; it sounds like a story about Klingons....

Looking over that web page of "Repeat Offenders" which I mentioned in my "Jury Prudence" post, I found this bit o' trivia: over the many years that 'Law & Order' has been on the air, three different actors have played Borak the medical examiner:

Chip Zien
Timothy Britten Parker
Josh Pais Chip Zien was the first to play the role, in the first season episode "Happily Ever After". (Slightly off-topic, I wonder if the casting director had Zien in mind for that episode because he made a connection between "Happily Ever After" and "Into The Woods", the Sondheim musical about fairy tales?) Then Timothy Britten Parker took on the role in the second season episode "His Hour Upon The Stage". But then he was AWOL from the series until the 13th season, in which he returned as Borak in the episode "Mother's Day". Between those two appearances, Josh Pais played Borak from "American Dream" in the fourth season to the 13th season episode of "True Crime". Pais also played an unnamed medical examiner in two first season episodes - "Poison Ivy" and "Mushrooms". But to reduce the surplus population of Toobworld, I think we can safely assume that both of these were also Borak.

'Law & Order' is probably the most unadorned of TV shows; in the relative terms of television, it's probably the most "realistic". So even though it shares the same dimension as - and is closely linked to - 'The X-Files', 'Law & Order' doesn't lend itself to wild Toobworld splainins for recasting characters, like quantum leaping or alien impersonations.

Therefore, to clear up this case of recastaways, I'm going to suggest that all three Boraks were members of the same family who went into the same line of work. I have no problem thinking of them all as brothers; I've seen worse casting when it came to finding genetic similarities.

An interesting side-note: both Pais and Parker played a character named Cioran in first season episodes of 'Law & Order'. (First Pais in "The Reaper's Helper" and then Parker in "Life Choice" nine episodes later.) I admit I haven't done the research to find out who Cioran was and if they should be considered the same character or not.)

BCnU!
Toby O'B

AS SEEN ON TV: PEDRO ZAMORA & "THE REAL WORLD" CAST

On Wednesday night, MTV will premiere "Pedro", a movie about the life of Pedro Zamora, who appeared on 'The Real World: San Francisco'. The movie will simulcast on mtvU, LOGO and MTV Tr3s at 8PM, with a special introduction by former President Bill Clinton.

From the press release supplied by MTV:

In 1994, Zamora captured the hearts of millions as the first-ever openly gay, HIV-positive main character on TV—on MTV’s 'The Real World: San Francisco'. Zamora’s time in the house on Lombard Street brought a face to the AIDS crisis. President Bill Clinton has long credited Zamora with personalizing and humanizing the epidemic, and he will introduce "Pedro" when it makes its world television premiere April 1st.

“To this day, Pedro Zamora remains an extraordinary example of what a huge impact one young person can make in our world,” President Clinton said. “I’m glad to have known him, and I’m grateful his life has been able to inspire and enrich so many others.”

Told through the eyes of his friends and family, the film "Pedro" celebrates the extraordinary life a young man who found out he was HIV positive at 17, then made the courageous decision to dedicate his life to speaking out about the disease. Zamora testified before the United States Congress to argue for more explicit HIV/AIDS educational programs aimed at youth of color before auditioning for 'The Real World' in 1993.

Zamora’s story heightened awareness of the AIDS/HIV epidemic in America, and now 15 years after his death MTV will tell his story. From his early life in Cuba to his death at the age of 22, "Pedro" will give viewers a look into the life of this great man.

Pictured above are the actors from the TV movie, portraying the cast of that San Francisco chapter of 'The Real World'. Pedro is in the striped blue shirt.

Another, more infamous, resident of the Frisco house is behind him to the far left: Puck.

It just seems a shame that if they really wanted to get this message out, they wouldn't have scheduled it opposite 'American Idol' and 'Lost'.....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TOOBWORLD LOOKS AT BSG: PART TWO

From the April 28, 2006 edition of "Inner Toob":

It would be nice to fill out that particular dimension a bit, so that it's not so void of TV shows. Therefore, as far as I can see, since 'Firefly' is set in the future, and 'Galactica' hasn't reached Earth yet, for the time being I see no reason why it can't share the same dimension as 'The West Wing', 'Mr. Sterling', and 'Smallville'.

After first visiting the burnt-out cinder of a planet which was their fabled version of "Earth", the Galactica fleet reached our concept of "Earth" about 150,000 years ago. (Kara Thrace knew "there's got to be some kind of a way out of here" when the brokered peace with the Cylons fell apart - she went for broke and jumped the old battlestar, based on musical notes that also served as coordinates. And that's how they ended up in the Sol system in "the prehistoric dawn on a small blue-green planet in the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy.") So part of that quote of mine above no longer holds true. Not only had they reached Earth, but had done so many thousands of years in the past.

I have friends who have asked me to consider both versions of 'Battlestar Galactica' for inclusion in my vision of Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld. Their argument basically is that the new version happened in the distant past, and then History repeated itself as the original series took place in the decades leading up to 1980. But I still have to hold that this re-imagining of the series has to find a new home in some alternate TV dimension. Such a repeat of History is too great a coincidence, not that it's impossible in Toobworld. Depending on how this Thursday's finale of 'Life On Mars' plays out, I'm hoping to keep the American version in Earth Prime-Time just like the original British series; there are ways to splain around it. But this kind of repeat of events and characters goes beyond the realm of believability.

And it's not just the original 'Battlestar Galactica' that would be duplicated. There's also a key segment of the TV version of 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy' to consider - when the Golgafrinchams crashed on Earth and became the real ancestors to the human race. So I'm thinking the first part of my original premise can stand - the whole enterprise would be better suited for a particular alternate TV dimension, that in which Matt Santos is the current President of the United States, the dimension of 'The West Wing'. Other series already included in this dimension are:

'Mr. Sterling' (meant by its creator to be in that same world)
'Smallville' (since Clark Kent had not come to be known as Superman yet - and STILL hasn't)
'Raising The Bar' (different NYC D.A. than 'Law & Order', which is a powerhouse Toobworld staple)
and possibly the USA version of 'Life On Mars'.........

It's not bad company to be keeping, so I can't see why there should be complaints. I rather like the idea that two of the most critically acclaimed series of all time share the same dimension. In fact, some of the characters from 'Battlestar Galactica' could be distant ancestors to those in 'The West Wing'.......

BCnU!
Toby O'B

AS SEEN ON TV: LAWRENCE LESSIG

In the sixth season episode of 'The West Wing' entitled "The Wake-Up Call", Christopher Lloyd appeared as Lawrence Lessig, author of "The Future Of Ideas" (about copyright law, I believe), who was brought in to the White House to advise a Belarus delegation on the drafting of their own constitution.Save those people who appeared as themselves on 'The West Wing' - like Jay Leno, Penn Jillette, and Yo-Yo Ma - no real-life figures were shown to be portrayed by actors... except for Lawrence Lessig.

Here's a thumbnail biography for Lessig, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Lawrence Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society, and will soon re-join the faculty at Harvard Law School. Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons, a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center and a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.

As an expert on intellectual property law, I'm sure he'd have plenty to say about "Inner Toob"!

Toobworld is used to TV characters based on real world people looking nothing like the original: Ross Perot = Richard Crenna, Ryan White's Mom = Judith Light, Pappy Boyington = Robert Conrad. So it's not that odd that Christopher Lloyd looks nothing like the actual Lessig:
I really can't figure out why Christopher Lloyd was chosen to play the part. As great as he is, he's almost thirty years older than Lawrence Lessig!

Well, this all takes place in the 'West Wing' dimension, so it's not a real sticking point. But if Lessig was to be portrayed in a show set on Earth Prime-Time, then I have a better suggestion for the actor: Christian Clemenson is only three years older than Lessig, a much better match that way.

Here's what Lessig had to say about the 'West Wing' portrayal:

"The story is based (loosely) upon a true story. I was involved in the drafting of one early version of the Georgian constitution. But the story ended up in the 'West Wing' because I told the story to my students in Constitutional Law at Harvard, and a current writer for 'the West Wing' was in that class.

And so is "fame" made: My story is on 'the West Wing' because I was at Harvard -- not because the brilliance of my intervention had been noted and reviewed, but because I was teaching talented kids who would prove to be important. Indeed, so has the most important of my "fame" been made: Did Justice Jackson pick me to be his special master because he had determined I was the perfect mix of Holmes and Ed Felten? No, I was picked because I was a Harvard Law Professor teaching the law of cyberspace.

Remember: So is "fame" made."

BCnU!
Toby O'B

THE HAT SQUAD: BOB ARBOGAST

Voice-over artist Bob Arbogast has passed away.

Mark Evanier writes of him:

"How to describe Arbogast? Bob Arbogast was a comedy writer, a radio personality, a voiceover specialist, a creator of funny commercials and a TV host...and even that doesn't begin to tell you who he was..... Among folks who do funny voiceovers, he was kind of a legend."

Arbogast did several voices for cartoon series, but also appeared in live action shows as well, including 'Mork And Mindy' and 'Mathnet'. And he also was a writer for 'The Nut House', a live-action pilot by Jay Ward.

Bob Arbogast's most famous Tooniverse character would probably be General G.I. Brassbottom of 'Roger Ramjet'.

TOOBWORLD
"Mathnet" .... Byle Dupe
- The Case of the Missing Air (1988)

"Square One TV" (1987) .... Mr. Beasley

"Mork & Mindy" .... Policeman
- In Mork We Trust (1979)

THE TOONIVERSE
"The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo"
- It's a Wonderful Scoob (1985)

"Galtar and the Golden Lance" (1985) .... Ither

"Monchhichis" (1983) .... Snogs

"Smurfs" (1981) .... Additional Voices

Faeries (1981) .... Kobold/Trow/Hunter

Carlton Your Doorman (1980) .... Parrot/Undertaker

"I Am the Greatest" (1977)

"Hot Wheels" (1969) .... Doc Warren / Jack "Rabbit" Wheeler

"Skyhawks" .... Buck Devlin
- Devlin's Dilemma

"Roger Ramjet" (1965) .... Gen. G.I. Brassbottom

"The Jetsons" (1962) .... Additional Voices

Good night and may God bless.....

BCnU.....
Toby O'B