AS SEEN ON TV: SYDNEY BIDDLE BARROWS

SYDNEY BIDDLE BARROWS

AS SEEN IN:
"The Mayflower Madam"

AS PLAYED BY:
Candice Bergen

From Wikipedia:
Sydney Biddle Barrows (born January 14, 1952), known as the Mayflower Madam, was an American madam. After her escort service was exposed and disbanded, she gained worldwide notoriety, in part because she was part of the upper-class Biddle family of Philadelphia and is a Mayflower descendant. During her years as a madam, she used the alias Sheila Devin. She is related to the Drexel banking family of Philadelphia.

After graduating from New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, followed by a short career in the fashion industry, she was introduced to the world of high-class prostitution and started her own escort service named Cachet, which existed in New York City from 1979 to 1984. Unlike other escort agencies, Cachet offered an unparalleled service at the time, focusing on delivering a classy and elegant experience to the wealthy and powerful who either visited or lived in New York City. Some of its clients included industrialists, high-powered business executives and lawyers, foreign diplomats and Arabian oil sheiks.

In October 1984, her escort service was shut down and she was charged with promoting prostitution by the New York City District Attorney's Office. After her guilty plea, she published a best-selling autobiography, "Mayflower Madam", which later became a television movie of the same name starring Candice Bergen. She has written two subsequent books on modern sexual etiquette.

BCnU!

THE 2009 TOOBITS AWARDS (PART FOUR)

Here we are with another batch of winners for the 2009 Toobits Awards. We're slowly moving on up to the big categories now with this collection of characters whom we liked the best from last year.

There is at least one spoiler in this mix, even though the show has now ended, so proceed with caution.....

CHARACTER MOST DESERVING TO BECOME A REGULAR
Lady Christine De Souza, 'Doctor Who'

BEST LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES APPEARANCE
Chris Kattan - 'Bollywood Hero'

BEST LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES APPEARANCE IN A COMMERCIAL
Male - Alec Baldwin, "Alec In Huluwood"

Female - Keira Knightley, "Cut" for Women's Aid Society (UK)

Ensemble - Chevy Chase, Molly Shannon, Dana Carvey, Darrell Hammond - T-Mobile


BEST LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES APPEARANCE IN THE TOONIVERSE
The cast of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' on 'Family Guy'

BEST CHARACTER RETURN
Sharona Fleming, 'Monk'

BEST NEW ALIEN SPECIES
The 4-5-6 - 'Torchwood: Children Of Earth'

BEST NEW MALE VILLAIN
William Herrick - 'Being Human'

HONORABLE MENTION
Rigaud - 'Little Dorrit'

BEST NEW FEMALE VILLAIN
Marianne Forrester, 'True Blood'

MOST EVIL CHARACTER
Henry Dunn, 'Harper's Island'

BEST NEW CHARACTER NAME
Demetri Noh, 'Flash-Forward'
(in the tradition of Horation Caine, Napoleon Solo, James Tiberius Kirk, Artemus Gordon) We'll have more winners in the Characters categories tomorrow as the 2009 Toobits Awards continue......

BCnU!

"DOCTOR WHO" & THE ANGELS OF DESTINY

I think for next year's collection of 'Doctor Who' blog posts for the annual "Who's On First" on New Year's Day, I'll just gather up the posts from the past year.

Beginning with this one.....
In the first half of "The End Of Time" (the final 'Doctor Who' episode to feature David Tennant as the official Doctor), the only decent scene had the Doctor and Wilf Mott in a heart-to-heart conversation in a coffee shop......

THE DOCTOR: Who are you?
WILF MOTT: I'm Wilfred Mott.
THE DOCTOR: No. People have waited hundreds of years to find me and then you manage it in a couple of hours.
WILF MOTT: Well, I was just lucky I suppose.
THE DOCTOR: No, we keep on meeting, Wilf. Over and over again. Like something is still connecting us.
WILF MOTT: What's so important about me?
THE DOCTOR: Exactly. Why you?

THE DOCTOR: I'm going to die.
WILF MOTT: Well, so am I one day.
THE DOCTOR: Don't you dare.
WILF MOTT: Alright, I'll try not to.
THE DOCTOR: I was told; "he will knock four times." That was the prophecy. Knock four times and then...
WILF MOTT: But I thought. When I saw you before you said your people could change, like, your whole body.
THE DOCTOR: I can still die. If I'm killed before regeneration then I'm dead. Even then, even if I change it feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away. And I'm dead...

As powerful as the Doctor is, and during RTD's death-grip on the show the Time Lord had practically become a deity, I think he was still capable of being manipulated by celestial powers greater than he could ever be. And that would include the Angels of Destiny.....

Here's how the Charmed Wiki describes the Angels of Destiny: The Angels of Destiny are the protectors and overseers of the Grand Design, ensuring that no one alters it unnaturally. They are portrayed as ethereal, graceful magical beings of the highest rank. They are above the Elders in the hierarchy of good, but they may be overshadowed by The Tribunal and/or The Cleaners. They are more powerful than the Angel of Death, Elders, and even Avatars. In season 8 episode "Vaya Con Leos", the Angel of Destiny may have suggested that there is a God above them who is the creator of all destinies, however this was not discussed further after Phoebe interrupted the angels conversation. Angels of Destiny possess tremendous amounts of power, being able to halt the orbit of Earth, halt time globally, alter reality and foresee the future. Their only known limitation is that they cannot help or control those who are outside of the time/space continuum, for they are beyond destiny's reach. Any other power(s) used on an Angel of Destiny as seen in season 4, has no affect as they are beyond that. The Angel of Destiny exists outside of space and time, with many angels covering many different destinies.

So O'Bviously they would be even more powerful than a Gallifreyan Time Lord. Since the Angel of Destiny exists outside of space and time, someone whose main strength lies in traveling through time and the relative dimensions in space would not be able to overpower the Angel.

At the same time, the Angel of Destiny would be unable to do anything in regards to the Doctor while he was flying about in the TARDIS, as he would be outside of the space/time continuum during that time. Therefore, the Angel of Destiny needed the Doctor away from the blue box - and on Earth - in order for the Time Lord to face his predetermined Fate. And therefore, it was necessary to use a pawn like Wilf Mott to keep the Doctor anchored in one place. That's why it was the Angel of Destiny that kept them connected.

I don't know why we only think of Earth as being under the sway of celestial beings like angels. They should be universal and so the concept of angels should hold true on other planets like Vulcan or Minbar. But for some reason Earth seems to hold their interest - it's a blessing... and a curse - and so the Angel of Destiny felt it necessary for the Tenth Incarnation of the Doctor to meet his fate on Toobworld.

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: MIEP GIES

Miep Gies, the last survivor among Anne Frank's protectors and the woman who preserved the diary that endures as a testament to the human spirit in the face of unfathomable evil, died Monday night, the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam said. She was 100.

MIEP GIES

AS SEEN IN:
"The Attic"

AS PLAYED BY:
Mary Steenburgen
You can read her full obituary in the New York Times here.

BCnU.....

VILE VERIDIAN VERBIAGE

These out-takes are from an episode of 'Better Off Ted' which will be airing tonight on ABC. It'll be interesting to see how they compare to the actual scenes shown.



One pozz'bility for Toobworld: these out-takes actually took place in the evil mirror TV dimension.....

They've certainly expanded my vocabulary, and there's at least one potential winner for a 2010 Toobits Award!

BCnU!

ECHOES: FEELING PUNCHY

FROM 'SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE'



FROM 'DOCTOR WHO'



BCnU!

THE 2009 TOOBITS AWARDS (PART THREE)

Here's our third installment of the annual Toobits Awards presentation.......

BEST VOICE-OVER
Adam West for the Lending Tree - nobody can say "diabolical" quite like him!



BEST LINE
"I'm the ass kicking clown who will twist you like a balloon animal. I will beat your head against this bumper until the airbags deploy, so apologize to my boyfriend right now!" - Cameron Tucker as "Fizbo", 'Modern Family'



RUNNERS-UP:
"Go shit in the ocean." - Mrs. Zinberg, 'Nurse Jackie
(It sounds much better in Yiddish.)

"Abra Kev Dorfman, you son of a bitch!" - Natalie Teeger, 'Monk'

"I like being weird. Weird is all I got. That and my sweet style." - Moss, 'The IT Crowd'

"I believe you. I don't understand you, but I believe you." - Carmen Reyes, 'Lost'

"I know it's our Christ-given duty to help family, but can't we just kill him?" - Cassie Powers, 'Eastbound & Down'

"I'm going to try to butter that muffin." - Cole Barker, 'Chuck'

BEST SPEECH/MONOLOGUE "I am brave. Rollercoasters? Love 'em. Scary movies? I've seen 'Ghostbusters', like, seven times. I regularly drive through neighborhoods that have only recently been gentrified. So, yeah, I'm pretty much not afraid of anything. Except clowns. Never shared that with the fam' so sssh, I have an image to maintain. I am not really sure where the fear comes from; my mother says it's because when I was a kid I found a dead clown in the woods, but...who knows?" - Phil Dunphy, 'Modern Family'

BEST DIALOGUE EXCHANGE
Colby: Can I ask you something?
David: Sure.
Colby: Do I seem like a Roast Beef kinda guy to you?
David: I won't discuss another man's meat.
('Numb3rs')

Two years running for meat/sex allusions. What could that mean.....?

BEST NEW THEME SONG
'Murdoch's Mysteries'



There's something about the bridge that makes me think of the theme music for 'Six Feet Under'......

BEST MUSICAL MOMENT
The 'Doogie Howser' theme, an SNL Digital Short (1/12/09)



Now, you may have noticed that some of those are from earlier years, but they were new to me in 2009........

We're far from done with our salute to great Toobworld moments in 2009, so stick around!

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: JACK LONDON

On this date in 1876, Jack London was born.

From Wikipedia:

Jack London (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author who wrote The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea Wolf along with many other popular books. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing.

JACK LONDON

AS SEEN IN:
'Mentors'

AS PLAYED BY:
Chad Willett

Here's an episode guide description of his appearance in 'Mentors':

Oliver finds himself back in time due to a computer glitch. Meeting up with Jack London, Oliver experiences some harrowing moments in the untamed Klondike during the gold rush. When his 21st century wristwatch is stolen by an unscrupulous gambler, Oliver finds himself in a race against time to preserve history as we know it.

Since it's the Toobworld Central position that all of the "Mentors" encountered in this series were computer-generated, Oliver actually found himself in a computer simulation of that era. It could even be that his computer was somehow uplinked into a connection with the past timeline of the 'Harsh Realm'......

JACK LONDON

AS SEEN IN:
'Star Trek: The Next Generation'

AS PLAYED BY:
Michael Aron

From Memory Alpha:

Jack London was an American author in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

In 1893, he worked as a bellboy at the Hotel Brian in San Francisco. His earlier jobs included being an oyster pirate, selling newspapers and working in a fish factory. While working as a bellboy, he met Data who had been transported back in time. He helped Data, whom he believed to be an inventor, acquire things that he needed to build a device to detect temporal distortions to return to the 24th century. He also tried to talk Samuel Clemens into writing Jack's biography, but Clemens advised him to become a writer himself and to fulfill his dream of going to Alaska.

Click here for a clip from Chad Willett's reel of his scenes as Jack London in 'Mentors'...

And here's a few scenes from that two-part 'ST:TNG' episode "Time's Arrow" which not only features Jack London, but also a member of the TV Crossover Hall of Fame, Mark Twain!

All that talk about oysters and oyster pirates is making me hungry....

Two for Tuesday!

BCnU!

TVXOHOF, JANUARY 2010: JAY LENO

IT'S "JAYNUARY!"

The bad news for Jay Leno came down this week: his 10 pm weeknight show will be canceled in February. NBC hopes to move him back to a half hour show at 11:30 pm and have Conan O'Brien do the 'Tonight' show starting at midnight. (But it may be that "Cousin" Conan will bolt the Peacock network over the slight and maybe go to FOX for a show that starts at 11 pm.)

I feel sorry for Jay Leno. He didn't ask for all of this to happen. NBC put the squeeze on him to relinquish the 'Tonight' show in 2009 a few years back so that they could hold on to Conan, thinking that his popularity would translate to an hour earlier. Then, when they realized it made them look bad to have done this to a man who was loyal to his network and was untiring in his pitching for them on all sorts of shows, NBC came up with this idea of a weeknight talk show at 10 pm for him. (I'm sure those suits - who deserve to be nibbled to death by ducks - also figured they'd save a lot of money with the show rather than spend a fortune on dramatic series.)

But then the squeeze came on for which dramatic series would survive with five fewer berths to fill; NBC let 'Southland' slip away to TNT because it was too intense for the nine o'clock hour; and NBC affiliates began to bitch about the slide in ratings leading in to their lucrative 11 pm news broadcasts. So now nobody's happy.

(Of course, Leno may be responsible for all of his bad karma - he created a lot of ill will during the writers' strike over a year ago by continuing with his monologues and by doing a crossover with Jimmy Kimmel's show on ABC in what appeared to be a show of solidarity and as a defiant stand against the strike.) At any rate, Toobworld Central has decided to do its part to bring a little joy in Jay Leno's life. And so the man known for his love of cars and for his freakishly big chin (He's often referred to as "lantern-jawed" in so many articles about him!) is the January 2010 inductee into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame - not only as the traditional Classic TV entrant, but also as a member of the League of Themselves.

Just take a gander at this line-up of credits in which Jay played himself:

"Entourage"
- Drive (2009)

"The Comeback"
- Valerie Does Another Classic Leno (2005)

"Joey"
- Joey and the Tonight Show (2005)

"The Bernie Mac Show"

- Pink Gold (2003)

"Scrubs"

- My Own Private Practice Guy (2003)

"Just Shoot Me!"
- Liotta? Liotta! (2002)
- Secretary's Day (1997)

"Titus"
- The Pit (2001)

"The Chris Isaak Show"
- T&A (2001)

"DAG"
- Pilot (2000)

"Passions"
- Episode #1.332 (2000)

"The West Wing"
- 20 Hours in L.A. (2000)
[This is an alternate TV dimension version of Jay Leno.]

Y2K (1999) (TV)

"V.I.P."
- Valma and Louise (1999)
- Diamonds Are a Val's Best Friend (1998)

"Home Improvement"
- Home Alone (1999)
[Leno also appeared in an episode entitled "Brother, Can You Spare A Hot Rod?" He was named Jay in that but was a guy at an auto show who was keeping an eye of a bunch of cars. It could be he was one of those celeb-obsessed guys who undergo plastic surgery and take on a new persona to be more like their heroes - in this case, Jay Leno.....]

Jerry Seinfeld: 'I'm Telling You for the Last Time' (1998)

"Muppets Tonight"
- The Best of Muppets Tonight! (1997)
- The Cameo Show (1997)

"Veronica's Closet"
- Pilot (1997)
- Unaired Pilot

"Caroline in the City"
- Caroline and the Bad Trip (1997)

"Baywatch"
- Talk Show (1997)

"3rd Rock from the Sun"
- Dick Jokes (1996)

"The Nanny"
- The Taxman Cometh (1996)

"Ellen"
- Go Girlz (1996)

"Seinfeld"
- The Shower Head (1996)

"Wings"

- The Team Player (1996)

"Homicide: Life on the Street"
- Sniper: Parts 1 & 2 (1996)

"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air"
- The Script Formerly Known As... (1995)
- Will's Up a Dirt Road (1994)

"JAG"
- Pilot: Parts 1 & 2

"Mad About You"
- Just My Dog (1995)

"Friends"

- The One with Mrs. Bing (1995)

"The Sinbad Show"
- The Telethon (1994)
- The Mr. Science Show (1994)

"The Larry Sanders Show"
- Performance Artist (1993)

"Madame's Place"

- Episode #1.14 (1982)

Not that they really count towards one's credits in Toobworld, but Jay Leno appeared on so many other talk shows, beginning with 'The Mike Douglas Show' to 'The Oprah Winfrey Show', (even a German show called 'Galileo') and of course including 'The Tonight Show' and 'The Jay Leno Show'. "Reality" shows like 'The Osbournes', 'American Chopper' and 'Top Gear' (He created a robot for 'Battlebots' called "The Chin Killer"); and game shows from 'Match Game' to 'Deal Or No Deal' are also in the mix. Plus the movies in which he's often used to encapsulate the American zeitgeist in regards to the hero's situation: "Dave", "Contact", "Calendar Girls", "EdTV", "In & Out", "The Birdcage", and "Wag The Dog".

Jay Leno has been a formidable presence as himself in the Tooniverse as well, and not only as himself. (He's played characters on 'The Fairly Oddparents' and 'South Park', which he also did in the early days on other shows like 'Laverne & Shirley.)

Here's a list of appearances by the cartoon version of Jay Leno:

"Family Guy"
- We Love You Conrad (2009)
- Patriot Games (2006)

"Dilbert"

- The Delivery (2000)

"South Park"
- City on the Edge of Forever (1998)

"The Simpsons"
- The Last Temptation of Krust (1998)

For alls I know, this is only going to make Jay Leno feel worse, but nevertheless....

Well Come to the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame, Jay Leno!

BCnU!

SPLAININ TO DO: DAUGHTER OF CRAGEN

Earlier Sunday TNT replayed a 1995 episode of 'Law & Order' called "Bad Faith". It was directed by Dann Florek after he left the series in 1993 (where he played Captain Donald Cragen), but before he was connected to 'Law & Order: SVU'.

In this episode, his character of Captain Cragen mentions his fourteen year old daughter. However, it was previously mentioned in the series that Cragen and his wife (Marge) had no children.

But that was back when Florek was still in the show. It could be that this fourteen year old daughter was a late adoption, taken in by the Cragens when she was just beginning her teen years.

We can't see everything that happens in Toobworld.....

BCnU!