(no subject)

Whoa. Light begins to dawn...

I have never "gotten" the whole boy-band-slash thing, although people whom I respect have demonstrated quite a passion for Sparkly Dancing Boys.

Recently I picked up some 16 magazines from the mid-1970's, figuring I'd put them up on eBay for the S&H fans - nearly every ish has something about Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul - and I was glancing through the other pages. Lots of material about the Bay City Rollers, whom I admit I adored when I was 14 and then loathed when I was 15.

One of the articles purported to be a true-life account written by a band member who decided to leave. I have to believe it was written by a staff writer. I can't imagine a guy writing these words: "Eric [another band member] and I were both quite depressed. We used to take long walks together whenever we had the time, which wasn't often. He has these incredible blue eyes, you know, with those long black lashes, and his eyes, well, they'd just fill up with tears. Sometimes, he said he felt like crying without even knowing why. And I understand how he felt."

OMG! It's, it's (faint sputtering noises), it's PRO-SMARM! If this is what the media machine is coming up with, and has been for more than twenty-five years... I begin to see a proto-fanfic matrix from which bbs was almost inevitably destined to develop.

Spotting Actors!

We were watching 77 Sunset Strip the other day, the episode "Hong Kong Caper." It was a veritable parade of stars!

First there was the villain, an extortionist named Run Run Lee, played by a very strange-looking actor who didn't *look* at all familiar. But his voice! He had a strange, sibilant voice with an unplaceable accent, and a strange way of moving his mouth when he talked. After a few minutes it clicked. He was the Andorian Ambassador in the Classic Trek episode "Journey to Babel"! He didn't look familiar because in the 77 Sunset Strip episode he wasn't wearing blue makeup, a white wig, or antennae. We looked it up and yep, there he was; the actor's name is Reggie Nalder.

We showed a few minutes of the ep to a friend of ours, a fellow Trekkie who stared at the ingenue guest and said, "We've seen her on Star Trek, too!" Her character, like Lee, was supposed to be Eurasian, and she had some strange eye makeup on, but suddenly I realized she was Eve from "Mudd's Women"! Despite the makeup, she was very recognizable in profile. The actress is Karen Steele.

The same episode featured a tourist couple from the Midwest. The wife was played by Kathleen Freeman, who plays the brassy middle-aged lady in just about *everything*. The husband, though, baffled us. Played by Willard Waterman, he didn't look a bit familiar - but as soon as he opened his mouth we knew we'd *heard* him somewhere! And not in blue makeup, either. My husband was convinced we'd heard him in a radio comedy, and we were trying to run through the ones we've listened to - he wasn't in Life of Riley, he wasn't in Fibber McGee - we were drawing a blank. I mentioned the name to my mom on the phone today and she said, "Willard Waterman? You mean, the Great Gildersleeve!"

So, very cool. The Andorian Ambassador blackmails one of Mudd's Women, to be foiled by our detective with the assistance of the Universal Brassy Middle-Aged Lady and The Great Gildersleeve. What an episode!