Lostie in Trouble

Henry Ian Cusick, who plays Desmond on Lost, is being sued by a former ABC employee for sexual harassment.

According to the employee, Cusick "allegedly squeezed and placed his face on the plaintiff's breasts, kissed her on the mouth, and caressed the back of her body while making moaning sounds."

Lovely! I assume he gave a muffled shout from betwixt the victim's decolletage that "I'M DOING IT FOR MY HONOR, PENNAY!"

But seriously folks, it's well-known that Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros were both booted from the show some seasons ago because they were arrested for drunk driving. If Lost has such a stringent zero-tolerance policy, I hope they apply it to Cusick as well. I admit this is mostly because I find his character extremely irritating and unnecessary, not because I have a soul.

In fact, just to illustrate how awful I am, here's a GChat I had with Jeanette about this:

me: is it wrong that i find the description of the harassment kind of hilarious
Jeanette: ummm anyone who does anything like that without anything that can be construed as consent
is the man
me: hahahah seriously
like just shoving his face in her boobs
hilar
Jeanette: boobs are so great, I get it
me: i think so too
ive had the urge many times to burrow into yours without your consent
wait what
Jeanette: DO IT
me: NEXT TIME I SEE YOU
ITS BOOB SCUBA

What You're Doing Tonight at Midnight

Or at least what your DVR is doing.

Friend of The Boob Tubers Kara Klenk is making her cable television debut in the Spike TV series MoCap, LLC. Kudos to the gang for making the transition from webseries to real TV. What that means is now maybe their grandparents will actually understand how to watch them. If you've also ever wanted to see Kara and the rest of the hilarious cast as cartoons, go here. check out a preview below, then check out the show. Word.



My, our little Kara has come a long way since the days of the Streetwalkers, eh...?

I am gay for The Wire

So, obvs I'm way behind on this, but I've been watching The Wire, and it really is pee-your-pants good. I'm so absorbed in the show that last night I had this weird meta-dream in which I was telling Jimmy McNulty that he should really start watching The Wire. Hokay!

I realize that drooling in this way just makes me even more of a bourgeois whitey cliche than ever, but SO BE IT.

To that end, I'm recommending that admirers of charismatic gay thugs AND those who have no idea what I'm talking about all watch Bill Moyers' interview with showrunner David Simon for a healthy dose of satisfyingly blunt social criticism and unchecked earnestness. And also, please keep in mind that it's all in the game.

Hey, this looks fun! Come to this party! A good time + networking/job opportunities in entertainment + a good cause = BE THERE

CE OH NO!

I feel like I haven't watched television in EIGHT YEARS. What's wrong with me?

In this economy (TM)*, perhaps no public figure has been more ubiquitous than the now equally dreaded/pitied CEO. Ed Liddy gives out tax payer, bailout money as bonuses to AIG big wigs. For Shame. Obama asks Rick Wagoner to step down as chairman and CEO of General Motors. For double shame!

Enough finger wagging at Ed and Rick, though. I'm calling out someone else who has put himself in the public eye: Domino's CEO David Brandon. If you've ever been in the position of wanting to order a pizza in my presence any time past midnight in a city that is not New York, you've heard it before: every slice saves a fetus. While Domino's never went on the record with this slogan, it was the truth at least for as long as founder and CEO Tom Monaghan was in charge. Monaghan's blatant ties to the Catholic Church and his subsequent biases were a disturbing part of his business model post his late eighties "religious awakening," and jaw dropping amounts of Domino's profits were donated to pro-life causes. For the best account I have ever seen as to how creepy this shiznit really is, check out this New Yorker article from two years ago. HE BUILT A SEGREGATED CATHOLIC TOWN for Christ's sake--little to no pun intended.

While David Brandon may be in charge now, this choice in successor has done little to change the company's politics; the red phone with the direct line to the Vatican may not be in the CEO office anymore, but the Republican party ties certainly are. Which is why it's kind of gross to see this, what I am assuming is merely an abused platform for Brandon's expected 2010 gubernatorial run:


So as to not be a total downer, I will balance this criticism with a president/CEO who was adorably capable of speaking for his company. Jim Perdue, of Perdue Chicken, has that Benjamin Button charm to him, and also is the spitting image of Shermie, the imaginary friend I had for the first three years of my life. What a rapscallion!




*Seriously, someone must have gotten the rights to this phrase by now. It is UNAVOIDABLE.

House 5x20: "Simple Explanation"

Don't read any further if you didn't watch yet and don't want to be spoiled. I say this as though there are tons of people reading this blog, ha!

The previews had me thinking that last night's House was going to be a Very Special Episode™, so I was only half paying attention during the first several minutes, which made Foreman and 13's discovery all the more abrupt and unsettling.

I certainly didn't expect Kutner to die, and upon learning he had, I certainly didn't expect it to be from a suicide. I think the most deft and sort of meta aspect of this episode was that viewers' reactions mirrored the characters': utter confusion and denial.

From reading some message boards at Television Without Pity, I found that many viewers were extremely angry and disgusted with the way Kutner's death was handled. There were many pronouncements of "Fuck you, show" and "I'm not watching anymore," which, that level of vitriol directed at a television show when there are all sorts of outrageous things happening out here in real life--kind of absurd. But others made the critique that Kutner's suicide was a contrived way to pull the heartstrings and make an Emmy bid.

I'm sure the spectre of a possible Emmy win is always looming over showrunners, but I disagree that this was a contrivance. This was possibly the biggest infusion of reality that an often bordering-on-sci-fi show has ever had, which is perhaps what made it so jarring: it's not just realistic, it is real. Can we ever really understand why someone has made a decision to end his or her life? Sometimes there are what we think of as "signs," sometimes there aren't, but it's always incomprehensible to those left behind.

13 mentioned that with 25% of suicides, there are no outward signs. House disagreed: for 25%, their so-called friends and loved ones were simply too self-absorbed to notice what was going on. House, of course, would say this: his reliance on rationality and logic has a near-religious intensity. The show has emphasized, over and over, that pretty much the one thing keeping House from succumbing to his own misery is his passion--and singular talent--for solving puzzles. Perhaps the saddest aspect of the episode for me was House's insistence that Kutner had been murdered, since there was no explanation for why he'd kill himself; this was a childlike denial of not only Kutner's tragic death, but the truth that we are all essentially mysteries to each other. Human beings ultimately can't be puzzled out. It will be interesting to see how this realization resonates for House throughout the rest of the season.

And if you're interested, check out this interview with actor Kal Penn: apparently his reason for leaving the show is that he's going to work for Obama! Kudos to him for leaving an extremely profitable job to dedicate himself to public service--seems like quite an unusual decision.