Out and About

Yesterday I was out, getting my hair cut, visiting bookstores, going to see the season premiere of Veronica Mars with Sailor Mom. I also went to the post office and mailed out the packages I’ve been sitting on for almost a month with no good excuse for sitting on them other than things kept coming up and then the post office would be closed. So all you people waiting for packages will be getting them soon.

Today, I am in, working on revisions to the sequel of SSG, which apparently does have a title, but I’m not going to say it until we’re positively sure.

I liked Veronica Mars last night, though I rather too easily guessed all the plot twists. I think it may be because I now expect anything and everything in this show. so it’s kind of how you always think something bad is going to happen and then when it does, you say, “I knew it!” It’s not premonition, people. It’s pessimism. When V walked into Parker’s room I was all, “It’s Logan! No, it’s Dick! No, it’s Beaver and he’s alive. No, it’s the head-shaving rapist. No, it’s Duncan, back from Down Under.” See? With guesses like that, it’s no wonder one is usually correct.

So after Veronica Mars was over, we quick switched the station to ABC so that Sailor Mom (who is going to hate this name, and we’ll have to find her a new one) could watch Boston Legal and caught the end of Help Me, Help You. I’d never even heard of this show. HMHY stars Ted Danson as a psychotherapist with issues and a crazy group therapy group who are the show’s other stars. It also had two actors familiar to me in guest parts as Ted’s buddies. We only saw the one actor for a split second, but the other actor was Tim Meadows, who you probably remember best as “The Ladies Man” on SNL. (He was also the principal in Mean Girls.) The other guy was SUPER-familiar to me but I couldn’t place him. Skinny, balding, very intense eyes… anyway, I tried to go to Sailor Boy for help, since he’s my go to “Hey it’s that Guy” guy, but he claimed he didn’t recognize the fellow and then later, that he didn’t even see him. SB was being such a putz.

Of course, it proceeded to drive me crazy! I’m a mad IMDBer and Googler, but nothing helped, especially since the IMDB listing for tonight’s episode of HMHY did not list the guest stars. Curses. And though I racked my brain (wracked?), the only thing I could think of is that this fellow had played someone’s love interest… or maybe someone’s father. And also that I’d seen him in something recently. Only it wasn’t Stick It, which was the last movie I had out from Netflix, and it wasn’t in The West Wing (was it? I went through my mental list of West Wings) or Veronica Mars, or Sports Night. And I haven’t seen anything else. Not even Heroes. I was pretty sure it had to have been on West Wing, because he’s a very interesting looking guy, and I felt drama coming from him more than comedy. But who would it have been? Not one of CJ’s boyfriends. I couldn’t think of who it was.

So I googled, and googled, and googled, and SB told me there WAS no other guy in the scene which really made me determined to prove him wrong and eventually, I found a complete list of guest stars, and lo and behold, I had seen this guy not so long ago, playing a (creepy) husband and a (creepier) father.

Toby Huss, who played “Stumpy” on the short-lived HBO show, Carnivale, which I had been watching on DVD not so long ago. (Odd show, but I can’t make myself look away.) I was always a fan of the name they called him on Television Without Pity, Pa Cooch. His character pimped out his wife and made his daughters work as strippers. And he was one of the good guys. (I told you the show was weird. It also stars Nick Stahl playing a bag of rocks — I’m sorry, a young farmhand/chain gang escapee/roustabout with terrible psychic powers and enough dirt on his neck to grow potatoes, who happens to be dumb as a bag of rocks.)

Anyway, I felt a little bit Veronica Mars myself, what with all the sleuthing I did to track that sucker down. And to think, I made this connection with little more than a split-second glimpse of his face before he ducked beneath Ted Danson’s mattress and disappeared. (Um, that makes sense in context.)

Mars Investigations, I’m ready when you are.