what may or may not be hard reality

So this is my Top 10 vote for AfterEllen's Hot 100 2012, but *dammit* this year they allow for voting once every day. As if it wasn't difficult enough already! But Lana, Amanda, Chely, Jaime, Joanne, and Lucy have still been voted for every day. Dina, Christina, Mercedes, and Tina have had to make room on different days for Viola Davis, Rachel Shelley, Claudia Black, Gina Torres, Jennifer Beals, Catherine Bell, Annabeth Gish, Angie Harmon, Stephanie Zimbalist, Mariska Hargitay, Natalie Lisinska, Elizabeth Mitchell, Anna Silk, Zoie Palmer..... and goodness, the list goes on and on and on.... I wanna make some kind of 'fa's Hot 100' actually... so much pretty going around.

(compare: 2008, 2009, 2010)

Have YOU nominated your Favourite Female TV Characters for AfterEllen's Top 50 Favourite Female TV Characters list? Here are my picks (So hard! So painful! So many awesome ladies who didn't make it!):

So AfterEllen's Hot 100 2009 is finally up!! Yay!!! I gotta say, though, that it felt like it was significantly more people this year that I felt exceedingly neutral (bored) towards. It feels like previous years, even when it's people I haven't voted for, there's still been a lot of people on the list that I like, but I guess that's what I get for not following any of the newer shows. Anyways. On to the...

( ...more specified squeeing under here! )

( And the original collages I made, accompanied by rank )

So, uh, Bridget and Karman are married. MARRIED. I'm really happy for them (truth! I promise, I'm just a little stunned. Married? For reals?). HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS??? Because I've totally watched everything they've done since they appeared on AE; including, of course, the stuff they've done *together*, and I had NO IDEA. To paraphrase another AE reader, 'I knew my gaydar sucked, I guess now I know my couple-dar sucks as well. Damn.' But, Yay Gay Marriage!!! Get to work, Terminator dude, and all the lawyer people, and get that prop thrown out!

Also, new pictures of Christina this weekend!! Yay!!

( Picture undere here! I *love* the position of Nancylee's hands. If I had a Ladycop on each side of me I'd be trying to 'cop' a feel, too...  )

More pics from the event at GettyImages.

I just posted an insanely long comment on AfterEllen, in response to a post that widely generalized gay men and lesbians, about the importance of recognizing that stereotypes do exist while not treating people according to stereotypes (I should say I don't think the poster did anything wrong, except maybe assuming that people understood the meaning of the phrase 'in general'...). I just reckoned I'd put enough thought into it to warrant posting it here as well. (It's written somewhat defensively, being in favour of stereotypes didn't feel like the popular opinion on that particular thread, which isn't to say that I support stereotypes, I just think it's important to admit that they often exist for a reason.)

( ~1000 words, under here )

I've been meaning to blog for a while now. But really, life is mostly work, which is interesting and satisfying, but not something that makes me wanna blog (and also that non-disclosure agreement I signed), and as for TV, at the moment, the hour I most look forward to is Men in Trees, which just started up here again. Which saddens me a bit. Not hugely, or anything, I'm very fond of Men in Trees (for reasons I haven't quite untangled yet, but I'm sure they're there), but in these days of new L Word episodes that I've waited almost a year for, 30 Rock, We're Getting Nowhere recapping what I thought would be my favourite show and all the other awesome AfterEllen vlogs, Ellen's writers being back from the strike, Women's Murder Club, and Cashmere Mafia there is something sad about my favourite show being about a straight city girl relationship coach stuck in the woods with a bunch of very quirky characters.

Now, 30 Rock has an excuse. I only have a few episodes left of my 1st season DVD set, and I know once I've watched those I'll have to wait until fall for season 2 to appear. So I'm trying to back off it a little, because I enjoy the feeling of having episodes yet to watch.

As for Ellen, well, the obsession is going on a year and a half now, and is starting to mellow out a little. I adore her, and Portia, and the show is funny, but when you've seen a few hundred of them they're starting to seem pretty darn alike. These days I mostly just tape them and wait for the forum to tell me what parts I should watch (because there's too much going on to find the time every day to watch an entire show).

Women's Murder Club and Cashmere Mafia have failed to hold my interest. No big surprise there. Women's Murder Club is straighter than Men in Trees, which is really sad because the first is a crime drama/comedy/whatever and the second is mostly a relationship comedy. Cashmere Mafia started out relatively well, but it got to where storyline after storyline got unwatchable, until I was fastforwarding more than I was watching, and the only reason I watched was because Miranda Otto and Bonnie Somerville are gorgeous, and then I might just as well look at pictures.

The runner-up for biggest disappointment is The L Word. It doesn't take home the big prize because it really has only followed its usual pattern. I look forward to it so, and then I really enjoy the first 3 episodes or so, and then it starts going downhill. This season I'm really into TiBette, of course, but I get so sad when I think about how much it will hurt Jodi, and Alice freaks me out these day, and I hate hate hate Jenny, and Cybill who? And Helena's not even around these days. MAJOR suckage about Helena. Again, I just save the episodes, and then wait for scribegrrrl to recap so I can go watch the scenes I think I'll like.

The major disappointment totally has to be the We're Getting Nowhere recaps of The L Word. I was looking forward to this something fierce, which is of course why it's so disappointing to find I don't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. And it's not that I don't love Karman, Jill, and Dara, I do! It's just that I don't agree with them. They love the scenes I hated and fastforwarded through, and they don't care about my favourite characters, and they roll their eyes at the stuff I adore. They're still brilliant as ever, but when they were recapping South of Nowhere and Top Model I had never watched either of these shows so what they were saying didn't matter to me, I could just enjoy them being hilarious. Now when they're doing The L Word I get all riled up and sad that they don't talk about the stuff I cared about in the episodes, and then I roll my eyes and shiver in pain when they go on and on about how much they loved a scene that I absolutely hated. *weepies*

So Men in Trees it is. Anne Heche is pretty, and adorable, and quirky, and a lot of fun. Suleka Mathews is *gorgeous*. Sarah Strange is quirky and cute. Scenery is pretty, too. And the show is easy on the eyes, and easy on the mind, doesn't deal much in angst or embarrassment, and is a perfectly harmless funny little show. Why isn't next week here yet?

(Also, if they went and signed that Arrested Development movie deal, that would totally make my day.)

Aaaaiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Michelle Paradise's Worst Date Stories Video Blog

So does the world love me or hate me? I'm not entirely sure. On the one hand, Sarah Warn just posted the Most. Amazing. Vlog. Ever. OMG. Sarah, and Lori, and Karman, and Jill, and Dara, and Michelle, and Marnie. All in one room together, acting out hilarious Worst. Dating-Stories. Ever. Which is a total dream come true. It's insane how much I love these vloggers. (The only sad thing is that Sarah & Lori stay behind the camera way too much.) Which gets us to the Universe Hate MEEE!!! part. I'm leaving in about three hours. For the entire week. And the video isn't downloadable. ARGH! It's there, and I've seen the beginning, and I can't save it, and now I gotta leeeeeave, so I can't watch it over and over and over. Instead I gotta think of it, over and over and over, while not watching it. Way to be patient and happy while away for the holidays.

Either way, this brings me to the purpose (if at all there is one) of the post. I'm off for Christmas. I'll be back in about a week, or so. Take care, everyone. Christmas cards are on their way (yes, actually, sorta, kinda), and will not arrive in time for Christmas, but slightly later. Ahem.

Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays!

(oh, and I'll be checking in, and such, but not all that much. e-mail me, or leave a comment if there's something on your mind)