My Life Is One Long "Kevin Bacon Game"...

I have this habit of getting unhealthily attached to movie actors. I have never "stalked" anyone, but there are several people for whom I have such a deep admiration that I forget that I don't actually know them. Some would call it an obsession, but I do not think that it is anything that serious. I am a mediocre movie-buff; nowhere near an expert, but I can crush anyone I come up against in Scene-It, and what else matters? I don't do any real research and I certainly don't subscribe to anything Don Lockwood would sneeringly call a "fan magazine;" I just absorb whatever IMDB hands me on a silver platter. And I do watch a lot of movies.

One cluster of actors that I have always been particularly fond of are those that grace the screen in Christopher Guest's mockumentaries. I am addicted to them! I love all of the movies and all of the actors in the movies and all of the other movies the actors have been in... Let me give you an example. I love Best in Show. John Michael Higgins is in Best in Show (and a lot of the other ones, but I am trying to make myself clear). John Michael Higgins has a bit part in Bicentennial Man. Therefore, I love that movie as well. I recognize that it was exactly "a shimmering star in the Hollywood firmament," but I still love it. Because John Michael Higgins was in it. This, of course, is a simplified example; my love is much more complex. In actuality, I also love the movie Matilda and Miss Honey is in Bicentennial Man as well, and Matilda featured little Mara Wilson as the title character (I would not put her in my list of favorite actors, though. I am picky about child actors), who was in a Simple Wish with the amazing Martin Short and Kathleen Turner . Kathleen Turner was in Undercover Blues, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which opened the door to my love of Stanley Tucci and Larry Miller, Larry Miller who was also in Best in Show... I could go on for hours. Literally. I have kept notebooks where all I have done is connect movie to movie with all o my favorite actors. I admit that it is not entirely healthy. I can quit whenever I want to, I just don't want to...

A lot of the mockumentarians have been guests on my favorite TV show of all time, Arrested Development, which is ironically and very sadly in a state of arrested development. Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins, Michael Hitchcock, Ed Begley, Jr.... they have all appeared on the brilliant show, which, in this particular case, increases my love of a show I already love. Plus, I now appreciate everything that each cast person has done individually a lot. Even though I had seen Muppets From Space years before this chow aired, I like it more now that I have more of an attachment to Jeffrey Tambor. Sometimes this web even confuses me.

The point is that I am very excited to see this movie. I already know that I will love it, so I am just looking forward to actually seeing it.

This is not the only time this general topic will come up in this blog. Even if I was giving an 18 month lecture series, I could not plumb the depths of it all. So in my quest to find exactly what will go into this blog, I have established what will probably blossom into a beanstalk such as Jack could never hope to surmount. (God help us all...)