It's My Dog's World: I Just Live In It

South Park vs. Cesar Millan: You be the judge

The New York Times has a little article about how parents are using Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan's techniques to deal with their kids.  I don't have the time to go into why, um, this might not be the best idea in the world, but I welcome comments.  (I love Cesar for his pitbull advocacy, but will point out that more that research has not supported some of his more controversial methods.  At all.)   I will point out that Karen Pryor, clicker trainer whiz, might be a better source of cross-species training.  Check out her classic "Don't Shoot the Dog."

And finally, I believe South Park beat the New York Times on this subject...by about three years.

Fringe's Michael Cerveris: What the dog has taught him

So...no dog content in this entry.  Well, almost.  I went to see Sarah Ruhl's "in the next room, or the vibrator play," which is about a lot of things, but most especially about a doctor in the 1880s, who, like many doctors of the time, used a vibrator to dispel women's lethargy.

I'll probably be writing about this play for a few days. Maddening, wonderful, finally: maddening.  Ruhl's got great ambition, a brilliant voice...and yet..the politics of the play bugged me.

But let me be honest...I went in large part because Michael Cerveris was in it. (Also Quincy Tyler Bernstine, who deserves her own post.)  Cerveris blew me away as Sweeney Todd.  Icy, sexy, relentless, even funny.  How pleased, then, was I to see him as "The Observer" in the Fox show "Fringe."  Creepy, creepy, utterly compelling, and without eyebrows. In real life, the well-eyebrowed Michael Cerveris is devoted to his dog Gibson, who you can hear barking in this interview.

And here their lives collide:

 

In this interview, he reveals this about the Observer:

I based a lot of the physicality on watching [my dog] Gibson observe things; there’s a slight tilt to the head.

That's Nice, Dad, But...Can I Get Back to the Dog Now?

Good news: Mad Men is back.  And it now includes a dog-obsessed daughter!  This is Don Draper with his daughter, who, when she came home, cried "POLLLY!" and hugged her dog before Dad got a half-hearted greeting.

Mysterious news...we still don't know about the Sterling Cooper dog, who made no appearance on the first episode.  Is this a secrecy-obsessed Matthew Weiner head fake?  Did he bring a dog on the set when there was a USA Today photographer on the set just to mess with our minds?

Dr. Horrible: It Could Only Be More Perfect If There Were A Dog In It

It's a musical and a superhero movie, and a dessert topping, too.

And congratulations to (dog owner!) Neil Patrick Harris for his much-deserved Emmy nomination.  (A cairn and a rescue mutt, FYI.)

Mad Men's Sterling Cooper: The FIRST Dog-Friendly Office?

My official Mad Men countdown clock has begun.  Eleven days and some odd hours and minutes, and Don Draper will be back lying to me through his pomaded hair and beautiful teeth and poetically fake name again...

So...for those of  you who have not seen the show yet, stop now, and go rent it. Minor spoilers begin here.

I love this show.  I love this show. I love this show. So I was trolling around the AMC blog with one of my many burning questions--which  was:  did the Draper family keep that dog that Don bought them so mysteriously one night when Don just couldn't take the domestic suffocation anymore and ran out to god knows where?  I already know from the extensive yet secretive coverage that the show opens in 1962--if they kept the dog in the storyline, I wonder, will they get a different dog?

But wait...there's a USA Today article about the show, and one of the pictures features two ad men characters, Duck and Pete, in the elegant Sterling Cooper office...with a handsome shaggy (retriever? setter?) named CHAUNCEY.  Really.

So: is this the Draper dog?  Or is this the company dog?  Or is this part of a gigantic ad campaign for dog food that Sterling Cooper will be doing...which means LOTS of dogs...

Oh, I can't wait.

Battlestar Galactica: More Dog-Friendly Than You Might Guess

Battlestar Galactica has been a wild crazy ride this year, as it gets ready to fade into the sunset. Lots o'death, S&M-tinged sex, cancer.  Not a barrel of laughs. However, I was THRILLED to discover that one character I thought had not made it off New Caprica--DID:  Jake, the resistance dog, who never complained as his...yes...always-empty dog food bowl was used as a secret message signal...is alive. As of last night, Jake is back! He even got adopted!

Random Television Hair Questions

When Ugly Betty came back from the strike, scene-stealing Michael Urie wore various hats THROUGH THE WHOLE EPISODE.  Will someone tell me why?

Mary McDonnell--bald as an egg on Battlestar Galactica.  Will that make her more or less power-mad?

Of Alpha Cats and Rocket Ships

I have a lot to be thankful for. 

Our nice new neighbors asked us to catsit their two babies, one, a frisky young boy who loves the tummy rubs, and the second, a more sedate matriarch who actually hid under the bed the first day I had to feed her.  She soon began greeting me (grudgingly) at the door, but never really warmed to me. Cats are not dogs, for sure.   It was interesting to see how the two cats carved out their very separate spaces (the boy likes heights, the matron, who is a little hefty, likes whatever makes a den).  They...tolerate each other.  Interesting to see this in the animal world.  They don't snuggle, they don't hiss unnecessarily.  He stays by the window sill, and she lies beneath the coffee table, poised on the issues of a cigar magazine.  They've worked it out.

We could learn something from them, if we weren't so busy pretending we weren't like them.

And speaking of Alpha Cats, thank you, thank  you, thank  you Sci-Fi Channel for resurrecting Admiral Helena Cain, the Alphaest Admiral ever to oversee a Battlestar.  (Actress Michelle Forbes calls her "Saddam Hussein in bangs," but that doesn't do justice to her ferocious, nuanced performance.) I've actually been savoring RAZOR, the standalone Battlestar Galactica TV movie, watching it slowly, because I don't want to lose Admiral Cain again...even though I know I must.

Admiral Cain is one of the reasons that while I love Heroes, I LOVE! Battlestar Galactica.   Heroes, as lovely as it's been the last couple of episodes, still has some trouble working its Powerful Woman Paradigm (although none at all with the Hottie Heroines in Short Skirts Paradigm).  The Cain storyline on RAZOR features three flawed and fierce women in the kind of triangle you just don't see in most film or TV shows--sexy and political and heartbreaking.   I don't want it to end.

What Will I Do Until June? Mad Men Wraps, I Weep

Reasons to keep living: 'Mad Men' to return to AMC - Entertainment News, TV News, Media - Variety.

Holy heck, it was brilliant. Thank  you, Matthew Weiner and your den of great writers.  Thank you, brilliant cast. Thank  you, awesome directors.  I worship you, cinematographers and set designers and costume designers.  And AMC, you made a big bet, and it paid off triple.

I'll rave more later. Never has something so sad  made me so happy.  But what will we do until June?

Why I Love David Milch

• Because he cast Ian McShane in “Deadwood” and let him do his devilish best.
  
• Because he put Ed O’Neill AND Bruce Greenwood in his new show about surfing (and Luis! Guzman!).
  
• And because when an interviewer asked him if thought “Deadwood” was his best work, Milch explained he tried to stay away from being proud of his work because “Given my character defects, I start with pride, and I end up under a bridge with three strangers.”