1. TV departed – my list of Eight Reasons You Should be Downloading the First Season of “The Middleman” is live at Fantasy Magazine. Because if my weekly gibberings haven’t convinced you, then by god, a numbered list will!

2. TV present – I think weekends on the SciFi channel are designed to sap my will to live. The fact that I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves WILLINGLY, THREE TIMES rather than watch the SciFi channel is proof of how bad the SciFi movies are; when I can’t sit through something, you know it’s bad news. The TiVo descriptions are like poetry, though. And by “poetry”, I mean “the poem Joey from third grade wrote about how he would use his pet dragon to burn up his little sister, and suddenly the teacher decided it was time for recess and sent Joey to the nurse”.

3. TV forthcoming – I will, of course, be following every episode of Eleventh Hour (for the four episodes I suspect will air before they can it). I will be reporting on it here. I need some kind of ASCII shorthand for “googly eye”, but otherwise I’m rarin’ to go on this one. Sewell, dude, you knew this day would come.

(Fun fact: I’ve written more about Rufus Sewell in this blog than I have about any other actor. That’s really bizarre to me, because if you ask me to give you a list of my favorite actors, he’s on it, but I’d probably give you a list of twenty guys and then I’d call you later and be like, “Oh! And Rufus Sewell. And that guy who played Roe in Band of Brothers. And Jim Boadbent.”)

4. High on that list would be Julian Rhind-Tutt, who I do like as an actor, but whose name I would put on the list regardless, because HIS NAME IS JULIAN RHIND-TUTT. This actually counts as TV, too, since he was on “Keen Eddie”, which I watched for all thirteen episodes until they canned it. This also means I got to hate Sienna Miller before it was cool to hate her.

5. Which reminds me, I’m ripe for disliking another “blonde and winning” TV lady! Marley Shelton, I’m looking at you.

(Note: this isn’t a Questionable Taste Theatre, because Questionable Taste Theatre is movies I actually like, or movies I suspect are good. This, despite its train-wreck glory, is neither of those.)

Some wiseacre decided to air Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves over the weekend, when they knew I would be helpless with illness right in front of the TV and be forced to watch it!

…three times!

And you guys, we need to talk.

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With recent events, in a country where the rich steal from the poor and then expect the poor to bail them out, it all seems a terrifying, crazy, hopeless mess. We could all use some escapism. (And, eventually, a plot of land on which to grow vegetables and process our own graywater as we wait with our guns in our laps for nightfall, when the raid-gangs come. But that’s not what Questionable Taste Theatre is about!)

This week’s Questionable Taste Theatre honors a movie in which a terrifying, crazy, hopeless mess is awesomely, wondrously, and hilariously fixed: Cold Comfort Farm.

Nutshell: There’s a huge mess. Then Flora Poste shows up.

“Jane Austen and I have so much in common – neither of us can endure mess.”
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Good news: in her new movie, Keira Knightley wears chemises, as you can see around the neckline of this frock:

Bad news: people are still casting Keira Knightley in movies.

Note: I am not generally a shoes person. My favorite shoes are my orthopedic loafers, because they provide arch and heel support. And because I’m eighty.

However, sometimes when you pass a secondhand store and stop to buy a friend a 75-cent copy of that classic Harlequin Regency The Highwayman (“Everything about him screamed danger!”), you end up going so far back into the cramped, narrow store that you come out in Narnia – being sensible, you quickly backtrack, and find the shoes.

And among the clunky, worn black shoes is a brand-new, acid green pair of Fluevogs with elf-toes that stick out THREE INCHES past the toes of your foot.

Clearly, you buy them. You spend the rest of the evening staring at them in half-wonderment, half fear, clutching your copy of The Highwayman like a book of psalms.

(I’m still looking for a picture, but if anyone on the internet actually owns a pair of these shoes they’re too afraid to cop to it.)

ETA: I just tried them on. These shoes are MAGIC. I love them so much. How can these crazy shoes inspire the kind of love that 4″ tango stilettos could not?