I haven’t watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy since Katherine Heigl killed Jeffrey Dean Morgan and then whined about how she missed the guy she MURDERED for an entire fucking year. At the beginning, back in, wow, 2005, when Grey’s Anatomy was a midseason replacement and a surprise hit with a sexy, diverse cast and its own distinct dialect (seriously?!), I liked it a lot.

And then everyone on that show became a complete and utter asshole. Meredith Grey was always a bit of a dishrag, but back at the beginning Christina was awesome, and all the men were hot, and Bailey was just super. Even Katherine Heigl was pretty terrific, when she ripped her shirt off and yelled at everyone for making fun of her for being an underwear model and proclaimed that while they were in $100,000 worth of debt apiece, she paid her way with her spectacular rack. Remember? That was great. But then they all became jerks. And even pretty, pretty Kate Walsh and Eric Dane couldn’t fix it, because let me repeat myself just this once, Izzie KILLED SOMEONE and then moaned about it for a YEAR.

So when show creator Shonda Rimes spun off Private Practice, I jumped ship on whiny, bitchy Grey’s Anatomy and went with Kate and her pretty hair to California. Because at that point Addison, Bailey, and Torres were the only people on Grey’s Anatomy that I didn’t want to set on fire every Thursday night. it had everything I’d originally liked about Grey’s Anatomy with none of the whining: very pretty people who are ostensibly fantastic at their jobs, an excellent soundtrack, ridiculous medical cases that make you go google shit and panic mid-show.

Last week on Friday Night Lights, Coach was mocked for forfeiting the first game of the season. Matt met his new “mentor,” the pantless metalworking artist. Tami encountered friction with the Panther boosters and the Dillon students when she turned in fancy running back Luke Cafferty for lying about the district his parents’ home is in. Landry and Vince took a leadership role in uniting the East Dillon Lions, and Tim joined the Lions as kind of an assistant coach. He also moved in with Alicia Witt and her teenage daughter, whose name we think is Becky. Now, this week!

Whenever I think about the possibility of going to grad school, I always think about the inevitable realities of feeling old in the middle of a classroom filled with nubile recent college grads and dealing with assholes on group projects. Apparently life is easier for James Franco, though.

Because getting an MFA in creative writing wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Franco is launching a much-publicized guest stint on General Hospital. He’s an “artist whose canvas is murder.” F’reals.

Here’s the promo for his upcoming role.

Also, I’m going to make a declaration here. James Franco: not hot. Opinions?

Sigh.

The upcoming 40th season of Sesame Street will , including a certain gentleman who the courts insist I stay 200 feet away from at all times. Other guests include Cameron Diaz, Adam Sandler, Eva Longoria, Ricky Gervais, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate, Hugh Jackman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Matthew Fox and Michelle Obama.

One of the perks of being a gay man is that no one is shocked when you make frank sexual remarks at any age. It’s not that it’s any less creepy, it’s just expected.

Enter Meredith Viera, the lusty television hostess-of-a-certain-age. Courtesy of Best Week Ever, take a look at this clip of Viera hosting the syndicated version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. In it, she welcomes a member of our armed services with open arms and offers him effusive praise and a few ‘did she really say that?’ remarks.

It all climaxes around the two-minute mark, when she basically asks said serviceman to service her.

In other news, I’m excited to see how many hits we get based on Google searches for “old horny woman.”

While it seems like a perfectly charming channel, I don’t normally make a habit of watching Animal Planet.  It does have the must-see annual Puppy Bowl and it does feature those heart-breaking Pet 911 shows with the one-eyed kitty who has a kidney infection. I don’t even like cats, but those emergency vet shows have me curled in a ball on the couch, negotiating with God for the life of the animal.

But I’m not here to talk about cats.  Or even animals at all.

It’s come to my attention that Animal Planet has enlisted the help of a few preposterously hot hosts, namely Night’s Brandon McMillan and Into the Pride’s Dave Salmoni. It’s enough for me to immediately flip to Animal Planet while I’m on the treadmill at the gym, just so I can ogle them while feeling shitty about my own physique (all the while learning facts about animals!).

First, let’s address the issue of Brandon McMillan (right), who I only ever heard of yesterday. What you need to know about Brandon is the following: he’s an animal trainer from a family of animal entertainers and he hosts a night safari show. You can tell he’s hot even when he’s shot through the grainy, green night vision goggles. Of course, he’s a little douchey (think Jeff Corwin) when it comes to amping up the drama and being a ham. Such sins are easily forgiven.

Check him out in action here, encountering a baby hippo and her protective mother.

Now there’s the issue of Dave Salmoni, who hosts the show Into the Pride (and, much to my chagrin, the usage of the word ‘pride’ has nothing to do with floats, beads and drag queens). Dave embedded himself into a pride of lions for six month during the production of his show Into the Pride. While I’m a fan of the beard in general, he grew himself a monster of a one during the production — which sort of diminishes his Canadian hotness.

Here’s an interview with Dave done by the wonderful Michelle from Best Week Ever. She fully admits that it’s hard to pay attention to the adorable lion cub when you’ve got Scruffy McForearms charming his way into your heart.

After the jump, enjoy a gratuitous/unnecessary clip of a beardy Salmoni taking an open air shower with the pride.

So I have started watching Torchwood lately. (Yeah, Rescue Me has been postponed slightly.) If you haven’t spent much time watching BBC America lately, Torchwood is a spinoff of Doctor Who that began in 2006. It is about a team of sexy people:

who are kind of like Mulder and Scully, in that they investigate aliens and shit like that (also they have a pterodactyl in their office—damn, pterodactyl is a hard word to spell) but unlike Mulder and Scully, they like to make out with each other. And strangers. And aliens. People talking about the show in the extra features on the DVDs often refer to the show as “dark,” which only proves they’ve never seen anything on HBO, because it’s frankly a little cartoonish at times. The drama seems a little lightweight; when people are killed, it has about as much impact as the opening murder on an episode of Law & Order. Maybe I’m jaded, but I’ve seen a hell of a lot darker stuff on CSI.

Torchwood is also, kind of hilariously, set in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, which is kind of like setting The X-Files in Portland, as it’s amusingly improbable that an agency described as outside the government, more powerful than the CIA or MI5, is set in a smallish bayside town full of castles. I’m sure there’s some UK joke about it being set in Cardiff that I’m not getting. Overseas readers (both of you), feel free to educate/yell at me.

I will be honest: I started watching Torchwood because John Barrowman, who is in the middle up there, is one of the judges on Any Dream Will Do, and he looks like a hot, butch Tom Cruise and is a delightfully bitchy judge. I have kept watching it because it’s pulpy and silly and EVERYONE MAKES OUT WITH EACH OTHER. I’m not kidding. Everyone. Without regard for sexual orientation. There are boys kissing in the first episode, girls kissing in the second. Boys kiss girls too, occasionally. It’s incredibly fluid; basically, everyone is bisexual, or at least kind of unconcerned with labels. It’s interesting in both an academic and a lusty way; I have heard the word “gay” used exactly once—they don’t really discuss it. The characters just sleep with who they want to sleep with. It’s not something I expect to see on American TV any time soon, and in that it certainly has a leg up on HBO.

So I know he didn’t do a lot of TV, but I loved him. And I will miss Paul Newman a whole damn lot. One time my coworker J and I saw him sitting in the passenger seat of an SUV on Broadway outside our office. And…it was awesome. Because it was Paul Newman. And he just seemed like a splendid human being, in addition to a fine actor and humanitarian.

My favorite Newman, as you can see, is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, although he is spectacular as Butch Cassidy. Paul, I hope you are somewhere with fast cars and delicious salad dressings.

Hey guys, here’s a TiFaux guest contribution! I got my straight guy friend Rob to write up a review of the Justice League: The New Frontier. I keep a few straight guys in my circle of friends to make it seem like I’m open minded about other lifestyles. Seems like most of them have beards these days (Rob, ) — go figure. Anyway, here’s what he had to say…

(Oh, and he wants me to tell you that this probably deserves a PG-13 rating because heads blow up at certain points in the movie.)

When Dan made sure that a review copy of Justice League: The New Frontier made it into my hands, I couldn’t have been more pleased. I’m a big fan of the comic book it’s based on, and pretty much everything by its author and artist, Darwyn Cooke, who served as a creative consultant for the movie.

So, apparently the DC comics animation guys who made Batman: The Animated Series and the Justice League cartoons have moved away from television and into the direct-to-DVD market. Fine by me, if it means they can do more mature, long-form stories but still, while The New Frontier is a great book, it’s kind of an odd fit for a film. Y’see, the story takes place in the 1950s, involves a huge cast with several separate storylines and takes its atmospheric cues from Cold War-era paranoia. I can see the instant appeal for comic book readers, but to the uninitiated who haven’t subjected themselves to decades of comics lore, it might be a little bit jarring.

There’s a lot to love in the first two-thirds of the film, though. For the most part, the animation is nice – better than the Batman cartoons, although not on the level of, say, Spirited Away. The book’s cast list was chopped down, so what we’re left with two main plotlines: a hotshot pilot’s path to becoming the Green Lantern and a Martian visitor slowly learning the ways of earth. There are also a handful of other supporting players with their own stories, including a morally conflicted Superman who’s been drafted as a government agent, a really cool interpretation of Wonder Woman who’s built like a linebacker, and my personal favorite, a nice-guy version of the Flash who has a couple of sweet moments with his fiancé. The narratives are filled with fun little 50s-era flourishes, especially Green Lantern’s, which clearly draws much of its inspiration from Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff.”

Unfortunately, all of those storylines come together in a messy pileup at the movie’s end, which pits the assembled heroes against a poorly defined superthreat that turns out to be (spoiler alert) a flying dinosaur island that can shoot energy beams. And, although the movie makes some weak attempts at foreshadowing, this thing basically just appears as an excuse for everyone to provide a common enemy. Plus, a bunch of heroes from the book who were mostly cut from the film appear for the climactic scene, but you’d have no idea who they are, because they have no lines.

Of course, I know all of the characters and I’ve read the book, so I was OK. But, just to test my accessibility theory about this movie, I watched it with the girlfriend. Here’s a sample of our conversation:

g/f: What’s that Wonder Woman’s flying in? A cage made out of blood?
me: No, Wonder Woman has an invisible plane. I think she was just bleeding all over the cockpit.
g/f: Wonder Woman has an invisible plane?
me: Yep.
g/f: That’s awesome.

So, yeah, the uninitiated would probably find much of this movie – especially the last 30 minutes – almost incomprehensible. It seems like the writers either should have further simplified the original material even further or given the story more room to breath, which would have required more than its meager 75-minute run-time. But even with those fairly glaring flaws, it’s still fun for nerds, though, especially those who want a companion piece for the book.