Chronicles, Litanies, and Fanboy Obsessions:

Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies.

Herein is the semiregular Lack-of-Sleep Litanies, the sequel. Previous Litanies can be found over here. The Egolf Chronicles have their own pages now.

This page updates once every few months. If an update is considered Really Important, I might update earlier. But don't count on it. Recent updates are also kept on their own page, called "Recent Updates". Original, huh? (Just like this text.)

May 1, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 4.1)
Tammy Lauren, everyone's favorite Dana with the last name no one can spell, was on yesterday's Walker, Texas Ranger rerun. I was greatly impressed by both how much better I like her as a brunette and how well she did her whole emotional collapse in the scene when her ex-hubby had said he'd killed their daughter. (He didn't, there was a happy ending for everyone except the ex-hubby, who wound up with a free vivisection.)

May 5, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.7)
As a quick note, Amanda Pays (the doctor with the cute accent in Martial Law episode "Blue Flu") is showing up slightly more regularly as Theora Jones in TechTV's run of the 14 Max Headroom episodes. (What? I've only seen two of the episodes and I like it, so sue me for fitting in a cheap plug.:)

May 9, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 12.1)
And I do hope that you're watching the much-vaunted (on other pages) Nero Wolfe. Last week's screenplay was written by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin. (The original story was written by Rex Stout, of course.) Apparently one of the next few is also from their pens. Er, keyboards.

It wasn't the comedy gold I was expecting from the way the teaser built it up; after all, a mystery revolving around a box of corn? The most amusing thing is that this particular story's been made for TV more than once. Oh, and I greatly enjoyed Wolfe calling Susan(?) McLeod - played by Kari Matchett - a "cockatrice". The only thing better than Nero using an obscure word I know ("cockatrice") is when he uses one that throws me for a bit of a loop ("vexacious").:)

But it was still a solid episode. Though Maury Chaykin (Nero Wolfe) clearly had one of his lines dubbed in later, as his lips intermittently matched and didn't match what he was saying. It was soon after the "cockatrice" comment, when Susan(??) asks the one-word question: "Why?"

Update, August 5, 2002 AD: They reran 'Murder is Corny' and I noticed something: Nero's badly dubbed line was now much improved. Also, it was before the cockatrice comment, not after. Ooops.

I did notice, though, a few continuity glitches, that I don't think are me mis-seeing things. In the first meeting with the 'three stooges', Nero's naming a list of drinks. Archie is in front of Nero's desk in one shot and behind the desk and seated in the next, despite only a few seconds passing - takes more than that to get around the desk and seated.

During the second meeting with the same three, when one 'stooge' is holding Goodwin and trying to convince the others to hit him, the hold the stooge uses changes between angles.

May 10, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.8)
Those new nationally-broadcast T.G.I. Friday's ads... is it just me, or does the stern cooking teacher look like Scorpio head honcho The One V2.0, Christopher Neame? With a shock of gray hair around the perimeter of his head? (If so, I understand the bald look.)

May 25, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 4.15)
Tammy Lauren, everyone's favorite Ms. Lauren, was in Wishmaster on the Sci-Fi channel. While the reception was so poor as to be unwatchable, I didn't mind - didn't look like a great flick, you know? My satellite guide gave it one star.

Of course, it kicks the ass of the next Sci-Fi channel flick, Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Bill. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell netted a big 0 stars. (Reads cast list.) Okay, Jason Connery was in W3:BtGoH. (Sounds kinky.) That suddenly puts Nicolas (check 1:33) into perspective for me.

May 26, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 12.2)
(Note to self, write Nero Wolfe entry later. Don't upload this and make yourself look like a moron.)

(June 7, 2002 AD: Time to write the real entry....)

That last Nero Wolfe episode, Poison a la Carte (insert accents where appropriate) was the other Goldberg/Rabkin concoction. However, I was more interested in Tina Gerussi (Casting) and Rita Bertucci (Extras Casting). Why? They certainly seemed to know what kind of woman gets my hormones going. I would hug them if I knew them. But I don't, so Mmes. Gerussi & Bertucci may use a printout of this webpage to receive a free hug from me at a later date. Offer valid once per person. Some restrictions apply.

July 6, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 4.16)
Early upload time, just because I want to, even if it makes me look like a moron.:)

Tammy Lauren, everyone's favorite... er... something is appearing regularly on The GoodLife TV Network in Homefront, which I'm told was very good. It seems to be on at 11 pm Eastern on weeknights, though their site denies it. Also appearing is Kyle Chandler (the Early Edition dude), a bit thinner than I remember him.

June 9, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 19.6)
I was poking about an odd bit of the Internet and found out several unrelated French sites giving credit lists for Martial Law. (This is just one of them.) I noticed something odd. In the French-language dub, Miss Bock has been given the highly odd first name of Ivana. One site's also changed Amy's abortive fiancé from "Dennis Taggert" to "Dennis Storm". What, the voice actors couldn't say "Taggert"?

(And "Amy Storm" sounds worse than "Amy Taggert". Don't mess with mediocrity.)

June 12, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 21.0)
Dan Patanella sent me this link for an article that isn't actually about Sammo Hung, but starts rambling and eventually gets into the history of the fight film.

Even if you don't want to read it, check out the paragraph starting with the words "The monk Wang". It's funny as hell. Unless I'm easily amused.

July 10, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 22.0)
You know it's a very slow news month when you consider writing an update complaining about the style of Sammo Hung's hair on the first English page of his offical fan website.

The desperation actually led to me reading rec.arts.tv for a while, where I stumbled upon Boomtown. Any port in a storm: Neal McDonough (aka Kyle Strode) is in it. Beyond that, I have know idea what it is.:)

July 21, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 22.1)
Remember Portman? No? Go on, think of him, I'll wait.

Portman, that bigoted-but-not-really-bigoted cop from a few early Martial Law episodes, was played by Mike Starr. He also played a somewhat more mellow (from what I saw) cop in Murder in a Small Town. (The Gene Wilder movie for A&E, not the "reality" series.) I found this out via channel-surfing today.

He sang in Murder in a Small Town, too; something operatic. I didn't know he could sing.

Imagine my surprise. Go on, think of it, I'll wait.

July 23, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 22.2)
Louis Mandylor, he of the not entirely common Greek Australian ancestry, is playing up the Hellenic half of his bloodline in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

There's room in here for a really tacky joke, but I can't think of it right now.

July 28, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 21.1)
Now, Sammo Hung has had his odd moments. Indeed, he's probably over quota on odd moments. However, he's adding something else to the pile, a comedy/drama about Feng Shui.

Quoth the Sammo: "Foreigners have started to get interested in Feng Shui. As a Chinese, it's easy for me to do research on it."

Started to get interested? Sammo, Sammo, Sammo. Forgotten Sammo Blammo already? See also: the script.

July 31, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 22.2)
You know you've made it when you're name is included in a spam. Today, Kelly Hu can join the likes of Anna Kournikova, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Cameron Diaz in that exclusive hall of fame for female celebrities whose names have been (mis)used by spammers in attempting to get me to click on something. Yes, those hallowed halls where droves of horny young men are driven to drooling by the mere insinuation that someone possesses a picture of her naked (papparazi)/naked (stolen sex tape)/naked (never-before-seen early photo shoot)/naked (she's into lesbian orgies, no really)/sucking on just about anything.

August 11, 2001 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 11.65)
I was thinking of holding back a month on this, but it's graveyard humor as it is. From an old press release:

"Aug. 22, 2000 - TNN, which this fall will become the new home of the WWF, has acquired all 44 episodes of MARTIAL LAW, a fast-paced, comedic action drama featuring martial arts superstar Sammo Hung, from King World Productions, Inc. MARTIAL LAW, which will premiere on TNN Monday, Sept 11, will telecast Mondays-Fridays at 7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT (....)"

A coworker at my office also has his wedding anniversary the same day. Ironic, in a sick sort of way. (Sick in an ironic sort of way? Not ironic at all, perhaps?)

September 15, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 22.4)
Natalie Raitano (Season 2 irregular Miss Bock) is putting in more regular hours on TNN's newest aquisition V.I.P., a show which it is a sin to watch. Unless you're watching for that late 2001 episode with Natalie's character in the sauna, showing off all the bits* that you can possibly get away with showing on TV. If you're watching for that, you're forgiven.

But if you're watching for Pamela Anderson, there's just something wrong with you.

* Better outfit than she wore to the 2000 Source Awards, which had a foil-like sheen that made her look like a life-sized TV dinner. But then, maybe that was Ms. Raitano's intention. After all, think of what most people do to a TV dinner: They get it hot, rip off the foil, and eat it.

October 19, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 22.41)
After that last joke, I've learned a valuable lesson: My readership doesn't offend easily. This is a good thing, as I will now tell you the joke about the two chicken prostitutes and the goat who won the lottery.

But seriously.... In my last month of poking around the Internet for new information on any of the regulars, I only found disturbing tidbits. An interview with Neal McDonough where he talks about crushing the fingers of an innocent woman.... (Though Google's new news feature also provided me with tons of stuff that I won't directly link here - well, not much - except to say that Boomtown looks like it might be one of those intelligent programs that proves, yet again, that Neilsen families are morons.)

Kelly Hu.... Something that was genuinely disturbing, rather than just a cutesy joke like the Neal McDonough item. First thing I hit was a Usenet thread debating how much of her nether regions were visible when you watched, frame by frame, one of the scenes on the Scorpion King DVD. And, unless two of my cache files got crosslinked (a possibility) the conversation quickly dissolved into a debate if yEnc was a good format for downloading pictures of naked women.

Arsenio Hall.... Okay, I was visiting hollywoodsquares.com to see if they had a list of next week's guest celebs and saw something truly disturbing. First, look at this picture of Carrot Top. Go on, it's important. Now look at the picture of Arsenio Hall from the same site. Am I the only one who's seeing some commonality here?

November 15, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 22.5)
Tom Wright, lieutenant and occasional captain Ben Winship, was in today's NYPD Blue, at least as it aired on TNT. It confirms what I've always suspected: He looks real cool in a leather jacket.

(Speaking of leather, he was also in an episode of the late, great series The Lazarus Man, entitled "Cattle Drive" if the IMDb is to be believed.)

December 14, 2002 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 22.6)
Not only Kelly Hu on Nash Bridges, but also the following little item on Neal "Kyle Strode" McDonough's role in Boomtown, 'borrowed' from the local paper using my handy dandy HP scanner. Enjoy!

Boomtown's various perspectives unique
By Kate O'Hare
Zap2it

Boomtown is set in Los Angeles and filmed there - in Hollywood's old Raleigh Studios - but for two of its stars, the ties that bind extend far beyond Tinseltown. According to Neal McDonough, he and Donnie Wahlberg - also his co-star in Band of Brothers were born in the same hospital in the Boston neighbourhood of Dorchester.

"Yeah," Wahlberg says, taking a break from filming at the battered table in the interrogation room on the police-headquarters set. "He likes to talk a good one about being from Dorchester. Dorchester people go to Cape Cod twice a year on the weekend, if they're lucky. They don't live there."

"I left," McDonough says, relaxing in an unused part of the set. "My parents got smart. My dad lived in Dorchester for a while, then decided he wanted to bring up his family on Cape Cod, opened this little mom-and-pop motel. "There is a friendly rivalry between myself and Donnie on, like, everything. He is definitely one way; I'm definitely another way. We are so completely different in every aspect of our being that it works out really well together."

Airing Sundays on ATV at 9 p.m. and at 11 p.m. on NBC, Boomtown views crimes from the perspectives of perpetrators, victims, police (Wahlberg, Mykelti Williamson, Gary Basaraba, Jason Gedrick), a reporter (Nina Garbiras), a paramedic (Lana Parrilla), and a district attorney (McDonough). It uses overlapping scenes, different camera angles, and other effects to track its complex, multilayered stories.

Wahlberg plays world-weary Detective Joel Stevens, who unsuccessfully tries to keep his marital troubles private.

McDonough plays David McNorris, a married, ambitious prosecutor who risked all by having an affair with equally ambitious reporter Andrea Little (Garbiras). Although little ended the affair, the wounds and the passion linger.

Wahlberg and McDonough also share an Irish heritage -- McDonough on both sides; Wahlberg on his mother's -- but it's McDonough who lets that inform his character. In the episode being filmed on this day -- The David McNorris Story -- McNorris hits the wall.

"His whole life is just thrown onto a platter," McDonough says, "and you sift through the garbage, trying to find that small bit of humanity and kindness and gentleness in David McNorris, through all the alcohol and the abusive father -- classic Irish story."

Viewers who tune in to Boomtown this week can see McNorris begin to reclaim what's left of his life. "At the end of this episode, I have no girlfriend anymore. I have no wife. I have no job. I have nothing except my lovely bottle of Jameson.

"They said, 'You're going to go a few more episodes with the descent, just hitting rock bottom.' Then something happens where I come back. ... I have to go through the dark side and get out of it myself."

January 14, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.51)
Remember when it was such a slow month that I did an update on 'Steve Valentine, the drummer-whose-van-was-stolen-by-a-bandmate in Martial Law episode "Funny Money"'?

Well, Steve's in a commercial now, with that curly-haired guy I always point at and say "Oooh! He was in that commercial there! You know, that one! Not the one with the credit card, the one before that! The cool one! What was it? Damn, I forget!"

Problem is, his hair looks like a trapezoidal black piece of cardboard stuck behind him more than it looks like, you know, hair.

February 10, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.52)
Remember when it was such a slow month....

Ah, sod it. Yeah, Steve Valentine's on Crossing Jordan currently airing on A&E, but he's not - in my mind - the big draw. Jill Hennessy is. And why not? She's:

A) Cute. 'nuff said.
B) Canadian-born, - at least, according to the IMDb - which in my Canuck-centric worldview counts for a lot.
C) Only half of a matching set. Jacqueline Hennessy's her twin sister.

You know, I should dust off my take-over-the-country-then-the-world plans. Then I could give Canada a new motto. Nothing about nature or anything stupid like that, but something topical: Canada, home of the Hot Babe Twin Pack.

I think it works.

February 12, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.521)
In other news:

For Neal McDonough (Martial Law's Kyle Strode) fans: Boomtown's being re-launched in March with a marathon on NBC property Bravo. Ah, NBC starts subverting Bravo just like ABC did with the increasingly misnamed ABC Family. They claim it's a one time thing, of course.

For Lee Goldberg (season two producer) aficionados, his site has seen a hefty update, including an article on writing for Nero Wolfe, which includes a very insightful comment on plotting and one of the hands-down best speeches Nero ever gave. (Though the article looks like hell in Netscape, due to the so-called "smart quotes", or whatever makes apostrophes and quotes look funny in everything but IE, even though I've seen smart quotes that work fine in NS.)

For Sammo Hung (guess who he played) fans, apparently a few months ago he opened a restaurant. Wonder if he got any advice from Britney Spears? (Now there's an image. One business meeting I'd like to be a fly on the wall for.)

For Jackie Chan (well, his name was on a theater in "Cop Out") fans, you may be disappointed to hear he's started using stunt doubles. I guess age and many fractures have started to take their toll.:\

(Update, February 17th. Well, dammit, that link expired in the past few days! Oh, well, search Google - news or web search - for "hurdles with a crazy horse" and you'll find the article or something similar. The main core of the story is quoted below, just in case all these other articles age out.)

"I will use stunt doubles if you ask me to ride an F-16 jet fighter, or to jump over a series of hurdles with a crazy horse, or to perform two 720-degree somersaults," Chan said in remarks that his manager e-mailed to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

"But one somersault, I'll do it myself," said the 48-year-old Chan. "I will do what I could do and I won't do anything that is out of my capability."

Chan was responding to a reporter's inquiry about a recent story in the South China Morning Post newspaper that said Chan used at least seven stunt doubles in his recent film, "The Tuxedo."

The Post quoted Chan as saying it wasn't his decision and the director and studio officials "call the shots."

February 14, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.52291)
Oh, and as evidenced by Egolf Chronicle V29.1 I'm in the middle of an e-mail dialogue with the webmistress of a fansite for an actor, and I've just mentioned that the IMDb is unreliable.

Proof? She was asking when her favored actor was in Martial Law. Seems the IMDb claims he was in some episode. Well, I ran through the opening and closing credits of every single episode in an effort to prove the IMDb wrong. If he was there, he wasn't credited for it.

Len: 3 IMDb: 0. Let's make woo-woo noises now.

March 18, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 23.0)
Way, way back in the mists of time, I said: Is this a TV show? Louis Malone gives a phone number as 555-whatever. Fine, it's a TV show. But then later, you see a sign on a dumpster - that fills the screen - that reads:

*** Rubbish (805) ***-9400 (818) ***-2474

Where the asterisks are numbers carefully painted over with almost-matching-the-dumpster-color paint!

Well, I decided to do a search, and I found who those numbers most likely belong to: G.I. Rubbish. In fact, squint a bit at the logo on the side of the truck on their main page.

April 14, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.523)
Someone just whacked me via a forum to let me know that Tammy Lauren was in Wanda at Large on FOX. Then a fight broke out as to whether or not it was any good and if it'd last long.

Ah, peace and love on the Internet.

Depending on who's right, you may want to watch it before it's cancelled/picked up for a second season.

April 23, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 24.0)
Of course, everyone knows that Grace Chen's 'real' name was (family name first) Chen Pei Pei. While I'm not one trust the IMDb out of turn, this entry seems a bit long to fake. There's a fight film actress named (again, family name first) Cheng Pei-pei.

May 3, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.524)
All the Huvians (heh) in the audience know that Kelly Hu is in the movie X2. I dunno, the preview on HBO made it look like her mutant power is to look like she belongs in the Matrix sequel, in both outfit and obnoxious fighting moves.

May 4, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 23.1)
I channel surfed through Red Corner a few nights ago at the ungodly hour of 2 AM. Imagine my surprise when a sizable number of Martial Law guest stars passed by my eyes. Since it was 2 AM, I forgot most of them, so a quick cross-reference of IMDb entries reveals:

Actor      | Character               | Episode
Byron Mann | Nakamura (the assassin) | This Shogun for Hire
James Hong | Mayor Chang Yen         | Painted Faces
Tzi Ma     | Lee Hei                 | Several season one eps.

Wow. As far as Asian-themed films go, the old adage is true. You can't pitch Richard Gere without hitting three Martial Law guest stars.

June 17, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.525)
So Louis Mandylor's regular gig My Big Fat Greek Life got cancelled, while Tammy Lauren's gig Wanda at Large was renewed. So the one I mentioned got renewed. The one I didn't mention wasn't. My words have power, POWER!

Other than that, not much interesting has happened, except that the promo run for X2 almost gave me a Kelly Hu overdose. I saw more of her selling the movie than I saw of any of the other actors. Is this a good sign for any future sequels?

July 20, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 25.0)
Oh, cool! William Rabkin (Martial Law season 2 co-producer and writer-typey-person) e-mailed me about my site this month. He offered some helpful info and mentioned that both he and Lee Goldberg (other Martial Law season 2 co-producer and writer-typey-person) were pleasantly surprised that Gretchen Egolf (ahem, cough, cough) had shown up on an episode of Nero Wolfe. (For the record, they weren't producers or anything on Nero Wolfe, just freelancers who wrote a couple of episodes.)

Now I have the complete set, both Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin. This is cool. Maybe I should have some bobble-heads made of them in commemoration. With some little director's chairs so I could have them posed like in the picture at the top of this page.

Goldberg & Rabkin bobble-heads. There's a market in this, I know there is!

August 17, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 18.526)
Well, the revival of Star Search in the face of the likes of American Idol has given Arsenio Hall new hosting responsibilities.

Better than being on a show spawned by the personal makeover show craze. Way too close to Bravo's 'We're not changing, we're just going to show a lot of really gay stuff.' territory for anyone to be comfortable with.

September 2, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 23.2)
Back in the days when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, say, two years ago I said something. Not only was it something, it was something from the Season One episode "Lock-Up", and it went something like this: Want some eye-ced tea? Bad Gal Corrupt Prison Guard Type uses eyedrops in iced tea to give the drinker awful stomach cramps. Ah, the wonderful things you learn watching TV. Excuse me, I need to go poison someone.

Ah, I was more accurate than I thought. Snopes.com has a new article on this particular method of ruining a person's afternoon, and it turns out it doesn't work. Well, not in the way intended. You don't get stomach cramps or, as the tale more commonly goes, diarrhea. Instead, what it really does is cause blurred vision, vomiting, and seizures. Oh, and it can also force the victim's body temperature to a dangerous low, put the person into a coma, or stop their breathing.

This, my fellow web-users, is why I wonder if both children and adults require parental supervision during television watching time.

September 19, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 25.1)
Rez e-mailed me recently to let me know that he'd stumbled across something that might be of interest.

In August of 2002, an autograph collector site had this to say of the third-from-the-top person on their 'worst signers' list:

Kelly Hu: An exotic beauty with a bad attitude.

It was great to see The Scorpion King generate some serious box office numbers earlier this year. Unfortunately, Kelly Hu was part of that success. For most of her career Hu has been an arrogant, non-signing prima donna, and her recent surge in popularity has only compounded her bad attitude.

In the rare instance that Hu does decide to sign an autograph, she belittles collectors so much that they almost wish she wouldn't sign at all. If she would just be decent and politely say no, Kelly might not even be on this list, but her personality (or lack thereof) has earned her this shameful high ranking.

But, a year has come and gone and something's changed:

Changing places: Kelly Hu has gone from bad to good.

Here is the turnaround story of the year! Last year Kelly was #3 on the Worst Signers list, but when she heard about that dubious honor, she put collectors on the spot outside a Hollywood nightclub and asked them for their opinion of her signing habits. When they confirmed the negative report, Kelly told them it bothered her to have that image and vowed to change.

From that point on, Kelly went out of her way to sign for fans wherever she went. For her noble efforts, it's our pleasure to take Kelly off the Worst Signers list and make room for her on the Best Signers side.

October 21, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 26.0)
A frenzy of hunting found this little bit of trivia on Usenet that Tammy Lauren fans might like:

'--Karen Maruyama ("The Jamie Foxx Show") will have a recurring part on the FOX comedy "Wanda at Large," playing a political analyst on the Washington public-affairs show where Wanda (Wanda Sykes) works. In addition, Tammy Lauren, who plays Wanda's widowed sister-in-law, has been made a regular.'

Someone's warming up the VCR now, I can hear it.:)

November 18, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 26.1)
Neal McDonough (Kyle Strode) and a sensible hair color are in the new movie Timeline, a time travel film. I've also heard people who want to travel back and prevent it from ever being made, or at least prevent the scriptwriter from revamping the book. Perhaps it's good that he apparently doesn't have a big role, then.

(I was gonna comment on something about rumors I hear of an upcoming movie with Jackie Chan in it that also has Sammo Hung in a small role, but the more I heard of the rumor the less believable it got. I'm going to wait on this one. Besides, if The Medallion et al. is any indication of the quality, it might fare worse than Timeline in the reviews.)

December 5, 2003 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 26.05)
Remember when I said something about the show "Wanda at Large"? And about Tammy Lauren? Well, so much for that - Fox cancelled it.

Ah, the changing fortunes of television shows.

February 21, 2004 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 25.1)
Kelly Hu has popped up on a list for high-paid celebrities. Only thing is, it's in British Pounds. Of course, even if you don't wish to attempt pound-for-dollar conversions, you can read the article for the amusing errors that reek of running something through a spell-checker and wantonly pressing "replace" every time it finds an error. For instance, it mentions a famous action film personality with the last name of "Stall one".

And when you think about all that money you can wonder if she bought a giant birthday cake. Quoth I: "Feb. 13: Actress Kelly Hu ("Martial Law") is 36."

March 23, 2004 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 26.2)
I was surprised to see ads showing Neal McDonough in a film with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. So now that's Kelly Hu in The Scorpion King and Neal McDonough in Walking Tall. Anyone care to take bets on which Martial Law actor is next? I'll bet every cent I have on me that The Rock will be showing off heretofore unknown skills at singing ballads on Star Search, hosted by Arsenio Hall.

(Rather obvious I'm broke, ain't it?)

April 19, 2004 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 25.3)
You want a song that sticks in your head? "Ii Yu Da Na". It's Japanese, it means "What a Nice Hot Spring". I only mention it because the MP3 player's running it right now.

Tzi Ma's been popping up a lot lately. First in that new Tom Hanks film that didn't do well (See? I don't mention it before release and it fails. Producers should talk to me more.) and then in USA (I think) Network's rerun of that Pierce Brosnan volcano flick.

Oh, and I found this story cute. Wonder precisely what Kelly Hu had to say about the masculinity of Australian men to get Hugh Jackman riled up for his fight scene....:)

May 17, 2004 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 4.2)
Remember that Early Edition episode that Sammo guested on? Well, there's a site dedicated to crossovers that did a very nice synopsis for those of us who missed it.

June 3, 2004 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.0)
An incredibly late update - an incredibly slow month. Nothing much of interest....

Neal McDonough acting weepy on an NYPD Blue rerun on TNT. Tom Wright was on another episode, looking spiffy in a leather jacket.

Tom Wright was also spotted being all manly (and dead sexy in one o' thems armless shirt thingies) in an HBO rerun of an action movie. Opposite actress Catherine Bell (also dead sexy in one of those armless things), pre-JAG, no less. Bell's then-future (and sadly deceased) JAG co-star Trevor Goddard was also in the movie, but I didn't see him during my five-minute watching period.

Only other notable was hearing - and falling in love with - a Japanese song by Teresa Teng, who sang the (Chinese) "Moon Repesents My Heart" used in a Marital Law episode. The Japanese song is called "Toki no Nagare ni Mi wo makase" and might be available for listening here, along with many others. (Rather amusingly, I found that the Movie Maker included in XP can convert .rms to .wmas. I have another program that makes .wmas into .mp3s. Guess what's playing on the .mp3 player now?:)

In more depressing news, my recent lack of most of my regular TV channels (technical problems) has weaned me off the tube and given me a deeper loathing for the medium when I do watch it. I'm considering only updating every two months. It's been slow lately, and until one of these actors hits a juicy new role, it's kind of bland around these parts....

July 8, 2004 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.1)
Ah, how interesting. On Lifetime series Any Day Now, I noticed a mustacheless Tom Wright (Benjamin Winship) and a greying Vernee Watson Johnson (uhh... Terrell's sister, in that episode where Terrell's musician nephew got shot).

As to my bimonthly updates.... I think I'll try it. Unless something amazing happens, I think I'll take next month off. Of course, if anything does happen, it'll be on the Recent Updates page, as well as here.

September 1, 2004 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.2)
Ah, much slowness. Despite the two months, all I've managed to find was an item on NBC's fall season that reads 'Even the wonderful Neal McDonough ("Boomtown") is stuck with the generic "Medical Investigation."'

Well, good review, bad twist of fate. Still, he seems to be the busiest of the Martial Law (semi)regulars. Kelly Hu has her movie career, of course, but I haven't heard of anything major since X-Men 2.

Oh, and for the people who keep searching for it, given what I see in my logs: No, Louis Mandylor (Louis Malone, first season) IS NOT DEAD! I have not found one single shred of evidence to support this conclusion. I don't know who you got it from, but they're wrong.

November 1, 2004 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.3)
Ah, much more slowness. Other than the recent spate of Jackie Chan movies (Sammo Hung being action director-type person on some of them - i.e. whichever ones were made when he wasn't feuding with Chan), I haven't heard much of any of the regulars. Neal McDonough's "Medical Investigation" is apparently looking good, though, scoring a full season for next year. Oh, and Kelly Hu apparently said, at some point in the past, "I have a crush on Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro. They're the coolest, hottest couple. I met them, and didn't need to tell them... the drool coming out of my mouth was kind of a clue."

Okay, sure.

January 4, 2005 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.4)
I start the new year with ruminations on fading careers.

I once said... Throw Momma from the Train: The mother of Ginuwine's character was played by Vernee Watson Johnson, the same one who played Will Smith's mother on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Typecast as a hip-hopper/rapper's mother. What a lot in life.

Well, she's back. I've seen her in a few commericals lately. A battery commercial and a painkiller commercial. (Any marketing exec who thinks ads inspire brand loyality is nuts.)

Up the Martial Law celebrity scale, Kelly Hu was playing a walking violence machine opposite Noah Wyle*, Bob Newhart, et al. in TNT's The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. While I didn't stick around for much of it (Bob Newhart doing the fight-film schtick was a bit much for me), it looked a touch too much like a 'lite' version of her X-Men 2 villainess Lady Deathstrike. And she didn't even get a character name. "Serpent Brotherhood Member"? Cripes, that's right up there with "Student at Book Party".

Now, not to say this is necessarily a trend, it's just that if you do too much of one thing, you tend to get pigeonholed as that one thing. And 'Asian martial-arts psycho' isn't quite as good a pigeonhole as, say, 'leading lady'. Or, like Kelly Hu's done well in the past, 'leading lady who can take care of herself in violent fashion unless the climax is coming up'.

( *Though Wyle's librarian charater has been called - at least where I could hear it - a poor man's Lara Croft, I pause to point out that Lara Croft is just a horny man's Indiana Jones.)

February 18, 2005 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.5)
USA's been showing Medical Investigation starring Neal McDonough, so I finally decided to take in an episode. And wished I hadn't. Neal was fine, but everything else was unimpressive, notably hackneyed plot elements. To wit: Head doctor (McDonough) for the second time orders overly concerned subordinate doctor (no psych training) to stop trying to help an unwilling patient who has suffered mental anguish 'heal'. He strengthens the "stop trying" part with a "don't even go near her". Besides ignoring the order, the doctor commits numerous privacy violations, break and enter, theft, and so on. She gathers enough information to arrive at an illogical (but correct, amazingly) conclusion, confronts the person (via Deep Meaningful Speech) about it, and then there's a happy ending. Leaving the following thoughts in my mind:

1) As a pathologist or something, the head doc knows as little about proper psychological tricks as the doctor doing the confronting. However, up until this point he was smart enough to realize that this wasn't their area of expertise, and they should back off. Why'd he change his mind? See item 2.

2) The head doctor knows that this doctor ignored orders, yet he lets the confrontation happen anyway. Presumably a very convincing argument could do it, I understand. The only one I could think of was "My meddling - against your orders - with her mental health has resulted in her refusing to talk to us anymore, cutting off a valuable source of information about these strange symptoms people have been getting. Could I really make it any worse by giving it another shot?" Obviously the writers couldn't think of one any better than that, as the doctor tells the head doctor about what she wanted to do, and then they cut to another scene before her justification was spoken. Damn, the best writing on cable television and we all missed it.

3) Since the order the doctor ignored was two part (to paraphrase: "Don't go near that patient, plus get at least five hours of sleep because you've been going nonstop for 48 hours."), the doctor is putting all her other patients at risk by not getting the proper sleep, leading to poor judgment and eventually hallucinations. The head doctor should know this via simple math - if she spent the last five or so hours driving out to a patient's home, worming her way in by misuse of her credentials, searching the place top to bottom, stealing some letters, driving to a second residence mentioned in those letters, and speaking at length to the person inside, then how long did she spend actually sleeping?

4) The logic chain: The anguished person was anonymously sending $2000 a month to support a dead friend's daughter. The doctor decides that means the anguished person is feeling guilty and played a role (real or imagined) in the friend's death. Me? I assumed they were just good friends and, not having any children of her own - a fact which is mentioned in the episode - the anguished person was playing ersatz caretaker. If they weren't good friends, how did she guess where the daughter was living now that her mother was dead? Or did she just wing over $40,000 cash off to the person's old apartment and hope the legal guardian moved in with the kid, not vice versa as expected?

The secondary plot was little better. One of the oldest tricks in the book: The hero says "I don't know how this could have happened. It's perfect here." followed by a shot of an idyllic town. Odds are a thousand to one that the culprit is right in that idyllic scene. (It was - a passing ice cream truck contained contaminated ice cream.)

(Update, March 14, 2005 AD: Oh, and I noticed them using cell phones near medical equipment, something I suspect no doctor would do. My favorite was when one doctor was standing right next to a pump. Certain kinds of pumps - infusion pumps - are known to have problems with cell phones.)

March 19, 2005 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.6)
A reader writes:

I enjoy your website. I'm surprised you didn't mention the movie LADY JAYNE: KILLER, which has Louis Mandylor and Tom Wright in the cast. It showed up on cable a lot last year.

The movie itself is a hoot, so bad, it's unintentionally funny. Louis and Tom only have one brief scene together. I like to think that between takes, one of them said to the other, if they weren't canned from MARTIAL LAW, it would still be on the air, and then they wouldn't have to be in this crummy movie :)

I completely missed it, no idea how. But I'd like to thank this attentive e-mailer for informing me of one of the few (the only?) post-ML multi-actor sightings.

March 24, 2005 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.7)
While half-listening to a wildly out-of-season Hallowe'en episode of Nash Bridges - another brainchild of season one Martial Law producer Carlton Cuse - I was surprised to hear Joe Dominguez, played by the ever-amusing Cheech Marin, seeking a Cuddlebug costume for his daughter.

Since Kelly Hu was also on this episode of NB (ooh, abbreviations), it clearly predates ML's (ooh, abbrevs) use of the same name for a similar gotta-have-it Beanie-Baby-style fad.

May 31, 2005 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 27.8)
ABC Family's showing Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, featuring the eternally adorable Julia Campbell (Sammo's season one girlfriend, Melanie George) as the rather evil former cheerleader Christie Masters.

Why are they showing this? Because they're featuring their new movie "Romy and Michele: In the Beginning", a prequel of sorts.

Incidentally, did the IMDb screw up (not the first time...) or was Katherine Heigl really playing Romy in this new one? In all the commercials I saw (wouldn't watch the movie, even for the promise of Heigl in a bikini) she was perfectly channelling Lisa Kudrow, who played Michele in the first film! Who's the lunkhead who pulled that casting coup? A perfect - though much better-looking - Kudrow impersonation and they hand her the Mira Sorvino role!

And unrelated to anything: If you've developed an odd taste for light Asian-language music due to my occasional reference to Teresa Teng - or, perhaps, due to the phase of the moon, I don't know how you do things - you might like Naomi Tamura's "Ano Hi no Futari wa Mou Inai", B-side to the "Yuzurenai Negai" single. ("Yuzurenai Negai" being the opening theme to season one of Magic Knight Rayearth - got that?) I just rediscovered this song and how great it is.

October 12, 2005 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies 28.0)
Been quiet lately. Not only have I seen very little of anyone connected with Martial Law, but life has been very, er, lifey.

Most notable: Lee Goldberg got a flexible sigmoidoscopy a month and a bit back. Best wishes to him. That sort of thing is never fun.

June 14, 2006 AD (Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies X.0)
Well, so much for that. It's been a hell of a year for me, and it doesn't look like it's letting up any time soon. As you can see, I've pretty much stopped updating this page. (Hasn't been much to update about, though....)

So, while not a complete closing, it looks like this is about the end of regular updates for this page. If something comes up, I'll certainly update, but there's no sense in me making every-three-months promises that I know I'll never be able to keep.

Best wishes to my readers and fans of all things Martial Law-related. Take care of yourselves.


Season One, Part One | Season One, Part Two | Midseries Metamorphosis | Season Two, Part One | Season Two, Part Two
The Index | The Annotated Index | The Progenitor Rant | The Original Page
Chronicles, Litanies, and Fanboy Obsessions: (Recent Updates)
The Egolf Chronicles: Current | May 2001 - February 2002 | February 2002 - July 2002
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