Convalesce and Confessions

So, I torqued my vertebrae, very low on the lumbar register, creating the curious sensation that my pelvis is actively trying to divorce my spine. I am technically in good health, but if you told me that after the nine days I've spent in bed, alternating heat and ice and IcyHot, and making the most out of entirely too few drugs, I would consider shucking your heart out of your chest and swallowing it down like a raw oyster.

What I've been watching: I've seen three seasons in three days of Queer as Folk (US version; I can't understand what British people are saying), but I had to cut myself off when the season three finale made me cry thrice in the span of half an hour. I'm going to be a WRECK when Brian gets ball cancer.

So instead, a moment with a few B-actors I love.

There is an engrossing show that has not yet been cancelled: the objectionably spelled ScyFy channel's Haven. It's got a good Stephen King/Coastal New England foundation, and while it may be unremarkable in large doses due to some formulaic issues, it also has a lot to offer. There is the will-they-or-won't-they love story between the man who can't feel physical sensation and the only woman who can penetrate his numbness. There is the distinct relationship between the supernatural and the dysfunctional, as the impossible disasters inevitably link back to a single "troubled" soul. There is a clever "add a cast member from 90210" Hail Mary that actually WORKS. There is also the charming B actor presence of Eric Balfour.

What can I say? Eric went to high school with Buffy (ok, he tried to eat her in the pilot), he was sympathetic in the only season of 24 I could stand to watch, and he was heartbreaking in Six Feet Under. Was there ever much character variation? Well, no. He's pretty much the Troubled Manslut with the Heart of Gold (and some facial hair) in everything he plays. But that's not really a problem for me, because it seems like he's genuinely trying to hit bottom in every role; it's so depressing, it's almost admirable.

Another actor I've been following is Laruen Lee Smith. She had a nice little affair with Dana the tennis player in the L-Word, and was oddly memorable in the 2001-'03 equally oddly memorable X-men ripoff tv series Mutant X. I'm three minutes into the pilot of Mutant X, and the usage of the crane alone scores it high on the Squalid chart. Smith plays Jean Grey the psychic one, and I'm looking forward to a thousand close-ups of her furrowed brow which indicate she is using her powers. I can't remember if she uses the hand-on-the-forehead gesture to emphasize her skills; only time will tell.

Excitingly enough, these two actors bone like crazy in a movie that amounts, for me, at least, to a bisexual sundae: 2005's Lie With Me. I've only watched half of it (I sense a bad case of disaster syndrome coming on), but I like a) how the film is narrated in the voice of a sexually voracious woman, for once, and b) there is fairly convincing chemistry and extremely convincing sex. I'll report back to you on Lie With Me when I feel I can stomach whatever after-school-special/dangers-of-sex trope they throw in the last 45 minutes. Best guess based on pattern: Eric gets shot.

Let's see.. in my misguided enthusiasm for the future Ms. Bonanza (that's what I call illustriously out bisexual Anna Paquin), I watched Margaret (2011), and was too busy being annoyed that Paquin has been playing teenagers for longer than anyone spends in their actual teens (and also being annoyed by her character) to have any fun. It did spark the idea for a future blog post about two actors, one male, one female, who are so pigeonholed for teenage coming-of-age roles that they have each lost their virginity in at least a dozen movies. I'm looking forward to holding them up to the Gender Analysis Lens, and seeing which one bursts into flame and which one just melts. It's going to be "tits," as the kids like to say.

Squalor of the month goes hands down to In the Cut (2003), a tawdry whodunit complete with dismemberment, voyeurism, slang vocabulary lessons, and really talky, dirty sex (dirty for the MPAA, that is) between Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo. The poor film was despised by critics and audiences alike, despite its irregular romance and almost-grindhouse appeal. I think maybe I've been single and/or without sex for too long, because I rewatched this squalid classic out of the bizarre sensation that if I met Ruffalo in person, I would hold some part of him over my mouth and nose and inhale as though he were an oxygen mask. In the Cut: a fair substitute for a kind of sex I should probably not be having. And some nice work by Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Ok, I promise to get back to rape in film as soon as I can sit upright. In the meantime, friends, stay squalid.