“Skating with the Stars”

Holy crap! Did anyone else watch this televised insanity last night? Man, if my Mother-in-Law hadn’t strong-armed us into watching part one of the season finale of “Dancing with the Stars” — a show neither Christine or I have ever watched willingly — we would probably have missed it entirely.

But, thanks to Marge, we totally watched the premiere episode of “Skating with the Stars” and, Lord in heaven, I want my hour back.

Seriously, that shit was so crazy! No offense to the sexiest damn replicant in the “Blade Runner” universe, but, when Sean Young is your biggest name star, you know you don’t have any stars. Yikes! And the still-sexy Miss Young tried her damndest, but, wow, bitch could not skate to save her life!

Even Olympic Gold Medalist Jonny Mosely sucked. Sure, he won his gold for skiing, but, still, you’d think he’d have some basic skating skills. Sadly, he didn’t.

The rest of the nobody’s…ahem…”stars”, were fine-to-decent skaters — except for reality show super-bitch Bethenny Frankel, who kinda rocked! — but the highlight of the night was when middle judge and resident super freak, Johnny Weir, inexplicably skated for the crowd.

It was so weird, they just came back from the break and announced that now, Johnny Weir would be skating. Huh? What about the next couple? And how did Johnny change into that strange outfit and frost his tips red so quickly? It was very confusing, amigos.

And the song the Weird One skated to? Wait for it…Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”. Ha! Perfection! Instantly, the show went from plain-old bad TV to totally-surreal Mexican variety show. So awesomely bad! Wow…it’s almost enough to make me wanna watch next week. Almost…

Anybody else watch this craziness? If so, what’d you think?

Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009)

For those of you who haven’t heard yet, Ricardo Montalban, the coolest Mexican cat to ever don a white suit in the tropics, passed away today in Los Angeles at the ripe old age of 88.

And while he was a pioneering champion of Latino’s everywhere…onstage, onscreen and even behind-the-scenes…Ricardo Montalban was also one hell of an actor. With over one-hundred-and-fifty screen credits to his name, that dude worked non-stop. But there are two roles that, for me at least, made Montalban a straight-up bad-ass.

The first was Montalban’s iconic Mr. Roarke on “Fantasy Island”. I remember the pilot episode of that show scaring the shit out of me…I don’t know why, but there was something really f-ing creepy to me about that island. And if I remember correctly, Mr. Roarke was much more dark and menacing in the early seasons than he was later on. Seriously scary shit…

Childhood nightmares aside, however, the role that will forever endear Ricardo Montlban to me is his big, rip-roaring performance as the maniacal Kahn in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn”. My Dad was a huge fan of those movies and we watched them many times (except for the sucky first one…yikes) but our favorite to this day is “Kahn”.

I know it’s lavish praise, but in my mind, Montalban’s villainous turn as Kahn Noonien Singh ranks up there with Darth Vader, Rutger Hauer from “Blade Runner” and maybe the Alien from the “Alien” movies as one of the best sci-fi villains of all time. Seriously, this dude kicked Kirk and company’s ass in that movie! And he was Mexican to boot! Way to go, hombe…way to go!

So, for Kahn, Roarke, and every other suave-ass thing you did in a lifetime of sauve…RIP, amigo. You will be missed…