Yahoogroups, idiot criminals, and asshole airlines

1) Why does yahoogroups hate me? I sent an email to a list 90 minutes ago, which has not appeared. The email I sent one minute before that one, which was sent by accident and was entirely devoid of content, posted 90 mintues ago. Discuss.

2) A man answered his cell phone while he was raping a woman. Not that anything could make that worse, per se, but the caller was his wife.

3) In other news of hate and stupidity, Continental Airlines screwed tjonesy with her pants on. It drives me crazy that they were booking the flight for passengers, and handing out boarding passes, and *cancelling the flight* at the same time. It drives me even more crazy because they're price-gouging bastards. I hate when an informed consumer gets screwed because she knows more than the vendor. But mostly I just hate that now I don't get any tjonesy at all. (Truly though, I have no right to bitch and complain; poor tjonesy just spent two days going back and forth from her home to the airport and dealing with any number of people at Continental who had no idea what anyone else at Continental was saying or doing, and there were people there who were even worse off than she.)

In conclusion - liquor.

The Riches. Verdict - so far, pretty damned awesome.

Word about The Ri¢hes is slowly making its way across fannish livejournal. I TiVoed it and just got around to watching the pilot tonight. Wow. Not what I was expecting in terms of tone, but I really enjoyed it. I don't want to give away anything of the set-up or plot, really, because this is quite different in terms of television stories - pretty original.

I first heard about it when I caught a preview on FX that was nothing but Eddie Izzard, in character, talking. I love it when he's given a dramatic role to play (it happens so rarely on screen, but on stage he's done several plays and was nominated for a Tony Award for A Day in the Death of Joe Egg in 2003.)

The pilot, which by nature must contain set-up exposition, is crafted to do so rather subtly. For example, we slowly discover an important fact about Izzard's character which a lesser should would simply have spelled out. Izzard does supply the bulk of the funny moments, but they are not his "Eddie Izzard" stand-up persona schtick. They're intrinsic to the character he plays.

The cast is uniformly top-notch. Minnie Driver is absolutely (cliché alert) a revelation here. It goes to show what actors can do when given the right material and time to work on it. So many actors out there are probably far better than they are even given the chance to prove; I'm really glad she got this role. Complete eye-opener. I never thought she was a *bad* actress, but I had no idea she had this in her. The three children (two teens and a younger child) are in no way precocious or cloying, nor are the performers "child actor"-like.

I don't want to oversell the product; this isn't The Sopranos or The Wire, but it is definitely worth giving a shot to find out if it's your cup of tea. If you're interested, check your FX schedule to see if/when they're re-running the pilot in your area, or find other ways to get your hands on it. The show airs Mondays at 10pm Eastern.

<shallow>Eddie looks HOT, and we get naked Eddie having sex with Minnie</shallow>