Humanizing The Vacuum

To the three score lawyers who took to Facebook last Tuesday to condemn the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial, Carl Hiassen wants to talk to you.

Please, Mr. Obama, use sarcasm like this more often. Thanks.

This Bronson Pinchot interview has circulated over the interwebs the last few days. The former star of “Perfect Strangers” dishes on the continuing mystery of Tom Cruise’s sexuality and the public manifestations thereof, and the meanness of Denzel Washington (“Denzel Washington cured me forever of thinking that there is any amount of money or anything that could ever, ever make it okay to be abused. The script supervisor on [Courage Under Fire] said it’s like watching somebody kick a puppy. He was so vile.”). Who cares if any of it is true?

Oh, he thinks Tom Hanks is a peach of a fellow.

Yesterday morning, consulting “Family Ties” episodes on Netflix (don’t ask), I apparently added a disc to my queue by mistake, so I spent the evening watching one disc from the show’s 1985-1986 season: the one in which Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox) meets Ellen (real-life wife Tracy Pollan), thus introducing the world to Billy Vera and the Beaters’ early ’87 #1 hit “At This Moment.” It’s totally fascinating. From fourth to seventh grade, Fox was the most popular pin-up idol in elementary school. And the Keaton character’s smart-aleck Reaganism transcended gender: lots of my male friends went through the motions of protesting when girls insisted on watching Teen Wolf and The Secret of My Success. Hard to believe that the show’s producers intended Meredith Baxter Birney and Michael Gross to be the leads until Fox’s popularity early in its run forced them to write the show around him. As for the other Keaton siblings, Justine Bateman’s dense Mallory still inspires lovelorn eye rolls (no way is she hotter than “The Cosby Show”‘s Lisa Bonet though), while Tina Yothers as tomboy Jen is your typical blond wise ass middle child.

Watching the show for the first time in twenty years, Fox’s work still holds up. It’s not so much that his demerits — squeaky voice, height, and curious Canadian asexuality — actually work in his favor; he’s so weird yet approachable that they’re insignificant. He also has an infallible instinct for the blank double take or the infinitesimal hesitation before a punch line (Bill Cosby’s Heathcliff Huxtable wasn’t too goody-goody to project a faint air of contempt for the children on the other end). It’s a good thing, for without him the show’s rickety structure lacks the anything-goes spontaneity, real or feigned, that any of the Huxtable children (or the Huxtable parents, those horndogs) threatened to unleash at any minute.