Answers, the second!

Continuing the replies from Ask Me Anything! 2011 (still open to queries! Get 'em in, no question turned away! No question, turned away!), this time from Roger:

1. Do you watch a TV show/movie because one of your ROWR is in it? In particular - did you watch CSI NY before Sela Ward was on it, and do you watch it now? Also, have you noticed that she had "work done" and how do yo feel about this?

I have, occasionally. Note that I don't choose ROWR's (even now, when I choose them very sporadically -- although I'm giving thought to revising that practice, since my traffic spikes every time an episode of The Big Bang Theory airs in which Melissa Rauch appears) on the basis of just how beautiful they are, but because I saw them in something, or saw them perform something, that I really, really liked, so what attracts me to them at first (in the very mild sense of "attract") is the talent they bring to whatever they do. There are plenty of really beautiful women on shows that I hate, so I don't post about them, because I hate their shows, and that kind of "taints" them a little. (But I do make the distinction between hating the person and hating the show. That's got to be clear.)

So, the ROWR honoree has to be in something that I'm interested in watching. If Sela Ward, Melissa Rauch and Jacqueline Obradors were all cast in a new David E. Kelley legal drama, I wouldn't watch, because I can't stand David E. Kelley's shows. (I'm just picking on him because I've got him on the brain, as he prepares to destroy Wonder Woman for the new generation.)

On Sela Ward specifically: I have only watched one episode of CSI: NY since she's been on it, and I watched that one just to see what she was like on the show. But since the best opinion I've ever been able to muster for that show was "tepid" and that has cooled significantly over the last couple of years, I haven't watched any more. She was OK, but fact is, the CSI shows are basically designed to plug in any actors at all. The most character driven of them is CSI: Miami, and that's just because David Caruso has turned Horatio Caine into the most deliciously weird teevee cop of all time (excepting those on Barney Miller).

Ward has had some plastic surgery done, which does, in my view, make her less beautiful than on Once and Again, wherein she wasn't in a single scene where she wasn't radiant. But even so, Once was ten years ago, and in general, I think that the whole plastic surgery thing can be OK when it's done relatively tastefully, and I thought hers was. I certainly didn't agree at all with this Ken Levine post in which he says that now she looks like Jack Lord (I found that post in general fairly mean-spirited, actually). Plenty of women have had surgeries that make them look ghastly -- Joan Rivers is a good example, although I've always found her ghastly, so she might not be a good example).

2. If you were at dinner with George Lucas, what would you talk about, assuming that Star Wars is off limits? How would you feel if he brought up your sequel fixers?

No Star Wars? Aieee! But really, George Lucas seems to be a man with a lot of interests and who knows stuff about a lot of things, so even setting Star Wars aside, I suspect that the conversation would be fascinating.

Now, if he were to bring up Fixing the Prequels, I hope he'd be gracious about it, especially since I'm always trying to make clear that I don't write those out of a desire to bash the Prequels, but to defend them by drawing attention if I can to what's good about them. (And there's a lot.) What I suspect, though, is that he would be gracious about it. Lucas has shown quite a lot of humor over the years about his life's work; he has, to my knowledge, never really gone after any of the parodies that circulate online, nor has he gone after the various people who have done "fan edits". When Carrie Fisher took to the stage at Lucas's AFI Lifetime Achievement award and told the story where he apparently had indicated during filming of A New Hope that "there is no underwear in space", he laughed uproariously, and there is a photo out there of Lucas on the set of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wearing a t-shirt that says "Han shot first". I have a feeling Lucas would be fine with it...but man, would that be weird. It would probably take me fifteen minutes just to pull my heart out of my stomach just to discuss the subject with him!

More answers to come! And don't forget, I'm not closing off the submissions yet, so if you want to ask something, go ahead!