Filler!

I know, I know: It's been ages since my last post. It's a busy and transitional time for me, and that means my eight readers have to suffer these balmy September weeks without my lengthy yet insightful diatribes. More ruminations and pontifications soon, I promise.

So, to keep you busy, a detailed, unscientific analysis of the percentage of dialogue that audiences find intelligible when articulated by the following soap actors:

Thorsten Kaye (Zach, AMC) - 84%
David Fumero (Cristian, OLTL) - 80%
Maurice Benard (Sonny, GH) - 67%
Steve Burton (Jason, GH) - 66% (May possibly share Benard's mumbling coach)
Elizabeth Hubbard (Lucinda, ATWT) -62% (Strings random words together in a sort of nonsense verse)
Eric Braeden (Victor, Y&R) - 44% (When Victor is shouting at someone: 58%)
Adam Brody (Seth, The O.C.) - 31%
Antonio Sabato Jr. (GH, B&B, Melrose, various pap) - 7%
Rachel Bilson (Summer, The O.C.) - 1%, might possibly be speaking Portuguese

Discuss.

Five Reasons to Love Hal Munson

When we lost Benjamin Hendrickson earlier this year, daytime was left without one of its most unique actors and best characters, As The World Turns’s Detective Hal Munson. Hendrickson imbued Hal both with tenderness and a fierce determination for justice: He was simultaneously prickly and cuddly. Hal was the cop you wanted on your case and the dad you wished you had. Here are five reasons why we will always love Hal.

1. He fathered four children by four different women, and yet even the daughter who wasn’t biologically his somehow inherited his red hair.

2. Despite his conquests of practically half the town’s female population, he still found time to marry and divorce Barbara Ryan three times.

3. He had the moral fiber not to take the phone book to those bastards Stenbeck and Montgomery, even though they were frequently begging for it.

4. He loved his family, the Cubs, greasy breakfasts, and greasier lunches.

5. He was perpetually tired of listening to your bullshit.