Imdb.com is a great site. Just type in any Actor’s name and get a list of all the movies he/she has ever been in, see everyone he/she has ever worked with. It has everyone on it; from the biggest Hollywood stars ever, to obscure foreign assistant directors, to friends of mine who have only ever been extras on one or two TV shows.

If you don’t know the format, it’s a simple one, the most important feature for this article being that most actors and film-types listed have a little picture next to their name, one selected, cropped, and posted by someone working for imdb.

Sometimes I’m shocked by the poor quality of the headshots displayed for particular actors. Especially when, for each personage, there is a special page labeled “photos,” that houses 1-100s of photos of that particular celebrity; naturally, the more famous they are, the more photos there will be.

So, I’ve made a list of great actors who have terrible imdb photos. Even my friends who are extras have better photos, much better, than the ones below.

Billy Crudup

This photo of Billy Crudup clearly comes from the movie Almost Famous. But Crudup is a good actor, and I don’t think he’d be too happy if that movie, and only that movie, defined his career. Imagine if imdb had decided to do that to him with his role from Watchmen. He would just have a big, blue, eyeless, CGI face. Plus, that mustache makes him a little hard to recognize.

Marlon Wayans

I don’t even think I have to say anything. This would be a terrible picture of anyone, let alone a big movie star. What’s even going on here? Is he hanging his head out of a moving car? No one could find a better picture of him? Really?

Talia Shire

She was Adrian in Rocky. She has 62 acting credits on imdb. But this photo doesn’t even show her face front on. Did someone take it at a restaurant with their camera-phone?

Allen Covert

You may not know who Allen Covert is, and you would never figure it out based on this picture. This headshot is a still image from the Adam Sandler movie Little Nicky. If this picture was all you knew about Covert, you would think he was an overweight, nearly bald, old actor. He’s not. This is not at all what he looks like. It was a particularly grotesque part in a particularly horrible film. So who is he really? Allen Covert is Sandler’s boy; appearing in basically all of Sandler’s movies, and even starring in a few of his own (although they were produced by his friend Adam’s company “Happy Madison Productions”).”

Sam Neill

He was in Jurassic Park! That movie was huge. You couldn’t find a photo where there was proper lighting?

John Bellushi

Uh, what? John Belushi doesn’t have a picture?  I know that he died young, but I’m pretty sure there was some photographic evidence of his life. And are there really no die-hard Animal House fans out there willing to email an image of their drunken hero?

Another thing, the URL for people listed on imdb all have a similar ending – each listing starts with “nm” (for “name,” I assume) which is followed by a string of numbers (the code for things besides people is slightly different, for example, the URL for movies and TV shows says “title/###”). The ending for the John Belushi pages looks like this; “nm0000004,” which means that Belushi was the fourth actor added to the site. He was forth in the mind of the website creators, in front of every other movie actor ever, besides 1-3. It goes Fred Astaire at nm0000001, then Lauren Bacall, Brigitte Bardot, and then John Belushi, after whom comes Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, and then Brando at eight. It’s a weird list, I know, but Belushi is right in the middle of it, so you would think someone would paste a picture of his big face next to his name. Even a terrible picture would be better than none at all. (For the record, all the actors and the one director listed above have great imdb headshots)

That’s it. I’m going to keep looking. It’s something that used to bother me a whole lot, but now I think it’s kind of a fun game.

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A while back, Alex and I were approached by TV producers to be contestants on a new reality show called “Write or Wrong.” We agreed and started filming the pilot episode. “Write or Wrong” was an occupational competition show, like Top Chef or Project Runway, where writers compete to see who’s the best. So, Alex and I moved into a house full of other up and coming writers. The network filmed for one day before completely abandoning the project. If you thought those “Real World” people drank too much and had trouble getting along, you can’t imagine what an apartment full of writers and endless booze will lead to.

The show, of course, was never aired, so Alex and I asked for the footage and spent 6 hours in a computer lab in Worcester editing the discarded footage into a five minute promo. Here’s “Write or Wrong”

Hey, come on out tonight to the Pinch! It’s a nice little bar with a sweet little contest that I’m in the finals for! I moved on in two previous rounds; both unexpectedly. I’m happy to be in the finals, but who doesn’t want to win? I’m generally not a competitive person, but c’mon, seriously, I want it so bad! If I don’t win, what will I do to myself and to others?! Nothing, but why take that chance. Watch me try to be as funny as I can be tonight at The Pinch!

Comedy Party USA
@ The Pinch
237 Sullivan St.
9 PM
FREE

This weekend my gal and I went to Concord, Massachusetts to visit family and friends and dress up all nice to drink cocktails on Saturday night. While we were in Concord we walked across the Old North Bridge, the central battleground for the first day of battle in the American Revolution. There may have been tea thrown in Boston, but there was blood spilled in Concord. Boy howdy.

One of the reasons was that there were huge munitions stations in Concord so the British were trying to get at the heart of the matter of these militias. I’m told this, but I wasn’t actually there.

We crossed the bridge and walked around the hill for about an hour. It was a beautiful day and as Bono says, we didn’t let it get away. It’s so picturesque there; I can understand what the colonists loved about it. They must have thought this bridge would be there forever. And it has in a way, but in another way it’s been built and rebuilt five times.

Saturday, as a surprise event, Dan, Julie and many other Concordians and/or former Concordians went canoeing six miles down the Concord River. Some people were in tubes for they are not righteous enough for a canoe. It was a great weekend to spend in Concord and traveling under the Old North Bridge made me think of those ninety-five red coats coming to fight a group of farmers. They were probably laughing, chilling out, relaxing all cool and then a bunch of colonials started to appear. At one time they were their fellow countrymen, but God dammit they’d been taxed too much! Take that and that! And that and that and that!

The coated men of red were in a deeper red now. Deep in blood. Deep in debt of loss of men. Deep in red sunlight as the sun set over the meadow. I assume the battle ended at sunset.

It is a beautiful bridge and if you’re ever in Concord for more than two hours I recommend going. Although I don’t recommend being in Concord for too much longer than thirty minutes. Daniel Davis Tovrov and I had to; we grew up there.

HBO’s new comedy series “Hung” is two episode old, and according to HBO, a hit.

Here are some random and pointless thoughts. They will most likely tell you nothing about the show.

• The Title Sequence/The Theme Song – Very disappointing. The song is “I’ll be Your Man,” by The Black Keys. It’s a slow, blues riff, that could certainly stand on its own, but as part of the opening credits seems rather boring, especially when compared to other HBO opening themes, which are generally of the highest quality. Think about these other shows: The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, Entourage, The Wire. They are all excellently done. They’re catchy and cool. Their only problem is occasionally, they’re too long; probably because they’re so good that producers didn’t want to cut them. The True Blood theme scares the crap out of me.  Even Sex and the City, which I didn’t watch, has an annoyingly catchy theme.  I also can’t see that HBO logo pop up without starting to sing the Curb Your Enthusiasm tuba intro. Hung does not follow suit. It’s not just the song, but the actual opening sequence that’s flat. It’s just Tom Jane walking down the street, languidly taking off his clothes. That, mixed with the slow, mellow song which unfortunately fades to the background, makes for a title sequence that isn’t terrible, but just doesn’t live up to HBO standards.
• It takes place in Detroit; an interestingly and culturally relevant city for obvious reasons.  Hopefully, this was done on purpose, besides just making the connection between the down and out protagonist and the down and out city in which he lives. They can probably make some statements about or an examination of the current economic crisis, which would be really cool to watch, just like The Wire did in the fifth season when it showcased the dying newspaper industry.  But that type of commentary might be too much to ask for in a show about a guy with a big dick.
• The show has a voice over, which it probably doesn’t need, but works OK. In the first episode, the main character Ray, who does the narration, had trouble maintaining his mid-western accent. At first, I thought it was intentional and found it an interesting detail and pretentiously tried to find a reason for it. Then I realized it wasn’t on purpose. By the second episode, the issue is resolved. They kept the voice-over, but it’s done in a smooth and hilarious Detroit dialect.

Those are my notes on the show so far. It’s brand new, and it’s pretty good. The plot is developing slowly and I’ll stick around and see what happens. The show is OK and has some potential. I see it being a decent show and one that I’ll keep watching even though I know it’s not all that good; a lot like Californiacation (which also has a mediocre title sequence) .