All My Children, 1970-2011

Gah! Editorial post crashing! Sorry Nojo, it took me so long to find the most awesome hair photos and then format those fucking photos.

@SanFranLefty: A delay well-timed, since the intended audience for this post was 11-year-old Nojo. I’m reliably informed that he got the message.

@nojo: I especially like “reliably informed.”

@SanFranLefty: @nojo: Thanks, you two. You’re the heart and soul of this here enterprise. (Nojo, please don’t feel slighted. You’re the engine, the sine qua non. Well shit, now I haven’t mentioned Blogenfreude. Not veering off topic, I have noticed that every one whose comments on Wonkette made me laugh immoderately came here after the Great Schism, including and especially Ewalda.)

@lynnlightfoot: a tribute to Ewalda. “Paris on the Seekonk.” His comment on a sex scandal in Rhode Island.

This was the last soap taped in NYC and its demise will put a lot of people out of work.

Back when I was just beginning there were 5 or 6 of them being taped here and you could reckon on being hired on a semi-regular basis. In my first stage job in Central Park all the good-looking guys had regular parts on one or other of the soaps and managed to pull down pretty good money. There was a whole gay subculture, deeply closeted, on the damn things. They all spent the summers on Fire Island and got to Europe at least once a year. Of course it was soul-crushing work, at the studio by 6 – earlier for women for hair – on the floor by 7:30, rehearse till 12, break for lunch, on the floor to shoot live on tape till it was done around 4. Later, when the shows went to an hour, it was worse. I did a few days on AMC some years back and detested every minute of it. I couldn’t stand it that no one learned the lines as written. By me paraphrasing is not allowed. And it takes time and a certain amount of slog to memorize things properly. The regulars mostly developed an ability to read a page once or twice and be able to fake their way through it. When I did my little stint they didn’t even rehearse. You got dressed and went straight to the set. The once huge clumsy cameras had shrunk to the size of an iPhone and the once blinding lights were quite muted. I was impressed by Finola Hughes who was, I thought, extremely professional and smart and, given the fact that one is dealing with shite, very good at what she did. Susan Lucci really is like something you find in a box of Crackerjack. Tiny. But very good-natured so far as I ever saw.

@Benedick is not as stupid as he looks.: Because I love it so much, I want to believe that the movie Soap Dish was amazingly accurate in portraying what it’s like behind the scenes. Please don’t disillusion me if that’s not right.

@Benedick is not as stupid as he looks.: Between this and the demise of two L&O franchises, what will theatre actors do to pay the bills?

@Mistress Cynica: … what will theatre actors do to pay the bills? Hahahahhahhahahhahhahahhahahhahahhahahahhhahahhahahhahahhahhahahhahhahahah.

Sorry, excuse me. But no, really. Hahahahhahahhahahhahahhahahahhahahhahahhahhahahahhahhahahhahahahahahaha.

OK. Drying my eyes, wiping the snot off the monitor and back to work.