Lustbox: Men who can sign

Now, PLA and I were having a bit of a collective swoon about men who use sign language yesterday, and I suggested lustboxing the lot of them.

Then I worried that perhaps it was offensive or patronising or something. Anyway, after a lot of thought (and, I’ll be honest, there’s not usually a lot of thinking going on when lustboxing) I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just a variation on finding bilingual men sexy.

The conversation started with silver fox Mark Harmon, who as Special Agent Gibbs regularly (though not regularly enough) converses in sign language with Abby Sciuto (who proves that signing women are sexy too), and moved on to Connor from Waterloo Road who signed his wedding vows.

Then there’s double signing with Guppy Sean and Sam Colloby from Casualty in the late nineties and more doctors signing in ER – proving that sign language can make even doctors Benton and Romano seem a lot more human.

Sadly I couldn’t find you links to the rare bit of signing we get from my favourite West Winger Josh Lyman (Season 2, Episode 20 – thank you Twitter hive mind), though I can give you Joey Lucas and Kenny signing AND annoying Josh at the same time. What’s not to love?

And then of course there’s CSI’s Gil Grissom. Smart, geeky and a signer. Not to mention William Hurt in Children of a Lesser God. Who have I missed? Let me know. And feel free to share more sexy signing women too.

Finally, why not follow @BritishSignBSL on Twitter and learn a new sign every day?

[NB I nearly included Benton Fraser here, but although he understands ASL, he doesn't actually sign for us in Due South, and semaphore may be a niche attraction even by my standards...]

Posted by Jo the Hat

Damages – Season 3 (1): Who’s in the dumpster?

arialbold has been an excited quivering wreck since discovering the third season of Damages was upcoming on BBC. With Glenn Close as ice-queen who-will-she-get-next NY lawyer Patty Hewes, nothing is ever what it seems.

With Damages, practically the only things you seem to be able to rely on are the opening titles which have passed unscathed through into their third series.  I figured everyone would want to copy The Wire and have their opening music covered by a different cool artist each series – but maybe with Damages they need to leave you something that tells you which way is up.

The other now perennial feature – which gets a tad annoying at times – is that whenever they cut to what will be the denouement which gets slowly revealed episode by episode, everything goes slightly off kilter, with washed out colour and “eek eek” music.  It’s a useful signalling device in case you wonder why the person you have just seen bouncing happily round the office is now dead in the dumpster and oh he’s alive again.

And as a piece of TV rhetoric it’s great – constantly changing your perspective on what you’re seeing as the backstory unfolds.  In other hands it could be poor – and it verged on the hammer whack when you saw loyal and much put upon Hewes associate Tommy Shayes (who sadly only has two acting styles – happily stunned or unhappily annoyed – and wears that David Steel sartorial suicide note, the white collar and coloured shirt) watching his name going up on the door of the firm alongside Patty Hewes’, all the while you knew, you just knew, it was going to be him in the dumpster.

And this is clearly the show to be on if you want to make a strong left-field career move.  Dunno who their acting coach is but boy are they worth it.  Glenn Close had already made great TV with The Shield, but season one showed Ted Danson was not Sam Malone.  Season two had William Hurt doing his best stuff since way back.  And now season three – Martin Short!