I had known Kristen Bell played Veronica Mars for several years, from seeing commercials for it on UPN back in 2004 and 2005 (though never watching it) and from adding the three seasons of it to my Amazon wish list, where its description was always “Kristen Bell et al.” However, despite being intrigued by Veronica Mars when it originally aired (though apparently not enough to tune in) and obviously planning on purchasing it, I ended up watching Party Down (all 20 episodes of it) first because it was streaming on Netflix and I had heard great things about it. I had no idea there was any connection between the two shows.

After I watched Party Down this summer on Netflix, I happened to buy all three seasons of Veronica Mars on DVD because they were all finally cheap enough for my standards. Somehow, after seeing all two episodes of Party Down in which Bell guest-starred as the cut-throat, competing caterer Uda Bengt, I never noticed her name in the closing credits. In that show in particular, I always read the closing credits attentively to see who played the guest characters and to see if there were any names I’d recognize. I can’t understand how I missed Kristen Bell. I had seen her name underneath the show title on those Veronica Mars DVD’s while scrolling through my Amazon wish list dozens of times. It’s understandable that I wouldn’t recognize Bell herself in the episodes because I had never seen her in anything else, but I can’t understand how I missed her name.

Because I watched both shows in such close succession, you’d think I would have recognized that the same actress who played Veronica also played Uda, instead of the other way around, but I never did. I have little doubt that I would have recognized Uda as Kristen Bell if I had watched a lot of Veronica Mars and then watched Party Down, especially because of all the other Veronica Mars alums who have large and small roles in Party Down, but that’s not the way it happened. After learning she was Uda and thinking back to that character and those episodes (including a GIS and this short preview clip), I was really amazed that I hadn’t put 2 and 2 together. This revelation really shook the foundation of my entertainment world for a few minutes. It was like when I found out my NIH friend Jessica Dolle pronounced her name “Dolly” and not “Dole” after knowing her for about 10 months.

Kristen Bell herself looks about the same in both shows, as they were only filmed a few years apart, but the way she acts, speaks, carries herself, and presents herself as Uda Bengt (including the work of the wardrobe and hair people) make her seem like a completely different person from the young, sarcastically bubbly, determinedly spunky Veronica Mars. (I’m given to understand that this is called acting.) Uda is robotic, serious, humorless, all business, no fun, and ruthlessly efficient as the Valhalla catering team leader. She is always barking orders, threats, or insults into her Bluetooth earpiece intermixed with her face-to-face conversations, to much comedic effect (all of which would be lost on Uda). Her hair is just pulled straight back into a boring, non–time-consuming ponytail. She wears all black as her work uniform. She asks a man out on a date the way she would schedule a business lunch. She knows with passionless certainty that she and her team are leagues better than the Party Down catering team, but she spares no hurtfulness or nastiness when she hurls insults at Ron Donald and the losers who work for him. Uda’s jaw is different somehow—more prominent, clenched, impatient, intolerant, ready to bite any slacker’s head off. Perhaps her odd, foreign name added another element of differentness to this Kristen Bell character that prevented me from recognizing her mere weeks later when I started watching Veronica Mars.

The reason I’m writing about this is that Kristen Bell’s performance as Uda Bengt provides a great life lesson for all of us. We can project the image of ourselves that we want others to see, and we can influence how people think of us by how we dress, speak, stand, walk, and style our hair. When motivational speakers or guidance counselors or whoever advise us to start actively embodying the change we want to see in our lives or start acting the way people in our desired station/position in life act, this really is some of the best advice you can heed, especially at a young age. There are probably better examples of this than a pair of an actress’s characters, but it prompted this realization in me, and hopefully it can impact more people’s lives than mine in a positive way. If you want to succeed in a field of study or a career, start behaving, talking, interacting, and even dressing the way people who are successful in those areas do. If you want people to see you as more confident, smart, outgoing, interesting, older, younger—then make the change in yourself first to make others see you that way. In many cases such superficial changes are only the precursor to the more important step of thinking like and being a new and improved person, but no one does anything in a vacuum, so changing the impression you give others is often necessary to become a successful employee, boss, leader, colleague, student, friend, or loved one. Become the character that you want to become.

My favorite instance of Tim Andrews impersonating Michael McDonald came probably sometime in 2009 or early 2010 when a caller asked him if he ever forgot who he was or had any sort of identity crisis because of all the voices he does. Tim responded with something like, “Yeah, sometimes when I’m in bed with my girlfriend, I’ll break into Michael McDonald: ‘Oh, you know, I’d really like to have sex with you again….’ Man, I wish I had saved that one.

Another great Michael McDonald–related memory on the Regular Guys show was during the Regular Guys Squares when one of the squares was Michael McDonald, and instead of requesting him, the caller accidentally said “Norm McDonald”, and without even missing a beat, Tim broke into a great Norm McDonald. “Oh, hey there, I’m Norm McDonald in the Regular Guys Squares, there. Yeah, that was a good choice you made, there.” Or something like that. I’ve got to start saving my favorite Regular Guys clips.

I did save the latest appearance of the Michael McDonald impersonation on the show. The final caller of the show would win tickets to see Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs in concert, so one caller requested that Tim Andrews regale us with some of his hilarious Michael McDonald impersonation:

Today I got up early and ran in the Tortoise and Hare 5k in downtown Ann Arbor, hung out at home and finished editing a paper that I was unable to finish last night, and went out to lunch at ABC with Dave. Lame-ass Theresa and Rich didn’t join us, but that’s okay, they probably didn’t feel well or have time. Since I had no particular thing to do or place to be, and I didn’t want to go back home and sit in my hot, stuffy apartment for 6 hours, I decided to drive around to a couple stores and look for furniture or electronics that I could buy in the future (after I move next month or next summer). I headed for Art Van, the furniture store, to look at coffee tables, end tables, night stands, and couches. I saw lots of good ones, probably plenty of things Kathy and I would like, but it felt kind of pointless without her there (for her knowledge of home design and her opinion of every piece, as they will be joint decisions), but then I saw the TV store that existed in an annex in the back of the store: Paul’s TV. It is like the “home theater” section of Best Buy, just a medium-sized room in the back of the store, and it operates as an independent store. I’m sure they have plenty of TV/furniture deals in coordination with Art Van, but other than that, they’re separate.

I went back to Paul’s TV and sat down in an armchair to watch a plasma TV (Panasonic P50S2) and an LED-backlit Sharp (LC52LE700U) that were set up perpendicular to each other. I had a good angle to watch the Tigers game on both, though it was closer than I’d typically sit at home. The reason I sat down to watch those two, mainly the Sharp, is that the local appliance store ABC Warehouse had given me a guaranteed price of $1500 for the Sharp, to be delivered in August after I move, if I paid a down payment on it, but I saw that Paul’s TV had it for $1197. THAT…is insane. Paul’s TV never charges for shipping, whereas ABC Warehouse would have charged $50.

Naturally, my first thought was that this was too good to be true, but I double-checked the model number and size. I had been keeping track of many TV prices in a spreadsheet over the last year (yes, total loser-geek), so I had gotten good at memorizing model numbers and was already familiar with this one anyway. It was definitely the same TV, for $350 cheaper. Its MSRP is $2000. My second thought was also along the lines of, “This is too good to be true,” but referring to the picture quality—maybe this TV isn’t all that great, despite great reviews (at both Amazon and Newegg, which is a ringing endorsement, considering the tech-savvy videophiles who populate Newegg). It is that great. I thought that its colors might have been a little too bright or washed out compared to the plasma, but, first of all, that’s adjustable, and I don’t believe that the Sharp’s colors will be the slightest, remotest bit sub-optimal after I adjust them. One strong point of the Sharp LEDs according to reviewers is the color accuracy. The motion of the ball and players seemed nearly identical to the S2, with the edge probably going to the S2. I don’t know if that’s a by-product of the colors being turned up too bright, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The big advantage of the Sharp LED was, surprisingly, its black levels (and other dark levels). They were better than the plasma’s. Its blacks were blacker, and it was easier to distinguish a few details in dark places than on the plasma. This is despite the incessant claims by videophiles at CNet and everywhere else that plasmas’ black levels are so superior to LCDs’. Not these two. (Nor any plasmas in ABC Warehouse, which is the very thing that swayed Kathy and me towards the Sharp in the first place.) In and around the backdrop of Comerica Park, which is the dark, empty part behind center field that enables the hitter to see the pitched ball, more detail was distinguishable. It was July 4th, so the Tigers and Mariners were both wearing these special “patriotic” caps (here’s the Tigers one). Before the start of one inning, the camera zoomed in very close to a Tigers hat that was sitting in the dugout or in a shaded part of the stands or somewhere; I guess the Fox Sports crew had set it up there for the purpose of zooming in one inning. The LED-backlit TV was far, far more detailed and accurate in showing the lines of the Tigers’ English D and distinguishing the navy-blue textures of the middle and left side of that logo from one another. It was a mess of navy blue on the plasma, and a clear English D on the LED-backlit screen. Sold.

To make the end of this story rather shorter, I took this price to ABC Warehouse to challenge them to beat it, but I had no documentation, so all they could beat was the website’s price of $1497 (the $1197 was a special 4th of July sale). I went back to Paul’s TV, paid a 10% down payment on my credit card, got the receipt, brought it to the ABC Warehouse manager, who eventually told me he would not only match it but beat it by $100. I don’t know if he mistyped, misspoke, or miscalculated, but he actually gave it to me for over $160 less than Paul’s TV: $1102 after tax and shipping, compared to $1268 in total from Paul’s TV. That is INSANE, people.

When Kathy and I had first picked out the Sharp LED-backlit TV in June, I walked out of there telling her it wasn’t quite a steal, but it was a very good or great deal on a great, long-lasting, highly reviewed TV that we both witnessed outperforming every TV in the store with a remotely similar price. But $1100, THAT is a steal. It’s unbelievable. I am ecstatic. This has made my month.

I have seasons 1–5 of South Park on DVD, and I don’t ever plan on buying any more because every episode is available for free 24/7 at its official website, southparkstudios.com. I know there is abundant evidence that giving something away for free actually increases its sales, but I at least understand the basis of where the RIAA is coming from. I won’t pay a penny for South Park as long as it is available on demand for free.

One of the worst things Amazon.com has ever done is lump the reviews and ratings of the DVD version and the Blu-ray version of every single movie together, so that you can’t tell whether someone’s review and star-rating refers to the DVD version or the Blu-ray version, unless they state they’re reviewing the Blu-ray version specifically. What idiot thought of that? I can’t imagine the level of stupidity required to approve of that idea at multiple levels of management in the Amazon company hierarchy. It is inconvenient, counterintuitive, and simply inaccurate because the two different products are, um, different products!

So, it turns out my TV is a hell of a lot sweeter than I had ever thought. It is a Samsung SlimFit high-definition television. It is capable of displaying 720p and 1080i video. It’s only 30 inches diagonally, and it’s a cathode ray tube TV, so it isn’t as awesome as the larger TV I’m going to buy next summer, but, hey, that means it has a higher pixel density. I found this out because Kathy got me a Blu-ray player for Christmas, and I hooked it up to an HDMI port in the back of my TV (hmm, that should have made it obvious to me that it was an HDTV, but it never occurred to me), and it plays Blu-ray movies in very nice quality. I tried out my new Blu-rays of Star Trek: First Contact and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I’m pretty sure they looked as awesome as they could on a 30” TV. Maybe a new LCD (or plasma, if they existed at 30 inches) would show an improvement over my 3-year-old TV, but the Wikipedia articles on plasma displays and LCD screens indicate that, other things being equal, CRT produces the best picture in terms of color accuracy, sharpness, and blur. (The problem is, other things aren’t ever equal, not anymore.) However, CRT picture quality fades a lot sooner than the flat-panel displays, so I’m sure mine doesn’t look as good as it used to in high-definition. Those two movies looked really awesome, though; you could tell the source and the display were both high-definition.

I began to suspect that my TV was capable of playing video at some level of high definition (either 720 or 1080 vertical resolution) the night before I discovered it for sure, as I was reading my TV’s manual for probably the second time. I don’t remember reading a lot of it when I got it in August 2006. I think I was reading it to determine if it might be possible for me to use my TV’s remote control for both the TV and the Blu-ray player (both Samsung). I know it’s possible to use the Blu-ray player’s remote to control the TV, but I don’t think it’s possible to change the picture’s aspect ratio/zoom with the Blu-ray remote, and I’ll need this for watching regular TV content that is widescreen because I don’t have high-definition cable, so most things are 4:3, so I have to zoom in on a widescreen program to avoid having black bars on the sides and top and bottom. It might be possible, but first I’ll need to figure out how to navigate my TV’s menus with the Blu-ray controller; all it can do so far is power-off, power-on, and change the volume, channel, and input source.

So I have liked most of the clips of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon that I’ve seen online, but nothing prepared me for the blinding white light of brilliance that emanates from this clip. I first saw it posted on my friend’s Facebook page and have watched it about 10 times since.