Happy Birthday to Me

My strange little wish list

A Media Shmedia column

by Scott Patrick Wagner

I just had a birthday. A milestone birthday. One with a big honkin’ zero at the end of it. I’d tell you which it is, but I’ll let the petulantly ambivalent state of my hairline be the only clue.

For my birthday — since the impeachment of Bush/Cheney/Rove and the institutionalization of Ann Coulter don’t seem to be forthcoming — my wish is to have the Birthday Dinner of my media dreams, with a collection of guests whose work I think is vastly under-recognized. My invitation list includes a musician, an actress, a brat, the cast and crew of a short-lived sitcom, and Patrick Dempsey when he was autistic. And let’s add Ann Coulter, so the rest of us can yell at her and then throw her out. But I digress. (It’s my birthday. I get to digress. And make abrupt segues.)

Ah, Fox . . . the network of broken dreams. I am hard pressed to explain their cancellation practices. Perhaps owner and ultraconservative megalomaniac Rupert Murdoch occasionally runs low on puppy blood and goes on a firing streak. (I didn’t check recently . . . does he own this paper yet?) There is one particular Fox casualty that is its most unsung. Andy Richter Controls the Universe is, minute for minute, the funniest and most inventive TV series you probably never saw. And they got to make nineteen episodes before Fox snatched the life support. What Scrubs aspires to, what Family Guy sometimes overshoots, this show would hit spot-on every week. Amazon.com has a sign-up page, so you can be alerted if Fox ever decides to release the DVD. And creator Victor Fresco and all involved are welcome at any birthday wing-ding I should ever throw.

For my next invitee, let’s pay a quick visit to Once and Again, the heartfelt series from 1999. While everyone did exemplary work, one intermittent guest-star performance remains indelible: Patrick Dempsey as Sela Ward’s autistic younger brother. His visits intensified in number and resonance in the third and final season of the series — and this is the only season that has NOT been released on DVD. I would give up Ann Coulter’s left nut if they would release this box set.

And now for an actress you’ve probably never heard of unless you watch (gulp) soaps. Stay with me, now. I wouldn’t be bringing her up if she didn’t transcend her genre. (No offense to soaps. Even though I guess I did just diss them.) Hillary B. Smith — the intrepid Nora on One Life to Live — plays irreverent comedy as easily as the big dramatic stuff, making it all much more palatable than you would expect. The producers put her in a coma for about a year, ostensibly waiting for her contract to run out so they could fire her ass. But viewer outcry was heeded (daytime is funny that way), and Nora woke up. But would somebody please give this woman a vehicle that really shows her stuff? I know there aren’t a lot of showcases for women over 40; when it’s your birthday you wish for a pony, I’m wishing for this.

Rounding out my guest list are two guys at opposite ends of the media. Michael Buckley is host of a YouTube “show” called “What the Buck?” (youtube.com/whatthebuckshow) He spends his three- to eight-minute installments dishing all things ridiculous in the media, with occasional “skank editions” dedicated to the likes of Lindsay, Britney, Paris, and their ilk. What makes Mr. Buckley fascinating is the unabashed, exuberant delight he takes in trashing his targets. It is as if the little boy from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip came to life, with both his brattiness and his glee fully intact. Watch him grin ingenuously as he tells detractors to “suck it.”

My last invitee isn’t associated with anything video. In fact, he works in theater and cabaret (yes, they’re forms of media . . . suck it). (Sorry. It’s that Buck guy’s influence.) John Bucchino is a hell of a songwriter. His lyrics go from the sardonic to the profound at the drop of an octave and his melodic structures are disarming, doing a dance of extraordinary intimacy with the lyrics. I don’t believe Mr. Bucchino will remain unsung very much longer. His new musical, “A Catered Affair” opens this month at the Old Globe in San Diego; and, in a case of great insight on the part of Ventura’s own Rubicon Theatre, a fundraising cabaret evening of his work will arrive in Oxnard in October. And Mr. Bucchino will be playing the piano himself; perhaps he’ll stay in town long enough for a piece of aging birthday cake.