Keshia Knight Pulliam was 5 when she read for the part of Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show. At her audition, she kept looking away from the director, who finally asked her what she was looking at. "That's me," she said, pointing at the monitor. "How can you make me on the TV?"

Aw. That's the Keshia I want to remember. Little Rudy — smart as a whip and cute as a bug — or a goldfish.

Sure, I know that the actor and her character are two different people. I know that it's been over 15 years since The Cosby Show's original run. I know Pulliam turned 29 a few weeks ago. When I see pictures like this, I can deal with her growing up. You can still see a little of Rudy in her, can't you? … continue reading

Apparently, I harbor an inner redneck. Earlier this week, I blogged about country music, and today I'm blogging about football, both of which I like a great deal. I'm not sure how all of this meshes with my musical theater–loving New York ways, but I guess we all have our contradictions. Happily for me, my girlfriend tolerates the country music (and the showtunes) and embraces football. So we do OK. I'm mentioning all of this right now, of course, because this Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, and I will be rooting for my hometown Giants. (Although my regular season team is the Pittsburgh Steelers.)

Despite the emergence of numerous women's professional football leagues over the years (you can check out a pretty good history here), football is a guy sport. Women can and do play, but next to nobody pays attention — including me. While I generally like women's sports more than men's, I simply cannot get into women's pro football. But I do like women in football movies when I can find them. Here are the very, very few.

1. Tami Maida — Quarterback Princess (1983)

I'll bet I wasn't the only young adolescent who developed a crush on Helen Hunt in her turn as high school quarterback Tami Maida. I had already seen her on Family, The Facts of Life and that ABC Afterschool Special, Desperate Lives, where she jumps out the window while on angel dust. But in Quarterback Princess, she played some football and crusaded for the rights of girl athletes everywhere. Of course, she also made a point of how straight she was. And how she didn't like other boy things, like logging. But still, both Helen Hunt and the real Tami Maida were pretty cool. … continue reading

Thanksgiving is the perfect lesbian holiday. It involves a potluck (with vegetarian options, of course), eating too much and then sitting around with friends pretending to watch football while we talk about the people who aren't there. And we have pie. I love pie.

T-Day also provides plenty of fodder for seasonal episodes of television series, usually centered on a chaotic family dinner or the Macy's parade or turkeys that aren't done on time. (See TV writer Ken Levine's blog for his summary of Thanksgiving plots.) Sounds like a good excuse for a list — and some food for discussion. And so, submitted for your approval, my five favorite Thanksgiving episodes.
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I generally avoid TIME magazine in favor of less Time-Warner-owned news outlets, but I generally gravitate toward "best of" lists because I love to hate them (see here and here for recent choice examples). So, what to do with TIME's list of the "The 100 Best TV Shows"?

Dare I say, agree with it? I feel like Scully acknowledging a paranormal phenomenon as paranormal, but there you have it. Since The X-Files made the cut, at least I'm in (very) good company.

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The list isn't perfect by a stretch (no Northern Exposure or The Muppet Show), but its author, TIME TV critic James Poniewozik, gets more things right than wrong, and includes quite a few lesbian favorites, Buffy and Battlestar Galactica among them.

It doesn't take a lot to make me reminisce about The Cosby Show, but this week I have a couple of good reasons. First, Tempestt Bledsoe, who played Vanessa Huxtable — as well as Clay's mom in South of Nowhere — has been cast in a new Oxygen movie. (Sadly, the movie is called Husband for Hire, so I'm already over it.) Second, today is the gorgeous Phylicia Rashad's 59th birthday.

After gazing fondly at a few Rashad photos — I had such a crush on her in the '80s — I decided to see what all the ladies of Cosby are up to and how they've changed over the years. My sleuthing was very cursory, so if you have any better info, please let me know in the comments. Here's what I learned: … continue reading