Bea Arthur: Marine Chick

In perhaps the most incredible story to be leaked in recent memory*, The Smoking Gun has revealed documents showing that Bea Arthur was one of the first members of the Women's Reserve and spent more than 30 months as a typist and TRUCK DRIVER in the marines. If Bea could possibly do anything else to cement her legendary status I think this is it. As if Jennifer Anniston could drive a truck for the marines. Puh-leeeease!

Actually, come to think of it, World War II wasn't the only conflict that Bea has ever been part of. Let's not forget her stint as a bartender on Tatooine during a rather difficult time for the rebels in the 1979 Star Wars Holiday Special...

Since that special was a major flop (though I can't see why), allow me to also post this clip from The Golden Girls, which I once heard Bea say was her favorite episode because she got to sing. Yes, that's right, and acting, singing, typing, truck-driving, substitute teacher who lived with her mother in Miami. Take that, Anniston!

*I'm not that impressed by Wiki Leaks anyway. Remember, I used to smoke a lot of pot and watch CNN for hour after hour in college. I knew most of this stuff.

Surely You Can't be Serious

Unfortunately, I am serious, and don't call me Shirley. Leslie Nielsen has died.

While he'll mainly be remembered as the doctor in Airplane! and as Lieutenant Frank Drebin in Naked Gun, I'll also always remember him as Blanche's uncle Lucas, who married Dorothy in the series finale of The Golden Girls.

More on him tomorrow, but for now enjoy this little clip which added a little strangeness to the finale...

She-Ra is 25 and I'm 34

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Princess of Power herself, She-Ra. For those of you unfamiliar with her (as hard to believe as that may be), She-Ra was He-Man's sister, who was spun-off into her own series with her own villains and with their own set of fairly ridiculous plots. But don't take my word for it, listen to She-Ra explain everything herself...

The show was a pretty big success, though I think we can all agree her catch-phrase, "For the honor of Greyskull", was not as catchy as He-Man's "By the power of Greyskull." Nonetheless, I, along with millions of other children tuned in after school to watch her battle Hordak and his minions of bad dudes. While he was a capable enemy, Hordak was no Skeletor in terms of sheer evil determination and general bad-assness.

Dave, why this trip down cartoon memory lane? It's so out of character for Rubinville.

Right, right.

Well, when I saw that She-Ra turned 25, it reminded me of something else about watching the show when I was a 9 or 10 year old. I do remember having this vague sense of shame, even though I didn't really know what it was, as if I shouldn't be watching a show that was for girls. Really though, there was no reason to think that show was for girls, other than She-Ra was a woman. Besides that, it was pretty much the same thing as He-Man. (Sorry to all of you who want to get really deep on the differences between the two. We can do that about She-Ra and Jem sometime, if you want.)

Ironically, I'd bet that 90% of the kids that watched She-Ra were boys, and I wonder what percentage of those boys were gay and were feeling them same thing I felt. I guess it just shows the subconscious things that kids can deal with while growing up.

Anyway, time passed and I moved onto bigger and better cartoons such as GI Joe and Transformers. Fortunately, neither of those caused any sexual confusion for me, though come to think of it, my two favorite bad guys, Starscream and Cobra Commander were both a little gay. (And voiced by the same guy, Christopher Collins, aka Chris Latta, who in an ironic twist was also a comedian. Sadly, he died a rather mysterious death back in 1994. Man, this post is all over the place, huh?)

Oh, it should be noted that my feelings about this don't apply to all female superheroes. I never really liked Wonder-Woman. The idea of an invisible jet just seemed utterly ridiculous to me.

Now if Betty White had an invisible jet, that would be a show...