Thursday, April 24, 2008

Tom Lenk, or How Whedonesque keeps me informed

True, my all-time favourite Buffyverse character is Anya [insert lame maiden name here] Jenkins: no one can beat Emma Caulfield's deadpan delivery of pop culturally illiterate and genuinely sincere (albeit cruel) lines. If you don't believe me, watch The Body (S5) again: true, SMG is amazing in it and Joss puts some of his best directing skills to work, but the Anya monologue is brilliant in Caulfield's hands; and for lighter fare, look at Selfless (S7) for Caulfield's range - from an alienated waif, to a vengeful demon, to an inhumane capitalist, to a heartbroken human...

BUT if anyone gets close (and I'm sure a couple of more episodes and Anya would have had a tough competitor) it's Tom Lenk's portrayal of Geek Andrew (see Jane Espenson's hysterical episode Storyteller from S7 for a hell of a time!) Which is why I loved that they were paired off by Season 7: the pop culturatti and the pop ingenue (And yes, I'm still looking for that comic-book one-shot where they're together again!) While I have no idea what Emma is doing at the moment (I must resign myself I guess, to staring at my Anya action figures: I have 2!) it seems Tom's talent is all over the place (or so do the recent posts on Whedonesque suggest).

Take a look at Tom's singing talents:



And read about his various projects in this starpulse.com interview (from which I took this wonderful geek-chic pic of my favourite Nerd... even if, as he tells us in the interview, he's not one himself).

What caught my eye in the interview:

Now most of your live comedy is obviously based out in LA. Do you ever plan on expanding your domain, bringing your shows on the road to other cities?

You know what, I keep promising that I will go to New York, but I never do. I get paranoid because I'm lazy and don't feel like doing publicity to get people to come to the show, so I never know when I am in a foreign land, like New York, how I would spread the word. I'd hate to put together a show and then have the audience be empty, so I guess if enough people were like "we'll come and see the show" then I'll do it.

Tom: I'll come! I know that only fills one seat in your audience... but I'm sure I could bully er... a person or two... and that's like 3 people! Pretty-please?

1 comment:

Vance said...

I'd go! Andrew was one of my FAVES!!! I don't know why Tom Lenk isn't in more stuff. Casting agents NEED to contact him!

Emma was on my flight once. Very polite but she slept the whole time so sadly I couldn't bother/fawn over her. She brought her own pillow. Cute.