Tomboy Bombshells
and other endangered species
It’s hard to believe sometimes how much of my early fantasy life was produced by Glen Larson. I’ve written before about some of his more sci-fi series
and his ill-fated forays into superheroics
but The Fall Guy lasted for five seasons, from 1981 to 1986.
I watched that show with my dad, who is only three years older than Lee Majors, and who remembered the actor fondly from his Big Valley days, and The Six Million Dollar Man1. He wouldn’t have let my sister wear a bikini (or even jeans, at that time), but he never objected to seeing them on television.
There’s a line from this podcast interview that says something about Heather Thomas not being likable, in the eyes of Hollywood execs. But those were “adult” men. An impressionable 11-yesar-old kid such as myself liked women with more agency. Jody Banks was the same sort of smarter-than-she-looked tomboy bombshell that made Kari Byron such a fan favorite on Mythbusters.
That show, The Fall Guy, was still on its first run while I was in high school. One of my English teachers had gone to college with Lee Majors, who grew up in Kentucky and played football for EKU before getting injured. My teacher would laugh ruefully about all the girls (including herself?) swooning over him.
What’s ironic now is how hard that show pushed the incel angle, from the theme song, “The Unknown Stuntman,”
But the hardest thing I ever do is watch my leading lady
Kiss some other guy while I’m bandaging my knee.
to the many cameos, from James Coburn coming out of his trailer with a pair of blondes on his arm in the pilot to Linda Evans of Dynasty buying chili dogs in the biker episode. Everybody knows Colt Seavers, but he still has to play bounty hunter to pay his rent. And he never gets the girl.
Commenting on this pretty-people situation has been a thing in Hollywood since the earliest days, as the new Bruce Timm animated show Caped Crusader does in its second episode. They go back to the very first version of Clayface, a Phantom of the Opera style slasher dressed in a red scarf and a slouch hat like the Shadow. His first victim is “Basil Karlo,” drawn to look like a cross between Boris Karloff and Humphrey Bogart, a talented actor who never gets the lead roles because he’s kind of ugly.
But nobody ever does anything about that situation.
I’m thinking about this because I spent a few minutes outside yesterday with my kid (who aside from the tattoos is a pretty little thing), watching two male hawks doing aerobatics above our house as they competed for the attention of a female perched in a tree across the street. They day before I saw them do a minor version of the bald eagle thing that birders call cartwheeling, where they lock talons and spiral towards the ground in a game of chicken. First one to let go loses, but if they smash into the ground they both lose. Even raptors have hollow bones.
In the end the lady hawk flew off by herself.
What the Hell Con 2025
Clearly the biggest thing going on at What the Hell Con was the World of Darkness LARP scheduled for Saturday evening. I played some tabletop Vampire in the 90s, so I know the vocabulary. It was mildly interesting, (mis)anthropologically, to listen to the chatter of people not actually playing a game but so, so enthusiastically post-gaming and pre-gaming like sports fans. Like, interrupting each other enthusiastic.
They were running a charity auction for a group I’d never heard of, called Childs’ Play, which does video game stuff for kids in hospitals2. I was slightly tempted by a Doric figure,
which I found funny because the box touted the fact that there was no plastic in the packaging, never mentioning that the figure itself was made entirely of plastic. Baby steps, I guess.
I had a table in Artists’ Alley, so most of the non-LARPish conversation was about making things. It seemed like there were at least as many trades between the artists as there were sales to members of the public. I had exactly one person stop by and snap a photo of the QR code on my Substack flyer.
I guess readers are also an endangered species?
To those of you reading at home on this cold and rainy weekend (definitely not California bikini weather), my thanks.
There’s a good scene in the pilot, where Colt’s nephew Howie shows up on set, fresh from Yale in his burgundy blazer, to thank his uncle and to take over as his manager, easing him off into his “golden years.” Colt punches Howie through the door of his trailer to land on his ass in the dust of the movie lot.
Was that a stunt man initiation ritual? Howie asks.
No, says Colt. That was me trying to punch your head off.
I have no doubt my dad felt the same way about me, many times. Thankfully he never followed through on it.
A tiny bit of internet research reveals that virtual tabletop companies Roll20 and DriveThruRPG have a similarly branded initiative.
I never missed an episode of The Fall Guy. That's why when I watched the recent remake, I laughed, even while I was saying, "This is wrong, he's a bounty hunter."
I burst out in laughter at some points… 😂