Secret Boyfriend Addition: Jason Segel

Yes, everyone, it is time for us to revisit the ever-expanding list of Spacebeer's Secret Boyfriends! Our newest entry is the amazingly sexy and funny, Jason Segel. Just look at him over there. Don't be shy, Jason!

I dare anyone who has watched Freaks and Geeks not to just want to go take this guy home and love him for the rest of your life.

Plus: He is friends with muppets! (How have I not seen this movie yet?)

I know it is a surprise, Jason, but just sit back, relax and enjoy your new SB status.

P.S. It must be because we watched Undeclared recently, but I discovered this week that I find tall slightly rocking looking super competent copy shop workers a little bit sexy. I think the guy behind the desk at the Kinko's by campus knows what I'm talking about. Sorry, Dr. M...

Secret Boyfriend Death Scene

You should all rent Richard III (1995) with Ian McKellen right now. The film (which was based on a play based on the Shakespeare original) moves the story of everyone's favorite villainous and scheming hunchback, Richard of Gloucester, to a 1930s Nazi-ish alternate reality England. And it is awesome in every way. And one of the ways in which it is most awesome is this scene with secret-boyfriend-extraordinaire, Robert Downey, Jr., who plays the queen's playboy brother.



It is the part he was born to play, baby!

We go as late as I want to take it

Secret boyfriend update!

William Petersen has always appealed to me on CSI, but never really crossed into full blown secret boyfriend territory. Not until I watched Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986), starring Petersen as the FBI agent who brought down Hannibal Lector, had a breakdown, and was called back in to solve the case of the Tooth Fairy serial murderer (who prefers to be known as the Red Dragon).

He has all the necessary SB trademarks:

1. Smokes cigarettes.









2. Has a beard.













3. Is often shirtless. In fact, he even makes these totally dumb purple shorts look attractive.







This particular scene got me all worked up last night, especially the effective use of cussing about 2 minutes in:


That's right, William Peterson, you just tell us when it's too fucking late.

Special Secret Boyfriend update!

Thanks to our digital TV converter box, I have renewed my love affair with a feisty pair of secret boyfriends, the San Diego private detectives Rick and A. J. Simon. Now that we are receiving digital waves from our antenna, we get the Retro TV Network, and as far as I'm concerned we never need to buy cable for the rest of our lives. In addition to the sexy brothers on Simon and Simon, we also get the Rockford Files, The Incredible Hulk, The A Team, Dragnet, and so much more.

But back to those Simon boys. A.J. is the straitlaced, play by the rules brother who usually gets the girl. Rick is a Vietnam vet who takes chances and plays by his own rules. And often also gets a girl. The girls change from episode to episode. Every episode is really excellent, although the last one I watched has Rick and A.J. investigating a man who disappeared from a nudist colony, which naturally involved quite a bit of nudity on the part of the brothers, often with hilarious and charming results. I believe this is the only instance of two naked SBs together in a single one hour television show, and it might be hard for any of my Secret Boyfriends to top that...

Don't believe me about how awesome Simon and Simon is? Just watch the intro, and you will be hooked for life:

Reformatting

I still love Kitchen Nightmares, and Gordon Ramsey will always be a secret boyfriend (although after some searching, it looks like I never officially posted about his secret boyfriend status), but what bonehead changed the old format where Gordon would take his shirt off about halfway through the episode and change into his chef outfit while confiding to the camera about how fucked up the restaurant was and how he hoped they could pull it together before the end of the night? Because I miss that part...

[Also, I am an information professional, but I could not find a picture of Gordon Ramsey with his shirt off. That is why I made the Gordon Ramsey / Daniel Craig (also a secret boyfriend) mash up you see above. Can you tell I don't have Photoshop? That is all Paint, baby!]

[Also, I'm home sick from work today. Is this a good use of my time?]

Mini-SB Update

Watching Brewster McCloud last night reaffirmed the SB status of young Bud Cort that started when I first saw Harold and Maude back in high school. He is seriously adorable. And surprisingly sexy. I looked around for a still of his chin-ups in underwear scene from Brewster McCloud with no luck. If anyone finds it, let me know, because that is some hot stuff. Yowza.

Is it the End of Secret Boyfriend Wednesday?

Dear readers, we have traveled together on a crazy whirlwind of a secret boyfriend wednesday ride. One year ago tomorrow I posted my first weekly SB: the lovely Tim from the British office. I still stand by Martin Freeman and all the rest of my 50 posted SBs (50! I had no idea there were so many). I'm not out of SBs, but from now on the revelations will be less predictable. All good things must come to an end, my friends, and weekly secret boyfriends are no exception.

So, to end it where we began it, in a strangely circular fashion, I give you Jim from the American Office (who I always call Tim, since the British version is burned into my brain). Cheers to you, John Krasinski, and congratulations on being the 50th, and final SB Wednesday honoree.

SB Wednesday has no failure to communicate

Paul Newman, welcome to Secret Boyfriend Wednesday. How on earth could we leave you out? Not only are you smoking hot, but you also make a mean line of food products (which are awesome -- if I have a choice between something Paul Newman made and something else, I go with Paul every time), and you donate all your profits to charity!





In addition, you have aged quite well.















Although I will never get tired of young Paul. Nice work, PN -- welcome to the SB pantheon!

SB Revelations

In honor of the American Idol finale, and because I'm having to dig deep to find unrevealed secret boyfriends, I'm going to own up to a kind of ridiculous SB of mine: Simon Cowell. It's true. He wasn't at first, but something about watching him every week has really grown on me. I like that he almost always wears a tight black shirt. I like that he doesn't smile much, but when he does it's cute. And he is generally pretty spot on with his comments -- really the only honest-ish person on the show.





I also love the smirk.








And the whole fake-rude bit. I don't know why, he just appeals to me. I'm kind of embarrassed about this. Does anyone else think he's cute?

[The one thing I do hate is the fake/scripty animosity between him and Ryan Seacrest. Can't those dudes just give it a rest? I like that Simon always seems sort of irritated by having to do it. Ryan Seacrest is the anti-SB.]

I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen

John Cusack has been a secret boyfriend of mine for about forever. He has done some pretty dumb movies, and he isn't great in everything, but just look at the great movies that he is great in, including: Say Anything, The Grifters, Being John Malkovich, and High Fidelity. They are so great that they permanently implant him in my brain as the perfect smart, funny, totally flawed, but ultimately good guy.

Plus the pretty good movies that he is great in like Grosse Pointe Blank, Bullets Over Broadway, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil aren't so bad.




In addition, he's just so darn cute.







And obviously, there's this:

SB Wednesday Drew First Blood

In a similar fashion to the Kurt Russell/eye-patch SB phenomenon, the cast of Young Guns (and, naturally, Young Guns II) have also earned a mysterious place in SB history. Individually, I have nothing against Emilio, Charlie, Kiefer, and Lou. They are all attractive enough, but they just don't have that SB touch. But, put them together as a gang of gun fighting bad guys with hearts of gold in the old west, and they are magic. I haven't seen either of these movies since maybe 1991, but I'm betting that the SB status will hold up even if the films fall a little flat. I can't say why throwing this rag tag bunch of actors together in the wild west makes them exponentially cuter, but it does, and I don't like to overly question the SB magic.

And now I think you should probably watch the Blaze of Glory video, since the song is surely in your head:

SB Wednesday: Goofy Edition

I love tall, I love red hair, I love funny, so it goes without saying that Conan O'Brien is a secret boyfriend extraordinare. Of course, being that he is a comedian, it is rather hard to find any pictures of him online where he actually looks as sexy as he often looks on TV. Instead he mostly looks a little goofy. Cute, but goofy. Not sexy. Maybe its just that the sexiness evaporates in a still and only the funny is left behind?



Although pictures with guitars usually enhance the SBness of all my SBs, this one doesn't really capture that same flavor. I couldn't find a picture of Conan with a tattoo, but we can only imagine that it would end up being more humorous than sexifying.







That's alright, Conan, maybe your secret SB power is a subtle kind of SB fever that grows after multiple exposures. That and the red hair.

SBW: The Eye-patch Mystery

I've got no problem with Kurt Russell -- in fact, I find him to be a very fun and likable actor -- but he is usually not really an SB (although I learned the other week after watching Grindhouse with my parents that he is one of my mother's SBs...). Similarly, I have no particular love or hate for the eye-patch. I certainly never found them to be a SB-enhancing accessory.

But that is before we watched Escape From New York (1981) where Kurt Russell and the eye-patch were combined into one unstoppable SB super machine!

I think I'll have to do some scientific analysis of this phenomenon.

SB Wednesday: Modine Mania

Oh, Matthew Modine. You are such a nice actor (although often in rather crappy movies, and honestly I haven't seen you in anything since Abel Ferrara's The Blackout in 1997, which was really horrifically spectacularly bad in the way that only Ferrara can be.

Other people will insist that your master work, Cutthroat Island (1995) was also spectacularly bad, but I really liked it. Was it just the combination of your SB-self and Geena Davis who I like because she is tall (6 feet - still shorter than me) in a role-reversal adventure pirate flick? Perhaps. I still think those naysayers are missing the greatness of this film.

But you have tons of movies out that I haven't even seen. And in this one (Hotel New Hampshire), you even have a mustache! And it makes you even more cute. Pulling off a mustache is a true sign of SB power.

And finally, it appears you played Jesus in a movie with Juliette Binoche where she plays Mary? Huh. Still looking good there, messiah SB.

[Oooh, and now that I look at that Mary movie, I see that it too was directed by Abel Ferrara. I think I'll watch it sometime, after making sure that I'm ready for something either super great or stinkingly bad...]

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: Favorite Actor Edition

Ah, Harvey Keitel. Not just an SB, but also a Favorite Actor. What can't this guy do?






Well, he can't really pull off this hair in Taxi Driver (okay, he can, and luckily he is so much of an SB that his SBness shines through). And he is great in Taxi Driver, isn't he?



Another nice thing about Keitel is that the guy has no problems getting naked on screen. Chalk up another point in the super SB column.




And thanks to YouTube, we can all watch Keitel in a scene from Fingers (1978) -- just one of the many movies he is in that I totally love. It isn't the doublesuck scene (which, if you've seen it, you know what I mean, and if you haven't, you really should), but it's still pretty great. In it, he plays a slightly disturbed piano virtuoso who spends much of his time collecting debts for his small-time mobster dad. Soooo good.

SB Wednesday: Turkish Edition

Sometimes I find a new SB when I'm not even looking for one. In this case, Turkish director and actor Nuri Bilge Ceylan (I also like that his second name is Bilge). We saw the AFS screening of Ceylan's film Climates (2006) last night, and now I have a crush on the director (who is also the film's lead actor). [In addition, this film is amazing. Watch it as soon as you can.]





And who wouldn't get a little SB crush on this guy? His character in Climates is kind of a clueless (yet somehow sympathetic) jerk, but his face is like Robert Downey, Jr. X Clive Owen + Daniel Craig.






And since many of my SBs also have attractive wives, its nice to see that Ceylan fits into the same character. The lead actress in Climates is Ceylan's wife, Ebru Ceylan, and she is not so bad herself.

Congratulations on becoming my first Turkish SB!

SB Update

Okay, so I missed SB Wednesday -- but I'm busy being a hostess until tomorrow! I just thought you should all know that I saw Zodiac yesterday, and got to experience SB overload. Robert Downey, Jr. won the triple SB showdown by a mile. He is, in fact, the only thing about that movie that I really couldn't criticize. That dude can deliver any line you give him with pizazz and he looks mighty fine in an ascot.

SB Wednesday: In Theaters Now!

Oh, Jake Gyllenhaal -- even though I have to look up your name every time I type it, and even then I still usually spell it wrong, you are still the SB of this Wednesday.





A big reason why I want to see Zodiac involves the SB-trifecta of Jake G., Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey, Jr. Look at Mark be all confrontational.

And look at Robert's cuteness hidden under the kind of unfortunate facial hair. You can't hide that cuteness completely!

Jake G. made for a pretty cute cowboy, even with the gay element (and possibly even cuter because of it...)



In this picture, the hair gets a thumbs down (to be honest, Jake G. has dumb hair about 53% of the time), but the rest is all thumbs up.

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: Spell it Out

Even though I always get his name mixed up with Robbie Coltrane, Rory Cochrane is the real SB of the pair. I just have trouble with names that start with the same letters -- I also get Clark Gable, Cary Grant, and Gary Cooper mixed up for the same reason (the names, not the actors).






Although CSI Miami is not my favorite arm of the CSI franchise, Rory Cochrane makes it quite watchable. [I also have a soft spot for David Caruso, even though his Horatio is completely goofy -- it has to do with the red hair].








He is equally cute animated in A Scanner Darkly [and nicely acting alongside another SB. You know who it is.]

Don't shoot, Rory! You're my SB of the week!

SB Vibrations

Watching the Oscars on Sunday reminded me of a long-standing SB that has yet to be mentioned: Mr. Mark Wahlberg (oh so gracious in defeat).











He was certainly one of the top three best things about the enjoyable but not fantastic The Departed. And man, sometimes SBs playing cops can be mighty fine...












In addition, he has the requisite SB tattoo and is photographed often sexily smoking cigarettes. (Actually he is photographed so often smoking cigarettes that I could have constructed this entire post out of cigarette pictures.)










Never you mind that his tattoo is his own name and initials. I'm guessing its a relic of the Marky Mark years.








Not that there was anything less SB about him back then -- feeling some Good Vibrations, anyone? Actually Mark Wahlberg's transformation from NKOTB brother, one-hit wonder, and underwear model into respected actor is really something....