rove and other television anomalies

Rove is my favorite Australian TV show, along with So You Think You Can Dance and Thank God You're Here. I like it a lot.

Rove IS the guy. It's really his name, and he actually looks quite normal. The show's kind of a late night comedy sort of thing, but way better than Letterman and with a much cuter cast than Leno.

Rove, like I said, is the host. He interviews the guests and all that jazz. He also does "20 bucks in 20 seconds," which is one of my personal highlights of the show, because he asks each guest funny, semi-insulting questions in rapid fire ("So, Mr. Swimming-Olympic-Medalist-Whose-First-Name-Kim-Forgets Hooker, we've come up with a few headlines for your newspaper columns, what have you got?") and I get to watch them squirm and try to be witty under pressure, which they often are, though generally accidentally.

The last question, though, is always the infamous, "SO, (insert guest name here), who would YOU turn gay for?" Answers have, naturally, varied. There's been: "me -- I'm pretty hot!" Or, when Rove interviewed a musical couple simultaneously, he told them he wasn't picky -- they could pick individually or communally. The man immediately piped up and said that, yes, they'd like to turn communally gay for Angelina Jolie. Hugh Jackman, though, got the goods when he informed Rove that the airline hostess had warned him about this question -- and she'd told him he could get an extra $20 if he said Rove. (He did.)

It's a question that gets you thinking, hey? Can't say she's my final answer, but for now I think I've gotta do the patriotic thing and go for Palin. You?

So also in the show there's this girl called Carrie who does "Carrie at the Newsdesk," which is a humorous take on weekly events delivered in a standard, deadpan style, and a guy called Pete with the originally titled "Petespace." Ryan is a cute curly-headed guy who does various packages on various random things, to be specific about it. Then there's the (I think he's nameless) guy at CommSec (Commonwealth being the big bank here, or at least it's mine, so I'm convinced it's the most important) who gives the weekly economy update.

My favorites, though, are Hamish and Andy, or, to be more specific, my favorite is Hamish. Andy's not bad, of course, but I'd never thought it was possible to like a guy named Hamish before I moved to Australia. Now I know I was wrong.

One of my friends kept saying Hamish Blake, Hamish Blake was her future husband and I kept saying hairy coo, hairy coo, I had a picture of a hairy cow in Scotland named Hamish.

And then I saw him on Thank God You're Here (which is like Who's Line Is It Anyway?, only with a slightly higher budget) and decided it was possible for a Hamish to be cute, and then I saw him on Rove for a couple weeks and decided it was possible for a Hamish to be hot, and then I saw him on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? (of COURSE "scribe" was right!!) and I'm not really one for celebrity crushes, especially now that Heath Ledger's dead, but I decided I was going to have to fight her for him.

Hamish and Andy are the dorky cool kids that run around making trouble and taking videos of it. Like they went to the Beijing Olympics and spent their time marching after soldiers (competing to see who could get away with longer) and finding restaurants dedicated to serving penis of various animals. What's not to love?

My least favorite part (besides the boring musicians), though, is Dave Hughes' "Help Me, Hughsie." He mostly just shouts a lot (and they say Americans are loud!), though occasionally he does something dramatic like shaving his chest or his dog.

And then there's my favorite part of the show. It's the Things that Makes Them Happy bit, where everyone goes around and says what makes them happy after Rove does his odd yoga head twist. Like Pete said that the ladies made him happy. Because, you know, it smelled so much nicer than the men's.

And that's Rove, except of course the guests, who actually do answer more than 20 seconds of questions and I think are more or less supposed to be the main highlight of the show. I was quite disappointed to learn it's actually filmed in Melbourne, though, so I can't just pop in and say hello to Hamish. Alas.