back to my Tom watch

Filtered phone shot from my TV
DVD set of The Flash season 6 arrived
This is Nash Wells

I love seeing how many times I can cartoon and posterize screenshots before they disintegrate into garbled data. Tom generally holds up a bit better than some others, not sure exactly why, possibly face definition and really good hi def lighting to begin with.

So anyone new to me, I've got this years long The Flash hashtag thread on twitter, and since covid took over, I have become so bored that I've started a rare #watchalltheTomCavanaghthings to see how many movies and TV series he shaves and/or brushes his teeth in. I normally don't do this with actors, ever. I'm not particularly into actor following, more of a very picky scifi enthusiast with side jaunts into whatever. Saying that, however, I own nearly everything Jacky Chan has ever made, and I did at one point own just about everything Johnny Depp was ever in, as well, plus I have a life sized Jack Sparrow cardboard cutout in my house.

Speaking of that, wonder if a person can custom order a life sized Harrison Wells wall cling from Fathead... 🤔 Or like a life sized cardboard cutout from Standees. I could try ordering something but I don't wanna throw money away right now after buying up stacks of hard to find DVD collections. You guys know you can custom order just about anything, right. So many sites out there provide really cool services like that. I've seen people do that with wallpaper, wrapping paper, toilet paper, socks, spandex, clocks, cakes, and I'm sure someone out there has done an entire Christmas tree in Harrison Wells. I find some really wild stuff when I get bored.

Here, click this and get lost in tumblr. That's right, I bring goodies to my review writeups.

Anyway, back to the Tom watch. I'm a bad person and never noticed Tom Cavanagh before The Flash (I do remember roundly avoiding Ed with a big thumbs down back in the day because I'm such a stick in the mud for scifi and explosions), but it's hard not to notice a guy brushing his teeth and spitting in someone's coffee. The scene starts about 45 seconds in.

And then when I finally did stick a toe into unknown Tom Cavanagh waters, I started with The Bird Men and dang if he wasn't shaving and brushing his teeth. Then I wound up watching Love and Debt next, boom, shaving and brushing teeth. By then I was hooked. How many movies and TV shows has Tom Cavanagh shaved and/or brushed his teeth in? Is this a standard that comes with a Tom contract? Fans wanna know. After Breakfast with Scot he was four and oh, and I was seriously tripping. Who winds up shaving or brushing their teeth in everything they do? Well, I'm finding out that not every project required a hygiene scene. Something More was it's own brand of fun when Tom's character Harry caught his wife cheating on him, and 400 Days was so creepy that I seriously worry about having Tom Cavanagh nightmares now. Creepy Tom freaked me out. Guess that means he's a really good actor. 😄 

So after all that, while I was waiting on my season 6 The Flash to arrive from a pre-order that hadn't been filled yet, I found the Ed series real cheap. Here, lemme paste over the Ed stuff I have written so far.

I can usually find anything, and Ed is one of them. There's always someone somewhere in the world recording constantly, and they do really nice jobs of boxsetting entire collections, sometimes even print the series artwork onto the discs. I'm not sure that's legal, so I won't link where I found it ($26 instead of the usual $80+) (oh here you go, $35), but I'm on a quest to find out how many TV series and movies Tom Cavanagh shaves and/or brushes his teeth in. I was at 100% until I watched 400 Days last week (found that one for $4, guys). That was hella creepy, nightmares of Tom Cavanagh are real now. I've been putting off Sublime for a day I feel more capable of handling it. I'm not the Ed type (IMDb) because it's seriously lacking scifi formula, but I have been known to jaunt off into more mundane directions for odd reasons. This is one of them.

Here's the Ed pilot if you guys are bored and need distraction walking away from the news mess setting all our tension off. You're welcome.

Ok, back to today. At this point I've made it 7 eps into season one and although there's been no shaving or brushing teeth, I'm deeply questioning how Ed and Carol created a 50 pound meatloaf together for a Thanksgiving at the bowling alley for only like 10 or so people and how 

1. we didn't see any of bonding/not bonding over actually cooking that much food together because it's only logical that the most time they ever spent together doing something real was completely skipped over for a show focused on Ed trying to get Carol's affections 🙄
2. no one at the table questioned 5 pounds of meat per person
3. wtf where the heck did they even get an oven to cook that huge of a meatloaf in a bowling alley (I'm asking as a professional with long resume list across food and service industries)
4. I gotta keep watching this series because it's sheer gold for story bloopers and plot holes
5. I'm also psyche analyzing Carol and wondering what Ed is getting himself into because she is wack for dating her teacher what appears to be nearly straight outa high school for this long without committed ties or thoughts of children and 7 years before she starts even thinking she needs to get her own life smh 
6. Ed really needs to slow down and think about this... 😬

Yes, I got sucked in. See, this is why I avoid regular TV without explosions and spaceships. You get sucked into the weird psychology of TV writing.

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I just realized SyfyDesigns doesn't have an area for regular TV because all of us over there are into scifi and explosions.... You know what, I'm just going to start a Tom Watch thread in there anyway, dang it. Tom Cavanagh is frickin Pariah now, so there you go. 

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Now click this and go get lost on Pinterest. Start a new board. Build a house around it. Make it your life, have kids, raise them on Pinterest life memes, strike gold when you find that rare elusive recipe for purple macaroni salad. You know you want to...

Wait, that just clicks to one pic
Go to a whole board ---> CLICK

I spent about a week thinking through a Tom watch review, what with L.A. burning last year and Hollywood grinding to a halt this year, and while I realize not all filming is in Hollywood by a long shot, the entertainment industry itself is taking a real beating this year with the covid thing, and sadly, Hollywood isn't looking too cozy this year. Add in the crazy twitter fights with a few key entertainers diving headfirst into political hate fests, and I very nearly completely stopped reviewing.

I'm the kind of person who vets anyone I drag into my weird little spotlight, so I did my civic duty and plunged into fanstalking Tom as a public entity. The last thing I want this year is to wind up caught in a sidetaking manifesto showdown, so I'm sliding back in with as little political affiliation as I can around a very well known and seasoned actor who has extremely clean credentials (compared to many). So there's Tom-

• Still married, four kids, which you can find easily in search, like this page.
• Had malaria as a child and now does fundraisers for Nothing But Nets. Quote from Variety article. 

How did you get involved in the non-profit Nothing but Nets? 

I spent time in my childhood in Africa and had malaria as a child. My sister had a serious case of malaria in Africa. And then Rick Reilly wrote a column on the back page of Sports Illustrated. It was a simple plea talking about, “If we all gathered a buck, or two, or $10, we could buy one net, and then we could help this village in Africa.” The outpouring of money and support was, A, surprising, and B, led to the formation of this group called Nothing but Nets where the mandate was “let’s put a dent into the disease that is malaria.” Our pipeline is very simple. Ten dollars here buys one net and that net gets handed to a family, and you can track it. Nothing but Nets paired with the UN, and the thing just grew and grew. I went to Uganda. We went to refugee camps. Malaria was killing their children, and it’s incredible that you can drop a mortality rate by 80% by simply handing out nets. Our goal is to get rid of malaria. It’s a worthy cause, direct and simple. 

You organized the Cavanagh Classic basketball tournament as part of that. 

Yeah. The Cavanagh Classic is an obnoxiously-named charity basketball game that is furthering the cause of Nothing but Nets. So I badger some of my fancy, famous friends. I still play basketball in a couple leagues in New York City. So I say, ‘Hey, come do some good.’ We do it at the Rucker, which is one of the best-known city playgrounds. It’s in New York City. It’s a lovely event. I think the worst job at that event is the person who dresses up in the mascot uniform, which is this giant furry mosquito, and we try and hold it in the summer, and that person has to lose about 20 pounds in sweat by stuffing themselves into a mosquito costume and dancing around for the Nothing but Nets Cavanagh Classic.

• I've dug through nearly 50 reviews, interviews, and podcasts and have yet to find or hear anything coming from Tom Cavanagh that I have to politely ignore in order to enjoy seeing him on TV. Sometimes it's difficult to ignore an entertainer's personal tastes and opinions if they manage to filter through the fiction or documentary lenses through which we originally find them. Despite rigorous deep dives, I cannot find a single thing that 'turns me off' as a viewer about this man. That is a rarity in entertainment.
• Personal note- I have prosopagnosia and I can't remember Tom's face when I'm not looking directly at the TV, which rules out that I'm following an actor around because of his looks. Quoting from an earlier blog post-

Despite all the vids I've shared and movies and shows I've seen lately, I cannot see Tom Cavanagh's face in my head unless I'm looking directly at him. The prosopagnosia is strong with that one. Joe Flannigan, no problem. I mean, I can at least get a forehead and eyes on him and I'm not even into Joe Flannigan. But yeah, I'm having as much trouble memorizing Tom's face as I had Scott's face and never admitted it for years. Imagine being married for 15 years before you even confess you can't picture your husband's face when you close your eyes and you're sitting right by him.

• There are millions of memes and gifs of this guy on every platform and not a single one of them ever hit my radar in general as a tv viewer/reviewer until I started looking him up, so I didn't follow this one from a trail on social medias to the film work, like I did the Benedict version of Sherlock.

Tom Cavanagh Fans tossed this (original) out on twitter and facebook roughly four hours after my own Star Labs t-shirt went live on my own blog here and on pinterest, and all I'm saying is coincidence haunts me and I feel like Tom is judging looking right at me and I wanna know what that pendant is.

Yeah, I'm not big into making my own memes. I think the only memes I made that ever went a little crazy were for the Oak Island guys (not even going to say his name here, that run on Pinky blog is still going on and is pure facepalm).

• Tom is fun to mess around with in my phone.

Remember that time I took Robin Lord Taylor through 13 filters? I just put Tom through 15. The glasses are fake. I cartooned immediately and then posterized this at least 3 times in between the other filters. Here is the original if you're curious. The game is to take it through as many filters as you can without losing integrity. It's like a phone sport when you're super bored. 

• I'm not going to list everything I've ever found and read or listened to involving Tom, but that's my opinions in a nutshell. Cool guy, very busy, goodhearted, extremely professional, and loads of fun.

I think the rest of everything Tom I've ever written is covered in my The Flash thread on SyfyDesigns.

So this is a start of what looks like might be a very challenging project. How many movies and TV shows has Tom Cavanagh shaved and/or brushed his teeth in? Guess we'll find out.

:edit: This post is live at SyfyDesigns.