Happy Birthday Robert Vaughn!

Okay, total shameless self-promotion. I admit it.

The It Gets Better Project was launched after the suicide of Billy Lucas, 15 year-old who hung himself in his grandmothers barn after enduring intense bullying at the hands of his classmates. Hundreds of people, the famous and the regular folks like you and me, have made their own videos which are being collected on a single YouTube channel. All of them tell heartbreaking stories, but they also are uplifting stories of survivors.

If you need to talk to someone, please contact The Trevor Project – 866 4-U-TREVOR. There are also a number of stirring and uplifting videos to be found on the Trevor Media Project Channel on YouTube.

Because this is so important, here are two of the many videos made for this inspiring project.

Ah Sapphire and Steel… two impossibly beautiful creatures. This is just a nicely put together video with lots of lovely moments from the annoyingly short-lived yet utterly brilliant series that I still don’t completely understand.

I wanted to take a moment to talk about the Kish phenomenon for a moment. You probably haven’t heard of them if you’re not a fan of American soap operas or a regular reader of After Elton but in their pop culture circles they have over a million strong in the Kish Army.

Okay, here’s the poop. Medical intern Kyle Lewis (Brett Claywell) and police officer Oliver Fish (Scott Evans) were two characters on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. They had both been on a show for several months when they finally encountered one another and it took a few weeks after that to finally find out that they not only had a shared past, but it was something Oliver didn’t want to revisit. Turns out that they had gone to college together, been in the same fraternity and for at least one of the four years they knew one another had been lovers – until Oliver’s mother walked in on them and Oliver was forced to choose between his Christian family and Kyle. Being the dutiful (and frightened) son, he pushed himself back into the closet and determined to live his life as a heterosexual. All of that came crashing down around him when Kyle unexpectedly reappeared in his life; Kyle who’d been going through a rough patch but trying to pull his own life back together.

The couple had an interesting back story giving fans plenty to speculate (and write fan fiction) about and in the approximately eight months that ABC allowed the couple to stay on the air they built a strong following as they jumped through the regular soap opera hoops that most soap couples go through. (FUN FACT: They were the first gay couple to have a sex scene on an American daytime soap opera.)

They took home the GLAAD Media Award two weeks after the two actors had been unceremoniously fired – Brett Claywell was called into the producers office after a day of filming and told he would no longer would be needed and Scott Evans found out about his termination via Twitter when fans were offering their condolences.

Fans are still making music videos, writing fan fiction, supporting the actors in their current search for work. The video I’ve selected for the week is an example of just how strong the love for the characters was and still remains. It covers most of the couple’s on-screen relationship and should give you an insight into the chemistry between the two men. In a brief period of time, they became a power couple in soapdom; it was only the bigotry of certain network executives and pressure from online trolls that removed them from our screens.

Nerdily, I’ve always harbored a hope that the characters could appear on another ABC series; they were more developed than your average soap characters and would be a fine addition to any of the police procedurals out there. (Plus, they’d bring their legion of fans right along with them.) That’s just me being a complete fan girl though.

If you’re curious about them, the Kish Army has you covered. ALL of their scenes have been archived on YouTube; eliminating the other characters so it doesn’t take that long to catch up with Kish, sadly. This page contains all of the Kish clips in HQ.

Yeah, okay I’m easily amused. I admit it. This fan video cracks me up. All those wonderful little flirty moments between Gibbs and DiNozzo set to the cheesy sounds of Lady Gaga? Goofy smiles all around, thank you. Did I not mention it’s slashy in nature? Well, it is. So, don’t click play unless that kind of thing doesn’t bother you.

Oh look, it’s another movie trailer. Oh, and this one also features Simon Pegg. Oh, and this one also looks like it’s a must-see.

This week we’ve got an entry from a new vidding cousin full of slashy goodness set to Tom Jones!

Normally, movie trailers aren’t the type of thing we like to feature as the Video of the Week. However, watch this and you’ll understand why it’s the exception to the rule. Oh yes.

Last week, Nathan Fillion tweeted that he wanted a theme song. Not a song for Castle or for Mal but for him, Nathan Fillion. As can be expected, the nerd ‘verse jumped at the command of Captain Tightpants. This is my favorite of the lot that I found.

Hitchcock’s masterpiece is really what “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” is based on. I swear! Cary Grant is the dashing agent who looks gorgeous in a tux, Ingrid Bergman is the innocent dragged into helping the cause, Claude Rains is the Thrushie, er Nazi. If you’ve not seen the film, you should. I bet your local library even has a copy of it.