Fifty thousand, four hundred, and twenty-five. That's how many words I came up with when I put the body of my posts into the ol' word counter software (generously provided at http://wordcounter.net). While this does not include the titles of the posts (which totally count in the overall counting, because they're at least a small part of the "fun"), it does include the image tags, so I'm assuming that I'm somewhere around fifty thousand either way. It's a tough call, but I'm going to assume that I'm in the right on this one. I'll still try to get this post out before midnight tonight to make sure that everything is on the up and up. But, hey, good job. We got through another year of Novemblog.

Huzzah.

Easy there, Doogie.

Hours later, congratulations to USC (the South Carolina one) on a big win over Clemson. To the Clemson fans, sorry about that. To the Paul Walker fans out there, well, um... I'm sorry for your loss. I'm not a huge fan, but I'll try to avoid any of the obvious jokes. Instead I'll go for the less obvious send off.

Hope you're cruising around and observing the differences in geography between Main St. and Elm St.

And, of course, since I'm over the word count and have some time (for the moment), let's get to number two on our British and Non-British Actors Who Were In Some Movies That Nobody Saw Or Whatever The Hell It Is, Because Bold and Names Apparently Don't Count Once The Word Count Is There.

2. Ian McKellen in Cold Comfort Farm

Cold Comfort Farm is one of those movies (along with Get Shorty and Big Trouble) that I like to show to young ladies whom I court. The odds are that they haven't seen them, and they're offbeat enough that it gives me an idea of how much they can stay on the ball and how weird their sense of humor might be. Cold Comfort Farm stands out because it's probably the most subtle of the bunch and because it has a lot of people before they got famous (or after).

It's about Kate Beckinsale trying to write while living with a family in the country, and because she learned from all the great literary heroines available in the 1920s, she has to meddle in everybody's affairs (but for the better, of course).

Shown here being just too sassy.

Ian McKellen is in all of, like, twelve scenes, MAYBE. And he steals every one of them. For example, she comes down for breakfast the first time, everyone looks at her, and he says, with perfect Sir Ian delivery, "Well, some of us has farming to do!" He walks into a restaurant, grabs Kate Beckinsale, and yells, "FORNICATORS!" He's really a pretty terrible person, and he looks like this:

This is what happens when a USC house sees a Clemson student, apparently.

Oh, did I mention that he's also a hardcore evangelical preacher? Oh, he is. It's his best scene. You can find it on the Youtube, if you like. And you know what? I like. So I'ma find it.

Everything in this scene is perfect. They do the cuts to the congregation members. You see Kate Beckinsale becoming more and more wigged out. For Pete's sake, the sermon starts with, "You... miserable... worms," because (like Timothy Dalton) Ian McKellen can speak in italics when the mood strikes.

Despite the fact that he's a southern accent away from having a call in line where you should give money so we can build that big new office like Baby Jesus wants us to (Adult Jesus is still mulling it over, and Teenaged Jesus is in the basement listening to some Led Zepplin), Ian McKellen sells the bajeezus out of the role. It's like he took everyone who ever made a homophobic comment to him, wrapped them up into one person, and then imagined what it would be like to be that person and acted in that way on the day. Meanwhile, the ACTUAL Sir Ian looks more like this:

The words were written down for him in a script.

Seriously. Go watch Cold Comfort Farm. Well, I would say that, but I think that everyone on the blog has seen it, either because they're family and were forced to see it by my mother or because they're friends and I've made them suffer through it.

Novemblog. OUT.