“Who’s JoAnn Willette?” Crankenstein asked about an hour ago, glancing at my laptop screen.
“Connie Lubbock,” I started to answer, then caught myself — that name wouldn’t ring a bell, either. Despite its religious setting, she never watched Just the Ten of Us as a kid, but it was one of the shows Felix and I devoured on USA Network when our parents first got cable, along with American Gladiators. I can’t think of one without remembering the other.
Felix, already a horror movie buff, originally tuned in to Just the Ten of Us for Heather Langenkamp, but her character’s dowdy appearance was not his cup of tea. Fortunately for him, there were many Lubbock sisters from which to choose, including Brooke Theiss and Jamie Luner, whose later TV movie work is on the Cranky agenda.
“She was on Just the Ten of Us,” I explained to Crankenstein, aware that further details would not be of interest to her. But saying “Trust me, you wouldn’t care” wasn’t an option, because then she might have testily replied “What, so you don’t want to talk to me?” The only course of action was to answer the question knowing she’d mentally tune out after the first sentence.
“A longtime reader who was late to the Passions review left a comment earlier about two of Willette’s sitcom costars — one of whom was in Passions — appearing in Freddy Krueger movies, and I thought Willette was also in one and wanted to double-check before replying,” I continued. She looked every bit as bored as you probably are right now, but the good news is we’re free to forget about Just the Ten of Us entirely because it’s not the point of this convoluted post: American Gladiators is.
There’s a footnote in my recent-ish appreciation of Kate Jackson that references (other people’s) humorless fans in passing, and an example of that can be found in American Gladiators. Sometime within the last year or so, a documentary about the series appeared on Netflix, which I only realized after a few ancient, obscure posts I’d written about the show and my all-time favorite gladiator, the openly lesbian “Ice,” were suddenly garnering a bunch of traffic.*
The majority of her fans who visited my site and read gay gladiator jokes from 2008 behaved themselves and said nothing. A few clicked through to movie reviews and still check in sometimes today. But one posted several verbally abusive comments that I deleted and then sent me an angry message. He even subscribed to my site using a weird email address he’d created on his own web-hosting plan. By weird I mean it included a Cranky reference.
Imagine his site was called — and I’m making this up, it’s not his actual URL — JohnSmithBlog.com. For the purposes of monitoring Cranky Lesbian, where nothing had been written about Ice for 15+ years, and where I’d remembered Gladiators fondly, he signed up as something like ‘crankywatch@johnsmithblog.com’. Presumably he unsubscribed once he realized I’m more likely to poke fun at Joan Van Ark than the bodybuilder whose honor he attempted to defend — as if Ice, who could snap us both like twigs and knows her way around a sharp-tongued woman, would’ve needed the help.
* At the time I assumed it was due to revived interest in both Ice and her sexuality, but I’ve not yet watched the documentary (which might’ve actually been a series) and suppose it’s possible she was interviewed and said “There was this grouchy lesbian idiot on the Internet that I’d like to dwarf-toss into a volcano…” This is a good spot to add, for anyone who bothers reading the old Gladiators posts, that Ice’s website from 2008 no longer exists. But you can find her on Instagram, where filters and MAGA-adjacent antics abound.