Author: Dana Seilhan

Oh, wow! Does this mean we might get to see The Damned in the United States???

I mean… C’MON, BIG MAN. You need to be in stuff we can see outside of Europe!

In other news, I was just peeking to see if anything major had come up on the front page of Google — of course, it almost never does — and turns out Rory’s Instagram is now on the front page of his search results. That’s pretty much like if he had an official fan site and it turned up there. Excellent news! See? Google says it’s the big man too. NOW ARE Y’ALL HAPPY?

(I’m still there too… near the bottom… but it’s my own fault, I don’t update here enough. At least it’s not the “love life” page anymore.)

—

Bit of a personal update for those of you who haven’t figured out where I am on the web yet. Am in California, settling in, trying to figure out where I go next. Caught a cold, it was nasty, seems to be getting better now but anymore when I get sick I also get kind of stupid, so that was fun. I’m also having to manage things without having a car — sold the car to make this trip, didn’t really have anywhere else to go and needed starting-out money — but oddly, for California and not being in L.A. or San Fran, I can probably get around all right. It’s just going to take me a lot longer. Walmart is walking distance from here and the bus line stops there too.

I actually did not love moving even farther away from Scotland, so to speak, and I miss Ohio. But I don’t get to go to the fun places or live where I want to live until I can fucking pay for it. Just the way it is. And this bit of NorCal is positively lovely. I think even Rory would dig it. I have redwoods in my (my roomie’s) yard, y’all. Redwoods. And bears for neighbors. And huge doggos for housemates. Great Pyrenees. They’re adorable. I have never thought of myself as a dog person, but most of them have liked me, and these are no exception.

I’m not going to make any guesses about which way things will go. I am just gonna fucking vibe and do the best I can with what I can control.

And if that sounds like “hey, more improvements here,” yes. That too.

There we go. [looks at title] I think my brain’s back on right-side up.

Got this relatively lovely piece from ScreenRant in my Google Alert today; surprisingly, it was the only link I got today. It’s still lazy in places (peep the Lurch entry and you’ll see what I mean), but much less so than usual.

I just had to laugh because I looked at the header image and immediately knew where the The Book Group photo of Rory as Kenny came from: this is right after Fist borrowed Kenny’s wheelchair to race in, and he’s at Barney’s place smoking a joint and pondering why Fist would want to use a wheelchair “when she’s got legs like that.”

I am not sure what it says about me that I know that. Hahahahaha

Real talk: the past 2.5 years have done a number on me. I still have quite a bit of my Rory stuff, but not as many of the DVDs. I am proud to say I have not let go of my two seasons (series in the UK) of The Book Group, though. I have to look at the bright side. I love Rory in Game of Thrones, but I’ve got me a soft spot for Kenny McLeod. Can’t help it, the man’s adorable.

Weren’t we all when we were younger, though.

Okay, I wasn’t. But most of us, I bet.

A few updates.

1. At the “urthboundmisfit” handle on Instagram, there is a reel. Turn the sound way up on your phone or whatever, then click that reel. It is instructions on how to report all these little assholes going around Instagram pretending to be Rory so that Instagram will shut them down. Long story short? “BIGMANRORYMCCANN” IS RORY. NO ONE ELSE IS. Okay? Can we settle that finally? Thanks.

I am sorry about the sound quality, and right now I am too duh-brain to try to figure out something better. If someone with a home studio and five fucking phones to use as models would like to take a stab at this, be my guest. Because I keep seeing follower counts on these imposters, which tells me fans are falling for it. Even if it’s only, like, twenty-four of them or something. Still too many. Anyway, at some point I may set up an instruction page here for anyone who wants to nuke the imposters from space just to be sure. Do not count on that until I’ve gotten settled on the West Coast.

[EDIT: I was so duh-brain I forgot my usual format for post titles here. Oops. Fixed. Also URL so I hope none of you linked to this.]

2. Oh hey! I get to live on a West Coast too! Not Scotland’s, unfortunately.

But! I will dig being near a beach for the first time in more than THIRTY years.

3. Speaking of. I leave Louisiana on Sunday night. There was nothing for it; if I don’t leave on the nine-something-PM departure, I will have to wait a really long time to catch the last leg of my trip. I’ll have to wait several hours as it is. Let’s not make that suck any more than it already will. Anyway, that’ll put me at my destination on TuesdayWednesday afternoon if everything goes well. [knocks on head]

[EDIT: Wednesday. Not Tuesday. Corrected.]

(Did I tell you all the story of how I have been knocking on my head when I say “knock on wood” — USA version of the UK’s “touch wood” — for well over a decade, only to see Rory doing it in the YouTube vids of his panel at the Glasgow Film Festival a few years back? I about shit. That was AWESOME. I’ve never seen anyone else doing that.)

I might post here again before I go and I might not but the chances are considerably better than they were the last time I posted, because so much was still in the air and I didn’t know when anything would be happening. It’ll probably take either something really cool happening with Rory or me being really bored, because my hostess is going to be out of town from tomorrow sometime until sometime Saturday…? I think? So I am going to take that time to do extra prep for the trip. It’s not necessary to the trip, but it’ll increase the chances of a good outcome on the other side. To say I have been anxious and overplanning about my preparations is an understatement. But it’s better than being off-the-cuff and random, I suppose, in terms of usual outcomes.

Okay. ‘Later.

This is the dumbest shit I have read in a long time.

I think I have lost about fifty IQ points reading it.

I may actually not be able to walk upright anymore. How am I typing?

I… I just… Go read it. I hope someone is monitoring the trackbacks. They should be ashamed of themselves. I am not this lazy on my worst days.

At least it was about one of Rory’s roles and not about Rory himself, I suppose. I’ve seen the media be that lazy about him before, though.

—

The bad news is, I’m writing about myself again.

The other bad news is, I’m moving. Again. If you want to know more about that, look around. I’m not going to get into it here. I already put too much effort into writing about it elsewhere in a place it mostly won’t be read. I suppose it’s just as well. But to sum up: I didn’t break any laws or kill anyone. I just had shitty luck. Again.

But!

The good news is, if everything goes well [knocks on head], I’m about to be in a situation where I will finally have breathing room to do more work on this without having to drive ten or twenty or thirty miles and use a library table to get it done. I’ll have home internet! And a desk! And stuff!

Exciting times.

I have stuff to do, so this is all you get for now. I might write again before I go on my trip, but I doubt it. Y’all take care. I’ll catch up with you not long from now.

Okay. End of an era. There is no longer a page index for articles about Rory. If you look in the menu (instructions for finding it are on the front page), you will find the Articles item is gone. [plays “Taps”]

All is not lost. The articles are still here, but I have pulled them into the so-called “blog,” which may be renamed at some point. I’m not sure. And if you look under the blog categories in the sidebar (or the bottom bar, if you’re on a vertical screen), you will see an Articles category. THERE they are. Yay!

I may not have remembered to add the Articles category to all the articles. If that’s so, I will catch my error eventually. No fret.

I want to do this with the photos next. I make no promises about when that will happen. The process is going to be a bit more involved because I want that to be more useful than it is. I like being able to see an old photo and being able to say “Oh yeah, that was Rory at the SAG Awards in 2015” because who doesn’t like feeling smarter? And it really just puts his whole career all in one place, including illustrations. Love it.

The archives section in the sidebar may get a bit unwieldly unless I figure out a better system. For now, it’s just going to be REALLY LONG. Sorry about that.

And, as I’ve already mentioned but in case you’re new here, the search function is very, very good. If you want to look up a specific thing that you know the word for, just type it into the search bar and go. If you’re on a horizontal screen, it’ll be in the sidebar to your right. If you’re on your phone, you’ll have to scroll down but whatever the fuck the orientation does to the sidebar, the search bar will be located at the top of it. Easy-peasy, Rory-squeezy. RORY CUDDLES OMG.

Just kidding, Mrs. McCann.

No I’m not. The clothes would stay on.

ANYWAY. I want to get some libraryage before they close. The way this weather is going, you may hear from me again tomorrow. Grumble.

Big man’s being QUITE active, for him, on Instagram lately. Have a look, if you haven’t already. He’s posted a reel from his boat! 💙🤍💚

You will note two mugs in the cabin (I guess that’s what it’s called). I hate stereotypes, but one of them looks like the sort of mug a married woman would have. Apologies to Rory if that’s actually his mug and he’s hanging out with the Troon yacht harbor guy or just forgot to wash a mug. But I doubt either is what this is.

There seem to be a lot of fans still in denial about that. Oh well. Maybe one of these days he’ll actually admit it. I am still a little weirded out that he spent so many years going I AM SINGLE HERE I AM, LADIES and now he won’t even say he found someone. But he’s also gotten a lot more privacy-oriented over the last ten years or so. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that what he thought was a crazy amount of attention after The Book Group got ramped up to 11 after Game of Thrones and his brain sort of went into meltdown. If this amount of distance saves his sanity, I say go for it. Happy big man, good life. That doesn’t rhyme, but it’s true.

He seems to have struck up a bit of a friendship with Cary Elwes, who seems to also be in the Knuckles series, and I’m just fangirling all over the damn place. This time it was a comment about pirates on Rory’s boat post. 😍😍😍

Google Alerts are chock-full of Knuckles stuff. I heard the first episode is available free on YouTube now. Sometimes I am in places where I can stream but I’m not generally in the mood to watch anything extensive when I am. I’ll get around to it or I won’t. But actually, let me go find that for all of you in case you haven’t seen it. You’re welcome.

So if you haven’t ripped off my pics already, there’s another source for ya. (I don’t actually care about the ripping off of the pics. I’m just needlin’ ya.)

[EDIT] Wait, what? They took the video private. Well, I’ll leave it up for a while in case they make it public again. Sorry about that.

Oh, and going back to the private life for a minute. When Rory posted the reel he made some remark about how “the season” has begun. I feel this is one more piece of evidence that he is not living on the boat. There is every possibility he could be living there, and that he and the missus make it work, but given what I’ve heard about his net worth it would be weird if they didn’t have a house on land somewhere. And it may even be quite isolated. That would track with his general pattern.

I have to say that though I’m a little frustrated that he won’t even give us an update about his general situation, I also REALLY APPRECIATE that he protects her. Because be honest with yourselves, those of you who covet him: If he’d picked you, would you want his crazy fangirls coming after you? I would not want that for me. Fuck that. It also says something about him, and wholly in his favor, that he doesn’t seem to view his wife as a trophy as so many celebrity men seem to do. We missed a real gem, ladies. Darn it.

Okay. Am off. I might do some work on this today, actually. I’ve got a little time. I don’t know if you will be able to tell, but I’ll let you know.

Yep, this was down yesterday.

Yep, now it’s back up.

What happened was I thought I had originally bought the domain on the 23rd five years ago. So I let my misremembering override my looking at the actual evidence; Hosting Service did email me ahead of time and I didn’t even look at the date it said. My bad. Sorted now.

I actually would have had it done on time, but Walgreens, Chime, or both have this policy that you can’t load less than $20 on your Chime account at a go and I needed to load $9. First I’ve heard of this. To say I was unhappy is an understatement.

In other news, I do believe the big man’s set a personal record for social-media participation: two posts in seven or eight days! AND replied to a comment Cary Elwes left, and I’m a Princess Bride fan from way back so my inner fangirl was bouncing madly in her seat. It doesn’t take much these days, I guess.

(If you didn’t know, Elwes is in the Knuckles show too.)

I have to say I’ve been kicking around a birthday idea for Rory for years but it isn’t going to happen this time. It may never. There are matters I need to investigate and skills I need to acquire and I don’t know if I will, especially with my internet situation being generally shit now. But I do like the idea. We’ll see.

I did send him a card a couple years in a row, but then life got crazy. Given what I know of his life situation now, likely I won’t do it again. I don’t know. I’ll keep an open mind and see what happens. It is not like his emotional health hinges on me sending him things. Haha.

I can’t remember if I have ever posted to this blog from my phone before. So this may actually be a first.

I couldn’t resist. New premiere photo droppage.

Take the following in the context of my sincere and completely uncreepy admiration for the big man.

I had someone tell me ages ago that they couldn’t believe Rory was married because no one had cleaned up his appearance. I am not sure we talk about this in the fandom very publicly because it is too easy to sound mean about it, but he is a jeans and tshirts guy who keeps outfits a long, long time, and his grooming up til now has been shave it all off or let it go wild ever since his hair loss got fairly advanced.

Notice I shared no opinion about this. I am only describing.

But with that in mind, look at him again.

That is a new outfit. It looks fantastic on him, though it also totally changes his “vibe.” Another thing about him is he’d either be Scottish wild man or James fucking Bond if he did dress up. This is a complete departure from either.

And then? That is the most groomed I have ever seen his facial hair. WOW.

I am not ashamed to say I had to look at his pics twice because y’all, I wasn’t sure it was him.

I do have opinions about this, but they are not important and I don’t care what yours are either, Fandom, so no weird Instagram DMs trying to answer that question, please. I am just sharing the new thing. Enjoy. Or not. Long as the big man’s happy, that’s what’s important.

LOOKIT MAH WILD MAN TRYNA BE KNUCKLES

I miss seeing Rory be silly. Wish we’d seen more of him and less of Ellie. No offense, Ellie.

P.S. That beard is fucking magnificent. Rory’s. Not Ellie’s. 🤡 💙🤍💚

Oh look, it wasn’t a month again!

You will recall in the previous post I mentioned that Jason Momoa is doing a Guinness ad. He’s actually doing at least two. The first one I saw was the one joking about Ancestry DNA (or a similar service) telling him he was two percent Irish. The other one is just him hanging out with various people. I watched the whole thing hoping for a big man drinking photo. No dice.

Sniff.

But in the general theme of big-man-related (however distantly) TV ads? Have you seen the latest Scotts Lawn ads???

I had thought there were only one or two. There’s an entire muhfuggin SERIES.

Okay. I adore Kris Hivju. He’s fun. But he’s SO not Scottish.

I mean, I can hear him trying. I can hear him nail little bits of it here and there when he speaks. But it sounds more like “I hung out with Rory McCann for months filming the north-of-the-Wall scenes and I’m drawing on what I remember of him speaking off-camera to play this role” than like “I trained with a dialect coach.” And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that (the former, not the latter) is exactly what it is.

I wouldn’t care, because it is just TV ads and it’s not like they will cure cancer or bring about world peace or anything, but the United States has this long history in our popular media of NOT getting Scottish accents (there are more than one) right. It’s not even close. Here we are with more access to information than we’ve had in all our history and someone should have done their homework on this. It would have been a lot more fun.

…

As a postscript, and apropos of absolutely nothing, I have seen the headquarters for Scotts Lawn with mine own eyeballs. They are located just southeast of Marysville, Ohio, just off US 33, and I have taken a few food deliveries out thataway (not to the HQ, but traveling the road past it) in the past few years. It is not one building but a literal compound and looks very Stepford. Which is no more than I’d expect from a corporation that is no doubt the darling of suburban homeowner associations across the United States, actually.

Okay. Just checking in. I’m off again. Have fun, kids.