Category: Uncategorized

So! I just came up with a new post format for this site. Big Man sightings! Because there’s been one!

Someone in the comments at Facebook said they saw him at the Harbour Bar in Troon — I’m guessing recently, based on the context — but didn’t know who he was til it was too late. And actually, that sounds familiar and I want to say he’s been spotted there before.

Fair bet he loves Italian food. This makes at least two such restaurants he’s been seen at since I started half-assedly tracking him. Solidarity, big man. Though I daresay the Italian you can get is likely a hell of a lot better than what I can get.

No mention of a wife this time. If she’s there, she’s still staying out of the pics. Rory hasn’t posted about this on his Instagram either. Though, well, he’s never struck me as the type to photograph his food. But not even a sort of mention. Probably feels too much to him like being stalked.

Well, so, we can guess a couple things based on the new data and the photo.

First off, either he’s in Glasgow or he was just in Glasgow.

Secondly, he’s been in Troon recently. The Harbour Bar, in fact, is extremely close to where he was docking his boat. Not sure about walking distance but you could definitely ride a bicycle over there. I wouldn’t even say this, but any enterprising nosyparker could find that out in like point-two seconds just from a Google search. (So anyone about to send me scold mail… save your fingers.) Rory knows people in Troon — would have to, he docked there a long time whether he currently is or not — and that alone could explain the visit, but this also points to the possibility he’s still got his boat, whether or not he is living on it at this point.

Thirdly, unless DCI Daley grows a big bushy beard in the books OR the writers on the TV series project have decided they don’t care one way or the other, Rory’s not working on the Daley thing right now. However! Denzil Meyrick posted a thing on his Facebook page back in February stating that he couldn’t tell anyone what was going on with production, as he’s contractually obligated to keep his yap shut (my words, not his, though he’s welcome to borrow them if he likes them), but he could say that things were going very well. Shooting, as some of us are aware, is only part of making a TV show or a film. Post-production takes a while too. At this point I’m not even sure I’ve heard whether anyone has picked up the show, which will add some more lead time if they haven’t yet.

(HEY. SCOTTISH TV PEOPLE. WHAT THE FUCK.)

Not that it matters. I will be dead fucking shocked if I get to watch it “on time.” Do you suppose Acorn TV might distribute it in real time? Probably not, but it’s nice to think about.

Anyway. Expect more use of the “big man sightings” category. I’ll try to add in old stuff too.

NO RORY, WE ARE NOT STALKING YOU.

Well. Uh. Not criminally stalking you. Not with bad intent. That’s, uh, probably the best I can do. Sorry.

Ah! I’m here working!

I’ve been in this serious mood-logjam of late. Has to do with my life going dubious again, but I don’t think that was the only thing. I had a nasty headache last night and this morning (my migraines are not as severe as they used to be, but it is never just a headache, anyway) and had been in a horrid mood before that. One day I will remember that at this stage in my life, half wanting to off myself is a prodrome for me. I hope so, anyway, because I never remember that’s what it is when it is happening, which just makes me more miserable.

But for some reason I’m better now. I’m sure some of it was just needing some fucking protein. And now I want to do stuff. Go figure.

Just got done moving over Rory’s little opinion-piece from 2009 about women from the articles page to the mainline of the blog. That piece is a hoot. It was a bit of a headfuck reading that and some other things he’s said in the past about dating.

“You like quiet women? I’m quiet! Men have given me shit about being too quiet before!”

“You like cuddly? I could spend an entire weekend with you in bed! On the sofa! Wherever!”

“Nothing sexier than a brown-eyed girl? Oh COME ON.”

(Yes. Got ’em. My dad used to say “You’re so full of shit your eyes are brown,” but I got the color from him, so.)

About the only things I didn’t have going for me were being “small enough to fit in the boat” (the “What I know about women” opinion-piece was written back when he owned Blue Boat) — probably a diplomatic general dig about weight, which mine’s too high — and possibly not being a good cook. I can do a pretty damned good chicken tikka masala, but other than that I don’t know. One of the things that made me sad when I still lived with my daughter’s father was people would give me attitude for not cooking dinner, and then when I did cook dinner they didn’t like it. Except the tikka masala. I don’t know why. So I don’t know what was going on there. Too late to worry about it now.

Anyway, I have my suspicions about the “brown-eyed girl” remark. The reason I say that is I’ve got his friend Graham from Thundersoup’s two books that mention him, and one of them was about Graham’s time in bands, and one song Graham wound up hating was “Brown-Eyed Girl,” which apparently EVERYBODY wanted his fucking bands to play. I would not be at all surprised if that were also true of Thundersoup. So does Rory actually like brown-eyed women, or was he taking the piss because he didn’t really want to write that stupid article but someone told him it’d be a hit with the fans, so he was dog-whistling to his pals about how silly it all was? Because really, either is equally likely. Rory is an intelligent man. Rory is known for taking the piss. You just never know. And he’ll probably never ‘fess up. You’re no fun*, big man.

But hey. One of MY standards about dating guys is Must Be Single. So Rory fails at that. So there.

I see Scotland is fucking off again instead of visiting here. I see how it is. That’s all right. Norway’s been here quite a bit though, which is odd. Also, every now and again my visitor counter mixes up countries, so I’ll get a visit from Salt Lake City, United Kingdom or something along those lines. As in Salt Lake City IN the United Kingdom. It is really weird.

No word from my boat-lady penpal in months. I’m starting to wonder if that wasn’t Mrs. McCann also taking the piss. I used to be followed on Instagram by Rory’s marina buddy so hey, anything’s possible. But I’m probably wrong. I have nothing better to do these days than wonder idly about weird things, if you’ll excuse me.

(However, if that was Mrs. McCann, I’d be the last person to tell you her name. I’m not entirely classless.)

Okay. Back to it. I’d like to get at least a couple more years done tonight. Onward!

—–
*OH, what a lie. I’m goin’ to hell for that one.

Have been getting in some more work on the site. I don’t know why I feel the need to announce small changes like that. Attention-seeker, maybe. But at the same time I avoid nearly everybody in my meatspace life. Go figure.

(See Rory, you’re not the only one who’s self-contradictory. Haha.)

I am thinking I will probably keep the “administrivia” feature after all but just have it be about the site. Expect that to be more of a regular feature starting in September. I like timing things to coincide with beginnings of months. Something else I can’t explain about me; I just roll with it.

I am also thinking about a different thing to do with the picture header but that’s going to take longer to materialize. I like to draw the big man. Some of you have seen that. I might actually do that to have my own art for the site. If I do, it’ll be headers primarily unless I think of a way to use the pieces elsewhere.

This may be the closest I get to breaking my “no making money from the fan site” rule, too, because I might decide to list finished pieces after photographing them or whatever. I haven’t decided yet but it is not outside the realm of possibility. People do fan art of the Hound now and again but there’s no reason I can’t dodraw his other characters too. There’s even a really cool shot of Kenny McLeod I might attempt. I’m getting way ahead of myself because I don’t do nine-tenths of the shit I say I’m going to do but if I follow through with this, they’ll likely wind up on Etsy. The fees are not insane.

(No really, they’re not. There are still people selling their own art on eBay and that appalls me. No listing fee but the final value fees’ll kill ya. I mean they are painful.)

Don’t be surprised if I end up adding other people’s fan art here. The most likely way I’ll do that is by embedding from deviantART. I have seen some fucking excellent work there, at least one piece of which Rory actually owns. Shit you not. GOD, I envy that artist.

Do you suppose Rory has some kind of souvenir room at this point? We know he’s kept swords and armor from several things he’s been in. We know he’s kept at least one piece of fan art. That stuff’s got to go somewhere. It’d be fun to see.

HEY BIG MAN, LET’S SEE YOUR SOUVENIR ROOM ON INSTAGRAM

Seriously! We’d love to hear from ya any old way.

Okay. Stuff to do. Onward!

I haven’t updated in pretty much two weeks. Obviously, right? Not all of you follow me around (going by the visitor stats — yep, I’ve got ’em on my homepage too), so I thought I’d catch up a bit here.

Things have gone from Probably Good to Probably Dubious. I won’t elaborate much, I made this too much my alt personal blog already, but I can say things are better than the last time they went dubious so I’m cautiously optimistic. It was yet another situation where my mental health was going into the tank and now it’s not so much, plus I think I’m about to make a bunch of new friends and hey, you can’t beat that with a stick. I’m not Ms. Gregarious at the best of times but God, there have been days I wondered if I actually exist. That can get a little bit tiresome.

I’m hearing bupkis about Rory, which is to be expected. Thus far he’s still only posted on his Instagram those four times, which is also to be expected. (I probably warned you all to not expect him to post often, right? Well, there you go. I couldn’t be fucking wrong about everything forever.) I did finally figure out that my Google Alert set for him updates me every day at 8pm. I had been vague about that whole process. It’s the same old recycled crap, but I suppose at least I hear anything, ever.

My stuff never appears there, of course. I was tempted to think that was because I use a lot of mirrored material instead of it all being original but I don’t think it’s even that. I don’t update enough. The end. There are so many garbage clickbait “entertainment” blogs out there publishing speculation and recycled things about Rory McCann and getting time on Google Alerts. They must update pretty much every day. I want quality here though, not just quantity and I was never going to get the quantity with Rory being reclusive in the first place. I accepted that occupational hazard going into this. It is what it is.

(Good thing I never wanted to make money with this or I’d be fucked, huh? Go figure.)

I did learn a new tidbit, and was absurdly charmed. We knew he has nephews, because he mentioned them being wrestling fans when he was interviewed for the Jumanji film he was in. Well, according to the info I found and followed this past week, some of it (not all) via Rory in an old interview, the total count actually adds up to at least two nephews (thus his referring to them in the plural) and one niece. I will elaborate in no more detail than that, because it isn’t really important to us random strangers and also it would freak Sally-Gay (Rory’s sister, if you didn’t know) out. But I thought at least some of you would be charmed too. I hope he spoils them absolutely putrid. I hear he is great with kids. Sniff.

I never did see Sally again on Instagram after the last time. I make it about three different handles she had in the time I was aware of her presence there, each account with a distinctive clue in it that to me was a dead giveaway. Apparently she’s stopped doing that. Good woman. What DID you people say to her, anyway, in DMs? I don’t want to know, do I? Damn.

Rory is now following Cary Elwes from his IG. Forgot to mention. Hey Dread Pirate Roberts! Follow Rory back! He’s basically your one-man Brute Squad!

“You obsess too much over Rory!” you’re saying. Eh… not really? I go at it in fits and starts. If I update myself about anything daily it’s Scotland, not the big man. It’s all Rory’s fault though. I started searching up some Scottish things and places he mentioned in his interviews and next thing I know I’m following like three dozen different Scotland accounts on IG and a whole lot more on Facebook. It’s been mental. But also fun. And you would not believe how many Scottish references there are in American culture and I never knew; they were right there in the open the whole time! I had originally hoped to see mention of the big man here and there, which of course didn’t happen, but then got caught up in the country itself. It’s kind of cruel because no way in hell can I go visit anytime soon unless something really cool happens. But from this distance it makes me think of the Pacific Northwest except with friendly people and more snow. I lived in the Puget Sound area from ’87 to ’89 and that’s my favorite area of the USA, though I will probably never live there again because the locals have gone fruit loops. I mean people in general are crazier than they used to be, but it’s particularly bad there. Sad too, because one of my brothers lives in Oregon. But I can’t. I’m so done. I might visit, that’s it. Scotland looks like a real gas, though, and really the only question is which two weeks out of the year should I go dip my toe in. I used to fantasize about doing the entire six months that we’re allowed to do in a year, but let’s face it, I’m lucky I can make my rent at the moment. If I could work remotely and do it I would, but the UK hasn’t caught up to reality about that yet. Probably won’t happen in my lifetime, either.

That said! I wish I knew the first fucking thing about running a gift shop or importing anything. I’m seriously considering doing some SCORE courses and seeking out a mentor. I already have this other thing I want to kick off that will do as a half-assed substitute for a while. Scotland has contributed so much to American history and culture, and it appalls me how ignorant I was about the place until I started crushing on a Weegie. Even most of what passes for pArTiCiPaTiOn iN ScOtTiSh CuLtUrE in the USA is stereotyped as hell. I thought I might take some of this fangirlishness and channel it into, well, educational pursuits. That might be fun. You never know.

Won’t link to it here yet but will when I’m happier with it. May be a while yet. Dunno.

Speaking of getting happier with projects. Be back later. Need to do more shifting things around here. Mwah.

Oh hey… can you watch Tubi from where you are?

You’re welcome, fuckers.

💙🤍💚

And! It is not censored! [flips YouTube off] HALLELUJAH.

Enjoy.

Hey gang.

I said this on my personal account on Instagram, and I’ve had a borderline shit day and a strange week and two years’ worth of heartbreak so I was not super nice about it, but I’ll be nicer here.

This doesn’t happen hugely often, but it does happen, so: Please stop DMing me asking me about this Rory thing or that Rory thing*.

Look, I know you probably send Rory DMs now that you have a direct line** to him. And that he never answers you. And that I at least, once in a while, may speak to some question a person asks me, or I used to, anyway.

But the problem is that as obsessed*** as I’ve been with the guy, I still don’t know the guy. Anything I could possibly tell you runs a high risk of being incomplete, mistaken, or downright bullshit. I don’t like to think so, but I’m human. I fuck up too.

If you see someone or get a DM from someone pretending to be him, just report them. It does not matter what I think of them. You know where Rory is. He’s the blue-check being followed by his screen-acting agent, his voice-acting agent, a band or members of that band who have met him in person, his former makeup artist, and possibly Maisie Williams (he’s definitely following her). So basically, anyone who isn’t that account but is saying they’re him is full of shit. Easy.

Anyway, I don’t always see messages in time to respond in a reasonable amount of time. That’s no good either, so just don’t. Thanks.

—–
*And especially do not be asking me about that Rory thing. You could ask Mrs. McCann, but I doubt you’ll like her response.

**For some value of “direct,” because we don’t actually know whether that is Rory posting. It’s definitely his account and the account definitely posts pics of him we’ve never seen anywhere else (well, until people steal them and repost them elsewhere), but it may actually be Mrs. McCann doing the posting.

***Not “boil a bunny” obsessed, but maybe “talk endlessly about trains” obsessed. Except, well, this train is vertical (except when sleeping) and has no tracks (except the ones he leaves when hiking).

I literally am never gonna shut up and let this site speak for itself, am I

That’s okay. There’s still good stuff here, you just have to work harder to find it right now.

So here is a funny thing that I bet most of you haven’t seen and I’m gonna post it here and it’s not Rory but I hope Rory sees it. Rory’s a funny guy, I bet he appreciates other funny guys, and this guy hails from Rory’s neck of the woods so he ought to find it extra funny.

I dreamt last night…

Seriously, go watch that and laugh your hairy arsehole off. Out. Whatever.

We all need a laugh ’cause another of Rory’s jobs is ending. BOO. I heard. That Transformers series is done very soon now. Well, Rory already knew that, probably months ago, but suddenly now it’s news. Or, I dunno, it was news already and I missed it, which is not at all difficult to believe, but I heard about it finally the other day. Like, less than a week ago. And what do I say about running this fucking place?

Right. I chronicle. I do not scoop.

Oh well. If this means Rory’s finally working on that fucking TV show I AM ALL FOR IT.

Even though it’ll probably be ten fucking years before I finally get to watch him as DCI Daley.

Sniff.

But, here he is as a cop in another thing.

Hope Daley has a happier ending than… well… I’ll shut up. And I still need to get State of Play. It looked like the whole thing was going to be good. But what did I do instead? Bought a second copy of Hot Fuzz. I thought I was done with DVD impulse buys. Shows what I know.

Okay. Bedtime. Whee! (It’s almost 2:30am.)

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve put some more work into this. It isn’t a huge amount every time (seriously; a lot of it’s copy-and-pasting), but every little bit helps. That tag cloud is certainly growing.

I have been tagging things he’s been in wherever they’ve been mentioned. I could have just limited it to when something substantial was written about the work in question, but then we get into how to define “substantial.” I won’t worry about it. However. Come to think of it, one of the things I’ll be including in-line with this blog is an entry for each of his works on the date it was first released, and that will have its own Filmography category. So there’s that. Aaand when I do that I’ll likely include the screenshots when I have them! So that’ll be fun. I might not do it right away but edit the screenshots in later, depending on how generally busy I am. But the nice thing about a blog post is that you can shorten it with a “read more” tag, so I can make those posts nice and long when I have the material and it won’t interfere with the general blog layout. So I guess that solves that mystery. You longtimers may recall I argued with myself for probably literal years over whether to do screenshots as a separate page or to include them with the filmography. There. Sorted.

I am sorry to note that I will probably remove the “love life” page. Might even remove the boat page. That’ll likely mean I fall in search rankings. Oh well. I am not making any real moral pronouncement about those things, I’m just not sure where they will fit into the rearranged sitemap. Plus, well, they don’t really help anything at this point. Me writing about Rory’s boat always gave a certain group of people conniptions, and we could never get the straight story about Rory’s love life either, not even the stuff that’s usually public for non-famous people. (Seriously. If someone you actually knew kept his marital status secret from you for years, wouldn’t that weird you out?) I’m at a point where I prefer to share stuff I can actually prove, since I’m wrong at least half the time with my speculations anyway. (Me guessing he’d end up on Instagram was a fucking unicorn, and then it was spoiled because I came up with it after he’d already started his account there, which at the time I didn’t know yet, but of course what the fuck does that look like? DAMN YOU, McCANN. 🤪) I can’t see how me dropping the bullshit speculation will take anything away from this site but its search ranking. I can live with that.

Still pondering the whole “administrivia” thing. It’s possible I will keep that feature but much more subdued. But jury’s still out.

Okay. I’m now sitting here staring at this thinking Was there something else I wanted to add? Never mind. Onward!

They have updated Rory’s photo at his agent’s site.

Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.

Ah, yes. The photo I tried to draw THREE SEPARATE TIMES. One of these days I’ll do it. I don’t have a good setup or a good mindset for it yet.

Here’s one of my attempts. It’s long gone. I threw it away or I set it on fire — I did a lot of trash-burning while I stayed with my dad. Normal for South Louisiana, and actually kind of cathartic (not Rory’s drawing specifically, but other stuff I made gone). But enough about that. Drawing. Here.

I actually want to do the other one of him making the silly face, too, so I have the pair. Maybe one day.

P.S. Edited to add. I am not sure when it happened, but Rory’s Instagram is blue-checked now.

Of course people are going to say “well, any idiot can get a blue check now.” No pleasing people.

It is testament to the mis-wiring of my mind that I fucked off all day (note the “off”… my life has been boring in that way for a long, long time) and then suddenly, close to two hours after I usually get off work except it’s Saturday, I’m working on this site. GOD. I could have gotten SO much done by now.

Oh well. It’s a start. I figure I’ll give me til about 2am or so, my time, for this little work session here.

You will find that stuff disappears. I have ideas about how I want to move forward with this and it’s looking like — no promises — there will be considerably less autobiography and smartassitude going forward. I know some of you like me being silly — you made that obvious when I still had a Facebook page for this project, and didn’t we have a time? — and maybe even Rory doesn’t mind it, if he even looks at this place, but I don’t know yet whether I will fit my humor in here somewhere going forward or even how I will do it. At this point I just want to get a straight-up narrative going, and then we’ll see what else fits. And it could be by then that you’re getting enough out of the site just as I envision it now that you won’t miss the bullshit. Fun as it sometimes was. There will still be a personal “voice” here though. That’s too difficult for me personally to leave off.

Anyway. We will see how this goes! I’m already pleased to note the index page looks like it will work as it should. So there’s that.

Oh, and a further personal note. At one point I had opined that I would not be going tracking down Rory’s birth info. I still have not personally seen his birth certificate and will not be seeking it out. I did, however, stumble across an information source that contained both his apparent birth data (time and place and date) and his middle name, claiming his birth certificate as a source of that information. You know… someone, no idea who, took it upon themselves to declare his middle name was Philip some years ago and to append it to his Wikipedia article (and it has since been deleted). I can’t see how it is worse for me to share information I’m two degrees away from verifying versus someone just making shit up.

Plus this came off a public site. I didn’t need a password to see it. It’s out there. My keeping my mouth shut didn’t make it less public.

And if it makes you feel better, my middle name’s Rachael. So there.

Okay. Onward. Let me not distract myself with nonsense again. This post won’t stay up forever, but hopefully enough of you will see it until then. The times, they are a-changin’.