Thursday, January 26, 2006 Obscure Celebrity Crushes: Penultimate Edition The second-to-last installment, friends. Feels like it's hardly begun, right? Right? On with it, I suppose. Obscure Celebrity Crush #2: Alexander Siddig (nee Siddig El Fadil) In many ways, Alexander Siddig could be #1 on this list for any number of reasons. I've certainly known who he was since 1993, which means that I've had his name in my brain for over HALF MY LIFE. (By the way, that is fucking depressing.) The fact of the matter is, though, that during his seven years on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine my opinion of him wavered between mildly annoying to mildly amusing. Sure, when it was revealed that Bashir was genetically engineered to be awesome, I ended up liking the character a whole lot more, and the episode in which he mathematically determines that the Federation will ultimately lose the war is high on my list of favorites. But I never responded to the character the way I did others, so it came as a bit of a shock when, post-9/11, I realized two things: 1) He was never going to get another role intended for a white man ever again, 2) That was a shame, because he is fucking beautiful. In the six years since DS9 went off the air, I have seen Alexander Siddig play terrorists and sheiks and princes and sherpas. I have, in short, seen Vertical Limit, Reign of Fire, Kingdom of Heaven, Syriana and that episode of MI-5. I've ordered them by quality, and Syriana is the borderline good one. So please understand that I've suffered for his art. Watching Syriana under the influence of some serious cold medication, I spent most of the movie hoping that maybe, just maybe, nothing bad would happen to a Middle-Eastern prince interested in developing his country's infrastructure and not bending over for the US. And the next day, as I lay in bed with my remotes at hand, I watched hours of DS9, marvelling that once upon a time, I got to watch Alexander Siddig every week on my TV. That sometimes entire episodes would be about him. It's like remembering that hundred bucks you stashed away somewhere. It's like a dream. He's talented, suave, looks great in a tux. So when I invent my time machine and start moving actors from the present to the past or the future, Alexander Siddig will be the first one I stop for. And I'll either take him to the 1940s, where his dark good looks would make him film noir's ultimate dangerous detective, or I'll take him to the future -- a place, one might hope, where a man of Sudanese heritage could be James Bond. Until then, I'm left to content myself with DS9's "Our Man Bashir." | permalink blog • archives • photos • about • contact This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All content © 2004.