A glimpse into my twisted little mind...

Anyone who knows me realizes that I'm a little, uhm, different than most. Long-time blog readers are well aware of this fact too.

(Some of you are similarly messed up. Like those of you who clicked on all those individual links--just to see if there was any porn. Yeah, you.)

This is a little detective story that I didn't know was a detective story until I got to the end. It really started a a year or so ago...

Actually, this post is really about Chyler Leigh, but you don't know who she is. And I didn't either. Well, I did, but I didn't know it was her. Sort of.

You see, I'm a fan of the movie Not Another Teen Movie. If you're a fan of the 80s teen movie (and related spoofs) genre, I highly recommend it. Any movie with John Hughes High School in it gets my vote.

At John Hughes High School, the students are the same as just about every other teenager in a teen movie. The popular jock, Jake (Chris Evans), takes a bet from Austin, the cocky blonde guy (Eric Christian Olsen), that he can transform Janey, the pretty ugly girl (Chyler Leigh), into the prom queen before the prom. But two people are trying to stop Jake from succeeding: his evil sister, Catherine, the cruelest girl in school (Mia Kirshner), and Priscilla, the bitchy cheerleader (Jaime Pressly). And all of their friends are the same as any other teen movie: Areola, the naked foreign exchange student (Cerina Vincent), Les, the beautiful weirdo (Riley Smith), Malik, the token black guy (Deon Richmond), the desperate virgins (Cody McMains, Samm Levine, and Sam Huntington), Amanda Becker, the perfect girl (Lacey Chabert), Ricky, Janey's obsessed best friend (Eric Jungmann), and Sadie, the VERY old undercover reporter (Beverly Polcyn).

Anyway, one more than one occasion I've been watching the movie and thought to myself, "Damn, not only is Janey Briggs cute, I could swear I've seen her before." For those of you who don't remember (shame on you), Janey is the main female character.

I'd never been able to figure it out. I assumed that maybe she just looked a lot like a combination of two actresses (or even non-actresses) that I've seen before. It's possible. If you look at her just right, you can see a bit of JLH and someone else in there. Maybe. But who?

Well, earlier today I was replying to a note from fellow goon Andy in which he made a reference that reminded me of the movie. And I, of course, needed the URL. So I headed over to IMDB to find it, 'cause that's what geeks do.

While there, I thought to myself, "Hey, they have a roster of all the film stars. I should find out what her real name is.

It's Chyler Leigh.

I wonder what else she's been in.

*click*

(IMDB rocks.)

*scroll*

Ah! She was in Girl's Club, the 2002 David E. Kelley Drama that didn't last very long.

Yes, I watched it. So sue me. The basic premise was a three cute 20-something lawyers in San Francisco. How bad could it be?

Three young women, best friends and roommates, work at a prestigious, male-dominated law firm in San Francisco and deal with a variety of courtroom cases, legal depositions and other professional and personal matters.

Anyhoo, that's when it clicks. "Oh, yeah! That's right. I remember watching that show and thinking, 'Damn, she reminds me of of JLH.'"

Now I know, thanks to the Internet.

And so do you.

But the strange thing is that I also remember thinking I saw her in something before Girls' Club. But nothing on her filmography is anything I'd have seen.

Then I remembered that it might have been JLH's co-star in her flop Party of Five spin-off, Time of Your Life. Ah, Jennifer Garner. Nope, not her either.

Now, those playing along at home will realize that Lacey Chabert was in Party of Five as the young Claudia Salinger. And she's also in Not Another Teen Movie as Amanda Becker.

Funny little coincidence, huh?

It took me about 30 minutes after she appeared in the movie to figure it out, 'cause she was a bit older than in Party of Five.

Anyway, back to Chyler...

In case you're disappointed that IMDB doesn't have any pictures of her (you know, so you could have an idea who I'm talking about--since you've never seen the movie or the TV show), never fear. If you search Google for Chyler Leigh you'll find several fan sites with pictures. Some are a bit more revealing than others. I shouldn't have been but I was surprised.

There. I told you I was different. Not only did I actually think and do this, I took 10 times as much time to also write about it and include pictures.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog posts...

Or maybe I'll figure out how Kevin Bacon fits into all of this...

Posted by jzawodn at August 18, 2003 11:21 PM