Celebrity crush: Sarah Chalke (revised)

Today's entry contains some ranting about short-sighted TV networks not putting shows online. Proceed at your own risk.

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Name: Sarah Chalke (images -- some NSFW | Web site | Twitter)
Hometown: Born in Ottawa, raised in Vancouver, Canada, according to her Wikipedia entry.
Best Known For: Sarah's biggest role to date was co-starring for most of the run of Scrubs, starting on NBC and ending on ABC. More recently, she co-starred alongside Jason Biggs on the short-lived CBS sitcom Mad Love.

In the interim, she had a substantial recurring role on the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother as a woman to whom narrator Ted nearly married. Some time later, her character's husband wrote a movie about the incident, and Chalke's character was played in the movie-within-the-show by fellow celebrity crush Malin Åkerman. Not a bad trade however you look at it.
Humble Beginnings: Sarah started acting before she turned 18, including a multi-year run on Roseanne as eldest daughter Becky. She was the second actress to play Becky, and the original came back for a year to alternate in the role with Sarah, before Sarah alone returned to the role for the series' final season. (Very confusing.) I typically don't list credits under age 18 in these write-ups, but I'll go ahead and list her entire tenure on Roseanne below because she was close to 18 when she joined the show, and for continuity's sake, it just makes sense.

Advocacy Work: She lost her grandmother and an aunt to breast cancer and is an active supporter of breast cancer research; she starred in a Lifetime TV movie called Why I Wore Lipstick To My Mastectomy. She's also appeared in a video supporting marriage equality for California and is an ambassador for the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund.

Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: She's hot, and she's funny. I didn't care for Scrubs -- I tried, but it just wasn't my style of humor, and I feel even guiltier in some ways for not liking it than for not liking 30 Rock -- but I really dug her appearances on HIMYM. I think I would have liked Mad Love, too, if it hadn't been difficult to get TV time at school, and if it had been available on iTunes.

(Same thing stopped me watching the revamped V in its second and final season. There's really no good excuse for a network not putting shows for sale online in 2011. Refusal to do so sets them up to fail.)
Voice work: American Dad, season 7: "Stanny Boy and Frantastic" (Amazon | iTunes) * Prep & Landing Stocking Stuffer: Operation: Secret Santa (2010 TV short) (Amazon | iTunes) * Prep & Landing (2009 TV short) (Amazon | iTunes) * Clone High (2002) (Amazon | iTunes) * Diary of an Alien (2000 documentary) (Amazon | iTunes)
Musical work: Scrubs: "My Musical" soundtrack (Amazon | iTunes)

TV and Web video credits: Mad Love (2011) (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 9 (Amazon | iTunes) * How I Met Your Mother, season 4 (Amazon | iTunes) * Maneater (2009 miniseries) (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 8 (Amazon | iTunes) * How I Met Your Mother, season 3 (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 7 (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs: Cast & Creators Live at the Paley Center (Amazon | iTunes) * Saturday Night Live, season 32: "Zach Braff/Maroon 5" (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 6 (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 5  (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 4 (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 3 (Amazon  | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Scrubs, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * First Wave, season 2: "The Channel" (Amazon | iTunes) * Dead Man's Gun, season 1: "The Bounty Hunter" (Amazon | iTunes) * Roseanne, season 9 (Amazon | iTunes) * Roseanne, season 8 (Amazon | iTunes) * Roseanne, season 7 (Amazon | iTunes) * Roseanne, season 6 (Amazon | iTunes)

Film and TV-movie credits: A Gaythering Storm (online) * Prop 8: The Musical (online) * Chaos Theory (2008) (Amazon | iTunes) * Mama's Boy (2007) (Amazon | iTunes) * Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy (Amazon | iTunes) * Channel 101 (2006 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Cake (2005) (Amazon | iTunes) * Alchemy (2005) (Amazon | iTunes) * It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) (Amazon | iTunes) * XCU: Extreme Close Up (2001) (Amazon | iTunes) * Kill Me Later (Amazon | iTunes) * Cinderella: Single Again (Amazon | iTunes) * Spin Cycle (2000) (Amazon | iTunes) * Terminal Countdown (1999) (Amazon | iTunes) * All Shook Up (1999) (Amazon | iTunes) * Our Mother's Murder (1998 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * I've Been Waiting for You (1998 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy (1998 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Dying to Belong (1997 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * A Child's Wish (1997 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Stand Against Fear (1996 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Dead Ahead (1996 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Robin of Locksley (1996 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Ernest Goes to School (1994 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Beyond Obsession (1994 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes)