You gotta love Cloris Leachman

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — There's an amusement park ride on the Santa Monica pier that spins and jerks up and down. Some certainly find it fun, but I commented to a one of my TV critic pals that it would, without doubt, cause me to, um, lose my lunch.

As I was making that comment, we noticed one of the people riding that particular ride: Cloris Leachman.

She's 84 years old.

A short time later, Leachman was in the bungee ride — big bungee cords that bounce you up and down.

She's 84 years old.

What was she thinking?

"Why not?" Leachman said. "We're here to have fun, aren't we?"

How do you not love Cloris Leachman? Even when she's annoying the heck out of you.

Like when, at a press conference for her new TV show, "Raising Hope," she insisted one critic stand up. Then sit down. Then stand up again.

Or when several questions were directed to executive producer Greg Garcia ("My Name Is Earl"), she said, "You're asking him all the questions. That's not nice."

Or, when there was a question about whether the premise of Fox's "Raising Hope" — that a young man gains custody of his infant daughter when her mother is executed for murder — might be a little dark.

"We think it's funny," she said before asking if the character was really dead. Told she is, Leachman said, "That's sort of dark, isn't it?"

Or when she asked co-star Martha Plimpton about her meeting with Garcia: "Did you flash him?"

Or when she insisted on rearranging the chairs on the podium.

"Every day," co-star Garrett Dillahunt sighed.

"This is why I told the studio we need 14 hours a day to shoot," Garcia said.

If you think that this sort of behavior is new for Leachman, well, think again. Nearly two decades ago I was doing a one-on-one phone interview with her, and she was very, very insistent that I make certain that my infant twins were breast fed.

Really.

In the very funny pilot episode of "Raising Hope," Leachman's character is mostly senile, with brief intervals where she snaps out of it. But Garcia promises that as the series goes on, she'll have more to do.