Category: Television

Please reset the counter for Days Since Someone at Nogglestead Made A Reference to Manimal to 0.

My oldest said if he had a superpower, he would like to be able to turn into a cat.

“What, like Manimal?” I said, knowing full well that Manimal turned into a panther, not just a house cat.

The Wikipedia article for the program mentions two other series from NBC 1983 that got axed, but which I remember acutely (as I previously mentioned): Jennifer Slept Here and We Got It Made.

Also, someone from Hollywood must read this blog, as I said when commenting on Jennifer Slept Here:

Jennifer Slept Here–really, I haven’t brought that up? It didn’t run very long, but I can still remember the theme song. Also, with this and the short run Eric Idle vehicle Nearly Departed makes me wonder why we don’t have reboots of ghosts-live-here sitcoms these days–but both of these were very short runs indeed, which perhaps answers my question.

Currently, CBS’s Ghosts is on its third season.

As opposed to the The Best of the Dean Martin Show, this DVD did not come out decades after Chris Rock’s talk show and sketch comedy bit went off the cable (which is “off the air” in the late 20th century–the modern equivalent would be “out of the stream” or something). Rock’s show appeared on HBO, so I didn’t have access to it when it was on, and I am not one for the talk shows anyway, so I probably would not have seen it.

I have, however, seen the skit “How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police” a time or two.

This single DVD does not include the aforementioned skit, but it does have some humor poking fun at The Race Question from the perspective of the middle 1990s. One skit is purportedly about an academic who is barred from entering establishments or who gets thrown out of establishments because he’s black. But when they go to the video proof, the man is naked and is getting thrown out or barred entry for that.

Man, what a wonderful world that was. Imperfect, but better than what we have now, where these sorts of jokes and poking fun at minorities’ pecadilloes just don’t fly, and we’re not allowed to laugh at obvious stereotypes.

Man, Chris Rock was everywhere up until some point in the early part of this century, but he seemed to have disappeared. Actually, I was going to posit he got supplanted by Kevin Hart, but in reality, it’s probably that my pop cultural awareness took a nosedive this century. I see he’s been in several films in the Sandlerverse–I saw Grown Ups–twice, in fact–but not much else of his work in the last fifteen years. I guess that’s on me.

As I have mentioned, my Facebook feed is roughly 30% posts by about eight of my “friends,” many of whom I’ve never met in real life, 20% actual advertisements, 15% pages I’ve liked, and 35% pages Facebook recommends, many of which relate to television or movies.

Like this retro post about how old Cheers is:

They didn’t need to downgrade it to black and white to make it older, but they did.

C’mon, kids, it ain’t that eld.

The Best of the Dean Martin Show was a collection of videocassettes and later DVDs with songs and skits from the decade-long television program along with occasional commentary from guest stars and the producer/director who released this set. It comprises 29 volumes in all, but the Lutherans for Life garage sale only had 7 videocassettes, and not contiguous, which makes me wonder where the other 22 went.

At any rate, as it is a “Best of” series, it does not play the episodes in total. Instead, it features a couple of musical numbers, a couple of skits, and a bit of commentary in each hour-long videocassette. It starts often with Dean Martin sliding down the pole into the living room set and singing “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime”, the show’s theme, but later with the Golddiggers, the all-female song and dance group that opened the show or the pre-show warning users not to touch the dial.

And the guest stars. Jimmy Stewart and Orson Welles team up with Dean Martin at one point to do a comedy and song number about men at a beauty salon. Dom DeLouise is a frequent guest, and Peter Sellers stops by. Lorne Greene from Bonanza sings a song with Dean while they’re astride horses and Dean’s won’t stand still.

The producer/director Garrison, who is behind the collection, said that they often did not tell Dean the punchline when he was being the straight man, or at least as much of a straight man that Dean Martin could be, so that his laughter and reaction would be genuine. And there’s a recurring bit where someone knocks from inside a closet, and when Martin opens it, he’s confronted by a secret guest star who makes a gag or something and then leaves, and Martin doesn’t know who it is in advance.

Much of the humor relies on Martin’s reputation as a sophisticated partier, but in real life, he wasn’t that way, so the Dean Martin character you see is only a character infused with Martin’s warmth and humor.

So it was a fun bit to watch–I am pretty sure I watched my seven cassettes in as many nights–but it would have been better if it was more of a complete first season kind of thing, with the actual episodes collected, but this collection precedes the confidence that people would buy that sort of thing by a couple of years–this collection was packaged in the middle 1990s and sold via infomercials. One assumes that the audience then would have been old people, perhaps my grandparents, who remembered the show and Martin’s movies fondly.

One can only speculate about the kind of audience finds these cassettes secondhand two decades in the twenty-first century, but old man is probably not far off the mark.

And as I mentioned yesterday, Sandahl Bergman, who played in Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja, was one of the Golddiggers, the singers and dancers that opened the show in later years and appeared in skits. So given that I have watched those two films and four or five of this set in which she appeared, I have seen more Sandahl Bergman on screen in the last two weeks than anyone in the world unless 1) Sandahl herself is watching her old films, Norma Desmond style, in a dark room in her mansion or 2) there’s some academic writing a dissertation on her for a film doctorate who has done nothing this summer but watch her movies over and over to gather evidence for some assertions or others. If I yield to the temptation to watch Hell Comes to Frogtown in the coming days, I might surpass either of those cases.

As you know, gentle reader, I am about half way through James Blish’s short paperbacks collecting episodes from the Star Trek series (see also Star Trek, Star Trek 2, Star Trek 3, Star Trek 4, and Star Trek 5 for the recent re-reads or click here to see earlier and future re-reads–which will include the others in this timeline that I post later than I post this). Last Christmas, I received gift certificates for the antique mall again, $100 worth this time (with a six month expiration and no change returned, so a very old school type of giftcertificate). As I mentioned in the report on Star Trek 4, I looked for episodes of the original series at Relics Antique Mall last month. Although I did not find any physical media for the original series on that trip–one in which my buying focus was finding one big thing, like a set of fencing equipment, a receiver to serve as a back up in the parlor, or something that cost $100, I went again later with two certificates to look specifically at DVDs and videocassettes, and amongst a number of videos that I have not yet begun to watch, I spotted this DVD (and bought it, of course).

This 2009 release comes at a time when Paramount released the first season of the original series on Blu-Ray, remastered and with remixed sound. One assumes that this was a bit of a loss leader, a way to pitch the new set to people who maybe casually or perhaps a little more than casually enjoyed the original series but hadn’t seen it in a while. 2009, man. They probably still had video stores like Suncoast back then, ainna? Certainly the Best Buys and Walmarts still had fairly robust video sections in Electronics.

So this single DVD collects four episodes:

• “The City on the Edge of Forever” (Blishified in Star Trek 2), the one with Joan Collins in it. C’mon, man. Joan Collins. Something something time travel and Joan Collins.
• “The Trouble with Tribbles” (Blishified in Star Trek 3), the one with the little puff ball creatures that takes place on a disputed space station and where Klingons insult Kirk and the Enterprise (which is why the quote from Wilder’s post that I mentioned yesterday was fresh in my mind).
• “Balance of Terror”, (Blishified in a later volume than I’ve read so far), the one where the Enterprise encounters the Romulans and their cloaking device.
• “Amok Time” (Blishified in Star Trek 3), the one where Spock goes through Pon Farr and has to return to Vulcan to mate, much to his high Vulcan chagrin.

So I enjoyed spending a couple of evenings reviewing things I’d seen before and read recently, for the most part. Not enough to buy the complete series on Blu-Ray (although it looks as only the first season got the treatment and is only $22, whilst the whole movie collection with the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation is only $44, which is not bad for new, but I’d rather pay less than $5 for DVDs).

I know, I know. By now you expect me to post photos of actresses from things I watch below the fold. But, c’mon, man, I already posted about Arlene Martel, who appeared in “Amok Time”, after I saw her in Route 66.

Well, to save myself from your disappointment and disapproval, how about some photos of Grace Lee Whitney, who played Yeoman Rand? Continue reading “On The Best of Star Trek: The Original Series (2009)” →

The headline is a little misleading (Courteney Cox admits she doesn’t remember being on ‘Friends’) as what she says is a little different:

Courteney Cox made a shocking revelation when she admitted that she doesn’t remember much of her time filming “Friends.”

Cox, 57, recently sat down with “Today’s” Willie Geist for an extended “Sunday Sitdown” interview when the actress shared that she realized there were a lot of gaps in her memory when she appeared on “Friends: The Reunion” in May 2021.

“I should’ve watched all 10 seasons because when I did the reunion and was asked questions, I was like, ‘I don’t remember being there,’” she laughed. “Yeah. I don’t remember filming so many episodes.”

C’mon, man, that’s how memory kind of works when you get older. I have the first line of a poem about it–I remember my life like a history book–because I, too, remember facts about my earlier life, but vivid recollections are few and far between.

Which is a shame; I sometimes lament the loss of the flavor of things. The scent of type cleaner. The smell of the corridor leading to The Paint Dealer, a magazine where I was briefly a hyphenated-editor of some sort. I can’t even see the corridor in my mind, although I know it was up a flight of stairs and toward the back of the building. I know the facts, but I cannot reproduce the experience in my mind.

So this is not shocking that Courteney Cox does not remember every single day of her job twenty-some years ago.

Okay, apparently I did not do the comparison in the book report for Firefly: Still Flying (I compared Firefly to Battlestar Galactica because of a famed reboot).

But a more apt comparison might be to Star Trek.

Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987, roughly 20 years after the original series.

When TNG appeared, the Star Trek franchise had been pumping stuff out fairly well over 20 years. How does the Star Trek franchise compare to Firefly’s in the first 20 years?

I won’t belabor my point by delving into the number of games, video and IRL, that each franchise spawned. And just for fun, I won’t compare how the Star Trek franchise has fared in the last 20 years–but it does include 6 television series and 4 movies.

So one of them really has legs. The other has Disney needing content for Disney+. So maybe the next 20 years will be comparable between the two, at least in video formats. I think the Star Trek fans skew older and probably read more, so there might be more books for the Star Trek franchise until they die off and no longer buy the books. But time will tell.

Will Forte on reviving ‘MacGruber’ and his surprise real-life wedding

Eleven and a half years ago, we were one of the few people to see the MacGruber film in the theaters. On our anniversary. We’d seen Iron Man 2 and had dinner, and then I said, “Hey, want to see another movie?”

Oy, she hated it, but she did not divorce me over my taste in films.

It’s back now, but apparently it’s on a streaming service, so she is safe from my watching it.

I mentioned in September that I’d picked up a couple of inexpensive videocassettes with episodes of Route 66, the old black and white television program from the early 1960s. I finally made it through the last of the episodes–my television and movie watching in the autumn has been reduced to football, mostly–so allow me to sum up the episodes and what I thought of them.

In “One Tiger To A Hill”, Buz and Tod catch on as fishermen in Oregon, where they are hired by a widow with a beautiful daughter–and with whom they room. They encounter, and fight, another fisherman, a veteran who was broken by the war and perhaps his relationship with the daughter.

In “Welcome to the Wedding”, Buz and Tod are sent to the airport to pick up the maid of honor for a wedding they’re attending. She’s running late, so Tod goes to see if he can have them postpone the ceremony. Meanwhile, a psychopath convict in transit appeals to Buz to reach out and bring back his brother so that the convict can see him one last time. When Buz reluctantly helps out against his natural instincts, the “brother” is shot helping the convict escape, and he takes Buz hostage to help him go back to his old house to retrieve his stolen loot. A young Ed Asner plays the marshal in charge of transporting the prisoner.

In “How Much A Pound Is An Albatross”, a blonde Julie Newmar plays a Vicki, free spirited heiress riding across the country on a motorcycle “to live.” She draws Buz and Tod’s attention–they actually crash the Corvette into a store window as she roars past–and they bail her out, which gives Buz a chance to get to know her better and to let her expound on her Beatnik philosophy of living–which she is doing to hide the pain of losing her whole family in an accident. She takes Buz out into the desert and perhaps on purpose runs out of gas, making it so she misses her court date, but all’s well and she goes free.

In “Give the Old Cat a Tender Mouse”, Julie Newmar returns as Vicki, this time coming to Memphis to meet a man her banker thinks would be a good match for her as he is also young, rich, and reckless. She catches Buz’s attention–but he does not crash the car again–and ultimately, after spouting more Beatnik and Existentialite philosophy, decides not to marry and rides off on her motorcycle. This episode aired ten months after the previous one with Julie Newmar in it, presumably the next season.

So, these are the six episodes (including the ones I watched earlier) I will see of this program in my lifetime, likely. I am no television scholar (even if I read Marxist/Feminist inquiries into the impact of television on life of the bourgeois in the ten years after World War II and other scholarly works for sadism sometimes, but I can see a little how the show takes in, in bite-sized chunks (the episode being the meme of the day) the concerns of the day, including the meaning of life, vets with PTSD before the abbreviation became popular, and the psychology of psychopaths. The programs are not as dated as one might expect, although they lack computers and cell phones–being as I am of a certain age, probably that world is not as alien to me as it would be to one of those damn kids.

I must mention if you click this link and buy, I get a few grubzits:

Did someone say blonde Julie Newmar?
Continue reading “Catching Up With Route 66“ →

As I mentioned, I bought three video cassettes with episode of Route 66 on them. I had not ever seen the program before, although it might have still been in syndication when I was young, and it might have appeared on Nick at Nite at some point when we had cable when I was growing up, but I hadn’t seen it before. I knew the premise, though: two guys in a Corvette driving up and down the iconic highway having adventures. So I popped the first videocassette in, and….

The episode “The Newborn” starts out with two men on horseback and a guy in a cart riding through the desert. As I had thought that Route 66 was in color, I wondered if the videocassette was mislabeled and I ended up with a Western television series of some kind. Then I saw that the guy in the wagon was dressed in 20th century clothing–it was Buz Murdock, one of the main characters. He’s going to with the owner of the ranch and his psycho hand played by…. Is that Robert Duvall (whom I just saw in The Godfather(s) and whose film Secondhand Lions I just bought last weekend)? It is! They’re going to retrieve a pregnant Native American woman played by Arlene Martel–who wants to die, but not before the baby dies without her. Apparently, the protagonists (Buz and Tod, the guys with the Corvette) have caught on with a ranch in New Mexico and have worked there for about a month before the events of the episode. When the pregnant woman does not want to come, the ranch owner wants to bind her and carry her off. Buz objects, with his fist, which puts him on a collision course with the psycho hand. Especially when Buz and Tod quit the ranch and help the native woman run off and give birth. The back story, alluded to at times, was that the ranch hand’s son raped the native, who was a Christian who was planning to become a nun (rape of a nun? I just saw that in Change of Habit). The father, the ranch owner, made the son marry the woman, but he killed himself, and the ranch owner wants to raise the child as an Ivy (that is, in his family). But the mother, who dies in childbirth, wants the child raised in her pueblo, so Buz and Tod promise to take the child there–which leads to a final reckoning with the psycho henchmen who also dies.

The second episode, “…And the Cat Jumped Over The Moon”, takes place in Philadelphia, which is not on Route 66 at all, but never mind. They’re visiting a friend of Buz, a social worker who helped get Buz out of the gang life, and a young lady played by Susan Silo appears and says that unless he does something, the hit will be that night. So he leaves his small one bedroom apartment, telling the boys he’ll be back. He goes to an apartment building and meets with the gang on the roof, and according to the gang’s constitution (?), he can have a summit with them if he matches or bests the gang leader in a parkour-lite game of follow the leader. Unfortunately, the social worker loses his balance and falls from the building. As it happens, the girl is the fiancee of the former leader of the gang, and the gang wants to hit him to set an example that you cannot leave the gang. The gang kidnaps the girl, and the former leader comes to rescue her, and a knife fight is about to erupt, but Buz calls for a summit. The former leader of the gang takes Buz’s place in the parkour game and eventually bests the current gang leader, and the gang turns on their most recent former leader. As the credits roll, I notice that the former gang member was played by Jimmy Caan–who was also in The Godfather, and the current gang leader was played by a very young Martin Sheen.

So it was an interesting bit, and if you look at the IMDB entries of the bit players, how they played in a bunch of different series from the time–I’ll recognize a number of them in the Twilight Zone episodes I’ll be watching sometime soon.

And this series is a pleasant bit of throwback television, an episodic series which really shows that any kind of story might appear. But Buz and Tod have left three bodies in their wake in just these two episodes. But Tod does mean Death in German. So with “Buz” and “Tod” as the stars, perhaps this is a story of a pair of spree killers on the rampage.

I’ve got two more videocassettes with other episodes, which

I must mention if you click this link and buy, I get a few grubzits:

But I did mention Arlene Martel and Susan Solo by name, so let’s take a look.
Continue reading “First Exposure to Route 66 (1961)” →

‘Reading Rainbow’ legend LeVar Burton wants to host ‘Jeopardy!’:

Amid mixed reception for the latest crop of “Jeopardy!” guest hosts, Twitter is campaigning for one beloved celeb to succeed Alex Trebek as full-time MC — former “Reading Rainbow” host LeVar Burton.

LeVar Burton on the left, Geordi La Forge on the right. You see? Completely different people.

They might as well have just said science fiction author LeVar Burton.

I know, I know, he has been associated with Reading Rainbow for a couple more years than the Star Trek franchise. But aside from the 90s kids who make up modern tastemakers, who associates him with that? More people than think of him as Kunta Kinte, but not many.

I just can’t quit turning a viewing of the New Shows Of…. video compilations that Ace links to into personal reminiscences and quizzes.

Yesterday, he linked to the new shows of 1984.

How many do I remember/did I watch?

As always, I’ve bolded the ones I remember and added a link to references to the show on this blog.

• Punky Brewster. C’mon, man. Although, to be honest, it was a bit a little girl, so I probably only watched it reluctantly. I understand Soleil Moon Frye has a new documentary about being a kid celebrity in the 1980s out. Which I will bold in the future, for although I will remember she did it, I won’t watch it.
• It’s Your Move. Short lived, to be sure. I remember when Jason Bateman tweeted about a show getting a second life in 2011, and I responded I hoped it was this show (It was Arrested Development. Man, that was ten years ago.)
• Charles in Charge. I think I wanted to be Scott Baioish when I grew up.
• Who’s the Boss?. Kind of like Mr. Belvedere if Mr. Belvedere were a former boxer. Or like Charles in Charge if Charles were a former boxer. Also, Alyssa Milano.
• The Cosby Show. Wow, those kids were young in 1984. So was Cosby. So were we all, except for you damn kids who weren’t born yet.
• Three’s a Crowd, the follow-up to Three’s Company. I didn’t see this as much as the original because I saw the original more in syndication.
• Dreams.
• E/R. But not that ER. The first note in each Wikipedia entry is that this is not that.
• People Do The Craziest Things. I mean, I think I remember this. The middle 80s were full of these humor segment shows.
• Highway to Heaven, which I mentioned just last year in Know Your Frenches.
• Finder of Lost Loves.
• Glitter. Although by the title, I can tell what it’s about.
• Paper Dolls.
• Call to Glory. I thought this was a miniseries, actually.
• V. Which was a mini-series. The television series came several years later, after V: The Final Battle. I most recently referred to it only last year.
• Murder, She Wrote. I know I have mentioned that my mother loved this show, and that I read one of the paperback novels based on it that I had given to her in 2010, not long after she passed–and I still have plenty of them floating around yet to be read.
• Jessie. I want to say I remember the Bionic Woman’s later show, but I am not sure. It wasn’t around long enough for syndication, though.
• Partners in Crime, a detective show starring Lynda Carter and Loni Anderson. I want to say I remember Wonder Woman’s later show, but, again, I am not sure. Note that both Jessie and this program have similar titles with a puzzle motif. Were they related?
• Hot Pursuit. I wasn’t sure I remembered it until we got to the point of the intro where the woman says, “Find her, or find them before they find her,” and the guy raises his eyes and one is another color. I didn’t watch it, though.
• Cover Up. I did watch this one which was far too short, and it’s a shame about Jon-Erik Hexum.
• Hunter. I also watched this, and I referred to it in 2006. I might even say, “Works for me,” and try to sound like Hunter from time to time.
• Hawaiian Heat. What if Magnum, P.I. were a buddy show?
• Miami Vice. I referred to it when I published my earlier essay Name That Muzak on this blog, and I did buy the soundtrack on CD a couple years back for some reason.

That must be my high score, ainna? 15 of 23?

You can see previous results and musings on the years 1982, 1983, and 1987. Which means I have more than half of the decade to go whenever Ace posts them. Or, in case he already has before I paid attention, when I think of it.

Ace posts again a link to a New Shows of 1980-something’s title credits, and again, I feel the need to watch the whole video and annotate which ones I remember or, heaven forbid, refer to in my daily life almost forty years later (I’m not stuck in amber–you’re loose in the aether).

Again, I’ve bolded the ones I remember and linked to any referred to on this blog.

• Square Pegs, the Freaks and Geeks for our parents’ generation. Ace calls it “a show that everyone remembers, but I’m not sure anyone actually watched it.” Which is true for me.
• Gloria, a All in the Family spin-off. Not one of the successful ones.
• Silver Spoons. Referred to in passing for the Jason Bateman connection; I am surprised that I did not refer to it on the blog as my inspiration for having full sized video games in my home. I know I’ve mentioned that on Facebook anyway.
• Family Ties. I called Michael J. Fox Alex P. Keaton here; I have a tie-in children’s book somewhere on the shelves here. Perhaps I should read it among the movie paperbacks.
• Star in the Family. Starring Brian Dennehy and Michael Dudikoff. In a sitcom.
• It Takes Two. I want to say I remember it, but probably I remember the song (which is not the theme song for the show).
• Cheers C’mon, man. Although I don’t see a reference to it on this blog, I did refer to it in real life recently as an example of how 80s sitcoms were crass and sexual at times because I remember Rhea Perlman’s character telling someone to announce that she has the thigh sweats for a man.
• Newhart. I saw this a bunch for some reason back in the day. And although I don’t seem to have used the “I’m Larry. This is my brother Daryl. And this is my other brother Daryl.” bit on the blog, I have used it in real life within the last decade (or as I like to say now, “Recently.”).
• The New Odd Couple. Ron Glass’s other show before Firefly. Although I think he had a couple back then, ainna?
• Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!. C’mon, man. You can still hear Jack Palance saying, “Believe it. Or not,” can’t you?
• St. Elsewhere. I can even remember the real name of the hospital without prompting. It was like E.R. for your parents, but with the voice of KITT. But it was a nine o’clock show, so I never saw it as it was past my bedtime.
• Bring Em Back Alive. Which is apparently an 80s show based on the life of trapper Frank Buck, who played himself in Africa Screams.
• Tales of the Gold Monkey. I thought I had mentioned this somewhere, but a quick search says no. I wish I had seen this when I was younger.
• Voyagers! I might remember this, but I never watched it. Basically, it’s like a Sliders for your grandparents. Because Sliders isn’t for kids today. Come to think of it, maybe Sliders is for your grandparents now. Time flies even without a portal.
• The Powers of Matthew Star. You know, I would have been right in the target audience for this one. But I missed it.
• Knight Rider. You know I saw this. I corrected trivia about it in the book report for Super Incredible Trivia.
• Tucker’s Witch. Never heard of it.
• Remington Steele. Mentioned here when I listed a set of television private investigators who were actually private investigators.
• The Devlin Connection. Featuring computers and 80s tech fonts which look like Comic Sans to us in the 21st century. I missed it, though.
• Matt Houston whose star Lee Horsley, as you might remember, made my aunt’s toes curl.
• Gavilan. This was Robert Urich’s show before Spenser: For Hire and after Vega$. I never saw it, but I remember the bit from the promos, also in the titles, where he punches a guy in the face and shakes his hand because it hurt. I’m not saying I’m a Robert Urich fan, per se, but I did create a test user named Dan Tanna on my job just this week.
• The Quest. What is that all about? But it illustrates that certain actors had their runs in different programs through the 1980s: Robert Urich, Perry King, Stephen Collins–these guys always seemed to be leading a television series, even though many of them were pretty short-lived.
• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I didn’t watch it, though, as I was not into Westerns. Also, Richard Dean Anderson was one of those guys, although he hit it big with MacGyver.

I was thinking I did really well on this particular quiz, but it’s only 13 of 23. But I think that’s all of the ones that ran for more than one season and one or two others.

I guess that was a peak year for television for me: My parents were separated, we were on welfare, and my mother could not drive, so she could not take us to the library, so it lent itself to a lot of television.

Also, in 1982, look at the two Raiders of the Lost Ark tag-alongs: Tales of the Gold Monkey and Bring Em Back Alive. And a science fiction bit with Star Wars sound effects in the titles (The Powers of Matthew Star) and a Time Bandits tag-along (Voyagers!). Very derivative stuff, and the television-sized budgets didn’t hold anyone, apparently.

Still, better than I’ll do in another forty years. Or even this year looking back to 1990-something.

Over at Ace of Spades HQ, my friend (I say because he’s pimped my books on the Sunday Morning Book Thread and has netted me more sales than an In The Mail mention on Instapundit) Oregon Muse has a feature every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that includes memes and a little game called “Who Dis?” wherein you are to guess a male and a female celebrity and their connection.

Unfortunately, today he makes a probably common mistake: confusing Heather Thomas with Heather Locklear.

Photo 1:	Photo 5:
Heather Thomas	Heather Locklear

I mean, in the 1980s, teenaged boys would not have made this mistake, but it is not the 1980s nor are we teenagers any more.

I mean, who didn’t have the Heather Thomas towel poster?

Well, I didn’t have it. I think my brother did.

I didn’t mention the error in the comments at AoSHQ (nor Heather Thomas’s connection to Lee Majors, which is the television program The Fall Guy) because I’m a lurker there who doesn’t comment. Also, I wanted to include pictures of who might be the second and third hottest Heathers ever. What, with the picture of Morena Bacarrin yesterday, it’s pretty clear that Musings from Brian J. is becoming one of those kinds of blogs. Perhaps I’ll even bother to send one or both of these posts to Wombat-Socho at The Other McCain for official Rule 5 post consideration. But probably not. I’m too lazy to comment and too lazy to linkwhore.

Earlier this week, I watched a video that listed the new shows of 1983 and turned it into a quiz wherein I listed the ones I remembered.

I have done the same with the 24 New Shows of 1987 (26 if you count the two Fox shows mentioned but not depicted).

As then, I have bolded the shows I remember and included links to any I mentioned by name on this blog.

• Dolly!, a variety show. Come on, kids did not watch these.
• Women in Prison, a sitcom?
• A Different World, which I didn’t watch. But I didn’t watch The Cosby Show, either.
• Full House
• Second Chance
• Everything’s Relative complete with shot of the World Trade Center in the beginning of the intro.
• My Two Dads; I remember a single episode, where they give a party and try to engage the teens in conversation, and the daughter imagines them as really old.
• I Married Dora; I am pretty sure I watched this every week and was very disappointed when it was cancelled. I remember the ending of the last show, where they break down the fourth wall and say they were cancelled and all bow. Also, this program more than Down and Out in Beverly Hills caused my crush on Elizabeth Peña.
• Buck James
• A Year in the Life
• thirtysomething; although this came on at nine, so I didn’t watch it. Not that I would have. Thirty-something was old.
• Frank’s Place; I’d like to think I kind of remember this, but not for sure.
• The “Slap” Maxwell Story
• Hooperman; although all I remember is that John Ritter was the title character. Good enough for trivia nights.
• Beauty and the Beast
• Once a Hero
• The Oldest Rookie
• The Law and Harry McGraw; although, again, only the title and that Jerry Orbach was in it.
• Jake and the Fatman; Joe Penny’s show after Riptide
• J.J. Starbuck
• Leg Work
• Private Eye; I want to say I remember this, but there were so many shows (and video games with the same or similar names.
• Wiseguy; didn’t see it though, as I think it was a nine o’clock start.
• Tour of Duty; also here and here. I actually have the whole series on DVD as I previously mentioned.

So I rmemember a bunch of them, but only watched two of them back in the day (watching the videocassettes that my father recorded with him and my brother counts).

Weird; I thought I had a lot of time to watch cable in the old days; however, by 1987, we were living in the trailer and we had cable, so I was watching a bunch of movies on Showtime over and over as I have previously mentioned.