Not Even with Cleavage!

A new Roku channel shows "Square Pegs" on weekend mornings.  I hadn't seen an episode since I watched them over 40 years ago on Monday nights on CBS, but the first one I saw was probably the one I best remembered - Johnny Slash is bizarrely good at hitting home runs for the school's baseball team.  Unfortunately, he can only play home games because the fields at other schools look different.  Steve Sax makes a cameo, and they mentioned that he had just been named Rookie of the Year about 6 times.

I also always like Tracy Nelson as Jennifer.  She has the Valley Girl thing going on, even though the show is basically set in the New York area, but also has a proto-Madonna vibe.  She's also true Hollywood royalty, being the daughter of Ricky Nelson, sister of Nelson Nelson, granddaughter of Ozzie and Harriet, niece of Mark Harmon and Pam Dawber .... 

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh

The Pisces were coached by Sacramento's top investigative TV reporter, Jeffrey Trout.

Update:  Nicholas Pryor apparently and coincidentally died this week.  I'll also remember him as a passenger in "Airplane!" and from a couple of "Murder She Wrote" episodes.

Theories that Probably Aren't True But Should Be

1.  "The Wizard of Oz" is an allegory for bimetallism and the gold standard.

2.  The movie version of "The Shining" is an allegory for the genocide of indigenous peoples of the Americas.

At least the theories seemed compelling when I first read them as a kid.

Kennedy Center Honors

The latest group of Kennedy Center honorees has been announced, and the organizers somehow resisted the temptation to recognize yet another British rock star.  They finally got around to selecting Francis Ford Coppola, which seems overdue given that his more prolific peers Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg and even his less prolific protege George Lucas were honored a long time ago.  I read a very tedious online article about how it's somehow bad that dead rock stars like Jerry Garcia aren't honored as part of groups like the Grateful Dead, this despite the fact that the honors are never given posthumously.  The same article didn't have a problem with a building, in the case the Apollo Theater, being honored.  

It's a good thing that true architect of rock and roll Little Richard didn't live to see a building selected instead of him.   

"Eight Is Enough" S4:E18 The Commitment

High school senior Tommy is obviously profoundly insane and believes that Mary's gorgeous med school classmate (played by Markie Post with late 70s Farrah-esque hair) has the hots for him.

Al Whited

My biggest accomplishment in college quiz bowl was helping to establish the Gordon Carper Lifetime Achievement Award when I was helping edit 1999 ACF Nationals.  I first suggested the idea of an award for contributions to academic competition to Andrew Yaphe, who of course was unimpressed.  I then mentioned it to Al Whited, and he got REALLY excited.  Apparently, he had been thinking of something similar and had it all mapped out - it should be named for Gordon Carper who would be the first recipient a la the Fermi Award.  I actually bothered to check with Dr. Carper to see if it was ok to name it for him, and he said, "Well, if you and your little friends want to name an award for me after all of these years then who am I to object?"  

Al Whited of course was a great guy and master storyteller who apparently singlehandedly wired pretty much the entire 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta for telecommunications.  They now appear to have a veterans committee selection each year, and Al would certainly be a worthy companion to his former Yellow Jacket teammate Jim Dendy.

"Eight Is Enough" S3:E27 Marriage and Other Flights of Fancy Part 2

The single strangest "Eight Is Enough" episode, it includes only one Bradford (David), lots and lots of hang gliding, and a rivalry between a young hotshot glider and an older retired Air Force pilot who are never mentioned again in the series.  At least most of the first part episode not only had the Bradfords but the well-worn plot elements of David and Janet fighting about her career as a lawyer and Tom Bradford unknowingly promoting pornography (he finally gets a short story published, but it's in the Playboy stand-in "Man's Man Monthly").  I can't tell if the episode is supposed to be a backdoor pilot or if one of the producers really, really wanted to promote hang gliding as a sport.