Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Obit watch: April 17, 2018.

Tuesday, April 17th, 2018

Mike the Musicologist and I have a running joke: the decline of Western civilization began when men stopped wearing hats on a daily basis. We’re both doing our part to bring back the hat era.

I bring that up now because one of the great hat wearers of our time passed away yesterday.

Harry Anderson. Asheville Citizen-Times (more of a retrospective than an obit)

Of course, he wasn’t just a guy in a hat:

While he earned critical acclaim and amassed a devoted fan base on “Night Court,” Mr. Anderson never fancied himself an actor. “I’m a magician, or a performer, by nature, and that’s always what I’ve been,” Mr. Anderson told WGN-TV in Chicago in 2014.
“I was never really an actor,” he said. “I was a magician who fell into a part on ‘Cheers.’”

He was a good one, too. And for what it’s worth, I loved “Night Court” then, and I love it now. (I wish I could find video of Harry Stone revealing his custom bowling ball. If I could find someone to make me a bowling ball like that, I’d take up bowling.)

In honor of the late great Harry the Hat, why not go out and pick up a nice hat for yourself, or someone you love? Not a ballcap or a gimmie hat: I mean a real, genuine, honest to God hat, like a fedora or a porkpie or something. Let’s bring hats back, for Harry, and for civilization.

Posted in Hats, Magic, Obits, Rhode Island, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 16, 2018.

Monday, April 16th, 2018

It was another busy weekend: birthday dinner, BAG day (post forthcoming), lots of running around…so let us get caught up.

Art Bell, noted radio host.

For more than two decades, Mr. Bell, who was 72 when he died April 13 at his home in Pahrump, Nev., stayed up all night talking to those people on the radio, patiently encouraging them to tell their stories about alien abductions, crop circles, anthrax scares and, as he put it, all things “seen at the edge of vision.”

I used to listen to a lot of late night radio, but my time preceded Art Bell. I know someone whose job requires them to drive in sometimes late at night, and back in the day they were an Art Bell listener.

Tim O’Connor, character actor. He had a long-running role on the “Peyton Place” TV series, and also did guest shots in just about everything. (Including “Mannix”.)

Milos Forman, one of the great directors. (“Amadeus”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”)

And finally, R. Lee Ermey. Borepatch.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Master Ninja theme song!

Tuesday, April 10th, 2018

By way of Lee Goldberg’s blog, I have just found out that the complete 1980’s TV series, The Master, is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. (Well, at least, per Amazon. I’ll believe the Blu-ray exists when I see it.)

This is slightly less obscure than other TV shows I’ve discussed (for reasons I’ll get into shortly), but for those who have never encountered The Master: Lee Van Cleef is “John Peter McAllister”, a “white ninja”. (He “stayed behind” in Japan after WWII and supposedly learned the ninja arts.) McAllister returns to the US to search for his daughter and teams up with “Max Keller” (Timothy Van Patten), a drifter with a van. Together they wander the country looking for the daughter and meddling in other people’s affairs helping others with their problems. Meanwhile McAllister is pursued by “Okasa” (Sho Kosugi), a former student who has a grudge against him for leaving the ninja clan or some other stupid horsepucky.

I never saw an actual episode of the show, so my judgement is perhaps unfair. But: it wasn’t good. Think a post-BJ and the Bear series or a variant on The A-Team, but featuring two people with no charisma.

How do I know? Well, the series was recut into “movies” (basically two episodes each) and released on video. (It is unclear to me how they got seven movies out of thirteen episodes, if they did two per movie. But I digress.) Later on, as I’m sure many of you know, Mystery Science Theater 3000 did the first two “movies” (episodes 322 and 324) which is how I saw them.

And now you know…the rest of the story.

The Master on Wikipedia.

Take us out, bots.

Posted in TV | Comments Closed

Quaint and curious volumes of forgotten television.

Monday, April 9th, 2018

I don’t remember how I stumbled across this, other than we were watching “Ironside” (with Burgess Meredith!) while waiting for “Kolchak” to start.

Anyway: I found out that there was a detective show in the mid-1970s called, believe it or not, “Khan!”.

No, tragically, it did not star Shatner or Ricardo Montalbán. Actually, the title character was played by Khigh Dhiegh. Unless you’re as geeky as I am, you may not recognize that name: he was a fairly prominent character actor, perhaps best known for playing Wo Fat repeatedly on the good “Hawaii 5-0”. (He also played the brainwashing expert in the original Manchurian Candidate.)

(Short shameful confession: while I like the good “5-0”, I do have a lot of reservations. Besides Jack Lord’s ego and politics, my biggest one is: I’ve never liked the Wo Fat episodes. I find them mostly unrealistic and annoying. Yes, I know, I need to go out for blueberry-almond martinis with Gregg Easterbrook. But I digress.)

Also interesting: Ivan Dixon was involved as a director on the series. (Note to self: I still need to pick up a copy of The Spook Who Sat By the Door for movie night.)

So why have I never heard of this? Well, it only lasted four episodes. I suspect this is also why it hasn’t had a DVD release.

As an extra bonus, because I know there are a couple of other Kolchak fans out there (Hi, Pat!): “It Couldn’t Happen Here…” in which the bloggers review all of the episodes of the original series, including the TV movies and the three unproduced scripts.

I’m not sure I agree 100% with their reviews and conclusions, but it fills in the blanks on some of the episodes I’ve missed.

Posted in 1970s, Bookmarks, TV | Comments Closed

Random note.

Wednesday, April 4th, 2018

I’ve been binge-watching episodes of “Seconds From Disaster“.

One thing that kind of surprises me is that there are a lot of disasters – serious disasters, causing major loss of life – that I’ve just simply never heard of until I stumbled across the relevant SFD episode. Mont Blanc Tunnel fire? Totally missed that one. Kaprun funicular disaster? How did I manage to miss that?

Interesting safety note: one of the talking heads on the Kaprun SFD episode made what I thought was a really profound point. Fire will always do the unexpected. Fire doesn’t necessarily behave in an intuitive way. 12 people survived at Kaprun because they ran downhill, towards and past the fire at the rear of the train. Which is counter-intuitive: why would you run towards the fire? Because:

The tunnel acted like a giant blast furnace, sucking oxygen in from the bottom and rapidly sent the poisonous smoke, heat and the fire itself billowing upwards.

Everybody who went uphill away from the fire died.

Also interesting: the trench effect.

Posted in Safety, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 2, 2018.

Monday, April 2nd, 2018

Man, it’s been a really busy couple of days.

Deborah Carrington, actress. Among her credits: Thumbelina in the original “Total Recall”, Valerie Vomit in “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie”, various Ewoks, and the “Bride of Chucky”.

Stéphane Audran, Babette in “Babette’s Feast”.

Delores Taylor, also an actress. She appeared in a bunch of her husband, Tom Laughlin’s, films, including “Billy Jack” and the two sequels.

Anita Shreve, noted novelist.

Separated at birth?

Former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt


INS reporter Carl Kolchak.

Finally, noted TV producer Steven Bochco. (“Hill Street Blues”, “LA Law”, “NYPD Blue”, “Doogie Howser MD”. And where’s my damn “Hooperman” box set? I’m not kidding: I remember that being a kind of fun show.)

Let’s go out with a bang, shall we?

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 20, 2018.

Tuesday, March 20th, 2018

Nokie Edwards, guitar player for The Ventures.

This is here mostly as a transparent excuse for a musical interlude. I’ll put in a jump.

(more…)

Posted in 1970s, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes, mostly legal, March 15, 2018.

Thursday, March 15th, 2018

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have samurai swords.

In the immortal words of Hank Williams, Jr., it’s just a family tradition.

Interesting #1:

Exonerations caused by official misconduct: 84
Well over half of the people exonerated last year were initially convicted because of official misconduct, such as officers threatening witnesses, analysts falsifying tests or officials withholding evidence that would have cleared the defendant.

No-crime exonerations: 66
In just under half of the exonerations last year, defendants were wrongfully convicted in cases in which no crime was committed. This included more than a dozen drug possession cases, 11 child sex abuse cases and nine murder cases.

On a totally unrelated note, the state of Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains and it’s hard to get drugs for lethal injections, has decided to start using nitrogen gas instead. (Subject to judicial approval.) I’ve seen other folks call for this as being a much more painless and humane alternative to lethal injection, but OK seems to be the closest to actually doing this.

(Yes, I know: “You know what else is a painless and humane alternative to lethal injection? Not executing people.” And yes, that seems especially relevant in light of the previous item. One of these days, I will write that essay for you guys on the death penalty and my complicated feelings about it.)

Herman Bell has been granted parole. Mr. Bell, along with Anthony Bottom and Albert Washington (members of the Black Liberation Army), executed NYPD officers Joseph A. Piagentini and Waverly M. Jones on May 21, 1971.

In a statement condemning the decision, Commissioner James P. O’Neill recalled how Mr. Bell and his co-conspirators “shot Officer Piagentini 22 times, including with his own service revolver — as the dying officer pleaded for his own life.”

Mr. Bell has been in prison for 47 years. Mr. Washington is still in prison. Mr. Bottom died in 2000.

Toys ‘R’ no longer us.

Headline:

Claire Foy, Queen on ‘The Crown,’ Was Paid Less Than Her Onscreen Husband

Body:

Mr. [Matt] Smith came to Netflix as an established actor in Britain, most notably as the titular character on the BBC staple “Doctor Who” from 2010 to 2013 — a fact that informed the producers’ decision around salary, they said at the conference.

Aside from a role in 2015 in the Golden Globe-winning BBC mini-series “Wolf Hall,” Ms. Foy, 33, was a relative unknown when she was cast in “The Crown.”

The show’s producers have promised that, from now on, “Nobody gets paid more than the queen.” Oh, by the way: they’re also recasting the show: the queen will now be played by Olivia Colman.

You know, you would think that Sorkin and company would have worked out all the permissions issues before actually trying to stage the play…

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, NYPD, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 5, 2018.

Monday, March 5th, 2018

Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile under four minutes.

One of the things I always wondered: how does a medical student find time to become a record setting runner? Sort of an answer:

“Now that I am taking up a hospital appointment,” he said in an address to the English Sportswriters Association that December, “I shall have to give up international athletics. I shall not have sufficient time to put up a first-class performance. There would be little satisfaction for me in a second-rate performance, and it would be wrong to give one when representing my country.”

And I rather like this quote:

“He was running on 28 training miles a week,” Sebastian Coe, who set the world record in the mile three different times, once said. “He did it on limited scientific knowledge, with leather shoes in which the spikes alone probably weighed more than the tissue-thin shoes today, on tracks at which speedway riders would turn up their noses. So as far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great runs of all time.”

David Ogden Stiers. It is perhaps worth calling out that he was more than Major Charles Emerson Winchester III: he was the announcer in “THX-1138”, Cogsworth the clock in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” (and he had other roles in a lot of Disney films), and acted in four of Woody Allen’s movies.

In a statement after his death, Loretta Swit, who played Maj. Margaret (Hot Lips) Houlihan on “M*A*S*H,” called Mr. Stiers “my sweet, dear shy friend,” adding, “Working with him was an adventure.”

I’m throwing this in so I have an excuse to mention: over the weekend, I caught an episode of “Match Game” with Ms. Swit. She was wearing a very unfortunate yellow and black striped outfit: it made her look like a giant bumblebee.

Sometimes, I miss the 70s. Then I’m reminded of why I shouldn’t.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

World’s Most Corrupt Police Departments.

Friday, February 16th, 2018

Coming up on the Justice Network.

(Well, they need to do something, now that those jerks have dropped the midnight Sunday “Most Shocking”.)

(Seriously, Justice Network: was anyone asking for a three hour block of “Rescue 911”? And why are you also airing another three hour block of “psychic” frauds?)

(But I digress.)

I’ve written before about the criminal Philadelphia police department. Latest development:

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office last year secretly compiled a list of Philadelphia police officers with a history of lying, racial bias, or brutality, in a move to block them from testifying in court.

Of course the list is secret.

The list was intended only for internal use, as a guide to determine when a potentially tainted officer’s testimony should be used. Under the office’s policy, front-line prosecutors were instructed to get top-level permission before calling such an officer. Prosecutors, according to sources, did not want to release the list out of concern for the officers’ privacy rights and the broad impact it might have on past convictions involving the officers.

As the article notes, this isn’t unheard of: Seattle is cited as an example, and I seem to recall hearing that the LA district attorney’s office had a similar list. (Edited to add: link to recent coverage of the LADA list. Additional. Denton County has a list, too.) It seems to me, though (and if there are any legal experts out there, please correct me if I’m wrong) that the places that have these lists of problem officers also have a lot of other police related issues, too.

And as a by the way, you know who created the list? Seth Williams.

(Hattip.)

I’ve been sort of negligent in covering the ongoing Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force cases. To be honest, I’ve been a little busy, things have me down, and the most recent trial got pretty widespread national coverage. (Spoiler: two detectives were convicted on Monday.)

As you would expect, now that there’s convictions, there’s also weeping and wailing from the politicians. Which usually isn’t interesting, but:

State Del. Bilal Ali of Baltimore called for disbanding the police department entirely, citing Camden, N.J., as an example where the police force was rebuilt. He said the corruption and wrongdoing highlighted in the trial is an “ongoing experience” for many residents, and have not been sufficiently addressed by the consent decree or other efforts at reforms.

(Previously on Camden.)

My first thought: if you disband the Baltimore PD, where is David Simon going to get material for season six of “The Wire”?

My second thought: if you were going to disband a police department for being corrupt and out of control, B’more would not be my first choice. In order, I think I’d take Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia before Charm City.

Posted in Cops, Law, TV | Comments Closed

Nostalgia is (kind of) a moron…

Thursday, February 8th, 2018

Back when I was a small child, I loved “Emergency“.

Now that I’m an adult, and have the chance to work from home some days, I can watch the show on one of those retro TV networks. And you know…I hate to admit this…and maybe it is just the episodes I’ve caught…but it’s not as good as I remember it.

There are two episodes that I recall, but haven’t seen come round yet: one where Dr. Brackett and the paramedics have to do emergency field surgery on a guy who fired a grenade round into his gut, and another where the paramedics may have to do a field amputation to rescue a man trapped by a building collapse. (I don’t remember if they actually took the guy’s leg off or not.)

What brings this to mind? About six months ago, Collin County (where Plano is) realized they had a problem: there’s a lot of construction going on, and with that, a lot of potential for workers to become badly trapped by construction accidents. Collin County firefighters worked with a local hospital (Medical City Plano, also a Level 1 trauma center) to develop something called the “pre-hospital amputation team” in case it was ever needed.

Last week, it was.

Firefighters called Gamber on their way to the accident scene. He summoned trauma surgeon Al West, who arrived by helicopter 41 minutes after the accident.
He carried a black plastic toolbox that held everything he would need to free Palma: a saw, scissors, clamps, dressings. This was the first time in his 20 years operating on trauma patients that he wouldn’t have a sterile operating room.

…

Firefighters held Palma’s body so he wouldn’t fall after the amputation and West began cutting above the right knee. The machine had already partially severed the leg and West cut the remaining tissue. Palma’s left leg was also injured — with a fracture and muscle damage, tests would later show.

…

Ten minutes after West arrived, Palma was free, said Vetterick, a former flight medic, who supervised the 20 or so firefighters working with the doctors near Main Street and Independence Parkway.

The guy’s still in critical condition, but expected to live. The doctors say there’s about a 75% chance he’ll be able to walk normally with a prosthetic leg. Here’s his GoFundMe, if you feel like kicking in a few bucks for the family.

Hattip: SwiftOnSecurity.

Posted in 1970s, Geek, TV | 1 Comment »

TMQ Watch: January 30, 2018.

Tuesday, January 30th, 2018

Ah, the week between the end of the playoffs and the Superb Owl: or, as we like to call it, “the most boring week in sports”.

What does TMQ cover this week? Would you believe there’s almost nothing about television shows?

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

(more…)

Posted in NFL, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 20, 2018.

Saturday, January 20th, 2018

Paul Bocuse, one of the great French chefs.

I don’t have my copy of Alice Let’s Eat in front of me, but I remember Trillin quoting Bocuse: “Without butter, without cream, there is no point to cooking.” Bocuse was 91.

Dorothy Malone, Texan and retired actress. She was in Douglas Sirk’s “Written on the Wind” (and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress). She also played Constance McKenzie for four out of five seasons of the “Peyton Place” TV series. (She was written out after season four.)

Dorothy Eloise Maloney was born on Jan. 30, 1924, in Chicago and grew up in Dallas, one of five children of Robert Ignatius Maloney and the former Esther Smith. Two of her sisters died of polio in childhood, and a brother was fatally struck by lightning in his teens.

Stansfield Turner, former CIA director.

Peter Mayle, author. I never read A Year in Provence but from the description it sounds a lot like a French version of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.

Posted in Books, Food, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 14, 2018.

Sunday, January 14th, 2018

Some more from the past couple of days:

Keith Jackson, legendary announcer.

Edgar Ray Killen is burning in Hell.

David Toschi passed away a week ago Saturday. FotB RoadRich mentioned this to me in the middle of the week – he saw it on a low-rent cable channel – but I had a lot of trouble finding a good obit. I couldn’t find the actual obit on SFGate: I was only able to get at an arthive.org version.

Anyway, “David who”? He was a famous San Francisco PD detective. He was one of the lead investigators on the Zodiac killings.

He was removed from the case after revelations that in 1976 he had sent several letters praising his own work to a San Francisco newspaper writer under fake names.
“It was a foolish thing to do,” he acknowledged at the time.

I don’t remember where I picked up this detail (maybe in the archive.org version), but that “newspaper writer” the NYT doesn’t name? Armistead Maupin, who was working as a reporter for the SF Chron at the time.

But that wasn’t the only reason he was semi-famous, at least among us common sewers connoisseurs:

Mr. Toschi was a personality in the police department even before his involvement with the Zodiac case, so much so that Steve McQueen had borrowed from him for the fictional police officer he played in the 1968 movie “Bullitt.”
“They literally were filming in my dad’s office,” Ms. Toschi-Chambers said. “My dad took off his jacket, and Steve McQueen said, ‘What is that?’ And my dad said, ‘That’s my holster.’ And Steve McQueen told the director, ‘I want one of those.’ ”

(I wonder what that holster was: and if it’s out of production, how much do vintage ones go for? There’s a discussion on defensivecarry.com, but I can’t judge how accurate it is.)

Clint Eastwood also drew on Mr. Toschi for his portrayal of the title character in “Dirty Harry,” Don Siegel’s influential 1971 movie about a San Francisco police inspector, Harry Callahan, who hunts a psychopathic killer. Mr. Toschi, though, was bothered by Callahan’s penchant for administering his own brand of justice. He is said to have walked out of a screening of the movie, which was released when the Zodiac investigation was in full swing.

(Damn shame. He missed out. And I still haven’t seen “Zodiac”.)

Edited to add: this might lead to a longer post later, but: there are certainly worse hobbies in the world than engaging in Steve McQueen cosplay. Though I will concede that could get expensive quick, especially if you go full “Bullitt” and start looking for a Mustang.

Posted in 1970s, California Über Alles, Cops, Guns, History, Law, Movies, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 8, 2018.

Monday, January 8th, 2018

A roundup of obits from the past couple of days:

John Young, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle astronaut. NASA.

Jerry Van Dyke, noted television actor (“My Mother the Car”).

Peggy Cummins. She’s mostly forgotten now – she stopped acting in the 1960s – but she was the female lead opposite John Dall in the famous 1950 noir film “Gun Crazy”.

Start with a badass, end with a badass: Ulrich Wegener, founder of the German Border Protection Group 9 (aka Grenzschutzgruppe 9):

The unit, also known as GSG-9, was created after the September 1972 attack on the Summer Olympics in Munich, when Palestinian militants kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes. Ill prepared for terrorism, and lacking a tactical sniper team, the German police botched an attempt to rescue the athletes, who were killed, along with one police officer and five of the eight kidnappers.

One of his first accomplishments: Lufthansa Flight 181.

Around 2 a.m. on Oct. 18, Somali soldiers lit a fire 65 yards in front of the jet, creating a diversion. As the hostage takers entered the cockpit to see what was going on, Colonel Wegener and his commandos stormed the aircraft. Over the next seven minutes, three militants were killed and the fourth was wounded. Three passengers, a flight attendant and a commando were injured. But all 86 passengers, along with the four surviving crew members, were saved.

…

Later that night, three members of the Red Army Faction — Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe and Andreas Baader — were found dead in their cells, having committed suicide, and Mr. Schleyer, the abducted executive, was murdered.

…

Briefly held by American troops as a prisoner of war, he returned home, to what became East Germany, to finish his schooling.
Caught handing out leaflets critical of the Communist government, he was jailed for 18 months. Upon his release in 1952, he fled to West Berlin, where he went on to join the police.

(I haven’t found a source I consider completely trustworthy for this, but there are reports that Colonel (at the time) Wegener also participated with the Israeli Sayeret Matkal in the raid on Entebbe.)

Posted in Geek, History, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »