My Life and Code

As big a fan I am of both classic television and the 1970s as a whole, it's a little surprising that I'd never watched the TV show Taxi . Granted, my fascination with the '70s is relatively recent (probably less than 15 years), but it's taken me this long to finally get around to watching it. I've just begun watching the series for the first time, and am reviewing each episode as I do so. If you're interested (or just plain bored ), you can check out my reviews at one of my other blogs, Classic TV World ,  here .

When I was a kid, I loved whenever I would happen across Siskel and Ebert’s TV show. I think it was shown at 7pm on Saturdays in my area, but I don’t remember ever setting out intentionally to watch it — I’d just happen to catch it. I always enjoyed getting to watch clips from the new movies they’d be reviewing, and hearing them give their thoughts — and often debate — about the films. It was one of two movie review shows I was aware of, the other being Sneak Previews  (which I learned only relatively recently had originally been their  show). But I preferred Siskel and Ebert’s At The Movies  (and later Siskel and Ebert and The Movies ). It wasn’t just the format of the show, but its hosts. And thanks to YouTube, I’ve been able to revisit a lot of their reviews, including a lot I’d never seen before. I’ve had a blast watching these clips and checking out their reviews of movies I like. We didn’t always agree, but I always enjoyed hearing their thoughts. Sometimes, they wo...

(Updated 12/2/2018) I have a soft spot for TV, movies, and music that are considered...let’s say less than the best . Sometimes entertainment that is unintentionally bad is more enjoyable to me than something comparatively decent. And the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies fit that bill for me. Are they bad ? Well, not really. But they’re incredibly cheesy (IMHO). I watched them every chance I had during last Christmas season, and this year I plan to do the same. Here are the reasons I find these movies so cheesy, and why I love them so much. They’re essentially Lifetime  movies - Okay, now stay with me here. There’s nothing wrong with Lifetime  movies, and I don't want to give you the wrong impression. It's just that these movies follow the same general formula: the lead character is female (either a professional or a small business owner), the story deals with romantic relationships, and the male lead is unrealistically perfect and the type of guy that makes us real-li...

I’ve already written about ‘70s novelty albums based on  Lenny and Squiggy  and  The Odd Couple , but this one is the piece de resistance of albums based on Garry Marshall shows: the way too optimistically titled Laverne and Shirley Sing.  Personally, I think a much more accurate title would have been Can  Laverne and Shirley Sing? While the album is long out of print, it was re-released on CD a number of years back, but that too is now out of print. But, shockingly, it's currently available on iTunes. Being a lover of obscure/weird/bad music, I paid the $7.99 plus tax to get it. And...wow...just...just wow. In all fairness, Penny Marshall (Laverne) and Cindy Williams (Shirley) are both talented individuals. It’s just that singing really isn’t one of their talents. But is it really that bad? To be honest, they're not horrible , it's just that the album sounds like two people singing karaoke. As for the songs themselves, they're mostly covers of 195...

This is the second of three posts I'm doing concerning odd albums from the 1970s. It seems like if you were a television celebrity in the '70s you were sure to get one of two things: a variety show special or an ill-conceived album. Here, we have the latter. The Odd Couple Sings . Do they? Do they???  Well, sort of. Tony Randall (aka Felix)  sings. Jack Klugman (aka Oscar) not so much, and he even admitted as much. And it's evident from the very first track, entitled Johnny One Note , which seems to tell you right from the beginning "Look: Jack can't sing. I know it. Jack knows it. Now you  know it." How bad is it? Well, in the aforementioned opening track, Jack sings one note through the entire song. I'm not sure exactly which note that is , but it sounds like when you go to the doctor, and the doctor brings out a tongue depressor and tells you to say "Ah", and you say "Ahhhhhhh" with your tongue sticking out. Now imagine that fo...

The 1970s were a weird, weird time. It’s one of the reasons I have such a fascination with that decade. This is the first of three posts I’m going to do on novelty albums from the ‘70s, all three based on TV shows from producer Garry Marshall. And this first one is, IMHO, the most palatable of the three. Lenny and Squiggy Present Lenny and the Squigtones  is played for laughs. Recorded in front of a live audience and released in 1979, the album features Michael McKean and David Lander in character as Lenny and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley . Several times on that series they performed as Lenny and the Squigtones , and this time they’re joined by a drummer and by future Spinal Tap guitarist Christopher Guest. Included here is the track Night After Night  which had been performed by the duo on the show during a Shotz Brewery talent show. But it’s not just music. The album also contains comedy bits that are interactions between Lenny and Squiggy. I gotta admit: this one ...

Superfriends  was a cartoon by Hanna Barbara that ran from the early ‘70s to the mid ‘80s. It was very much a product of its time and is very  cheesy by today’s standards. And I love it. So I was happy to find these two figures at Target recently on separate trips. They are re-releases of pervious figures but modified to more match their cartoon appearance. Apparently, these had been released as an exclusive somewhere else a few years ago but now they’re back, but at Target. I already own the non-Superfriends versions of these but being a fan of all things ‘70s I had to pick these up.

In my early teen years, I used to watch Dr Who on our local PBS affiliate on Saturday afternoons. I haven't seen it in years, but for some reason I was reminded of it one day this week. Later that same day, a co-worker mentioned it to me, and then a day or two later someone else brought it up. I thought it was kind of funny that this TV show I hadn't watched since I was a teenager was now frequently popping up. This, in turn, reminded me of a particularly odd VHS tape cover I'd seen when I was still a teenager. The third actor to play Dr. Who was a gentleman named Jon Pertwee. It seems like everyone's favorite Dr. Who is Tom Baker, who was the fourth actor to play the part, but I never saw much of Tom Baker's work, and my personal favorite is Jon Pertwee. And at some point, a VHS release of some of his best work was released, but it had an extremely odd photo of Mr. Pertwee on the cover:   I'm not sure what they were thinking when they chose this phot...

I've been on a bit of a Star Trek kick lately, and on my drive in this morning I was considering writing a bit about it here on my blog. And then I learned that today is William Shatner's 80th birthday, so that pretty much convinced me that it had to be done. I'll be writing in more depth a bit later, but for now, here is a video by Maurice LeMarche, a voiceover actor (along with one of his Futurama cast mates), instructing us all on the intricacies of sounding like William Shatner. Enjoy!

I don't watch much TV, but one of the few shows I do watch is History Detectives on PBS. Each episode features three investigations, each one centering on the history of a specific item and its historical significance. For example, someone may have a family heirloom that they believe may have belonged to George Washington. The person contacts the History Detectives and one of them travels to the person's home, listens to the information the person has about the item, and then, in most cases, takes the item with them as they travel around the country to fill in the missing blanks in the item's history and find the answers to the questions the owner has about it. Watching the show, I have to wonder if anything bad has ever happened to one of the items being investigated. Have any of the History Detectives accidentally damaged (or utterly destroyed ) one of the items when taking it with them to investigate? I can only imagine how that would go over. It'd be like "So...