In Memoriam: The Pie in the Face Gag

 

Serious question for anyone still watching scripted television today – when was the last time (if ever) you saw a character take a pie in the face? 

 

 

I’m guessing the answer will be zero. Like funny drunks and bosses who chase their secretaries around a desk, this once-renowned paragon of slapstick humor seems to have been phased out of polite society by our elitist betters. Try hitting someone with a pie now and your show will earn a TV-M rating for an offensive exhibition of violence, not to mention an egregious waste of pastry.

 

But in the Comfort TV era, a custard pie in the face was a guaranteed laugh generator, as well as an homage to the earliest days of silent cinema. According to what my friend Mitchell Hadley refers to as “the always reliable Wikipedia” (I sense sarcasm), its first victim was comedian Ben Turpin in the 1909 movie Mr. Flip. But from Our Miss Brooks to Night Court – a span of 40 years in network television, it was a moment that might happen at any time, on any series, to preserve a proud show business tradition.

 

The most prominent keeper of that tradition was Soupy Sales, who hosted children’s shows between 1949 and 1979. 

 

 

Sales’ pie-tossing antics were the inspiration for two classic TV moments. “When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen,” is one of my five favorite episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. It starts with Rob arriving home after a day of trying unsuccessfully to generate an idea for a comedy sketch. His son Richie suggests doing something with a talking bowling pin; the next day, Rob, Buddy and Sally develop that idea into a wonderful routine for Alan Brady (the scenes in this series that illustrate the creativity of talented writers are always a delight.)

 

But unbeknownst to Rob, Richie’s idea came from watching a talking bowling pin bit on a children’s show hosted by Uncle Spunky. The joy in the writer’s room turns to panic when they realize they could be fired for stealing from another series. 

 

Alan finds a solution, and at Rob’s urging agrees to appear on Uncle Spunky’s show, unaware that every guest gets hit with a pie. Alan is ready for payback, but it doesn’t go quite as planned.

 

Also inspired by Soupy, “Captain Crocodile,” the host of a kids’ show in an early episode of The Monkees. The band appears on the series, and all four of them are hit with pies before the episode’s opening credits. 

 

 

Of course Lucille Ball would get in on this fun, and more than once. Remember “The Diner” on I Love Lucy, which ended with the kind of full-out pie fight made famous by the Three Stooges? And on The Lucy Show, when Lucy enters a pie-baking contest, I’m sure most viewers knew exactly how the episode would end – and enjoyed it anyway. 

 

 

Slapstick wasn’t as commonplace on The Brady Bunch, but this was a series in which Mike fell into his own wedding cake in the first episode. Four seasons later, Cousin Oliver was welcomed to the family in a show best remembered for that infamous event (“Welcome Aboard”), but also featured the family re-enacting a silent comedy at a movie studio, complete with pies splattering everywhere. 

 

 

Even Norman Lear’s sophisticated, topical sitcoms weren’t above a little lowbrow humor every once in a while. I recall a Maude episode about a telethon, in which Maude didn’t wait for God to get Walter and hit him with a pie instead.

 

All of these scenes are meant to be funny, yet I did feel a little sorry for two flying pie victims on two different shows, perhaps because they were both teenage girls in the process of having their dreams shattered.

 

On The Patty Duke Show, Patty cures a rare moment of low self-confidence by landing a modeling job – but the gig is for a comedic advertising campaign in which she is doused with water, dropped from a hammock and, yes, hit with a pie. 

 

 

And on The Love Boat, Vicki is thrilled when a famous child star boards to shoot scenes from a movie on the ship, and offers Vicki a chance to be her stand-in. But that means taking the abuse the star is too good to handle, including – you guessed it. Guest star Alison Arngrim, the devil child from Little House on the Prairie, is in familiar territory here.

 

Do I have a favorite? Glad you asked. It’s the Bewitched episode “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble,” in which Serena impersonates Sam and torments a confused Darrin, until he finally sees through her charade. But that’s when Samantha returns home, with a pie from the bakery. Still believing she’s Serena, he lets her have it. What makes this moment special is how Elizabeth Montgomery clearly breaks character, being unable to suppress her laughter, while the line she was supposed to say was looped in later. 

 

 

First runner-up among my favorites: “There Was a Time Ann Met a Pie Man,” an episode of That Girl built entirely around a pie hit. 

 

Ann is offered a comedy spot on a popular TV show in which she will be the target, and wonders whether it will hurt her career. 

 

 

Second runner-up: who can forget this commercial parody clip with Johnny Carson that was aired every year on The Tonight Show’s anniversary broadcast?  

 

 

 

And with Christmas TV viewing right around the corner, don’t miss “’Twas the Pie Before Christmas,” from the final season of The Bob Newhart Show. 

 

Yes, I know I missed quite a few. Be sure to add your favorites to the comments. And if pies are still being thrown somewhere on series television, let me know. I’d be delighted to learn that my eulogy was premature.

Classic Halloween TV Movie: Moon of the Wolf

 

Every October I like to look back on at least one of the classic TV horror movies, just in time for Halloween. And every year I realize, given the number of memorable films presented by the networks, especially in the 1970s and ‘80s, that I should probably explore this territory more often. 

 

This year the choice was particularly tough. Salem’s Lot, a worthy adaptation of the Stephen King novel? Scream queen Linda Blair in Summer of Fear? Should we travel across the pond for the classy but creepy The Woman in Black, which debuted on British television? Or watch Kim Darby and Jim Hutton contend with the demons in their fireplace in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark? 

 

As I wrote in previous pieces like this, what makes these movies interesting is how they manage to frighten an audience without the graphic blood and guts mayhem employed by most contemporary horror movies. Through creative filmmaking technique and effective performances, they managed to comply with broadcast standards that placed strict limits on violence, and became triumphs of artistry over gore.

 

And if you don’t think a film that debuted in prime time a half-century ago could actually be scary, watch Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark from 1973 – and don’t blame me if you then jump at every noise in your house, and don’t get much sleep that night. 

 

But this year, I’m going with Moon of the Wolf, because you can’t go wrong with a good werewolf story, and because this 1972 classic stars one of my favorite Comfort TV actors, David Janssen. 

 

 

 

It’s arguably the least frightening of the titles I’ve already mentioned, but it’s also the most evocative. The first half plays more like a Southern Gothic murder mystery, after the body of a young woman is discovered in Louisiana marshland, with part of her torn to shreds.  Janssen plays Sheriff Aaron Whitaker, who is called to investigate. 

 

 

His search takes him to office of the local doctor (John Beradino), who had an affair with the girl, and to the ancestral home of the Rodanthe family, who established the community a hundred years earlier. The current heir, Andrew Rodanthe (Bradford Dillman) also had a hidden connection to the victim. The sheriff is pleased to see Andrew’s sister Louise (Barbara Rush) has come home, as their relationship dates back to high school.

 

 

Sheriff Whitaker focuses on three suspects and throws one of them in jail, but his investigation is upended after that suspect is mauled to death by someone – or something – strong enough to tear iron bars from concrete walls. 

 

Meanwhile the father of the murdered girl, already on his deathbed, keeps exclaiming the same mysterious word in French – “Lougaroug.” 

 

What does it all mean? It doesn’t take long to find out. Another benefit of these TV movies is that many of them unfold at a crisp 75-80 minute running time, long enough to deliver a layered story but short enough not to monopolize your entire evening. 

 

David Janssen was such a grounded actor that it was fun to watch his character contend with something supernatural. He had wonderful chemistry with Barbara Rush, which isn’t surprising as they had worked together before, most notably in the classic two-part Fugitive story “Landscape With Running Figures.”

 

I also enjoyed seeing John Beradino here, playing a doctor but one that was very different from the esteemed physician he played on General Hospital from 1963 to 1996. 

 

How does it end? That would be telling. But if you prefer Halloween stories with more subtlety than shock value, give Moon of the Wolf a try on YouTube. And take a moment to look back fondly on the time when three networks could turn out dozens of quality original films every television season, challenging us to choose between the ones that looked most interesting and our favorite regular series. How wonderful that so many we missed the first time around can now be enjoyed online.

My Journey Through 1970s TV: Saturday Nights, 1974

 

To go out, or to stay in on a Saturday night? That was the question (and probably still is), but in 1974 one network offered a compelling reason to skip the restaurant and the movie, and order in a pizza.

 

Saturday, 1974

 

CBS

All in the Family

Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The Bob Newhart Show

The Carol Burnett Show

 

CBS programs dominated the mid-‘70s on Saturday nights; All in the Family remained the season’s #1 show, followed by Mary Tyler Moore at #9, Bob Newhart at #12, and Carol Burnett at #27. 

 

All in the Family was about midway through its nine-season run, but was already such a phenomenon that CBS aired a special salute to the Bunkers in December, hosted by Henry Fonda. This was also the season in which George and Louise Jefferson were spun off into their own successful series. 

 

 

New to the lineup was Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, but not for very long. What an odd title – I assume they wanted Sand to have his name in the title like Mary, Bob, and Carol – but they were all already known quantities to viewers, where he was not. According to series co-creator Allan Burns, they gave Sand his own series because he and James Brooks were so impressed by his guest spot as an IRS agent on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But despite being surrounded by hits on the schedule, the series never found an audience. 

 

 

It’s been decades since I’ve seen it, but in my memory Sand came off like a slightly less nebbish-like Woody Allen, and that’s not the type of character that viewers would embrace on a weekly basis. CBS dropped it after 15 episodes, but Sand continued to work steadily for decades, and is still with us at age 92.

 

NBC

Emergency

NBC Saturday Night Movie

 

Emergency continued to draw enough viewers in its fourth season to stick around, even against such formidable competition. Did you know that the Squad 51 fire engine shown on the series is now housed at The Los Angeles County Fire Museum, along with other equipment used on the show?  

 

 

ABC

The New Land

Kung Fu

Nakia

 

The returning Kung Fu would survive another season, even sandwiched between two shows that were given hasty exits.

 

I’ve never seen The New Land, so on the “Missed” list it goes. But from what I’ve read and the clips I’ve seen it appears ABC was trying to pull in some of the Waltons audience with another series about a rural family struggling to survive hard times. Here its Minnesota in the 1850s, and the Larsen family, immigrants from Scandinavia, try to claim their share of the American dream. 

 

 

Bonnie Bedelia and Kurt Russell are in it, and John Denver performed the theme song, but it was pulled from the schedule after just six episodes. That was bad news for the Lookinland family, given the cancellation of The Brady Bunch at the end of the previous season. Todd Lookinland played young Tuliff Larsen, and was hoping to keep those network paychecks coming in, but it was not to be. Mike would be back on the air two years later, singing and dancing with his TV family plus Fake Jan, on The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

 

Nakia was another ‘70s law-and-order series set in the wide-open spaces of the Southwest. Previous attempts (Cade’s County, Man of the City) hadn’t made it, and this one didn’t either. 

 

 

But it had Robert Forster in the title role as a deputy sheriff of Navajo heritage, based in Davis County, New Mexico. According to IMDB, this series gave Lynda Carter her first acting credit, just one year before she became Wonder Woman. That clip is on YouTube along with one full episode. Forster's always good, but I enjoyed the clip more. 

 

 

 

Shows Missed:

The Don Knotts Show (1970)

San Francisco International Airport (1970)

Nancy (1970)

The Headmaster (1970)

The Man and the City (1971)

Search (1972)

Assignment: Vienna (1972)

The Delphi Bureau (1972)

Jigsaw (1972)

The Little People (1972)

The Sixth Sense (1972)

Tenafly (1973)

Faraday & Company (1973)

Kodiak (1974)

The New Land (1974)

 

Classic TV Commercials: Less Noise, Normal People

 

The list of activities that truly make me happy seems to dwindle with each passing year. One that still qualifies is watching compilations of vintage TV commercials on YouTube, particularly those that share a Halloween or Christmas theme. And thankfully we’re now into the season when doing so would seem slightly less strange than watching them in April. But I do that too.

 

 

This time, however, I am revisiting my favorite compilations not just for pleasure but also as a scientific analysis. After enduring far too many current commercials, which can lower a viewer’s IQ in just 30 seconds, I was curious to study how many of those 1970s and ’80s ads also featured people acting like idiots.

 

Before revealing the result I should clarify what “acting like an idiot” entails, as there are many idiots loose in the wild today that see nothing unusual in their behavior. For the purpose of this study an idiot is defined as someone who, if they did what they are doing in the real world and not in a commercial, would draw incredulous stares from everyone in the surrounding area.

 

I would also like to clarify that I am unaware of any offensive connotation (outside of the obvious) to the word “idiot” and whether it is now discriminatory or intolerant to any subset of humanity based on any pre-existing condition over which they have no control.

 

Can’t be too careful these days.

 

I will also not classify all unusual behavior as idiotic if there is a supernatural element involved, as is frequently found in Halloween spots. If a housewife turns into a witch, that’s just seasonal fun. 

 

 

This is the Halloween video I reviewed. It contains about 80 commercials.

 

How many of these spots do you think would measure on the idiot scale? Here’s the answer – two. Just two out of ±80. I think that’s a ratio viewers would welcome now, as it means far fewer lunges for the mute button. 

 

 

Not long after completing my study, I turned on a network with commercials – doesn’t really matter which one – and not three commercials passed before a first ballot hall-of-fame idiot popped up to celebrate his drug prescription. A few minutes later, just two commercials aired before another cringe-worthy exhibition.

 

Can we learn anything from this? Does it say something about how television has changed, how the culture has changed, or is it merely a result of advertisers having to fight so much harder now to get our attention?

 

These are the real questions. I’m not sure I have the answers. But as this blog has evolved I hope it has become a place to not just celebrate the wonderful shows of the past, but also to look beneath the surface, and try to understand why television is the way it is now, and why the decisions being made by content producers seem so different from what they used to be.

 

I understand the pressure of having to pull viewers away from other distractions that did not exist in the Comfort TV era, when the television screen was the only screen in the house. When people watched TV then their focus was not distracted by incoming text messages or the latest viral TikTok upload.

 

Knowing that an audience was watching and listening (mute buttons were also less commonplace), commercials didn’t have to shout to get your attention. Advertisers hired spokespersons with pleasing voices, or gave us a glimpse into recognizable home and business settings, with a more simple, straightforward message: here’s a product we think you’d like, and this is why.

 

 

But that might not be enough anymore, so they yell, or try to compensate for muted sound with visuals so bizarre they hope viewers will restore the audio to find out what’s going on.

 

Does it work? And if it works for commercials, would it not make sense to try the same strategy for a TV series? I pulled up a list of the 25 best TV series according to RogerEbert.com. I won’t judge them without having watched them, but from the descriptions it’s clear that many feature characters that exist far outside the mainstream, and capable of extreme behavior. 

 

 

Maybe there is a through-line here, in a time when it’s become fashionable to denigrate the normal. The traditional. The spiritual (Halloween ghosts? Yes! Holy Ghost? No.) And that is the culture television now reflects. It depends on your perspective, I guess. All I know is that the Halloween commercial compilation I watched now has more than 1.3 million views, and has elicited thousands of comments like the following:

 

“There was never a better time in history to be a kid then the 70's and 80's. Thanks for putting this together. Great memories!”

 

“There’s something magical about old commercials, like there’s a certain charm about them”

 

 “I would do anything to be able to go back and live in this time period.”

 

“Little did we know how good we had it back then. Is so different today I wish my kids could have grown up back then.”

 

“I look back at all these retro commercials with nostalgia and some sadness. It reminds me of those days when we had hope for our lives, our country, our loved ones. Unlike now where it feels like we are on the verge of collapse and our quality of life is deteriorating fast. We don’t have to pretend to be frightened of evil spooks in an imaginary world, we are living that reality now.”

 

Will today’s commercials – will today’s television shows – elicit a similar response 50 years from now? I seriously doubt it.

My Journey Through 1970s TV: Friday Nights, 1974

 

Every night in the 1970s offered interesting shows to explore (and revisit!). But sometimes there is an evening that stands out more than usual. Such is the case with the Friday prime time network schedules from 1974. Even the shows that didn’t last were memorable, and some have a following that remains to this day.

 

Friday, 1974

 

ABC

Kodiak

The Six Million Dollar Man

The Texas Wheelers

Kolchak, the Night Stalker

 

After several years of popular, if not always high-rated shows like The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222 and Love American Style, ABC ditched its entire Friday night lineup from previous seasons and introduced four new shows. Only one lasted, and since you’ve already looked at the titles you know which one. 

 

 

To be honest I can’t recall whether I watched Kodiak or not, so I’ll add it to the “missed” list. But it sounds like something I would have enjoyed. Clint Walker, who I thought was wonderful in Cheyenne, played Alaska State Trooper Cal “Kodiak” McKay, whose territory covered 50,000 miles of harsh wilderness. 

 

 

The 6’6” Walker was an imposing figure but a very kind gentleman. A long time ago I wrote a piece about western TV shows for Cowboys & Indians magazine, and shortly thereafter received a phone call from him thanking me for my praise of Cheyenne. I’m not even sure how he got my phone number, but that gesture was much appreciated.

 

So it’s  a shame about Kodiak, which sounds like a one-hour action drama that should have worked. But it was a half-hour series, and maybe that was part of the problem. It was pulled after just 13 episodes.

 

Viewers had already met Lee Majors as bionic astronaut Steve Austin in three TV movies that aired in 1973, which proved successful enough to bring him back again for The Six Million Dollar Man. The very popular and heavily-merchandised series ran for five seasons, and introduced Jaime Sommers in the spinoff The Bionic Woman (which I actually liked more). 

 

The Texas Wheelers provides another example of what usually happens when a veteran supporting actor/second banana gets cast in a lead role. It rarely works, especially when the banana in question is Jack Elam, who played nasty and crazy old coots in about a thousand westerns. He didn’t go full Elam here, dialing down the eccentricities to play a father who returns to his family after abandoning them for years.

 

Two of Elam’s sons were played by Gary Busey and Mark Hamill, which could raise the curiosity factor for anyone wanting to check it out now. Several episodes are on YouTube – it struck me as a series that didn’t have a clear idea what it wanted to be. But if you like banjo music, this is the series for you. 

 

 

Kolchak: The Night Stalker followed the same formula as The Six Million Dollar Man: introduce a character in TV movies, then give him his own series. But what worked for Steve Austin did not for Carl Kolchak, despite The Night Stalker being one of the most popular and acclaimed made-for-TV movies of its era.

 

What went wrong? To find the answer I consulted an expert – Mark Dawidziak, author of multiple books about Kolchak and his adventures.

 

“That was back in the day when horror might have worked as a one-shot movie event in prime time, like Rod Serling's Night Gallery or, of course, The Night Stalker, but, in a three-network universe, there wasn’t a big enough regular audience to sustain a weekly series,” Mark told me. “The Night Gallery series didn't make it, either. It also didn't help that the series was on the lowest-rated network.” 

 

Take heart, ABC - you won't be the lowest-rated network in the 1970s much longer. 

 

 

CBS

Planet of the Apes

CBS Friday Night Movie

 

In the 1970s, when a hit motion picture was first shown on television, it was still a big deal. That was the case with Planet of the Apes, for which CBS paid $1 million. Their investment was validated when the movie aired and drew an amazing 60 share of the audience. Given that response, would a series work?

 

It didn’t, but it wasn’t a bad try. The show took its cues from the first Apes movie – two astronauts (played by Ron Harper and James Naughton) land on a planet ruled by monkeys with rifles who view them as an inferior race. Roddy McDowell, who had played two ape characters in five films, returned once more to endure what had to be grueling makeup sessions to play Galen, an ape who joins the humans on their adventures. Their nemesis, General Urko, was played by Star Trek’s Mark Lenard. 

 

 

There were high hopes for the series (Mego released an entire line of action figures featuring its characters), but reviews were poor and the show found its most enthusiastic audience only among the elementary school set. 

 

“Of people 50 and over, apparently, only four are watching,” said then-CBS head programmer Fred Silverman. “Two old ladies in Iowa and a couple who owns a zoo.” However, it did get a DVD release, which is rare for a series with just 14 episodes.

 

NBC

Sanford and Son

Chico and the Man

The Rockford Files

Police Woman

 

If any network executive ever earned a bonus, it’s the one that gave a green light to three successful new shows and scheduled them all on Friday night, following the evening’s most popular returning series.

 

Sanford and Son finished the season at #3, and Chico and the Man seemed like an ideal pairing to complete the hour. The Rockford Files featured James Garner, one of TV’s most charismatic leading men, as Jim Rockford, aka “Jimbo,” “Rockfish,” Beth Davenport’s most troublesome client, and the only person on earth who could tolerate Angel for more than ten seconds. 

 

Great show with a great theme song, and who didn’t look forward to the different voicemail messages that opened each episode?

 

Police Woman was more standard fare, though a female lead in a cop show was still somewhat original in 1974. Angie Dickinson played pop culture’s most famous Pepper until the MCU launched, and was ably supported by Earl Holliman as her commanding officer. Viewers voted with their remotes to watch Angie instead of Carl Kolchak, keeping the series around for four seasons. Maybe Darren McGavin should have gone undercover in more slinky cocktail dresses. 

 

 

Shows Missed:

The Don Knotts Show (1970)

San Francisco International Airport (1970)

Nancy (1970)

The Headmaster (1970)

The Man and the City (1971)

Search (1972)

Assignment: Vienna (1972)

The Delphi Bureau (1972)

Jigsaw (1972)

The Little People (1972)

The Sixth Sense (1972)

Tenafly (1973)

Faraday & Company (1973)

Kodiak (1974)

 

Smile and Say “Classic TV!”

 

I’ve had an iPhone for years, and I know all the things it can do, but I still mainly use it just for phone calls and occasional texting. The camera feature that seems to be a favorite among most people is something I’ve used less than a handful of times.

 

For whatever reason the idea of taking a picture still demands, for me, some genuine purpose as it did back in the day, when a roll of film required you to consider what was important enough to merit one of the 24 exposures you paid for at Fotomat.

 

That perception is continually reinforced by so many classic TV shows, when family photos were perceived as something more special than they are now. On more than one episode of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, one of the boys would bring a date home, and they would spend part of the evening looking through the family photo album. The fact that the series was sponsored by Kodak may have influenced that choice. 

 

 

And just like other families on TV, my family used to gather in the living room and look at slides projected on the wall. I can still hear the ‘click-click’ that fed each slide into the projection chamber, and feel the heat when I held my hand over the light bulb that provided the illumination.  Birthdays, holidays, vacations, family gatherings, there was a moment worth remembering captured in each image. Not a single selfie in the bunch.

 

Granted, sometimes these presentations were not enthusiastically welcomed by guests.  Even the Comfort TV era acknowledged that, though no one took it as far as Night Gallery. In one brief segment. a hippie is sent to hell and forced to spend eternity with an older couple, watching their nonstop vacation slide show.

 

Thankfully Rod Serling also saw more intriguing story possibilities in photography. In the Serling-scripted Twilight Zone episode “A Most Unusual Camera,” three crooks find a camera that can take pictures from the future. They soon realize the profit potential it holds, but greed quickly gets the better of them. 

 

And in “Camera Obscura,” another Night Gallery tale, an equally greedy banker is undone by another supernatural camera.

 

Cameras could also solve crimes and right injustices, as in “The Night of the Hangman” on The Wild, Wild West, in which Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin, also featured in “Camera Obscura”) is able to exonerate a wrongly convicted assassin with photographic evidence. And on The Brady Bunch, Greg takes a picture that proves a receiver on his high school football team caught a touchdown pass in bounds - though he was actually aiming his camera at a cheerleader (“Click”). 

 

 

Comfort TV classics remember when a single image could hold our attention for hours, and be treasured as a beloved keepsake: The boy or girl you loved in high school, who went on to marry someone else; family members who have passed on; the puppy in the box at Christmas time.

 

Speaking of Christmas, remember those commercials for Sears Portrait Studio? They aired year-round in the Comfort TV era but were more prominent around the holidays. A framed 8 x 10 portrait of a family member, especially kids, was a wonderful gift that would hang on a wall in the recipient’s home. 

 

Usually Sears also provided some Christmas cards where a smaller photo could be mounted inside. Now, most people don’t even send cards anymore.

 

How far we’ve come. Or have we?

 

Such are the unavoidable repercussions of technological advancement that renders mundane what once seemed impossible. No one alive now can remember the time when it felt like a miracle to pick up a device called a telephone and speak to someone on the other side of town – or in another state.

 

When television came along that first generation of viewers must have been thrilled to watch a movie right in their living room – as long as the antenna was pointed just right. And now there’s a small dish mounted on the side of my home pointed toward space – space! that beams a signal into my television set, so I can watch Scooby-Doo help Sonny and Cher solve a mystery. The only constant is always change. 

 

 

People take more pictures now than ever, and 99% of them are deleted shortly thereafter. What is so special about one photograph, when your phone can hold thousands of them, just as your TV can access thousands of programs – nothing much special about those either these days. The more of something that exists, the less valued it becomes.

 

And if  you don’t believe that, consider what would happen if  Thanksgiving and Christmas were held once a week instead of once a year. Would we approach them with the same anticipation and appreciation?

 

For me watching the old shows is like paging through a photo album, remembering happier times and interesting people, recalling the moments when we first met and wishing I could spend more time with them now – or know what they’re up to these days.

 

“Every time I see your face

It reminds me of the places we used to go.

But all I’ve got is a photograph

And I realize you’re not coming back anymore.”

-- Ringo Starr, “Photograph.”

 

Yeah, I  miss The Beatles too.