Larry Gelbart- R.I.P.

Thanks to Booksteve and his great blog I just saw that Larry Gelbart just passed away. A sad loss after a long struggle with cancer. He wrote one of my all time favorite show "M*A*S*H". His legacy is secure in the annals of TV history just for that.
Here is the latest.

#1 Song of the Week

From this week in 1990, Jon Bon Jovi and his #1 hit "Blaze of Glory". This was for the soundtrack for the motion picture Young Guns II and featured Jeff Beck on lead guitar. This also earned Bon Jovi an Oscar nomination for best song, but he lost to Madonna and "Sooner or Later" from Dick Tracy.
"Blaze of Glory"spent 1 week at the top before giving way to Wilson Phillips and "Release Me".

In Case You Missed It

From the Guardian website:
Lost world of fanged frogs and giant rats discovered in Papua New Guinea

Welcome to the Trailer Park

Today we kick it old school in the trailer park with one of my favorite movies ever, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" with Don Knotts and a cast of very familiar faces. Back in the late 80s when the channel American Movie Classics was still that ,and commerical free , they played this and "Young Frankenstein" on Halloween. What a blast that was to watch. Now this is one of my favorites.

The Rest of The Story

Today would have been the 91st birthday of radio legend Paul Harvey. Sadly he passed from this world on Feb 28th of 2009, leaving a void on the radio for millions of listeners who tuned in at lunch time everyday to hear his news and views. I know I did and had been since I was about 10 when my dad introduced me to "The Rest of The Story". I didnt hear it on the radio first, but he found a "Paul Harvey's Rest of The Story" book at our library and we both read it cover to cover. I can remember going to my Uncle's house on a saturday morning with my nose buried in that first collection of "Stories". I couldn't wait to get to the other volumes and still to this day enjoy them.
I started even had my daughters listening to Paul Harvey in the afternoon's until WIBC moved to FM, no longer wanted the older skewing audience that Paul Harvey attracted.
To remedy that I found the tv version of "The Rest of the Story" on YouTube. Still entertaining and what a pleasure to hear that voice.

What's My Line? Day

Well I totally spaced that yesterday September 3rd was "What's My Line?" Day. It was on that day in 1967 that CBS had its last airing of the sunday night staple hosted by the classy John Daly.
It ran a total of 17 years and made Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen household names and brought Fred Allen back into our homes on a weekly basis. Steve Allen moved from the panel, where he popularized "is it bigger than a bread box", to late night legend. All of it was moderated by the classy, cool and strict John Daly. Mr. Daly ran a tight ship and made sure it stayed a bastion of high class viewing.
I am still in the process of putting all the episodes I have on my dvr onto dvd, but I do have this one on dvd. Its from the final airing, and the mystery guest was none other than John Daly himself.


It still amazes me that the original "What's My Line?" has been off the air for 42 years and is still more entertaining than most of what passes for tv today.

The Collyer Brothers

I saw today that E.L. Doctrow has a new book out called "Homer and Langley" and its reviewed here by the NY Times.

I wasnt sure what it was about until I started reading the review and I saw its about the 2 infamous packrat brothers from New York City. I first found out about them while randomly picking out a year in wikipedia and checking out all the articles for that particular year. In this case I was looking at 1947 and saw a story about the Collyer Brothers. Having no idea who they were I of course had to read it and see what was so important about them in 1947. Seems as though they had both died in 1947 and their once posh NY brownstone house was basically a death trap and filled from top to bottom with everything imaginable. The brothers had developed a type of OCD that became compulsive hoarding disease and was named after them and led to their deaths. Both brothers were found dead in the home after police and fire departments raided the house.

Another good article on the brothers I found here.

The book by E.L. Doctrow is a mix of fact and fiction in the way he did previous books like the bestseller Ragtime, World's Fair and Billy Bathgate.

Its a strange, tragic story but very fascinating.