SILVER CITY SERENDIPITEEVEE

A little hometown nostalgia crept into my dose of "serendipiteevee" this morning when I got home from work.

I turned on the TV as soon as I got in (of course!), and flipped to CNN - where I caught the tail end of a weather report live on the scene from Meriden, Connecticut.

Unfortunately for the reporter, she ended her report saying that the weather was "going to get much more bad". The anchors back in the studio, as well as the meteorologist, had fun with that!
Usually I have to go online to get a taste of the Silver City's news.....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: CRASH IN THE EVERGLADES

I never know where my TV investigations will take me online....

I was looking for information about WNKW and its connection to the ABC series 'Invasion' - about the strange alien lights which took possession of the inhabitants of Homestead, Florida, during a hurricane. So while watching the pilot episode, Everglades Park Ranger Russell Varon told his brother-in-law Dave about a plane crash in the preserve back in 1996.

Although he was referring to a plane crash that later played into the 'Invasion' storyline, it may have been influenced by a real world tragedy, that of ValuJet Flight 592. If so, details of that case would have been just as interesting as the plotline in 'Invasion'.....

When ValuJet Flight 592, en route from Miami to Atlanta, crashed in the Florida Everglades on May 11, 1996, 109 people died. Among them was 38-year-old Delmarie Walker, mother of two teen-aged children and wife of a disabled Pennsylvania state policeman.

In February 1997, well before the ValuJet crash suits could be settled or go to trail, the College Park, Georgia, police announced that they were closing their investigation into the March 25, 1996, murder of 48-year-old Catherine Holmes. “Even though we can't charge [Delmarie Walker], we feel the evidence shows she was the suspect who committed this crime,” the lead investigator told the Journal Constitution.

Holmes had choked to death on some object, possibly a sock, which had been forced into her throat. In the course of an apparent struggle she had received more than twenty stab wounds. Hogtied with a pillowcase covering her head, Holmes died cluching tufts of her assailant’s hair.

Then Walker died in the ValuJet crash in the Everglades. Eight months later (after delays attributed to the Olympic bombing) the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab confirmed that Walker’s hair matched the hair found in Holmes’ grasp and that Walker’s fingerprints were found in Holmes’ apartment. Evidence that Holmes had previously written checks to Walker and that Holmes was known to have received $1,800 from her mother shortly before her death was apparently sufficient to convince police that Walker had murdered Holmes in a dispute over money.

However, because Walker’s body was never recovered from the Everglades, it was not possible to verify a match between Walker’s DNA and the blood spatter at the murder scene. Thus, the evidence on which the police based their conclusion that Walker was Holmes’ murderer and their consequent decision to close the investigation was largely circumstantial and arguably less than conclusive.

What if the televersion of DelMarie Walker's body became a hybrid of the creatures, as did Sheriff Tom Underlay's in that 1996 plane crash? Could they protect her from the authorities by hiding her in Homestead?

Here's the full story by Stephen Dresch......

BCnU!
Toby O'B

THE ECHO OF SPUNK

I think that'll be the name of my porn movie......

LOU GRANT:
"You know what? You've got spunk."
MARY RICHARDS:
"Well....."
LOU GRANT:
"I HATE SPUNK!"
'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'

"You've got spunk... and balls.
I like that in a woman."
DOUGLAS REYNHOLM
'The IT Crowd'

BCnU!
Toby O'B
[Post #3333]

The Christmas Countdown

TODAY'S TWD: SAKHAROV

December 19, 1986:
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from internal exile in Gorky.

Two years earlier, Jason Robards and Glenda Jackson portrayed the Sakharovs in a TV movie about what led to this form of imprisonment. HBO moved up the film's premiere date because of Sakharov's hunger strike, which was undertaken in hopes it would force the authorities to let his wife leave the country for a needed operation.

Here is an extended excerpt from the New York Times review of that TV movie:

Essential biographical details are taken care of in the very first scene as a Soviet official lectures an unidentified group, who may or may not be members of the K.G.B., about Dr. Sakharov's background: born in 1921, a doctorate in physics in 1953, the year he also became the youngest member ever to be elected to the Academy of Sciences. As the physicist credited with developing the hydrogen bomb for the Soviet Union, Dr. Sakharov is one of the country's elite. He is a respected academician and, as another dissident later explains, more than that - ''You're one of them, not a Jew.''

Portrayed powerfully by Jason Robards, whose lean and craggy face comes closer to resembling Boris Pasternak, this Sakharov is a quiet, rather dour man who insists that he doesn't always seek out trouble. Yes, someone agrees, but ''you don't always avoid it either.'' When approached to sign a petition for an arrested dissident, Sakharov tells his first wife (Anna Massey), ''If I was in a prison camp, wouldn't you want people signing petitions for me.'' As he drifts slowly but unhesitatingly into more unpopular causes, his privileges are cut back and eventually he loses his top position as a teacher of physics. After the death of his wife, he sits alone on a park bench, still being watched by the authorities from a distance.

Through his association with dissident causes he meets Miss Bonner, a divorced woman with grown children. She is played by Glenda Jackson, whose special chemistry with Mr. Robards gives their scenes an extraordinary weight. Half-Jewish and long an active Communist, Miss Bonner becomes the driving force in Dr. Sakharov's life. When they eventually marry, he acquires the family he never had and becomes dedicated to its survival, especially when it becomes apparent that the Bonner children are being threatened and punished for the supposed transgressions of their parents.

It is Miss Bonner's elderly mother who prophetically warns her son-in- law that things are not so different from what they were under Stalin. Today they don't need terror, she observes, they have other ways, such as marshaling ''world opinion'' and having colleagues denounce you. ''They'' are not different, she insists, only smarter.

Why does Dr. Sakharov resist? He tells Western journalists that he has a need to create ideals. No ideals, no hope, he says, ''and then one is completely in the dark, in a hopeless blind alley.''

Needless to say, the Sakharov fight for human rights knows no geographical limitations. Among his more personal causes is his resistance to arguments for nuclear superiority or the death penalty. If he were outside the Soviet Union, he doubtless would be at the forefront of demonstrations that wouldn't necessarily be sanctioned by some of his current supporters. This is the crucial point scored quietly in this film, even as it shows George Orwell's vision of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' harrowingly close to being fully realized in the Soviet Union.

Writing up this piece only makes it more imperative that I finally get myself a scanner for Toobworld Central. I can't find a single decent photo or video clip from that TV movie online, but I do have one in a massive book on TV movies in the Great Library. Oh well. I'll post it eventually, so that anybody else who might find themselves in need of a picture of the televersion of Sakharov can find one......

BCnU!
Toby O'B

THE CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN

I AM A CAMERA

My brother sent part of a product description for a Pentax camera to be found today on Woot. Technically, this has nothing to do with television, but since inanimate objects can be alive in Toobworld, I think this could find a home in the TV Universe......

I thought you'd get a kick out of the product description they posted in the form of 10 things the camera has going for it, from the viewpoint of the [Pentax] camera itself:

9) YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THE DAY IS?
Late at night, when everyone else is asleep and I’m left alone to imagine how I would kill them all, if only I had arms and legs.

10) WHAT IS YOUR DEEPEST REGRET?
Not having arms and legs.

GOOD & EVIL?

BCnU!
Toby O'B

STAMP ACT

My Iddiot brethren Eliot (with his Harveyesque partner Dr. Philately) sent me an email hallooing the news about that the Postal Service had unveiled its line of stamps celebrating "Early TV Memories". An hour later, my brother Bill also got his stamp magazine and sent me a similar email.
Here are the honorees in next year's issues:

'Texaco Star Theater' hosted by Milton Berle, aka "Mr. Television"

'I Love Lucy' - with Ethel Mertz and Lucy Ricardo in the chocolate factory

'The Red Skelton Show' with Red as Freddie The Freeloader

'The Howdy Doody Show'

'Dragnet' - with Sgt. Jack Webb

'Lassie'

'Hopalong Cassidy', with his horse Topper

'You Bet Your Life' - with the one, the only, Groucho

'The Dinah Shore Show'

'The Ed Sullivan Show'

'Kukla, Fran, and Ollie'

'The Phil Silvers Show' aka 'You'll Never Get Rich' and simply 'Bilko'

'The Lone Ranger' shown with his horse Silver

'Perry Mason', squaring off against DA Hamilton Burger

'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'

'Burns And Allen' with George and Gracie

'Ozzie And Harriet' Nelson, playing themselves

'The Tonight Show' with host Steve Allen

'The Twilight Zone' with Rod Serling, creator and host

'The Honeymooners' with Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton

My only quibble with these choices would be the lack of Tonto in the picture of 'The Lone Ranger'. You watch - there'll be some outcry over that as being politically incorrect. It would have been nice to see Burr Tillstrom recognized for his puppetry genius, but at least we can pay attention to the man behind the curtain through Kukla and Ollie.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

"The Post Office announced today that it is going to issue a stamp
commemorating prostitution in the United States.
It's a ten-cent stamp,
but if you want to lick it, it's a quarter."
Chevy Chase
"Weekend News Update"
'Saturday Night Live'

DHTV: "DIE HARD TELEVISION"

Signing off until February, 'Chuck' gave Toobworld a big Christmas gift with the holiday-themed episode, "Chuck vs. Santa Claus": Reginald VelJohnson was a guest star, playing Big Mike's cousin. But even better than that... Al was Al Powell of the Burbank police department, Twinkie included. That means he was the televersion of the character VelJohnson played in the first two "Die Hard" movies!

This doesn't have to mean that the "Die Hard" franchise is fully incorporated into the TV Universe, just that most of the characters from those films also have lives in Toobworld. And for all those TV shows that made mention of the events in the "Die Hard" movies (or to the movies themselves), the movies could have been fictional representations of actual events which occurred in Toobworld. Among the shows that either had the characters talking about the movie, or watching it, or quoting from it are:

'Friends' - in three different episodes
'The X-Files'
'The Middleman'
'The Sopranos'
'The Office'
'Ugly Betty'
'Supernatural'
'Freddy's Nightmares'
'How I Met Your Mother'
'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'
'Third Rock From The Sun'

As for Michael Rooker's appearance as Lt. Mauser in the story, this is no reflection on the character from the "Police Academy" movies - at least from within the reality of Toobworld. First off, if he had been the real character, as Al was, he should have looked like Art Metrano. Secondly, it doesn't even acknowledge the presence of those films, which do have a TV counterpart sharing the same dimension.

Instead, it's either the FULCRUM agent's real name, or he pulled it out of the air for an alias.

Thanks, 'Chuck'! Happy Holidays!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

THAT'S LIFE WITH LAVERNE & SHIRLEY

While doing research on 'That's Life' (the one from 2000) for today's TWD about New Jersey Day, I found this line of dialogue from the show:

"What, you let him live in your place
And now we're Laverne and Shirley?"
Jackie O'Grady
'That's Life'

I've got no problem with this Zonk. For the audience viewing at home? Sure, it's a reference to the TV show. They're "hearing" the quotation marks around the title in their heads.

But in Toobworld, Jackie was referring to two women who are known to both her and to her friend, Lydia DeLucca. For alls I know, maybe that Shirley and Laverne are elderly lesbians, and Jackie was worried about getting that reputation as well.

No matter who they were, that Laverne and Shirley were living in New Jersey and not in Milwaukee.

BCnU!
Toby O'B