As I was reading another classic television piece, I stumbled upon this one which was very well done on a long time TRS favorite "I Dream of Jeannie".
CloserWeekly.com is the host for the long and well-written article on the show, which I have loved since a toddler.
"Jeannie" is one of those 60s shows with a silly premise that much like pro wrestling that you have to set aside the ridiculousness and enjoy a show that just makes you laugh.
Sure, Barbara Eden is downright gorgeous (For my money, using sports style drafting such as I'd take 1968 Bob Gibson as my pitcher in any game, etc, 1966-70 Barbara Eden in Jeannie is my first selection in the beautiful actress draft without a doubt. Call me out now.), but Larry Hagman was terrific in his role as the leading man and pratfall taker and with several talented character actors in Bill Daily, Hayden Roarke and Emmaline Henry to name a few, Jeannie makes me smile and laugh as very few shows do.
What brought me to CloserWeekly was a similar article on "Nanny and the Professor", a show that I remembered faintly from my childhood.
While Jeannie ended in the 1969-1970 and my memories are all from syndication, my limited memories of "Nanny and the Professor" were mainly from its placement on the ABC schedule in 1970-1971, exactly in between "Brady Bunch" and "Partridge Family".
The ratings in between those shows were good, but an FCC decision for the 1971-72 television season doomed this show which starred Juliet Mills (a long time TV veteran in the United States and the United Kingdom) and Richard Long ( who was a star on the 60s western The Big Valley).
Pre-1971, prime time television started at 7;30, not the current eight o'clock.
The change in prime time meant something had to go and despite Nanny being the eight o'clock program, it was the show bumped from the kid-friendly lineup.
After a move to the more adult Monday schedule, Nanny and the Professor didn't last long and was gone after that season.
We move to the Alzheimer's Association website as the daughter of the late Glen Campbell writes about some of the problems that her father struggled with.
Ashley Campbell writes of the battle and how Alzheimer's is such an insidious disease.
I cannot imagine what an afflicted person and their families have to go through when something like a brain disease strikes a person.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer writes of the recent 50th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River "catching fire" in 1969 and looks back at the event, the River's past and its present.
Even though the Cuyahoga didn't really catch fire (it was floating pollution on the top of it put there by industrial factories) and it was far from the first time that pollution had ignited, it was the 1969 fire reported nationally by Time magazine that woke people up to just what was being done to natural resources and in many ways could be regarded as the start of the environmental movement.
Today, the Cuyahoga has been improved significantly through regulation and cleanup to the point that in March, the Ohio EPA declared fish caught in the river between Cleveland and Cuyahoga Falls safe to eat for the first time in fifty years.
Two political notes that I found interesting with the first being an opinion piece in Politico by Republican commentator Amanda Carpenter on newly resigned White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
Carpenter discusses Sanders role in not answering right-wing smears from the 2016 campaign from the Donald Trump team that Carpenter, who formerly worked for then-Trump rival Ted Cruz's Senate office and a "Never Trump" Republican, had slept with Cruz.
Carpenter rightfully calls out Sanders' remarkably high number of lies and then claims she is writing the column to place her version of the story to "warn the voters of Arkansas about Sanders".
Arkansas is where Sanders is rumored to be running for Governor in 2022.
The second goes to Vogue, who followed the controversial left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for 36 hours.
"AOC" has already become a polarizing figure in American politics and it is not difficult to figure out why that is with her ability to find cameras and her age, which has attracted many and repelled others.
No matter your opinion of her politics, it's interesting to see just how busy she is over a specified time period.
Dr.Lisa Alexander sent me this article from Rich Lowry and National Review on Oriole Park at Camden Yards and how it began the retro ballpark process for new stadiums.
The article reviews the new book "Ballpark" by Paul Goldsberger (who is an architectural critic and not a baseball writer) discusses stadiums along the way and the impact that they have had on the urban surroundings.
One interesting note was how Oriole Park almost didn't become the standard bearer for ballparks as it was originally slated to be another concrete two-team stadium (having the ability to house a football team as the Ravens hadn't been stolen from Cleveland at that time) and might have been placed in a Baltimore suburb.
Count me out on the former and in on the latter- I like the television look of an urban ballpark, but despise all the traffic and urban issues that come with it.
We wrap up with a sad note on satire that's not satirical as it appears that Mad Magazine is about to be the latest casualty of the internet and all the choices that one has and will be printing its final magazine later this year.
I think almost every boy of a certain age read Mad or at least tried it with its satire on about everything from film and television to society at large and like so many things from childhood can be better remembered through memory.
My brother and I used to read Mad with some variation of its iconic face, the gap-toothed Alfred E, Neumann all the time and I remember passing around Mad (and its lesser selling challengers Cracked from 1958-2007 and Crazy 1973-1983) between just as we would the latest issue of World Boxing or Pro Wrestling Illustrated.
It's sad to see an icon of over 67 years go away, but Mad wasn't just another iconic magazine to go away, it was a sign of our changing culture.
I love the internet and all that it offers, but Mad was an object of a simpler time where kids ( and adults too) needed a satirical release that other outlets didn't cover.
I haven't read an issue in lord knows how long and I don't remember if even by Ryan's childhood that he was reading Mad, but I still feel like something tangible was lost today.
Changing times claims another.
Man, that was a lot of heavy lifting, but the inbox is now lighter.
I still have to put together a post that peeks at some recent passings and a recent day trip to a new ballpark, but without a boxing challenge this week, I might have the time to do something different as well.
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