I met Serling a few months before he died - he gave a talk about the TV industry (and took questions) at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, April 1975. He looked MUCH older than he was, with a very wizened face. He died after heart surgery. I believe he ruined his health with a combination of smoking and alcohol;…

"The charge is even made that it veered off course in candy-colored imitation of its time slot competition, Batman, which first appeared after Lost in Space had been on the air for four months." …I didn't see the PBS show so I don't know whether the phrase was used there, but the entire first season of Lost in Space…

I didn't see the PBS broadcast, and I don't know how carefully they distinguished early from late Lost in Space, but I do know that the carrot-man episode came near the very end of Lost in Space's run, spring 1968.

Why not? School of Rock (or The School of Rock) IS the last good movie he was in.

Wednesday evening 12/22 show is canceled as well
…Per New York Times, 5:30 p.m. EST, 12/22.

Better yet, a detailed, well-written tell-all book/postmortem such as The Devil's Candy by Julie Salamon, about Brian DePalma's production of The Bonfire of the Vanities.

The H-B movie "The Man Called Flintstone" was good (or so I recall; I saw it in a theater in 1966) - a spy story with a title song/lyrics written for the picture, etc. I agree that Top Cat (another half-hour early-'60s H-B show along with The Flintstones and The Jetsons) would work if enough people were familiar with…

We have a Monkees compilation CD, great for road trips, that includes the opening/closing song from Head, "The Porpoise Song" by Carole King & Gerry Goffin, who'd previously written "Sometime in the Morning" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday" (among others) for the Monkees. I haven't seen Head in many years but tried to…

The SF writer Brian Aldiss in his history of science fiction, Trillion Year Spree (1986), made the good point that Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan reads "like an exceptionally sunny Dick novel."

Oh, sorry, I forgot to comment on someone's praise above for the Ram album attributed to Paul & Linda. I could never call any album terrific that includes material like "Smile Away," "Three Legs," and "Monkberry Moon Delight." The album has craftsmanship, sure, but in the service of tunes like those? (I do think…

Actually the "Another Day" single on Apple was credited solely to Paul McCartney as performer, although the writing credit on the label was "Mr. and Mrs. Paul McCartney." Google search for the image (I can't find my own copy of the single) showed this. A good song, anyway.

He actually wrote a Ubik screenplay, published (posthumously) twice, most recently by Subterranean Press.

I think the broadest variety of sexualities was in I Will Fear No Evil (1970) - a novel that actually sold well at the time as a mass-market paperback (although I'd be quite surprised to hear of anyone today who says they enjoyed it), probably because of superficial resemblances to Stranger in a Strange Land, which…

The subway episode was the subject of a documentary about its filming, "Anatomy of a 'Homicide: Life on the Street'," which was broadcast in 1998, I think on PBS.

Earth Abides
Agreed - everyone should read it. What a great piece of work. (Although I could have done without the so-carefully-chosen names of the main characters: Ish, Em, Ezra - i.e., man, mother, and helper, if you know your Hebrew.)

The great majority of Homicide's 100+ episodes were just as artfully done and are equally worthy of such a long and detailed write-up. Why not add this series to TV Club Classic?

As for recurring characters showing up late in the run, many of them even showed up in the seven or eight Rockford Files TV movies broadcast by CBS in the 1990s. Also participating in those were many writers from the series, including Cannell, Juanita Bartlett, and David Chase (just before The Sopranos got started).

Eddie Fisher was a Hebrew-school classmate of my dad's, long ago in South Philadelphia; a class photo shows them both in a group of 12 or so. Not that they were friends or anything - I always supposed that the entire class, except for Eddie, became dentists or MDs.

As much as I admire Spiner's work in TNG, I have to note here that he has a story credit in Nemesis. Is it possible that Spiner was given a story credit and DIDN'T have anything to do with the B-4 storyline? Don't think so. (Also, Shatner has a story credit in ST V. Perhaps actors should stick with what they know…

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Let's not forget one of Fleming's last books, and, as far as I know, his only work for children; it ends with a fudge recipe. For more than 40 years, this charming illustrated novel (which I first read in hardcover when it came out; I was 8) has been overwhelmed in the public consciousness by…