No, sorry - I liked Chapin's earlier stuff, but at the end of his career he put out "Sequel," which was an uninspired-by-definition sequel to "Taxi." I take that as a clue that he was about played out. It's a shame the way he died, though…

Lenny Baker
The star of Paul Mazursky's autobiographical movie "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" (1976, set in 1953); also a stage actor whom I saw in Israel Horovitz' one-man play "Spared." Would have had a great career…

Ian R. McLeod's wonderful novella "Snodgrass" (www.infinityplus.co.uk/stor… is the first-person tale of a down-and-out Lennon, who had quit the Beatles 30 years earlier at a key real-life juncture, when it was suggested that they cover "How Do You Do It" (later a hit for Gerry & the Pacemakers) at their first…

Gray-green jazz
…and other musical genres invented by Philip K. Dick. A gray-green jazz harpist is a character in the story "The Little Black Box," ideas from which worked their way into Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? some years later.

Ellison's persona is why he was such a great choice for a dramatic reading of Steve Jarrett's "Dr. Seuss" version of Josh Olson's essay "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script" (http://blogs.villagevoice.c….

You can also find the original script in the mid-1970s paperback anthology Six Science Fiction Plays, edited by Roger Elwood, which is still possible to find in used bookstores.

Me and You and a Borg Named Hugh
Travelin' and a-livin' off the stars… someone help me out with the next couplet?

Well, that's the thing - the lead character was still recognizably Lou Grant, and he was able to be funny sometimes, just in a different context. Gene Reynolds was the main guy behind Lou Grant the series, and having been one of the original producers of the series version of MASH, he knew the importance of the…

Lou Grant
Thanks for beginning with proper attention to the hour-long MTM show that started it all. The story behind its premature cancellation by CBS in 1982 under political pressure is interesting, although I don't know if an unbiased account of it has been written. I still have a tape of the final episode - which…

Jeez, why hire Spacey if you're NOT going to have him play a character who's verbal (or, in one case, Verbal)?

Jeez, there are only twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers … and all twelve have been around since 1979. You've had plenty of time to get caught up.

Since the digital transition we get the suite of three Ion broadcast channels too. Mostly we check the main Ion channel to see whether there's a semi-interesting movie to accompany doing dishes or something. It's clear they're not selling too many ads; nearly all of the ad time is given over to house ads for the three…

Prince bootlegs
Ya know, it's odd that an artist who is so controlling has so many bootleg recordings out there - studio recordings, for the most part. And they're not hard to get, or weren't; I've got several hours' worth from the mid-'80s, my favorite period. Moreover, the "black album" that was withdrawn and…

I thought the subtitle of Godfather IV was The Quest for Pizza.

Every 4-5 years or so, I reread my (coverless) first-edition Ballantine paperback of Ringworld in which Louis extends his birthday party by going west-to-east; this was corrected in later printings by changing the names of the cities, but I always liked the sounds of the originally chosen city names better, even if…

Ah, yes… I can still play back in my head the excellent theme music (in 7/4!) for that series - its first season coincided with the last season of Star Trek, and on the same night (Name of the Game was 8:30 to 10 p.m., followed by Star Trek at 10, in fall 1968).

Jeez, what's wrong with the great James Garner retiring? The man turns 83 this year. I am glad he did those two-hour reunion movies on CBS in the '90s, though, with all the same people behind the scenes and most of the recurring characters returning as well, even Kathryn Harrold as the now-married Megan Dougherty - I…

As noted elsewhere: The writer obviously forgot about the Tunnel of Love album (1987 or '88); I saw the un-broken-up band on tour behind this album in 1988.

Springsteen and E Street Band did tour after Born in the USA, before breakup
I saw them in 1988 touring behind the Tunnel of Love album; that was the tour, I think, that introduced the solo acoustic version of Born to Run. A good case could be made that that was the last really decent Springsteen album.

Peter Greenaway's The Falls
…is another long experimental movie, a three-hour mock documentary, that turns out to possess its very own rhythms, charm, and sense of humor. I saw it only once, at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the 1980s, and never forgot it, in particular the Michael Nyman music and the "Theory…