Actually, the RNC screwed up big time. One example: The televised debates starting in 2015, when there were ~17 candidates, all had Trump at the center of the first group of candidates (according to polling) and the second group was the "kiddies' table" with its own debate. This continued for as long as there were two…

Ken Levine's blog has occasionally featured entertaining stories about his time working on the 1985-86 Mary sitcom. Best thing about it was Katey Sagal, but then she's the best part of anything she's involved with, in my opinion.

Late Night was (and is) a 12:30 a.m. show, however. Chase might have made a success in that time slot, but Fox aired his show at 11 p.m.

I never saw an episode of The Brady Bunch Hour, but I did see the follow-up The Bradys (1990) once. Who in the world thought an hour-long Brady Bunch drama series was a good idea!?

Dick van Dyke also had a weird, failed variety show during this same era: Van Dyke and Company (fall 1976). Like the two 1978-79 MTM series, it had a supporting cast that included future well-known oddballs - in his case, Andy Kaufman and Bob Einstein. You'd think MTM would have learned something from DVD's experience.

Likewise, John Colicos played the first Klingon ever to hit the airwaves in 1967, and was great in the part ("Errand of Mercy"), but when he reprised the role on Deep Space Nine he appeared as a "modern" Klingon with no explanation.

Many different aliens appeared in the scene in TMP where Kirk gathers the entire crew together to educate them about the Great Big Threat that is about to obliterate a deep-space observing post. That's probably where those stills in your LP came from. But in the scene, these aliens - many of them purportedly longtime…

I already reached zero interest a while ago - partly because it just seems all wrong for Star Trek to be a CBS thing.

Well, since Elijah means "my god [eli (אלי)] is God [yah (יה)]", what you're really saying is " 'My god is God' is God."

Debbie Harry (who will be 72 this year) is a "girl," hm?

This is all making Superman Returns look better in retrospect, isn't it?

There were exactly two elements of creative interest in Broad Street, and they both survived the movie: the David Gilmour guitar solo in "No More Lonely Nights," and the new arrangement of "Silly Love Songs," which is about twice as interesting as the original mid-'70s version.

What, no mention of Under the Cherry Moon or Graffiti Bridge? Film directing was not one of Prince's skills, but apparently no one was able to tell him so. He also tended to fire people frequently during both productions, as I heard second-hand but reliably at the time.

You want to see a good Chelsom-directed movie? Seek out Hear My Song, which he also wrote.

He was credited as "Dan Travanty" in that.

Small correction: Mannix ran for eight seasons, not seven (1967-75).

Also noteworthy, for people who haven't seen it, is that The Fugitive is a great Chicago picture.

Yeah, but The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (which is entirely sung) is an enduring masterpiece - or so many writers have argued for 50 years, and I tend to agree with them - and the male and female leads did not do their own singing.* Yet they were ideally cast - who would say otherwise? - and no one cared that they were…

Look, I agree with the idea that we now prefer to discuss pop culture, etc., online with relative (or actual) strangers rather than in person with friends, and that this leads to aggression that didn't previously exist. BUT anyone who writes headlines (or did so in a former life, such as at a college newspaper) knows…

It's odd - I have a coverless first printing of the 1970 Ballantine paperback original of Ringworld (in which Earth is evidently rotating in the wrong direction in the opening scene, corrected for later editions), and it can be read and reread with pleasure; nonetheless I've bounced off of every other Niven novel I've…