March 16, 1975

I look at the Family Circus pretty much every day in 2022, and one thing I notice relative to seeing it from time to time in 1975 ...

16 Mar 1975, Sun The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) Newspapers.com 

... is that the parents don't rage at their children nearly as often now as they did then.

The Best Made-for-TV Movie About TV of All Time

My favorite movies are made-for-TV movies about TV. The best one of all time (5 stars, highly recommend) is going to be the one that someone does about the night that Don and Kay Knotts play bridge at Pat and Marjorie Harrington's place in Westwood.

What's Happening This Weekend (in Hoptown, in 1969)?

Well, we could go to a movie.

The movie I'm most interested in among these is Yours, Mine and Ours, which is really sweet and wonderful. I love Lucille Ball, and I especially love Lucy when she plays it more straight. I was mistaken in thinking this movie was a blood ancestor of Brady Bunch; regardless, I like it a great deal.

I looked at about 10 minutes of the Don Knotts movie on YouTube, and it's, basically, what if Hugh Hefner visited Mayberry? It's always good to see all of the Andy Griffith Show bit players turn up in his movies, at least.

There's always good, ol' TV, of course ... a Dragnet rerun, for example ... baseball on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon ... the "Coaches All-America" football game ... etc., etc. There's always TV! Actually, the program I'm most interested in is this hour-long NFL Action program that has turned up most Sunday afternoons during this NFL offseason. I just discovered the following description of the series in the May 15, 1969, Chicago Tribune, and it sounds like a very, very compelling program!

How about dinner and dancing?

The restaurant is a tough choice, but I'd probably end up at Jerry's to get my astronaut print. The Alibi Club looks like a literally "happening" place, but--who's kidding who here?--I'm probably heading to the Legion to see Sonny & the Satisfies.

Plenty of more exotic fare to choose among, too. Boy, Beech Bend really knew what it was doing, hosting those "county days" for each area Kentucky county. That's probably where I'm heading; I love Bowling Green and that drive across U.S. 68 from Hoptown.

What's On TV Tonight (1969)?

OK, it might've been slow moving (I don't know; his Feb. 20, 1969, special is not on YouTube, though others are). But the decision to have Andy Griffith--especially Andy Griffith--recite James Weldon Johnson's "The Creation" a couple of months after Apollo 8 was just freaking brilliant ...

Also, I'm already getting excited about the 1969-70 TV season.

Andy Griffith, Intermission

“Everything we ever said on the show, we believed; I suppose that’s what made it work.”

“I don’t know what we’re going to do when Don leaves. And I got up and left, and she wrote it just exactly that way. It was the best article ever written on me.”

“I’m not bragging. I just want to clear up something.”

“Dick and I hit television situation on its rise; Jerry hit it on its decline.”

“Dick Van Dyke cannot stand on a nightclub stage and tell a joke.”

“It starts Sept. 23 … right? Yeah. And I will be a guest in four episodes. I happen to be a guest in the first episode. The character Helen and I get married.”

I find every moment of this whole, two-part conversation, from 1968, fascinating.

That's Entertainment

Man, oh, man, do those things--from 1965 and 1967 Andy Griffith specials, respectively--make you feel like something big's about to happen or what? These are about my two favorite songs right now.

1975: The new season (Fridays)

Now this is some rock-'em, sock-'em/capital-T, capital-V TV, baby!

With Sanford and Son and Chico and the Man, Nielsen's second- and third-rated shows of last season, respectively, one would think NBC would have locked down the 7 p.m. Central hour. But CBS has No. 5 M*A*S*H right there in the 7:30 rearview, and this season it leads off with rookie Big Eddie, which is led by no newcomer. Producer and director of The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show, Sheldon Leonard gets back in the acting game (I'd forgotten he was in It's a Wonderful Life).

But what about ABC? They're giving brilliant Jack Webb a new go. I'll definitely have to give Mobile One a try, too, as I love both Jack Webb and TV shows about media.

It's a solid night at 8 and beyond, too. TV Guide tells us that The Sound of Music and Sounder are among the titles planned for The ABC Friday Night Movie. For me to tune in, however, it will have to be a proven, stellar commodity like one of those two. I am totally in the tank for Rockford Files, and I will happily enjoy a 9 p.m. nightcap with either sultry Angie Dickinson in Police Woman or steady Buddy Ebsen in Barnaby Jones.

What a night--Friday nights in 1975. This is the kind of night that encouraged my dad to write in his American history, The Death of Democracy, "Television continued to provide the working man with dependable and affordable entertainment."

Previous dispatches:

-- Mondays

-- Tuesdays

-- Wednesdays

-- Thursdays

Rest in peace, Andy Griffith

I have a stupid and awful tendency to get agitated with my fellow survivors when someone I love dies. It irritates me when others mourn differently than I do. I get mad because I judge that they're not somber enough, or I get mad because I judge that they're too somber. Or I get mad because I judge that they celebrate the wrong things from the dead person's life--or that they missed the point or took away the wrong lesson. Any and all of the above. It's a wrong-headed, illogical and unhelpful way to live at a moment when one needs to be living right for the sake of not only himself but also for his brothers and sisters around him. But darn if I don't fall into that same manhole every time I walk down this street.

Andy Griffith died Tuesday, and I was surprised that it so staggered me. The man was 86 freaking years old. He'd been old for a long time, and there'd been reports off and on of his being sick. So many of the other people that I associate with him in my head--Don Knotts, Howard Sprague, Helen Crump, Goober, Patricia Neal, Dad--are already dead. Why would the news of Andy Griffith's passing surprise anyone? Well, it did me, and I ended up spending pretty much the rest of Tuesday in a haze of reading fantastic obituaries and tributes written by folks who are more adept at catching clues and collecting and expressing thoughts than I am.

Anyway, the focus on A Face in the Crowd has really--stupidly and awfully--agitated me the rest of the week.

Hey, I love this movie, too. I've got a VHS copy that I recorded off TV 15 years ago, and I'll bet that I've watched it a dozen times and loaned it out to at least that many friends and family. It's a great story; it's a great-looking thing, and Andy Griffith is one sweating, throbbing, laughing, crying, yelling, moaning force of manhood in that movie. It's a fierce and virile performance, and the people who made the movie obviously knew what they had, because the script for the trailer compares the 28-year-old, newcomer lead with Marlon Brando and James Dean.

"If Andy Griffith had won an Academy Award for A Face in the Crowd--as he should have done--his whole career might have been very different," Go Heath remarked around the HP office watercooler Tuesday afternoon. "As it was, he never got the chance to play as many dramatic roles as he should have had."

That's true.

But, man, oh, man, am I ever thankful that it worked out the way it did. Because had Andy Griffith gotten to be Marlon Brando or James Dean, we probably would've never gotten The Andy Griffith Show.

The Andy Griffith Show is my favorite take-me-to-a-time-and-place TV show of all time, and that's not the half of it. TV Land is going to run marathons of episodes today and tomorrow. They're going to kick things off at 10 Central this morning with "The New Housekeeper," the Oct. 3, 1960, debut, and you can see that Andy Griffith and the other people who made the show understood right off the bat the story terrain they intended to explore. There are strategic and personnel tweaks throughout the series' eight-season run. But, from the start, The Andy Griffith Show was funny in the way it was going to be funny and it was about what it was going to be about.

And what it was about, was living in loving community. It's about the balances to be struck or to throw out of whack between sweetness and authenticity and between compassion and justice. It's about the tension in a community between hospitality and security, and it's about what's it's like to deal with the problems of sameness and change in single individuals or in multiple individuals. And when it gets it right, as it often does--not "The Gospel According to The Andy Griffith Show," but "The Andy Griffith Show According to the Gospel"--it's as good as anything ever.

Andy Griffith's life story is filled with all sorts of bad stuff: feeling lesser than when he was a kid, getting too full of himself professionally when he was an adult, divorces and other family tragedies, horrible illnesses, falling off a roof. He was just another man, but I do find a lot of things about him to think about and to admire. Primary among them is that the signature piece of work of Andy Griffith's life on this Earth concentrated on no less than the nuts and bolts of what's it's like to actually live out, together, the kind of community that Jesus calls us to. (Calls us one and calls us all.) "Andy Griffith created aspirational television," Brad Hirschfield put it in Wednesday's Washington Post.

Amen, brother.

UK Ranked Number 1 in Pre-Season Poll

The rifle poll, that is. As you recall, UK is the defending NCAA rifle champion.

Which poll did you think I meant?

The rifle poll, by the way, provides a fascinating picture of Red State America. Kentucky may or may not be the best state when it comes to basketball, but we are clearly the best rifle state:

1. Kentucky
2. Texas Christian
3. W. Virginia
4. Alaska-Fairbanks
5. Murray State
6. Jacksonville State
7. Army
8. Mississippi
9. Air Force
10. Ohio State
11. Navy
12. Nebraska
13. UTEP
14. Nevada
15. Memphis
16. Columbus (Ga.) State
17. Akron
18. N. Carolina State
19. UT-Martin
20. Morehead State

Album Review: Finally Famous by Big Sean

A throwaway hip-hop dance record.  The album can be summed up by the following lyric from the song "My Last."

And I'ma hit this drink up like it's my last
I'ma, I'ma hit this night up like it's my last
I'ma I'ma, hmm, hmm, like it's my last

The music is about as innovative as that lyric.  If you were a modern day Opie Taylor and you want to throw a dance party.  Throw this album on and very soon everyone will have either fallen asleep or left.

Following the Rhapsody rating method I give it 0 out of 5 stars for Don't Like.

Here are my favorite 13 take-me-to-a-time-and-place TV shows to have aired before 2002

1. The Andy Griffith Show (1960s North Carolina)
2. Seinfeld (1990s New York)
3. Gilmore Girls (2000s Stars Hollow, Conn.)
4. The Bob Newhart Show (1970s Chicago)
5. WKRP in Cincinnati (1970s Cincinnati)
6. Newhart (1980s Vermont)
7. The Simpsons (1990s Springfield)
8. The Dick Van Dyke Show (1960s New York and New Rochelle, N.Y.)
9. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970s Minneapolis)
10. White Shadow (1970s Los Angeles)
11. Roseanne (1980s Lanford, Ill.)
12. Barney Miller (1970s New York)
13. Happy Days (1950s Milwaukee)