The Heath Post: Partridge Family

Showing posts with label Partridge Family. Show all posts

Saturday, February 2, 2019

What's On TV Tonight (1973)?

It's a David Aldridge Friday night on Feb. 2, 1973, on Channel 3:

At 7 p.m., it's an old HP favorite, "Bobby's Hero," on Brady Bunch.

At 7:30, Bert Convy, who has not been discussed nearly enough at the HP, makes a pass by The Partridge Family.

At 8, we have Room 222, a show I know hardly anything about and one with apparently no Season 4/1972-73 full episodes available online. Here's how The Paducah Sun described tonight 1973's episode: "A bright, rebellious student plans to refuse a college scholarship to protest scholastic competition." I should probably spend a little more time with this program.

At 8:30 comes dependable Odd Couple.

And, at 9, it's Love, American Style, which is hard to find online. But then we can pretty much fill in the blanks of the hour from this IMDb episode summary: "A woman is willing to remove everything but her gloves. A bride undergoes hypnosis in order to relax. A woman is prone to hysterical laughing upsetting social events. A young girl finds the ideal roommate with a gut but insists on being platonic."

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

What's On TV Tonight (1973)?

Channel 12 at 7 Central tonight 1973:

Channel 3 at 8:

That leaves a half-hour gap between the two broadcasts, and rich 1973 me will probably use it to watch the videotape of last Friday's Partridge Family, which I missed.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

The Freakin' Weekend (1972/73)

I've gotten myself stagnated on my 46-years-ago pretend at the HP.

For one thing, we're smack in the middle of Christmastide as I observe it, and that's always a happily different season for me, vacating me from the same, old routines that nourish me throughout the rest of the year. And that's great. Not only is the different good in and of itself, the different also is good in that it makes me more grateful and renewed when I get back to the sames.

So Christmastide is one issue here. The other thing, though, is that pretend me is catching up to the real me that I actually remember, and so I'm getting bogged down in all of the 1972 media that 2018 me consumes. I'm pretty regularly looking at three daily newspapers on Newspapers.com; I'm looking for pretty much a whole prime-time schedule's worth of old TV episodes, and I wanted freaking everything in the 1972 Sears Wishbook this year. All of it fancies me.

Anyway, the chase is that I don't know what the heck I'm doing now. I'm all over the place, and I want to talk about everything, and I'm saying almost nothing. And that's no fun at all, because posting and commenting on stuff at the HP makes my heart just absolutely sing. I think my strategy is just going to be to start posting more stuff that is less connected and see how that goes.

Here's the Partridge Family that played on ABC on Friday, Dec. 29, 1972:

Previous and future NFL72 reports:

Saturday, May 26, 2018

The Freakin' Weekend (1972)

I am rooting for the A's ...

Also, I love television ...

I am so thankful that, in this glorious age of Internet, I needn't face this Sophie's choice ...

Spoiler alert ... I already know how this comes out ...

I love these #freakinweekend posts. They are when the HP feels most clubhousey to me ...

Sunday, August 20, 2017

The Freakin' Weekend (1971)

What's on TV tonight (Friday, Aug. 20, 1971)?

The Aldridge lineup ...

The Partridge Family S01E21 Partridge Up A Pair... by burak-akpli

OK, here's the deal ... it's time to catch up on what's been going on TVwise ...

And now's the time to catch up on any music I might've missed so far in 1971 ...

Or if there's a movie out there I want to see, this is the weekend to see it ...

Or if there's some baseball teams or players I want to take a look at, other than the likely playoff participants, I better get on it ...

Or if I want to give a whirl to some new boutique parlor activity ... or check out what the hipsters are going crazy about ... or deep dive on one of those long, one-off, oddball SI takeouts ... whatever freak-flag curiosity that's catching my fancy ... the time is now ...

Because do you know what's drawing near?

Sunday, June 4, 2017

The Freakin' Weekend (1971)

Then, on the next Sports Illustrated, it's Al Unser (and Peter Revson) on the cover. It's Friday night (June 4, 1971), at last ...

Maybe I'll clip and fill out my All-Star ballot this (freakin') weekend ...

Here's where we stand, MLB71wise ...

I'm still pretending that I'm either 48 or 8 and either visiting or living in Chicago, by the way, and I'm pleased to report that the Chicago Tribune reports there is finally some good news on the Cubs ...

Why, yes, that is a Patio soda (Go Heath!) that (future-A!) Ken Holtzman is enjoying after his big game ...

As always, there is plenty to do around and about Chicago ...

But, of course, I will likely spend a good bit of it hanging out at the house, catching up on Mac Divot ...

... and TV, which is mostly in reruns ...

Not totally in reruns, however--there is a fresh Bobby Sherman special on ABC tonight!

Monday, April 10, 2017

Spring Break in Chicago (1971) (2017)

You know, I just love to play pretend. I always have, and I still do.

My (real) wife and daughter and I went to Chicago this (real) past week, and we had a great time (really). Part of the great time for me was that (pretend) Hoptown 1971 me went, too. The Chicago Tribune has browsable archives online, and the Museum of Classic Chicago Television has a robust YouTube channel. These really make it easy for a 48-year-old man in 2017 to pretend he's on vacation in Chicago in 1971. In fact, there's so much great old stuff available online, my pretend 1971 vacation figures to keep going for a good while even though my real 1971 vacation has ended.

Real 1971 me actually did live near Chicago. When I was 2 or 3, my dad took a job with a construction company in Highland Park, Illinois, a swanky northern suburb, and so my parents, younger (but still older) brother and I moved from Evansville, Indiana, to an apartment there. It was a huge deal with implications for my whole family and me forever.

For one thing, I don't think Mom and Dad would've ever moved to his old-home Kentucky directly from Evansville. He hadn't gotten far enough away from it, either geographically or rhythmically, either for him to pine sufficiently for it or for her to be convinced that being away from Kentucky was diminishing him. But, by 1973, we are moving away from the Chicago traffic and economic and social pressures to Paducah, and, ultimately, I'm writing for The Heath Post (as opposed to The Reitz Picayune or whatever the public high-school newspaper is called on the west side of Evansville).

Another thing is that the move to/from Chicago turned my family into people who at least think of ourselves as fearless counterculturists. At the front end the move in 1970, my mom and dad become the people in their Silent Majority circles who leave the known (a house they built amid their families) to the ... well, maybe even worse than the unknown, the familiar-and-feared (Chicago in the near wake of the 1968 riots and Democratic National Convention). Then, three years later, after a period of lavish, modern living with stuff like Mexican restaurants and professional sports, we chose against that life and moved to cheap property in Kentucky for Dad to teach himself (from books checked out of the Paducah Public Library!) to make and sell primitive pottery (kind of like the old brick-making Wöhlers back in dear old Detmold). These life choices have no precedent in our broader family, and they aren't depicted in TV sitcoms or long-distance commercials. To this day, my Mom and Dad's pod of the family is thought of as the kooky pod, and we like it that way. Highland Park is a big reason why.

Finally, the move turned me into a bit of an only child. I came along late--my dad was about to turn 43 when I was born in 1968, and my mom was almost 40. They already had 16-year-old and 11-year-old boys and a 14-year-old girl, so, by the time I came along, they had already checked all of the Greatest Generation parental boxes like lead a Boy Scout troop, serve as an elementary-school Room Mother and pour a backyard swimming pool. Even though one brother moved with us to Highland Park, the relocation was sort of like a retooling of a sitcom (Coach and Shelley Long are out, and here come Woody Harrelson and Kirstie Alley). Instead of parenting another hand-me-down Evansville kid, Mom and Dad tried some different stuff with me. I was hardly ever spanked. They took me to the library and neighborhood park a lot. I played with G.I. Joes and Sun Oil football stamps. I watched a lot of Mister Rogers and Sesame Street. Part of all that was the inevitable churn of kid culture over 10 years, but part of it was about raising an only-ish child in a suburban Chicago apartment instead of a fourth kid in the same, ol' Evansville ranch.

So, anyhow, going back to Chicago last week with my own spouse and child was pretty evocative stuff. And I found myself evoked in quiet moments to pretend all sorts of fun stuff--that I was real 1971 Dad, that I was real 1971 kid me, that I was Hoptown 1971 adult me, that I was the son of Hoptown 1971 me, that I was Hoptown 1971 me with real 2017 daughter in 1971, etc. Pretending is fun, but, when you are as sophisticated and experienced of a pretender as I am, it can get pretty complex to keep the storylines straight.

The scenario I spent the most time pretending was 48-year-old me vacationing from Hopkinsville in 1971 with wife (kind of real wife) and my 8-year-old son (kind of real 1976 me plus a little real 2017 daughter), and, in this happy storyline, it was just absolutely driving the boy insane that his dad kept wanting to drive the routes and find the sites in the 1939 Illinois and Indiana WPA guides. This was a blast.

We need a new muffler. Or something—I don’t know anything about cars. But we need something. The car is really loud. The engine is loud. Plus, Dad has the radio cranked up and the window cracked, so his cigarette smoke blows out of the car.

It’s a little boring in the dark because you can’t see anything, but it’s also kind of nice. This seat’s comfortable. I’m in the backseat, stretched out. I’m almost too tall now to do this, without folding my legs at the knees. But, for now, it’s pretty comfortable.

It’s just a little cold. Just a little.

The Bulls are on the radio. We’re still in Indiana, but we must be getting close to Chicago. I collect basketball cards, and I like hearing the names. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Bulls play on TV, but I know most of these players from the cards. I wonder if Jerry Sloan is nice. Dad loves Jerry Sloan.

It smells kind of cold. It does. The air from the window is a little chilly. It and the smoke are back here. It smells good. I smell a little gasoline, too. I like smelling gas.

I wonder if Mom’s asleep. Dad hasn’t said hardly anything since supper. What time is it?

It’s boring, but I like the driving out in the country more than in the cities at night. In the cities, it’s good because the lights flash into the backseat and I can look at my cards. But Dad’s nervous about driving in the traffic, and Mom’s nervous about looking at the map, and that makes me nervous. In the country, like I said, it’s boring, but it’s also kind of nice because nobody’s nervous. Dad’s just driving, smoking cigarettes, listening to the Bulls … I think … maybe he’s just thinking. I’ll bet he’s not even listening to the game; I’ll bet he’s thinking about something else. And I think Mom might be asleep, or she’s just sort of sitting there looking out the window at the dark. I don’t know. But it’s kind of nice, even though it’s kind of boring.

This seat’s pretty comfortable. I’m getting sleepy.

Initially, I was going to have us all pretend to stay at this place, but that's too little of progress on Day 1 of driving even to pretend. So, we got to Chicago all in one day--it just took a while (real and pretend).

And I think this place is where we pretend stayed (my parents and I stayed at this place in real 1978) ...

I imagined all sorts of places we might and might not have gone while we were in town ...

Of course, a lot of the time was spent checking out what was on TV. All pretend and real versions of 1971/2017/whenever me love TV ...

I'll tell you another thing I spent a lot of this pretend 1971 doing is looking at "The World's Greatest Newspaper" (from what I've seen, the tagline gets no argument from me) ...