Newsday TV Book, February 19-25, 1978.

We're two-thirds of the way into a brutally cold February, so I bet the music of Barry Manilow will shine, shine, shine on you like a warm daybreak. (Or, you can't stand him, like several people I know, in which case just resume freezing your hinder off and skip the cover story by the great Bill Kaufman.)

(Click or tap the pictures to see them better. I'm not sure I need to say that anymore--it seems so obvious and dumb--but, to paraphrase Mary Tyler Moore, "Dumb is all around.")

I thought the mention of Barry’s beagle, Bagel, was a funny little detail, turns out this was a very well-known hound.

In the TV Line: the whereabouts of the fifth Kong, an explanation for Mrs. Roper’s fashion sense, and why Soap is Soap.

Oh, and that thing around Paul Michael Glaser’s neck? None of your fucking business.

In this week’s ad for Dan Howard’s Maternity Outlet, the Noseless Preggo wears high boots and an overalls-ish romper, I guess. So, the baby just lifts that flap when it’s hungry?

Here’s a full weekday, Monday the 20th. There’s a close-up on that night’s TV movie premiere of Wild and Wooly, featuring hottie trio Elyssa Davalos, Chris De Lisle, and my favorite, Susan Bigelow. She was in tons of commercials, and I always thought she was cute (although this pic doesn't do her justice). Coincidentally, I acquired a recording of WaW, from WNEW, aired July of ‘85.

TV celebs were regularly given specials with stupid titles, and the aforementioned MTM got a few of them, including this doozy ("How to Survive the 70's and Maybe Even Bump Into Happiness") with Harvey Korman.

I seem to remember digging Quark. I have the series DVD (all 8 episodes), acquired with the hope of scratching a nostalgia itch I'm not even sure I have. I've tried watching it several times, but I haven’t yet made it through an entire episode. I guess it’s not the worst show I’ve ever seen, but the overall quality tends to remind me of the unpleasant notion that I am not immortal and therefore needn’t be spending any more of my hourglass sand on a 70's sci-fi sitcom that seems to be inspired solely by a desire to cash in on the Star Wars craze. Sorry, creator Buck Henry.

All day Saturday. You didn't ask for it, but I know how you are…

You would be wasting your morning strolling down Broadway with a zombie from the 1940's (thanks to the WOR double-feature). 

Later you'd tune in Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (WOR again!), although you will find it does not benefit from daylight viewing. This is a movie that needs all the help it can get, so maybe wait 'til the next late Saturday Fright Night showing, which I can tell you (by consulting my handy copy [digital] of Fright Night on Channel 9 by James Arena) won't happen for another three years and a month. (Here's my review of the book--go click on "helpful," you don't even have to read it.)

I'm not sure what you'd watch that evening, but I do know that the joke in John Cashman's review of Panic in the Year Zero is hobbled by a typo; it's supposed to say that Ray Milland's greatest feat as director is not letting Frankie Avalon RUIN things.

I'll end the second-person pretense now and just say that I would have Love Boated to Fantasy Island purely for Lynda Day George and Carol Lynley, respectively. Then Odd Couple, O.J. Simpson on SNL (although we never called it that back then, just as we weren't yet calling O.J. a murderer), and of course, Octaman on FN!

Some Cable TV Highlights: Russ Meyer's The Vixens (X) gets softened into Vixen (R),and Tom Downey Reports on clamming. Only one of these shows featured incest.

(To my knowledge.)

Just a couple ads to offer, starting with a sprightly clip art George Washington for Medford's Nanrich...

...then that black-and-white furniture illustration comes to colorful life for Suburban Colonial Shoppes' own holiday sale.

My eyes! I got some seventies in my eyes! Quick, flush them with a Harvey Wallbanger!

See you next time, for an early March 1977 edition, with the TV movie A Circle of Children on the cover. Oh boy--Jane Alexander and a dozen emotionally disturbed kids? Break out the snacks!

And keep those Wallbangers coming!