Here is your
a little spark of madness
that we could use to momentarily forget about those
things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.
|
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Tony Figueroa
I represent the first generation who, when we were born, the television was now a permanent fixture in our homes. When I was born people had breakfast with Barbara Walters, dinner with Walter Cronkite, and slept with Johnny Carson. Read the full "Pre-ramble"
Sunday, November 19, 2023
Your HOLIDAY SOR-BAY: The Mary Tyler Moore Show - Not a Christmas Story
Monday, November 13, 2023
This Week in Television History: November 2023 PART III
November 14, 1988
The first episode of Murphy Brown aired.
Murphy Brown aired on CBS from November 14, 1988, to May 18, 1998, for a total of 247 episodes. The program starred Candice Bergen as the eponymous Murphy Brown, a famous investigative journalist and news anchor for FYI, a fictional CBS television newsmagazine.
November 15, 1933
Jack Burns is born.
Burns began his comedy career in 1959, when he partnered with George Carlin; both were working for radio station KXOL in Fort Worth, Texas. After successful performances at a Fort Worth beat coffeehouse, The Cellar, Burns and Carlin headed for California in February 1960 continued to worked together for two more years. An album containing some of their material was released in 1963, titled Burns and Carlin at the Playboy Club Tonight.Longer lasting was a later teaming with Avery Schreiber, whom he met when they were both members of The Second City, a live comedy and improv troupe based in Chicago.
Burns and Schreiber were best known for a series of routines in which Burns
played a talkative taxicab passenger, with Schreiber as the driver.
During the first half of the 1965-1966 season of The
Andy Griffith Show, in an attempt
to replace the Don Knotts' Barney Fife character after Knotts left the show, Burns was cast
as Warren
Ferguson, a dedicated but inept
deputy sheriff. His character was not popular, and was dropped after eleven
appearances.
In 1967, he was cast as 'Candy Butcher' in The Night They Raided Minsky's, a movie about burlesque.
Burns voiced Harry Boyle's (Tom Bosley) neighbor Ralph
Kane in the short-lived syndicated primetime cartoon Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. The series was a forerunner of adult animation comedies.
Burns was the head writer for the first season of Hee Haw and for that of The Muppet Show. Schreiber appeared on an episode with The Muppet
Show during that first season. Burns also co-wrote The Muppet Movie (with Jerry Juhl, his successor as head writer of The Muppet Show.)
He hosted a 1977 episode of Saturday
Night Live, the first to carry
this title, after Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell was canceled.
In the early 1980s, Burns became a writer, announcer
and sometimes-performer on the ABC sketch comedy series Fridays. He and comedian Michael Richards were involved in a staged on-air fight with Andy Kaufman, later re-created in the Kaufman biopic Man
on the Moon.
He teamed with Lorenzo Music to provide the voices for a pair of crash test dummies respectively named Vince and Larry in a series of United States Department of Transportation public
service announcements that promoted
the use of seat belts. Distributed by the Ad Council, the advertising
campaign ran from 1985 to 1998. In
1993, Burns starred in the cartoon-series Animaniacs, as the voice of Sid the Squid, giving the character a raspy, Daffy Duck kind of voice. Schreiber also appeared on the show,
as Beanie the Bison.
Burns was a guest voice in the a 1999 episode of The Simpsons, Beyond
Blunderdome.
November
17, 1968
NBC-TV cut away from the final minutes of a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game to begin a TV special, "Heidi," on schedule.
The Raiders came from behind to beat the Jets 43-32.November 17, 2003
“The Terminator” becomes “The Governator” of California.
On this day in 2003, the actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in as the 38th governor of California at the State Capitol in Sacramento. Schwarzenegger, who became a major Hollywood star in the 1980s with such action movies as Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator, defeated Governor Gray Davis in a special recall election on October 7, 2003. Prior to Schwarzenegger, another famous actor, Ronald Reagan, served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975 before going on to become the nation’s 40th president in 1980.Schwarzenegger was born July 30, 1947, in Austria. He
trained as a bodybuilder and at the age of 20 became the youngest person to win
the Mr. Universe title. In 1968, Schwarzenegger, dubbed “The Austrian Oak,”
came to the United States, speaking little English, and went on to win a dozen
more world bodybuilding titles. In 1977, he gained notice when he was featured
in the documentary Pumping Iron, about the Mr. Olympia competition.
Schwarzenegger’s acting career took off with the 1982 blockbuster Conan the
Barbarian, in which he played a sword-wielding hero avenging his parents’
deaths, and its 1984 sequel, Conan the Destroyer. He later became an international
star with roles in a long list of action films including The Terminator
(1984), in which he plays a cyborg assassin who utters the now-famous line
“I’ll be back”; the Oscar-nominated sci-fi thriller Total Recall (1990),
co-starring Sharon Stone; Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which
contains the memorable catchphrase “Hasta la vista, baby”; and True Lies (1994),
co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis and directed by James Cameron, who also helmed the
Terminator films.
In addition to action films, Schwarzenegger also had
box-office success with comedies, including Twins (1988), co-starring
the diminutive Danny DeVito, and Kindergarten Cop (1990), in
which he played a detective who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher in
order to nab a drug dealer. While continuing to make movies into the
2000s--notably including Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)--
Schwarzenegger also built a reputation as a savvy businessman and an advocate
of physical fitness and after-school programs for children.
In 1986, Schwarzenegger, a committed Republican,
married the broadcast journalist Maria Shriver, a niece of President John F. Kennedy
and a member of one of America’s most famous Democratic families. In August
2003, Schwarzenegger, who became a U.S. citizen in 1983 and had never served in
public office, announced on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that
he intended to seek the California governorship in the special recall election that
year. After winning the election and serving out the remainder of former
governor Gray Davis’s term, “The Governator,” as he was dubbed, was re-elected
in November 2006 to serve a full term in office.
November 18, 1953
Kevin Nealon is born.
Actor and comedian, best known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1995, acting in several of the Happy Madison films, for playing Doug Wilson on the Showtime series Weeds, and providing the voice of the title character, Glenn Martin, on Glenn Martin, DDS.
November 18, 1978
Mass suicide at Jonestown
The The Powerpuff Girls officially premiered on, lasting 6 seasons with 78 episodes total.
The Powerpuff Girls is an animated television series created by Craig McCracken for Cartoon Network. The series began as a student film called Whoopass Stew, made by McCracken while he attended the California Institute of the Arts in 1992. Two additional shorts, "Meat Fuzzy Lumkins" and "Crime 101", later aired on Cartoon Network's World Premiere Toons. A Christmas special and a 10th anniversary special were also produced. Episodes of The Powerpuff Girls have seen numerous DVD and VHS releases as well. The show centers on Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, three kindergarten-aged girls with superpowers, as well as their "father", the brainy scientist Professor Utonium, who all live in the fictional city of Townsville, USA. The girls are frequently called upon by the town's childlike and naive mayor to help fight nearby criminals using their powers.
November 19, 1933
Larry King is born Lawrence Leibel Harvey Zeiger in Brooklyn, New York City, New York.
His parents were an Austrian immigrant Edward Jonaton Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker, and his wife Jennie (Gitlitz), a garment worker, who emigrated from Belarus. Both parents were Orthodox Jews.
He
began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and
1960s and became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting
in 1978. From 1985 to 2010, he hosted the nightly interview television program Larry King Live on CNN. He currently hosts Larry King Now on Hulu and RT America Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. He
also hosts "Politicking with Larry King", a weekly political talk
show Thursday evenings on RT America. His work has been recognized with awards
including two Peabodys and ten Cable ACE Awards.
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Monday, November 06, 2023
This Week in Television History: November 2023 PART II
November 10, 1969
Sesame Street premiered.
The longest running children's program on television. The show is produced by the non-profit organization Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), founded by Joan Ganz Cooney and Ralph Rogers.
As a result of its extensive influence, Sesame Street is one of the
most highly regarded, and most watched, educational shows for children in the
world. The original series has been televised in more than 120 countries, and
25 independent versions have been produced. The show has been called
"perhaps the most vigorously researched, vetted, and fretted-over
program". As of 2009, the series has received 118 Emmy Awards,
more than any other television series. An estimated 77 million Americans
watched the series as children.
Sesame Street uses a combination of animation, puppets, and live actors to
stimulate young children's minds, improve their letter and word recognition,
basic arithmetic,
geometric forms, classification, simple problem solving, and socialization by
showing children or people in their everyday lives. Since the show's inception,
other instructional goals have been basic life skills, such as how to cross the
street safely, proper hygiene, healthy eating habits, and social skills; in
addition, real-world situations are taught, such as death, divorce, pregnancy and
birth, adoption, and even all of the human emotions such as happiness, love,
anger, and hatred. Also, recently, the Sesame Street Muppets discussed
the late-2000s recession with their latest
prime-time special Families Stand Together: Feeling Secure in Tough Times.
The series has made many published lists, including greatest all-time show
compilations by TV
Guide and Entertainment Weekly. A 1996 survey
found that 95% of American preschoolers have watched the show by the time they
are three years old.
Sesame Street will celebrate its 40th anniversary and will include a segment
with First Lady Michelle Obama interacting with the Muppets.
Jon Stone was responsible for hiring the first cast of Sesame Street.
He did not audition actors until Spring 1969, a few weeks before the five test
shows were due to be filmed. He videotaped the auditions, and Ed Palmer took
them out into the field to test children's reactions. The actors who received
the "most enthusiastic thumbs up" were cast. For example, Loretta
Long, was chosen to play Susan when the children who saw
her audition stood up and sang along with her rendition of "I'm a Little Teapot". It was Stone's goal
to cast white actors in the minority. As Stone said, casting was the only
aspect of the show that was "just completely haphazard". Most
of the cast and crew found jobs on Sesame Street through personal
relationships with Stone and the other producers. Stone also hired Bob McGrath
to play Bob, Will
Lee to play Mr. Hooper, and Matt Robinson to play Gordon.
Sesame Street's cast became more diverse in the 1970s. The cast
members who joined the show during this time were Sonia
Manzano (Maria), Northern Calloway (David), Emilio
Delgado (Luis), Linda Bove (Linda), and Buffy
Saint-Marie (Buffy). Roscoe Orman succeeded Matt Robinson, the original Gordon, and Hal Miller, in
1975.
International
co-productions
Some countries
have co-produced their own unique versions of Sesame Street, in which
the characters and segments represent their country's cultures. Other countries
simply air a dubbed version of Sesame Street, or a dubbed version of Open Sesame. Among various
other countries, Australia has and still does broadcast the American version on
the ABC and the UK had broadcast the American show,
on Channel 4 until 2001 when it was replaced
with Henson production The Hoobs.
Dubbed versions include Seesamtie in Finnish, Boneka Sesame in
Indonesian, Sesam Opnist Þú in Icelandic, Sezame otevři se in
Czech, Sesamo Apriti in Italian, Sezame, otevři se in Czech, and Taman
Sesame in Malay. In 2004, one Japanese network cancelled the dubbed
American Sesame, while another created a local version. In New Zealand,
locally produced segments entitled "Korero Māori" (in
English: "let's speak Māori") were inserted into episodes to educate
children in the Māori language. Likewise, in Canada the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
substituted locally-produced French
language segments in place of the Spanish
language portions of the US version. Spanish program La
Cometa Blanca also includes segments from Sesame Street.
Locally produced adaptations of Sesame
Street include:
- 1972:
Vila Sésamo, Brazil
- 1972:
Plaza Sésamo, Mexico
- 1973:
Sesamstraße, Germany
- 1973:
Canadian Sesame Street, Canada (reformatted as Sesame Park in the 1990s)
- 1976:
Sesamstraat, Netherlands
- 1978:
1, rue Sesame, France
- 1979:
Iftah Ya Simsim, Arab World
(in classical Arabic)
- 1979:
Barrio Sésamo, Spain
- 1981:
Svenska Sesam, Sweden
- 1983:
Rechov Sumsum, Israel
- 1984:
Sesame! (Batibot), Philippines
- 1986:
Susam Sokağı, Turkey
- 1989:
Rua Sésamo, Portugal
- 1991:
Sesam Stasjon, Norway
- 1996:
Ulitsa Sezam, Russia
- 1996:
Ulica Sezamkowa, Poland
- 1998:
Rechov Sumsum and Shara'a Simsim, Israel and Palestinian Territories
- 1998:
Zhima Jie, China
- 1999:
Sesame English, China, Italy, Poland, Taiwan
- 2000:
Takalani Sesame, South Africa
- 2000:
Alam Simsim, Egypt (using the local dialect)
- 2002:
Play with Me
Sesame, United Kingdom
- 2003:
Open
Sesame, Australia
- 2004:
Koche Sesame, Afghanistan
- 2004:
Sesame
Street, Japan
- 2005:
Sisimpur, Bangladesh
- 2005:
5, Rue Sésame, France
- 2005:
Sabai Sabai
Sesame, Cambodia
- 2006:
Galli Galli
Sim Sim, India
- 2007:
Jalan Sesama Indonesia
- 2007:
Tar ag
Spraoi Sesame Republic of
Ireland, Irish language dub of Play With Me Sesame
- 2008:
Sesame Tree, Northern Ireland
- 2009:
Sesamgade,
Denmark
- Note
that dates solely refer to the year production on the series began.
See also: List of characters from international versions of Sesame Street
Monday, October 30, 2023
This Week in Television History: November 2023 PART I
November
2, 1998
CBS debuted the television series "Becker."
November 3, 1933
Ken Berry is born.
Sitcom actor, dancer and singer. Berry has had success in multiple television shows, one being with his friend and mentor, Andy Griffith. Berry starred in the successful comedies F Troop, The Andy Griffith Show spin-off Mayberry R.F.D., and The Carol Burnett Show spin-off Mama's Family. He also appeared on Broadway in The Billy Barnes Revue, has headlined as George M. Cohan in the musical George M! and provided comic relief for the medical drama Dr. Kildare, with Richard Chamberlain in the 1960s.
November 3, 1978
The first episode of Different Strokes was aired on NBC.
The series stars Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as Arnold and Willis Jackson, two African American boys from Harlem who are
taken in by a rich white Park Avenue businessman named Phillip
Drummond (Conrad Bain) and his daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato), for whom their deceased mother previously worked.
During the first season and first half of the second season, Charlotte Rae also starred as the Drummonds' housekeeper, Mrs.
Garrett (who ultimately spun-off into her own successful show, The Facts of Life).
The series made stars out of child actors Gary
Coleman, Todd Bridges, and Dana Plato, and became known for the "very
special episodes" in which
serious issues such as racism, illegal drug use, and child sexual abuse were
dramatically explored. The lives of these stars were later plagued by legal
troubles and drug addiction, as the stardom and success they achieved while on
the show eluded them after the series was cancelled, with both Plato and
Coleman having early deaths.
November 3, 1993
The first episode of The Nanny was aired by CBS. Fran Drescher starred as Fran Fine, a Jewish Queens native who becomes the nanny of three children from the New York/British high society.
Created and executive produced by Drescher and her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson, The Nanny took much of its inspiration from Drescher's personal life growing up in Queens, involving names and characteristics based on her relatives and friends. The show earned a Rose d'Or and one Emmy Award, out of a total of thirteen nominations, and Drescher was twice nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy. The sitcom has also spawned several foreign adaptations, loosely inspired by the original scripts.
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Matthew Perry
Women always think that I'm Chandler, so if I don't joke around for half an hour, they think that something's wrong. Then I explain that I don't have comedy writers scripting everything I'm saying at this particular dinner.
-Matthew Perry
 |
| Matthew Langford Perry August 19, 1969 – October 28, 2023 |
Matthew Perry moved from Ottawa to Los Angeles to pursue acting and attended The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, graduating in 1987. He pursued improvisational comedy at the LA Connection in Sherman Oaks while still in high school.
After graduating, he took the role of Chazz Russell in the TV series Second Chance. After 13 episodes, Second Chance became Boys Will Be Boys, with the plots refocused on the adventures of Chazz and his friends. After the show's single season, Perry stayed in Los Angeles and made his screen debut in the 1988 film A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. In 1989, Perry had a three-episode arc on the series Growing Pains, in which he portrayed Carol Seaver's boyfriend Sandy who dies in hospital after a drunk-driving crash.In the midst of his many continuing guest roles on TV, Perry was cast as a regular on the 1990 CBS sitcom Sydney, playing the younger brother of Valerie Bertinelli's title character. In 1991, he made a guest appearance on Beverly Hills, 90210 as Roger Azarian. Perry landed his next TV starring role on the ABC sitcom Home Free, which aired only 11 episodes in the spring of 1993, followed by a sitcom pilot titled LAX 2194.He attempted to secure an audition for the pilot Six of One, later to be known as Friends, by Marta Kauffman and David Crane, both of whom he had worked with on Dream On. However, due to previous commitments to the pilot LAX 2194, he was not initially considered for an audition. When he eventually got a reading, he landed the part of Chandler Bing. He was the youngest of the main cast at age 24.Friends was hugely successful, and Perry, along with his co-stars, became an international celebrity – something Perry had long hoped for. "There was steam coming out of my ears, I wanted to be famous so badly," he told The New York Times in 2002. "You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant." Due to the immense popularity of the sitcom, Perry and the rest of the six-member main cast ensemble were each making $1 million per episode by 2002. The program earned him an Emmy nomination in 2002 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, along with Matt LeBlanc, but the award went to Ray Romano. Perry appeared in films such as Fools Rush In (alongside father John Bennett Perry and Salma Hayek), Almost Heroes, Three to Tango, The Whole Nine Yards (alongside Bruce Willis) and its sequel The Whole Ten Yards, and Serving Sara.While known primarily for his comic roles, Perry carved out a career in drama as well, particularly in his portrayal of Associate White House Counsel Joe Quincy in Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing. His three appearances in that series (twice in the fourth season and once in the fifth) earned him two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2003 and 2004. He also appeared as attorney Todd Merrick in two episodes near the end of Ally McBeal's five-season run, including a two-hour special intended to revive the legal comedy-drama.
After Friends wrapped up, Perry made his directorial debut in an episode of the 4th season of the American comedy-drama Scrubs, in which he also guest starred as "Murray Marks", an operator of a small airport's traffic control team. Murray is asked to donate a kidney to his father Gregory (played by Perry's real father).
He starred in the TNT movie The Ron Clark Story, also known as "The Triumph," which premiered August 13, 2006. Perry played small-town teacher Ron Clark, who relocates to the toughest class in the country. Perry received a Golden Globe nomination[24] as well as an Emmy nomination for his performance.
From 2006 to 2007, Perry appeared in Aaron Sorkin's drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Perry played Matt Albie alongside Bradley Whitford's Danny Tripp, a writer-director duo brought in to help save a failing sketch show. Perry's character was considered to be substantially based on Sorkin's own personal experiences, particularly in television.
Perry's new comedy pilot, Mr. Sunshine, based on Perry's original idea for the show, was bought by ABC. Perry was set to portray a middle-aged man with an identity crisis. ABC cancelled the series after nine episodes.On March 1, 2012, it was reported that Perry had signed on to star on the NBC comedy pilot Go On, written and produced by former Friends writer/producer Scott Silveri. The project was picked up to series in May 2012. Perry portrayed Ryan King, a sportscaster who tries to move on after the death of his wife through the help of mandatory therapy sessions. The pilot aired on August 8, 2012, as a "sneak preview" after the 2012 Summer Olympics. The series premiered on September 11, 2012. On October 2, 2012, NBC ordered a full season of 22 episodes. NBC cancelled Go On in May 2013, shortly after the conclusion of its first season.In 2012, Perry guest-starred on the CBS drama The Good Wife, as attorney Mike Kresteva. In 2013, he reprised his role in the fourth season.
In 2014, Perry made his British TV debut in the one-off comedy program The Dog Thrower, which aired on May 1 as part of Sky Arts' Playhouse Presents
Perry played the lead role in a new production of his play The End of Longing, which premiered on February 11, 2016, at the Playhouse Theatre in London. The play transferred to Off-Broadway, opening at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on May 18, 2017, with Jennifer Morrison.
In March 2017, Perry again reprised his role as attorney Mike Kresteva, in The Good Fight, a sequel show to the CBS drama The Good Wife.
Later in 2017, he starred as Ted Kennedy in the mini-series The Kennedys: After Camelot.
In 2018, Business Insider reported Perry's net worth to be around $80 million.
In October 2022, Perry published a memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. It became a bestseller on both Amazon and The New York Times charts.
Good Night Matthew
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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