When I fight authority, authority always wins…

Once again, I want to thank everyone who participated in my last eBay auction—I had put all the DVDs for sale on one of my CD racks and the discs went so fast that there are now two empty shelves (out of a total of four). A gentleman from Brooklyn was nice enough to purchase…

TV news, both good…and not-so-good

Finally found a bit o’ spare time to get something up on the blog…but the window of opportunity is closing fast, so I’ll get right to the important items in the bulletin. Friday morning, as my Bombast web page appeared in my browser as if to say: “Hiya! Doesn’t it suck that we’re the only…

Paisan

My good friend and former Overlord of the League of Savannah Bloggers, Sam Johnson, posted an entry Sunday about how a casual e-mail brought back a flood of memories of a cable access comedy show he and his fellow unemployables directed, wrote and produced called Underground Savannah. (Keep in mind, folks, that Savannah isn’t too far above sea…

What a difference a Fay makes

For reasons I’ve yet to discern, all of the comments posted to the blog are being stashed away in my “Screened Mail” folder of my Bombast e-mail account, so I’ve been having to go in there and tell the system that queries and observations to TDOY are legitimate. If anyone has sent me an e-mail…

R.I.P. Roy Scheider

Oddly, I wasn’t greeted with the news of Roy Scheider’s passing at the age of 75 on my Bombast web page (though I will link to it here) because frequent TDOY commenter Pam sent me the sad tidings via e-mail, which was sent around 1:00 am or so. (Nice to see Pam’s keeping an eye on events as they…

“…you’re going out a comedian but you’ve got to come back a Stooge!”

It was during the filming of Half Wits’ Holiday (1947)—the ninety-seventh two-reel comedy that The Three Stooges made for the Columbia shorts department—that on May 6, 1946, “third stooge” Jerome “Curly” Howard suffered a stroke between takes…effectively ending his movie career with longtime partners Larry Fine and brother Moe. (He did, however, make cameo appearances in two…

“How dare you look like someone I hate!”

During its twenty-five-year hitch in the comedy two-reeler business, the Columbia Pictures studio worked diligently to find the right combination of comedic talents that might possibly echo the success of the shorts unit’s reigning stars, The Three Stooges. I discussed the short-lived team of Monte Collins & Tom Kennedy in yesterday’s post, but the brain…

The day the chasing stopped

Someone posted a notice over at the In the Balcony bulletin boards that actor Barry Morse has passed away. He was 89. Growing up, I was more familiar with Morse’s role as Professor Victor Bergman on the syndicated sci-fi series Space: 1999, a show that also starred former Mission: Impossible players Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. Space developed a huge cult following at…

Tom Collins and Monte Kennedy…no, wait…that’s not right…

While opening boxes upon boxes of the movie books that made up close to 85% of the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear library two weekends ago, I stumbled across my dog-eared copy of Movie Comedy Teams, originally published in 1970 and revised four years later (and again in 1985). Venerable film historian Leonard Maltin penned this invaluable film comedy…

“She looked at me as if I were a bug.”

Once again, Edward Copeland has done the blogosphere a tremendous service by asking over 120 film bloggers and buffs their picks for the Best Best Actor winners…including yours truly, for which I am justly humbled. I also didn’t do too shabby in the final outcome—I picked four out of the Top Eleven, with three in…