“A séance is held in the Great House at Collinwood…”

To address her nephew David’s (David Henesy) insistence that he’s seen and spoken with an apparition (Sharon Smyth) identified as Sarah Collins, family matriarch Elizabeth Stoddard Collins (Joan Bennett) reluctantly agrees to participate in a séance along with her brother Roger (Louis Edmonds), daughter Carolyn (Nancy Barrett), Dr. Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall), and Victoria Winters…

“And they used Bon Ami!”

Before my family and I relocated from Teays Valley to Ravenswood, West Virginia in the fall of 1972, I spent my formative years attending St. Francis of Assisi in St. Albans.  It was a Catholic school, and I’ve always had mixed feelings about it because while I remember with great fondness the wonderful friends I made…

“Hello again…Peabody and Sherman here…”

I was an underachiever in my high school years. Mind you, I did all right scholastically...though admittedly, I didn’t always apply myself where studying was concerned. In retrospect, I don’t have too many regrets because most of what I was taught focused on memorizing facts and regurgitating them on command...as opposed to far-more-practical critical thinking…

“My name is Victoria Winters…”

There was an unsettling rumor going around last November that the long-running daytime drama Days of Our Lives was in danger of getting a pink slip and losing its parking place at NBC...but DOOL’s demise turned out to be a premature one, and it was confirmed that the program would soldier on with Season 56.…

Nun of my business

Most of the obituaries and tributes to the late Shelley Morrison on her passing in early December of 2019 (at age 83) referenced her long-running role as Rosario Salazar, the tart-tongued domestic to flaky Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) on Will & Grace.  MeTV was a noticeable exception (and only fitting, seeing as they’re in the classic TV bidness and…

“Now…as gunshots echo across the windswept snow-covered reaches of the wild Northwest…”

I feel like every time I find myself apologizing for my all-too-frequent absences from the blog I’m like a husband sneaking back into the house after a wild stag party and I’m trying to explain to the wife. (“Shorry, honey...the fellash and I were having too much fun shingin’...”).  But I had to tackle a few outside projects…

“Around Dodge City and into territory on west…”

Although I was very much familiar with Gunsmoke the TV series throughout my childhood—the program ran on WCHS-TV like tap water, and during my second year at Marshall University, WVAH-TV made it “Must See TV” for my fellow dormmates on weeknights—I never heard a broadcast of the radio Gunsmoke until that same sophomore Marshall year. …

That’s what I like about the South

Well, I had gambled on having some new material cobbled together so that I might slap it up onto the blog...but as usual, a number of factors (eBay, laziness, the heat) interfered and so here I am once again on a Saturday with nothing but a fantabulous swag giveaway to entice you to keep checking…

Book Review: Identifi Yourself: A Journey in F**k You Creative Courage

From June 5, 1981 to December 30, 1988, The USA Network was the home of Night Flight—one of television’s most innovative attempts at capturing the pop culture zeitgeist.  Created and directed by Stuart S. Shapiro, Night Flight was a four-hour program comprised of music videos (featuring mainstream and alternative artists), cult movies (it's where I…

Adventures in Roku II: Texas Blood Money

The recent acquisition of the Roku in the House of Yesteryear has been both a source of welcome entertainment (for your humble narrator) and amusement (also for your humble narrator, because his mother is now calling it the “Yoko”).  I mentioned in this last post that I am fast becoming a fan of some of…