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I’m not often one for the “Wow, that makes me feel old” line of thinking. I like to think that I’m pretty realistic about the passage of time. But…good lord, how can it be that we’ve just passed the fiftieth anniversary of the series premiere of Laverne and Shirley?! I haven’t watched L&S at all since it first aired, but it was still iconic as hell. It was huge in its first few seasons, and I remember it being one of those shows we kids would talk about at school the morning after it aired. There was a kid in my kindergarten class, as IDown the rabbit hole….

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We’ve been rewatching Mad About You lately. Mad About You is a sitcom that aired in the 1990s for seven seasons. It was about the day-to-day life of a young couple in New York City, Paul and Jamie Buchman, played by Paul Reiser* and Helen Hunt. The show tended to be very down-to-earth in its concerns, almost mundane; in a way, Mad About You was better at being a “show about nothing” than Seinfeld was. We loved Mad About You when it first aired. The Girlfriend (now The Wife) discovered it before I did, but it quickly became a bonding thing for us during theDown the rabbit hole….

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It’s quite a jolt when you’re watching a marathon of The Office and you catch the last three episodes and then it goes right back to Season One, Episode One. Another observation: I’ve no idea how people deal with commercials on teevee. Lord, commercials suck. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Today is the 58th anniversary of Star Trek‘s first appearance on teevee. On this date in 1966, an episode called “The Man Trap” of a new science-fiction show aired, and I guess that at the time this seemed like just another airing of some new show. New shows arrive every year, most of which are completely forgotten eventually…but somehow that particular new show made enough of an impact that it lives on as a huge franchise, over half a century later. Most of the people involved with making that very first episode are gone now…but their memory endures through the legacyDown the rabbit hole….

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First of all, a bit of administrativia: the post immediately below this one was supposed to run yesterday and I screwed up the publishing. Oops. Now: not music, but a scene from a teevee show today: the closing scene from “The Unnatural” from The X-Files, an episode David Duchovny wrote and directed, in which his Agent Fox Mulder visits an elderly former FBI agent named Arthur Dales about a curious incident in Agent Dales’s past. It turns out that this Arthur Dales was actually the brother of the former FBI agent Arthur Dales, though both were named Arthur. Anyway, this DalesDown the rabbit hole….

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You may remember several months ago when I was irate that a really good player on Jeopardy! lost because he misspelled the Final Jeopardy answer by one letter? A refresher: I don’t remember the numbers in play, but the game was not a runaway; Ben actually needed to be right on Final Jeopardy to win…or at least not wager so much that he’d lose on a wrong answer. The Final Jeopardy clue was this (paraphrased), in the category “Shakespeare Characters”: “The names of these two lovers are taken from Latin words meaning ‘blessed’.” Now, first off: I came up with theDown the rabbit hole….

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This is one of my favorite little scenes from Friends. I’ve always loved this little exchange, and in tribute to it, I have ever since referred to all spiders as “Phil”. (In this case I now assume that Phil can be a genderless name: Philip, Philomena, Philopina, you get the drift.) Actor Matthew Perry died yesterday–that’s him in the clip–after apparently having drowned in his own hot tub. I expect that there will eventually be more sordid details about his passing, considering his long struggles with addiction and other medical issues. But that doesn’t matter now. Perry did a lot ofDown the rabbit hole….

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Today is the 57th anniversary of Star Trek‘s first appearance on teevee. On this date in 1966, an episode called “The Man Trap” of a new science-fiction show aired, and I guess that at the time this seemed like just another airing of some new show. New shows arrive every year, most of which are completely forgotten eventually…but somehow that particular new show made enough of an impact that it lives on as a huge franchise, over half a century later. Most of the people involved with making that very first episode are gone now…but their memory endures through the legacyDown the rabbit hole….

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I don’t have much in depth to say about some of these, so I’ll limit myself to two sentences each! ::  Happiness for Beginners: This cheerful and utterly unsurprising rom-com, which unfolds on a hiking trip, is worth watching for some STUNNING nature shots. Keep the PAUSE button at the ready. ::  Always Be My Maybe: This, on the other hand, is a cheerful but actually occasionally surprising rom-com, featuring Randall Park and Ali Wong as Asian-American friends from youth who wander in and out of a relationship over the years. It has some big laughs, lots of heart, and a terrificDown the rabbit hole….