12 Things I Love From "Star Wars"

Last year after I had done a slew of DC Comics related articles, I felt it was only fair to give some love to the other major comic company out there.  So I listed off things from Marvel I really really  liked. This year since it’s the 50th anniversary of Star Trek I have done lots of Star Trek articles. Heck, I’ve done almost 100 articles on Trek since I started these silly blogs. What about Star Wars? Three, maybe four. Yeah it’s no shock I am just not as huge a fan of Star Wars. But why is that?

A lot of people like to compete over what is better, Star Trek or Star Wars. And while to someone who doesn’t really know these franchises they can seem similar (space battles, etc) the truth is comparing the two is like comparing apple’s or oranges. Star Trek and Star Wars are very different when you really look at them. I have said that the Abrams Trek movies were his turning Star Trek into Star Wars. That’s because of the emphasis on action and the downplaying on morals and ideas which is what Star Trek is really about. The two have their similarities, beyond space battles. Both franchises have good strong characters that have become part of pop culture. Who is more popular, Spock or Darth Vader? Heck even in Back to the Future when Marty disguises as an alien he incorporates elements from both franchises into his disguise (in one of the film’s best jokes).


I was trying to figure out why I love Trek so much more than Wars, and in reading another article I came across the answer. At least one I am going with. Star Trek has morals, and they tell good stories we love to come back to again and again. Star Wars is pure fantasy, action and adventure as we watch our heroes rise up and defeat the bad guys. Trek is about exploring the human condition, and Wars is a space opera about heroes vs villains- good vs evil. As awesome as that is, Wars just doesn’t bring me back time and again (feel free to comment and disagree if you’d like). Of course it doesn’t help there are hours of Trek and only seven Wars movies. It’s no wonder Star Wars expanded media has taken off (which I had mostly ignored for the record). And yes, for the record,  I enjoyed Star Trek Beyond more than Star Wars The Force Awakens.


Ok this is turning into a rant, I have a list to get to. At one point I though of doing a a more extensive look at the two franchises back to back, but decided that has been done elsewhere by others much smarter than I.  Besides this is about giving Star Wars some love. It was supposed to be ten things, but I added a few, and hey since I’ve talked so much about Trek I can add a bit if I want.


So twelve things from Star Wars I truly love (in no particular order):




12.The Theme

Yeah it’s pretty hard not to smile when I hear that theme music. Especially if it’s in the theater. John Williams did a lot of fantastic music but this melody will always be my favorite. As soon as you hear that fanfare you know epicness is on its way. And yes the rest of the music is good including the classic Imperial March, but if I cover all the music then this list will just be that!

600th Blog Special-TV Shows I Truly Miss Being On TV

Amazingly it took me a whole year to reach 600, I guess last year was on the slow side. I always like to stop when I hit the 100 mark and reflect, what started as a lark has evolved into 600 articles over four and a half years. I truly never saw that coming. Of course, if it weren’t for Manic Expression I am sure that would not be the case. So what am I going to talk about today? I have discussed my favorite shows before, but there is a difference between a favorite show and a show that I actually miss.

Ok, let me back up. The title may be a strange one if you don’t understand what I mean. Of course, when I was a kid things were different. If you missed a TV show…you missed it. End of story. And if the show went off the air it was gone. Yeah some went to syndication but with a few special exceptions that never lasted either. But these days there are many ways to watch TV shows, old and new, so it’s hard to say I “miss” a show when it’s available on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Netflix, or DVD. Not to mention our DVR’s which can catch those re-runs that still very much exist.


No, what I am talking about are TV shows that I miss being on first run TV, mostly because of the memories involved. TV shows that we enjoy watching come and go  but for a variety of reasons, there are some that stay with us. Remembering watching them brings back fond memories. Yes we can catch a re-run, stream, download, or pop in a DVD of that show it’s still not the same as when we saw it for the first time.


Of course, movies are like this too. I adored Star Trek IV when I first saw and will never feel that way again. Heck even Back to the Future, as many times as I’ve seen it, I have never felt that same awe and excitement as when I saw it thirty plus years ago. This is especially true if it’s something you saw as a kid, since watching something as a child and watching it as an adult is very different. But the same experience can happen even as an adult. A great example is The Nostalgia Critic, which is one of those things I wish I could go back and re-discover for the first time because the night I first stumbled onto it was a special thing for me (and I have explained why elsewhere).


Ok so let’s go thru my choices and I hope I explain my reasoning better. By the way these are in no particular order.




This show was a big part of my weekend routine growing up. This was what we watched Sunday night at 7,for about six years anyway. Solid Gold was like this in the 80’s but I don’t have many memories of that show. AMHV was different.  I loved the show because in the age way before reality TV and social media, it was easy to forget there were other people in the world. This show gave us a small window which reminded us that there were people out there, and doing something like tripping and falling happens to the best of us. As for the Tom Bergeron version we have today, yeah I have watched it but the classic version is and will always be my favorite.

Ten Reasons I Love The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

There are just some traditions that I have had my whole life, and probably always will. As I have hit the age of 40, a lot of things I grew up with are gone. Bob Hope Specials? Gone. New Year’s Rockin Eve with Dick Clark? Gone. Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon? Gone. But there is one that I am pretty sure isn’t going anywhere soon.

 

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is an institution, and I could do a whole aricle on the history of this wonderful event. How it started and the issues it’s had, good and bad.  But that’s boring and can be found elsewhere. Instead, here are ten things I love about the parade which still airs every Thanksgiving Day on NBC.






10.The Broadway Shows

This part probably bothers people, and I’ll be honest I can find it boring too, but in order to kill an hour before the parade can get to Herald Square NBC shows off some Broadway shows that are playing. And it’s cool seeing these since I don’t follow this stuff. I still remember Bebe Neuwrith singing “All That Jazz” long before I saw the movie Chicago. Nice. I also saw Kristen Chenowith perform a song from Wicked, which while I have not seen it is one I want to.

Things I Just Love-TV Guide

 

This is something I have wanted to talk about for a long time. But how? Well let me start at the beginning. It may be hard to believe for those very young, but there was a time when TV Guide was the coolest magazine in the world. If you loved TV as much as I did anyway. It’s kind of hard to explain, and maybe it’s just me, but I adored this little book. When a new issue arrived every week it was exciting, I’d sit down and pour through it looking at all the awesome new shows that were coming the next week to look forward to. Then it was by my side as I watched TV through that week. At the end of the week, it had been so worn out that very often the cover had even fallen off.



Jerry Seinfeld himself summed it up in this clever bit:

These go way back my friends, to the 50’s since Desi Arnaz Jr as a baby was the very first cover. These things were collectors items, and no just because they could be worth money, and why not? They’re like little time capsules for what was happening every week years ago. I know what you might think, it’s a program guide so what? It’s hard to explain but I guess the one thing to remember is that this was before the internet. We maybe had Entertainment Tonight and that was about it. There was no Entertainment Weekly or cable guides. There were no spoilers or previews. And the best alternative for TV guides were the lame program grids in newspapers which told us nothing. TV Guide was all we really had to wet our appetites and make us look forward to whatever was coming along that next week.

How did they do that? Well you had the simple descriptions which not only old you the show but a simple plot summary. As I said this was before spoilers so we literally had no clue what the next episode was until we read it. It also gave you the whole week, daytime and nighttime, along with previews for things even further away. Then there were the ad’s. The kick ass ad’s! The ad’s in TV Guide were awesome, not to mention powerful things. I watched the first episode of The Cosby Show based solely on the beautiful ad that appeared in TV Guide. The ad that ran when Bo and Luke returned to The Dukes of Hazard was just beautiful (couldn’t find a good pic). And I watched the 80’s TV movie Crash Course based solely on he ad that appeared that week, which got me excited about the movie.

Here are a couple ads I found online just so you can see what I’m talking about :

But the big thing most people remember from TV Guide were the awesome covers. Each one brings back memories, if not to a personal memory than at least to that time in TV history. These covers are awesome, and that’s what I want to focus on. Now as I said these go back to the 50’s and the covers were amazing even then. However since I’m not THAT old, I am only focusing on the 1980-2005, which is when they chucked the digest format that made them famous and turned the magazine into just another entertainment magazine. Boring.  Damn I miss these today. And yes I went through every cover on TVGUIDE.COM to pick my favorites, and there was a tear of nostalgia in my eye as I did.

So hear now are my 20 favorite covers (yes, 20! But that’s a drop in the bucket really).

I picked three of these as examples, but let me tell you about the fall preview issues. I think Christmas Day was the only thing more exciting than when these came out. I would move hell and earth to get it, and read every stinking page. Not only did they tell you every new show coming out, good and bad, but the ads inside were always something awesome to see, bigger and better for all the season premier’s. Even for someone who loved TV Guide, these issues were extra special! The sad part is while I have saved a couple issues I didn’t save any of the Fall Preview issues. Damn it. These are especially fun to look back on and see what the editors thought would be hits…and how wrong they were!

Things I Just Love-Family Feud!

Welcome back to game show week as I discuss my all time favorite game show :

I was a huge fan of game shows as a kid, but none more than Family Feud! I loved this game, watching it every afternoon at 4:30 (until the station changed the time slot on me!).There was also a daytime version, on for an hour at one point, that I also watched when I had the opportunity.

 

Family Feud, if you don't know, takes two families and has them compete in teams of five. This already makes the game cool watching the families interact with each other. So first two members of each family meet in the center of the stage for the face off. The host asks a survey question that was asked to 100 people. The answers can have anywhere from 3 to 8 answers, and whoever buzzes in and answers with the most popular answer wins. In the Dawson era the host would ask the family if they wanted to play. That changed in the Combs era, which I liked because that never made sense to me. Why wouldn't they want to play???? I guess strategy but is still made no sense to me.

The family answers questions from  surveys given to a hundred average people, and who ever can discover the most popular answers that were given by those average people wins. You get three "strikes" if you miss a guess and on the third strike the other team gets a chance to steal your bank. As the game progresses the points double and then triple. The first family to reach 200 points wins and gets to play the fast money round, where two players team up to answer the same five questions, and if they combine a score of 200 or more they win whatever the established prize amount is. In later years a bonus prize was added where a family winning five times in a row also wins a car! There were other added games like a Bulls eye round which decided the fast money amount, but I won’t get into those.

 

Things I Just Love-My Favorite Movie

Usually I tell people my favorite movie is Back to the Future. And why not? It's a fantastic movie which does pretty much everything right. But I have to admit, there is another movie I love maybe more than that film. A film that was made in 1963 and starred Hollywood legends Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Of course I am talking about Charade!

 

This movie is so cool it fits several genres. Romantic comedy, action, mystery, and thriller all in one. I guess it's fitting that I am talking about this now, since this year is the 50th anniversary of the film. I watched this as a kid and something about it just clicked. Was it the chemistry between Grant and Hepburn? Was it the plot which has a very surprising twist,or was it the fantastic cast which included Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, and James Coburn? I have no idea but I simply adored this movie and have watched it more times than I care to count. I tried to get my wife to watch once, but she insisted she hated old movies. Even though she loved The Wizard of Oz and that was made in 1939! But I digress…..

The plot is pretty cool. Audrey Hepburn plays a woman named Reggie who is on holiday when we first meet her. She soon returns home to Paris and discovers that her apartment has been cleared out, and then she discovers her husband Charles is dead. All he left her was a duffle bag containing assorted items. She is called in by a CIA admin named Hamilton Batholemew played by Walter Matthau who informs her that her husband stole $250,000 during the war along with four other men. One of the men named Carson Dyle didn't survive but the other three did. Her husband double crossed them and took all of the money and now they want that money back  But of course the U.S. also wants it since it is rightfullt there's. Cary Grant plays a man named Peter Joshua who seems to want to help Reggie. But Reggie learns that Peter Joshua is not who he pretends to be. He appears to be in league with the three men and then reveals he was Dyle's brother, except that Dyle never had a brother. No one can find the money and the hunt is on. Then the other three men who were double-crossed suddenly start getting killed off one by one. Reggie started falling for Peter, nowc alled Alex, but at the same remains suspicious of his real motives.

Things I Just Love-Boston Red Sox

I am not a sports nut. I have a passing interest infootball. Basketball and hockey I can do without. And I find golf and NASCAR  to be incredibly boring (yes, Isaid it. I find NASCAR to be a giant bore). But there is one exception and thatis what I want to talk about today.

I have loved The Boston Red Sox for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember much from back in the early 80’s, but I do remember playing with a handheld baseball game and I knew the starting lineup of the team even then. I even remember liking Yaz and he retired in 1982! I wish I hada great “my first day at a ballpark” story but I don’t remember the first time I saw a game live.  Before anyone asks, yes I played little league and I sucked.Now let me clarify, I am not an obsessive fan. I don’t watch every second of every game. I don’t keep track of every stat or obsess about the standings. I will accept if the Sox are playing horribly. But I am not a fair weather fan either, I watch in good times and bad.