Blog : TV Worth Watching

Only Four Shopping -- and Viewing -- Days Until Christmas

We're down to the holiday crunch time. Most online merchants no longer guarantee delivery by Christmas, but you can still refer to our shopping guides as suggestions for your "real-life" shopping trips. (Click on the banner links just above BEST BETS on the home page).

And indefatigable holiday TV chronicler Diane Werts is still at it, and has just updated, for the skillionth and most massive time, her list of holiday specials, movies and series to watch over the next week or so. (Go to Diane's FOR BETTER OR WERTS blog on the home page.)

And finally, if you're shopping at, say, a bookstore, here's one more blatant plug, or plea, for you to pick up a copy -- or more, if you're the radiantly generous sort -- of my newly published Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Go forth and view, and shop, and be merry...

2 Comments

Len F. said:

Nice review in yesterday's (Sunday) NY Post. I think that the quote on page #226 of your book is brilliant!! That person should be rewarded! (haha).
[To decode the private joke: The person quoted on that page is Len himself, who voted for Pat Paulsen as a write-in vote for the 1968 election while serving in Vietnam. Hi, Len! -- David B.]

Comment posted on December 21, 2009 7:28 AM

Phillip R. Crabb said:

Definitely get the book...it's a great, easy, effortless read. I'm not the 'reader' in my family, but I can't put this one down. I just made it to the 'pictures', and will continue tonight.

What a time tunnel to that era. All the little nuances that I hadn't thought about for 40+ years. I was only ten years old or so, but I had completely forgotten the 'Angel' show, and I remember watching it religiously.

A year or so ago I wrote about one thing I remembered about the SBCH was the "go down to the newstand and take a LOOK..' subliminal message. I was happy to see it made the book, and the narrative that it was part of the first year finale provided one of many 'time-references' that were very satisfying to me.

Here I was in 1967, a 5th or 6th grader...whose life up until that time was closer to "Leave it to Beaver" than anything else...who couldn't figure out why there seemed to be so much strife in the country with the riots and demonstrations and assasinations that seemed to be part of every month back then.

But all you need to do is read the first paragraph in Chapter 6 to realize all the social and cultural tugging and pulling going on at the time. Truly, a year when "Ballad of the Green Berets" and "Strangers in the Night" shared the same Top-40 list with "White Rabbit" and "Paint it Black"....society was under stress.

More than Kennedy's assassination, I think the events noted in that paragraph were the cultural eddys that were getting untangled that led us to the points we are now. A great piece of perspective.

Love the book, now have to find a DVD set to be able to watch it all again with great foundational background.

Best of the Holiday Season, Dave!

Phil
Franklin (Sussex County) NJ

[Wow, what a wonderful summary (first-half, anyway). Thanks so much for buying the book, reading it, and enjoying it -- an author's trifecta! -- David B.]

Comment posted on December 21, 2009 5:23 PM

Archer T-shirts & fan gear at the Fox Shop!

Behind David in the picture is the first TV owned by his father, Virgil Bianculli, a 1946 Raytheon. (The TV, not his father. His father was a 1923 Italian.)

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air, occasional substitute host for that show's Terry Gross, and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His most recent book is 2009's Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,' and he's at work on another.

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