THE WORLD BACK IN ANCIENT TIMES.

The World of Entertainment Today...

I think this may be an age thing but it seems harder each year for me to find good entertainment...

MY FAVORITE MARTIAN

Mars will be closest to the Earth in a decade and a half today, on the night of July 31, 2018. The Earth will have the Red Planet and the Sun on either side, with the three celestial bodies in a straight line. Though the two planets will be at closest distances to each other, they will still be 57.6 million km apart. This will be the closest distance between Mars and Earth until October 2020, but the Red Planet’s visibility as good as today's only every 15-17 years. 

Those facts are completely irrelevant to the actual reason for this post. One of my favorite shows when I was growing up in the 60s, was MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, which premiered on September 29, 1963, and lasted until May 1st, 1966. The show told the adventures of a Martian who crash-lands his spaceship on Earth and is taken in by a young newspaper reporter named Tim O'Hara. Disguising himself as Uncle Martin, the alien from space tries to repair his ship hidden in the garage, but Tim's nosy landlady, Mrs. Brown, takes a liking to Uncle Martin making it very difficult to keep his true identity a secret.

The show starred Ray Walston as the Martian and Bill Bixby as Tim O'Hara and also featured Pamela Britton as Mrs. Brown and Alan Hewitt as a suspicious police detective named Brennan.  The show seems quite mild and tame by today's standards and the comedy isn't that hilarious...but it has a distinctive charm and appeal all its own. 

So, here's my tribute to MY FAVORITE MARTIAN!

MY FAVORITE MARTIAN is available on DVD from Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.com/My-Favorite-Martian-Bill-Bixby/dp/B011MU9ZIY/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1533055406&sr=8-4&keywords=my+favorite+martian

Movie Books!

Movie, TV, Comic Book Art and Music reference books have been a staple of my library and I frequently resort to them for information and material. My biggest source for acquiring media and entertainment literature before Amazon and the internet came into existence, had always been the fine cinema bookstores in the Hollywood area. Some of them are still in business and whenever possible, I drop by to check out the new releases. Visiting an actual bookstore is a unique experience, much more exciting and rewarding than simply shopping for books online!

Part of my book collection.

My favorite bookstores, apart from Amazon, where I have bought most of my cinema and other media books, are these:

1970s TV CARICATURES

Back in 1970, I did a weekly one page strip about local TV shows for a national television schedule magazine in the TV Guide mold, called TV FARÁNDULA. Sometimes I had the chance to do a piece on American TV series and these are two samples from those articles.