Thursday, November 4th, 1976

Headache. Bad back pain, too. Couldn't concentrate. Made a lot of mistakes in class today.

A lot out in Cincy but I didn't end up getting anything today except dinner.

Snow flurries today of all things.

Found a neat STAR TREK article at SS. ANGELS one, too.

NOTES: Jeez, these entries were sure getting sparse. It looks as though I did NOT keep a journal for 1977 but I HAVE found a full and compete 1974 Journal. I asked on Facebook if anyone would be interested in seeing what would essentially be a prequel to this blog. What do YOU think? Want to read about me watching TV, listening to music, reading books and going to movies as a Freshman and a Sophomore, too? Let me know, please.


In yet another coincidence across the years, I've spent today with a headache and really bad back pain!


Odd that I didn't mention it but November 4th was my friend Terry's birthday. In 2011, I wished him  a happy one earlier today on the phone. It's also my wife's birthday! Her 50th!


You know the end of the year is getting near when the song that was about to hit number one on the charts actually would end up remaining at the top right into 1977! A big year for Rod Stewart. 

Wednesday, November 3rd, 1976

Busy lunchtime with a lot I wish hadn't happened. Mona was there. Almost blew my secret inadvertently.

Skipped the first bus and Cincy. The TANK tax is out! Big news!

Learned tonight of a big Beatles show coming to the Emery Theater. Looks like about an 80% chance I'll get to go. November 11-14th!

NOTES: The "big BEATLES show" was BEATLEMANIA, fresh from its New York run. It was a multimedia show in which four men appear live as the Fabs at various stages of their career performing live on stage while film clips detail the backdrop of the sixties all around them. Many called it a rip-off but I did get to see it and I called it pretty darn groovy!

Tuesday, November 2nd, 1976

Election Day. For the first time it's kind of exciting. Carter won!

Got my hair cut. Badly. Hope it grows back quick. It's still somewhat "up" but just doesn't work.

Cleaned and rearranged my room. Again.

Finally wrote Yoshiko and also the CR Shop.

Saw Bill Bixby and "Debbie" lookalike wife on DINAH.

Watched unseen BRADY BUNCH and Clint's first big hit tonight instead of the actual election coverage.

NOTES: I had spent all my life going to barbers but a year or so before this I started going to "hairdressers" in an effort to look at least a little more modern. These guys with their fluffy hair and porn star mustaches taught me to use blowdryers and brushes and treat my hair right...for what little time it had left before it started thinning. 


Bill Bixby, star of MY FAVORITE MARTIAN and COURTSHIP OF EDDIE'S FATHER, had been a favorite for most of my life. He was married to a woman named Brenda Benet who was very cute but looked absolutely nothing like Debbie although I seemed that day to have thought there was a resemblance. Sadly, Ms. Benet would take her own life just a few years later after the death of her child.


As for the election, yeah, it was kind of exciting. Not exciting enough to actually watch the coverage, mind you! I liked Carter, though. Still do. I think part of the issue with his generally ineffective presidency was that he was too honest. Too good for the job, really. It's easy to admore everything he's done since, however.


When Jimmy took office a couple of months later, the newspaper featured a surprise editorial cartoon (above) by Selby Kelly, widow of POGO's Walt Kelly, in which the Okefenokee Players congratulated a fellow Georgia boy for getting elected. 

 

Monday, November 1st, 1976

Off school today! Paper arrived by 1 for a change. Despite being really down again lately, I felt really optimistic this afternoon. Extremely optimistic in fact about virtually everything.

Saw previews for THE ENFORCER. Looks great!

I took clothes in for Dad, mail for Mom and SS cans as I went to Cincy. Dropped the new SEX IN FILMS book and got HIGH SOCIETY mag instead. IT. Twice.

Saw a previously missed HAPPY DAYS.

NOTES: From a fairly young age, my dad had me dropping off and picking up his suits and clothes from the laundry or the dry cleaner. In the late sixties, there was an old-fashioned Chinese laundry right down the street from my barber. It was hot and steamy and a very large Asian gentleman who seemed to speak little English would come out of the back wearing silk clothes and sweating profusely! He scared me. That closed by the early seventies, though, but there was no shortage of laundries around town and the dry cleaners were a block away on one side and down by the last bus stop over the river on the other. 


Mom often had me drop off mail as I went also. She wrote a lot of letters to relatives and old friends.


The trailer for THE ENFORCER did look good but I wasn't thrilled when I eventually saw the movie. The first two films had been favorites of mine and re-introduced me to Clint Eastwood after I had been a RAWHIDE fan as a child. Seemed a different character in this one and it just got worse in the next one. Still like those first two, though.

Sunday, October 31st. 1976

Up at 5:30 and I was surprised to find Laurel and Hardy on Channel 12 and then on 48 'til 9! Paper arrived at 6:30. I actually heard it land on the porch. Learned from it that Harry will be back at Christmas. Also saw where the $17.76 record set I ordered will be coming it commercially.

Watched my first Marilyn Monroe film today when I missed the bus out to Ludlow.

Had to change a LOT of lights over at SS.

Had a not so good talk with Terry early tonight.

Halloween was never my favorite holiday and I like it less now that no one comes around anymore.

Watched LIFE GOES TO THE MOVIES and a good Bogey flick.

Off tomorrow.

NOTES: "Harry" was Dirty Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood's signature police inspector role. First seen in 1971 and last seen in 1973. This third film, THE ENFORCER, was announced on this date as being one of the first films to play at the upcoming "Cinema City Six" theaters in Florence, KY.  By the time they opened they were just called the Florence Cinemas. THE ENFORCER would be the first of many films I would see there. It wasn't very good.


I'm not certain but I think the first Marilyn film I saw was NIAGARA. She would soon enough become another obsession.


The $17.76 record set I refer to was the WINGS FROM THE WINGS bootleg. On this date I learned that WINGS OVER AMERICA would be released. The difference was that the boot was all one concert whereas the commercial release contained what was considered the best performances from each stop on the recently completed Wings tour. 


LIFE GOES TO THE MOVIES is one of the best Hollywood documentaries I've ever seen and I would later pick up the accompanying book, also one of the best in my movie collection. 

Saturday, Oct 30th, 1976

IT.

Cincinnati trip called on account of rain. Spent the day reading comics. I decided to chop 2001 and IRON MAN. New TBG came early, too.

Found out Terry had gone to see Hope last weekend, too.

Roddy was on with Carol tonight and I was able to catch Monty Python on 54.

NOTES: IRON MAN I had just come back to not long earlier after buying scores of issues I had never had. Eventually I realized that it was no longer as good as it had been and dropped it. 


2001 was Jack Kirby's ongoing series adaptation of the classic Stanley Kubrick film and sadly one of my least favorites of his long career. Every issue was essentially a rewrite of the issue before it. So I dropped it. Then he introduced a character in the title known as Mr. Machine...later Machine Man...who would go on to some success in the Marvel Universe. I was already gone by that point. 


Roddy was, of course, Roddy McDowall, a favorite guest of Carol Burnett on her Saturday night variety series. 


"54" was and is Channel 54, a low-power Covington PBS  and KET (Kentucky Educational Television) station.

***EXTRA***Comic Books: A Basic History

In recent weeks in my Journal, I have several times noted in 1976 that I was writing a book on the history of comics. Today, digging through boxes looking for more stuff to sell,  I ran across my original outline for the book as well as my "About the Author." Note that I apparently finished up to Chapter 14...but not beyond. Still searching to see if I have any of the chapters here anymore. 

Friday, Oct. 29th, 1976

Two unexpected tests today. The pep rally was quick and fairly painless. Missed the first Eastern bus home. It was early.

Saw George P. today and then later ran into Mrs. Rettig, too. She told me Mrs. Marrs has retired.

There were a few new books out including a new one on sex in films but I didn't get yet.

Another two hour Bob Hope special on tonight and I stayed up 'til 12:30 to watch the first part of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.

NOTES: "George P." was the son of our former landlady. He had at one point hit my dad--a notoriously soft touch--up for fifty dollars and gave him two gold rings melded together with multiple diamonds as collateral...and then he moved away and never came back for them. Years later, my wife and I sold the gold but had the diamonds popped out and inserted into our wedding rings. 


Mrs. Rettig had been my favorite grade school teacher. She reminded me of BEWITCHED's Agnes Moorehead and she was the first person I ever heard described a s a"bitch" but to me she was always great. I had her for both second grade and third grade! Again, zip forward more than a decade more and one day when my not-yet wife and I were just out for a walk down by the Ohio River we ran into...Mrs. Rettig!


Mrs. Marrs had been my first grade teacher, beloved by everyone. I had last seen her when, as a favor,  sixth grader me walked one of her students to a nearby clinic for required shots...and picked up chicken pox at age 12!


ARSENIC AND OLD LACE is a manic black comedy with Cary Grant starring in the film version as Mortimer, a role I played when we read the play aloud in class in high school! 

Thursday, Oct 28th, 1976

Mr. Tucker was out sick today. Fire drill again first period.

Parade in Cincy. Dad was there to see it and Holmes band marched in it. We saw much of it on TV including a confetti record.

I got a new article by Ray Bradbury on writing that I was able to bring home from school, too.

IT just for tension relief tonight...and it worked!

NOTES:I hate to keep typing in these notes that I don't have a clue about something but I don't have a clue what a "confetti record" is/was." Anyone?


I've mentioned so many fire drills in recent weeks I really think some of the other students were being prankish. The fact that my son brings home stories of multiple fire drills per week tells me that that's one more thing that never changes. 


Bradbury is still alive in his nineties in 2011 and long since considered one of the great authors of the 20th century, not just one of the great sci-fi authors. In the seventies, he used to complain loudly that books by L. Frank Baum and Edgar Rice Burroughs weren't in school libraries. They are now. I like to  think at least some of that was due to Ray.

Wednesday, Oct. 27th, 1976

Saw a Sherlock special on TODAY.

No new comics out. Well, there were a couple. I got one and Wendy's.

I almost screamed and cried at the same time as the dumb old local stations (both 2 and 5) took off the highly publicized episode of THE PRACTICE with Marlo! Now if it gets canceled I can never see it!

NOTES: Sherlock Holmes again. Seriously, 1976 was a good year for the man from Baker Street.


THE PRACTICE was a then-new sitcom starring TV veteran Danny Thomas as a doctor (who looked vaguely like Groucho). It wasn't bad but it only lasted the one season and, as predicted, I've never seen the highly advertised episode form this evening 35 years ago in which Thomas' daughter Marlo, THAT GIRL, guest-starred with her father. 

Tuesday, Oct 26th, 1976

Got TBG and a letter from Yoshiko.

Spent a long time with Mona today and was fairly open with her. She's easy to talk to.

Mrs. K introduced me to Sarah tonight.

We're having a stupid pep rally Friday.

NOTES: It continues to amaze me how I remember much of this stuff like it was yesterday and then there are things like this Sarah. Sarah? Mrs. K was the 90 year old former kindergarten teacher who lived upstairs. Apparently she introduced me to someone named Sarah. No clue. 


Sometimes I wonder what happened to my Japanese pen pal, Yoshiko Tashiro---especially in the wake of last year's Japanese disasters. We corresponded long past the junior high class which hooked us up for an assignment. I think I continued writing to her another couple of years beyond this, also! I remember in an early letter she said her very favorite movie star was Alain Delon. She got mad when I said I had never heard of him. Turns out, of course, that French actor Delon was one of the most popular stars in the world at the time...except in America. Over the years, though, he has become a favorite of mine and, in fact, I just watched two of his films with Jean-Paul Belmondo over the weekend.


Note that I had zero school spirit.

Tuesday, Oct 25th, 1976

Dad's off all this week.

Played chess in empty Spanish class. Hardly anyone showed up! In fact, little classwork all day. No sign of Mona.

No SS work tonight.

Nice, adult, romantic episode of ALL'S FAIR tonight.

Mom found a house buyer.

NOTES: A house buyer? We never owned a house! I'm confused. Was she looking for someone else? No memory.


Not sure how I got out of SS work, either, as they were always there and quite frankly, most of them were slobs. There had to have been ashtrays and trash cans overflowing. Oh, well.  


ALL'S FAIR was one of those shows that SHOULD have made it but didn't and is now largely forgotten. From IMDB: This sitcom set in Washington, D.C. detailed the relationship between 49-year-old conservative political writer Richard Barrington and his liberal photographer girlfriend Charley. Despite frequent arguments concerning current events, topical concerns and the generation gap, Richard and Charley stayed together, much to the amusement of their friends and co-workers.


TV and movie veteran Richard Crenna starred along with Bernadette Peters whom you may recall as one of my favorites then and now. 


Crenna had been a regular on several old time radio shows including THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE and OUR MISS BROOKS and on TV was known for THE REAL McCOYS. He was also a prolific director and a good character lead in feature films, perhaps most notably as Stallone's commanding officer in the RAMBO films. 

Bernadette Peters apparently postponed her Cincinnati concert appearance scheduled for this Fall as her site now lists it for April instead. Wish I could go.