dual personalities

Well, we were saddened to hear that “Cousin Richard” Chamberlain had died. When I was growing up, we always called him Cousin Richard and joked that he was, indeed, our cousin, because we had the same last name and he did kind of look like our father. We liked him in his king-of-the-mini-series period in the 1970s and ’80s. If Dr. Kildare was on Amazon Prime I would watch it now. I’ve never seen an episode!

As I have mentioned, we have not watched network TV for years, preferring to watch old TV shows (sans commercials whenever possible). After many seasons of Hawaii Five-0 and some Kojack, lately we have been watching Ironside (1967-1975) which starred Raymond Burr as a a consultant to the San Francisco police department (formerly chief of detectives), who was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by a sniper. The OM really loves the groovy theme by Quincy Jones. This publicity photo makes me chuckle, because no one ever smiles on the show, except maybe in the final scene of each episode when they are going to sit down to a meal of chili after solving their case.

I like Chief Ironside himself who is a gruff, smart, show-no-emotion kind of guy. And I have to say, I enjoy all the guest stars who were regulars on TV shows of the era, not to mention the fab fashions of the day. My favorite episodes are the ones dealing with hippies and the perceived drug crisis of the late 1960s. Anyway, it’s available on Amazon Prime.

In other news, I did watch the hilarious Major League (1989) which I highly recommend. I also watched Road to Perdition (2002) which is an excellent movie directed by Sam Mendes, but it is sad and depressing. It has a great cast–all playing terrible irredeemable Irish gangsters–including Paul Newman in one of his final roles. It won an Oscar for Conrad Hall and his wonderful cinematography. The music by Thomas Newman is A+.

To round out the weekend I watched Big Jake (1972) starring John Wayne and two of his sons (Patrick and Ethan) and Robert Mitchum’s son Christopher. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was amused by the Big Jake/Little Jake name-calling, because, of course, we have Big Wheeler/Little Wheeler in our family. At church on Sunday, I was looking for the boy and went downstairs to the Sunday School to find him. I said to the two men who were on check-in duty if Wheeler had come down. They said, Oh yeah, he’s in class. I said, No I’m looking for Big Wheeler, and they laughed. “Big Wheeler! Heh heh.” I said, well, that’s what we call him at home! They were highly amused.

The author of this article refers to our devices as “Phone Pharaohs,” which seems particularly apt. “The Lord’s command to Pharaoh could perhaps be applied to the smartphone: ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me’ (Ex. 9:1, NIV).”

And this made me laugh:

Happy Tuesday!