What was on TV July 12th through 18th, 1980

TV Guide is back again with this week in 1980.  How mad do you think John Schneider was when he heard the Duke Boys (and Gal) were going to appear on the cover of TV Guide only to find his face covered by the address label?

Let's right this wrong after 34 years.

Ah Randi Oakes.  Always a treat on "Battle of the Network Stars".  I never knew that Randi Oakes was Joe Namath's girlfriend. I wonder if even Joe Namath knew she was his girlfriend.

The Surgeon General's warning was so severe that almost every word needed to be capitalized. Sorry "to."

Ski Lift to Death nailed the "plot of movie as title of movie" decades before "Snakes on a Plane."

I always enjoyed Abbott & Costello's "The Time of their Lives" even though it was atypical of their comedies in that they didn't really play off each other.  In the movie, Lou Costello plays a falsely-accused traitor in the Revolutionary War who is executed along with a female companion.  From then on, the two haunt the grounds on which they were killed until they can prove their innocence.  Abbott plays the ancestor one of the real traitors responsible for their deaths.  Because Lou is a ghost and Abbott human, there is no verbal play between the two typical in most Abbott & Costello comedies.  The actual reason for this was they had split up temporarily in 1945 due to differences and refused to film together.  A storyline was developed that allowed them to film their sequences separately.

Seeing the sale of pennies for 15 cents reminds me of this Mitch Hedberg joke:
I saw some two-dollar bills today - They were for sale for eight dollars. Something went severely wrong there. What happened? It spun out of control... Now it's worth eight, still says two.

I remember a time when the Sears catalog was a big deal. Particularly the lingerie section.

Something tells me Carl Reiner is playing some sort of uptight authority figure in that Gidget movie.

"Jason and the Argonauts" contained some of Ray Harryhausen's best effects, except for the scene shown above.  Poseidon was played by an actual person superimposed over the shot giving it an even creepier effect than the stop-motion animation in the movie.

Do you think the inventor of Velcro ever thought that one day his invention would be used as a glorified corset?

This was a really bad week in television history.  Political convention coverage by all 3 major networks Monday through Thursday.  I don't know how I kept my sanity.  I may have even gone outside.

"The Bastard", one of the few movie titles along with "Damn the Defiant", “Damn Yankees” and “To Hell and Back” we weren't allowed to say in my household.

Ringo was so disrespected that the plot blurb of Help! mentions him by name yet he is the only Beatle NOT in the promo picture. Poor guy.

Someone needs to let Channel 11 ("Your Convention Alternative!") know the convention was over by Friday and their competition was now "The Incredible Hulk".  I know who got my Nielsen points that night.

Was Tom Wopat ever seen in anything but that denim outfit?

Crystals? Squelch control? Citizen band frequencies? Technology of 1980 was just weird.

Here's a dashing picture of Dan Rainey.  Apparently, he was later Commanding Officer of the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier from 1989 to 1991.

Remember, you can't spell "Dietac" without "D-I-E".

Although there's no signature in the picture, that has to be an Edward Gorey.

What about the "wide angled vents" requires them to be in quotation marks? Are they not that wide? Not that venty?

That's all for this week.  Tune in next time when I promise, the convention will be over.