Memories of a TV Childhood--Part 3--The Funniest Moments in TV History

1. That episode of Maude where Vivian was trying out someting called Total Womanhood, a reaction to Women's Lib in which the wife is supposed to be all sexy and submissive instead of an "aggressive female." Maude and Walter go over to see Vivian who has been acting strange lately. She answers the door stark naked except for Saranwrap. You can only see her from the neck up. She was obviously expecting her husband Arthur. She screams and slams the door. Maude and Walter stare at each other for about 30 second totally deadpan.

2. That episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show where Rob accused Laura of opening his mail. He sends for an inflatible raft. Laura can't resist her curiosity and opens it. The raft inflates and now she can't hide it. Millie and Jerry come over from next door and just the way they laugh so hard without uttering a sound is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

3. That episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where Paul Sand is an accountant auditing Mary. He sends her a box of chocolates. Rhoda starts to eat one and says "I don't know why I should bother to eat this. I should just apply it to my hips directly." At the age of 11, I had this image of Valerie Harper smearing her hips with chocolate.

4. That episode of The Carol Burnett Show when Carol as Eunice and Vickie Lawrence as Mama were having a fight. Lawrence delivered the line "Eunice, you gotta hole in your dingy! Your pilot light blown out! You got splinters in the windmills of your mind." Carol then breaks character and cracks up, sputtering "That's a new one, Mama." Obvioulsy Lawrence either ad-libbed the last one or the writers gave it to her as a surprise. She stayed in character and said "Now you look at me when I'm talking to you, Eunice!"

5. Laugh-In. There was one show where one of the running gags was Lily Tomlin as a strict librarian and Larry Hovis as a patron.
Hovis: Do you have any books on manners?
Tomlin: No we don't, stupid.

Hovis: Do you have the autobiography of William F. Buckley?
Tomlin: Yes, you go down that aisle and take a radical turn to the right.

Hovis: Do you have the autobiography of Lawrence Welk?
Tomlin: Yes.
Hovis: Is there a penalty if you keep it late?
Tomlin: Yes, if you don't return it after three weeks you have to keep it.

Speaking of Laugh-In, I'll never forget when the producer of the show was on the David Frost Show and he said they did 250 jokes every show. Of course, the next time Laugh-In was on, I counted every joke. And it totaled about 252.

6. On The Jetsons, daughter Judy was once again bitten by the love bug. Rosie the Robot Maid was sick of it. "This is Miss Judy in love, tra-la-la, tra-la-la" she said and pretend to prance around as best a robot can. "This is Mis Judy out of love, eh-heh, eh-heh" and then she bends over and moans. "I never sounded like that," Judy says. "I bet you could if you tried real hard," Rosie answers. My brother and I started imitating Rosie, going "Eh-heh" and moaning at the least provocation.

7. The episode of Batman with Tallulah Bankhead. She has them trapped in a giant electronic web and is open to unleash two spiders on them. "Well, dahlings, you may be caped and you may be dynamic. But to me you are a crashing BORE! So bye-bye, bat-baby."

8. On the Today Show they were interviewing people who were the subject of weird stories in the National Enquirer (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize this year for their John Edwards coverage). One woman claimed she had a toaster possessed by the devil. She displayed samples of toast with pictures of the antichrist scratched out of the burnt part. She put in a piece of bread and it caught fire. "So, why do you keep this toaster if it's so much trouble," the interviewer asked. "Well, you know, in spite of everything, it still makes a pretty good piece of toast."

Farewell to Athens

On my last day in Athens, I had to send out all my postcards. The stamps were so beautiful, I bought some extra and addressed a postcard to myself so I could have the cancelled stamp. I collect postcards from places I've been or from friends who sent them. This would be the first time I sent myself one. This way I'd know when everybody else got theirs. It gave me an odd sense of accomplishment. Then I was determined to find the Herakleidon Museum which had an exhibit of Degas sculptures. It was difficult to find, tucked away on a little side street near the Thissio metro station, but it was worth it. The Herakleidon is a small gem of a museum, a former private home, very intimate. There were over 70 gorgeous Degas sculptures including the famous one of the young ballet dancer. I'm not sure if it's the same one as in the Clark Institute in Williamstown. Beautiful music from the period played.

After lunch, I strolled around the Thissio square, near Monasteriki. Street vendors were selling stamps, coins, old watches, binoculars, pins from the Olympics, and various bric-a-brac. There were hordes of black men with huge bundles running from place to place from the police. They would drop their burdens which contained what appeared to be knockoffs of designer bags until they got a signal that the cops were nearby. Then they'd pick up and run off.

I wandered to the Royal Gardens and found a gallery which sported an exhibition of movie posters from various eras and countries. That was a lot of fun. Back in the hotel, I watched TV til Jerry got back from Turkey--interesting how the news media in Europe is totally to the left, there was a commentator on RT, the Russian network who suggested the Obama administration bribed the Nobel committee to get the president the Peace Prize--and then we all went out to celebrate our last night. We ate at a very good place with a view of the Acropolis. I told Jerry and his colleagues if I needed to write a doctoral thesis it would be on The Cult of the Virgin: Athena, Mary, Elizabeth I, and Doris Day. Prior to this trip, I hadn't known Athena was a virgin goddess.

The flight back to NYC was about ten hours, but I had my anti-jet pills. They showed four movies--all garbage. Four Christmases, The Time Traveller's Wife, Land of the Lost, and Post Graduate. I didn't watch any of them--that is I didn't listen to the sound on the headphones. The images were enough to tell me how stupid they were. All I could think of the films were "Wow, Carol Burnett, Robert Duvall, and Sissy Spacek must need money." Then they showed TV episodes and it was the same episode of The Simpsons I saw on the last Delta flight I took which was about a year ago!