Blown Kisses for Jim Lange

The Dating Game was like no other game show.  Of course it makes sense that Chuck Barris created it.  Jim Lange was its gracious host.  Jim passed away at age 81.  I still make references to it's crazy questions to this day.  If you could be any tree, what would you be and why?

Long before the Bachelor/Bachelorette, there was the Dating Game. If you won, you went on a chaperoned date (according the the NY Times the chaperone might be Jim or Chuck), usually for a dinner at Catalina Island.  Groucho Marx daughter won the grand Kahuna, a trip to William Holden's African safari resort. Groucho asked the questions and picked the date for a father's day edition of the show.  

The list of celebrities that appeared on the show is a 60's who's who.  Some were celebrities already, others had yet to break through.

Steve Martin twice. He got picked by the ladies both times
Karen Carpenter
Farrah Fawcett
Pee Wee Herman
Arnold Schwarzenegger
John Ritter
Suzanne Sommers
Andy Kaufman
Yvonne Craig
Michael Jackson
Richard Dawson
Bill Bixby (was on 4 times) He and Dawson appeared on an episode together
Groucho Marx (he interviewed the guys for his daughter) Hilarious. 
Maureen McCormick
Barry Williams
The Grassroots: Warren Entner and Rick Coonce
Robert Vaughn

Jim was poised yet retained just the right amount of sarcasm to make him the perfect host for the show.

Writing From Photographs

The closet archivist in me was sucked in by the title of Casey Cep's article in the New Yorker, A Thousand Words:  Writing From Photographs.  She is a writer who has abandoned physically writing, meaning putting pen to paper.  She uses her photo stream to dictate her prose.  Being someone who retains the trivial facts (Paul Reiser once commented that he read that Vanna White starred in a production of Brigadoon and it never left his head-thanks Paul, it hasn't left mine either) , but seems to let the others drift, I love having documentation of everything. I love research and details.  I love have something to look at and interpret. 

My husband whether he knows it or not, is a great visual archivist. I think he has the largest collections of the gates of the Hamptons.  He has amassed a drove of favorite gates we've seen in our dog walks through the Hamptons.  We're finally going to tackle building the gate using one of those photos as our inspiration.  Taking photos is easy now.  Using photos to create is a gift. 

THE MORNING AFTER and a DISASTER

After seeing this article about friend Alex Stais in the WSJ, I was inspired to search for "The Morning After".  Alec is the producer of Disaster, an off broadway play that is an homage to the Poseidon Adventure. It's ladened with cheesy 70's songs. Expect to hear "Torn Between Two Lovers" and "I'd Really Love To See You Tonight".  Since "The Morning After" will not be heard, I felt the need to post this.