Tonight's Jeopardy features a category devoted to classic TV Guide covers. Apparently, producers rejected my first suggestion: classic TV Guide Online columnists.
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Question: I remember a show/mini-series with David Bowie's theme "Golden Years" as its theme. It was almost sci-fi in content, but I don't remember the storyline completely! My husband thinks I'm nuts. Please don't confirm his suspicions! — Missy, Appleton, Wis.
Televisionary: Perish the thought, Missy. He's the nutty one here, darnit!
You're thinking of Stephen King's Golden Years, which revolved around a senior-citizen janitor who found himself getting younger and younger after an accident at the lab where he worked.
Since this was a King story, of course, the janitor (Keith Szarabajka) was soon experiencing all sorts of weird side effects. After a sympathetic lab security chief (
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Question: I remember (and I seem to be the only one) that in the mid to late '70s, there was a Saturday morning cartoon featuring two cats, Waldo and Felicia. My brother and I named our two cats after these characters, but no one I've ever talked to can remember such a show. Help! — Sally
Televisionary: You're thinking of The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty, which was about a wimpy cat (shot in live-action sequences) whose daydreams of grandeur (animated sequences) were the stuff of this show. Most of the fantasies involved Waldo saving himself and his gal-pal Felicia from the bullying bulldog Tyrone, who made their lives miserable in "real" life.
Sound a lot like
James Thurber's
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? The attorneys thought so, too. Facing a lawsuit, the producers changed the title to
The New Adventures of Waldo Kitty. (Big difference, eh?)
Wal
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At Monday's Country Music Television 2003 Flameworthy Video Music Awards (say that three times fast), Toby Keith's controversial anthem "Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American)" picked up awards for video of the year, cocky video (huh?) and best male video. Keith dedicated his big victory to "Mr. Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks, and all the people over there [in Iraq] putting it down for us tonight." Somewhere, Michael Moore is foaming at the mouth.
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Penelope Cruz is suing Australian magazine New Idea after it published a story that contained "false and defamatory statements" about her relationship with Tom Cruise. It's not clear what the story alleged, and to be honest, I really don't feel like looking into it.
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Here's your chance to own a piece of Hollywood history: Winona Ryder wants to auction off for charity the $5,500 worth of already-way-overpriced merchandise she stole from Saks Fifth Avenue in 2001. Ryder's attorney made the offer at Monday's progress report hearing in Beverly Hills, during which Judge Elden Fox praised the 31-year-old actress for completing her community service ahead of schedule. Fox postponed a decision on the whole charity auction idea.
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Question: What actress played a secretary aspiring to be a Broadway star on a short-lived sitcom? I don't remember the name of the show or the name of the actress. I believe she does a lot of Broadway acting. Her name may be Katherine or Caroline, but I could be wrong. — Caroline C., Atlanta, Ga.
Televisionary: That was Kristin Chenoweth playing an Oklahoma-born gal trying to make it on the Great White Way on NBC's Kristin, which debuted in June 2001 and was gone in no time flat. As you mention, Chenowith herself does much better on the stage; she won a Tony and a Drama Desk Award, among other honors, as Sally in You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown.
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HBO will do anything to keep its Emmy streak alive. The pay cabler has hired Bryce Zabel, the top exec at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (organizer of the Emmy Awards), to pen a drama series pilot set in the world of military intelligence.
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Spike Lee has agreed to direct The Game, a two-hour drama pilot for Showtime about San Francisco street gangs... A contestant and two audience members from the UK version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire were found guilty Monday in a London court of using a system of strategic coughs to win the show's jackpot... Nick at Nite is developing an animated series based on Bill Cosby's best-selling 1986 book Fatherhood.
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