Getting Punchy With Ponch
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
No particular reason, but I didn’t envision Erik Estrada being as nice of a guy as he was. When I first approached his table at the Hollywood Show on Saturday, April 2, 2011, he was away chatting with someone else. I sighed, wondering how long I would have to wait. Out of nowhere, Erik Estrada came rushing back to the table toward me, not to arrest me, but to give me a giant hug. Hmmm… he never did that to the criminals on the semi-classic 70′s TV cop show CHiPs. Read the rest of this entry »
I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever seen a single episode of the TV sitcom Family Affair, but it’s on my current ‘want list’. It was quite popular during its five-year run, being nominated for numerous Emmy awards. The actress who played Uncle Bill’s eldest niece Cissy Davis was Kathy Garver, and I had the chance to meet her at the Hollywood Show on Saturday, October 9, 2010. 
I’m sorry, I just didn’t like him. In Alex Haley’s TV mini-series Roots, he played the central character Kunta Kinte, an African who was stripped away from his homeland and brought to the United States in slavery. He was amazing in the role and to coin a pun, I was rooting for him every step of the way. Later on, Levar Burton was the presenter of the children’s series Reading Rainbow. I’m all about rooting for helping kids read. It was probably when he graduated to the Star Trek series- playing Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation – that he became a jerk. Star Trek tends to do that to actors sometimes. Am I complaining too much? 
Yep, there were three of them altogether. It began when Mrs. Edna Garrett was assigned the task of cleaning the soiled underwear of Willis and Arnold Jackson in the first episode of the series. She lasted a full season and a half before moving on from the penthouse apartment of Diff’rent Strokes to the Eastland School for Girls on The Facts of Life. Then came Adelaide Brubaker. She was older than dirt when she took on the role for the next year and a half. Finally, Pearl Gallagher came to the rescue and remained with the Drummond family as long as they had a TV show and young Arnold managed to keep his lip shaved. Then, most likely, she slew them. 
I am from the Saturday morning cartoon ilk. I literally spent many of my childhood Saturday mornings in front of the TV watching The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, Fat Albert, The Pink Panther, The Monster Squad, In the News, and my personal favorite, the live-action Land of the Lost. As any man who was once a boy watching this show will tell you, the girl playing Holly was a hottie: a rugged tomboy capable of getting her hands dirty, but with glowing blonde pigtails that made our hearts flutter. At the time, I had no idea that her real name was Kathy Coleman… or that nearly 35 years later I’d be getting to meet her.