What’s Happening Dee!!
February 24th, 2011
As someone who has a younger, wise-cracking sister, I was certainly one to appreciate the character of Dee Thomas in the sitcom that ran for three seasons from 1976-79 called What’s Happening!! It was sort of a poor man’s version of Good Times and I can only recall it being in syndication in the 1980’s. I tuned in at times and other times I flipped it off. But in re-watching the entire run of the series (along with the first season of it’s follow-up series What’s Happening Now!!), I can tell you one thing: Danielle Spencer who played Dee basically stole every scene that she was in. Read the rest of this entry »
I aimlessly roamed through the Spring of 1992. College student, father, partier, opportunist, music buff, Brady Bunch fan, Robert DeNiro idolizer, Kroger bagger, Laserdisc player owner. That was me. It was back to the drawing board of figuring out life after I had come to the conclusion that the job offer from Keith had been a hoax. Miraculously, I hung on to him as a friend, a deal which was sweetened by the fact that he was constantly buying me CDs, Laserdiscs, and taking me to rock concerts. 
I had no particular fondness for or attraction to David Hedison, who had starred in two James Bond films as Bond’s ally Felix Leiter in Live and Let Die and License to Kill. I was a bit more interested in the fact that he had portrayed the central protagonist in the 1958 horror film The Fly alongside Vincent Price – although I have never actually seen the film. My friend Bob had picked up a free signed photo of Hedison from that film and passed it onto me. 
At least that’s the way I always looked at it. Which makes it a no-brainer to do things like fly directly to Los Angeles from Miami, immediately following the cruise vacation that my Mom, Bob, and I had just taken. After going through customs at the port on Friday, February 11, 2011, I caught the shuttle bus to the Miami airport. I had only been mildly concerned about the early time of my flight, but I arrived with a full half-hour to spare before we even boarded the plane. I picked up the Miami magnet that I had missed when we had last been in Miami and caught my flight at 11:30am. 
Outside of her role as Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinnati, Loni Anderson didn’t do all that much that was noteworthy in the entertainment realm. She has parts in films like The Lonely Guy, A Night at the Roxbury, and the female lead in critical bomb Stroker Ace, alongside her future husband Burt Reynolds. But that role, along with a classic pin-up pose from the 1970’s, ensured that she would remain an icon for more than 30 years – and I was pretty excited to get the chance to meet her at the Hollywood Show in Burbank, California, on Saturday, February 12, 2011.