My favourite toys as kids were various sets of plastic men...I had a knight set, I had a Captain Gallant Foreign Legion Set, I had a Civil War set, Roy Rogers Ranch Set, A Farm Set, dinosaur set...these always came with a building of some sort --barn, castle, fort, ranch house. I got hours of fun from them. Once I hid some Indians from my cowboys in one of those adjustable cone lamps on a pole. My Indians melted somewhat and I had the most interesting tribe of deformed Indians you ever saw. Another time I took my Roy Rogers to share in kindergarten. He got lost; a big trauma for me, but he showed up a few days later...some kid had painted him.
I also had several of those Hartland Western Figurines, mostly cowboys that came on a horse and had removable hats and saddles and guns and in the case of my favourites, Robert E. Lee and General George Custer, removable swords that they could hold. Needless to say, I played with them a lot and they didn't stay in very good condition. The swords were the first to go, replaced by those little sword-martini-skewers for olives and pearl onions. but stirrups broke off saddles, guns were lost, paint got chipped. I've still got my Robert E. Lee, sans stirrups and sword, but with his hat, the rest of his saddle, and Traveller, his horse with a chipped ear. Had I taken care of these figurines they'd probably be worth hundreds of dollars today. Of course, that could be said of almost any of the toys I had. Unfortunately, these things all seem to disappear when you have younger siblings and cousins who get them handed down or your mother just pitches them when they get too tatty. I think somewhere in my mother's home is still a basket with the remanents of various soldiers and cowboys and whatnot from all the sets I had over the years. What I really miss are the many Golden Books we had and record albums...like Bozo and does anyone remember Gossamer Wump who was a triangle player narrated by Frank Morgan? Man, I just pulled that out of the dark recesses of my memory just now.
As for new TV shows, I have found I just cannot invest any time in being a regular, committed viewer to anything anymore. Other than SNL, I watch literally NO network TV. I have never seen an episode of Sopranos, Sex and the City, and ,other than American Idol, I resolutely refuse to watch any reality shows. Those take the food out of the mouths of fiction writers like myself...and I find their premises usually appeal to the lowest common denominator...really, shit like Temptation Island, promoting cheating on your other half. What a sleazy, scummy idea.
We just got HG/TV added to our cable system and I'm enjoying it a lot. Very calming. More like PBS This Old House...without all the freneticness of Page Davis and the trumped-up, but non-existenct conflict they try to create. And they usually offer real, permanent fixes to house problems...not quick-fix MDF shit thrown up or tacking crappy, dust-catching fabric everywhere.
I like what I've seen of Brit comedy,THE OFFICE; I enjoy Colin Quinn's new show on the Comedy Network where he and comics pseudo-discuss current events (It's Bill Maher played strictly for laughs); I like Bill Maher's new show on HBO, but it seems to come and go awfully quickly; I like DEAD RINGERS, an impersonation show on BBCAmerica...but if one is not up on the British political scene or their TV personalities, it can be a bit vague.
The only two shows...which are hardly new...that I consistently watch are SOUTH PARK, still the most savagely incisive satire on TV and terribly, terribly funny, and THE McGAUGHLIN REPORT.
My stations are pretty much TCM, Fox Movie Channel, BBCAmerica, HG/TV and The Comedy Network.
