No Longer Rooting for Levar
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
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? Read the rest of this entry »
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. 
The title of this posting might sound a little disturbing if the photo at left didn’t make it obvious that we were talking about the TV show Bewitched. Although in the great I Dream of Jeanie vs. Bewitched debate, I come down on the side of Jeanie as being the better of the two shows, Bewitched is quite fun nonetheless. As a fan who caught the series in reurns, I own all of the episodes on DVD and am anxious to dig into them in the near future. Unlike the cast of Jeanie, I never got to meet any of the principles on Bewitched, but during my visit to the Hollywood Show on October 9, 2010 , I was able to get to meet the actors and actress who played Samantha and Darrin’s children Tabitha and Adam. 
I virtually grew up with the TV show The Facts of Life, which made its debut in 1979 and ran for nine seasons. It was a show that had to re-invent itself several times, sometimes successful and sometimes not-so-much. But regardless, meeting the stars of the show has always been on my bucket list. I got my first chance during the Hollywood Show on Saturday, February 12, 2011. Mindy Cohn, who had portrayed Natalie Green on the show for its entire duration, was making a first-time appearance. She was certainly nice enough, but I couldn’t help but walk away with a bad taste in my mouth about the encounter.