Thanks to Wm Rowe

For a lot of people, fall conjures up thoughts of cool, crisp days and leafs changing colors. However, for many men, fall means football. Whether you’re a fan of the NFL or the NCAA or both, there’s nothing better than watching a football game during the fall. For many of those lucky enough to attend a game, it starts with a tailgate party with friends before the game even starts. For others, going to the game is not enough and they find it necessary to dress up in their team’s colors and paint their face. I tend to find my Saturdays beginning with College Game Day followed by an onslaught of games. I also follow other football games online by checking score updates through our Satellite Star Internet. I know it drives my wife insane, but thankfully, she has grown accustomed to my addiction to college football. She has even started to join in by wearing team colors, at least during the game. I’ve even been able to convince her to make food for football parties on occasion, too.

I thought you might find this interesting, Movie and TV Fast Facts. These are some interesting facts about movies and television. Whether you grew up watching one of the those big console televisions or have the luxury of watching flat screens on tv mounts, you will find these facts interesting. Here are a few to get you started:

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in 1926 in Soho, London. Ten years later there were only 100 TV sets in the world.

Today there are more than 1,5 billion TV sets in use.

China has the most TV sets (500 million).

The first TV interview was made with Irish actress Peggy O’Neil in April 1930.

The first TV commercial was a 20-second ad for a Bulova clock, broadcasted by WNBT, New York during a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies in July 1941. Bulova paid $9 for that first TV spot. Bulova also was the first watch in space.

The 1967 Russian movie War and Peace had 120,000 extras. The South Korean movie Monster Wang-magwi from the same year featured 157,000 extras. The 1945 German movie Kolberg had 187,000 and the movie with the most extras, the 1982 British movie Gandhi, featured 300,000 extras.

I used to be a big fan of Designing Women. It was a hilarious show and Dixie Carter was great as the “straight man.” Dixie was born May 25, 1939 McLemoresville, Tennessee and spent her early years in Memphis, Tennessee. She graduated from Memphis State with a degree in English. In 1959, Carter was the first runner-up in the Miss Tennessee beauty pageant.

Carter started acting in 1960 in a local production of Carousel. She traveled to New York City in 1963 and appeared in A Winter’s Tale on Broadway. After eight years away from acting, Carter filled in for the role of Dorian Cramer on One Life to Live while the regular actress, Nancy Pinkerton, was on maternity leave. She then was cast in the soap opera Edge of Night as Assistant D.A. Olivia Brandeis “Brandy” Henderson. She left the role in 1976, moved to Los Angeles and appeared in a variety of television series. Carter is best known for her role as interior decorator Julia Sugarbaker in the 1980s/1990s television program Designing Women, set in Atlanta, Georgia. Hal Holbrook, her real-life husband, had a recurring role as Reese Watson, and Carter’s daughters, Ginna and Mary Dixie, also had guest-star roles as Julia Sugarbaker’s nieces, Jennifer and Camilla.

After Designing Women, Carter in other television roles and on Broadway. Her final film was That Evening Sun, which she filmed on site with her husband Hal Holbrook in East Tennessee in the summer of 2008.

In 1967, Carter married Arthur Carter (no relation) and had two children. She later divorced him in 1977 and married Broadway actor George Hearn the same year. She divorced Hearn in 1979 and married Hal Holbrook in 1984.

Carter died on April 10, 2010 in Houston, Texas from complications due to endometrial cancer.

The people in the following video aren’t looking for accounting jobs they are actually New York area accountants who appeared on the David Letterman show to recite the “Top Then Things I’ve Learned from Being an Accountant. Letterman always has clever top ten lists and this one is funny too. So if you are frustrated with your taxes, here is a good laugh for you. My favorite: “People will pay you a lot of money if you pretend to know how the tax code works.”

I don’t know if you have seen the commercials for the new television show Huge. It is a show about seven teens and the staff at a weight-loss camp. I don’t know if the show is going to promote how to lose weight, but the star, Nikky Blonsky from Hair Spray fan, looks like she has gained a ton of weight for the show. I just find it interesting that the show would want to have their stars gain weight, which is so unhealthy, just to make a show about a weight-loss camp. Not sure what kind of message this is sending.

If you haven’t caught this show yet on Cartoon Network, it is interesting. I love the concept of the kids working together to try and build something constructive. Of course, they get the fun of destroying it too. I hope the waiver they must sign for the show, it includes an insurance quote. The concept is simple. Two teams destroy an object and then must rebuilt it to a new vehicle. Then they get to destroy it again. Here is an ad for the show:

Sometimes considered the first “reality” television show, Candid Camera was produced by Allen Funt. It was first introduced in 1947 as Candid Microphone and then graduated to television on August 10, 1948. Funt was the host (or co-host) of the show until 1993 when he suffered a stroke. His son, Peter Funt, began co-hosting the show in 1987 and is the current producer and host.

The format of the show involved secretly filming them at everyday situations, restaurants, jobs, on the street, etc. There was always a prank involved. When the prank was revealed, the phrase “Smile, Your on Candid Camera” was used.

The show has not run continuously, but as has runs of various lengths. The longest run was from 1950-1967 on CBS.

Here is a clip from an early version involving Woody Allen who was a writer for the show.

Recently, Andrew Koenig, an American actor has been reported as missing. Andrew’s father, Walter Koenig who played Chekov in the originally Star Trek series, is hoping for his safe return.

Andrew Koenig was born August 17, 1968. Koenig is best know for his portrayal of Richard “Boner” Stabone in the television series Growing Pains. I remember that the character was into building muscle before there ever was the mention of natural muscle builders or bsn cell mass. Here is a sample of dialogue from the program:

Eddie: Uhh umm uh, what’s your dad’s name bone ?
Richard ‘Boner’ Stabone: Sylvester.
Mike: Wait a minute… Your dad’s name is Sylvester Stabone?
Richard ‘Boner’ Stabone: Who knew!

Here is a clip about him being missing:

Celebrity Fit Club on VH1 is now in its seventh season. This season, celebrities include Bobby Brown, Shar Jackson, Jay McCarroll, Nicole Eggert, Sebastian Bach, KayCee Stroh, Kevin Federline, and Tanisha Thomas. It doesn’t look like any of these celebrities have invested in a natural fat burner lately, but the boot camp style of this season is sure putting them through the workout! You can watch Celebrity Fit Club: Boot Camp on Mondays at 9:00pm on VH1.

Before the wii was ever invented, we used to spend our afternoons watching soap operas. My favorite was All My Children. And who can forget the sometimes evil Palmer Cortlandt played by James Mitchell.

James Mitchell was born February 19, 1920 in Sacramento, California. Mitchell’s mother left the family in 1923 and Mitchell’s father, unable to run a farm and raise a son at the same time, “loaned” him out to a vaudeville act, George and Katherine King. Mitchell’s father eventually remarried and went back to live with his father. At the age of seventeen he left for Los Angeles.

Mitchell study acting at Los Angeles City College and became involved in modern dance. He danced with Leslie Horton’s dance company for four years. He auditioned for Oklahoma! as a dancer and danced and also assisted Agnes de Mille with choreography. He would work with de Mille on a number of projects for Broadway and film. He worked on stage in musicals and dramas until the late 1970s.

Mitchell had limited success in film and appeared in a few movies. In the 1950s and 60s he appeared in numerous television series and movies. In 1964, he took a role in The Edge of Night, his first soap opera role.

Mitchell’s performing career almost ended in 1974 and he went to college to get a BA and MFA so that he could teach at the college level. He taught at Juilliard, Yale University, and Drake University. In 1979, he was asked to play Palmer Cortlandt on the soap opera All My Children. He was hired for only one year, but the role was extended and he ended up playing Palmer for 30 years.

James Mitchell died on January 22, 2010 a few weeks before what would have been his 90th birthday.