Little Golden Book Monday #101

Just a quick one today. Here is the cover artwork to the Princess and the Frog Little Golden Book which will be released on October 13th.

Little Golden Book Monday #100

Today's Little Golden Book is the 100th LGB I have posted here since I started Little Golden Book Mondays. I wanted something special for the 100th book post, so I dug though my collection and found this one, The Happy Little Whale from 1973 (originally printed in 1960). What's so special about this book is that I believe that it is my first Little Golden Book as a child back in the early 70's. When I found it, I quickly opened the front cover hoping to find my young signature scrawled on the inside front page in the "This little Golden Book belong to" box, but alas, it was blank. Which doesn't really surprise me as even as a child I would have been thinking about how writing in the book would destroy its 'mintness'!
After 30 years or so, I had pretty much forgotten about this book, and the story of a little whale that gets separated from his pod and ends up at an aquarium where he makes friends with a dolphin and a female whale, but as soon as I opened it and started flipping though the pages the story quickly came back to me as if I had just read it yesterday!

Explanation

I have an explanation for the lack of a Little Golden Book Monday yesterday. I forgot. The darn Labor Day holiday got me all confused and I thought yesterday was Sunday... Won't happen again... until next time I forget!

TV Week 2009 Fall Preview Issue

I picked up the TV Week 2009 Fall Preview issue tonight at the grocery store. As I have said in previous posts, TV Guide is no longer sold in Canada, so this is what we have in its place. I have already checked out the TVGuide.com web site and seen that they also have their Fall Preview issue on stands, so I emailed my pal to see if he could pick up a copy for me.
I used to buy TV Guide on a semi regular basis (I even had a subscription for a few years), but I did find I was buying it less once I got digital cable and it included onscreen TV guide info. As for TV Week magazine, I pretty much buy one issue a year. I love checking out all the upcoming new shows, and always have a large slate of shows I want to check out.
This issue of TV Week lists 41 new shows. Here is a list of the eleven the shows I will be tuning in to and checking out this fall (I'll give each show a rating out of 5 for how much I am looking forward to it - 5 being the ones I am most excited about):

GLENN MARTIN DDS (3) - a stop motion animated comedy that follows the road-tripping adventures of a beleaguered dentists and his family after they ditch their suburban home and hit the highway in a tripped-out Winnebago, encountering an eclectic array of humanity - ranging from slick mobsters to Amish farmers - along the way.

THE JAY LENO SHOW (4) - Jay's new five-nights-a-week 10 pm talk show filled with his signature bits such as "Jaywlking", "Headlines" and "99-Cent Store". Sounds good. all the fun stuff without the dull interviews!

ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE (1) - I like Jenna Elfman so I will give this a look, but sounds like its going to be too much of a romantic comedy for my liking.

V (2) - Based on the iconic 1980's mini-series, starships loaded with seemingly benign aliens visit Earth, supposedly here to co-exist in peace with humanity while gifting us with planet-saving technology. I like Sci-fi but hated the original V, but I will still check it out.

HANK (1) - I like half hour comedy shows, and this in one of those. For that reason along I will check this out. I'm not expecting much though, as I am not a fan of Kelsey Grammer, and his last show (a half hour comedy) Back To You was pretty lame.

THE MIDDLE (4) - Another half hour comedy, this one actually looks promising. Patricia Heaton stars in this single-camera comedy set in the American heartland (aka "the middle"), focusing on the comedic struggles of harried working mom Frankie, her wisecracking-but-supportive husband and their kids at they struggle with what's left of the American dream in a small Indiana town. TV Week says its clearly going for a Malcolm in the Middle vibe. Sounds good to me.

MODERN FAMILY (4) - Another half hour comedy which also looks like it could be funny. It stars Ed O'Neill (Married with Children), and is done in a mockumentary style. That's enough to get me to tune in.

COUGAR TOWN (3) - Love the title and Courteney Cox is hot. If I can get past the dating / relationships part of the show, it might be good.

EASTWICK (.5) - Yes that's a point 5. Not sure why I will give this a look, but for some reason I feel compelled to check it out. I'm guessing I won't make it though the full episode before I change the channel over to watch a Seinfeld rerun.

FLASHFORWARD (5) - A mysterious worldwide event causes every human on the planet to black out for two minutes and 14 seconds, during which time each person experiences a vision of what he or she is doing at a specific time and date six months in the future. While the FBI tries to unravel the mystery, some people must come to grips with the seemingly shocking turns their lives will take - and whether it's possible to alter the future they've seen. This COULD be the one really awesome show this season... IF it doesn't end up sucking!

COMMUNITY (5) - the most promising of the half hour comedies this season. In this single-camera comedy, The Soup's McHale is in full-on wiseass mode as a disbarred lawyer forced to go back to school when it's discovered his law degree from Columbia is from the country, not the university. Finding himself an unmotivated student in a third-rate community college, he tries to pick u a fetching co-ed (Jacobs) by tricking her into attending his bogus study group,but the joke's on him when she invites a group of her misfit classmates.

There are also a few Midseason shows that look interesting: DAY ONE - A 13 episode series that follows the survivors of a global catastrophe that has destroyed the entire infrastructure of modern civilization as they try to decipher the mystery of what happened and why, all while trying to rebuild society. THE DEEP END - A quirky legal comedy/drama that follows the adventures of a group of sexy young lawyers, both in and out of the courtroom. HAPPY TOWN - In this mystery series, a deputy sheriff tries to unravel the unsolved kidnappings of a half-dozen children over the past decade in a small Minnesota town. SONS OF TUCSON - When their wealthy Wall Street dad is imprisoned for financial fraud, three young brothers hire a goofball slacker to impersonate their father so they won't be split up and send into foster care.