My Favourite TV shows of 2015/16

I love TV... perhaps a little too much! This season of Television has been better than the last few seasons, and I have been watching a lot TV. I made a quick list tonight and found 33 shows that I have been watching this season - thats a lot of time in front of the boob tube, over 24 hours of television viewing per week actually. Of course there is also hockey which I love to watch, CFL football, NLL lacrosse, as well as old shows on MeTV such as Gilligan's Island, Carol Burnett and Friends, Wonder Woman, and Bob Newhart etc that I watch semi regularly. I think you can say I am a high volume TV viewer.
What you see below is the 33 shows that are "Must See TV" for me each week... OK, there are few shows on the end of the list that are not exactly 'Must See', but I still record and watch all of them each week.
I watch most of my Television on my DVR after the fact, but I always watch Walking Dead and Talking Dead on Sunday night. I also like to watch both the East and West coast live versions of Undateable, although when I am not home to watch live, my DVR does not seem to like this show as it never records it when I set it to record. I have had to outsmart my DVR by setting the show before Undateable to record addind an additional 30 minutes of recording time so I can watch Undateable. The Middle, Goldbergs and Gravity Falls are the two shows I watch with my 10 year old son each week, and my wife likes to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt with me.
I am also looking forward to a couple of the mid season shows, especially Galavant which I really enjoyed during its very short run last season.
And I can't forget That Metal Show on VH1. It's not on my list below as I don't know when the next season will start, but I am looking forward to season 15.
Who says there's nothing to watch on TV!?

1. The Walking Dead
2. The Middle
3. Undateable
4. Brooklyn Nine-Nine
5. Goldbergs
6. Muppets
7. iZombie
8. Flash
9. Daredevil 
10. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend  
11. Marvels’s Agents of Shield
12. Fresh off the Boat
13. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt   
14. Elementary
15. Gravity Falls
16. Big Bang Theory
17. Blackish
18. Talking Dead
19. Be Cool Scooby Doo
20. Last Man of Earth
21. Two Broke Girls
22. Supernatural
23. Comic Book Men
24. Svengoolie
25. Last Man Standing
26. Grinder
27. Modern Family
28. Saturday Night Live
29. Scream Queens
30. Truth Be Told
31. Supergirl
32. Dr Ken
33. Wabbit

Disney on TCM this October

Here is the line up for the upcoming Halloween edition of Disney on TCM on October 28th, 2015.

Brownies Recipe Fried Chicken

Who remembers Brownies Chicken? I Do! While growing up I remember Brownies Chicken restaurants being everywhere. In my mind there may have been more of them than there were Kentucky Fried Chicken locations. I see from the back of this menu that there were at least 18 locations that I could have visited on a pretty regular basis growing up! The location that I remember the most is not even listed on this menu which is from 1989. The particular location I remember was one of the last ones to close. Back then I remember thinking that the Brownies Chicken restaurants were probably closing due to the 'political corectness' that was becoming a big thing in the world at the time. I had heard about the same sort of thing happening to the Sambo's restaurants many years before and figured that was probably what was going on with Brownies. But who knows, maybe they just weren't that popular to anyone but me.
What you see here is a near mint Brownies Recipe Fried Chicken menu that my wife found while helping her mother clean out her home recently. Of all the stuff my wife brought home, this is the one item that I was really excited about. Obviously one persons trash, is MY treasure!

Longest-lived American Comic Book

While reading the new IDW comics Donald Duck #3 (370), I came across this interesting editor's note in the back of the issue:

What's the longest-lived American comic book being published today? Trick question... we're warning you!
DC's Detective Comics – still on sale now – was born in 1937; Action Comics has flown the Superman flag since 1938. But both of those venerable titles, after racking up hundreds of issues, reset their numbering to #1; as if their old "lives" were over and a brand-new (52!) day was here. Even Archie recently reset after #666; did the devil make him do it?
With all of those heavy-hitters reduced to double digits, what one magazine still owns and embraces its long "life",,, even after countless climbs from one publisher to the next? Why, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, of course, with its 720 hefty issues of Mice and Ducks. But wait... how is that long-lived? Comics and stories quacked its last quick in 2011 – Donald swears to it on a stack of ice cream sodas!
But in the immortal words of Carl Barks, longtime comics Duck Man: "That's what you think Donald!" Rounding out IDW's Disney lineup this month, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories is back for a new run of adventures and comedy! Donald, Mickey and Goofy are here! So, before long, will be the Big Bad Wolf, Chip 'n' Dale, and more or our favorite co-stars. Well, whaddaya know?

This really struck a chord with me, as I am NOT a fan of the renumbering and issue #1 craze that has taken over comics over the past years. As a Batman fan, I was always smug in my mocking of Marvel titles like Amazing Spiderman and Captain American that had rebooted and/or gone back to issue #1 multiple times - and still Batman was still going into the 800's. I remember thinking, how cool it would be when Detective Comics made it to issue #1000! But, sadly, DC comics succumbed to the #1 reboot craze and with 52, took all their titles back to issue #1, leaving Detective Comics to stop with issue #881 before renumbering itself to #1 again. If they had not renumbered, they would be at issue #924 today, instead of issue #44. Of course, if DC is still doing Detective Comics in 13 years from now, you know they won't let this milestone pass them by, as they make a BIG deal about renumbering their title to market the hell out of issue #1000. But we will all know the truth... they need to go another 80 years for the current Detective Comics title to reach the 1000 issue milestone.
So, now I need to root for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. They just need to continue for another 279 issues (23 years of monthly comics) and I'll finally get my issue #1000.

Record with Double Label

While going though my records recently to thin out my collection I came across this album by Rimsky Korsakov, Scheherazade. I don't know where I got it or why, but it was probably really cheap and I liked the fact that it still have the price sticker on it from Eaton's. Eaton's was a large department store chain in Canada from 1869 until 1999. I bought many of my vinyl records at Eaton's as a young kid, so I'm sure the price sticker is why I ended up with this in my collection. Since I don't care about this particular album, I thought I would toss out the record and just keep the price sticker, but when I pulled the record out of the sleeve, this is what I found. There were two record labels stuck on side 2, one of them was in the proper location, the second was off centre and covered almost the last half of the albums music. Makes me wonder, who bought this album, and did they bother to return it, or did they just enjoy listening to side 1?

Happy 9th Birthday Big Pile of Stuff

Little Golden Book Monday #180

Today's Little Golden Book is The Good Humor Man from 1992 (originally printed in 1964). It has been crazy hot the last few days and since yesterday was National Ice Cream Day, we celebrated by visiting our local Dairy Queen. As one would expect, the place was packed! But I can remember my childhood when the ice cream man was something you got excited about when he showed up in your neighbourhood. Now, as an adult, when I hear the "turkey in the straw" through that tiny speaker, being played way too loud, I wonder who is buying his over priced 'treats'. We have a DQ and a Macs (Canadian version of 7-11) within walking distance, and a freezer full of ice cream etc, so its hard to imagine how the ice cream man can make money today. And to make things worse, the truck I see driving around here the most, is all rusty and beaten up and the driver looks like an escaped convict. I would never send my kids to buy ice cream from this guy! But, I remember when the two trucks that would come by the apartments where I lived as a kid, there would always been a line up at the window of the truck to buy ice cream, and I would always be there waiting my turn.

"Mothers left their kitchens and daddies left their lawn mowers and dogs left their bones. Everyone was there to see the friendly Good Humor man in his little white truck."

Sunday Funnies with Fitzpatrick The Mac Rat #5

Sunday Funnies with Fitzpatrick The Mac Rat #4

Sunday Funnies with Fitzpatrick The Mac Rat #3

Treasures from the Disney Vault on TCM

On July 2nd, TCM is presenting their 3rd instalment of Treasures from the Disney Vault hosted by Leonard Maltin. Other than the animated cartoons, but I do not think I have seen any of the movies they are presenting, so I look forward to another great night of popcorn and movies.

Sunday Funnies with Fitzpatrick The Mac Rat #2

Sunday Funnies with Fitzpatrick The Mac Rat #1

While cleaning out my office today I found a couple of photocopied cartoons I had on my office wall at work for a few years. The cartoons were of Fitzpatrick the Mac Rat, which was a cartoon rat and this human friend that appeared on the insanely-great.com web site. Fitzpatrick loved to poke fun at Microsoft back in the 90's when Apple was not the powerhouse that it is today. In fact, at the time these came out, I used to hear from people on a regular basis that I should give up my Macintosh because the company was going out of business any day! As a Mac evangelist, I used to love to put up any Apple related propaganda I could, to help the cause.
I went looking for Fitzpatrick the Mac Rat on the internet this afternoon and could find nothing, so I thought I would share these on my blog. Sadly, I can't find the original computer files of these cartoons, only these photocopied ones I had on my walls which I have scanned and turned back into computer files once again. As a kid I loved the Sunday Funnies in the local newspapers, so I thought it would be fun to share one of these each Sunday for the next couple of weeks. Enjoy!