"Stomp On Heads"

TigerBlog went to the movies yesterday and had a first-time experience.

He now, apparently, qualifies as a senior citizen. How did that happen? 

By the way, the movie he saw was "Bad Shabbos," which was silly but not too silly, though it came really close to being too silly. Had it crossed over the "too silly" line, then it wouldn't have been funny.

How's that for a movie review?

Elsewhere, the news broke last night that Loni Anderson had passed away. 

TigerBlog isn't sure what the cutoff point is age-wise for people to be aware of just how big a star Loni Anderson was at one point. He'd guess it's those who were born at a time that doesn't yet make them eligible for the senior citizen ticket at the movie theater but has them coming close to that day. 

To the rest of you, there was a time when Anderson was as much of a star as anyone. She was married to Burt Reynolds, who was an even bigger star, and they were as big as Hollywood glamour couple as there was. 

Anderson's biggest role was on the woefully underrated TV sitcom "WKRP In Cincinnati," which ran from 1978-82 and was simply hilarious. TigerBlog once wrote this about it:

If you've never seen the show itself, it's hysterical, with a hint of touching on some pretty big issues every now and then, much more so than would have been expected from what sort of billed itself as a campy sitcom. It had great characters - Les Nessman, Johnny Fever, Mr. Carlson, Venus Flytrap, Herb - and it took the whole "Ginger/Mary Ann" concept to another level with Jennifer and Bailey.

Back on Oct. 30, 1978, the show had an episode in which the station manager (Mr. Carlson) plans an elaborate promotion for Thanksgiving, which turns out to be a drop of live turkeys from a helicopter, not realizing that turkeys aren't quite like other birds.

TV Guide ranked the episodes as the 40th funniest episode in history. To show you what a great show "WKRP" was, TB doesn't even have that one in the top five in the show's history, though it is considered an all-time TV classic. 

The Thanksgiving episode of "WKRP" ran during fall break at Princeton in 1978. The Daily Princetonian didn't publish that week, but the next episode ran two separate stories on the football games that Princeton had played in between issues. 

The first was a 24-24 tie against Harvard in which the Crimson had the ball on the Tiger 5 with 30 seconds to go before fumbling and having Princeton's Steve Hart recover it. Ties, by the way, were something that football teams in college could have until 1996. 

If you recall the end of the 1995 season, Princeton won an outright Ivy League title with a 10-10 tie at Dartmouth.  That was the last game played before the introduction of overtime, and Princeton's first game the next season, at Cornell, went to overtime in Ithaca (Cornell won 33-27). 

The second game over break in 1978 was a 21-0 win over Penn. Here is how the Prince story on that game started: 

Last week, newspaper clippings appeared on the Princeton football team's bulletin board which quoted Penn coach Harry Gamble as saying that the Tigers were "pussycats" and star fullback Denis Grosvenor as saying that he looked forward to Saturday's game since he liked to "stomp on heads." Stung by those comments, the Tigers destroyed a flat Quaker squad, 21-0.

Gamble, by the way, was running the wishbone offense at Penn in those years, without a great deal of success. 

The story ended this way:

Middle guard Pete Funke summed up both the defensive and offensive efforts by using Grosvenor's own words. "We stomped on heads," he said. 

Ah, but the writer decided not to pursue a career in sportswriting. Instead, she went in a totally different direction. 

Her name? Elena Kagan.