Actress Barbara Billingsley gets mentioned not once but twice in the Arts section of today's New York Times. She's in an article about a new boxed set of the complete Leave it to Beaver that's about to come out. And she's mentioned in an article about the thirtieth anniversary of the movie, Airplane, in which she speaks jive.
I'm told the Leave it to Beaver DVD set is quite wonderful. Of course, I'm told this by our pal Stu Shostak, proprietor of the oft-plugged-here Shokus Internet Radio, and he produced the special features for this set. It contains all 233 episodes of the series which, I'm afraid, is about 228 more than I was ever able to watch. This is not a case of a show I liked as a kid that now seems dated. I didn't even like the show when I was the Beave's age. Nevertheless, an awful lot of people do and if you're one and you want to sit through a 37 disc set of it, you'll want to click on this link and order yourself one.
And while we're at it, here's a link to get a copy of Airplane on DVD in case you need one. If you haven't seen it lately, you need one. It really is a laugh-out-loud funny movie and I remember that wonderful sense of "discovery" we all had in the audience when I first saw it. The film was new and there was no real buzz or word-of-mouth about it yet. Everyone in the Village Theater that night ran right home and told their friends to go see it. And none of us can use the word "surely" in a sentence now without referencing that movie. Really? Has it been thirty years?