Daydreaming at Work

One problem with our afternoon editorial meetings at News13 is the myriad of monitors in our conference room.
Most are tuned to programming I don’t find interesting. One, however, is set on our MyTV digital station.
At 3 o’clock, MyTV airs “Mission: Impossible”. Not the movie… but the much-better 1960s-70s TV series.
The constant gazes at the fancy rotary phones and reel-to-reel tape recorders (with the not-so-real destructive smoke) prompted me to hit my fancy computer to find some vitally important information about the old show.
First of all, the episodes in the current rotation are from the later years of the “Mission: Impossible” run. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain are long since gone. Peter Graves is not. The computer told me that Graves is Jim Arness’ brother. I already knew that. I did not know, however, that he was not with the show in its first season. He replaced an actor named Steven Hill. Hill quit the show in great part because, as an Orthodox Jew, he refused to work on the Sabbath. That was in conflict with the “Mission: Impossible” production schedule. Graves is now 81.
Greg Morris was one of television’s first black actors in a positive, recurring role. I recall he played a role in an old “Dick Van Dyke” show in which Rob and Laura (mainly Rob) thought their baby (Richie) had been switched in the hospital with another couple's. When Morris and “his wife” showed up, the punch line was obvious that Rob had been mistaken. That’s tame by 2008 standards. That was cutting edge in 1964 (or sometime around then). My trusty computer told me Morris died about ten years ago. It also told me something I did not know. Morris’ son, Phil, played the recurring role of the Johnnie Cochran-“knockoff” lawyer Jackie Chiles on “Seinfeld”. That guy is one heckuva actor. Greg Morris’ daughter Iona is also an actor. I don’t know much about her except she went to the same Hollywood-area high school as Angelina Jolie, Nicolas Cage, Lenny Kravitz and Richard Dreyfuss.
Lynda Day George was the wife of the late actor Christopher George. I remembered that. However, I did not know that (according to Wikipedia) Christopher George, who starred in the 1960s drama “Rat Patrol”, was one of Vanna White of North Myrtle Beach’s uncles.
That same Wiki entry also says Chris George was one of the first “Playgirl” models. Coincidently, Peter Lupus from “Mission: Impossible” was also among the first to bare all in that magazine. Speaking of “Playgirl,” I knew a sportscaster who posed in the magazine. I asked him if he got a lot of calls and/or letters (no emails in those days) from women. He said he did. But he got more from men.
Getting back to Lupus, he is a former world-renowned bodybuilder, a former Mr. Hercules. He also set a world strength record last year, at the age of 75!
Another recurring image on “Mission: Impossible”... the cars. They can be more-aptly described as “land boats”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a main character or a main villain on the show ride in anything that gets double digit mpg. Space shuttles get better fuel economy. Again, that got me thinking (again during our important content meeting). 1972 was the year this episode aired. That is also the year before the Arab oil embargo, so it was truly the last year of cheap, plentiful no-worries gasoline. The average price of gas was 36 cents a gallon. One calculation I found (also on the computer) finds that gas costs, when adjusted for inflation and income, 10.5 percent more now than in 1972. Not huge, but fairly significant. However, when you figure today’s vehicle gets, on average, 60-70% more miles per gallon, it cost our “Mission: Impossible” friends more to drive then… than now.
Of course, the big outcry in this country won’t be when gas hits five dollars a gallon. It will be when those gas lines of 1973 come back. But that’s what you get when you depend on foreign oil. That, though, is another story… and hopefully one that will not be a “Mission: Impossible”.
Just a few interesting… or totally inane (take your pick)… things to ponder from yours truly, a trove of useless information.
As for what happened in our editorial meeting today. I have no clue.

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