Growing up without a male role model, I was forced to turn to the world of television.  It was 1980, and I was either looking in the wrong place, or there were not that many viable broadcast options for a 12 going on 13 year old wanna-be-rebellious mama’s boy.

I guess I was also a sister’s boy too, if there even was such a thing.

There were other boys at school, but, being my peers, they were equally uninformed – but hopefully not as pathetic as I considered myself to be.  Except for Mr. Bishop (who told a couple of harrowing stories of the Watts Riots), the teachers were all dicks and were therefore unapproachable.  Where would I turn to find an older guy to show me how to avoid the pitfalls of my teen years?  To show me how to, you know, just be a guy?

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The following should be treated as a cautionary tale by any sci-fi conventioneer

   During Labor Day Weekend in 2009, my wife Isabelle and I decided to attend a science fiction convention in downtown Atlanta.  I knew that since we’d lived in New York, this would probably be a snap (always thought that about doing new things).  We’d once been to a one-day Star Trek Convention at the Javits Center back in 1989.  I may not have seen any celebrities there, but I did buy a cool transporter pad coffee mug and some rubber Spock ears.

 And a tribble.

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My time in Hollywood wasn’t one Celebrity encounter after another.  Although I went to school then and later with a couple of people who turned out to be famous, my personal experiences were of a more “jejune” variety…  that is, except for getting to see a hirsute (hairsuit?) Ed Asner  anchor one end of a tug-of-war for ABC at “The Battle of the Network Stars;” IN PERSON!

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One show marked the beginning of what we could call ‘modern times’ in TV entertainment.  That show is, of course, “The Greatest American Hero.”  Agent Bill Maxwell, played by Robert Culp, took the baton in the great zeitgeist relay race that marked the beginning of “military industrial complex” as entertainment.  After many years, most of my life in fact, we are still in this phase, “NCIS” and Donald Bellisario being the inheritors of the work started by Stephen J. Cannell.

Yeah, this is heavy stuff.

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