Posted earlier today by Paul Schrader. Here’s hoping the Sight & Sound Stalinists see it…

If you’re unfortunately tethered to an unhappy and dysfunctional family and can barely stand your siblings during holiday gatherings, you can at least take comfort in the fact that the battling O’Neals were always worse off.

The father of all this misery, of course, was the late Ryan O’Neal, who apparently insisted on disliking his children, never apologizing and blowing them off repeatedly.

Posted early today by the N.Y. Post’s Dana Kennedy:

Respect and praise for the late Tom Smothers, whose provocative views and attitudes in the late ‘60s made The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which aired on CBS for two years and two months (February ‘67 to April ‘69), the hippest mainstream show on television.

If you were youngish and dropping acid, listening to progressive rock (Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Who), loving films like The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde and The President’s Analyst and generally hating the Vietnam War, you almost certainly watched this intensely spiritual (in a Nehru jacket sense of the term), anti-establishment show on a fairly regular and reverent basis.

CBS finally cancelled the Smothers Comedy Hour over regional complaints that it had pushed the counter-culture envelope too far.

Tom has passed from cancer at age 86.

[Posted on 3.26.21]

Just so we’re clear, Carl Reiner‘s Where’s Poppa? and Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock delivered the one-two punch that made George Segal into a marquee brand.

Segal was a respected, well-liked, plugging-away actor throughout the ’60s, and he definitely elevated his stock rating with his lead performance in Irvin Kershner‘s Loving (’70 — 3.4.70).

But Reiner-Yates added the boldface, above-the-title stardom factor to Segal’s guilt-ridden, self-flagellating, Jewish-guy thing, and he was off to the races.

Poppa (a cult film, not a hit) was released on 11.10.70, and The Hot Rock (a silly ensemble caper comedy for guys) arrived on 1.26.72 or 14 months later.

Pre-Poppa and post-Hot Rock Segal were entirely different entities.

With these two in the bag, Segal landed the titular role in Paul Mazursky‘s Blume in Love (6.17.73), and thereafter he wasn’t just a star but a complex ’70s soul man — the highest rung of the realm.

And then, 14 months after Blume, came Segal’s Bill Denny in California Split (8.7.74) — another grand-slammer.

And then God lost interest and Segal’s hot streak ended, just like that. Segal kept working for another 40 years after that, and good for his spirit and tenacity. But what a rude jolt.

1970 through ‘74: “You’re finally really hot, George…you’re totally cool and everyone digs you.” 1975 and onward: “Okay, you’re still good but time to cool things down.”

I’m truly lucky to have a strong constitution and therefore good health. And I absolutely love doing the column and living this rat-a-tat life on a day-to-day basis, but the best part of my journalistic hot–shot life is over. 1991 to 2019 — 28 years when things were pretty good and often delicious and sometimes wonderful. I’m simply too poor these days. Savoring the joys and adventures of yore is out of reach —that’s the long and the short of it.