Like everyone else, film majors like to lie about on sunny days casting imaginary movies. Years ago on just such a day, The League's film school pal, Justin L, suggested Seinfeld co-creator Larry David for a Spider-Man film. As whom?

Why, The Vulture, of course.

Could Justin L.'s prophecy be coming true?

In case you missed it, Randy recently posted a photo of myself and Mrs. League on his site.

It's that time again kids (because we've got a lot of territory to cover)...

It's time for...

DAMES IN THE MEDIA THE LEAGUE ONCE DUG

Instead of trying to do this in chronological order, I'm going to stick with a mystery theme to be revealed later (see if you can figure it out!).

This time around, The League investigates Knight Rider phenom Bonnie Barstow as portrayed by Patricia McPherson.


The lovely Patricia McPherson as Bonnie Barstow, world's greatest Jiffy-Lube employee.

Bonnie came into my life a few years on from Wonder Woman, when, I believe, I was maturing quite nicely in my taste in Dames. No longer did twirling seem to be such an attractive trait in a woman. Well, it was still important, but not as important.

So what did Bonnie have?

1) Bonnie didn't fall for Michael's nonsense. Sure, I loved Knight Rider, too, but I always thought Michael was sort of creepy. He showed more chest hair than I wanted to look at as an eight year old boy, and he usually spent the duration of most shows making goo-goo eyes at the dame of the week. And he was nice enough to Bonnie, and maybe a little flirty, but a) she didn't have badly frosted early 80's hair so Michael would never take her seriously, anyway, and b) she wasn't interested in his nonsense. You never once saw Bonnie show the slightest interest in Michael. No interest in creepy guy? Already I could feel the pitter-patter of my heart.

2) Hey, I was eight. I could not have cared less about Michael Knight's trials and tribulations. In fact, if the show had been about KITT and Dom DeLuise, I would have tuned in week after week just the same. For me, Knight Rider was about the Knight Industries Two-Thousand. And who was the genius behing K.I.T.T.? Bonnie Barstow.


Bonnie has trouble installing KITT's new 8-track.

Yes sir, Michael was just some jack-ass the Knight Foundation sent out there so draw fire away from their billion dollar, AI-infused car. Also, it would have been deeply suspicious if K.I.T.T. were zipping around southern California with no "driver" at the wheel. At the end of the day, those of us who knew the score knew that the Knight Foundation might as well have put a circus monkey in the cabin for all the good Michael did.

But, who had the brains and know-how to keep that car running? Surely not Michael (who was shot in the head in the pilot, as I recall). Nah, It was Bonnie who kept that show running. She was technically inclined and liked to chat it up with the talking car. My kind of lady.


Bonnie chats it up with KITT while replacing the windshield wiper-fluid.


3) They tried to replace Bonnie, and it didn't take. It's totally true. In the 1983-84 season, Bonnie wasn't on the show. I'm not sure why Bonnie bailed on KITT, or why Patricia McPherson wasn't on, but they brought in this sort of blonde woman to try to fill in for Bonnie. Rebecca Holden played fake -Bonnie April Curtis, but April just couldn't fill Bonnie's jumpsuit, and so, the next season, Bonnie triumphantly returned.


The evil, fake Bonnie, April Curtis, whose hair is a magnificent feat of architecture.

4) Bonnie apparently lived in the back of a semi, sort of like the truck in SpyHunter. Not only that, but she lived in the back of a semi which was constantly rolling, always nearby when needed, had every part conceivable to help fix KITT, and was always well-lit and spotlessly clean.

This is not to mention that the interior of the semi seemed to defy the laws of time and space, appearing to be much, much larger inside than outside.

One was, of course, left to wonder if the semi had a driver who had never taken a bathroom break, or if KITT's idiot cousin was up there muttering to himself.

5) No matter what, Bonnie's white jumpsuit always appeared spotless.



Sure, Bonnie had a lot of traits I didn't have at age 8. For example, had I had a white jump suit, it would have had Cheet-o finger stains down the front. But Bonnie was more than just another Jodie from The Fall Guy. Bonnie wasn't just eye-candy, she was also a mechanic and she was smarter than the rest of the morons on that show combined.

So a salute to Bonnie Barstow, finest TV mechanic to ever grace a white jumpsuit.

To read MORE about Bonnie, go here.

Go here to read up on Wonder Woman.

Y'know... sometimes I miss the cold, steely threat of mutually assured destruction which we enjoyed during the days of my youth. You sort of thought the USSR was probably puffing its feathers as much as the US (after all, nobody really benefits when the world ends up a smoking cinder looping around El Sol), and it gave us a big, spectral enemy to dislike. AND the Cold War also provided us with some neat movies.

I need to rent Firefox again.

Sadly, I haven't really had that "We're all doomed" feeling since I was 14 and Gorby made all nice with the west and the wall came down.

But, hey, Armageddon is not something which likes to lay still, and it's making a come-back in all new, wackier format.

Here and here coupled with here, here and here.

I only hope our movie producers are up to the task. Sadly, the German accent sported so often by the villains in Cold War flicks will be sadly inappropriate this time around.

So, make peace with your gods, mortals. I'm getting my lawn chair and bag of Stay Puffed Marshmallows ready.

All right you un-American swine, it's time to VOTE. So get in there and have your say...

VOTE NOW.

That does it. I'm fashioning a series of 'US governor' carrots and retiring. Can someone send me a profile shot of Janet Napolitano? -- Mrs. League

So the doorbell rang surprisingly late this evening, probably around 7:45. I was watching American Idol, an episode in which contestants were being weeded out of the 200 who had been selected out of the hundreds of thousands who had auditioned.

"It's amazing," one of us had remarked. "These guys audition and they all really think they're going to be the finalist."

And later, when the lady who had sold her wedding ring to make it to the first set of auditions was told she was not going to go on... and she broke down and said something along the lines of "I guess I'm going to have to find something else to do..." and you couldn't help but feel bad, but at the same time... American Idol dominates television. It reigns supreme as the purest of signs of the image conscious, semi-talented bland vanilla of popular culture. Mostly, the show spotlights those aspiring to be popular entertainers for 9-14 year-olds, but mostly wanting to be as ubiquitous as Colgate. I don't think there are many people over the age of 25 buying the albums by the likes of Clay Aiken and Kelly Clarkson, but I might be wrong. These are people who have fashioned themselves into approximations of entertainers, without the staff available day and night to ensure they are constantly in the right pants and jacket. Something for nothing.

But this is the dream, and it's what American Idol holds out for the contestants before pushing them back, teary eyed and invariably embarrassed, back into the world of Wal-Marts and Papa Johns.

I got up and got the door.

This skinny little kid with a large guy was standing on the other side of the security door, and immediately, the kid launched into his prepared lines.

"Hello, sir. I am working with the (blank blank) youth sponsorship group. I am selling newspapers in order to raise funds for savings bonds for college, and to win points towards a trip to Magic Mountain."

Immediately the larger guy cut in.

"We're working with the (blank blank) organization, and we're selling the weekend edition of the East Valley Tribune. A lot of kids don't have a lot of guidance in their life..."

I nodded, caught the basic gist of what they were selling and why, asked how much, and went and got my check book. 1) I don't get the paper currently, and 2) I'm a sucker for kids pretending to save for college. Plus, the kid might go to Magic Mountain. I want to go to Magic Mountain, but if I can't go, someone should.

"Twenty bucks?" I said to the kid.
"Yeah," said the guy. "You play football?"
"No. A little basketball in high school. A little lacrosse."
"Yeah, you look like you played football."
"Ha. No."
"I played five seasons with the Cardinals."
I sort of blinked. Totally embarrassed and not wanting to ask him his name at all, because, honestly, I've never even watched my hometown team on TV. I've listened to them on the radio, but... No. I wasn't going to know who this guy was.
"Yeah, I'm not playing now, so I got involved with helping kids, doing stuff like this."
"Hey, that's great."
"Yeah, last year was really rough. I was going through a divorce, and I was riding my motorcycle and it spun out and I hurt my shoulder and so I'm not playing."
And, I didn't say, Dennis Green cleared house the day he got here. Not even bad players. He just started firing people.

Christ.

I was reminded of the time I was buying plane tickets from this lady from Southwest Airlines, sometime just before Christmas. She told me as I was thanking her that I was her last customer. "Before the Holiday?" "No. After this call I go home and they close the office. They're closing this office permanently tonight." "Before Christmas?" "Yeah."

Christ.

"But I'm going to get back into it," he said. "I had a shoulder surgery and I'm going to get back out there and play again."
He could. He was maybe pushing 30. He was big, but lean. He looked like a player.
"For Arizona?"
"No. Up north."
"Yeah?"
"I'm thinking Green Bay."
"Interesting year for them next year."
"I know Brett Favre," he was used to pulling this one out. It impressed the hell out of people. I love Brett Favre. He's my favorite quarterback. Whether I liked it or not, I was impressed as hell. Unsolicited, the guy went through his history with Brett and I nodded a lot.
And then he finished, and I said something vaguely supportive and impressed.
"I've had three knee surgeries, two shoulder surgeries and probably'll have back surgery before I can go back out there. But I'm training every day."
"You can get back out there for a few more years," I said, and I knew it sounded pretty lame.
"In the meantime I'm working with these kids, and I'm trying to help give them direction I never had."

And this guy, he wasn't like these kids on this show, jumping up and getting 15 minutes on AI, squawking out a few bars and trying to look good. He'd already been where he was going to go, and now he's standing on some guy's front porch spilling his guts, because maybe if he tells enough people and he believes it enough, maybe he's going to be back out there on the field again next season. The divorce and motorcycle accident will be behind him, and he can proudly talk about how he took time off helping kids, getting his head together. And when he's done, he can say he played with the great Brett Favre in his final season, and that all of this, being down with the rest of us fans, maybe that'll have been just a bump in the road.

So, you know, next fall I'll be looking for the guy in the pictures of the line-up of Green Bay.