How could you?!

It turns out Britta Phillips is married to Dean Wareham. Why wasn't I informed by myself through better research before I wrote that internationally broadcast scratch-paper love letter to her?! (It turns out she used to be married to Jody Porter, her former bandmate and current Fountains of Wayne guitarist and son of my dad's high school friend. Oh yeah, did I mention that my big brother's former babysitter directed Angelina Jolie in 1996's Foxfire? Yeah, that's right—I know everybody very indirectly.) But I forgive you, Britta. It's all filtered water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned.

Say, isn't it interesting that Britta was the singing voice of Jem on the '80s cartoon Jem and Cheryl Ladd was the singing voice of Melody on the '70s cartoon Josie and the Pussycats?

(HOORAY! I've successfully completed a brilliant segue into talking about Charlie's Angels once again!)

Here's why I'm bringing up Charlie's Angels for the umpteenth time—it's going off the air! Ion is taking the show off its weeknight schedule after next Friday. Thanks for not allowing my new obsession to fully blossom, Ion. But they are replacing Charlie's Angels with reruns of The Wonder Years, which isn't a bad thing at all. For one thing, it's a much better show. I don't remember when I last saw The Wonder Years on TV. Maybe 2002, when Fox Family/ABC Family aired it, but I'm not sure.

When The Wonder Years started in January of '88, I was in sixth grade. The show's main character, Kevin Arnold was in seventh grade. By the time the second season started in the fall of '88, I was in seventh grade and Kevin was still in seventh grade, and it was comforting to watch him go through the nightmare of puberty and junior high just as I was, although we were separated by 20 years. The Wonder Years was a great, great show for its first three seasons—it combined comedy and drama in the best possible way (the ending of the pilot episode even made my dad cry)—but once Kevin's first love, Winnie Cooper, started going to another school and Kevin's friends seemed to change from episode to episode and Fred Savage seemed to reach the limits of his acting abilities, it became less interesting to me. (I now realize it's probably a good thing Freaks and Geeks, another great teen comedy-drama set 20 years before its time, only lasted 18 episodes.) Maybe the last three seasons of the show are better in retrospect. I guess I'll have to see on the nights when I'm home to catch it on Ion.

The Wonder Years still isn't on DVD because of music clearance issues, but the first season of WKRP in Cincinnati, another popular show that used lots of music that now costs a fortune to re-license, is finally coming to DVD next month after a long time on the sidelines, so maybe there's hope for The Wonder Years' first few seasons being released sometime in the coming year.