Who was bringing up three very creepy girls...

I love this so much. The young stars of "The Brady Bunch" did a heckuva lot of cheesy movies and TV when they weren't hanging around Westdale High.

Bobby Brady got kind of the best deal--he was on "Isis." Peter got to be a werewolf on "Bigfoot and Wildboy," which I only vaguely remember. Greg did "MegaPiranha," but that doesn't really count, it was supposed to be campy. And sweet Marcia did a 1979 TV movie called "A Vacation in Hell" that looks like exactly that.

Be sure to watch the video clips provided (sadly, the Peter as a werewolf one was yanked, leaving just the still photo below) for an extra dose of '70s lunacy.

Home sweet 1968

If I had $1.2 million and a huge desire to pretend to be Carol Brady, I would buy this house in my neighborhood and pretend it's still 1968, the year it was built. 

NOTHING INSIDE HAS CHANGED. What a time capsule! The red velvety bathroom wallpaper! The gold velvety bathroom wallpaper! The bar! The curvy fireplace! The intercom! The bidet! The indoor BBQ! And is that a RECORD PLAYER built into the wall in the kitchen, of all places? They should shoot "Mad Men" here.

Every home I lived in with my parents had a built-in bar. Neither of the ones Rob and I bought had one. My folks even had a framed placemat with drink recipes for drinks like the Singapore Sling and the Pink Squirrel hanging behind one of the bars. (Says my friend Kim: "Like Sally Draper's Cheat Sheet!") Ladies and gentlemen, America's GI generation... Look, if you're going to be asked to storm Normandy/shoot down kamikazes (now a drink name...IRONY!) at Okinawa, you're going to develop a high alcohol tolerance.

My dad could make any drink in the world, and from a college job as a butcher (and, uh, a stint in the Marines during WWII) could carve up an entire cow. He would have been a good man to have around during a zombie apocalypse, it just now occurs to me.

Dad, in September 1973, looking off into the middle distance, while his youngest daughter (me) and first grandchild (Erin) are fascinated by ... something. Eggs from the chickens? I can't tell...

Miss you, dad.

Here's the story...

Fun slideshow of The Brady Bunch stars then and now.

Hadn't seen Alice in a long time. Love Ann B. Davis. We'll be sad when she goes.

Greg didn't age as well as Marcia, but he's still so recognizable. And Carol looks amazing, as always.

Johnny Bravo meets Johnny Law

According to TMZ, Barry "Greg Brady" Williams is having some legal trouble with his girlfriend.

Their lede: "Barry Williams, the actor who played Greg Brady on "The Brady Bunch," claims his ex-girlfriend threatened to kill herself and him after losing a beauty contest ... and he's obtained a restraining order to keep her far away."

Yikes. Things were so much easier when Carol and Mike were laying down the law about how he couldn't read the back of a record album while driving, or how he had to take Bobby on his date to the drive-in movie.

Love to Love You Bradys

Man, how did this book get published three weeks ago and I didn't even know about it till Jeff Sparkman spilled the beans?

"Love to Love You Bradys: The Bizarre Story of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour" sounds JUST AWESOME, and I am ordering my copy TODAY.

Susan Olsen (Cindy Brady) is one of the authors, and it sounds like she thinks about that show just the way we all do. She's quoted on the book's official site as saying "It's a fish out of water thing. You can't watch the Brady Bunch singing 'Shake Your Booty' without your mind screaming 'WHY?' "

And I had no idea that Sid and Marty Krofft were involved! Man, that explains a lot.

View-Master rules

Matt at Scrubbles shared this old View-Master ad, which features the most all-star cast of its day: Henry Fonda! Jodie Foster! Christopher "Peter Brady" Knight!

Mrs. Brady speaks the truth

Raise your hand if you're on Florence Henderson's side in the "Adrienne Curry's no good for Christopher Knight" feud.

Here's the story...

Stupidest Super Bowl urban legend ever: Someone claims quarterback Tom Brady was cast on "The Brady Bunch," even though he wasn't even born when the show was on.

Robert Reed rants

Note that Robert Reed, a.k.a. Mike Brady, never appears in "The Brady Bunch" final episode, even though son Greg is supposedly graduating from high school, and his devoted dad would have most definitely been there.

Reed, who had Shakespearean training (although he also appeared in a movie that made "Mystery Science Theater"), was known for protesting the slapsticky "Brady" humor, and the last episode pushed him too far. You remember it -- Bobby sells hair tonic, dyes graduate Greg's hair orange, then sells orange bunnies, cousin Oliver wanders about randomly.

Anyway, this blog links to Reed's overheated memo about why the episode sucks.

I just think that instead of inserting a throwaway Carol line about Mike being out of town, they should have said he was unloading the car, or picking up a cake, or something. That always bugged me. (Via Boing Boing.)

Update: Rob points out that Robert Reed wasn't too high-and-mighty to skip doing the Brady Bunch Variety Show, which included the oh-so-realistic concept that an architect and his family would get a variety show of their own that for some reason involved synchronized swimming.

Oh, my tights!

Maureen "Marcia Brady" McCormick gets some unwanted attention on the wonderful Go Fug Yourself.

I think she is amazingly lovely for her age, and I've met her. But I have to say: Wow, that's some lot of purple she's wearing, there. She could fill in for one of the grapes in the Fruit of the Loom commercials.

Here's the story

Here are the top reasons Jump the Shark readers think "The Brady Bunch" jumped the shark.

Cousin Oliver, duh, tops the list. But it cracks me up that Mike's perm is one of the top contenders. Actually, all of the Brady boys got perms, which was just hilarious. Pass the Neat 'N' Natural hair tonic! Hide the rabbits!

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

Now they're saying the Marcia-Jan relationship was untrue, which doesn't surprise me. That story sounded wrong from the beginning.

Marcia and ... JAN? sittin' in a tree

OK, I buy Marcia-Greg and Jan-Peter having little behind-the-scenes flings, but Marcia and JAN? (Via Jezebel.com.)

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

While standing in the checkout line, I started reading People Magazine, as you do, and found a story on Maureen McCormick ("Marcia Brady," duh), who apparently went on "Celebrity Fit Club" to lose weight. She was 5' 3" and 150 pounds, which is a lot for her (and may I say, I have met her and she looked about three inches shorter than 5' 3").

In the story, she revealed that after she stopped filming "The Brady Bunch," she went back to regular school and her new classmates taught her how to throw up after gorging on food, so she became bulimic. She also later had cocaine problems.

While this is a bit shocking, more so is the fact that when she met the man who eventually became her husband, he had never seen even one episode of "The Brady Bunch."

I find it a little odd that the linked article lists among her credits episodes of "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island." And yes, I know she did do those shows, but only about eight zillion years ago. Is that really a major credit on her resume? More so than that album with Christopher Knight?

Ja wohl, Alice!

I had saved some retromercials featuring different "Brady Bunch" kids before they were on the show, but as luck and You Tube would have it, several of them have been yanked--a Cheerios ad and a Frisbee ad both featuring Peter, and Jan AND Marcia hawking Barbie dolls.

But instead I found this: The "Brady Bunch" opening credits in German ("Drei Mädchen und drei Jungen," but "Mister Brady" is the only phrase I recognize) and a nutty homemade "Brady" parody using actual footage but intentionally badly voiced-over new words, in which Cindy finds out she's pregnant by Oliver, and Alice comes out of the closet, kind of.

Oh, and Jan is mocked endlessly, as is Jan's lot in life.

Well, "Action" is kind of a relative term

This vintage ad features a very young Christopher "Peter Brady" Knight (and one of the kids looks like possibly his real younger brother?) in a commercial for Marx Action play sets.

The kids are dubbed the Action Kids, but really, they're about as lively as a digital clock. At one point I thought they said "cheap bullet-shooting machine guns," but I paid better attention, and they didn't really say the "cheap" part.

Greg's the Candy Man

Here's Barry "Greg Brady" Williams in an old Milky Way ad. This is fun for numerous reasons, chief among them:

--The street he is running down looks so familiar, like it's either the set from "The Brady Bunch" or the Haddonfeld street Michael Myers lived on in "Halloween."
--It cracks me up how he sees a Milky Way wrapper on his mailbox
--When he gets home, he has a lineup of about five full-size Milky Ways just sitting on his dresser. What kid would a) have the money for five candy bars, and buy all the same brand, and b) would have the will power to line them up all OCD and not devour them all? Well, Greg always was kind of a priss.