“Mega Piranha” will re-air on April 11 at 1am/ET and May 30 at 9pm/ET.

During the time Fury was on the air I was attending kindergarten in my home town (it wasn’t called pre-school then) and I had a girlfriend in my class. I liked to sit next to her when we were doing arts and crafts and I usually made my way near her in the afternoon for nap time. Occasionally we exchanged gum after it had already been chewed by one of us. Our version of french kissing I guess.

Her name is Claudia Graves and I was more than a little impressed when I was having a play date at her house one day, which happened to be just down the street from my own family home, and into the living room walks JIM NEWTON the owner of the Broken Wheel Ranch where Fury lived! It took me a minute to get the concept that Jim Newton was really an actor, Peter Graves and father to my sweetheart Claudia. This just seemed too good to be true and I thought it was so cool that I decided then and there I wanted to be an actor. Several weeks later while visiting at Claudia’s house I had a chance to ask Mr. Graves how he got to be an actor. He said, “I just thought about it.”

Good enough for me. I thought and thought and thought. Finally I thought about doing something about it and asked my parents to let me give it a shot. I started going to classes and acting lessons, got some 8×10 headshots and an agent. I was on my way.

After filming the Brady Bunch Pilot in 1968 and before we actually started filming the regular series in 1969 I had an extraordinary opportunity. I had an audition for a guest starring role in my then favorite TV series, Mission Impossible starring the man who inspired my whole career, Peter Graves. I got that role. Literally a dream come true.

Peter Graves passed away yesterday, March 13th. At the same time I was in Nashville doing what Peter inspired and I still love after all these years; acting onstage in a musical. His passing is a loss millions of people, along with myself feel. I always will be grateful to the wonderful contributions he made as an actor and a person including his remarkable return in the feature film Airplane. He was an inspiration to many and I am grateful for my personal connection with him.

I send out my warmest wishes and condolences to his wife Joan and daughters Kelly Jean, Amanda Lee, and first love Claudia.

As someone who’s done some singing and dancing with his own “brothers and sisters,” I can appreciate just how talented Michael Jackson was and am glad we got the chance to cross paths.

Farrah Fawcett and her poster were an important part of my growing up. For a while, I kind’ve resented Lee Majors! Of course, I didn’t show it the day he and Farrah made an appearance on The Brady Bunch Hour.

The script called for me to act tongue tied when I saw them. I can tell you, I didn’t have to do a whole lot of acting. While it may not be the scene either is best remembered for, I’ll always be thankful I shared the screen with those two TV icons.

Michael and Farrah will be missed.

I love Las Vegas.  For me, the only thing better than going there for a vacation, is working there.  Especially when I’m working  on the Strip and not only is my name up in lights but a giant 45 foot headshot as well.  The best lighting, best sound, best musicians, it’s all there.  Such is the wonderful situation I find myself in again this week at Planet Hollywood.  As some of you may know, I was invited to be a guest for a couple of weeks last month in the new open ended production of Tony & Tina’s Wedding in the Planet Hollywood Hotel.  What a blast.  This is hardly what I call working.

First of all I play… “myself.”  Actually my “role” is playing a friend of Tina’s father who for the purposes of this wedding night is deceased.  He was one of the truck driver’s on my 2001 Broadway National Tour of The Sound of Music.  We became good close friends and I visited the family frequently in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.  Vito, as his wife Josephina refers to him, asked me if anything were to happen to him that I give Tina away on her wedding day and…. that is how I happen to show up on Tony and Tina’s wedding night.  

For the uninitiated, the audience members are the guests, the two families, Nunzio’s and Vitale’s, are the wedding party and I spend the evening primarily as a mixer.  Now in my case this means I have an opportunity to meet virtually every guest in the house and usually there are about 400 of them.  I sit at the tables and eat with the guests, take pictures, talk about the BB and their experiences of growing up with it, I dance with everyone to the rockin group Fusion, dedicate and sing a song to Tina and generally have a great time.  Party on.  In all my years I have never seen audiences enjoy themselves more.  The Wedding is so realistic that on more than one occasion Brides and Grooms come straight from their own nuptials wearing wedding gowns and tuxes and celebrate their reception with us!

Usually I can tell if things are going well when I am invited for a return engagement.  So, beginning Friday night the 10th through Thursday night the 16th (with the exception of Sunday) at 6:30 pm I will be giving the lovely Tina Vitale away and mixing it up.  If you are looking for a little RnR this upcoming week, I’d love to see you there.  You can also catch me at the pool during the day. Viva Las Vegas!

Now Search & Win for Great Brady Prizes!

Vegas is one of my favorite places. I love the energy and the mix of fun, interesting people. I’m here for the next few weeks performing in Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding. It’s a great show if I say so myself. We’re having a great time. I worked with the management here to offer a special rate for my friends online. If you can make it simply print this page and head to Vegas.

Hope to see you here!

Barry

Along the way to reaching a goal there are milestones that must be achieved. I recently took on the goal of becoming a private pilot and I am happy to say I just hit one of those milestones. At some point if you want to swim you have to jump in the water, or if you want to snow ski at some point you must head down the mountain.  If you want to fly there comes a time when you need to do it unassisted, without a flight instructor to tell you what to do, and sometimes more importantly, what not to do. That point happened for me this past month.

The first thing I told Joe Justice, my instructor, when we started this process was that I was not in a hurry to hot-rod around the skies.  I wanted to take whatever time necessary to reach a level of proficiency that made my first foray above the earth a safe one.  That day happened on February 18th. Keeping in mind the aviator’s motto that flying is the second most satisfying experience in the world and LANDING is first. The only inkling I had that the day’s lesson might be different is that Joe made sure I had my log book and picture ID onboard the plane.

Off we went for a couple of loops around the airport, landing and taking off again without stopping.  After our second landing he asked me to come to a complete stop because… he wanted to get out of the plane.  The moment was here.  The moment I had long anticipated. After 42.9 hours of supervised flight time he at least felt I was prepared to fly alone.  It was time to solo.  Even with butterflies, I felt ready as well.

Alone in the cockpit for the first time, I contacted Ground Control then taxied and held short of the runway. Next I contacted the Control Tower, received clearance for take off and everything I had learned came together.  What an exhilarating experience.

Pleasantly, in place of fear, I found the flight around the airport challenging, and rewarding.  My smooth and successful landing proved that I had indeed achieved a milestone that comes with the understanding that there are many more to come.

Now Search & Win for Great Brady Prizes!

One of the enjoyable yet surprising parts of being Dad to a six year old son is reliving my own childhood.  It is completely enjoyable to watch his face delight in the discovery of new activities, skills, sports, food, plays and movies.  Brandon was first introduced to The Harlem Globetrotters via a Scooby Doo DVD called appropriately enough, “Scooby Doo Meets The Harlem Globetrotters”.  He was aware they  is also a group of very talented real life players who play professional basketball games but he had not seen them live.  I hadn’t seen them live since, well, I was about Brandon’s age.

Last week The Harlem Globetrotters came to town and played the Staples Center in Los Angeles.  Brandon and I and some friends went to see the game and what a treat we were in for.  We got there in plenty of time to get pizza and drinks and snacks.  Armed with programs and mini Globetrotter basketballs we settled in to watch the first half.  I remember really having a good time in my youth watching the game but this current team of Globetrotters and the show they present is pretty amazing.  Brandon was set from the beginning to keep track of the score and began cheering with all his might whenever the “good guys” scored, loudly pronouncing for the arena to hear with arms up over his head…..SCORE!!!

At half time we were privileged to go behind the scenes and meet the team, get autographs and take pictures.  As we started down the meet and greet line it was clear that I was not the only one recapturing a bit of my early youth.  We rubbed elbows with Billy Crystal, Adam Carolla, and Al Pacino among others who had their young kids in tow and there was a distinct air of excitement.  The players could not have been more friendly or more accommodating as we asked questions, learned to spin basketballs on one finger and in our case got our Scooby Doo DVD autographed.

Fortunately, even though the opposing Washington Generals cheated on the score a couple of times during the second half, the Globetrotters ultimately won the game much to the relief of Brandon.  That made Dad pretty happy too.

Now Search & Win for Great Brady Prizes!

‘1,774 friends and counting…’

Ask anybody – Barry Williams is a friendly guy.  Seasoned entertainer, keeper of the Brady flame, ever patient with perpetual repetitions of “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”, the Real Greg Brady is as affable as can be.  And now, like a new and improved box of Safe Soap, Barry is friendlier than ever before, thanks to Facebook.  That’s right, if you’ve ever dreamed of counting Barry among your circle of friends, just head on over to his Facebook page and offer your friendship.  He’ll be happy to accept.

I must confess that Barry is a whole lot friendlier than I am.  Though we started our Facebook accounts at roughly the same time, his list of friends is currently more than 25 times greater than mine.  I say currently because Barry’s list keeps growing like an unstoppable kudzu vine.  Take note of when his name pops up on your “Live Feed” and you’ll see him add a dozen or more amigos in a single go.  Me?  I might have one or two adds, and that’s only once in awhile, not every time I sign on.

Of course, I sense that our friendiocity standards are likely different.  I try to keep my account manageable by limiting my adds to people with whom I have actually had a conversation.  This is comparatively easy for me to do because I do not have a legion of fans who wish to befriend me.  Barry, however, has more people who’d like to chat with him than I can imagine.  It’s time consuming just perusing his friend list.  It’s also fascinating, considering that mixed in among hundreds of unfamiliar names are the well-known monikers of quite a few celebrities.

This is where you can leverage your Facebook friendship with Barry for your social advantage.  At a party, for example, you might enliven a conversation by casually dropping a few names.  “Oh, yes, Jennifer Beals, Henry Winkler, Michelle Phillips, Sean Penn, Belinda Carlisle, Matt Lauer, Rue McClanahan, Don Johnson, and Robert Downey Jr.?  We’re all friends…”  At this point, technically you have not told a lie; you just have not yet finished your sentence.  And people get their sentences interrupted by all sorts of things, say, a sudden dryness of the mouth requiring an immediate drink of water, or a prolonged cough.  Should this happen to you, it would hardly be your fault if your audience deserted you with an unintended impression in their minds before you are able to find your voice again and finish, “…with Barry Williams.”

Now Search & Win for Great Brady Prizes!

I went to check out my girlfriend’s show this past Friday night. Well, actually not my current girlfriend, but Greg’s reoccurring girlfriend Rachel on The Brady Bunch, played by Hope Schwartz Juber. Hope is the daughter of our creator Sherwood Schwartz and married to world renowned guitarist and former band member of Wings, Laurence Juber. In the eighties Hope performed in a quasi rock, all female band called The Housewives, which coincidentally also featured Barbara Chase who is Florence Henderson’s daughter.

It was one of Hope’s dreams to turn the experiences she had with the band into a musical. So she collaborated with Laurence to write the music and she partnered with a writing friend to write the book and the result was a really fun, enjoyable Friday night at the theatre for a performance of Housewives 2 in the San Fernando Valley. The fictional story follows the lives of the three girls who make up the Housewives. Their ups and downs their egos, the mess ups and the comebacks and it is done in a very clever way. So clever that sometimes I found myself laughing right through the next joke which may warrant going back to see the show for a second time. In an odd way, because I didn’t have anything to do with creating the show, yet somehow I am proud of Hope. I hope Hope will forgive me (Greg) for taking her out on a date to the drive in all those years ago when that ginormous frog landed on her head and in the middle of our pizza.

Now Search & Win for Great Brady Prizes!

Many of you know I have taken up a long time desire to learn to fly.  It seems I have always had a reason or an excuse to keep myself on the ground and I finally have pushed them all out of the way and have been diligently studying and flying with Joe Justice out of Santa Monica Airport here in CA since October ‘08.  Joe is the perfect choice for a flight instructor for me.  He is extremely experienced, safe, patient, plus he owns Justice Aviation. 

It is an interesting process taking up a new skill at this point in life.  I am used to doing what I know how to do well and, well…. flying is a brand new skill set and  a new way of thinking.  I am learning in a Cessna 172 and during my first few lessons I thought this would be a piece of cake.  I mean push the pedals turn the wheel and push or pull the yolk forward and back… what’s the big deal?  Around the third or fourth lesson however Joe stopped “assisting ” me quite so much and I quickly learned that there was a great deal more to successfully flying (and more importantly landing) an airplane than I had originally thought.  But here’s the deal, it’s FUN.  It’s challenging and rewarding and fun and I am hooked.

I am flying two to three times a week when in LA and I look forward to every flight.  It is an entirely new dimension to explore.  I am learning the local landmarks, the air spaces, aerodynamics, rules of the skyways and of course the all important controls and instruments.  Learning how to talk with ATC is also a challenge.  Everything in aviation is an acronym and for the uninitiated ATC is Air Traffic Control.  These men and women who work in the Control Towers are the pilot’s best friend while in flight, helping to keep all of the aircraft separated from one another.

I don’t think I would have had much luck when filming the Brady Bunch getting Mom to let me take flying lessons.  I mean she nearly had a heart attack when Greg took up football for a couple of weeks.  But my point is that if there is something you want to add to your life, some secret dream, something that would make your life and time here more enjoyable, get to it.  What are you waiting for, re-runs?

Now Search & Win for Great Brady Prizes!