Martin Mull and Christopher Lee together.
What could be better?
Does anyone remember the exact line Lee delivers in reference to his secret life as leader of a gay motorcycle oriented social group on weekends?
Something like,
'I'll have you know, Harvey, that my boys are some tough dudes!"
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0081485/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_(1980_film)
And the book is good too.
The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Serial ... rin_County
Once, 10 years ago, Marin county had been something they could regard with a mixture of wistfulness and detachment through the haze of smoke at the Buena Vista on Sunday mornings while they drank aquavit and decided where to go for dim sum.
Now they lived in Mill Valley. Not in the house they had in mind when they moved, though: the old canyon house with the view of Mount Tam, the leaded windows, the decks and the immutable Marin ambience -- a sunny blend of affluence, redwoods, bohemianism and old golden oak furniture bought for a song on McAllister street.
The realtor had shown them a few houses that fit their lyrical description all those years ago, but they had rapidly learned that they couldn't afford to prop up the sagging foundations, fumigate for scorpions, bring the plumbing up to code and make the necessary structural repairs.
In one house they'd seen, which their realtor described as "needing only an infusion of good taste," Kate had put her foot through a hole in the kitchen floor.
So they had settled instead for a tract house on the Sutton Manor flatlands; it was big enough, comfortable and just barely affordable. Besides, the first time they'd seen it, a racing green '63 TR-4 was parked in the driveway, a strong indication that the house's present owners were okay people. If they could live in a tract house, so could Kate and Harvey.
And it was still Marin, though just barely: Kate still hated to tell people, when she gave directions, to stay on East Blithedale all the way out, as if they were heading for 101, turn left at the Chevron station, go past the Red Cart, and turn right at the carwash.
Somehow, in Kate's eyes, the TR-4 had clinched the deal. But although the Harrises had become good friends during the course of the sale because they, too, belonged to the ACLU and the Sierra Club and went to the Mozart Festival at Stolte Grove every year with the picnic of the month from Sunset in a Cost Plus hamper, they had taken the TR-4 with them when they moved uphill.
Sometimes Kate wondered if she and Harvey would ever move uphill. Marin Monopoly dictated that every time you made another thou after taxes, you moved and gained another hundred feet in altitude. The Harrises, for example, had made it from a hilltop in Mill Valley to a higher hilltop in San Rafael, and finally, in a pace-setting coup, back to the city, where they lived in a penthouse on Telegraph Hill.
In all that time, Harvey and Kate had never passed Go. Harvey made more money now than he had then, but they spent it rapidly on things they hadn't known existed ten years ago: Rossignol Stratos and season lift tickets at Squaw; twin Motobecane ten-speeds; Kate's Cuisinart, which did everything but put the pate in the oven; Stine graphics; Gumpoldskirchner and St. Emilion (Harvey had "put down" a case in the vacuum cleaner closet); Klip speakers and the top-of-the-line Pioneer receiver; Brown Jordan patio furniture; Dansk stainless and Rosenthal china, long-stemmed strawberries and walnut oil from the Mill Valley Market; Birkenstock sandals and Adidas (Kate didn't actually jog yet, but she was reading "The Ultimate Athlete"). ...
The money flowed like wine, and it sometimes seemed to Kate that they could save a lot of time and energy if they just sat down and ate Harvey's paycheck, flamed in brandy, and eliminated most of the middle-men.
The first episode of "The Serial," Cyra McFadden's best-selling account of life in the Marin suburbs, appeared in The Chronicle on Monday, Nov. 21, 1977. The more things change ...
