When I was eleven or twelve, Nickelodeon started running Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (1968–73). That’s where I heard the phrase “Beautiful downtown Burbank” uttered every night by Gary Owens. It was a bit like a well-executed commercial jingle, setting up residence in my mind.
A decade later, I booked an extended-stay apartment in Burbank because that’s where all the interns from my Radio-TV-Film department stayed…of course, their internships were at NBC and mine was at Fox, but at least there were people I knew in the complex. I didn’t see much of Burbank in that month, but I saw enough, so I came back three years later. I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else, and I even got to hear Gary Owens utter his famous phrase in person for the city’s 100th anniversary a few years ago.
