This Wednesday, September 22nd, will be the 35th anniversary of the sitcom ALF so this week we'll be celebrating the show and the Melmacian himself. If you've somehow have never seen ALF before it's about an alien named Gordon Shumway crash landing at the home of the Tanner family after his home planet, Melmac, was destroyed due to nuclear war. The Tanner's give him the name Alf because of the acronym A.L.F... alien life form GET IT!? So yeah Alf lives with them and is kind of an asshole sometimes but the Tanners still care for him even if it's frustrating to harbor an extraterrestrial in your home... but they all love each other and it's nice. Anyways I'm sure even if you haven't seen the show you know who Alf is and have probably seen him in some sort of cameo, commercial, or even in POG form. The Alf character was created by Paul Fusco who had this "alien-looking" puppet (I believe from Bob Fappiano) and would first use the puppet to entertain and insult people at parties. Fusco had always wanted to produce and direct a television show and believed this creature was the ticket. So through his producer pal Bernie Brillstein he met Tom Patchett (co-writer for The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan) and developed what would become ALF. After pitching to several networks and Disney (who really wanted to buy it but more on that later this week) it was finally pitched to Brandon Tartikoff of NBC and then... ALF happened.
So as I said we'll be getting to a lot of ALF this week but first I just want to start slow and really appreciate what ALF is... a weird looking alien guy. But also he's got to do the comedy baby and that means silly little costumes he would wear. I thought I would share a few of my favorite things Alf would dress up in throughout the series and give a big HA HA and slap on the table for each one.

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