Fake Jan Day:




















For all of the little kiddies of a certain age, gathering around the color TV on Friday night to watch the Brady Bunch was an adolescent highlight and especially if the episode was about some crazy Jan antics. George Glass anyone? Big black afro wig? Marcia, Marcia, Marcia? You get the drift.

Well after the series became less than groovy and was eventually cancelled, the cast realigned themselves with the then power house production team of Sid and Marty Kroft and repackaged themselves into a singing dancing variety hour known to fans and the world over as…The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

It was legendarily awful. Really bad TV in fact it was so bad that it has now reached the level of Cult status. It was so bad that crazy Jan (Eve Plumb) preferred NOT to be associated with it or the enormous swimming pool that was populated with the enchanting Kroffette Water Follies. Thus began the story of and known to legions of fans as, “Fake Jan”.

Fake Jan (Geri Reischl) was the poor victim who was chosen to replace the real Jan. She was terrible and better than that she was beyond terrible. She was actually not a bad singer or dancer and she was rather attractive. BUT she was NO Jan! It robbed the loyal viewers of the opportunity to ridicule the original crazy Jan as she would have warbled and clod hopped her way through embarrassingly elaborately staged and choreographed disco numbers.

The rabid cult stalkers know January 2 as Fake Jan Day. Everyone should celebrate this momentous occasion for what it is, the day that commemorates a young girls dreams of a Hollywood career being dashed and ruined as she is to be forever associated with her one shot at stardom, Fake Jan.




I’ve always identified as a Jan. I’m a middle child with crazy tendencies but I overcame those obstacles to become a Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. I saved my pennies and when the classroom received it’s Weekly Reader magazine I ordered three lovely posters of Marcia. To be hung on the wall in sequential order of my spell-casting dungeon…Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.

Sadly one of the Marcia’s was damaged beyond repair and another is wrinkled and has broken glass in the frame. This Marcia is facing some serious Marcia conservation and the one good surviving Marcia is beginning to fade into the ether. Now I only have the two, Marcia, Marcia’s and for now they are safely ensconced in my magic attic. One day I’ll find the missing Marcia and her magic trilogy of power will once again be restored granting me the all powerful magical menacing Marcia alluring charms that is the Power of the Three Marcia’s.
























11 comments:

  1. fake jan! how horriffic! love the 2001 music. excellent!

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  2. It is written in the sacred book of Bebe Gallini, that on the second day after the ninth year in the second millenium that the true Jan shall be obscured by the fake, but when the moon in in the sign of the Great Tiki the three Marcias will be restored and the second coming of the True Jan will be upon us.

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  3. I must have killed off those braincells, 'cause I have no recollection of Fake Jan. And I should! So, thanks for this important post.

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  4. Fakes! Yeah, I know what you mean...

    Chrissy's antics were far more superior to the likes of Nurse Terri or clumsy cousin Cindy!


    Even though it was still chicks dancing around onstage in their underwear, Appollonia 6 never had the same impact as Vanity 6! "Nasty Girl"! - the #1 anthem of Strippers everywhere beats "Sex Shooter" hands down every time!

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  5. Eve Plumb was very busy running off to play teenage runaway whores in made for tv movies. I always identified with Jan more than anyone else, and unfortunately I was to young to realize what that said about me until the 90s revival and the movies starring Shelly Long, which I loved. As for Fake Jan, she never had a chance. I her she was lynched, tarred & feathered somewhere in a Florida neighborhood while the Brady's were on a Disco America tour.

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  6. Oh wow...I think "Fake Jan" is buried in the bottom of my brain somewhere! I remember "Dynamite" magazine too...and Sid A Marty Kroft (love)...and I think I had a Brady Bunch album too....great post! Happy New Year!

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  7. on new years day they had a marathon of brady bunch episodes all featuring Jan identity crisis plots! there's over 7 of them. in one she actually does have an inner jan voice that talks to her.

    you've prob already read my desc of the fantasy island episode where eve plum plays a hooker and the girl that plays nellie olson plays her mother trying to save her.

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  8. Like Reavis said, I wondered why all the BB episodes were Jan-centric.

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  9. because they are all actually evil living in a bubble and she crossed up their whole thing.

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  10. I'm not a fan of centre partings.

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  11. I was an obsessive Brady Bunch fan but never knew about FJD. FJ should form a band with Fake Becky from Roseanne.

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