Monday, 8/9

 At least I know why the theme from “Lost in Space” popped into my head at 4am.

First of all, a little back-story, back-story that may allow you to delve into my psyche just a bit. When I was a kid, I really liked the TV show “Lost in Space”. Not quite as much as “Star Trek”, but it obviously made an impression on me in one certain way. I specifically liked the third season of the show for two reasons, the first being because they spent time in space and not marooned on some planet. Secondly, I liked the third season because the show had one really cool theme song. It was written by a guy named Johnny Williams, who would a few years later drop the “ny” from Johnny and write perhaps the greatest fanfare in movie history..

When I was a kid, I was able to watch “Lost in Space” every summer when it was broadcast on WKBD TV from Detroit, a station we received on cable. The show would always return about the same time school let out for the year, and it would be one of the highlights of my youthful summers. The only problem was this—I really wanted to see the third season episodes, but I had to sit through the first two seasons first, because the station always started at the beginning. That means I had to sit through a month of black & white shows, then another month of shows in color but featuring space pirates, space frogs, and space Vikings. It was torture, but as soon as the station got to the final episodes of the second season, I knew my time was coming.

And that's why the third-season theme from the show popped into my head the other night at 4 am.

I hadn't thought about the show for years now, not since I picked up the DVDs a decade or so ago and could watch the third season whenever I wanted, unshackled by broadcast schedule of a downstate TV station. But I'm thinking there must be something lurking deep in my subconscious, something that realized that the holy grail of my childhood TV viewing—the third season of “Lost in Space”--would always start near the beginning of August.

Think about it. What is it now? Yup; it's near the beginning of August. So even though I haven't thought about or watched the show in a decade, it must have made such an impression on me as a kid that even, all these years later, my brain still knows when it's “Lost in Space”time.

And if THAT doesn't say something about the way I turned out, I don't know what would!

8-)

So anyway, that's why the third season theme from “Lost in Space” popped into my head the other night at 4am. It means absolutely nothing to me these days, but it's still there. Like a bird knows when to head south for the winter, my brain knows when it was time for me to start getting excited about “Lost in Space”.

(jim@wmqt.com), uber-dork.

(And if you wanna know what I'm talking about--