I will give you bonus points if you remember “The Midnight Special” TV series.
It’s a kitschy song in my opinion, but the main riff is pretty cool, and does get stuck in my head easily. Also, that’s the reason my kid hates this song – her dad wanders around the house humming it, and it just drives her crazy.
But I know that I’m not the only one who loves that riff…
As a parent, it is important that I educate my daughter so that she is prepared for the world that she will enter one day. And for that reason, the wife and I have started showing her old TV shows from the 80’s and 90’s. This week we landed on Quantum Leap.
The good news is, at least for the first half of the first season, the show has aged well and the kid is enjoying watching it. The bad news is that now I have the theme song stuck in my head non-stop. It’s not a bad theme song – its just that it won’t go away.
And as I have started looking up more production information on Quantum Leap, I discovered that the theme was written by one of the greatest TV theme song composers ever; Mike Post. If you are a Gen-X kid or a fan of 70’s and 80’s TV, then you have heard his work. See, Mike Post is the co-composer, with Pete Carpenter, of one of the greatest theme songs of all time: The Rockford Files. But, that is an earworm for another day…
It’s not Halloween without The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!
And it can’t be The Great Pumpkin, without the Great Pumpkin Waltz, by Vince Guaraldi.
Happy Halloween!
I don’t know if you’re like me, but there is a good chance that you might be. And in that case, do you also have trouble finding something to watch on one of the many streaming services that you subscribe to? Honestly, I remember having this same problem when I had 200 channels on my cable service. It’s not a new problem, I guess is what I’m saying.
Yet, when I am searching for something to watch, I need whatever it is that I am looking for to be really good. Like, really, really good. Like brag to my friends good, and be the first one to talk about it good. I need whatever the new show is to be a Ted Lasso, or Breaking Bad, or Mad Men. Also, it would help if it was weird and quirky, like Severance, or really epic like Game of Thrones or that Lord of the Rings show…
And that’s when I found myself yearning for different kind of show, a different style of show, like a good old fashion mindless scripted tv show. Something with a little action, fun characters, maybe a little silly but defiantly a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Not to get all retro, but like classic Magnum P.I., or Hunter, Remington Steel, or Matt Houston. Hell, I’d even take Rip Tide or a Scarecrow and Mrs. King at this point.
What those shows also had in common was a commitment to the status quo of a morally correct world. You know, bad guys get caught, wrongs get righted, the heroes make sacrifices to ensure justice is served. (Also, these shows had heroes that had no problem killing people who were bad guys. Taking a life cause never caused them to lose sleep at night.) Every episode was a tightly contained story, solved in 22 to 44 minutes, wherein our heroes were never challenged to the point to where they needed to learn or grow in any way. And next week it would start all over again. It was pure entertainment that only taught the lesson that bad guys lose, and good guys win.
That’s what I am looking for, and I don’t want to retread classic tv, because ventures into nostalgia always leave me disappointed, as those shows were way better in my memory. No, I’m looking for a modern mindless, morally status quo show.
