September 2006

There were 13 posts published in September 2006 (this is page 2 of 2).

40 Classic Sci-Fi Intros

Ah, YouTube, how I love you. Lonelygirl15. Storm Large. Stephen Colbert. That dude who does all the movie re-enactments. (Woohoo! He did The Big Lebowski — NSFW.) And, what do you know, a whole collection of intros from my favorite science fiction shows. It’s like a sort of geek-gasm.

For Dave and my brother Jeff (with whom I used to watch this show), “a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist”.

Man, I love that theme music. I also like the theme music to Buck Rogers:

Whatever happened to Gil Gerard anyhow?

Yes, my brothers and I loved science fiction shows. We didn’t have a TV when we were young, so we had to catch peeks of The Six-Million Dollar Man when we were visiting friends on Sunday night.

We didn’t get to watch The Bionic Woman when it originally aired, either, but eventually KPTV in Portland would re-run it in the late mornings during a period when we did have a television. Staying home sick became a treat!

Jamie Sommers wasn’t the only superwoman we liked. There was also Wonder Woman.

The Wonder Woman intro changed later in the show’s run:

Does anyone else remember this Indiana Jones knockoff? I think it aired on Friday nights.

Saturday morning cartoons were always a treat for us, but I was especially drawn to the live-action shows, shows like Space Academy:

and Ark II:

Who can forget the mighty Isis? (Isis, Isis, Isis)

Which, as I recall, aired in tandem with SHAZAM! (in something like “the power hour”).

I think The Greatest American Hero borrowed its flying effects from SHAZAM!. I watched every episode of this, but it never lived up to my hopes.

We worshipped Battlestar Galactica:

It helped that Mormon themes were prominent in the show’s mythology. We could relate. Now I love the new incarnation of Battlestar. I think that the first season’s opening sequence is the best-ever for a sci-fi show. (I really wish they hadn’t done away with the 20 seconds of preview clips for the season two intro.)

Another childhood favorite has been remade recently. I started watching Doctor Who during the Tom Baker years.

I love the new series. It gave me chills the first time I heard the theme redone.

There have been some other good recent sci-fi shows. What would the mid-nineties have been without The X-Files?

Farscape was fascinating, but I could never really get into it.

Firefly was vastly overrated. I know you all love it. I don’t. (And Serenity wasn’t very good, either.)

Babylon 5 is simultaneously over-rated (by fans) and under-rated (by everyone else). It’s not nearly as good as the zealots proclaim, but it’s worth watching. Especially the second season. Each season had its own title sequence. I’m not going to post them all, but here’s the title sequence for season one:

And the title sequence for season two:

(You can get a feel for some the awful writing with “the name of the place is Babylon 5” at the end of the voiceover.)

Here’s a show that my wife and I loved, but which didn’t last:

In high school, I loved Max Headroom, but now it seems oh-so-very-mid-eighties.

There are a lot of sci-fi shows I haven’t seen, such as:

I used to watch these two when KECH 22 debuted in Portland:

Here’s a show that’s not nearly as good as I remember it being:

And, of course, here’s the classic, the one that started it all for me. My childhood was devoted to Star Trek, the original series. KPTV showed reruns every Sunday at 4pm throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It would also frequently run the show on weekeday evenings before prime-time. I loved it.

During the early nineties I became obsessed with the first spinoff. I posted to USENET about the show. I kept detailed logs of every episode. I even audiotaped it. (I can’t believe this is the best quality version available on YouTube.)

Deep Space Nine was okay, though it lacked some of the spark of the first two series.

However, Voyager sucked. It had a great intro and gorgeous theme music, but the rest of the show was lousy.

It wasn’t as lousy as Enterprise, though, which had the worst theme song ever for a sci-fi series.

My parents once took me to a movie theater in Portland specifically because the Star Trek blooper reels were playing. They’re not as funny as I remember.

What is funny (and Star Trek-related) is the recent William Shatner celebrity roast. You can find all of the segments on YouTube, but the best is Shatner’s response (which is very NSFW).

And finally, though it wasn’t a television show, here’s a clip from one of my favorite early-eighties sci-fi films. I own this soundtrack on record, tape, and CD. I spent $50 to order the DVD (which is out of print) from eBay. Yes, I know I’m crazy.

Stupid, but I love it.

Canning Season

Kris and I grow a vegetable garden every year, but some summers are more productive than others. This summer has been the most productive that I can recall.

We were swimming in berries from the end of May until the end of July. We had so many berries that we eventually gave up. Can you imagine? Not eating fresh berries that sit there, ready to be picked? We didn’t let them all go to waste, of course. Kris canned some of them. I’ve been enjoying toast and freezer jam every morning since we returned from San Francisco.

We were picking snow peas for just as long, eating them fresh off the vine. Eventually we gave up on those, too, and just let them wither. (We planted our fall pea crop a couple weeks ago; I have little one-inch sprouts.)

Kris and Craig masterminded a tomato-growing extravaganza: they ordered seeds together, and each are testing certain varieties. Kris has eight plants (plus just as many volunteers scattered throughout the yard), and she’s been harvesting the fruit like mad. She’s made tomato soup, tomato sauce, marinara sauce, and, of course, many batches of the Best Salsa Ever. Her tomato map hangs from the fridge, and she’s circled her favorite varieties (Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Yellow Pear, Bloody Butcher, Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, and maybe Caspian Pink).

Our neighbors have given us apples and pears, and soon we’ll pick grapes from across the street. From our garden, we’ve picked cucumbers and green beans and zucchini and corn.

It’s a veritable cornucopia.

What to do with all this food? (Especially since I’m allergic to many vegetables?) Can it, of course.

Kris has been canning like crazy — sometimes with Tiffany’s help — and last night, she set out the fruits of her labor:

Here’s a list of everything that she’s canned:

  • 3 kinds of bread ‘n’ butter pickles
  • sweet pickles
  • pickled zucchini
  • pickled green beans
  • pickled cherry tomatoes
  • preserved grape leaves (experimental)
  • pears
  • almond pears
  • pear pie filling
  • mixed berry pie filling
  • apple cranberry conserve
  • apple elderberry conserve
  • pear syrup
  • tomato soup
  • marinara sauce

Later she realized that she’d forgotten a box of jars downstairs. “And don’t forget that we’ve given some away, too,” she told me. She’s also making some (gnat-infested) berry liqueur, which is fermenting on a shelf in the library.

Of course, all of this canning is nothing compared to some people…

RIP Crocodile Hunter

It’s always startling to discover which celebrity deaths affect me. Ronald Reagan? “He was so old, man.” River Phoenix? Meh. But Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter? My heart aches.

But why? I never watched anything the guy ever did. I always thought he was kind of goofy. But somewhere deep inside, I admired Irwin’s spirit, his enthusiasm, his vocation. He was a man living his dream.

And so when I read the news of Irwin’s death last night, I went to bed in a funk. I dreamt of wild animals. I woke still sad.

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