OCEANIC TIX PICS ON "FRINGE"

I'm still 3 episodes behind on 'Fringe', so I'm not likely to get to the latest episode anytime soon, the one with the visual references to 'Lost' (as pointed out by my 'Columbo'-lovin' blog-buddy, Martin).

But I did find the appropriate imagery online elsewhere.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: NICK CARRAWAY

In the season finale for 'Entourage' this week, Martin Scorsese (playing himself) offered the role of Nick Carraway in his upcoming version of 'The Great Gatsby' to Vincent Chase.

Here's a great analysis of the character Nick Carraway:

Nick Carraway
The novel's narrator, Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. After moving to West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. As Daisy Buchanan's cousin, he facilitates the rekindling of the romance between her and Gatsby. "The Great Gatsby" is told entirely through Nick's eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.

If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald's personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy's cousin, which enables him to observe and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922.

Nick is also well suited to narrating "The Great Gatsby" because of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter I, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzgerald's voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter IX.

Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized throughout the book by Nick's romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people.

Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby's party in Chapter II. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby's dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsby's funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values.
[From SparkNotes]

Nick would be a good character for Vince, who's not a good actor. Like Alan Swan declares in "My Favorite Year", "I'm not an actor; I'm a STAR!", and that applies to Vince as well. So as Gatsby's friend, serving as the observer to the actions of the those people swirling about him, Vince wouldn't need to call on anything more than the expression in his eyes, and he does have very expressive eyes.

As for any other casting on the picture, if we had to at least guess on who would play Gatsby, I would think Scorsese's televersion wouldn't stray too far from the real Marty. And that would mean he more than likely might cast somebody with whom he had worked in the past - I'm thinking Leonardo DiCaprio. And maybe Matt Damon either as Tom Buchanan or the mechanic George Wilson, whose wife is having an affair with Tom. (Maybe Mark Wahlberg for that role?) And Daisy? Scarlett Johanssen, perhaps?

Scorsese told Vincent that he planned to do a modern version of the story, setting it on the Upper West Side rather than in West Egg. I'm not sure that would work; in fact, I think the real Martin Scorsese would rather take on the challenge of filming it in its 1920s period on Long Island. But Toobworld does have its differences with the "Trueniverse" and this would be one of them.

Who knows? Maybe one of the actors he hires turns out to be an alien posing as a human!

For more analysis of Nick, click here.

From there, you can also read about the other characters, the mores of the times, and even a synopsis for each chapter of the novel.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

"Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures."
Nick Carraway
"The Great Gatsby"

ECHOES: BLACK FRIDAY TRAVEL MUSINGS

"People make me sick.
I'm glad I'm not one of them!"
Store Clerk
'That's Life'

"People....

What a bunch of bastards!
Roy
'The IT Crowd'

BCnU!

Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: SORAS

November 28, 1975:
As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the final two American soap operas that had resisted going to pre-taped broadcasts, air their last live episodes.

I'm still on the road for the holiday weekend, so I'm just going to do a quick TV-related Tiddlywinkydink for those of you who tune in. Because of that soap opera-related news item, I thought I'd spin off to a topic that probably affected both of those soaps, but one that I've especially noticed on 'The Young & The Restless', the soap my Mom used to watch: SORAS, AKA "rapid aging".

From Wikipedia:

Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome (also SORAS or "rapid aging") is the term used to describe the aging of a television character (usually an infant or child, but also sometimes a teenager) that is faster than they should be aging, given the timeline of the show. The process is usually done to allow for more rapid character development, and to allow the writers to develop new storylines for the character.

Although the process originated in and is most common in soap operas, it has also been used in prime time comedy and drama series. In soap operas, it is nearly always done by recasting the role after the character has been absent for a time, with a new actor appearing at the character's newly "SORAS'ed" age. In the case of prime time series, the SORAS procedure usually occurs in between seasons, with a new, older actor appearing when the show returns.

The term was coined by Soap Opera Weekly founding editor in chief Mimi Torchin in the early 1990s. It's generally used to refer to cases where a character's rapid aging happens off-screen without any explanation, rather than to storylines in science fiction and fantasy series where a character is shown as being rapidly aged due to technology, magic or non-human biology.

The phenomenon has led to a newer term, de-SORAS, which refers to the opposite effect – when characters remain the same age for an unusually long period of time, or even get younger.

(In the Toobworld novel I'm forever working on, two of my characters were shipped off to a Swiss boarding school and came back several years older.)

There's plenty more to be found on the subject at the Wikipedia page for Soras.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

LOST IN THE FRINGE

I got this message from Martin Ross, who runs that 'Columbo' fansite you'll find linked to the left:

You probably spotted it or a similar cross-Abrams hook, but Agent Dunham had a couple of Oceanic Airlines tickets in her paw on Fringe Tuesday.

I haven't seen it yet m'self. I DVR'd it Tuesday night as I made ready for work. But then I took the train to Connecticut right after work for the holiday. So I'll check it out tomorrow.

But I guess that puts 'Fringe' "officially" into those other versions of the TV Universe!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

THANKSGIVING ECHOES

'SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE'

1976

'SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE'
2008

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, from all of "us" at Toobworld Central....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TIDDLYWINKYDINK: HALLELUJAH

I don't keep track of what songs are used in Toobworld soundtracks, or how often; I wonder if anybody does. But when my brother mentioned Jeff Buckley's cover of "Hallelujah" in recent emails and on his Facebook page, I wondered if there could be a song used more often than that on TV. (The only song that comes to mind - and I don't even know the title - is a hard-driving disco kind of number, where a deep-voiced guy goes "Ohhhh, Yeahhhhh". You know the song....)

Anyhoo, here are the series in which "Hallelujah" - as sung by Buckley - appeared in at least one episode. And you'll see why today was the perfect day to comment on this.....

"Ugly Betty"
- A Nice Day for a Posh Wedding

"ER"
- The Honeymoon Is Over

"Criminal Minds"
- A Real Rain

"House M.D."
- Acceptance

"LAX"
- Thanksgiving

"The O.C."
- The Ties That Bind

"Without a Trace"
- Fallout: Part 2

"The Dead Zone"
- unknown episodes

"The West Wing"
- Posse Comitatus

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TIDDLYWINKYDINK: FIBONACCI

Last week, Harry Nilsson got mentioned in two different TV shows, showing that the late singer/songwriter has a presence in Toobworld. In that same week, we went from musical to mathematical with two mentions of the Fibonacci sequence.

In 'Criminal Minds', the serial killer who called himself "Professor Rothschilde" (Child of Wroth?) used the Fibonacci numerical sequence in plotting his crimes. And 'Chuck' realized that a paranoid scientist used the Fibonacci sequence in designing the clues to where he hid the encrypted file of FULCRUM agents.

I'm just guessing here, but I think it was the use of the Fibonacci sequence in "The DaVinci Code" that led to it being well-known enough to be used in both instances. (That book could also have inspired the name of one of the original characters from 'Prison Break': Otto Fibonacci.)

So, here's a little background on the Fibonacci sequence, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Leonardo of Pisa (c. 1170 – c. 1250), also known as Leonardo Pisano, Leonardo Bonacci, Leonardo Fibonacci, or, most commonly, simply Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician, considered by some "the most talented mathematician of the Middle Ages".

Fibonacci is best known to the modern world for:

1] The spreading of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Europe, primarily through the publication in the early 13th century of his "Book of Calculation", the "Liber Abaci".

2] A number sequence named after him known as the Fibonacci numbers, which he did not discover but used as an example in the "Liber Abaci".

In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number (after the first two) is the sum of the previous two numbers. Thus the sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, etc.

Each ratio between adjacent numbers in the sequence is the best rational approximation to the irrational golden ratio that can be expressed without using numbers at least as high as the next number in the sequence; for example, of all ratios between integers smaller than 8, none comes nearer to the golden ratio than 5/3.

I hope you understood all of that. I'm an oddity - er, an auditor, and all that math makes my noggin hurt.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TIDDLYWINKYDINK: BAND AID

November 25, 1984:
36 top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

From Wikipedia:

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" is a song written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in 1984 specifically to raise money for relief of 1984–1985 famine in Ethiopia. The original version was produced by Midge Ure, and released by Band Aid on November 29, 1984.

In late 1984, a BBC report by Michael Buerk was aired highlighting the famine that had hit the people of Ethiopia. Irish singer Bob Geldof had seen the report and was a social person to raise money. Aware that he could do little on his own, he called Midge Ure from Ultravox and together they quickly co-wrote the song, "Do They Know It's Christmas?".

Geldof kept a November appointment with BBC Radio 1 DJ Richard Skinner to appear on his show, but instead of discussing his new album (the original reason for his booking), he used his airtime to publicise the idea for the charity single, so by the time the musicians were recruited there was intense media interest in the subject.

Geldof put together a group called Band Aid, consisting of leading Irish and British musicians who were among the most popular and recognised of this era. The recording studio gave Band Aid no more than 24 free hours to record and mix the record, on November 25, 1984. The recording took place between 11am and 7pm, and was filmed by director Nigel Dick to be released as the pop video.

The original Band Aid ensemble consisted of (in sleeve order):

Adam Clayton (U2)
Phil Collins (Genesis, solo)
Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats)
Steve Norman (Spandau Ballet)
Chris Cross (Ultravox)
John Taylor (Duran Duran)
Paul Young
Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet)
Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17)
Simon Le Bon (Duran Duran)
Simon Crowe (Boomtown Rats)
Marilyn
Keren Woodward (Bananarama)
Martin Kemp (Spandau Ballet)
Jody Watley (Shalamar)
Bono (U2)
Paul Weller (The Style Council)
James "J.T." Taylor (Kool & the Gang)
George Michael (Wham!)
Midge Ure (Ultravox)
Martyn Ware (Heaven 17)
John Keeble (Spandau Ballet)
Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet)
Roger Taylor (Duran Duran)
Sarah Dallin (Bananarama)
Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama)
Pete Briquette (Boomtown Rats)
Francis Rossi (Status Quo)
Robert 'Kool' Bell (Kool & the Gang)
Dennis J. T. Thomas (Kool & the Gang)
Andy Taylor (Duran Duran)
Jon Moss (Culture Club)
Sting (The Police)
Rick Parfitt (Status Quo)
Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran)
Johnny Fingers (Boomtown Rats)
David Bowie
Boy George (Culture Club)
Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes to Hollywood)
Paul McCartney (Former member of The Beatles)
Stuart Adamson (Big Country)

Bruce Watson (Big Country)
Tony Butler (Big Country)
Mark Brzezicki (Big Country)

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: ZACHARY TAYLOR

November 24, 1784:

Zachary Taylor, 12th President of the United States, is born. (d. 1850)

As is my wont, I am ready, if not rough, with the bite-size biography, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an American military leader and the twelfth President of the United States.

Known as "Old Rough and Ready", Taylor had a 40-year military career in the U.S. Army, serving in the War of 1812, Black Hawk War, and Second Seminole War before achieving fame leading U.S. troops to victory at several critical battles of the Mexican-American War. A Southern slaveholder who opposed the spread of slavery to the territories, he was uninterested in politics but was recruited by the Whig Party as their nominee in the 1848 presidential election.

In the election, Taylor defeated the Democratic nominee, Lewis Cass, and became the first U.S. president never to hold any prior elected office. Taylor was also the last southerner to be elected president until Woodrow Wilson. As president, Taylor urged settlers in New Mexico and California to bypass the territorial stage and draft constitutions for statehood, setting the stage for the Compromise of 1850.

In office

March 4, 1849 – July 9, 1850

Taylor died of acute gastroenteritis just 16 months into his term. Vice President Millard Fillmore then became President.

The cause of Zachary Taylor's death is not well understood. On July 4, 1850, Taylor consumed a snack of milk and cherries at an Independence Day celebration. Upon his sudden death, five days later on July 9, the cause was listed as gastroenteritis He was buried in Louisville, Kentucky, at what is now the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery.

In the late 1980s, Clara Rising theorized that Taylor was murdered by poison and was able to convince Taylor's closest living relative and the Coroner of Jefferson County, Kentucky, to order an exhumation. On June 17, 1991, Taylor's remains were exhumed and transported to the Office of the Kentucky Chief Medical Examiner, where radiological studies were conducted and samples of hair, fingernail and other tissues were removed. The remains were then returned to the cemetery and received appropriate honors at reinterment. Neutron activation analysis conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed traces of arsenic at levels several hundred times less than necessary for poisoning to have occurred.

Zachary Taylor was never going to be one of those American Presidents who would have plenty of representation in the pantheon of POTUS portrayals. But even so, I found four actors who took on the role for Toobworld (although Tom Wicker's performance was more than likely a voice-over narration only.) And there would have been at least four more had we delved into the movies in which he appeared. And that's a sight more than we'll probably ever find for Fillmore or Franklin Pierce or Martin Van Buren!
Here are the actors who played the 12th President of the United States:

David John Cole
. . . Mexican-American War, The (2006)

Paul Fix
. . . "Riverboat" (1959)
{That Taylor Affair (#2.2)}
Holden and Blake have an idea for making the Enterprise famous by shanghaiing President Zachary Taylor. They get some help from a girl named Lucy Belle (and perhaps from Governor DeWitt as well).

Richard Gaines
. . . "Hallmark Hall of Fame" (1951)
{Soldier's Bride}
Story of the love between Sarah Knox Taylor (daughter of Colonel Zachary Taylor) and Jefferson Davis.

Tom Wicker
. . . "American President, The" (2000)
{An Independent Cast of Minds (#1.3)}

Speaking of movies, I'm using a picture of Paul Fix from "Warpath!" in that Taylor triptych. I couldn't find any pictures of these actors as Zachary Taylor, but I especially wanted the late, great character actor to be his representative in Toobworld. Historical recreations and one-shot plays are fine, but it's always preferable to get historical figures interacting with the fictional citizens of the TV Universe. So I would prefer his involvement in that episode of 'Riverboat' (which was probably set during the spring of 1850) to be the official portrait.

As we've seen with 'The West Wing', modern characters sometime trace their lineage to real people from the "Trueniverse". But if we were ever going to suggest a TV Taylor might have been descended from Zachary Taylor, we'd be better off looking for such TV characters over the border in the Great White North. And that's even though Taylor was "The Man From The South", like Andy Taylor of Mayberry, North Carolina.
Again from Wikipedia:

Ann Taylor's son John Taylor Wood, a U.S. Navy officer, defected to the Confederate side and later fled to Canada during the Civil War; his great-grandson Zachary Taylor Wood was Acting RCMP Commssioner, great-grandson Lieutenant Charles Carroll Wood died from wounds suffered during the Anglo Boer War, great-great-grandson Stuart Taylor Wood was Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and great-great-great-grandsons (Cst. Herschel Wood and Supt. (Ret) John Taylor Wood served in the RCMP.

So, I'm just sayin', is all......

BCnU!
Toby O'B

DON'T PANIC, CHUCK!

During "Chuck vs. The Fat Lady", the most recent episode aired of 'Chuck', his ex-girlfriend revealed that her boss had been so paranoid about his computer being hacked that he used a random piece of Vogon poetry as his computer password.

As fans of Douglas Adams' "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" know, Vogon poetry is the third worst poetry in the TV universe. "HHG2TG" exists on just about every level of the multi-versal plane, beginning with the sublime radio series, through books, a TV series, interactive games, and the very disappointing movie.

But in all of the variations, one of the constants is that Vogon poetry is perfect as a torture device. (I'll bet Dick Cheney reads a verse or two every day, just to get his day off to a good start.) The example used in the TV series, which is the only version we should be concerned with in Toobworld, was used to torture Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, and can be seen here to the right.

Based on the six-part TV series, the human race was not aware of the Vogons until the day they showed up around 1980 with their constructor fleet, which hovered in the air in the same way that bricks don't. (I think that has always been my favorite descriptive phrase in all of the series.) The Vogons arrived to vaporize the Earth (Earth Prime-Time to be specific) in order to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

Which they did.

And yet, as evidenced by 'Chuck', Toobworld is still around.

The history of Earth Prime-Time has been remade several times over since its destruction in 1980. Although it would happen again in 'Primeval', it was because of Ford and Arthur's interference back in the caveman days once they journeyed back in Time which resulted in the Earth's continued existence beyond its original destruction in 1980. I don't know exactly what they may have done to have caused this, but it led to there being a change in plans for that hyperspace bypass; the Vogons didn't come to destroy Toobworld in the new timeline.

But in this new timeline, Earth was still made aware of the existence of Vogons, and this time for more than five minutes. And although no mention has been made of it in other TV shows that share the same dimension as 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy' and 'Chuck', apparently their existence is known to the general public, based on Jill's revelation about her boss' Vogon password.
It's possible that in her field of expertise (and as we now know, because she was an agent of Fulcrum), Jill would have granted access to the information that the Vogons exist. Major John Casey and Agent Sarah Walker might have had the necessary security access to see such an "For Your Eyes Only" type of file. But even though he was the "Asset", the walking, talking embodiment of the Intersect, there's no way the government would have allowed Chuck to know about the existence of such alien life - unless it was already common knowledge among the people of Earth.

For whatever reason they came to Toobworld, the Vogons - bureaucrats that they are - could possibly be working for the US government in some mind-numbingly mundane capacity.

Maybe.

What we need is a live-action version of "Men In Black" to use as an entry point for their presence on Earth Prime-Time. And because the Men in Black seem to exist in 'The X-Files' episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", we're good!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

WHERE'S RAHMBO?

I have no clue what goes into the decision-making at 'Saturday Night Live', as to which sketches get picked, which get dumped, which get front-loaded into the show, and which are banished to the wastelands after the "Weekend News Update".

But this week there was a really confusing choice made. They opened the show (hosted by Tim McGraw with musical guests Ludacris and T-Payne) with the Big Three automaker CEOs appearing before Congress. It's was a pretty blerg opening.

And yet, to be found on the web at Hulu.com, there was a sketch in which Andy Samberg did a great take on Rahm Emmanuel, showcasing the reputed anger of the Chief-of-Staff Designate for the Obama White House. Personally, I was pleased that he threatened to strip Lieberman naked and force him to walk home to Connecticut. But the funniest bit is when he turned on one of his cameramen and bullied him as well.

I think Samberg's going to have a long run in playing this tele-version of Rahm Emmanuel!

Lorne Michaels really should have used this sketch to open the show. I'm thinking TV Squad - an excellent blog for TV news and op-ed - was right with their guess that they just couldn't take the chance that the control booth could stay on top of Samberg's cursing as Emmanuel.

Hopefully, they'll be able to work out such logistical kinks soon so that the Rahm Emmanuel of Skitlandia can resurface.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: HARRY NILSSON

It's been fourteen years since Harry Nilsson passed away, but he's still remembered in Toobworld. Just this week his memory was invoked in two different shows, 'Bones' and 'Life On Mars'.

From Wikipedia, here's a thumbnail look at Harry Nilsson:

Harry Edward Nilsson III (June 15, 1941 – January 15, 1994) was an American songwriter, singer, pianist, and guitarist who achieved the height of his fame during the 1960s and 1970s. For most of his recordings, he did not use his first name, and was credited only as Nilsson.

Despite some significant critical and commercial successes, including two Grammy Awards and two Top 10 singles, Nilsson's tendency to make broad stylistic jumps from one record to the next - coupled with his generally iconoclastic decision-making - kept him from capitalizing on his career. Among Nilsson's best-known recordings are "Without You", "Jump Into the Fire", "Everybody's Talkin'" (theme from the movie Midnight Cowboy) and "Coconut".

On 'Bones', Dr. Lance Sweets and his girl-friend Daisy were going to enjoy a night of karaoke to kick off the weekend. Sweets claimed that, in his estimation, he did a mean "Lime & The Coconut".
Here's what Wikipedia offered regarding that novelty number:

The second single was "Coconut", a novelty calypso number featuring three characters (the narrator, the sister, and the doctor) all sung in different voices by Nilsson. The song is best remembered for its chorus lyric, "Put de lime in de coconut, and drink 'em both up." Also notable is that the entire song is played using one chord, C 7th. Coconut was featured in Episode 81 (October 25, 1973) of 'The Flip Wilson Show'. The song has since been featured in many other films, commercials. It was also used in a comedy skit on "The Muppet Show", which featured Kermit the Frog in a hospital bed. In the 1995 movie "Houseguest", Sinbad's character (Kevin Franklin) says the famous line from the chorus ("Put de lime in the coconut, and drink 'em both up.") at one point in the movie. Most recently it has been heard in a television commercial for Coca-Cola with Lime. The song was also used during the end credits of Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs".

Nilsson made a video for the song, in which he pays homage to Ernie Kovacs most memorable routine, the Nairobi Trio. I've read that John Lennon is the gorilla at the piano, but I haven't been able to verify that.

Coconut

Nairobi Trio

During the last episode of the American version of 'Life On Mars' for this calender year (It returns January 28th.), Nilsson's song "Spaceman" was heard on the soundtrack to flavor the confrontation between Sam Tyler and the 1973 version of his father Vic. (Sam's dad encouraged his son's interest in the space program by giving him toy rocket-ships.)

I don't know if this played into the producers' decision to use the song for this particular episode, but - like Vic Tyler did to Sam - Nilsson's father walked out on the family when Harry was only four.

I love the song "Spaceman"; it intrigues me. How can something that sounds so happy, and is so much fun to sing, be so sad at the same time?

Anyhoo, here's a video that accompanies the song on YouTube:

Spaceman

BCnU!

Toby Schmobie

TWIPPIN' THE LIGHTS FANTASTIC

In "The Secret From Space", an episode of 'The Sarah Jane Adventures', the "Ancient Lights" had come to Earth and possessed a phony psychic. They gave him power over the astrological signs in hopes of taking over Earth Prime-Time. (Apparently, they had come to the TV Universe from an alternate universe which was destroyed in the Big Bang.) When their plan failed, the Ancient Lights departed Toobworld, taking the psychic with them.
It took a few more centuries, but those same Ancient Lights returned to bedevil the people of Toobworld, but this time in the final frontier of space. Claiming that they came from the dead planet of Zetar (which could have been their home during the interim since their last appearance), the "Lights Of Zetar" tried to possess Lt. Mira Romaine on board the starship Enterprise. But the chief of engineering, Montgomery Scott put Mira into the pressurization chamber which killed off the non-corporeal beings, who had become too accustomed to the vacuum of space. (That last encounter with humans occurred in 'Star Trek'.)

Of course, this is just speculation on my part and I don't have to prove it. All of our televersions in Toobworld will be long dead before that event takes place......

BCnU!
Toby O'B