Wherever You Are Tonight...

"There cannot be a crisis today, my schedule is already full."

-Henry Kissinger

God I love retro! Well, almost everything retro... I will never think highly of bell-bottom jeans. LOL. But almost everything else goes. One of the reasons I think Alan and I get along so well, is that we both enjoy old movies, and the wonderful old shows from our childhood. We will play a challenge game with each other on long car rides, sometimes quizzing each other on the theme song of a particular show, or maybe even asking a trivia question about a character. He and I both always enjoyed the secondary characters as much as the stars of the show. Here we are in our 40's, and we still enjoy popping popcorn, and watching the old Kolchak: The Night Stalker, on DVD on a Saturday night. Is that boring? :) I hated the new version that ABC came up with a couple years back, it lacked the truly spooky feel that the original one had. I loved Darren McGavin in the title role. He could both make me believe in the fantastic and fear it as well. As scared as Karl got, he stuck it out to the very end, he solved the mystery, even if no one around him accepted his conclusions.

I guess I am feeling in a nostalgic mood, because yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. What a magnificent album that was. God I miss John Lennon. Sigh. In just a few weeks it will officially be summer, and that will bring another anniversary to the Bay Area, see, 1967 was the Summer of Love. If you were a hippie, then Haight/Ashbury was the place to be. If you were in the East Bay, you were up here in Berkeley, probably in People's Park. A lot of social changes were taking place all over America, not just here in the heart of the hippie movement. I was a little girl, I was 5 years old, so I was for the most part, unaware of what was going on, but I knew about the war, and I was missing my brother who was in Vietnam. I didn't understand his leaving then, and even now I struggle to come to terms with why he had to go. War sucked then, just as it does now. Sigh. I took a lot of comfort in the old black and white TV we had, and all those sitcoms that didn't talk too much about war, or fear. Bewitched was one of them. Did you watch it too?

My brother came home for a visit in 1970, and we sat together on the couch and watched, among other things, Bewitched. It was a night I won't really forget. The guest stars were Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. I remember very clearly watching this episode with him, and singing and dancing. My sister had painted a flower on my cheek, as she often did, and the three of us watched the show together. This episode dealt with Samantha's cousin Serena, and her kidnapping of Boyce and Hart, so they could play at the very groovy Cosmos Cotillion. LOL. I found this clip on YouTube, and thought it would be the perfect accompaniment to this memory of mine. If you were a Bewitched fan I am sure you have seen it. It's a true gem of a TV moment. One I never forgot. A lot has happened between my brother and myself. I haven't seen him in years, and it is better if I don't, we are very different people. But there are moments, I will always be glad we had. Sigh. Yeah... war definitely sucks.

Still, in the middle of all the crap that was happening that I didn't understand, I had little moments here and there that made perfect sense. I am still a huge fan of Boyce and Hart, and was heartbroken when Tommy Boyce committed suicide a number of years back.They made beautiful music, but sometimes wars wage within ourselves as well. Again... war sucks. It's the little moments that saves us I think. The ones that always makes us laugh, or smile, or just feel good inside. I have a lot of those little moments in my brain, I call them up when I need to take a step back from whatever makes me sad. Sometimes though, Alan and I throw in a DVD of some great old show or movie and get totally caught up in it. I think later tonight we are going to watch an old Godzilla movie... LOL. Isn't Raymond Burr great? Lord I'm old! LOL.

Do you have a favorite old TV show? How about a favorite song from the late 60's or 70's? Share if you like, I would enjoy hearing what you watched on TV as a child. Any decade is fine. It always surprises me to learn how many people were watching the same episodes of TV I was all those years ago. :) It never occurred to me I wasn't the only one watching. LOL.

Enjoy!
Bewitched
episode 190
"Serena Stops The Show"
February 19, 1970

" I'll Blow You A Kiss In The Wind"
By Boyce and Hart

-OndineMonet