Lost in Space

It was incredibly busy last night. I got to take a 30 minute break and ate an $ .89 pot pie (yay). Didn't move from behind the register again all night. Wasn't a bad night for eye candy, though (see last night's stats). Got the laptop at work again, so I can charge it and my phone. Not having electricity sucks donkey dicks. Watched one and an half segments of “Rome” last night before my battery finally died, and then I re-inflated my deflating bed and went to sleep. Of course, I had to wake up about 3 hours later and pump it back up.

I woke up when Yang ran over my head while they were playing chase. Went to feed them and, lo and behold: they had gotten into the bag of cat food and spread it all over the floor. I don't know why, because they had plenty of food in their bowl. So, I cleaned up as much as I could before I took my shower and got ready for work.

I miss Adult Swim. I also miss going online. I haven't been because it drains my battery so quickly. I watch Hulu as much as I watch television, and I watch a lot of the old TV series “Lost in Space”, which all the kids watched when I was growing up. I had a terrible crush on Billy Mumy, the adorable redhead with blue eyes who played the son, Will Robinson. We are the same age, actually. So, I had my first crush on a boy when I was about 11 and so was he, only we never actually met. I wasn't so sure what I would actually DO with him, if I ever met him (I was 11, after all), but I thought he was the cutest boy I had ever seen. After the series, he continued playing music, which he always loved and went on to work on several other Sci-Fi series, notably “Babylon 5”. He recently remarked, on his website, that he had spent 50 years in entertainment, and what a good time he had had. He is married, with grown children, and still plays music. I wonder what he would think, if he read this.

Anyway, “Lost in Space” was a creation of Irwin Allen, who did all those cheesy disaster movies in the 70s, like “Towering Inferno” and “Poseidon Adventure” (possibly Travis' favourite movie of all time). He had a successful series at the time called “Voyage to the bottom of the Sea”, about an high-tech submarine with windows in front, called, eponymously enough, the “Seaview”. He wanted to do a space series based on the book “Swiss Family Robinson”, which had been made into a film by Disney a few years previously.

Allen decided that he wanted to do something unique with the score for the series. Rather than having an opening theme and just incidental music and stabs to accentuate the action, he decided to hire a composer to write a kind of leitmotif score, with specific themes for specific characters and situations. He had heard about a young composer out in Hollywood, a fellow named Johnny Williams, who had scored several films and gotten some attention, so he approached Williams about his project and Williams signed on, even though, as he told Allen, he had never scored anything in the Sci-Fi genre before.

The show ran for three seasons, from 1966 to 1969. It was watched by a budding young filmmaker out in California who had this idea to make a sweeping space drama. After working on a number of films and directing and producing a low-budget dystopian fantasy, “THX-1138”, George Lucas got enough funding to produce “Star Wars” , even though the studio had doubts that a “space opera” would make any money. He was looking for a composer to write a leitmotif score for his story, which he had already had decided would be a series of at least six films, and he wanted unifying themes to run through them all. I don't know if he did, but I rather think he thought back to Irwin Allen and “Lost in Space” , because he called up Johnny Williams, who had dropped “Johnny” for the more mature “John”, and asked him if he would consider the project. Williams agreed, and the rest is cinematic history.

George Lucas had a friend who was also a director, named Steven Spielberg, and they kicked an idea around for awhile, to do a series of films based on the old cliffhanger serials of the 30s and 40s. Of course, they hired John Williams to do the scores for the “Indiana Jones” films, starring Harrison Ford, who had worked with Lucas in the “Star Wars” films. John Williams became one of the highest-paid composers in history, with more Academy Award nominations than any individual other than Walt Disney.

And I still enjoy watching “Lost in Space” on Hulu. Watching Billy Mumy reminds me of that “first crush”, long before I even knew what “gay” was. It kind of takes me back to a gentler time, before I knew much about the evils of the world, when a whole planet could be made out of papier-mache' and quirky aliens abounded, and nefarious space villains and hideous monsters could be defeated by the staunch heart of a little boy and his faithful robot companion.

HBCT stats for the evening: 12 KOCs, 10 Qts, 10 Mhs, 13 CHK & 1 C-10. And the last one was absolutely gorgeous ... 21, long, copper-coloured hair and blue eyes. To die for.