Flipping
around through my cable channels one evening, I happened to notice a channel
called “Retro TV” that was airing old episodes of Dr. Who. Now for those of you who aren’t in the know,
Dr. Who is a British TV show that’s been airing (more or less) since 1963. It’s a show where if the actor who plays
the “Doctor” quits, the Doctor regenerates into a new version who looks like
the new actor playing the Doctor. I
remember watching Dr. Who with my sisters on PBS – it was on Saturday evenings,
as I recall – and they were on the Fourth Doctor by that time (mid/late 70’s.) He’s the one with fro-like hair and the long
multi-colored (or coloured, for my British fans) scarf.
The
sibs went off to college in ’79 (I’ll pause as you do the math of how OLD
they are). So I’m going to say that’s
probably why I don’t remember seeing any of the episodes with the Fifth Doctor (1981)
through the movie with the Eighth Doctor (mid-90's).
Plus I was in college during part of that, and although I did have a TV
in my dorm (sophomore year at least), there was no cable and I could only get
whatever stations whose signals made it from Indy to Greencastle. So, between, say 1979-ish, and about 10 years
ago, I was Who-less. But then, “they”
revived the series, life has been Who-filled.
See
the picture of the British fake “Lego” versions of each of the 11 Doctors!
What
was my point? Well, this Retro TV channel
is airing episodes from the Third Doctor (circa 1970-74) on the weekends and
the Sixth Doctor (circa 1984-86) on week nights. Why not just air one Doctor and go with
it? I don’t know. But I
have truly been enjoying the campy goodness that was these old episodes, the “special”
effects, the cave that it seems that every other episode was filmed. You get my point.
After
a week of watching Who each evening before going to bed, I was again flipping
through my cable channels and I happened upon another odd channel – the Heroes
and Icons channel. This channel airs 2 episodes
of Roger Moore’s the Saint
each evening. See, I grew up reading Leslie Charteris’ books
about Simon Templar a/k/a the “Saint” - the "modern day Robin Hood of crime" and then on Friday nights at 11:30 pm
(after the Avengers) on CBS, I watched the “Return of the Saint”
with Ian Ogilvy. 
To me, Roger Moore was
James Bond. But I’ve been watching for
the past couple of weeks. My
immediate thought while watching is how young Roger Moore looked. These shows were on 1962-69 (before he became
James Bond). Also, the fight sequences
are so obviously faked – I can only assume I’ve been jaded by all the sax and
violins on TV. Of course, the whole it
being in black and white transports me back in time too!
At
this point, what with an hour of Dr. Who each evening (2 on the weekends!) and
2 hours of the Saint, my DVR is beginning to fill up. Aren’t I happy that it’s summer and there’s
not too much else to grab my attention.
So, the next thing I know... last week, I heard that Comedy Central was going to stream
the entire series of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on its website and app starting
last Friday (and it's going to take over a month - it boggles the mind, but it is 4 nights a week, about 40 weeks a year for 17 years...)
Anyway, starting Friday night, when I got home from work, I put my
ear buds in and enjoyed old episodes from 1999. Again, it’s a shock to see how young these people
looked! Over the weekend, we got to relive
the build up to the 2000 election. It
struck me particularly funny, when announcing Donald Trump’s announcing his run
for the presidency, 
Stewart’s jokes were oddly similar to the jokes he used
just a couple of weeks ago when Trump announced his run for the
presidency. This week, we’ve been
reliving the zaniness that was the year 2000.
One painfully ironic moment being when Bush, in a campaign speech, claimed that if Gore were to win "we'd be in a war within a year."
Anyway, as I’m typing this, the episode for Election Day is coming on. I can’t wait to see who wins!
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