I finished dubbing off Centennial tonight. That penultimate episode, about the dust bowl, is pretty grim. Robert Vaughn, before he descended into ambulance chasing, was fine as the villain of the piece in the final part.

The first and last part of Centennial were two and a half hours without commercials, so I finalized both of those disks when I finished recording them along with a partner episode which clocked in at 90 minutes. But other four disks, with two 90-minute stories on them, still had an hour on each one, and although the temptation was to make it an all Centennial set, I can't bear to waste that much space.

However, I do have something appropo for them: Westerns! I have two episodes of Bonanza, one with Lou Antonio and the other with Dean Stockwell, and then there were two episodes of Wild Wild West at the end of the Centennial tapes, "Night of the Big Blackmail" (with Harvey Korman) and "Night of the Sedgewick Curse." I dubbed off "Blackmail" and watched Ross Martin wistfully.

I think I've talked about musical pieces that set off bits of memory: "Him" by Rupert Holmes reminds me of riding down to the beach on Sunday, the theme to Mannix takes me back to Lake George in 1968, and more. Wild Wild West brings back one of the nicest memories, of Friday nights in front of the television with my mom and dad. I have the Littlest Hobo DVD set, and first season of Hogan's Heroes—all I'd need to do is have DVDs of Wild Wild West to make those old Fridays come back: Hobo at seven, on channel 6 (WTEV back then), and then Wild Wild West at 7:30 (before the prime-time access rule, remember?), and Hogan at 8:30. Funny, in most of those memories it's summer and the front door is open and the swish-swish-swish of cars keep going by.

I do wish I had my two favorite Wild Wild West episodes: the one about the crying house and the one with Sammy Davis Jr.

The only rotten part about the night was feeling something tickling my leg at one point and looking down to see another one of those half-budgie size palmetto bugs staring at me from the side of the couch! It was waving its antennae at me. I called Willow and she nosed it down, but it got away from her.

Sounds like it's time to spray the doors again.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:51:00 PM

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