One Thing Leads to Another
Topic: Music
For exercise, I run. I got started running outside, of course. When the weather is nice, running outdoors is refreshing, invigorating and uplifting. Really, it is. Especially if you've been dealing with man-made stress at work for eight or nine hours. A good run under a blue sky reminds you that beauty exists, and that your body can do something more than sit in a chair.
But, in Minnesota, the weather just isn't conducive to running outdoors all that often. Well, at least if you're as interested in comfort as I am, it's not. Additionally, while I love my neighborhood, it just doesn't have many options for a good three-to-four mile route.
About two years ago, I started running on a treadmill when the weather, or boredom with my route, made me hesitate to run outside.
To make the treadmill run less boring than an outdoor run, I started watching DVDs during the run. In particular, I started watching "Star Trek: Deep Space 9" from the beginning. Let me tell you, it's actually easier for me to run for 30 minutes in front of a good story, with a real warm-up and a real cool-down surrounding it.
Anyway, I'm now watching episodes in season seven. The series has been as good as I remembered. But one thing I had forgotten was how many episodes in seasons six and seven had the character of
Vic Fontaine
as portrayed by
James Darren.
For those of you who don't want to follow the link, I'll sum up: Fontaine was a self-aware holographic character who was a lounge singer in a nice Las Vegas club. The episodes in which he appeared (and in one excellent episode in which he did not) featured Darren singing songs which I guess would be called "Swing Standards." Some of them: "Come Fly With Me," "That Old Black Magic," "It's Only a Paper Moon," "I'll Be Seeing You (in All the Old Familiar Places)."
Well, as I watched those episodes again, I realized how much the music added to the stories, and how much I really, really liked the songs. Consequently, my latest amazon.com purchase included
This One's From the Heart, an album of those standards, from which the songs in DS9 were taken.
It's been a great purchase. I just might have to buy some similar music from the originators of the standards: Sinatra, Como, and others. But, in fact, I love the smooth interpretations Darren sings. And since they are part of those DS9 episodes, I will probably prefer his versions anyway.
And that's another example of how one thing leads to another. Streams of consciousness are a natural part of my thinking, because, really, life is a stream of events which are interrelated, with some effects stemming from causes one would never expect. Running, leading to buying a crooner's CD? It happens.
Oh, and yes, James Darren is not exactly foreign to science fiction TV. He starred in
The Time Tunnel.
Related Links
Vic Fontaine
James Darren.
This One's From the Heart
The Time Tunnel