In Season 5, Episode 1 of "Reading Rainbow," host LeVar Burton showed kids around his other TV show, "Star Trek: the Next Generation." Not to be confused with the time Webster went to the Star Trek.
The episode aired August 15, 1988 and I remember watching it. Star Trak comes up frequently in life and I often thought of this episode and then today it shows up as a suggestion on youtube.
Memory is strange. The only thing I remembered distinctly about this program is that it showed bloopers and that one of them is LeVar at the console, standing up and knocking over the fake console. This show does show bloopers but that's not one of them.
This whole video I'm just waiting for "Pat and Kenny Read Oprah Transcripts."
They don't mention it for some reason but RIP Kenny Sheehan.
If you're wondering how far ahead these things are planned out (the videos), my "Pat and Kenny Read Oprah Transcripts" videos which overlapped with the highlights in this video were copyright struck in October of last year.
I am on the fence, I naturally lean toward explaining it as coincidence in most cases. But when you have actual composers explaining that they started with the title, there's obviously something to it.
Also, trees don't need love most of all, it's really just water and light.
I've always really enjoyed James Taylor's "Fire and Rain." Sure, it's mid-tempo Boomer folk, but it's just a great song. But it took me way too long to figure out that it's a bit darker than I had assumed.
The first verse starts as depressingly as we all know it does:
Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone.
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song,
I just can't remember who to send it to.
This was inspired by real life. Taylor had a friend Suzanne committed suicide while he was in London recording an album. His friends didn't tell him right away, fearing that it would interfere with his ability to record. But they told him weeks after the fact.
Then the chorus (we'll come back to that later).
Then the second verse:
Won't you look down upon me, Jesus, You've got to help me make a stand.
You've just got to see me through another day.
My body's aching and my time is at hand and I won't make it any other way
This was written while Taylor was in rehab, recovering from a heroin addiction. The lyrics are a literal prayer to simply survive one more day. Haunting and harrowing.
I won't go into the third verse except to say that it's about his failed band and his stay in a mental hospital.
So that's all pretty dark and its history is fairly well-known at this point, but between these verses is the chorus which I always assumed was the hopeful counter-punch. The chorus goes:
I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I'd see you again.
The "fire and rain" part goes along with the verses - life is sad and turbulent - but, forgive me if this is obvious and I'm the only one- but I always interpreted "I always thought that I'd see you again" as meaning "you're a good friend, I can count on you" - the positive light among the darkness of a fallen world. I only recently realized that "I always thought that I'd see you again" refers to the friend who committed suicide in the first verse. It isn't optimistic, it's mournful and heartbreaking. It's a lament that "In all the storms of life, I thought I had you as a constant and now you're gone" and "What do I do now that the light of my life has been snuffed out?"
As far as I know, this is a very rare situation, indeed. While it's fairly normal for people to put out movie commentary as a separate track (Rifftrax, Red Letter Media, etc.), this is the first time the unofficial commentary track is by the writer/director of the film.
The "Clue" DVD and Blu-Ray releases are great but quite minimal when it comes to the special features. And so it's quite interesting that now you can have a writer/director commentary for free.
This is one where they do get so lost in watching the movie that they forget that they're supposed to be talking over it, but whatever, it happens.
