ChŭbōGōnzō

I can tell you, almost to the minute, when I became in my heart a true martial artist. It was around 40 minutes into the premiere episode of  the TV series Longstreet which aired at 9:00 PM on September 16, 1971 on the ABC network.  It happened when Bruce Lee articulated the core philosophy of what the world would soon know as his martial art, Jeet Kune Do:

I vowed in that moment to live my life by those words.  And I have failed miserably almost every day since.  But Bruce, I am told, also lived by many another Taoist aphorism, including “Fall down nine times, rise up ten.”  In my case, I would have to multiply it by a factor of at least a thousand, but you get the drift.

I include here the text of this version, which is my favorite among many:

“Empty your mind…  Be formless…shapeless…like water.  Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.  Put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.  Now water can flow, or creep or drip or CRASH!  Be water, my friend…”

I recommend that you seek out and watch the entire episode, The Way of the Intercepting Fist, which can currently be seen on YouTube.

My earliest recollections of pondering some of the weightier issues of Life, the Universe and Everything do not involve home, school or even church.  Rather, they center around that venerable icon of early TV sci-fi, The Outer Limits.

Among the show’s trademarks were the often eerie and pedantic pro- and epilogues delivered in the distinctive “Control Voice” of actor Vic Perrin, who also made many cameo appearances on the show, and later on Star Trek – you may particularly remember him as the voice of the precocious space probe “Nomad”.

For lack of anything better to do with my time, I’ve decided to gather them together for my own enjoyment. I begin each volume with the original pilot intro, which is somewhat longer than the edited version used thereafter, and I conclude, of course, with the majestic theme music of Dominic Frontiere.

In the beginning, these monologues were used simply to set the scene for each episode, but it wasn’t long before they were posing important and profound questions for the time – or for any time, for that matter.

I commend you to them, and hope you find something of passing value in their wisdom.

Enjoy!

This is too funny.  It’s an excerpt from the a-book of The Fold by Peter Clines.  If you like this clip, you will surely enjoy the rest of the book.  I heartily recommend it in whatever medium you prefer, although I love the characterizations in the audiobook.

Let me briefly set the scene:

The Good News: A bunch of DARPA eggheads have just realized that their inter-dimensional doorway really works.

The Bad News: They’ve also realized that each and every one of them is “not in Kansas anymore”: They are all from different dimensions!  I think you can intuit some of the conversations leading up to this clip, provided you know your Trek episode history!

It is, of course, a classic Trek dilemma…