Two follow-ups for this post, both of which I came across early this morning. The first is frivolous yet still formed this trivial frustration to me for, um, a while. I mentioned in a previous post that there was this distinctive theme music to Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, one of the first TV programs that revolved around naturalism and wildlife, and you are obligated by law to give this entire name because they always did – it was also among the first programs wholly sponsored by a single contributor, an insurance company, and they made sure you knew it. The host would resort to these incredibly contrived segues into a commercial, one of the most memorable traits of the show. The other, that everyone who watched it remembers, is that the host, Marlin Perkins, this soft-spoken and urbane gentleman always in a suit and tie, would display the tame and innocuous critters in a studio setting, and then pass the reins over to Jim Fowler, the younger sidekick who did most of the field work and would routinely get his ass kicked wrestling with anacondas and running from angry giraffes. Yes, this was absolutely the genesis of Crocodile Hunter some decades later, except not as unbearably smarmy or contrived.
Anyway, the point I made in that earlier post was that the show had this specific theme music that I could not find anywhere – my guess is that they did not secure the rights to it for subsequent home video release and switched to the closing or secondary theme or something. Stumbling across that very post again last night, I got motivated to search again, and like before, I was only turning up this other, super-mellow version – this was getting so bad that I was actually doubting my memory (which, granted, came from when I was less than 9 years old so, you know, decades ago,) when suddenly I located it! This was both a completion of this ludicrous task set for myself many years ago, and vindication that I’m not completely senile yet. I present to you the theme that I always remembered (shortened a bit here):
Theme from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom
I had toyed with the idea of getting out the MIDI keyboard and reproducing it from memory, and now I wish I’d done so, because it would have been interesting to compare the two and see how close I’d come.
The other follow-up is a lot more recent and far less self-centered. Just over a month ago I posted about spittleblower David Grusch’s testimony that the US government and/or military had evidence of crashed extra-terrestrials – according to vague and unnamed sources and all that typical horseshit. But a few days back Brian Dunning at Skeptoid tackled this same testimony, only with a hell of a lot more effort and research involved. Dunning was even more disparaging that I was about Grusch bringing up Roswell, but more specifically, he tracked down the origins of another of Grusch’s claims, which turned out to be… less than stellar, shall we say? Dunning also revealed that Grusch was significantly less ‘security-minded’ in interviews several weeks before the congressional hearing, as well as his close ties with the same ol’ UFO blowhards that keep appearing again and again with the same ol’ stories and the same ol’ utter lack of anything the slightest bit substantial. Long story short: don’t invest in those quantum-drive hovercars juuussst yet…
[Among those that look into UFO/UAP reports critically, there are a lot of red flags: Roswell, as mentioned, and all of the names Dunning relates as well as Leslie Kean, Billy Meier, Whitley Strieber, Bob Lazar, and Betty Hill; Majestic/MJ-12; To The Stars Academy; Skinwalker Ranch; and plenty of others. While I would never recommend simply dismissing anything out of hand, the frequency that these people and items have been tied to failed promises and proven bunk is telling all by itself, and association with or referral to any of them is simply bad news. Skeptoid had covered a lot of these, and so has Bad UFOs.]
Okay, now back to video editing…