donn@sdchema.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (08/24/83)
Did the Bonanza theme song really have words?! Sigh... At one time that would have been wonderful to know. During the only period in my life that I watched Bonanza on a regular basis, I was menial labor in a warehouse in an oilfield on a drab little island off the northeastern part of Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan Utara). I used to catch Bonanza and I think Adam-12 and Emergency! and a few other American shows, all broadcast on Malaysian state TV from Malaysian Borneo (Sabah). The island was much too far away to receive the nearest Indonesian broadcasting stations (in Balikpapan or Samarinda, a few hundred miles across impassable karst mountains and unfordable tropical swampland), which provided much better fare like Hawaii Five-O and Streets of San Francisco. Nobody but me spoke English at the warehouse (not counting my supervisor, who normally spoke to no one in the warehouse anyway even when he condescended to visit our area), so I was made to serve as kind of interpreter for American culture. Unfortunately I had arrived too late to save these poor people from certain permanent misconceptions about the US, but I would have made a good start on things by showing how knowledgable I was about American TV theme songs. The lyrics to Bonanza would have made me look like a genius; nobody else would have been able to do it, not even the damn Texans who infest that part of Indonesia almost as heavily as the salt-water crocodiles. One has to wonder about how American television shows influence the populations of other countries. I remember when I was 6 or 7, rushing downstairs on a roasting hot Sunday morning to tune into Batman, and having to wait for the martial music to end instead of the commercials -- I had to watch it on Thai state TV in Bangkok. The maid and the cook used to watch too, but I was always too engrossed to wonder what sorts of thoughts went through their minds while they stared at this stuff... (POW! BAM!) The funny thing was, in the States my younger brothers generally watched Japanese children's TV on UHF -- this was sort of a cultural revenge from the East. I didn't watch it, though; I was above silly things like grown men in rubber suits (Ultra Man) or cartoon characters with enormous eyes (Speed Racer and its ilk). What did an 8-year-old budding intellectual watch? Would you believe, Lost In Space? Aargh. Fortunately I graduated to Dr. Who when the family moved to Hong Kong. (I have to admit I get a lot of fun out of some Japanese films on the late-late-late shows: I adore the original Godzilla, for example, but as usual for all the wrong reasons. Who could not like a film starring Raymond Burr spliced in like a special effect, teamed with a man in a rubber dragon suit?) Well, if someone REALLY can come up with the lyrics to the theme from Bonanza, I'm willing to memorize them... (y'all listenin', Lauren?) From a man who owns no TV, Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn