The Power of the Interwebs

What I've always loved the Internet for is that every single thing I ever loved as a kid in the 70s and 80s (cartoons, late night television, video games) can all be obtained.  Any cartoon I used to watch I can download, stream on YouTube or buy on DVD.  Any game I ever played can be emulated in a tiny program.  It's like all those things that I experienced a tiny part of (the end of an episode of V:The Series caught in the TV section of a shopping mall at Christmas, a Colecovision game played at a cousin's house one time) can now be mine easily, cheaply and entirely (so, those two episodes of Blackstar that I cherished since 1982, that episode of Speed Buggy, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk or Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle that I still remember now can sit on my shelf or in my hard drive, with every single other one of its fellows.)  It's quite an emotional experiment to have a fairly clear memory of a cartoon I saw once or twice in the mid 70s or early 80s, and which I haven't seen since, and sit down and watch it through my now very grown-up eyes.  So much is so different from how you remembered it.  

Some things have eluded me until now.  The Six Million Dollar Man was very slow to become downloadable.  It still has never been manufactured on DVD in North America.  I downloaded it and bought a UK DVD of it.  Spenser:For Hire was the toughest.  It has never been released on DVD, and it isn't generally streamed or downloadable in Canada.  I think the main reason is that it is streamable for free on America Online in the States, and blocked in the rest of the world, though it is not on Canadian cable television, and not available on DVD, apart from those abysmal reunion movies.

Spenser:For Hire was based on the books by Robert B. Parker which I still love to this day.  It was more film noir, more psychological than most detective dramas at the time.  But it was on TV opposite Miami Vice.  Good luck.  (I never liked the Vice much.  I think it depicted everything that cocky assholes in the 80s wore, listened to and did.)

This week I found a source to download Spenser: For Hire and am overjoyed to be watching that show again.  If it was for sale, I would have bought it long ago, and if I lived in America, I could watch every episode online,  free.  Stupid.  It's like "Here is my money.  Any takers?  No?  Anyone?"  No, I do not want to buy all of the seasons of Friends, Seinfeld, The Simpsons and Family Guy.  It's not like those shows are hard to get a chance to see.

So, happy.  Also got some ancient cartoons like The Archies and The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan and such.  Some of those I bought.