Watching You Tube: Space Adventure, Episodes 13 & 14 and Jim Troesh

And now it's time for two more episodes of one of my all-time favorite web series, Space Adventure!

Episode 13: Double Cliff Hanger!

It looks like "lukku cairi AKA Alice AKA leucocephala" has the same laptop I do.  Of course, since this was four years ago, she probably has a different one now, whereas I don't.

Episode 14: RCK Chain of Command

The "robot clown kid" footage comes from the (ostensibly) educational film The Self Image Film (If Mirrors Could Speak), which Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett covered for RiffTrax.

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I'm going to leave it there this week and share another video with you.  I don't keep up that much with Hollywood news, so it's kind of odd that I should happen to check out The Hollywood Reporter's news site yesterday and catch out of the corner of my eye a Breaking News sidebar item that put a cold shiver through me.  Actor/writer Jim Troesh has died.

That name might not mean much to you; his highest-profile role was a recurring one as a lawyer on Highway to Heaven.  But I knew him from an entertainment industry networking group, the Hampton's Table, that I was a member of when I lived in Los Angeles.

He was cheerful, irrepressible, and always working on something, which is more than I can say for myself.  And this was despite spending more than forty years of his life from age 14 as a quadriplegic.  There's a line from one of my favorite bands, Optiginally Yours, that always puts me in mind of him.  In "Beebo," they give you this advice on how to shake it to their boogie: "If you can move one limb, that's all you need to begin.  And if you can't, relax and just be groovy."  Jim was a relaxed and groovy kind of guy.

I mention all of this in a "Watching YouTube" post because the best way I can think of to remember him is with the first episode of his web series from a few years ago, called The Hollywood Quad, in which he addressed his own personal elephant in the room with his usual grace and good humor.  I remember seeing it the first time when he unveiled it to laughter and applause at the Table.  It even has a science fiction connection, of sorts, as we see him start on a science fiction script.  (In real life, he wrote a comedy pilot script with the wonderfully bent premise of Earth's first alien visitor having to make his way in the world once his novelty-based fifteen minutes of fame are up.)