Adrian Astur Alvarez

I was walking around the apartment this morning with a song stuck in my head. I have no idea why, but I couldn’t stop singing the opening to “3-2-1 Contact” a tv show I used to watch obsessively as a kid.

So it’s 6am and I’m making coffee and I’m singing, “Contact, it’s the feeling… Contact, it’s the feeling” because I don’t really know the words to the rest of the theme.

Actually, those aren’t even the right words.

I’m brushing my teeth and humming the opening 6 beats, and toothpaste is spraying on the mirror a little bit but I’m kind of getting into a groove so I keep going. That’s when Bean asked me what I was doing. She has a knack for appearing in a room just as soon as I’ve gone too far into crazy- like when I’m dancing around in my underwear toothpaste chanting the opening 2 bars of an 80s television theme song.

When I tried to explain what it was, she, of course, had never heard of the show (we’re 8 years apart), and when I told her it was on right after Electric Company she started to lose interest.

“You know, ‘Hey You Guys!’” “Chunk, from the Goonies?” “No, that’s what Chunk was quoting.”

[By the way, not to brag but I'm going to brag: I totally went to college with Jeff Cohen.]

I don’t know what alien god zapped my head full of 80s television theme songs this morning but I’m going along with it.

I’d like to say TV shows from the 70s are better than anything they make today but I really can’t. Shows for kids are awesome now.

So are toys. I used to play with cans of play-doh. What the hell was that about? “Here’s some mushy dough, kid. Go crazy. Oh yeah, and even though the real word is spelled with a ‘u’ and a ‘g’ I’m not going to worry about the effects of corporate meddling on standardized English. All rite?”

Not cool, Adults in the 80s.