La Zona Muerta

It has come to my attention that today marks the 30th anniversary (!! Good LORD, but I’m old) of the premiere of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, obviously the best space themed talk show there ever was.

“I’m gonna follow it home.” Mmmmhmmm hmmm ummm hmmm hmmm hmmmmmmm

Here’s a story about one day when I was sick.

It was roughly the end of 1999 or the beginning of 2000. The Adult Swim programming block was must see viewing for my roommate, my then girlfriend and I, and of course, we already watched SGC2C prior to the Adult Swim branding. At any rate, I was sick as a dog, possibly sicker than I had ever been in my life. This wasn’t a 24 hour bug, this wasn’t the flu or a cold. This had to be CAPTAIN TRIPS, or possibly some sort of bird-based mega flu from an exotic part of the world. I had thrown up on the way home from work the Friday prior with the force of a fire hose, absolutely RINSING the inside of the bus stop I was sitting at with the entire contents of my stomach, including possibly things that had no longer been in my stomach, probably dating back to 1997 or so. I was SO embarrassed for being a person who had puked all over a bus stop, and I wasn’t drunk or anything, just DEADLY ILL.

Anyway, it was the kind of gross sickness where not even sleep would bring sweet relief; I was achy and pained all over. There was no surcease from being just miserable, diseased, snotty, puke-y and dead. The roommate had gone to bed and the girlfriend wanted to, but was concerned and stayed up with me. “Just leave it on Adult Swim,” I croaked as I decided to not get up from the living room couch. I took what I can only consider in retrospect an heroic dose of NyQuil, in hopes of being knocked unconscious and bleary eyed, watched Adult Swim, waiting for sleep to claim me.

Space Ghost came on; a welcome sight, even if they were in the “we made three episodes this season and we’re gonna show them again and again” cost cutting mode. I hoped it would be one I hadn’t seen too many times.

For those who don’t remember, SGC2C was a very weird blend of talk show, celebrity media junket clearing house and, well, 1960’s TV superhero Space Ghost. SG reacts to media junket interviews (or sometimes interviews made for the show) with lots of pregnant pauses, people talking to unseen producers and violence towards his co-hosts. It was funny, meta, bizarre and often, just plain hilarious. It was tonally unlike anything on TV and lasted several years, even if it had a severe problem with repeats. Episodes were typically eleven minutes long and ganged up to be shown at the rate of two episodes per half hour. It even spawned several spin offs and sort of tie-ins, dating back to the early days of Cartoon Network.

At any rate, sick as a diseased leper and doped up on three quarters of a cup of NyQuil, I started to watch this episode of SGC2C. If you recognize the screen shot, you probably already get where this is going, but for those who didn’t watch the show as much as I did, I’ll describe this particular episode for you.

Space Ghost notices an ant has penetrated his clean TV studio. He decides to follow it back to it’s nest and crawls after it, for the better part of the episode. I’m talking Space Ghost just literally crawls after this fire ant for minutes on end, just incoherently mumbling to himself. Now, to my disease / NyQuil addled brain, this felt like an eternity. I’d nod off for a microsecond and then startle myself into awakeness and Space Ghost was still crawling along the ground endlessly. It wasn’t the typical eleven minutes (the episode was actually twenty two minutes in full, most of that devoted to SG crawling after the ant). It felt like two hours.

My mind broke. I assume that endless despair, watching Space Ghost crawl and mutter for however long is what being on drugs is like and it’s as close as I’ve ever come to being doped up outside of being on prescriptions from the dentist.

I chalked this all up to being a fever dream, especially when they replayed this episode a couple of weeks later, but only at a normal eleven minute runtime. I feared my wonderful brain was ruined with some kind of illness induced mini stroke or something. This was genuinely distressing to me. “I swear it was at least a half hour of Space Ghost just crawling!”

Of course, come to find out that the producers made this episode a full twenty two minutes strictly for the premier and eleven minutes for subsequent reruns, just because.

Go figure.

Anyway, bless Williams Street, C. Martin Coker and the producers of the best darn space themed talk show ever.