It snowed in Moscow today.

As the Skytrain rolled past the 1960's concrete towers near Lougheed Mall I started thinking about how these buildings were the inspiration for the apartments-on-stalks in the Jetsons. It's a matter of extrapolation: the car park takes up the first few floors and the upper floors are the more desirable apartments. Why bother building the lower floors at all if no-one wants to live in them? And with the flying cars in the context of 1960's car-culture you no longer have the need for the ground-level parking and entrance - obviously people would simply fly in and out of the upper floors directly and never need to walk anywhere.

So then I started thinking about what life would be like in the Jetsons future for people who weren't Vice Presidents at Spacely Sprokets or their whiny, privileged, bleach-blond daughters? What of all the poor sods put out of work by Rosie the robot maid and her ilk? What miserable life would they be living down on the surface, forgotten below these unassailable towers of bourgeois privilege? Would miserable shanty villages be huddled up against the bases of the towers to tap into what little heat and power could be gleaned off the service shaft? Would their inhabitants survive off the cast-offs from the ten thousand slovenly, video-game addicted, overweight Elroy's above? Between the tower bases would there be the hollowed out, abandoned shells of closed businesses that once thrived on pedestrian traffic? What horrors lurk beneath the world of George and Jane Jetson?

So valerian is sitting by me, with _jazz_ in her lap, expanding her Evil eBay Empire and mentions that she has the theme to "The Rockford Files" stuck in her head for no reason.

"We have that on a record," I mention, and proceed to pull out this gem:


Side One:
Octopussy
I Spy
Reilly: Ace of Spies
Casino Royale
Ipcress File (A Man Alone)
Thunderball
Man From UNCLE
The Prisoner
The James Bond Theme

Side Two:
Our Man Flint
Moonraker
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
Run Spy Run
Get Smart
You Only Live Twice
007
Goldfinger
The Rockford Files

All in instrumental glory by random studio musicians. Pressed in 1984 and bought used in 1986 from Lyle's Place on Yates Street in Victoria for the princely sum of $6.95.


Any questioning of the obscure random crap in my record collection will result in Bill Cosby busting a cap in your ass. Hiding behind a tennis racket won't save you. (This image is on the back of the record jacket, BTW.)