Because Alan Thicke Was Tonight's Gateway Drug

Terry is playing a Super Mario Brothers game on Wii while I'm on the computer reading your blog. The repetitive game music has begun to brand itself onto the left lobe of my brain, as I've been listening to him play for almost 45 minutes.

I say, "Doesn't this sound like the theme song to Perfect Strangers?"


And he's all, "Standing tall, on the wings of our dreams... Rise and fall...", followed up with his worst Balkie imitation, "oh, don't be ridiculous."

I'm impressed.

So, that's when I say (thinking I'm the only person on the planet who's made observation about ugly 80's pop culture), "Isn't it funny how every theme song from the sitcoms of our childhood sound like they were written by the same person?"

And he, "Uh, Alan Thicke?"
And me, "I knew he wrote the opening to Growing Pains, but all of those sitcoms?"

To which he replies, "I think so. I think he was the dude in the day. Family Ties, Diff'rent Strokes (wrote and sang actually), Wheel of Fortune. I dunno, IMDB him." (Another website that has ranked verb status in our home.)

So I do... while simultaneously singing my favorite theme song of all time:

Me and my dad used to sing the melody and harmony parts to this song when it would come on our fuzzy, cable-deprived set at 8:30 in 1988. So sad, so nerdy, and so wonderful a memory.

Terry pokes his head out of the laundry room just as I hit the high "Ooooh ooh, what will we do, baby... without loooove... sha-la-la-la." And it's at that point that I realize that had he heard me do that 7 years ago he may not have married me.

To my disappointment, Family Ties was actually not in Thicke's repitoire. (Trust that if you were here with me tonight, I'd be saying Alan Thicke over and over again, as it has to be one of my favorite names in history.) But, I still say the man should be knighted for his contribution. He hosted Wayne Gretzky's wedding, he's hosted pageants, he used to DJ in college, he was ranked #37 in TV Guide's List of the "50 Greatest Fictional Dads", and he wrote this classic:
Just IMDB him. Or better yet, just YouTube (another website verb) your favorite theme songs from your favorite childhood tv shows. It will make your night.

Punky Brewster
Silver Spoons
Mr.Belvedere
Webster
(are you ready for this?) Small Wonder
Out of This World (holy cow!)
Benson
My Two Dads
Just the Ten of Us
Head of the Class
227 (snap)
The Facts of Life

and when my mother wasn't watching:

I wanted to be Shera.

(None of the above had anything to do with the Thickster, by the way.)

I must say, my fingers were crossed that his birthday would happen to be today, in the hopes that this post would be a more meaningful tribute. But it's not. Hey, you know you're a great guy when you get a blog tribute outside of your birthday and death day.