Once in a while, something happens for no apparent reason that completely blows your mind. It's not always something life-changing. Sometimes it's just a little synchronicity that makes you think something's going on. One of those things happened tonight.
I had invited my family over to watch some TV, and when I turned on my DVR, Tara noticed an episode of Star Trek on the menu. These are the original episodes with Kirk, Spock and McCoy from the late 1960s, but they have been enhanced with upgraded CGI. I started playing the episode, which had been recorded several days ago on one of our local TV channels, just to show the girls what the upgraded scenes look like. The episode was "The Corbomite Maneuver", where Captain Kirk saves the Enterprise yet again, thanks in part to his deft understanding of the game of poker.
We started watching and got hooked enough that we had to finish the episode. At the very end, the alien being is played by 7-year-old Clint Howard, brother to Ron Howard and a recognizable character actor. We all knew we'd seen him before, but we couldn't place his name or any of his other roles.
Then came the weird part. We started watching this week's episode of Heroes, which was recorded on NBC on Monday. Right after the opening credits, who should appear on screen but the very same Clint Howard, 43 years older and now 50, playing a bit part on the show. We all gave a start and were amazed that we had, by pure coincidence, just seen an actor age four decades in the space of a few minutes.
And that's my fun story of TV watching for today. Back to reading The Books of Magic.
