My First Time

All petitions should be hated and loathed.

Except this one.

Of course.

The truth about petitions (for entertainment, anyhow) is that back in 1969, NBC threatened to cancel a rather poorly rated, poorly conceived and poorly acted science fiction show that had a shoestring budget and second-rate actors. Thanks, almost completely, to a letter writing campaign Star Trek was saved for an extra season.

That first successful petition has been the bane of television executives the world over. Much of the funding for current television shows is being siphoned into a time-travel fund in order to go back and brutally beat those Star Trek execs within an inch of their collective lives.

Resistance is futile.

Every week someone waves a petition at me to save, change, bring back, or end a television show, transfer it to DVD, VHS, Pan and Scan, Widescreen or otherwise alter the space-time continuum to change time, speed up the harvest, or teleport them off this rock.

By the way, PAN AND SCAN MUST DIE.

Sorry, just had to get that out of the way.

DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE.

Ok, I’m (DIE) done now.

The truth is that most petitions fail utterly and completely to achieve any of the objectives that they established. They raise false hopes in viewers, and basically waste a lot of time for both the petitioners and the studio execs. Execs are notoriously blind to anything except bigger boobs, bigger pecs and bigger profits.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty centered on those things too!

But when in college I heard the lyric (from some band whom I can’t recall at the moment), “I am what I am/ Just like Kunta Kinte/ Mister Kunta Kinta”. As an English and Speech Communication major at the time, I understood there was an underlying significance to this turn of phrase. But I was at a loss to explain it. My roommate, Win, had to explain just who Kunta Kinte was.

This is, perhaps, forgivable, since I was four when the mini-series Roots was released on television. Though for some reason I can remember Star Wars which was released that same year. Fascinating.

But if you asked me who Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, or Lord Toranaga, or even Omi-san was, I would have been able to tell you in an instant. The mini-series king was, without a doubt, Richard Chamberlain. He starred in Centennial in 1978 and The Thorn Birds in 1983 and even the original The Bourne Identity the first movie to ask, "Who is Keyser Soze?".

Are you Keyser Soze?

That's just what Keyser Soze would say.

But Chamberlain's crowning achievement was his starring role in a classic piece of artistic, acting, directing and storytelling was his 1980 roles in Shogun.

Ooo, just saying the name gives me shivers.

Shogun.

See, there they go again.

Based on the James Clavell novel of the same name, Shogun tells the story, though the eyes of a talented English pilot, of seventeenth century feudal Japan on the brink of one of its greatest civil wars which would ultimately unite it under the Tokogawa Dynasty for the next four-hundred-odd years. It is intrigue, politics, adventure, culture and men with big swords and bigger egos.

Oh, I think there’s a girl in there too.

Maybe a sappy love-story, I don’t really recall.

Transferred to the screen by director Jerry London, and brought to life with the skills of the very talented Toshiro Mifune as Lord Toronaga, Shogun is a masterpiece of nine-hours of the greatest television ever shown.

And yet . . . yet, it has yet to be transferred to DVD.

Can you imagine? I’ve been waiting very, very, very patiently for the past ten years to own this movie, and I refuse to own it on the eighteen VHS tapes that I know I will just wear out after three months.

Alright, it’s only four tapes, but the point is that this movie will still be worn out.

As well it should be.

And so, I write to you today to urge you to start a petition. But this time, a petition that not only has justification, but a moral and spiritual integrity that support it. This is a petition that was called upon not just by me, a mere mortal, but by God on High, Himself. A petition that not only will not fail, but cannot fail.

Please, please, please, please, please!

I’ll stop sending those, "Bring Back Old Trek" petitions.

Personal Note: For those of you Chosen Ones out there who are aware, Shogun is now available on DVD, through no small effort of this very article.