Holy Neptune's Nascent Nebula! Star Gazer (nee Star Hustler) is still active!

BLOT: (18 Aug 2010 - 01:57:48 PM)

Holy Neptune's Nascent Nebula! Star Gazer (nee Star Hustler) is still active!

When I was a younger lad, say about from about eight to maybe thirteen or fourteen, I would stay up late on Saturday nights and watch old Doctor Who and, later, Are You Being Served (etc) episodes on APT's WDIQ (yes, W-DIQ, pervert). At the time, it was "Channel 2" out of Dozier. Now it looks like digital channel 10. It's coverage just reached us in Evergreen, and not always super well, but I had this little black and white TV that I would hook up to an elaborate antenna system that was specifically set up to get that one station, and then would still have to get up and tweak it once or twice an hour to get better reception. After their Saturday late night block (which was prefaced by, and I think still is, the Lawrence Welk Hour/Show, which I hated as a kid), they would have a short, couple-of-minute program called The Star Hustler. "Some people hustle pool, some people hustle cars. now here's that man you've heard about, the one who hustles stars."¹. Then it would start playing Isao Tomita's rendition of Debussy's Arabesque No. 1, and Jack would come out and say something like "Greetings, fellow stargazers!" and would go on a short lecture about some event or planet or what have you that you could see naked eye. Then he ended it with "Keep looking up".

I have not watched the show since some time in the early 90s, and in that human way, had assumed it was no more. It had a quaint name, a quaint feel, with bad green-screen technology and an unusual host. Still, I miss it from time to time. Especially when I'm watching one of the old Doctor Who episodes or "Brit-coms". Today it was especially bad, because I was watching the DW serial "The Leisure Hive" that not only was one of the old ones back on APT but also happened to have some horrid green-screen moments. I decided to look old Star Hustler (LGT: Wikipedia) up. And found out that it is now Star Gazer (LGT: Official site). Holy crap. It's still around!

For sample...

And, it's quality is pretty poor but you can see on of the mid 80s ones that I might have watched as an 8 year old: The Centaurs Secret Revealed and Tipping Tea on a Terrible Tail. Notice that half the featured videos beside it involve Star Gazer, and half involve breasts (at least when I open the link).

According to the Wiki link, above, the show changed it's name due to the Internet's obsession with porn, and there is no way that Hustler would not trip up something as a keyword. Reading through the website also confirmed my tingling suspicion that it was aired nightly (or near nightly) but I wouldn't have seen it on school nights and such. At any rate, good times...

1: Of course I could not remember that whole thing, so I looked it up on this long and truly fascinating read about the birth of the program and the travails of its host: THE MANY PHASES OF JACK HORKHEIMER [note, I have a copy on my site, but the original was linked to here, since there are spaces in that link, it might not work just right].

TAGS: Science Popularization, TV Shows

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 33
BY MONTH: August 2010