BGM

Brought to you by 80s TV. BGM stands for Bad Guy Music, the foreshadowing score in a movie or TV show that warns viewers there's a bad guy lurking just out of the hero's or heroine's sight.

I spent far too much of the 80s watching TV with my parents, classics (now available on DVD!) such as Dallas, Remington Steele, Moonlighting, and that sentimental favorite, Hart to Hart. Remember that one? Lovebird husband/wife team Jonathan and Jennifer Hart (80s screen icons Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers; series created by 80s "literary" icon Sidney Sheldon) brought evildoers to justice in glamorous settings with impeccable couture. Their weekly adventures were so fraught with peril that the Media clan renamed the show The Jon & Jen Who Are We Almost Going to Kill This Week Car Chase Hour. BGM featured especially prominently in H2H, making it perhaps more of a comedy than intended.

Closely related to BGM is SGHM, Something's Gonna Happen Music, that auditory omen that tips you off to imminent events. Yeah, the warning chords — dunt dunt DUN! — that make you holler at the screen: "Jon! Jen! Look out! It's a trap! Can't you hear it?" Melodrama would be nowhere without it.

I've often wished for a soundtrack for my life so I wouldn't miss out on these helpful cues. I'd like to hear BGM if there's a mugger waiting in the parking ramp or a skeeze asking for a date, or a little SGHM before a tire goes flat or a computer crashes. I'm not sure how much good it would do me, really, since I still wouldn't know exactly what danger lay in wait. But I'd have a chance to stop, look, and listen, and maybe head disaster off at the pass.

Come to think of it, it might also be nice to have some stirring FSM, or Fight Scene Music, playing for my next bout with a certain customer service department . . .

Anyway. In other news, the Media Sensation will be on a mini-vacation the 26th and 27th, out of town for another Rockapella road trip. No BGM predicted, just TNACM (Top-Notch A Cappella Music). Stay tuned, true believers.

Today around the world: April 25 is Pesach, the start of Passover, in the Jewish faith. For Americans, it's Arbor Day; for Swazilanders, it's National Flag Day.