There are occasions when you are sleeping along just fine and someone wakes you for some reason  – maybe worthwhile, maybe not – and then you are AWAKE. Obviously AWAKE and then that word begins to stretch itself out and grow taller and pretty soon you are  AWAKE with a Times Square New Year’s Eve Awareness.

This is one of those occasions. In the old days, which we now refer to as “in the day”, it was common to turn on the TV and see what was on The Late Night Movie. Sometimes you got lucky and it would be a classic with real actors and dialogue that didn’t fall flat and a plot. It was a crapshoot, but there was a comfort in a flickering black and white drama of merit or even a Japanese monster movie when you were awake alone at night.

Now, I could stick a DVD right here in this old computer and watch a classic of my choice. I could even find one of those gag gift DVD’s that feature some movie made on a tiny budget and shown three times at a matinée in Peoria. But it’s the principle of the thing and there is just not the companionship found in a random late night programming schedule: Hey, you’re awake and alone too? Well, watch me make the lighting dance on your dark, nighttime walls. And don’t mind the 10 minute commercials if you’re watching WGN. I mean, you know how my plot is going to go and if you fall asleep during a commercial, you won’t miss anything – like whodunit?

Heck, I even miss the homemade car commercials on WGN; I just flat out miss my late night sessions with that iconic station.

So, although I am AWAKE,  I am going to cuddle down and think about the 40’s and old cars and rainy nights with water dripping off men’s fedoras – and maybe Barbara Stanwick or Joan Crawford or that second tier movie actor who was almost a big star and chased robbers or traipsed through Africa in jodphurs and a pith helmet.