Spaaaaaace Ghoooooost!

I've been a fan of Space Ghost since 1994. I know this because that is
when I got "The Mask" on VHS. It included a special episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast where he interviews Jim Carrey, and Cameron Diaz. I was 10 at the time, and I was absolutely fascinated. A cartoon talking to people?!?

A couple years later, I write a fan letter. They were kind enough to put their address at the end of each episode for just such things. It was 6 pages of 13 year old chicken scratch. I propose the idea of SG toys and request to be put on "The Space Ghost Crew", which was another brain child of mine. I wasn't sure what this crew would do, but I wanted in. I closed my manifesto requesting a signed picture. In my mind, this was a drawing of space ghost signed by the cartoonist that made it. What I got was an autographed, black and white, glossy 8x10 of Zorak and Moltar. No Space Ghost. This was the opposite of what I wanted, but I treasured it nonetheless.

My sense of humor never matured, so I continued watching the show long after my friends either grew tired of it, or completely turned on it. Was I the only one that "got it"? I remember one night they ran a marathon, so I taped the whole thing and watched it daily. That tape is in poor shape nowadays.

I realized early on that a big reason I loved the show so much was the voiceof SG himself, George Lowe. I was really excited for the Brak Show, even though I didn't care for Brak, because George was voicing Brak's dad. I enjoyed his character so much, that I created a website dedicated to the character. Not the show, just dad. It was a silly little site with a forum and wallpaper. But I liked it. One day I was looking at my stats tracker, and noticed a bunch of hits coming from atl90.turner.com. A little investigation lead me to realize this was Williams St. headquarters in Atlanta! They somehow found my weird little corner of the web, and were passing it around the office. Wow.

A few days later, I get an email from Pete Smith, a producer on the Brak show. He said he really liked the site, and he wanted to send me some stuff, like concept art, and animation cels, and a script for an unmade episode. I was skeptical, but sure enough, about a week later, I had a giant envelope of stuff from adult swim! I emailed Pete to thank him, and he told me that he passed the link on to George Lowe because he would certainly get a kick out of it. That night, contact was made. I got an email from George Lowe himself.

"What a shrine!!!
-G"

Short and to the point, but the most amazing moment of my life. This was in 2004, 10 years after I had started watching Space Ghost. I now had a email from the man himself. We got to talking, and he offered to do an interview for the Dad Shrine. I gathered questions for him from my forum members, and a week later, I was on the phone with Space Ghost. After that, we still kept in touch. He would even call randomly to shoot the breeze. It wasn't often, but to hear "Jeffy!" in that SG voice was always really cool. He even expressed interest in me doing a site for him. And that leads me to the reason for this post. 7 years after he expressed interest in me working on his site, it's happening. I plan to document the methods I use and just brainstorm on this blog.

Thanks for reading!







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