TV Theme Songs, A Dominatrix and You

Intro Music:
Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live love, make money, and change the world.

Tracey:
Hey, I’m glad you’re here. We are talking about TV theme songs, a dominatrix and you. I sure hope you’re wondering what these things have in common? I’ve had chats with my husband about each of these things individually this week, and he still looked befuddled when I told him what the title of my episode was. He was like, wait, what? I said, yes, they all have something in common. So let’s dive in.

TV theme songs. It feels like a Jeopardy question, but it’s not. If you are a TV watcher, and even if you’re not a big TV watcher, there’s some theme songs that are probably really recognizable for you. You hear it and you immediately remember something about the show. Now, I didn’t pay money to get the rights to play the songs, which would be the ideal, fun way to do this.

Think about the theme song for Cheers where everybody knows your name. You hear the strains of the song and you picture it. Yeah.

What about Hawaii Five-O? Da,da,da,da daa-dum. Da, da, dum da dum..,

Yeah. You know, you think immediately of Hawaii 5-0
.
SpongeBob– who lives in a pineapple under the sea. Yeah.

There’s a show called Bosch. It’s got this really cool jazzy musical theme. It doesn’t have any words. Hmmm, maybe it does have some words, but there’s such few words they’re not the highlight of it. It’s the music and it’s got really cool mesmerizing images with it. It’s one of these that irritates Todd to death. We’ll watch it and he’ll want to skip over it. And I’m like, no, no, I really want to zone out and enjoy the music. But that’s not even the one I want to talk about.

The theme song I want to talk about is the theme for the TV series Psych. Now it ran for eight seasons and it’s been, I don’t know, was that eight or ten years ago it ended? I don’t even know when it ended. We’re currently binging on it, which is why it’s top of mind right now.

But they’ve done something really cool in an area that most people just ignore with their theme song. “I know, you know that I’m not telling the truth” –it’s this peppy little song that they usually play. And for most of the episodes, they play just the regular chorus, but some of them, they’ll play a verse and the chorus. But then other times- I’ve done some research on this.

There are three Christmas seasons, shows that they did where they had a Christmas version of their song, and they even like, put Christmas pictures and emojis and stuff with the pictures to go with the song. So they have a Christmas version.

It was sung in Spanish, two episodes.

Boyz 2 Men recorded like a doo-wop acapella version that they used in a couple of episodes.

They’ve got a Bollywood version that was sung in Hindi.

One time they did, the name of the episode was Dual Spires and it was a parody of the older TV show Twin Peaks. It had its own song that was sung by Julee Cruise, who sang the theme song for Twin Peaks.

They had a superhero theme, complete with comic book images at the beginning.

They did a knock off of The Shining. It wasn’t scary. It was really funny. It’s a funny show.

And they had Curt Smith, who was part of Tears for Fears. He did a version.

So they’ve got all these different versions. Now, I haven’t seen another show do anything like this.

So I started investigating, why did they do it? And what I found out is that the show’s creator, Steve Franks, he created the show Psych, but he also had a band. His band was called the Friendly Indians, and this was one of their songs. So, okay, there’s a little bit of a tie in there. The show creator, band, song. Okay, there’s a tie.

It still doesn’t explain why they did all these versions. I don’t know, maybe somebody lost a bet and had to record it in Hindi and then decided, well, this is kind of fun.

I don’t know. But here’s what I think.

I think that these folks just really enjoy the process of being creative, and we see that creativity in one area in life feeds creativity in other areas. I think they just had fun.

They didn’t make any money off of it. I feel sure that they had to pay money to have the different versions done. So I think they just satisfied this creative itch and it enhanced their creativity in other ways. Now, as a viewer, I know what it does for me. I mean, for heaven sakes, I’m talking about it. It’s prominently part of what I’ve been thinking about this week, that, wow, look what they did. And I know when I’m watching the show, we don’t skip through the opening theme anymore because I always want to know, are they doing the regular one? Are they doing a different one?

It primes me. It helps me appreciate the show more, gives you a little bit more bang for the buck. It’s just a lot of fun. So there we have themes for TV shows.

Now, onto our second topic. This came across my newsfeed the other day, and it’s, I don’t know, three or four years old. Now, in this news article, a 68 year old woman is a dominatrix and has men who pay her $150 an hour to clean her house.

Now, I am not using ‘clean her house’ as a euphemism for anything. I just want to be clear about that. They are literally cleaning her house.

She assumes the role of the dominatrix and she assures us that there is no sex involved. It’s just some kinky domineering dress up, these men pay her, they come and they get in a costume and clean her house.

Now, I will freely admit the thing that intrigues me the most about this idea is not the kinky sex part. It’s that somebody is paying to clean a house.

Oh, my gosh. This woman who, just a complete side note, she discovered her kinky side when she was like in her late fifties. So, you know, you’re just never too old to explore things. I’ll just put that out there.

But I am intrigued that she has taken something that most of us spend our own time or energy or money on and she’s using it to make money.

Oh, my gosh. Let me say this too. This is not my new business venture.

So what do the many variations of the Psych theme song and the creative dominatrix who gets paid to have her house cleaned. What do they have in common with you and me?

We can be creative too.

We can have topsy turvy thinking.

We can do the same kinds of things, not necessarily the same exact things, but if you’re into that okay, but the same kind of things.

We can do it in our own life with relationships, with jobs, with our workday, with how we live life.

Where in your life do you want to spark some creativity? Where do you want to be curious? Where do you just want to do something because it’s fun? Where do you want to do a variation of your theme song? Where do you want to try something different? Where do you want to break out of a rut and do the opposite of what most people do?

I would love to hear how you are exercising your curiosity. How are you sparking your creativity? What variation of your theme song are you playing? What kind of thinking are you turning upside down on its head and somebody’s paying you for something you usually spend your time or your money on?

I think the world is a better place when we experiment, when we expand our horizons and our thinking and it starts with doing little small steps so I’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime let’s go live, love, make some money and change the world.

For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.