I've had insomnia ever since I was a little kid, which meant that I was more than usually attuned to the oddities of late night TV than most when I was growing up. One thing I miss about the pre-cable days is that the main thing local TV stations used to fill up the overnight hours were cheap old movies. Although I don't remember a thing about the film itself -- I probably turned the channel within the first five minutes -- I distinctly remember watching the opening credits of the 1969 film Goodbye Columbus on late night TV in Boulder when I was 10 or 11 years old, because this song stuck with me forever. It's one of the earliest examples I ever heard of a certain brand of pop music that's a big favorite of mine: stuff that's right on the edge of being hopelessly square but is nevertheless convinced of its own youthquake exuberance. Exhibit A: the theme to Love American Style, which uncoincidentally was co-written by Charles Fox, who wrote the incidental score to this movie.

I've still never seen this movie, but in high school, I read the Philip Roth novella that it's based on. I sometimes wonder if this movie is as depressing as the story, because if it is, this chirpy theme song is seriously false advertising.

-Stewart Mason