I'm back. Sorry I didn't write last night, but it was a case of I Didn't Watch A Movie So I Had Nothing To Report Because My Life Is Otherwise Marginally Boring Right Now.
I mean, it's not that bad because I do go to awesome concerts every once in a while, and I read a lot of interesting books, and I even still get out on a hike now and then. And even if I worked 24/7 and never had free time for anything, there are still many interesting subjects to write about on any given day.
I think it's more a case of When I Don't Watch A Movie It Can Be Hard For Me To Think Of Something To Write About, because I don't wanna bitch about politics (although I will be leading the High-Fives all around when Trump is impeached), and even though I have a lot of interests, I'm not always focused enough on any single one of them to write anything of substance.
Part of it is that I try to write every single day, and most days I have at least a movie or an anecdote or two. But as can be expected, it's not always easy to come up with something seven days a week. Sometimes I can do stream-of consciousness, beginning with a random observation. Like today, I was listening to 1260AM, the Oldies station, and they played "Levon" by Elton John. It's a great song and I've heard it a hundred times, but for some reason this time, I found myself thinking, "what the Hell is that song about, anyway"? Bernie Taupin sometimes wrote these little stories as lyrics for Elton, who sang them as if the stories were about real people. "Daniel" is another such song. But also with "Daniel", you go : "just who is that song about"?, because Elton makes it sound so personal and real.
So even though I've heard "Levon" over and over again since the early 70s, for some reason today I Googled "Levon Song Meaning", and many links came back. I discovered I am not alone in wondering about those lyrics.
And it turns out that they don't mean anything in particular. In an interview, Bernie Taupin called it an exercise in free form writing that started because he liked Levon Helm of The Band. The song developed to be about a guy who wants to break free of his job and his lot in life, but Taupin didn't set out to write it that way. He just liked the name "Levon", and a bunch of lyrics came out.
That's what I mean when I say that sometimes, if your mind is active, you can simply take a minor thought about anything at all and turn it into a blog. The problem for me is that my mind is not always active at 1am, which is the time of night when I begin writing.
I will shut up now, but even the act of 'Splaining Myself served as conversation material, and that is good. :)
I am writing from home tonight, off work until Wednesday the 20th.. And, I did watch a movie tonight! Hooray.......It was another classic Creature Feature from my Sci-Fi Collection called "20 Million Miles To Earth". That is one hell of a title, and because there is also a movie called "5 Million Miles To Earth", the question must be asked : "Is '20 Million Miles To Earth' four times as great as '5 Million Miles To Earth"? Because you would expect it to be, right?
Unfortunately, the answer is no, and that is because "5 Million Miles To Earth" was the British title for "Quatermass And The Pit", which is one of the Ten Scariest Movies Ever Made.
"20 Million Miles" is quite good in it's own right, though, because for one thing - that's a lot of doggone miles. If you have 20 Million Miles in your movie, it's a good movie, period.
The story begins in Sicily, in the waters of the Mediterranean (aka The Sea Of The Medium Terrain). Two fishermen are out in their small boat, when all of a sudden a Gigantic Spaceship appears out of nowhere. It is not a flying saucer, more of a rocket jet, but it is huge and no sooner does it appear than it crashes into the sea, not far from the fishermen, who turn their boat around quickly and row toward the rocket wreck, in order to try and save the lives of anyone aboard.
Only the captain lives, and it turns out that he and his crew had been on a secret mission to Venus, so now you know for sure that you've gotten your 20 Million Miles worth.
On Venus, the crew had captured a Specimen that they had placed in a metal tube. The Specimen was to be studied in a Secret Military Lab to determine how life exists on Venus, with it's inhospitable Ammonia Atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the metal tube is found on the beach by a small boy, who opens it, and - seeing the lizard inside, encased in jelly - opts to make some quick pocket change by selling the critter to a local zoologist, who is fascinated by his new charge but is unaware of it's extraterrestrial nature. Until he checks on it in it's cage a few hours after buying it, and discovers that it has tripled in size.
And it's only gonna get Huger! Or, since I am not sure Huger is a word, I will use the pronunciation instead : "Hy-oo-ger". Meaning really big!
And big it gets, this Lizard from Venus, created by Ray Harryhausen and for the most part very effective as one of his trademark special effects. As I watched I was thinking, "you just know that Spielberg saw this as a ten year old kid, and "Jurassic Park" was hatched in his mind. Yeah, I know it was written by Michael Crichton, but he probably saw "20 Million Miles To Earth" as well.
I didn't like it quite as much as the recently reviewed "The Giant Claw", because it was more of an action picture and didn't have as much Mad Scientist stuff and Weird Physics, laboratory stuff. Because it was about a Giant Killer Lizard From Venus, the last half hour was dedicated to the Army's attempt to subdue it, in cooperation with Italian authorities, as it made it's final stand in the Colosseum.
The movie really was filmed in Italy, too. And some scenes were shot at Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, at the Garden Of The Gods. That's only 5 Miles From Northridge as opposed to 20 Million Miles From Earth, but I still think it's pretty cool.
The print was in pristine black and white, which by itself is enough to garner Two Giant Lizard Thumbs Up, and I concur.
See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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