This blog was begun Wednesday night April 15th, and completed the following evening :
I can hardly believe I'm gonna be 60 in eleven hours, not because I'm unprepared (I know what comes after 59, lol), but because it once seemed so distant and now.......here it is, haha. I can remember thinking, when I was around 20 or maybe younger, "wow, I won't be forty until the year 2000"! The millennium seemed light years away, but I also remember pondering further : "And I won't be sixty until 2020". Both the age and the year seemed impossibly far off, something for a Future Version of Myself to mull over. For my 20 year old self, these thoughts were just a flash in the pan, brought on by the fantastic sounding numerals..........2000 (40)...........2020! (60!).
Time doesn't start to speed up until you are about 40, and even then the process begins gradually. Prior to 40 the years are eternal, but once you hit that age you notice a shift in perspective. You start to think in seasons rather than years : "Boy, summer sure went by fast". Suddenly it's Spring again. By 50 you are thinking in months, "man, it's August already? Christmas was five minutes ago". And then, by about age 54 or so, you just settle into the cycle of Time Moving Ever Faster, like a car around a race track. In my case, you were just 59, now you're 60. :)
But the good news is that time also moves very slowly. For instance, if you look backwards in memory, some events in your life seem so distant that it feels like they happened "in another lifetime", right?. Others can feel as if they took place "only yesterday". For myself, these kinds of time-bending memories do not always adhere to a linear order. For instance, a memory from kindergarten (55 years ago) can feel like yesterday, whereas one from my high school years is from another lifetime. This phenomenon can mix things up all over the map, to the point where 1964 can feel like it came after 1975, which came after 1998, which came before 1971, and what the heck happened to 1967? Did it disappear entirely? So yeah, time is a trip as we've mentioned many times, and it only goes fast in the day-to-day, year by year "counting forward" sense. If you are going by memory, or projection into the future, or just being present in the moment (not easy to do), it goes much, much slower. Remember that in childhood, before we got "used to things" a year seemed to take forever, and in a good way.
So that's time for ya. It goes fast and slow, all at The Same Time. I have a quote to bolster me today, when I think about the "new number", the one beginning with 6. Upon the occasion of his own 60th birthday ten years ago, the great Carl Palmer remarked "60 is the new 40". I've never forgotten that quote, and now I can use it myself! :)
So let's see, where were we? Oh yeah, tonight's motion picture was called "The Amazing Colossal Man" (1957), the debut feature by director Burt I. Gordon, who we became fans of after watching "Tormented" the other night. We've probably all seen "Colossal" as well, though I didn't notice the familiarity myself until the Man in question became Colossal, but more on that in a moment. Here we go with the story:
Along with several of his troops, Lt. Colonel Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) is crouched in a trench at the Nevada Test Site, preparing to witness the detonation of America's first plutonium bomb. Suddenly, during the countdown, some nitwit flies his Cessna over the restricted airspace. The control tower orders him to land, but in doing so he crashes. Colonel Manning tries to save him, rushing to pull the man from his plane before the test bomb explodes, but it's too late.
Ka-BLAMMO!!! (huge mushroom cloud, shock wave, firestorm, etc.) The plane and pilot are vaporised, as is the model town built to demonstrate the effects of the blast. But as for Colonel Manning? Curiously, he is not blown to smithereens. All his clothes are burned off, yes, as is as most of his skin - which isn't good - but other than that he's faring pretty well under the circumstances (and sorry about the grisly details). But then things get better. He is taken to the base hospital, where against all odds, and given little chance for survival, his skin miraculously grows back by the morning. He remains unconscious but it looks like he's gonna pull through. But then things get worse! When his girlfriend (Cathy Downs) arrives at the base later in the day, she is told she can't see him. His status is now classified.
After doing some in-house detective work, Downs finds his room number and sneaks past the sentry in order to see the Colonel.........only to scream and back away in terror, because he is now 18 feet tall! How the heck did that happen, I hear you ask? Well, according to Col. Manning's doctor (William Hudson), his growth spurt is related to the same rapid cell regeneration that caused his skin to grow back. "It's an unexpected side effect of the plutonium radiation". Unexpected without a doubt! Downs asks the doctor what will happen if Manning's growth continues unabated. After some quick calculations he gives her the grim prognosis : "By tomorrow he'll be 55 to 60 feet tall".
"Oh please, please don't give up on him"!, she begs.
"I assure you we'll do everything we can", answers the Doc, trying to provide a ray of hope. "We're working on an antidote at this very moment".
When Downs returns the next day, Manning has been moved to a Secret Facility in (where else?) Bronson Canyon. She tracks him down, demanding to be let in, but is told it's not a good idea. "Besides", adds the Doctor, "He's no longer cooperating. He won't talk to anyone".
"He'll talk to me"!, Downs exclaims. "I'm his fiancee! Maybe I can help". After considering this, the Doc agrees it might be a good idea. Manning is now being confined inside a large tent outside the hospital grounds. That he is now indeed 55 feet tall, as predicted, doesn't faze Downs. She tries to talk some sense into Manning, but he has retreated into cynicism and is sullen in response to her propositions. "But Glenn........they're trying to help you"!
This was the scene where I recognized I'd seen the movie before (probably decades ago on late-night tv), and you would remember it too, because Manning now looks like a gigantic version of Mr. Clean, with shaved head and chest and wearing only a swimsuit. All the chairs and tables look like dollhouse furniture, but what's also memorable is his rant about being seen as a sideshow freak : "Look at me! The Amazing Colossal Man! Line up to get a look at the monster, bring your friends and family! How do you expect me to live a normal life like this"? But then he turns the tables. "Wait a minute.....maybe I'm not the freak. I'm not a giant......it's all of you who are small! Yes, that's it! You're the ones who are different, not me"! As I recall, it's a pretty famous "outcast" speech that sort of put this movie on the map with the MST3K crowd. Feeling sorry for himself, Manning will now go on an equally famous pseudo-rampage, where he will stomp all around Las Vegas, but given his newfound ire, it's perplexing that he doesn't do anywhere near the damage you'd expect. I thought he was gonna completely trash the place, but instead he just toys with some of the landmarks along the Strip, like when he breaks off an oversized high heel shoe set atop a casino, only to put it back. He's a pouty Colossal Man more than a genuinely angry one.
Had he actually gone on the warpath, engaging the military with all their hardware, there might've been an exciting conclusion to this Paean to Gigantism. Instead, the ending just sort of peters out. The story begins with promise, but just when all of the scientific jargon is leading up to an Amazing Breakthrough, Manning starts acting like a moody overgrown teenager and gets all philosophical and depressed on us. It seems out of character, what with him being a highly disciplined military officer, but then I've never been 55 feet tall, so who am I to say? I'd probably resort to sarcasm, too.
It's still worth a view, if only to take a trip down Memory Lane (of late night Sci-Fi movie re-runs), and I've gotta say again that Bert I. Gordon is no hack, as some would have him. We've seen two of his movies now and everything about them looks professional, like Grade A theatrical releases. "The Amazing Colossal Man" is excellent right up until the tent scene, and then things go awry because Gordon diverts from the science fiction aspect to get a bit wishy-washy. Had he kept it a straight monster movie, it could've been a classic. I'm still gonna rate it Two Solid Thumbs Up because of it's very strong first half. See it for the plutonium test if nothing else. /////
That's all for tonight. I had a nice birthday today, hanging out by the duck pond for a while, enjoying the sunshine. I had some very nice wishes from friends on FB, as well as a few birthday phone calls. When Disneyland re-opens, I wanna celebrate it all over again, and everyone is invited. :):)
See you in a little while at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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