Humanity, Rubber Monsters and Gigs

I’m sitting at my desk and drinking coffee while Monster Zero plays on the TV (Bob do you ever watch anything without rubber monsters? Well there are the men in Gorilla suit films. Oh never mind).

I find the Humanity can present such a study in neck snapping contrasts. A few weeks ago a man fell onto the subway tracks as a train was coming into the station. Some guy jumped in after him and saved his life. He didn’t know the first man from Adam. He didn’t even really think about it, he just did it. And a week later two men in Harlem saw a child hanging from fire escape and ran over and caught the kid as it fell. Again the men didn’t know the child from Adam.

I’m thinking about those men and thinking about what the right wing blogs and pundits and talking heads are saying these days. Which boils down to this (apologies to the beach boys):

Bomb bomb bomb,
Bomb bomb Iran
Bomb bomb, bomb
Bomb Bomb Iran
Bomb Bomb Bomb
Bomb Bomb Iran

Let’s bomb Iran
Because we can
Let’s bomb Iran
We are rockin’ and rollin’
We just dig explosions
Bomb Iran

We broke Iraq
We can’t fix it back
So what we want to do
Is Attack someone new
Let’s bomb Iran

(Repeat chorus again and again)

The deaths of more thousands don’t seem to faze them in the least, never mind the uncertainty of expanding the war with the decent chance of setting the Persian Gulf on fire. We are a complex thing.

Meantime the President who made his speech with a deer in the headlights expression and a posture that said “I am holding a Ritz cracker between my butt cheeks” is not saying his opponents don’t have a plan for ending the violence in Iraq. He doesn’t either except send in more troops and hope for the best, which isn’t a plan anyway – just a cover for the real plan which is have the next president fix it.

The one thing all this Iran talk has done has made the beltway TV pundits like Matthews and Russet wonder if he is really that crazy. I know they are late to the party on this, because he is that crazy. Flaming batshit man.

Meantime I find my happy place working on the killer sheep musical. One of the things we want to do is pop some old B Movies lines into the work – Like “You see your stupid minds, Stupid stupid stupid.” Plan 9 – “keep watching the skies” the 1950’s version of the Thing. And of course “they’re coming! They’re coming!” From Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

We also want the bar TV to be a character – every now and then it will pop in with things like “The Department of Homeland Security is urging all citizens to stay away from grass. In New York City people are urged to avoid at all costs the sheep meadow”

I live for junk like this. These days when work gets me down or other troubles haunt my sleep I imagine standing in the back of a small theater and watching as the overture starts and I just smile. Of course after that we will need to move on to other projects like say an Opera set on a Moon base in the 1950’s version of the future. (Kidding).


Watching Monster Zero – a late early Godzilla film if you were – coming right after Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster it has Godzilla as the hero, along with Rodan and mercifully does not feature whining little kids – it does feature aliens which have become a staple of Toho Monster films. It’s notable for a few things. One is the stupid Victory Jump Godzilla does at the end of the first fight he and Rodan have with Ghidrah. It also feature Nick Adams who was in Japan at the time – he was in this as well as The War of the Gargantuas – which has yet to make to DVD yet. Staring with Adams in Monster Zero and War of the Gargantuas was Kumi Muzuno – (pictured – in Monster Zero all the women of planet X look like her – hey you have your dreams I have mine – this will do until the Diana Rigg Planet is discovered).

Another nice moment in Monster Zero is a snarky comment the Controler of Planet X makes to Nick Adams after he asks why they haven’t gotten rid of Ghidrah who is attacking their planet.

“If you have an idea of how to do that, please share it with me” the Controler says, “I would be very greatful”.

One of the reasons I want to see War of the Gargantuas again is because of the scene were the Evil Gargantua (there are two and one is evil) eats a woman and then spits out her clothes like they were the shell of a pumpkin seed. I can still remember the wet slap as the clothes hit the ground and my conflicted reactions “Ugg Gross! Cool! Ha! Ha! Ha! That’s hysterical in a sick sick way” If memory serves later in the film the heroes find more piles of wet chewed clothing making additional happless victims of the Evil Gargantua.

BAND NOTES:

Gigs coming up – Jan 26th at Otto’s Shrunken Head (8 pm) and 169 Bar Feb 4th (10 pm). There is an $8.00 cover at the 169 bar. And we need 6 people to show up to play and then 10 to get a cut. It’s super bowl Sunday so it might not be a good night to do this but guys – there are no New York teams and it looks more like Chicago and San Diego or the Colts. Like who cares right? So see the first half then come on out and see us. We’ll be doing a new song at 169 bar and of course the challenge remains – 100 paying customers we smash a guitar.

Peace, Love, Page Bob Haircuts and alien suits.