Still Around

Yes, I'm still here....and the fact that I only managed to post 3 times last month is a great disappointment to me. The dearth of postings from the Firefly Ranch is not due to lack of interest, believe me. I'll spare everyone the boring details, but it boils down to one thing: WORK. I find myself remembering the good old days back in graduate school when I fantasized about the time when school would end and I'd have time for Papa Cash, my cats, my art, my blog, and watching movies.

HA.

Hardee har freaking har.

But in light of the fact that there are many people who need a job badly and probably want to kick me for bitching about working too much, I'll keep my whining to a minimum. Suffice it to say, however, that there needs to be a balance between work and non-work, and right now my scales are tipped much too far in one direction. I do have plans in the making to correct this - but for now, it is what it is, and I just have to deal with it.

So today, like any other day off, all Mama wants is to sleep in, have a delicious alcoholic beverage, and watch herself some deliciously cheesy monster movie.

I almost got all three today.


Usually B&W + mutated insect/arachnid/sea creature + Richard Denning (from Creature from the Black Lagoon) + stop motion effects would be an instant winner for me. But I thought The Black Scorpion was just okay. The mutated scorpion was fun, and stop motion monsters make me giddy with joy no matter what. But everything inbetween was slightly boring and there wasn't even enough cheesiness to really poke a little fun at.

But, as always, Mother has picked out her favorite things about The Black Scorpion.

Ahh, Mexico. Where the children keep the booze flowin'.


Scorpions come back to life after being embedded in rock for thousands of years and then make cute lil squeaky noises.

Space age technology rules.

Making out, space suit style.

Giant worm vs Giant Scorpion!!

In the end, the tanks and the helicopters always come, don't they?

Perhaps more fun than the actual movie are the handful of short special features. The stop motion in the Black Scorpion was performed by Pete Peterson and supervised by Willis O'Brien. O'Brien was the special effects artist behind the original King Kong, and also helped give Ray Harryhausen his start with Mighty Joe Young. Harryhausen is featured in two very short interviews, along with 'lost' test footage by Peterson for two movies that were never made. My favorite is the Harryhausen/O'Brien produced dinosaur segment for a documentary called The Animal World. It's all kinds of neato, and reminds me of the trips to the Milwaukee zoo where I talk Papa Cash into taking pictures of me running away from the animatronic dinosaurs.

Which makes me giggle hysterically like a mental case. Then I send the pictures to my Mom. Who then, in turn, writes me saying how terrifying being chased by dinosaurs must be. I also made him do it at the Milwaukee Museum once with the life sized model of the Woolly Mammoth. Because that is how I roll.

One announcement before I sign off - Unfortunately I've had to turn on comment moderation. I'm finding that I'm getting a lot of stupid comments that I'm having to delete. Even more annoying is they're not even real comments - they're just characters that nobody can read. I very much appreciate the real comments that I do get, so I'm disappointed that I have to make this change, but I'm also tired of deleting these dumb ass things.

Here's hoping July will be more prolific....
Mother Firefly