Hi, gang. This is just a quick note to let you know I’ve added a new page here at the site to sort of round up my poetry recordings. You should be able to find any one of them right here:
The page includes a link to my Youtube channel. I hope you all had a terrific Thanksgiving yesterday!
Ziff-Davis Publishing.
As I explained last year, monster movies were simply a part of Thanksgiving if you lived in the Tri-State region around New York City between 1976 and 1985. This was due to WOR-9’s “Holiday Film Festival” broadcast, which actually also extended to the day following the holiday after the lineup’s first year. (People just called it the “Monster Movie Marathon.”)
As a kid, I was a hell of a lot more thrilled with the monster movies than anything being served for dinner. (Remember, video stores only began arriving the early 1980’s. Before that, you usually had to catch a movie on television if you wanted to see it at all. It’s why every house had a “TV Guide.”)
“King Kong vs. Godzilla” (1962) was one gem in the marathon. (Or, at least, it seemed like an amazing film to a gradeschool boy.) I was raised with the enduring myth that this Japanese film had two endings — an American version where King Kong prevailed, and a Japanese version where its native Godzilla was the victor.) My Dad told me that, and I remember being fascinated that a movie could have two different endings. I actually only learned just now, writing this blog entry, that it was a particularly widespread urban legend — stemming from an erroneous report in “Spacemen” magazine. The American version of the film had tons of alterations, but the outcome was essentially the same — King Kong won.
There were always a few more Godzilla movies on the day after Thanksgiving, too. “Son of Godzilla” (1967) was one of them; that was always hit with the kids. (I could swear at some point there was a cartoon adaptation in the early 80’s.) It was weird how 80’s kids apparently loved that ostensibly “cute” character; the adult in me today swears that “Son of Godzilla” looks like an upright, reptile-shaped poop. (Seriously, check out the second clip below.)
“Godzilla vs. Megalon” (1973) was another one I seem to remember being pretty thrilled with. I was even occasionally scared of the giant monsters in flicks like these. (Hey, I was a little kid.) Even as a first- or second-grader, though, I was smart enough to question why these movies were weirdly inconsistent. (Why was Godzilla a bad guy who destroyed Tokyo in one movie, but the “good monster” that the Japanese rooted for in another?)
I’m learning now that “Godzilla vs. Megalon” was the target of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. I’m going to have to hunt that one down.
Happy Thanksgiving!!
A friend of mine attended a street art festival in Houston over the weekend; this is one of the photos she took. The chalk artwork here is an update on Norman Rockwell’s 1943 painting, “Freedom From Want.” (Look closely and you can see a few tweaks.)
An Pan-Seok’s “The End of the World” miniseries (2013) appears to be an intelligent, if a little understated, Korean epidemiological thriller. I was engaged enough by the first episode to rate it a 7 out of 10, and I’ll probably keep watching it to give the show a chance.
It reminded me of Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” (2011), though the dramatic elements here are even more underplayed — at times the first episode even felt like a documentary. It’s a bit slow, but it really looks like screenwriter Park Hye-Reon has done his homework. (The miniseries was based on the novel “Infectious Disease,” by Bae Young-Ik.)
Assuming the series retains the tone and pace of its pilot episode, I believe this would appeal to only serious fans of disease thrillers. To them, I’d recommend it.
DC Comics.
“All Our Faults Are Fallen Leaves”
Again an annual angled auburn hand
announces advancing Autumn —
fingers aflame, the first Fallen leaf,
As slow in its descent, and as red,
as flailing Lucifer.
Hell in our sylvan vision
begins with a single spark.
The sting of the prior winter
subsided in July,
eroded at August.
Now, as at every September,
let new and cooler winds
fan a temperate flame.
May this nascent season only
bring brick-tinted perdition
and carmine Abaddon.
Where flames should burn, may there be
only rose tones on wide wine canvasses,
tormentless florid scarlets,
griefs eased in garnet trees.
What I hold in my heart to be true
is Edict at every Autumn:
Magentas may not make
forgetful a distracted God,
unless we ourselves forget
or burn to overlook.
Auden told us “One Evening”
to “Stand, stand at the window,”
and that we would love our neighbor,
but he didn’t counsel at all
about how we should smolder there.
Outside my window, and yours,
if the Conflagration itself
acquits us all by claiming only
the trees upon the hill,
the Commonwealth a hearth,
Virginia an Inferno,
Then you and I
should burn in our hearts to absolve
ourselves and one another,
standing before the glass,
our curtains catching,
our beds combusting,
our bureaus each a pyre.
Take my hand, my friend, and smile,
there on the scorching floor,
beneath the searing ceiling and
beside the blackening mirror
that troubles us no longer,
for, about it, Auden was wrong.
God’s wrathful eye
will find you and I
incandescent. The damned
are yet consigned to kindness.
All our faults are Fallen leaves.
Forgive where God will not.
Out of our purgatory
of injury’s daily indifference,
let our Lake of Fire
be but blush squadrons of oaks,
cerise seas of cedar, fed
running ruby by sycamore rivers,
their shores reassured
by calm copper sequoias,
all their banks ablaze
in yellowing eucalyptus.
Let the demons we hold
harden into bark
holding up Inferno.
All their hands are branches now;
all their palms are burning.
There, then, softly burning, you and I,
may our Autumn find
judgmentless russets,
vermilion for our sins,
dahlia forgiveness,
a red for every error,
every man a love,
every love infernal,
and friends where devils would reign.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2015
— Author’s note: the poem to which I’ve responded above, with its images of standing at the window and the mirror, is W. H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.”
Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson.
DC Comics.
Hey, gang — if you missed its appearance last week over at The Bees Are Dead, here is the audio for my reading of Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron’s “Operation Staffhound.” The poem is from his superb 2014 dystopian science fiction novel in poetry format, “The Pustoy.”
“Operation Staffhound” describes the brutal domestic police force employed by Lev Solokov, the future dictator of Britain and the novel’s central antagonist.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 