Watched the original 1954 Japanese release of Gojira / Godzilla (I bought the DVD). It was not available in the US until 2004, so the 1956 version we all saw with Raymond Burr is not the original. I was amazed to see the difference. The Japanese Gojira version is very coherent - much better editing and no cutaway interruptions of Raymond Burr talking into his tape recorder.

It's also not anything like subsequent Godzilla movies. It mostly philosophical and has personal tragedy laid on top of it. It's not just canons shooting at a big monster.

Backstory (thanks to Cousin Pete)

Source: The Observation Deck

. . . . Toho Company movie producer Tomoyuki Tanaka . . . was tasked with developing a film storyline to fill an unexpected slot in Toho's fall 1954 movie schedule. Inspired in part by past monster movies such as King Kong (1933) and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Tanaka added the element of atomic horror that was still very much in the Japanese social consciousness, but had not yet been directly dramatized in post-war occupied Japan. Along with special effects designer Eiji Tsuburaya and director Ishiro Honda, Tanaka developed the concept of the monster "Gojira", whose name was a combination of the English word "gorilla" and the Japanese word for a whale, "kujira".

An actor in a bulky rubber suit was used to portray Godzilla, as opposed to stop-motion animation. This was a necessity born of a tight special effects shooting schedule, but this method of "suitmation" has become a much-loved constant in the Japanese movie series.

Curiosity won me over and .... this is a photo of the July 1946 atomic bomb test on Bikini Atoll. Happily, the natives were relocated (and could never return) before the tests. The US maintained bomb testing there into the 1950's. Which was the inspiration for adding the nuclear backstory to the movie Gojira.

When I was a kid, I read the book "The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon", about a Japanese fishing boat that was covered in a nuclear cloud from one of these tests: Wikipedia account of the Lucky Dragon.

"You know you're old when you downsize your Christmas tree."
- Deborah J. Leo

After the tree was decorated, I almost put on a Christmas video, but decided rather to read Dicken's "A Christmas Carol". It is short and extremely well written. The narrative parts have the greatest sentences and phrases. The dialog is almost exactly as the 1950 film version starring Alistair Sim.

From that, I decided to start reading "David Copperfield". It's 550pages (on my e-reader, and cost just 99¢), and I'll read it in small bites, along with other stuff at the same time. Probably take me a year to finish it.

My 2nd and absolutely final coloring book picture.

This relaxes some people, but it does not relax me. It's work. For work, it's fun, but it's still work. Here, I finished the main characters by pencil, the erased the stupid background and put an abstract picture I had in back of them.

Confession

After watching the TV program "Snapped" upstairs, I am inspired to make this confession.

I was, generally speaking, a very well-behaved kid. I'll leave that right there for now.

I went to Brooklyn Technical HS, and often wore a jacket & tie to school, and occasionally, a suit !! No joke.

I was a leutenant on the "Service Squad" which meant I helped monitor the general hallway and school grounds behaviour of all the lucky guys that didn't sign up to do this sh#t.

One day I am leaving school late (can't recall why). Wearing a nice suit, maybe my only suit (?), but feeling pretty disgusted with my life. There on the sidewalk, near the curb is a jar of mustard; probably fell out of someone's shopping bag; it was a full jar of mustard.

I had been reading some cool stuff about "The Beat Generation" in the US and "The Angry Young Men in the UK", and was feeling that my very conventional personal life was pretty sucky & conformist, and I was not happy at that moment.

So I decided to throw that jar of mustard through one of the school windows.

I picked it up, stared at the building and picked a window. Ahh . . . that one. When I felt something going wrong. The cap had come off the jar (must not have been tight? or had I unscrewed it myself?) and the full jar of mustard had run down my pants.

Sh#t. Was this the story of my life, or what ?

Not a chance to clean up, I simply walked to the train station and got on board and rode home with yellow crud running down my paints, smelling awful.

I had previously become anti-religious, but I took this to be a direct message from God: "Dave, you can believe or disbelieve whatever you desire to ...... but don't intentionally make problems for other people to deal with."

Okay, God, I thought. And I have tried very hard all my life to have my own beliefs without deliberately (by malice of forethought) making messes for other people to clean up.

I Found My Movie List !

I'm the only one who'll get excited here, but I found that movie review list I started years back, and then lost !!

Dave's movie reviews.

As I love small, often ignored, often non-English movies, this is a big deal to me, because I have forgotten most of the ones on this list, but there it is . I am reorganizing and adding to my DVD collection, so this gives me some forgotten DVD's to buy (at used bargain prices!) in 2019.

I am not much into poetry, except maybe for stuff like Ogden Nash or The Night Before Christmas, but, putting aside her reference to poetry, Laura Riding has some wonderful things to say about "damn the torpedoes - get in touch with your own feelings" ....

A little-know fact is that my father, back when I was sleeping in a bed with baby bars, was a caligrapher by hobby. He had a set of pens (the bottle-dipping kind, and inks of various colors) and a box of nibs, and he wrote stuff on everything (I specifically remember the gothic "S.A.Leo" written in red on our portable record player. And I remember playing my vinyl 78RPM of Peter Rabbit on it !!).

Years later, when he felt I was old enough to appreciate his complaints, he would go on and on about "The ball point pen ruined handwriting in this country", and he was pretty perked up about it. I kind of understood his feelings, but he was intense - he hated ball point pens the whole rest of his life, because they destroyed the use of cursive writing.

In retrospect he was right.

Then keyboards destroyed writing altogether (except for a few historical diehards, like Deb who has spectacular handwriting).

Then Dad's rantings fell silent and the ages passed .... then .... today, as I stumble about the internet, I find an article on a literary website written by angry millenials .....

Dad, the generations have avenged you !

The good news is ....

Lea Seydoux is tagged to reprise her Spectre role in the next James Bond movie, with Daniel Graig. For those of you who missed it, she is wild about me and keeps sending emails to my secret account (or was that a dream I had ?).
She will be the first actress to appear in a "Bond" movie as the same "Bond girl" character.
Anyway, this, and the new Godzilla movie have me ever so hopeful for 2019 cinema releases.

Time for the yearly picture of my subterranean domain. I'm happy with it, but running low on wall space to hang stuff.

I still miss Lexi sitting up at the window (or on my keyboard!).

Puttering, Fidgeting, Tinkering

The small chores of daily life in this "holiday season" have kept me busy and snoozy/sleepy of late. Had not touched a camera or lens for ever it seems. Have watched Christmas movies to get in with the Spirits of the day. Tried to catch up with New Yorker issues, but ended up only reading the cartoons (that I don't understand any more - damn millenials have even influenced the New Yorker!!!) and tossing them in the recycling bin after 6 issues pile up. Organized my DVDs.

"If we'd been successful, I'd probably be dead."

Wayne Kramer was (back when) a "metal" Rock guitarist (with MC5). Went through a life of rapid and excessive highs and lows and spent some years in various prisons for drug use & trafficking. Gets out, moves somewhere new, starts over (clean), "recovered" well, got good jobs, restarted his music .... gets dirty again, life falls apart, goes back to prison. Over and over.

He is a repetitive drug addict, and it has ruined his hopes, his careers, some other people's lives and his own life's numerous restarts.

But, at 70 now, he makes an observation, when talking about (what we would call) success and failure.

Given that he is a hopeless drug addict (if that's what he is), the repeated collapses of his artistic / musical life and his cyclic jail times have possibly been his personal life preservers. His train to hell has been derailed many many times in 50 years.

He remarks about his failure and success in the music world ......"If we'd been successful, I'd probably be dead."

(Credit The New Yorker for the facts, credit me for the words.)

Years go by so fast but hours and days pass slowly. Don't know why, but that's the way it is (and that's merely an observation, not a complaint).

About 50 minutes from now, the Earth will stop precessing in one direction and start precessing in the other direction. For a micro-increment of time (?), the Earth will not wobble. The Winter Solstice ("the sun stands still") is mere moments away. I'm imaging some diehard Druids and Druid-wannabe tourists, huddling around Stonehenge, waiting .... waiting for .... ?

Me? Today I painted the woodwork in the little hall to the downstairs bathroom. I felt that would be more exciting than flying over and kneeling and praying to the Sun at Stonehenge ... but maybe I was wrong because painting was a real bore and my sinuses hurt from sniffing fumes and my bones hurt from crawling around the baseboards.

'Tis the day after Christmas,
We barely survived.
We're worn out, we're tired,
And barely alive.
My blood sugar's max'd out,
My belly is sore.
I'm happy it's over,
I can't take no more.

Some Pictures

Recovering from death

Lexie (my cat) died the first week of October. Not a lot of people really "get" this (she was a cat), but it has been a very sad time for me, as she was my wonderful companion.

In the weeks just after she died, every thought of her was depressing. But as time goes by, thoughts of her now bring back a nice memory, not a sad "I miss Lexie" thought. I do miss her, but my reaction memory is now happier more than it is sad.

I suppose it's a good sign that you are recovering from a death - when you smile thinking about your dead friend.