The Thing

I'm going to venture a little into B-Movie Catechism territory and talk about a film for a little bit.

The first time I saw The Thing I was twelve years old and was spending the night over at a friend's house. They had cable and The Thing was playing. I still remember sitting on the floor watching as a dog's face split like a banana peel. And it just got more gory from there. My mother didn't let me see most PG films so this was forbidden fruit. And like Adam and Eve I was sorry at the time that I tasted it. I had nightmares for a while after. (If you haven't seen the movie it was really groundbreaking in the amount of blood, guts, and monsters that looked like guts.

And that's what a lot of critics and regular people took from the movie (not that I blame them.) But if you separate the gore and view the movie from a storytelling and cinematic perspective the film approaches greatness.

The opening of the movie begins with a flying saucer hurtling toward earth which I personally could have done without. It seems to have been placed there for the slower audience members who later might question, "how did a flying saucer get buried in the ice?" So cut that part out.

The next thing you see is the title card in which light bursts through suggesting the nature of the monster killing from the inside out. It is genuinely creepy and was fashioned after the titlecard of the original film version of this story; The Thing From Another World, made in 1951.

The original short-story was about trust and here it was deftly fashioned into an allegory for the post World War II era in which it was made. The idea of a foreign body infiltrating and imitating someone you know echoed the concerns of the day; the spread of Communism and it's agents and sympathizers in the United States, and to some extent the film industry itself.

Similarly the 1982 version is an allegory of the times, only accidentally. Unbeknownst to the filmmakers, the AIDs epidemic was just beginning to make news. The similarities between the two, while completely accidental, are almost as creepy as the movie itself:

- The thing kills on the cellular level.
- The only way for the characters of the film to find out who is infected is to test their blood.
- The thing is projected to take over the world if it isn't stopped.
- The thing only attacks when two people are alone.
- The cast of the film is completely male (not indicative of AIDs as a disease itself but more of the prevailing notion early on that it was a "gay" disease.)

Anyway, the film really begins with a dog running over ice chased by a helicopter whose occupants are shooting at the dog. It's basic storytelling to begin the story in the middle, but basic isn't bad. On the contrary it's incredibly effective and you find yourself wanting to know more just as the characters of our story do.

Now I'm not going to give you a scene by scene blow. If you haven't seen the movie, you should. If you have then you know what I'm talking about. This movie does an excellent job of setting it's atmosphere. The music is perfect (a score not provided by the director himself which is unusual for this director.) The look of the film is perfect which is pretty hard considering there is a lot of snow and ice. Some of the lighting choices are brilliant; whole scenes are lit with flares alone. There are really great parts here.

But that's the problem. Atmosphere doesn't make a movie. And the gore keeps getting in the way.

By today's standards it's pretty tame and of course in our age of digital manipulation the foam rubber monsters and goo seem kind of fake in moments. But at the time it was a real gross out picture. Which is a tragedy because there are the makings of a really good movie here (Kurt Russel pictured below is excellent.)


Less is more. I've been saying it for a while now (ref.: "Why I hated the Jurassic Park movie.") I wish the filmmakers had opted to show us less. Some of the most memorable moments in the film are not the creature itself but the characters' reactions to it. Most are subtle changes in the face. Some are funnier moments (a certain stoner and a very memorable line.)

For me, Jaws is a perfect movie. And that movie's production was blessed with a shark that didn't work most of the time. Consequently they had to use the barrels to show you the shark was down there. It was absolutely brilliant but happened only out of necessity. Somebody out there tell me that the first shark attack of the movie isn't horrifying. And you don't see the shark during the whole thing! It's done completely with reaction and some very effective "breath" acting.

I guess I wish that The Thing had been plagued with similar problems. Its monster moments are at their best when the most subtle. For instance, the burned remains of the thing at the Norwegian science station still bother me when I see them today. They're a jumble of body parts and what looks like two half faces separated by about six inches but joined together in this truly hideous morphing of flesh that results in a grotesque expression not unlike the faces of Thalia and Melpomene (the smiling and frowning masks that symbolize comedy and drama.) It leaves space for your imagination to work.

Another memorable monster moment that still works is when the characters corner one of their own who has been taken over but isn't completely changed. At first, when he turns, he looks human in all aspects but the camera slowly reveals that he has these weird and gross crab/claw hands. The monster in mostly human form then lets out this slow otherwordly wail just before they kill it. Like I said, still very creepy.

And no, I don't see the appeal of today's horror movies. They appear to me to be no more than a competition to see who can be the most twisted. The idea of a monster that "could" exist has been replaced with the idea of a monster that does exist in our world: a person doing horrible things to another person.

Anyway, there's more good in this movie than bad. If you haven't seen it, check it out. If it's been a while since you've seen it, watch it again. Just watch it through a pair of rose colored glasses, if you will. And after all, what's more fun than pink snow?

Wait For It

Last July, I decided not to get a new watch. My old one had begun to fog up on the inside and I couldn't seem to get it repaired at the mall. At first I wanted to just replace it with a more sturdy one that I could wear while at work but I found that to get a really good watch for that type of abuse is cost prohibitive. I mean, who's gonna take a thousand dollar watch into a burning building?

So I decided to get the old one fixed. I found, through a dive shop that I called, a certified Seiko repair shop: Hurley Roberts. The repair shop is in a small suite in a large industrial park. Nothing about the business, except the website, screamed professionalism but those are generally the places that do the best work, right?

Flash to December, five months later, and the repair shop claims they haven't received the parts for my watch yet. I tell them that "there isn't anywhere on Earth that is five months from here." (Or maybe it's the geographical oddity Clooney's character spoke of.) Frustrated, having few other options, and trying to get last minute shopping done I decide to give them until after Christmas.

Just after New Year's Day I pop in and they tell me my watch is done, like it's been done for a while and why didn't I pick it up sooner? Anyway, they replaced the seals and the battery.

But, wait for it -- the watch isn't running now. That's right, it ran before I took it to them. So they hold on to the watch, say they are going to fix it and that they will give me a call.

Flash to late March. Still haven't heard from them (don't even try calling because they literally don't answer their phones.) I show up at the repair shop ready to demand my watch, fixed or not. After all, seven months is long enough to get a watch fixed, right?

But they -- wait for it -- can't find my watch. The guy looking is everything you would expect in a watch repairman. He has the small magnifying glasses that are attached to his eyeglasses. He's overweight from a lifetime of moving only his fingertips. And he looks like he doesn't spend much time getting ready in the morning before driving in to work.

This guy spends about fifteen minutes going through hundreds of stacks of bins, twenty bins high, looking for the one with my work order number on it. He finally comes back and says that my watch must be in the vault. My Seiko that I got for about $350 twelve years ago is important enough to lock in the vault? The vault that is so important only one person has access?

And -- wait for it -- he's not here today. It gets better. The only man with access to the vault is on vacation and won't be back for a week.

At this point it's beyond infuriating. I'm starting to laugh about the whole thing. So a week goes by and I show up wanting my watch. Mitch, our vault man, tells me without even checking the vault that they have lost my watch. By "lost" I guess he means in the building somewhere no further than 75 feet in any direction.

So Mitch plops the old Citizen catalog down in front of me and tells me to pick out a replacement watch in the $500 range. I pick out the watch pictured above based on the features that Mitch advises I should get on a watch that is going to take some serious abuse.

And that's reasonable I think. I'm going to end up with a much better watch. I mean, I liked my old watch. It definitely had some sentimental value, but this isn't a bad solution to the problem of my fogged up watch.

Flash to mid-April. I still haven't heard from Mitch who promised to call me when the new watch came in. Amazingly, I get him on the phone and he says that the watch will be in by Tuesday of this week. He asks me to measure my wrist so that he can size the band. Sounds good. Sounds promising.

Today I went in to the shop to give him my wrist measurement. The watch hasn't come yet. He promises he'll have it by Monday.

I'm think I'm going to have to -- wait for it -- that's right; wait for it.

What I've Learned So Far

This July marks ten years for me as a firefighter. What follows, in no particular order, is some of what I now know to be true.


1. “Firefighting is an inherently dangerous occupation.” from a warning label in my helmet.

2. Firefighting isn’t as dangerous as you think; it’s more dangerous in ways you’ve never thought of.

3. The majority of firefighting is common sense. A lot of people don’t have common sense.

4. There is no such thing as “Fire Proof.” Everything burns.

5. It can always get worse.

6. A small group of people can grow to an out of control mob in only a few minutes.

7. A Mack fire engine can be driven through a turn with all of the left side wheels off of the ground for about thirty feet.

8. Renter’s insurance is the best $200 you will ever spend.

9. Pit bulls are inherently dangerous and can tear a person into pieces.

10. Cars rollover all of the time.

11. Drugs are ten times as prevalent and one tenth as lethal as I had thought.

12. A lot of people don’t like cops until they need one. Everyone likes a firefighter until they “take too long” getting there.

13. Sometimes people that are talking to you will drop dead.

14. Bullets: Small hole going in, big hole coming out.

15. There are a lot of people who get hysterical in an emergency.

16. Seatbelts save lives.

17. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do.

18. Some of the best people I know I met at work.

19. Most people have better guns than aim.

20. Flies in a hotel window are not a good sign.

21. People will continue to lie even if theirs or someone they love’s life is on the line.

22. We don’t always have the best equipment.

23. Cars on fire don’t explode. Tires on cars on fire explode.

24. Receiving oral pleasure is enough to send an epileptic into a seizure. The epileptic’s “friend” who was “just using the phone” isn’t really his friend. And his wallet wasn’t empty five minutes before you got there.

25. The average taxpayer believes that a dollar paid in fire tax magically buys ten times what a dollar will buy when they use it at the store.

26. The majority of the population does not know the definition of the word “emergency.”

27. A lot of sick people don’t bathe.

28. The human body contains a lot of blood.

29. Most people don’t know the difference between steam and smoke.

30. A car can literally drive through another car.

31. Most people have cardiac arrests on Sunday morning.

32. The fancier the fire engine the more it is likely to break.

33. The prevailing wisdom is that if a job isn’t for the police or sanitation departments, it must be the fire department’s job.

34. People not in their right minds can suddenly become unbelievably strong.

35. Some live people smell worse than dead people.

36. Television shows about firefighting aren’t based in reality.

37. A drug user that moments before was clinically dead will sit up and yell at you for cutting her bra.

38. Most citizens wrongly believe that everything in the station and on the truck was bought with “their money.”

39. Most people don’t know the difference between carbon monoxide and natural gas.

40. Fire can do amazing things.

41. All bleeding will eventually stop.

42. Some dogs are not all bark.

43. Mack fire engines were the best.

44. Some people don’t want to be rescued.

45. Most firefighters enjoy the respect their occupation receives but avoid the “hero” label.

46. People with a long history of panic attacks seem to forget that what they’re having is a panic attack and call 911.

47. Your best chance in a fire is to save yourself.

48. Infant CPR is the hardest.

49. Always check to see if two Dobermans are in a fenced area before you jump the fence.

50. A burned body in a fire can retain heat for hours.

51. Being in a fire engine that is uncontrollably sliding downhill on ice and shows no signs of stopping is a sickening feeling.

52. For everything there is a first time.

53. Firefighting isn’t about being fearless. Firefighting is conquering fear.

54. 343 is a very large number.

55. A body with a bullet hole through the head isn’t always dead.

56. Where there’s smoke there’s fire. Where there’s fire there isn’t always smoke.

57. Firefighters that refer to themselves as “hero” are usually the furthest from it.

58. The protective qualities of your turnout gear can get you deeper into a fire than you should be.

59. Breaking the rules to get the job done is okay until you screw up.

60. Suddenly coming face to face with a dog in a closet while searching a smoky room on your hands and knees will scare the crap out of you.

61. It’s never the blood. It’s the fact that the dead woman has the same shoes as your wife.

62. There is nothing attractive about the backstage area of a strip club.

63. We have to make ourselves laugh sometimes.

64. A lightening strike can lead you to a dying man in time to save him.

65. There are at least twenty people I would immediately fire in our department if given the chance.

66. I will have no man on my engine who is not afraid of fire. (a corruption of a quote from Moby Dick)

67. Firefighting is the best job in the world.

68. Sometimes it’s better to lie to your wife and tell her you had a good day.

Go Figure

So the YouTube people just sent me an e-mail:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Universal Music Publishing Group claiming that this material is infringing.

The material they are referring to is my pop-up-video minus the video for Prince's Kiss. Wouldn't you know the little purple bastard would object? Probably because out of all of the videos I have done, his had less than a hundred hits at the time it was taken off. Kenny Rogers, meanwhile, keeps truckin' on with just under 5000 views this very moment.