Just Lay There Beneath That Stone. See If I Care!

I really miss someone, and there is nothing I can do about it. 20 years ago there was already nothing that I or anyone else could do.

There are no words – none that satisfy, anyway – when it comes to that barrier between me and the time I want so much to roll back, regarding someone whose life slipped away.

I sit and gaze in solitude, in silent frustration, at the computer screen. The name typed into the search engine stares back, like a tiny padlock on an invisible door of innocent yet forbidden knowledge.

What happened to you!?

That's all I want, and need desperately to know. Why did you have to die before they began storing stuff – like your obituary – digitally all over the web? You slipped between the very two cracks in the pavement of the information superhighway that were prone to slam closed again.

Why did our final conversation – 30 years ago – have to be so sour and alienating? Well… I know why, I admit. It did, because I was a relentless dick. I was the reason it wasn't nice, or even civil.

You'd had it with me. No formal warning – you let me find out the hard way that I was a bad chapter, now over. I figured it out, after a long interval of denial.

I never dreamed that wondering about you three decades later, and hoping you were well, was too much. Looking you up online, hoping to discover your life in full bloom of happiness and success, I instead found out you'd died when we were in our 30s (I'm in my 50s now).

Not you. That could not have been you, I kept whispering. What little there was to find online provided all the clues of the very thing I dreaded. Your father's obituary stated plainly that you preceded him in death.

All the death notices simply say that you died. Of what? Did you become ill? Did you lose a deathmatch? Were you lost in an airline disaster? Swept away by tsunami? What? And nobody to this day seems to possess your photograph. The only picture online, is your headstone – your now 20-year old headstone which already looks ancient, like it belongs so forlornly to the past that it might was well be that of an early pioneer homesteader.

What am I supposed to do, suffice with the ever fading image I have of you in my head?

This is really unfair, I ponder, staring at your name in the search bar. It dares me to strike the 'enter' key one more time, as if it will suddenly find that one quirky webpage where all is explained, and where resides a last perfect photo that I can download as a keepsake.

If you are looking down in bemusement at my helpless plodding, it serves me right. All I can do, or hope, is that all was somehow forgiven long ago. And all you need whisper, is "there there, now."

I Watched These For You. You're Welcomed.

I'll never do it again. I thought it was a swell idea at the time. It turned out to be eight hours I'd never get back.

There are so many old nobody-wants-them-anymore b-horror and sci-fi films on the internet, it makes me cry. Especially when I look at my DVD collection and realize that I paid actual money to own a number of them. If I had known that one day they'd all be free to watch online, I'd have made a down payment on that house in Malibu I'd always dreamt about.

On this poorly judged day, however, I decided not to leave my bed, and point my tablet at some of the once-upon-a-more-innocent-time futuristic cinematic gems I'd always meant to catch, but had continually been distracted from. I now know that perhaps a divine hand had guided the distraction.

In hope of gaining something positive from my wasted day at the mooveys, my fevered brain has decided that an exorcism is in order, in the form of the following soul-cleansing rant about what I have endured. Consider this the instruction of a legless soldier after stepping on a landmine, who points the way for those following, to advance further than he could. Watch your step, or you'll be the next sacrifice for the survival of the squad.

Space Probe Taurus (1965)

Ohgawd.

It almost sounds like the nickname of a sex toy. If only it were that exciting.

On Wikipedia, the description of this movie states only that it "is a 1965 film." Period. Done. Nobody was willing to touch it any further. It's hard to imagine how Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space is regarded as the "worst of all time" when this flying streamer of jet-trash exists.

Produced by Burt Topper and penned by none other than Samuel Katzman, Space Probe Taurus is quite a study in amazing contrasts. Beautifully photographed. Epically scored. A main plot that is perhaps 75 years ahead of its time: In the year 2000 (which was 35 years in the future when the film was made), an intrepid team of space travelers venture into the vast galactic unknown in search of an Earthlike planet upon which humanity can begin colonization, as our home planet comes near depletion of its natural resources. That, by the way, is also basically the plot of Interstellar (2014), but who's noticed?

Pretty high-minded for a low-budget 60s sci-fi yarn. Sounds great so far.

Then, unfortunately, the opening credits end, and the film commences. Your dog shits things more interesting than what follows.

Katzman revives every bad plot device he likely first explored in high school creative writing class, and tacks them onto the story at random – as if to show up all those teachers who suggested he become an aluminum siding salesman. The film seems written to be cut into half-hour segments, which makes sense when one learns that Katzman did that on purpose. This movie was originally envisioned as episodes of a series, for the burgeoning TV market. But the tropes used seem a little Flash Gordonish, just slightly updated to reflect the then-current state of (bad) scientific knowledge.

In real life, the first moon landing was still four years away, and such marvelous technological concepts as atomic power and computers were still mysterious enough to reference in vague terms and lend a crude credibility to films like this. Katzman drives them into the ground here, while short-order cooking up subplots that leave the audience wondering why, when he abruptly abandons each to advance the script to the next one.

In the first half-hour, they encounter an alien spaceship, and board it to learn its origins. They meet the alien pilot, who promptly attacks – being a classic bug-eyed creature from beyond – and is stopped by a bullet from a revolver. Yes, of course. All Earthmen who explore the cosmos carry standard b-movie private-eye type black metal pistols, that work no matter what the physics. They then plant a bomb (more standard issue space exploration equipment) aboard the alien craft and blow it to smithereens.

Well, that's only logical. Isn't it?

Afterward, the crew's elder science officer laments what a shame it is to discover a new life form in the galaxy, and have to kill it. Oh well… that's done, let's be on our way. Let us never speak of it again.

And... they don't. We still have an hour of movie to go. That Katzman sure can pack his scripts!

The bluntly episodic nature of the screenplay, with each plot-point taking a path of least resistance to an unsatisfying "resolution," is testimony enough to what a pathetic, short-lived TV series Space Probe Taurus might have been. Pieced together into a feature film, the "adventures" of our heroic crew make a baffling, disconnected and rather unscientific narrative, about a bunch of space-faring self-important pricks.

Still to come in the film's drab 60 minutes, the lone female onboard keeps the 50s-style pent-up testosterone hopping, as the crew encounters deadly flaming meteor storms, giant sea crabs, and a low-rent underwater creature-man. All of them are brushed off as incidental sidebar material – until it's time to say "mission accomplished, let's head for home." Cue dramatic outro music. We can't wait for the pulse-pounding thrills of the next incredible mission.

The shit you say.

Target Earth (1954)

This one actually starts out well.

Hopes rise in the opening credits, where it's revealed that the script was based on a classic pulp sci-fi story. One envisions a well-constructed – albeit low budget – take on something akin to Harry Bates's Farewell To The Master which was filmed as The Day The Earth Stood Still.

No such friggin' luck.

The first half-hour shows some promise… opening with (dare I say) an artistically staged tableau of a young woman's attempted suicide. She lays on her bed passed out amid spilled pill bottles, sprawled in her undies, posed with self-abandon, in a visual worthy of a lurid pulp-novel cover. The camera rears away to reveal it all still just a reflection in a dresser mirror. It pans further to take a close-up inventory of the sorrowful scene, coming to rest upon the closed eyes of the poor self-destructive lass, which suddenly pop open. Suicide: Fail.

That one-take moment of cinema-noir is nearly worthy of Orson Welles.

Or was it? As she rises and stirs about to survey the extent of her prolonged misery, she discovers the entire city's populace beyond her door has been evacuated. The film is still mildly flirting with epicness at this point – the desolate cityscape portrayed is definitely not a studio set, but an actual portion of… Chicago? San Diego? Duluth? – devoid of life. Just the rope required alone must've driven the production to near bankruptcy.

When she finally ventures outside, stricken with epic curiosity, the plot nosedives quickly into cliché and contrivance. It gets worse from there, only not without a last spit wad of near-quality – to remind us what nuance we're leaving behind, in order for Target Earth's paltry tale to unfold.

She encounters the body of a nearly identical woman, laying on the sidewalk, propped grotesquely, having befallen whatever horror has laid waste to the unfortunate rest of humanity. The corpse stares tensely out, at something. No mere "dead body pose," this. The actress portraying the deceased is apparently following astute direction, to make this shot a stunning visage worthy of a much better film.

It's when our heroine runs into the first living character, that things slow to a dead crawl.

Richard Denning has just awoken from either a hangover, or a missed lunchbreak on the set of a neighboring noir film, cigarette butt firmly in his lips, and coat heroically over his shoulder. He now casually strolls the apocalypse. He does what any red-blooded he-man would do, upon discovering the only buxom dame at the end of the world… he intentionally nudges right into her from behind, scaring the crap out of her. Then he chases her down for the wonderful opportunity to slap her back to rational behavior.

And when he does exactly that, it's apparently just what she'd hoped for. That's a 1950s screenplay at its best, folks!

Together, they haplessly run into another sexually oppressed yet blithely less-than-promiscuous couple enjoying the bohemian freedom of post-invasion America. Mad lovemaking among the statuary in the town square? No, of course not – rather, its playing dinner theater piano and chugging the house champagne at one of the front tables of an abandoned nightclub. That is living, my friend.

The couples join forces for an exploratory double-date to see how well the apocalypse is going, further down the block. They wind up in a hotel to hide out from the shadow of what looks like a man wearing cardboard boxes and shooting randomly about with a death ray. That's always a downer, I admit.

There they meet the obligatory town nerd-psycho, who somehow relishes the arrival of intergalactic liquidators as a gene pool purifier, but who won't follow his cause loyally enough to march out and welcome them personally.

When we meet the invaders at last, we discover just how futuristic those old console TV sets actually were. The aliens are walking RCA Dynavisions. Their metal bodies angular and devoid of such needless things as bendable joints, the robotic aliens menacingly waddle after their prey, and inexplicably navigate such would-be obstacles as stairs, scaffolds and ladders – they just never seem to do it on camera.

Just like in The Day The Earth Stood Still; you never see the mighty robot Gort actually lift Patricia Neal into his arms – she suddenly, magically, is just in them.

Indestructible, save for the fragile toy plastic visors that serve as their faces, the marauding boxy nightmares relentlessly stalk the few remaining humans. Until, that is, scientists in a remote bunker discover that cracking the aliens' plastic visors causes them to shut down and fall over. Of course it does; they conquered the vastness of space and brought fearsome weapons of mass extinction to a neighboring galaxy with plans of planet-wide annihilation, but those darn plastic face visors – they never quite got the hang of those.

Did I spoil it for you? Don't worry, it was already spoiled. I took this one for the team. You're welcomed.

The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)

A more accurate title might be The Afternoon Dies Snoring, but that probably wouldn't have sold many tickets to this British sci-fi fizzler – er, sizzler, I meant.

Another post-apocalypse scenario finds everyone gone, as usual – and more robots roaming about, terminating any left-over squirmy humans who didn't get the hint that they were supposed to die. These stoic automatons-o'-doom happen to look like tall guys in cheap space suits, with light-bulb eyes and huge bong tubes mounted on their shoulders. Oh, they have rayguns, of course… which seems counter-productive since they can apparently kill victims by merely tapping them on the shoulder – a "touch of death."

They don't seem to run much, but merely trudge along with a determined gate, unconcerned that those they pursue can still jog, trot, skip, and haul ass aboard motorized fleeing aids like cars, scooters, etc. Luckily for the aliens, very few of the surviving humans seem to realize their advantage.

One jumps inside his car as protection from the slow marching terrors. He only remembers at the last second that the key is in the ignition. He can start the car, floor it, and beat the on-foot creatures to the end of the block well ahead of them – where he can re-park the vehicle and conveniently wait in horror for the aliens to catch up.

Oh goodie, games?

Speaking of which, not to seem outwardly racist, but just what is it about British protagonists in yarns like this? Heroism always seems to take a backseat to polite decorum and courteous fair-play. Waiting in ambush as one of the galactic goobers waddles by solo, instead of attacking, our gallant leading man patiently allows gentlemanly passage, then avoids direct confrontation, in lieu of fleeing to warn everyone in the alien's path to run away as well.

For the love of Whit Bissell, I thought bravery was a prerequisite for a leading man role.

When subdued by the aliens' terrible power, victims drop, but then awaken later sans eye-pupils, and wander about gazing in far off distraction – which seems to terrify the rest of the cast. They don't seem to possess any life-threatening powers themselves, but merely a tendency to shuffle in the direction of whomever screams the loudest. Seems that merely staying quiet and stepping aside would be all the counteraction needed against them.

So Brits are polite and unobtrusive to the invaders, but scared bladder-dry by their senseless victims. Seems legit.

When nothing proves worth a damn against the lurching, death merchant space-tards, the brave survivors decide that running away is the best option. The end. Cue music.

Huh? No figuring out the aliens' scientific Achilles heel? We didn't want to write a script that deep. We only had $150. Our uncle needed his camera back. Run away.

The Old Days

I'm not sure why I find this photo so… I don't know the proper word… comforting?

I think, Saturday… autumn afternoon… just a short walk down the sidewalk. Through the door, the scent of musty pulp, and a promise of something old but magical.

The owner doesn't quite know all that's here, but take your time looking.

Quickly – A Plug For My Newest Blog!

It's Rob isn't going anywhere – we'll be back to our regular shittle-shattle in no time!

I only wanted to let you know that my books, meaning those I've actually written (despite all the best efforts of my high school and college English and literature instructors to dissuade me) will not be cluttering things up here, but have their very own promotional outlet...

MY MIND CREATES DANGER will be updated semi-regularly – once a week, should I be able to manage it. It will feature announcements, updates and general weekly plugs for all the titles in my ever-growing library (11 so far).

Check in from time to time, to see what's new, or what's still waiting for inclusion on your reading list!

That's it – commercial done.

Now for a nap.

There's More To Read!

This blog has been my sanity maintenance zone, and it will continue to be.

I'd like to take one blogpost, however, and let you know where you can get your eyes on even more of my humor, if that's your impulsive desire!

"8 Plays That Scientifically Disprove The Existence Of Love" was just published this week!

Remember the last time you saw two people lost in the throes of love and wondered just what was the hidden backstory behind that outer layer of blithe perfection? Before you answer, please ask yourself if you know perfect love when you see it. The truth is, most people never do, while they just assume it's out there! This saucy collection of rowdy sketch comedy explores that mysterious valley between love, like... and mutual tolerance. Don't let the book's title rile you too much – a treasure trove of lovely laughter awaits, whether you are a theatrical producer, actor, or just want to read and enjoy the ride. Decide for yourself herein what is proven or debunked about everyone's favorite subject, nude skydiving. Er, uh... no. We meant love.

It's available in paperback for you tangible book lovers, and e-book format for you technology-addicts who want to keep laughing! Search for it on Amazon, and other fine online book retail sites!

Shortly I will have a separate blog for my book promotions! In the brief meantime, please give this a browse, won't you?

In a few days we'll be back to the usual shenanigans here!

Cheers, everyone!

– Rob

Please Consider We Who Come After You

Have I ranted on this before? The guy who be-bops out of the mensroom magnetized to his iPhone, with no awareness or consideration whatsoever that he has left the facility wreaking of his gastric plumage?

It's possibly a delicate subject, I admit, but really, there are even limits to what us rugged he-guys will endure from one another.

Call our mothers a farm animal… hint that we're less than granite… question our ability to woo a mate or produce mentally stable offspring… we handle all that – though we might not relish the battle, in secret. But to assume that others enjoy being flash-swamped by your shotgun butt-whiff is taking machismo too far.

I don't wish to share your colon's chemical handiwork on those seven fish tacos you scarfed down at lunch, thank you kindly.

We tried to be nice about it. We placed a can of air freshener, and hung a demure sign in the mens: "Please consider who uses the room next."

That apparently wasn't direct enough. So we placed a larger sign, which had drawn an arrow, pointing to the air freshener. "Please use this after flushing."

Well even that wasn't sufficiently tow-headed to get the message across. Then there came the jumbo can – impossible to miss, especially placed centrally upon the toilet tank behind the bowl – with a sign that made the request abundantly clear to anyone who can decypher basic words: "Spray room after you flush. No one wants to smell you."

So today I approach the mens, in time to meet iPhone Commander coming the other way – he nearly runs into me. I enter the facility, and immediately think a nearby paint factory has exploded. I back-track out in expeditious fashion.

There sits the largest available retail family-jumbo-deluxe can of Mountain Berry Glade – untouched!

A sign as big as a movie poster, reads down to 3rd Grade level: "PLEEZ USE SPRAY AFTER YOU DO A BIG CACA! NOBODY LIKES SMELLING YOUR BIG CACA!"

"Smell big caca?" The room is like iPhone Dude has stashed a garbage bag full of week-old dead gophers in there.

And he's plunking more money into the breakroom vending machines, for select junky snacks to diversify his next exertion's savory nuance.

Am I unkind? Does someone really need to confront this self-distracted walking contaminant, about the fact that his bowel movements are not grunted out in a galactic vacuum, that other living things must endure his rancid rectal greenhouse effect? Can anyone this obsessed with technology be so disconnected from his own biology?

Does he just not smell it himself anymore? Is he so used to his own inner rot that it no longer registers on his olfactory meter? Even a beer-and-chili addicted trucker knows to exit a bathroom with a warning along the lines of "don't go in there for a few minutes."

Or are there people who actually derive personal satisfaction out of being such a – literal – huge asshole?

What the hell must his home bathroom smell like? How many patient girlfriends has this human debris factory melted like they'd fallen into a vat of nuclear solvent?

Maybe the next sign would be better, were it poetic, and uncaring whether its readers were educated or not. "Please consider we who come after you, or we'll come after you."

How Surreal Did My Friday Morning Become?

Friday morning went from normal to nutty-as-a-circus-elephant-turd, in record time today.

The first abnormality that confronted me, was the two near-full, refrigerator-chilled bottles of Mountain Dew standing side-by-side at the bottom of the waste paper basket. This sight, to put it mildly, was completely left-field level unexpected.

I extracted the two bottles of cold soda, and placed them on the desktop above the basket, to fully absorb the twisted reality of such a discovery. I then got a suspicious notion. Was the liquid inside the bottles, really their original contents? I lifted one of the bottles, which became instantly sweaty in my hand, from the transition to room-temperature. I shook it, to see if the liquid would fizz with carbonation. It didn't.

It appeared to be yellowy Mountain Dew… that wouldn't bubble. I immediately suspected the worst.

I put the bottle down as fast as I could, and trotted to the supervisor. "Someone put two bottles of URINE in the department trashcan, and it looks like they even got them cold in the refrigerator for who-knows-what reason, before they did," I cried!

My boss then chuckled, and said "I put those there."

My eyes wouldn't blink. "YOU did??"

"They'd been in the fridge for weeks, they'd been opened, they were old. I threw them away," she said, laughing more.

"So they're really just two old bottles of soda," I asked, to double-check my own senses?

"Well, you could have opened one and tried it, if you had doubts," she grinned.

I left her office, and headed back to my work area, to discover that the entire department had heard me yell "two bottles of URINE!" And… as I made my way to my chair, I saw a city policeman enter the building, his attention distracted over toward us… because an interdepartmental discussion had arisen on the benefits of drinking one's own urine – inspired by my loud scream of the two chilled bottles of tinkle.

Someone was apparently practicing survival techniques… at work.

The cop, across the room, attending to some benign business at the subscription window, stared in a daze at the discourse raging at fever pitch amongst the employees… about the pros and cons of ingesting pee-pee.

"You guys," said the supervisor, seeing my pleading gaze and stepping onto the floor to address the group, "it was just old soda in those bottles, really."

But the argument by then had reached a crescendo. Now they were quoting pop-culture reality show stars who'd drank piss on TV, and distant relatives who'd survived for days in desolate locales around the globe, quenching their thirst for self-preservation's sake – guzzling their own self-generated salty gatorade.

"You people shut up, please," the boss finally said, fighting to keep her eyes from rolling as she saw the staring officer. "It was two old bottles of soda. They'd been opened a long time ago by someone, and they were flat."

The pee-drinking debate subsided momentarily, but throughout the rest of the morning, the day's overall theme had been thusly set. Whispered points and counterpoints of piss-chugging's benefits and side effects raged back and forth randomly, past lunch and into the afternoon.

And I had started it. Everything said from that moment on, upon this unfortunate workday, was mentally weighed by each worker for its worthiness of urination innuendo. I dared not enter the breakroom for a second cup of coffee for dread of stinging satire directed my way with 50 shades of yellow.

I mean… gee whiz, everyone!