Scary Christmas and Happy Horrordays!

CHRISTMAS EVE MORNING... I got up fairly early, well before Ms. B., and made my usual Christmas Eve morning slapjacks. Tradition, don't you know. On a whim, I took a photo of the cast of the 1974 original Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, the lot of whom are hanging out on the shelf in my office. Then I did a little Photoshop job to post as a Christmas greeting. And as you can see, these guys are sure having a great time!

Brugger and I had ordered a bar set a while back as a Christmas present to each other, so we spent most of the afternoon hammering it all together. It's really quite lovely, and I made an extra run to the liquor store to insure we had sufficient spirits to stock it up. We put it to good use during the evening, as friends Charles and Samaire came round for treats. We ended up going till the wee hours; a most enjoyable little gathering.

An absolutely lovely Christmas Eve at Casa di Rodan

CHRISTMAS MORNING... Quite early, our houseful of housecats set to hollering impatiently to get their gifts from Santa, so that was all she wrote for dad getting any more sleep. The afternoon weather forecast wasn't looking promising, though the temperature was lovely, so once Ms. B. was up and going, she and I took a pleasant walk around nearby Lake Lanier. Then she started dinner cooking — a big ol' pot roast in the crock pot to make shredded beef to go on jalapeno pasta a friend gave us a while back.

Wacky people taking a Christmas morning walk around Lake Lanier

Friends Terry & Beth recently picked up a brand-new huge-screen TV for themselves, so they very kindly donated their old one to us. Brugger and I spent the early afternoon getting it set up. Then I made mulled wine. Allison originally intended to come round during the afternoon, but she had gone to visit her mom in Greensboro and their festivities ran a bit late, so we'll be seeing her at some later time. Mid-afternoon, Kimberly and I opened our presents to each other, and there were good things. A new S.H. MonsterArts Gigan figure is a particular favorite, and he's now up on the shelf with the rest of the daikaiju figures that currently haunt our house. I took a photo of him and futzed around with the scenery. After all this, Brugger set to work building a chess pie for tonight's dessert.

 

The cats made out like bandits, by the way.

Our shredded beef on jalapeno pasta with roasted brussel sprouts turned out fantastic — amped up with a bit of Smoky Bourbon Ghost Pepper that Santa put in my stocking. And Brugger's chess pie for dessert was out of this world. For our second dessert, we watched Destroy All Monsters on the big-screen TV, which came purty near duplicating a fun theatrical experience (my most memorable Destroy All Monsters experience is detailed here: "A Random Godzilla Story," September 7, 2014).

 

And so ended another lovely Christmas Day. Christmas was my parents' favorite holiday, and I always find myself a bit wistful, since I am the last of the family I grew up with. I tend to not dwell on that fact, but at Christmas, it's easy — and, for me, desirable — to reflect on what a wonderful family I did have and to express my love and appreciation for my current family: Ms. B., my daughter, and, of course, our four lovable yet terrible catses. I could hardly ask for more.

L: There's nothing like relaxing with a hot cup of coffee and a bear hard on your trail.
R: My new coaster has bigger feet than your coaster.

A Random Godzilla Story

If you're an old monster movie buff like me, you might remember the daikaiju movie, Yog — Monster From Space (a.k.a. Space Amoeba) periodically showing up at drive-in theaters in the early 70s, usually on a double feature with Destroy All Monsters or Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster.

Sure enough, summer of 1971, Destroy All Monsters and Yog were coming to the local drive-in (the Castle, may it R.I.P., in Collinsville, VA), and while my parents didn't mind occasionally taking me and some friends to see monster movies, they inevitably ruled that the second feature came on too late for us to stay up. Well, I wanted to see Destroy All Monsters because it was a Godzilla movie; I knew nothing and cared nothing about Yog. Naturally, according to the published schedule, Yog was to be the first feature. So I called the drive-in, hoping to convince them to run Destroy All Monsters first. No way, they told me; the projector was set up to run Yog first, and that was that.

Well, young Mark is distressed. So for a couple of evenings, I called the drive-in relentlessly, disguising my voice, even getting my best friend Frank to call them, hoping to persuade them to run Destroy All Monsters first. Each call was answered with the inevitable "No way." Well, come the weekend, my Dad takes us out there, we stop at the ticket booth, ask which show comes on first, and we're told "Yog, Monster From Space." (The lady pronounced it like "Yoga.") So Dad says, "Sorry boys," and figures we'll want to leave. But no; we put on the pressure and get him to drive us on in, just to see if maybe the ticket lady had made a mistake. Well, since we didn't pay, the manager comes to pay us a visit, and Dad tells him, "We just figured we'd stay for a few minutes to see which movie came on first." The manager bends down and gives Frank and me a very hard stare. "You must be those youngsters who've been calling nonstop for the last two days." We admit that we are. The manager sighs and says, "Well, we've decided to run Destroy All Monsters first."

You could hear us whoopin' and hollerin' over in the next county (which was actually just a stone's throw away). So it was a wonderful night for monsters. But had I known Yog was a fun little Toho film, I would have been just as happy to see it, since I'd already seen Destroy All Monsters once before (this goes to show you the value of research first). But, as luck would have it, Yog showed up at the downtown movie theater a few months later, all by its lonesome, so I went and checked it out.

It was a blast then, and by gummy it still is.