Full Moon Fun

I'm going to try something new tonight. I am going to do a play by play commentary on the Wolfman. I have never seen this movie. I know the iconic imagery. But I have never seen it for myself. And tonight, ON A FULL MOON!, TCM is playing this classic horror movie. Ive been keeping up on Fiddler on the Roof with a friend on facebook. So I thought this could be kinda fun.

The Wolfman stars Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Ralph Bellamy, Claude Rains and was made n 1941 by George Waggner. It came 6 years after Werewolf of London. That movie did not really capture much attention, according to guest host Chris Issak.

Asthe credits roll two things stand out to me: Bela Lugosi is not the creepy looking guy I assumed he would be and Lon Chaney is actually kinda cute. It may have been how mom described these guys and her adventures at the movies during WWII but I assumed the make up was covering up some kind of flaw in there features. And Claude Rains (Casablanca) seems to never change. But how they decided to cast such a shrimp as Chaney's dad is beyond me.

Hmm... this is starting to feel like a pop up video episode with an audience of one.

Creepy stalker. If you are going to peep on a girl you probably shouldn't mention it. But if you slip you can always say you are psychic. Oh and don't forget to quote the brothers Grimm.

Even a man pure of heart who says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

And here comes the gypsies... Vardo and all.
And the fog...
And the wolf bane...
And there is the howl...

OOh this is new. This wolfman chewed on the victim in full dog form. That is starting to sound a lot like the Northern Michigan Dogman legend to me. The Odawa say the dog man is a shape changing guardian of the native tribes. It can function in man, wolf, combo and stealth mode; stealth meaning invisible... some kind of in-between state. Who knew?

"Fighting superstition is as hard as fighting against Satan himself."

I like the Gypsy idea of a funeral. It's just a big party in the Irish tradition with dancing and nihilistic prophecy and carnival games. Ya know, everybody loves a good carnival but they all complain about the gypsies without whom none of the entertaining would happen. Who would run the carnival without them? Granted they come with a host of problems when they come to town. But you can't have the circus without the carnies.

And now we obsesses about hair. Transformation. Transformation. Transformation. But it looks like he's wearing pajamas.

Now I have a legal question. If a man could truly become a werewolf & its proven that he is not in control of that form of himself can he really be held accountable for what he does under the moon's influence? I know you have to hold something accountable. But if you could cure the man of the curse would you still prosecute the animal's crimes?

Wow... I am really diggin the Claude Rains. He reminds me in some ways of Patrick Stewart. Maybe the delivery?
And there are the old biddies making trouble like a mob armed with pitch forks and torches. In this case it would be the forked tongues and incendiary words.

And though riddled with superstition the only one willing to help the poor guy is a gypsy. Go figure.

The way you walked was thorny through no fault of your own...

Say what you will about the gypsies... but they have a lot more compassion for people than most of the "normal' world I have met.

Not the ending that I thought it would be. And so not scarry......

I don't know about this...

So John Cusak has another movie out. And it's The Raven. Poe chasing serial killers?

Not sure how I feel about that. I mean tis the season for Poe things. But Poe the detective? No one has jumped to the not so obvious conclusion that Doyle was a detective just because he wrote about one in the Strand. So how do we assume Poe did? His mysterious death?

I haven't seen the movie. But now that my imagination is going I am going to say that I could see Poe having BEEN a serial killer (thus the focus on feelings of guilt) sooner than a detective. Not saying it couldn't happen. Just saying it seems the least likely.

Should prove to be entertaining at any rate.

Management Decisions

I'm watching When Weather Changed History on the Weather Channel (I know. duh.) And there are two things that strike me about the program. First is that the problem with the O-rings, which we all knew about within months of the tragedy, was really a weather problem. I;m not a genius. But I do know something about black rubber O-rings. Being made of black rubber, they will fail the same way that the rubber gaskets or washers in a kitchen faucet will fail. They can dry out with disuse. Or they shrink and warp in the cold. Run the faucet for a while and the rubber will soften and reseal itself but not before leaking water all over the counter. Run water through there in a house that is almost cold enough to freeze water but not quite and you get failure. I've done it in dad's house. And it took me a while to figure out it was an issue with the climate and not with the hardware. I'm not a rocket scientist. But I kinda figure the rocket scientists should know about it. More over the managers should have known about it.

But who would have thought that could really have been an issue? It's a small kind of thing. But isn't it the small things that really always trip us up? The Spanish Armada was sunk in the English Channel because the pursuing Spanairds forgot how shallow the water and how low there ships sat in the water. We forget the basics when we keep our eyes so rivetted on the Big Picture. Can you blame anybody? I don't know. It was either arrogance or complacency. But then again, how many times have I not bothered to say something at work because the little things just don't matter to anyone but me? The subtle changes in the way a room smells or the sounds of the machines in the mech room next to me all give me pause for concern. Its never pleasant to smell antifreeze. And the scent usually means there is about two weeks till the heat pump goes out. But what can you do with that kind of heads up? There are a million reasons to smell the antifreeze and the odds that it would be a heat pump failure EVERY time are slim. So management politely nods and I go on doing my job.

And then the pump fails. It's just the way that humans do things. We don't really sweat the small stuff. Sure weather could be a factor in the shuttle disaster. But mostly the problem is that we always hope for the best and we take chances. We have to. None of us are really psychic. And none of us knows exactly how things are going to work.

And that is the second thing that struck me as interesting in the presentation. We push the envelope thinking that we will always succeed because we have always succeeded. And then there was Columbia. It makes me wonder if anyone ever thought "That only happens to the Russians. It doesn't happen to us." so the envelope gets pushed, statistics get ignored. We keep doing the things that make us human. And eventually the odds run out.

After a conversation that I had at work I am beginning to think that people who believe in karma and astrology might make more sense than those who do not. And that only for the fact that superstition creates wariness and wariness makes a more cautious person... yes, it also makes paranoia and paranoid people have been known to walk around with aluminum foil helmets to protect them from alien brain scans... but caution at least reminds us that anything can and will happen. Even the unthinkable.

And now my early am rambling comes to a conclusion for this broadcast day.
CUE: Anthem and waving flag