Posted tagged ‘Satellite in the Sky’

“Another one of them new worlds. No beer, no women, no pool parlors, nothin’. Nothin’ to do but throw rocks at tin cans, and we gotta bring our own tin cans.”

January 12, 2017

Where did all the snow go? Two days ago it covered everything. Then it rained. Now, only a small pile or two left by the plows exists on corners. My yard is completely clear. The steps are safe again.

We’re in the middle of a January thaw. It was over 50˚ yesterday and will be even warmer today. The wind was fiercely blowing earlier this morning. I could hear the chimes singing from the trees in the backyard. The wind has since become a breeze.

Maddie, Gracie and I are headed to the vet’s. Both of them need their nails clipped. Gracie slid on the stairs this morning, but I was there to grab her before she fell. I think it was because of the nails on her back feet. Maddie hates it when I check her nails. She pulls her paws right out of my hand. If she’d let me, I could spare her the anguish of a car ride and a nail clipping, but she won’t have it.

Yesterday I was in B-movie heaven. TCM turned me into a couch potato. It intermingled good science fiction with bad to keep me interested. I watched Forbidden Planet one of the good ones, maybe even a great one. After that came another good one, The Thing From Another World. The final one meant to keep me on the couch was 2001: A Space Odyssey. I didn’t move. Figuring I was caught, TCM then rolled out the other movies. First up was Satellite in the Sky. It was made in 1956, the same year as Forbidden Planet. That I would never have guessed. I had to chuckle when the first orbital vehicle is left unguarded so a newspaper woman can sneak in and hide in a cabinet on the spaceship. She is discovered after the launch. Where did her pocketbook go? How did she find a flight suit her size? Where did those flat shoes come from and how about that classy scarf around her neck? Next was Countdown starring such luminaries as Robert Duvall and James Caan. Ted Knight is also part of the cast. The movie pitted the US against the USSR in the space race, sound familiar? Last was my favorite, The Green Slime. It turns men into monsters. That was fine with me as I didn’t know a single person in the cast. Let them be monsters.

Nothing got accomplished yesterday. I didn’t even get dressed. I had cereal for lunch, Frosted Flakes, and cheese and crackers for dinner. Also, over the course of the day, I ate one sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies. I’m not proud of it, but I did leave the second sleeve alone. I want credit for that!

“In nature, everything has a job. The job of the fog is to beautify further the existing beauties!”

June 13, 2015

Yesterday in the late afternoon when I went to get my mail, I noticed the fog rolling in, a hazy mist moving down the street. The air got chilly and damp, but I stayed outside drawn by the fog. The end of the street began to disappear and was soon lost in the mist. Later, in the early evening, I went to the door to check the fog and found it was raining, a gentle rain so quiet I never heard it.

This morning was overcast and damp. It reminded me of vacation mornings near the ocean. I was usually the first awake and the first to go outside. Everything was quiet, no one else was stirring so the world belonged only to me. I had that same feeling this morning only I was sharing the world with Gracie who stood beside me patiently waiting so we could go inside.

The morning breeze has blown away the clouds, and we have sun and blue skies.

The TV has been bountiful for me this morning. The first gift was a film called Satellite in the Sky. I won’t even get into the special effects except to say it was 1956 so just imagine the smoke and the fire from the engine, the missing weightlessness and the arrays of buttons and switches. The plane, sort of a rocket ship, carried a full crew and a stowaway, a woman reporter. Luckily she had found the perfect hiding place where she also found a uniform which fit her as if it had been sized. She added a scarf around her neck for the sake of fashion. After she was discovered, her next scene was when she brought coffee to the crew. Now the ship was complete with a stewardess. Later she also brought sandwiches. She and the captain, originally at odds about the ship, both agree that the Tritbonium Bomb strapped to the bottom was wrong.  A kiss sealed their agreement.

The second gift was one part of The Batman serial from 1943. The only actor I recognized was J. Carrol Naish as the villain, a Japanese spymaster named Dr. Daka. He had a machine which turned people into willing to do anything live zombies. After their transformations, they all wore contraptions on their heads which looked like colanders with antennae. It was through these contraptions the zombies received Dr. Daka’s orders. My favorite tidbit is The Batman (always The Batman) and Robin usually rode in the limo driven by Alfred, even when as The Batman and Robin. Their hero outfits were worn under their clothes. The bat cave was accessed through the grandfather’s clock in the spacious living room. This week’s episode ended when The Batman, a captive locked in a wooden box, is dropped to the hungry crocodiles. The last thing you hear is a scream. Will The Batman be saved or he is really lunch meat? You’ll have to wait until next week to find out!