There was a time where I loved to read, couldn’t put a book down, something I truly regret that I don’t do much of anymore, at least not of novels to transport, though I still do read voraciously when it comes to trying to stay informed in this real world (but maybe back to transporting type novels might be more in order as the staying informed in this real world just tends to really piss me off and make the blood pressure spike which is not recommended at my age with an old man tiny little daily pill now as proof) or reading of old friends and new found ones and their blogs, or of baseball and my Buccos when in season though that has fallen off this year, sadly by a lot, and for many very specific Rob Manfred reasons, but that is the topic of another post, and another thing to make the blood pressure spike that I just don’t need … I mentioned at my age and old man tiny little daily pills right?
But I discovered early on, after a short stint of YA sports books, exclusively baseball related but which got rather repetitive and dull after a while, that I was to settle in, instead, on what would become lifelong wheelhouse stuff for me, fantasy and sci-fi.
I couldn’t get enough of the Asimov’s, and the Heinleins, the Herbert’s, the Clarke’s, the Niven and Pournelle’s together or alone, the Terry Brook’s and Shea Olmsford’s Shanarra days, the Mary Stewart’s and her Merlin and King Arthur tales (some that I even read once in England while sitting on the lawn of an old Norman castle for added effect) and eventually the Gene Wolfe’s, man, the Gene Wolfe’s and the Book Of the New Sun of Severian the Torturer for one, or any of Wolfe’s other disquieting and always slightly askew stories that left you feeling, well, just that, slightly askew, and marvel at how they could all build worlds so immense and dense in detail and yet also so intricate and fragile, sometimes even light, though, more often than not, dire and harrowing but always just flat out glorious and the sleepless nights that would ensue just waiting for return after being forced to put whatever new world I was in now on hold, at Mom’s insistence, on a nightstand, wondering if all involved in the pages knew that I had put them on pause, in a time out though not for any face in a corner reason, small, no bigger than a novel font, underneath some kids’ lamp after that Mom’s insistence turned to Momly threats, usually of the “alright Stephen, but you still gotta get up in the morning and I don’t wanna hear about your tired if so” type.
The Neil Gaimen’s would come too and of course there was the early discovery of Hitchhiking through the galaxy with Douglas Adams and Arthur and Ford and finding out just how important a simple towel and off beat Monty Python-esque silly English humor really could be.
And then there were the movies, a lot of really bad ones as I look back at them now, “The Man From Atlantis”, the first one, a TV one, with Patrick Duffy was possibly the greatest movie I had ever seen back then when I was 13, holy cow I thought, he can breathe underwater! And he has superpowers and webbed feet and hands! something I watched again years later and probably shouldn’t have, I really shouldn’t have. Sometimes it’s best just to let your grand memories remember and live on their own, in their own time … otherwise you just open yourself up to disappointment. Ya don’t need that right? No, “The Man From Atlantis” was the greatest movie ever. Period.
Then, in the same year, came that little thing called Star Wars where I was the envy of every kid in school as I had seen it first on Cape Cod on a family vacation. For one week before it came to town at home I was a kid god.
And it was, of course, a revelation, no sci-fi anything had ever looked like this, had told such a story as far as I knew, a one so engrossing and visually mind blowing. I was sold now on the movies showing me my favorite of sci-fi and fantasy things in moving pictures, real, forever hooked.
//////////////////////////////////////////
I went to the movies tonight for the first time in 13 or so years. The last being, I think, when Maria and I and the JG, back in the when we were a now, saw Toy Story 3, JG making a point of punching both of us in our arms when we were brought to tears.
It was Guardians of the Galaxy 3, a triumphant conclusion to a set of films that I had already held dear, just the first two installments, but hold even more dearly now.
I went in with intent to the Regal at the Poughkeepsie Galleria, and walked some length of the Mall from my always Mall parking lot parking spot from whenever I did go there, by rote, so many years ago, for a Maria visit at her store, and past her old store, forgetting that I was on the wrong end of the Mall for the theatres.
It was a bit of a hike. I forgot how Malls can be so long. I broke out my inhaler.
It was just a little kiosk now, the theater, menu, tap tap, menu, tap tap, in front of empty windows, almost mocking them, where there used to be human beings to buy your ticket from, with quick excited casual conversations, as you bought that ticket, of the wanting to see whatever you so were looking forward to followed with spoilerless “you’ll enjoy this one … seen it three times now” from former human beings at was now just that kiosk.
This was new navigating for me, kind of cold, but well, with big popcorn and a waaay too large a soda in hand that you know you shouldn’t order as their will be, in your old, at least one pee break, but hopefully at a point in the movie where you won’t miss too much, I made my way in.
//////////////////////////////////////////
After a back in the when we were a now with Maria and the JG and were now just a were I moved out into my own apartment, a wonderful little place in upstate Hyde Park, NY with the best of neighbors who always kept an eye for me, something I will forever be thankful of as I am often not all that good at doing it for myself.
There was a weekend where I thought the JG (Jagger) might like to come visit and watch a movie with me and just hang for a bit, I would be an awful cook in my promise of dinner and maybe he and I could just watch this flick called “The Guardians of the Galaxy” that I had heard about but knew nothing of.
I was transfixed, we were transfixed, we were transported, it was my everything space adventure, and an unexpected one at that making it even more special and engaging and was reminded of how the best of adventures, in books or TV movies or even full blown Hollywood productions of any type always have you playing the lead in your head or in your dreams on a nightstand until tomorrow.
I watched it three more times after getting Jagger back home and before the weekend was done.
//////////////////////////////////////////
I figger’d the personless kiosk, and after some tap taps it spat out a ticket and I made my way into the stadium seating which sounds like a whatever something until you realize and remember that it is more than a something, it’s just really cool, almost like a captain’s chair (a good chair to be in if this were a space adventure) and you don’t need to worry of that one really tall guy with the really big head wearing a hat who would, of course, always be sitting right in front of you.
I settled in with that too large a soda and that too large a popcorn in a too large a bucket taking up it’s own seat like it was my date …
//////////////////////////////////////////
No spoilers, but Rocket? You are probably one of the greatest characters I have ever had the pleasure (or pain now) of sharing my time with.
frankenberrysattic.com 