Head Rattle

I.
John Carpenter's classic sci-fi/horror ick-fest The Thing (1983) was showing at the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre last night. I attended that screening, with quite a large, predictably geeky crowd, but not the 1950s version the Theatre showed earlier in the day, which I saw on TV a long time ago. (Yes, it was one Thing after another, haha.) It isn't the gooey, pre-CGI aliens that are scary in this movie, it seems to me, as well done as those were, but the notion of one's identity being hijacked or suddenly not knowing who the people standing next to you really are. That had obvious political resonance during the Red-scare 1950s, but it's still a creepy thought. "What are they really thinking?" I ask myself that several times a day.

II.
I watched some of the post-event footage of "THE wedding" and was amused by the bizarre female headgear and male comic-opera "military" get-ups on display. Even HM the Queen wore a surreal chapeau, though a sedate one compared to the antlers and flying saucers sported by other guests. The whole thing was indeed affecting. For about five minutes, I wanted to be British in reality, not just ancestry. Cable TV news coverage of it here in the ex-colonies was schizophrenic, alternating between the royalties and the horrendous and tragic tornado damage in the U.S. South. Happy, sad, strange world.



~~~

Meanwhile....

I can't decide if these are beautiful or hideous, but they're certainly impressive. If I didn't know better, I might think they were Photoshopped.

(Thanks, Ray)