Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Attack Ships on Fire...

So... I recently watched Blade Runner again and, once again, realized it is one of the coolest damn movies EVER made.


Period.


I especially I love the scene where Roy Batty is about to die and he looks at Dekker and says, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... "


This soliloquy was especially poignant to me this time around because I have been in a weird funk as of late. I wrote about it a few posts ago (or - more appropriately - whined about it) when I wrote about my aging musical tastes.


I'm not certain why I'm suddenly so nostalgic, or feeling my age so strongly. Either way, the last month or so's seen lots of Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Depeche Mode, and other music that came from a younger, brighter time of my life.


And I've also been rewatching many of the movies as well - hence my rewatching of Blade Runner.

To help with my growing ennui, I've decided to makea commitment to myself and my writing.

I've decided to make many of my this year about memories.


I plan to periodically post little glimpses into things that I've seen in my life that will be lost for all time unless I commit them to paper - or, in this case - to the electronic ether this blog represents.


So - in that vein - here is a memory of one of the coolest things I've ever seen....


I posted this on Zombie Squad a month ago, but thought it would fit perfectly into my own Replicant history.

Back a few years ago, I helped my buddy Richie and his then girlfriend, Dr. Michelle, move back to Ohio from Oregon.

We had stopped at Mt. Rushmore and, as we were leaving, there was suddenly a rumble like a passing train. The rumble grew and turned into a a deafening crack of thunder and, in the growing gloom of the approaching nightfall, a searing stitch of lightning filled the distant sky. We hurried into our cars and resumed our trip, leaving the Black Hills under cover of one of the most incredible lightning storms I've ever seen.

After a few hours of the brilliant lightning and thunder, it started to eventually rain. And it wasn't normal rain. It was pouring rain - cataclysmic rain.

So I'm in Dr. Michelle's car (she's sleeping in the passenger seat), and I'm following Richie's truck across the high desert in a driving storm.

The sky was filled with an awe-inspiring electrical show and the wind blew dirt and sand and tumbleweeds across the seemingly endless ribbon of highway that stretched into stormy blackness before us. The thunder was like the angry roar of an avalanche and lightning crisscrossed the sky like brilliant spiderwebs spun by giant, god-like spiders.

We'd been on the road for a few days, and we were all tired, so you can imagine my surprise when - as the rain fell in shimmering, wind swept sheets and the lightning lit the inky darkness with brilliant blasts of daytime - the desert road was suddenly filled with toads.

That's right... it was a plague of toads. Millions of the little bastards.

They were pouring out of the ditches on the side of the highway like water boiling up out of a pot. In horror, we drove for a half hour through the rain, and lightning, and thunder, and fucking TOADS -- with Richie's 1968 Chevy pickup truck cutting a swath through the poor amphibious bastards.

We stopped some hours later and were standing at a gas station in the middle of
nowhere, Richie and I both drinking Jolt Colas and leaning against the building. We sat in companionable silence, slurping on the syrupy, caffeinated evil that is Jolt Cola and watching Dr. Michelle continue sleeping in the front seat of her car.

"So," I says, "did you... ummm. Hmmm... I'm really tired. I think I might have
been hallucinating for a little bit back there. You didn't see... umm... toads,
did you?"

"DUDE!" Richie yells, with a look of total relief, "I thought I was totally
losing my mind! There were toads everywhere! They were popping under my
tires!"

... to this day, Dr. Michelle refuses to believe us that it happened.

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