IS IT "MR. ZILLA?" OR CAN I CALL YOU "GOD?"

I've been suffering a bit of an energy crisis lately, in that I just haven't had the energy to blog much. The days are, after all, growing shorter (yes, even in Spain!)--and wintertime has been an annual, creativity-draining albatross around my neck since I was a child growing up in the 1950's.

But I desperately wanted to publish something--ANYTHING!--on my blog tonight, so I was forced to break-out the big guns.

Look up! See that photo? It's from the 1963 movie, "King Kong vs. Godzilla." I don't think I'm exagerrating when I say that this movie was the reason that Thomas Edison invented cinema.

I saw KKvs.G no less than *seventeen times* before my tenth birthday. And no...that's not an exagerration, either. I counted.

To briefly summarize the plot, Godzilla was being naughty...so a group of Japanese guys brought in King Kong to kick his ass.

But the movie was SO much more. There's a drunken orgy featuring hallucinagenic berry juice. There's a giant octopus that sounds like an obese man peeling his sweaty buttocks from a vinyl-covered chaise lounge. And of course...there's incompetently-edited English dubbing; the likes of which the world had not seen since...well, since the previous Godzilla movie.

In case you're wondering...I rooted for Godzilla. All seventeen times. It was nothing personal against King Kong. In fact, I had a splendid brunch with Mr. Kong at Tavern on the Green in 1973, and I found him utterly charming. But for reasons that I can't articulate, my heart belonged to Godzilla--as did it also belong to Dick York, Mary Ann and Jan Brady.

During the movie's final fight scene when Godzilla was playing Jerry Lawler to the King Kong's Andy Kaufmann, the big ape got a quick boost of energy by chawin' on a high-tension power line. I briefly considered this treatment as a tonic for my current meloncoly, but was forced to discard it after reading the fine print on my insurance deductible.

So...I think I'll try to score some of that berry juice, instead.