2010 January » Purple Grasshopper

We are controlling transmission

Jan 072010

Saturday afternoons when I was growing up was the best time ever. Well okay maybe not ever but I have fond memories of part of Saturday afternoons. It’s actually more of a moment frozen in time. A collage of memories.

My best friend Brian would come down and we would watch the Saturday afternoon monster matinée on TV. It was almost always a Godzilla film of some sorts along with some other film. Brian loved Godzilla, he would even pretend he was Godzilla some times. Or if I had missed a film he would tell me in detail what happened and would rattle off the names of all the monsters that had appeared in the film.

Me I thought the Godzilla films were good but it was always the second film that I liked the most. It was always some 50/60′s sci-fi B movie. You know something like Them, Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still… stuff like that. I remember at the time wondering if I was supposed to think they were cool, or just awful. Regardless of the effects, the plot or anything else I would sit and watch the film engrossed in it. Even then thinking some of the ‘future’ stuff was past it’s sell by date. But enjoying it none the less.

After the monster matinée they would normally show an episode of The Twilight Zone and then The Outer Limits, followed by Star Trek. Star Trek was always watched on a small portable TV that lived on the end of the dining room table while having dinner.

All of that may or may not have happened all at the same time, remember I said it was like a moment frozen in time. It’s all bunched up in my head, all under the same category in my brains filing system. Brian, Monsters and Sci-Fi it all some how goes together.

I’ve recently been reliving those moments in time. For Christmas this year I asked for a long list of 50/60′s B movies, the box set of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone box sets. I’ve found myself getting sucked in once again even though the ‘future’ stuff is even more past it’s sell by date and the effects are even more tired and awful than they were in my childhood. They still hold some power over me, they remind me of Brian being Godzilla, of Ants the size of giants and of a time when the world seemed to hold amazing secrets and felt so huge.

Pass the popcorn, it’s about to start so shhhhh!

Ode To A Grasshopper…

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Jan 042010

Back in the 1990′s I discovered The Doors. I don’t mean that I didn’t know they existed before then, I’m sure I did. But I got hooked on them in a big big way. For months they were all I would listen to. Their music spoke to me on some level. Looking back on that time I’m sure I was struggling with … something. In my early 20′s, trying to work out where I fit in the world, what I was going to do with myself. You know that kind of angst. The Doors seemed to be a fitting back drop for that time.

But this post isn’t about the Doors. It’s about a Grasshopper. Its actually about both.. and music and … well okay I’ll start this again.

When I had been younger I wanted to own a record shop. An idea that never has completely left me even now. But when I was in my 20′s I decided that I was also going to sell reconditioned retro 50/60′s furniture. Way before being retro was cool I might add. I didn’t have a name for the shop, until one day while watching The Doors Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

Jim is dancing around on stage during the song The End. He notices something on stage, bends down to look at it to see what it is, gets up dances around a bit more and then as he picks up his mic again starts singing/chanting

I think I’ll open a little shop
A little place were they sell things
And I think I call it, “Grasshopper”

There it was! The name I’d been looking for my whole life! I would name my little shop Grasshopper, it’d be an in joke, Doors fans would get it but no one else would. But wait Jim was looking at the grasshopper on the stage again…

Oh, I blew it, it’s a moth
That’s alright, he ain’t got long to go
So we’ll forgive him

Well calling a shop Moth wasn’t going to work, it didn’t have the same ring to it… okay I’d stick with Grasshopper… and I’d have a little moth flying through the P’s it’d work. It was sorted… in my head anyway.

The shop never did happen, came close though but it’s still there in my head with all it’s funky junk and it’s big green sign out front.

So the point of all that… what do you call a blog when you can’t think of a name… combine your favorite color and the name of the mythical shop you were going to run all those moons ago.