16 below zero with a 35 below chill factor/"The Thing" (1951)

Those were the stats from this morning....about 8 degrees colder than predicted and a nice 10 degrees colder on the wind chill numbers....

I crawled out of the sack, Patricia and everybody else had school cancelled(cold more so than the icy roads, although they are still bad), and most of the varsity basketball games have been postponed as well. The skies dawned blue and cold, like a .38 police special.....at 2pm it was still sitting a -2 and will stay there or get colder as the day wears on...tomorrow some wind and flurries will bring the temps near 20....which of course will seem much warmer.

First off, I fired up the various vehicles, Sam's being the only one of the 4 not to turn over....I finally put the jumper box on that and got his Dodge cranked up an hour or so ago. Reagan(the Airedale) had a vet appointment at 8 this morning, so I had little choice but to move my sorry butt out of the house. Neither one of us wanted to do that.

I went by frozen Grand Lake about noon, and took a couple of photos...the 13500 acre lake is froze solid....Global Warming? The lake has seldom seen this much ice in the past 25 years...so choke on that Al Gore, you fat lying sack of dung! The same goes for your lemming like legion of followers in the Chicken Little world of faux Global Warming.

"The Thing from Another World"(1951)

Every time we get weather like this, it reminds me of one of my favorite all time movies, the Sci-Fi Classic from the early "Atomic" scare days of the 1950s.

The original "Thing" came out in 1951, and featured a crew of Air Force sky jockeys up near the North Pole, who hooked up with a group of nerds to fight off a survivor from a downed "Flying Saucer".....the lone monster was none other than James Arness in one of his earlier parts...."Matt Dillon" never said a word, and didn't get anywhere top billing, that went to the lone eye candy of the movie, Margaret Sheriden....but it did get Arness his start towards the big time.

The entire movie took place in the frozen tundra of the great northwest somewhere in Alaska....I remember one line in particular after the monster had cut off the heat supply...."Captain, Captain, the temperatures down to 5 degrees"....Scotty, the journalist, wisecracks back, "Next stop, Ten Below".....it's one entertaining show, and even with the monster looking like a giant carrot, it is entertaining as they come, without blood, guts, and nudity. You can buy it on DVD or catch it on Turner Movie Classics on occasion.

With the basketball games getting backed up to do postponements, the Vietnam Security Police mini-reunion, and other goings on, I suspect the next few weeks are going to be quite busy...but our baseball rules meetings start the middle of February, and that can only mean, spring isn't that far off.

back later>>>>>>>

photos--at the top a couple of shots this noon of the frozen 13 thousand acres of Grand Lake.....then from "The Thing"...Robert Cornthwaite, Margaret Sheriden, and Kenneth Tobey discuss matters/The Fly Boys find the Flying Saucer/ and the updated studio poster that says "Starring James Arness as The Thing"...the 6'7" Arness was the thing, but never said a word, and only appears on screen for a few minutes....but he was "the star"--Great movie, and far superior to the 1988 remake.