Some of the Earth's Citizens turn into Zombie 'Robut' Slaves and Die
Friday, September 30, 2011
In which the horrors of the 1960’s are once again debuted in black and white…
After a 5:18 wake-up call due to OLeif exiting the warm house for a cold bike, Puck snuggled into bed with his mama. Later, at a more acceptable hour, Collette emerged to find Puck having bundled Donkey on the couch in winter hats and a knitted glove on his head to keep him warm.
As the morning progressed, apples were juiced for Puck, a full glass of worthy cold apple foam.
And another trip to the park sent Puck entertaining four young children on the jungle-gym above the sloping wooded prairies of autumn bouquets. As they made their approach, Puck, hardly able to contain his excitement of playing with even more children than usual that week, would announce to their parents as if to reassure them…
“I am super nice to kids. This is a fun playground!”
These were Indian days, the acorns slamming the woodland floor, and the sun at that dipping angle that Collette always liked.
And finally, the mystery of the wasps in the house was explained. Somehow, throughout four years, seven months, two weeks, and five days of living in the house on the ill-defined hill… a rather large gap had never been discovered between the sliding glass door and the stationary glass door of the patio. Not until Thursday afternoon at 4:39, that is. Collette wadded a small cloth in its garish hole until a better remedy could be discovered.
Movie night was Carrie’s choice, although Rose had already refused to attend if Carrie’s selection was Yule Log, which was simply that: a yule log roasting over the fire for hours on end. Carrie had already threatened this torture upon them.
It was a short hour of English Sci-Fi, in the end. The Earth Dies Screaming, 1964. And two plates of homemade gingerbread cookies and chocolate-Reeses cookies…
They arrived, condemning the Honda dealership for trying to charge Dad five thousand dollars to replace a dying transmission in the Odyssey that had been replaced only two years earlier.
And to begin the evening, the girls argued over seating arrangements…
“Move, Carrie,” Rose bellowed. “That’s my seat.”
“Oh, come on. Who loans you her clothes all the time?”
“That’s my seat. Move down.”
“Collette has to braid my hair.”
“You can sit on the floor then.”
“Go suck an egg.”
“You go suck a lemon.”
Joe’s eyes were ping-pong balls as he watched the scenario, then laughed…
“Actually, Carrie, Rose must care about you more. You told her to suck an egg, which is probably raw, and would probably make her sick. But she just told you to suck a lemon.”
“No,” Carrie replied. “Lemons ruin my teeth.”
Once Magnus had arrived shortly later, the film started off with explosions of a decent variety.
Then Carrie pulled two zip-lock bags from her purse…
“If we run out of cookies, guys, I’ve got more snacks.”
“Spinach. And carrots,” Rose groaned.
“Ooh,” said Joe. “Toss me a carrot.”
It landed on the floor.
“Think I can still eat this?”
“Eat it! Eat it!” Carrie chanted.
Joe popped it in his mouth.
“Eew!” Rose exclaimed. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Why can’t we just get along, guys?” OLeif asked.
“Because the world hates everything,” came Rose’s predictable response.
Around the time that various characters began dying off… which was basically the entire movie, Rose once again expounded on her upcoming funeral…
“And you’ll put me in a chair in the corner during the funeral and you’ll bury me in New Orleans.”
“Why?”
“’Cause it’s creepy.”
The characters, meanwhile, were slowly being zombified into ‘gray blob’ eyes.
“What the… why can’t he just hold a gun in a normal way?”
“He’s British. They don’t know how to shoot guns.”
As fuel came sloshing out all over the car in the next scene…
“Ha. That’s what it’s like to pump fuel in Illinois.”
“Illinois. Don’t get me started.”
Magnus was confused by the whole… Illinois… thing…
“Missouri is just as rural, if not more so, than Illinois.”
“Just don’t… just don’t say anything about it,” OLeif whispered counsel.
“We’re not allegiant to Missouri, really. It’s just St. Louis.”
“Yeah,” said Carrie, “sometimes I’ll write on my name tags: St. Charles-St. Louis.”
The film progressed with robotic spacemen walking at a sloth-pace to kill off their victims…
“Why were people in the 50’s scared by slow things?”
The nondescript woman ran hysterically from the advancing menaces…
“I don’t get the whole pause, wait for it to catch up, then run again thing…”
“It’s called the pause-and-pose,” OLeif explained.
The woman hurried into a small closet to avoid the advancing zombie…
“Good thing that wasn’t Joe hiding from it. He’d just leave a trail of eyebrows,” said Magnus.
Not long later, the woman emerged…
“They always come out too soon,” said Carrie. “I would’ve waited there for the rest of my life.”
Shortly later, the woman could be seen standing motionless as the zombie and robot-spaceman made their two-inch-an-hour attack…
“’I’ll just wiggle over here,’” Rose mocked.
“Ten… hours… later…”
“Carrie,” said Joe. “These cookies are just OK.”
“That’s because they weren’t made with love,” Rose crooned.
“That’s ’cause I made them for you,” Carrie retorted.
“Aw, that robot just missed him. Now he’s sad.”
“These movies ask really great questions,” said Magnus later, “Who are they? What do they want? In return, I must ask myself… ‘Who are we?’ ‘What do we want?’”
After one robot, or ‘robut’, as they seemed intent on calling them, was crushed by a ramming car, the precedence was set…
“Oh, he’s gonna hit it again!”
Collective ‘awww’ when the car fell short of its mark.
“Why are they smiling all the time?”
“Because they think that’s what Americans do.”
And comments about Wedgie Man, who seemed to have issues with his pants throughout the film…
Just as the final destructive dynamite explosion was being rigged, a last robut came into view…
“Oh, it’s the sad robot.”
“’Don’t destroy this, please…’”
Another ‘awww’ as the car once again failed to ram the machinery lying in the middle of the road…
“It’s like aiming for a crunchy leaf,” said Carrie.
“What’s happened here, exactly?” was Magnus’ next question, which basically seemed to sum up the whole film as it came to a close.
The kids ‘saddled up’, as Mom always put it, shortly after nine, Carrie’s kind of movie-watching, just as Francis called up Carrie for advice on how to purchase a Six Flags season pass… in October…
“You know what Francis did today?” she said. “I told him to go to the store just to get me some ground ginger. So he calls twice because he can’t find it. Then a store associate helps him find it. And then he comes home with three sacks of groceries. Unbelievable.”
As the kids were getting into the Fit to leave, Joe called back to the porch…
“The brakes don’t work, so I have to use the engine to stop it.”
“What?”
“Bye!”