INTERMISSION: A WEEK, A MONTH, A YEAR, HALF YOUR LIFE

Another meme seems to have found it's way to my lobby, this time by way of The Sci-Fi Catholic. According to the rules, I'm supposed to pick various locales in which I'd like to live for a week, a month, a year, and half my life, and explain my reasons why. That's a dicey proposition when you're confined to a low budget universe like I am. While others get to pick places like The Matrix or Middle Earth, I'm stuck with choices like Boggy Creek, Frogtown, and wherever the heck it is Beastmaster is from. Still, with a little effort, I think I can probably come up with a few interesting B-type places in which to kill some time. So, let's see, how about...

A WEEK... on Monster Island. Introduced in 1968's Destroy All Monsters, this is the place where the U. N. dumps all those giant monsters which occasionally pop up and stomp Tokyo into dust. Not really a place you'd want to stay for any great length, but for a week it might be fun to watch Rodan and Mothra do fly-bys, see Anguirus do that rolling ball thing, and maybe even catch the Big G himself teaching Manilla how to blow smoke rings. The childlike wonder of the experience would be great. Of course, it might be really creepy if they still had the zippers up their backs. Exactly what kind of thing would choose to wear a thirty story tall lizard suit? Maybe I should change this one to the Land of the Lost.

A MONTH... on location with Roger Corman's production company in the 1960s. Not only would I have helped make about, oh I don't know, seven movies during that time period, I would have likely gotten to work with Vincent Price. We could have talked about fine art, the original version of The Fly, and what Chuck Heston was like on the set of The Ten Commandments. Too cool.

A YEAR... at the Banzai Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Strategic Information. Sure, I'm not really qualified to hang out with a bunch of adventuring neurosurgeon samurai rock stars, but with my college degree in Commercial Music & Recording, I could easily make it as a roadie  for Buckaroo Banzai and the Honk Kong Cavaliers. Helping invent cool stuff, putting on a good concert, and saving the world from Rastafarian aliens... not a bad way to spend a year.

HALF MY LIFE... on the Satellite of Love, of course. Do I even need to explain this one?

So, there you go. Not a bad itinerary for such a tight budget. The price tag doesn't really matter though because, as Buckaroo Banzai always remarked, "Remember, wherever you go, there you are." What he was referencing, of course, was the section of The Catechism which states, "The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully." Heart trumps budget any day of the week... or month... or year.