AND I NEED YOU TODAY, OH MANDA

The other day it fell to me to evict this pleasant little invader from the offices of The Day Gig…

I relocated the trespasser to a junk-cluttered desert area outside where, I hoped, he or she would find ample prey and shelter. The creature, whose skin was a pretty orangey-red that doesn’t come across in the pictures, expressed his or her opinion of my actions by excreting on my hands. The exploit made me feel like I should have my own show on Animal Planet.

Anyway…

Monster-of-the-Week: …in his or her’s honor let’s give this week’s nod to Manda, the titanic snakelike terror from several Japanese monster films, including 1963’s Atragon and my own favorite kaiju free-for-all, 1968’s Destroy All Monsters...

PETER THE GREAT

RIP to the wonderful Pete Seeger, passed on at 94.

One of my earliest memories was being in the back seat of a car in Newport, RI, and seeing a smiling guy get out of a car up ahead of us, and a wave to everyone, and being told that this was Pete Seeger. My parents were taking my folkie sister to the Folk Festival in Newport, and I was along for the ride. I also remember being taken to a Hubert Humphrey rally, so one or the other was the first famous person I can remember seeing. I’m told I also saw Bob Hope once when I was very small, but I have no memory of it. Maybe only the lefties stick in my mind.

On a more personal note, RIP also to bluegrass musician Kip Martin, my one-time step-nephew (though he was older than me) and unofficial extra older brother, passed on way too young yesterday.

Happy New Year tomorrow everybody! Chinese New Year, that is.

Farewell to the Year of the Snake, welcome to the Year of the Horse.

In honor of that noble beast, and also of The Kid, whose zodiacal sign is the Horse and who favors the Monster High series…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod to a new character from Monster High—the Nightmare Horse belonging to Headless Headmistress Bloodgood (“daughter of the Headless Horseman!”).

MIDGARD ACTION

With the Chinese New Year holiday festivities winding down this weekend, there’s still time for one more…

Monster-of-the-Week: …selection honoring the Year of the Snake. One friend suggested Thulsa Doom’s giant pet who runs afoul of Arnie in 1982’s Conan the Barbarian...

…or the snake with whom Arthur O’Connell has a candid chat in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao…

Fine choices both, but they're edged out by another friend’s suggestion: the Midgard Serpent, aka Jormungand, the vast, world-encircling, tail-chasing reptile of Norse mythology, and for the god Thor, in his career as an angler, the perennial One That Got Away. Here’s the Middie in a painting by Henry Fuseli…

…and here’s the Marvel Comics version….

By the way, I’m hoping that this being The Year of the Snake bodes propitiously for the Arizona Diamondbacks…

RATTLETALE

We’re still in the thick of Chinese New Year festivities ringing in the Year of the Snake, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod to this gigantic rattler menacing the space travelers in this Aurora model kit tie-in with the ‘60s TV series Land of the Giants…

As far as I know, this scene never occurred in the two-season series, but the box art is pretty awesome.

TO SERPENT WITH LOVE

Happy Chinese New Year this Sunday!

It’s the Year of the Snake, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week the nod goes to the giant Skull Island snake that menaces Jessica Lange in the 1976 version of King Kong, before being easily dispatched by the title character. The huge reptile looks pretty lame in the movie itself…

…but quite marvelous in this John Berkey promotional art…