Movie Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Oh, we're going old-school on this one. VERY old school, in fact. This is a 1920 film from Germany that still stands as one of the best and most famous films of the silent era. Best known for its insane set design and its twist ending, this movie still has an impact to this day.

You doubt me? Oh, but it's true. This was the second time I watched this; I watched it in a college course a few years ago. But I didn't watch it alone. I watched it with my middle son, Tanner, a fourteen-year-old who is totally into cool stuff, not Dad's old stuff. But he couldn't turn away.

Yes, it's silent, and yes, it's German, and yes, it's nowhere near as creepy and horrifying as the sort of stuff we've been given in movies for the past few decades. But it's got incredible atmosphere, a very clever script, and as I mentioned, the set design is unreal. Literally. Everything on the screen has a twisted, warped perspective. There isn't a single right-angle to be found anywhere. Clerks sit on stools five feet high and bend over desks piled with scraps of paper. Roads and sidewalks are slanted. It's utterly wrong...and it's perfect.

See, the original screenplay was intended to reflect the national post-war attitude in Germany; the writers, Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, were pacifists who had different experiences during the Great War; Janowitz was an officer, Mayer a draft-dodger who faked insanity to avoid serving. Their original idea was to write an allegory about how the German government had brainwashed the German people into fighting a war and paying the consequences for it. The twist ending was not part of their original script. But without it, the movie likely would not have been remembered nearly as well as it is today.

So, short synopsis. A man named Francis sits on a bench, watching Jane, the woman he loves, walking by, oblivious to his adoring gaze. He tells the man next to him that she is his fiancée, but they have both suffered through a terrible ordeal. The story is then told, with the twisted, Impressionist art and sets leading the way.

It turns out that not too long ago, a man calling himself Dr. Caligari showed up at the festival with a strange and unique exhibit: A somnambulist named Cesare, a man who has slept his entire life. Caligari claims to be able to control Cesare, and wakens him to the delight and horror of the paying audience. Cesare is also able to predict the future, and predicts the death of Alan, Francis' best friend and rival for Jane's affections. That night, Alan is indeed murdered, and the police cannot locate the murderer.

Francis soon suspects Caligari of having something to do with the murder, and he's right; Cesare is the murderer, unknowingly committing crimes at the behest of the insane Caligari. He is sent to murder Jane, but instead of killing her, he abducts her. A chase ensues, and Cesare leaves the dumbstruck girl behind before collapsing in the roadway.

Dr. Caligari (left), Cesare, and Jane

Caligari turns out to be the director of the insane asylum, who has gone mad in an attempt to replicate the experiments of the actual Dr. Caligari, an 18th-century mystic who had hypnotized a somnambulist of his own, named Cesare. When the current Cesare was admitted to the asylum, the director successfully used him for his own experiments in hypnotism. When confronted, Caligari reveals his insanity, and is hauled into a padded cell of his own.

Returning to the bench, we reach the twist ending as we find out that Francis is actually a patient at the asylum, along with Jane (who believes she is a queen) and Cesare (who isn't a somnambulist, just a quiet, staring man with no homicidal tendencies). Caligari is the director, who now understands Francis' delusions and believes he can cure him.

Caligari was one of the highlights of German cinema in the 1920s, along with such films as Nosferatu, Metropolis, and The Golem. It was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, doing well with American audiences. And while the horror elements are incredibly tame by today's standards, they are quite striking for their time.

This is definitely not a movie for everyone; modern audiences often struggle with silent movies. But if it is an acquired taste, it's definitely a taste worth acquiring. And I'm not the only one who thinks so; Tanner enjoyed it just as much, although the twist ending caught him by surprise.

Check it out; it's public domain, so it's available on YouTube or the Internet Archive, as well as on DVD and Blu-Ray. 

Movie Review: The Mask of Zorro (1998)

I reviewed the Tyrone Power Mark of Zorro a while back; now it's time to review this one. And, as a bonus, I got to watch it not only with Tanner, but I even got my wife to sit down for this one, as well as Garrett for a while before he fell asleep. And while it will be like pulling teeth to get her to admit it, she enjoyed it.

This movie is exactly what you want in a swashbuckling extravaganza. There's action, swordfights, acrobatics, romance, comedy, and explosions. It's a recipe that's worked since The Adventures of Robin Hood (although that one didn't have explosions), and it worked very, very well here.

In a sense, this one is a sequel as much as it is a reboot. Don Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins), the original Zorro, is older now and ready to hang up his mask and sword. But stuff happens, and his mortal enemy, Rafael Montero (the outgoing governor of California) figures out who he is. We get a cool fight scene in a burning house, and Diego's wife is killed by one of Montero's men. Worse, Diego is arrested and thrown into prison, but not before Montero takes his infant daughter, Elena, to raise as his own child.

Twenty years later, Montero returns, and Zorro escapes prison to get his revenge. He soon learns that his daughter has accompanied Montero to California, which throws a wrench in his plans. He finds a drunk Antonio Banderas, looking for revenge for the death of his brother at the hands of Montero's main henchman, Captain Love. Realizing that Alejandro (Banderas) is the same kid that helped him at the beginning of the movie, he trains him in swordfighting and courtly manners and turns him into a carbon copy of his younger self; foppish and arrogant as a nobleman, swift, deadly and cunning as a masked avenger.

There's a plot about buying California's independence from Mexico, using gold secretly mined in California that the Mexican government doesn't know about. Alejandro, in his nobleman disguise, finds out about the mine and has to stop the villains from completing their plan and killing all the workers to hide what they've done. Meanwhile, Diego returns to Montero's house to have it out with him, and Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) learns who her real father is.

Big climactic fight scene at the end as both heroes get their revenge, and the innocent workers are saved from the mine explosion. It's very exciting, but the point of the movie isn't the plot; it's in the atmosphere and the set pieces. And oh my, are these good set pieces. The opening scene, the barracks fight, Alejandro's dance with Elena, the infiltration of Montero's mansion, the fight in the barn, the closing battle...it just keeps coming. And it's paced very well, so there is time to breathe between the big moments.

My wife enjoyed the scene in the confessional as well as the dance, and she paid attention through most of the movie. It's rare that we find a movie that we will both like, but this is definitely one of them. We won't watch it again any time soon; she rarely watches a movie more than once. I've seen it at least a dozen times, though.

This is a fantastic movie, one that I recommend to everyone. The only scene that might be questionable for kids to watch would be the fight in the barn between Zorro and Elena, just for the ending. It's played for laughs, and it works, but there is definitely sexual tension throughout the scene. And she ends up topless, although she has strategically-placed bosom-length hair to keep the movie from showing nudity.

Action scenes and swordfighting are a big part of my own writing, so if you want to see how movies like this inspired me, check out my first fantasy novel, The Chronicles of Meterra: Arrival, on Amazon. And support indie writers, because pop culture isn't producing this sort of entertainment anymore.

Terra Nova: Enterprise Retrospective

Ah, I miss this show. It was such a breath of fresh air after twenty-one seasons of far-future, super-advanced Federation technology, fighting the Borg and the Dominion and running around the galaxy like a futuristic delegation from the United Nations. In this episode, we see the Enterprise doing something more prosaic: solving one of the early mysteries of deep space exploration and colonization, the lost colony of Terra Nova.

Terra Nova is described as one of the first attempts by humans to settle another world. Using early-stage warp engines that can take years to go from one star system to the next, the colonists successfully landed on a planet and named it 'Terra Nova', or 'New Earth'. Quite the ambitious declaration. When Earth sought to send another batch of colonists to the same world, the original group protested, and it devolved into a nasty war of words that culminated in TN cutting off all contact with Earth. No one had been there since, until the Enterprise, fast enough to make the trip in a much shorter time, dropped by for a visit.

They discover a race of underground people who speak a primitive form of English, who take Lt. Reed captive and demand that the Enterprise and its crew of 'humans' leave them alone. It doesn't take a degree in anthropology to figure out that these people are the descendants of the Terra Nova colonists, driven underground by a radioactive meteor that poisoned the surface and killed most of the adults; the only survivors were the children, who demonstrated true colonial spirit in figuring out how to survive without any adults to guide them.

In the end, one of the oldest Novans is identified as a young girl from the original colony, and Archer works with the Novan leader to rescue one of the trapped Novans from drowning. The Enterprise leaves Terra Nova without bringing any of its people back to Earth, since they have no memory of the planet anyway and are adapted to survive here. And thus, the mystery of Terra Nova is solved.

This isn't one of the episodes I look back on with fondness. The background is, frankly, weak. The original colonists (of which there were about eighty or so) complain that Earth is sending more people? It's a planet, not an isolated valley. You're going to need some genetic variation to sustain a tiny population like this anyway. You don't want to see the newcomers? They can land on the other side of the world and never have anything to do with you! Threatening a state of war with your home planet when you have zero space capability (having used the colony ship as building materials to get the colony started)? And then blaming Earth for 'sending' a radioactive asteroid to kill you all? Come on. There is so much wrong with that premise to begin with, that it makes the whole episode fall flat.

As for the Novans themselves, the idea is interesting and executed fairly well. The Novans, who were all children and their descendants after the adults all died in the radiation poisoning (why the kids didn't die isn't fully explained), grew up believing that Earth had killed their parents and abandoned them to their fate. Of course they don't consider themselves humans, and treat the Enterprise crew as enemies.

There are some nice character moments; Mayweather is the most excited crewmember, having learned about the lost colony as a child and wanting to solve the mystery. Archer frustrated that he is supposed to be making first contact with alien species, and he can't even do it right with a colony of humans. It's an episode that showcases just how comparatively primitive this show's setting and technology are compared to the original series, let alone the TNG/DS9/VOY era.

Overall, though, this is the weakest episode thus far, and that's two poor ones in a row. This one is getting a 2 out of 10; the interesting initial premise is overshadowed by the terribly thought-out backstory. Very disappointing.

Next time, though...we meet the Andorians. Oh, yes.

Manly Men Doing Manly Things

Growing up, I was always a 'brain-work' kind of person, not a 'physical labor' type. Now that I'm on a farm, that has changed a bit. But even after we moved here, we relied on our oldest to help with a lot of that sort of work, because he likes it a lot, and because I don't. But he's been unavailable for the past little while thanks to working two jobs and spending lots of time with his girlfriend, so it's fallen to me.

And dear Lord, does it ever hurt. Fifty-one years old is not the time to start doing construction projects and working with power tools. But, you do what you have to do. And I had to do it, so I did it.

Yes, it's a chicken tractor. With twenty chickens moved into it last night. We were extremely fortunate that we still had the old tractor that we built last year, or at least its frame, mostly together. It took about fifteen hours of work to complete the frame, attach the wire mesh, and get it ready for its occupants.

I learned quite a bit from our first attempt last year; instead of just stapling the mesh, I used 1x3 strapping for a much more secure setup. Ain't nothing getting through that. And we didn't mesh the bottom this time, to give the chickens the opportunity to scratch at the ground and dig for bugs. So there's always the possibility that a predator could dig underneath, but it's a chance we'll have to take. I added the birch log to give them a place to roost as well. It's still small for the number of chickens in there, but it's just a temporary home, and much bigger than the small crate they spent the past few weeks in.

Kudos to our middle son, Tanner, for helping out; he's learning how to use the tools as well. It's important to learn to be as self-sufficient as possible, especially with the economy going as it is. The more we can do on our own, the better off we'll be. Gardening, raising chickens and rabbits, doing our own repairs and farm projects...it all adds up to free-range living.

This project didn't cost us anything more; the frame was already there, the mesh was reused from the old tractor, and my wife picked up the strapping on the side of the road for free. We had the tools and screws, as well as the framing wood, so all this cost was time. And my sedentary nature. And a lot of Advil. Because dear Lord, this really hurt.

But seeing the happiness on my wife's face when she came out to see it? Worth every ache and pain.

Alternate History

The most asked question in history is, "What if?"

"What if the South had won the Civil War?"

"What if Hitler had won?"

"What if the Spanish Armada conquered England?"

"What if the Soviets kept missiles in Cuba?"

"What if the American Revolution had failed?"

"What if France defeated England in North America?"

There are literally millions of possible questions of this sort; what if this particular historical event had gone a different way? What would be the result?

This is the field of alternate history, a sub-set of science fiction. Basically, there is a PoD, a Point of Departure, where one, possibly very small, event turns out differently than it did in our actual history. One of the most well-known examples of this is Harry Turtledove's 'American Empire' series, where the Union never gets hold of Lee's plans for Gettysburg thanks to a sharp-eyed Confederate soldier who rescues the dropped orders. Not able to anticipate Lee's intentions, the Union is hopelessly outclassed at the battle, and the American Civil War is effectively over, with two countries now occupying the land where one once stood united. Turtledove wrote a lengthy series of eleven books in which he explores the aftermath of this single action, with the action beginning with another war between the North and South in 1881 and ending with the end of World War II in 1944. It's justly known as one of the most intricate and detailed alternate history stories out there, and Turtledove himself is the acknowledged master of the genre. So much so, in fact, that there is an award named after him on the Alternate History forums.

Yes, that's a thing; a web forum where people toss out ideas and write lengthy timelines exploring various facets of 'what if' in history. There are pre-Christian timelines, Fall of Rome stories, medieval alternates, and of course, Civil War and World War II explorations; those two are the most popular topics for alternate history speculations.

Right now, I'm reading a very lengthy and detailed timeline about what might have happened at the beginning of World War I, if the Germans had a couple of cruisers near the Canadian west coast at the time war was declared. Due to political wrangling and a focus on the east coast, Canada had but one functioning warship on the west coast at that time, the Rainbow, which would have been outclassed by either of the likely German cruisers in the region. It's a fantastic read, very well-researched, and while it only covers a brief span of time (the writer stated that it would only cover roughly the month of August, 1914), it's filled with incredible possibilities for a future in which Canada almost certainly develops a strong Navy in the aftermath of what would devastating coastal raids in British Columbia.

Alternate history has subgenres as well. There's fantastic alternate history, where magic makes an appearance in some historical period, such as the Crusades or the Roman Empire; there's sci-fi alternate history, such as an alien invasion in World War II (another Turtledove series). One recent addition to the alternate history genre is 'steampunk'. This is a genre in which fantastic technologies imagined by 19th-century writers such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells become a reality; a particularly popular point is Charles Babbage's attempt to build a functioning computer (The Difference Engine), which could do complex calculations. His designs were recovered decades later, and a working model of the Difference Engine has been built. Imagine Victorian England with computers. Where would we be today?

Some alternate history focuses on the actual PoD, where the immediate aftereffects of the change are explored. Others look further into the future, looking at how society would have developed differently in the intervening years between the PoD and the setting of the story. Both provide interesting and exciting possibilities. And there's another branch of this genre in which our timeline is somehow mixed with an alternate one, usually through time travel or some other such device, where people from our familiar history are transported to a different world with a parallel history.

While Turtledove is the master of the genre, he wasn't its originator. The oldest known example of alternate history comes from Ancient Rome; the historian Livy speculated on what would have happened had Alexander the Great lived to invade Europe as he had planned, and how Rome would have fared against his forces. That was written in the late 1st century BC.

I'm going to recommend a few alternate history books that deal with a variety of historical periods and how history could have been changed with just a twist of fate. All of these are rightly regarded as classic works of the genre.

L. Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall (a time traveler goes to Classical Rome and tries to prevent the fall of the Empire)

Eric Flint, 1632 (West Virginian miners are transplanted to the Thirty Years' War in Germany)

Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (The Nazis won World War II, splitting North America with Japan)

Keith Roberts, Pavane (Spanish conquer England, no Industrial Revolution but there are fairies)

William Gibson & Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine (Babbage succeeds in building the first computer in Victorian England)

Harry Turtledove, pretty much anything

These are a good start for the reader interested that most mysterious of questions, "What if?" Enjoy, and learn some history.

Mixing Genres

One of the most interesting things one learns when reading pulp stories is that 'genre' is just a word. The notion of splitting stories up based on a particular theme was common enough in the early days of the pulps; there were fiction magazines devoted to railroads, for example, or westerns, or scientific topics such as electronics. But the biggest sellers didn't bother with these distinctions. They contained stories that would appeal to a wide range of readers, which is why they sold the most.

For example, the first part of Edgar Rice Burroughs' first published novel, A Princess of Mars, shared space in the February All-Story Magazine with romance stories, western stories, comedies, poetry, and adventures on the high seas. It was a grab-bag, and it was one of the most popular selling magazines in North America. Two hundred pages of variety, fun for everyone. All for the low price of a dime.

Later, the idea of 'genre' came out of the science fiction camp of fans; they wanted to define what a 'science fiction' story was allowed to be. It had to be plausible, scientific, and 'realistic' in terms of if it 'could' happen in our own future. Stories such as Princess of Mars, or Abraham Merritt's Moon Pool, were suddenly disqualified from the ranks of science fiction despite their scientific basis, which was based on scientific knowledge of their time. Instead, they were 'relegated' to the realm of fantasy fiction.

Horror is another genre that gradually became separated from its fantastic cousins; while Weird Tales Magazine, as well as some issues of Amazing Stories, contained stories with horror elements, the idea of separating horror from other genres didn't come until much later. But during the twenties and thirties, in magazines such as Weird Tales, writers such as Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft were published right alongside Robert E. Howard and Seabury Quinn. It was a time when the writer's mind could truly roam free, using whatever story elements fit the author's vision.

Burroughs' Pellucidar envisioned a hollow Earth, with an entire world on the underside of the Earth's crust inhabited by dinosaurs, ape-men, and enormous creatures from Earth's dim past, as well as humans. H.P. Lovecraft's horror contained science fiction elements such as the Mi-Go, fungi from the ninth planet of our solar system (written around the time Pluto was discovered). And Robert E. Howard's Conan, the quintessential fantasy hero, fought eldritch horrors that wouldn't have seemed out of place in a Lovecraft story.

Unfortunately, that sense of 'anything goes' was lost for a long time. Go to a modern bookstore and look at all the genre sections. There's mystery, there's fantasy, there's sci-fi (sometimes the latter two are combined), there's horror, there's romance, there's westerns...it's all neatly categorized, and you can generally have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get when you pick a book out of one of those sections. And that, frankly, gets to be boring. There are only so many ways you can pastiche or deconstruct Tolkien before the stories are predictable. And who reads for predictable?

Today, indy writers are mixing genres the way it used to be done. Brian Niemeier, for example, has written the Nethereal series, which combines far-future science fiction with cosmic horror. Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International mixed modern military-style fiction with fantastic creatures such as werewolves. The genre lines are blurring again, and that's a good thing.

The best compliment a pulp-style writer of fantasy or science fiction can get is that his story can't be categorized in any particular genre. Mix it up! Who cares if your swashbuckling hero in 17th-century France runs into a Roswell alien? That's a cool story! Or a dragon taking on an F-18 in an aerial dogfight? Bring it on! Stories like that expand the imagination and get the reader thinking outside of a particular box. And who knows? That might lead them to a whole new pack of stories that they would never have read had they stuck to a genre.

The old pulps had it right; appeal to multiple audiences, and sell more copies. It's time to get back to that mindset, and ditch the rigid compartmentalization of writing.

Consistency

One of the things I learned when I started writing seriously was that the key to success isn't brilliance or creativity; it's consistency. Consistently writing something daily, whether it be a quick short story or a chapter of a novel, was the only way to succeed. And for over a year, I did that. Unfortunately, since we moved, I have not been anywhere close to consistent. In fact, I've gone months without even posting on this blog. So it very much feels like I'm starting over.

The good news is that I have started writing again; another Cameron Vail mystery. It's only just started, and time pressures mean I don't have the luxury of having a couple of hours uninterrupted every night to work on it. But that doesn't mean I can't put in some effort every day, even if it's only fifteen or twenty minutes. Again, consistency is the key.

The idea of 'waiting for inspiration' has killed more writing careers than anything else. I know it; I've read words to that effect dozens of times. But it's still a matter of planting your butt in the seat and typing, without all the distractions that are so easy to find today. Put on a YouTube video for background music? Before long you're watching other things, and jumping around to whatever distracts you from doing the actual writing.

So, how to maintain consistency? Again, it's just a matter of committing to do something every day. Even if it's just a few minutes. Eventually, more time will be available, and there will be some days where hours will open up for uninterrupted writing. But in the meantime, being consistent in the little things will make a big difference. Writing a thousand words a day means a novel can be finished in two months or less. Two thousand words? A book a month. That's consistency, and that's the goal.

Let's see if I can get back on track.

Tombstone (1993) Review

Well, I've written science fiction, fantasy, mystery, steampunk superheroes, pulp heroes...but not a western. Not yet, at least. Maybe I will at some point. My son and I have been delving into the old Lone Ranger TV series lately, but tonight I wanted something a bit more...grandiose. For research for future writing. That's the ticket.

So, I put on one of the all-time greats, Tombstone. A movie absolutely loaded with stars, past, present and future, based on real history and full of quotable lines that still resonate nearly thirty years later. And yes, I called it an all-time great, because it is exactly that. Action, romance, comedy...this movie has it all and then some. And, much like Desmond Doss of Hacksaw Ridge fame, the reality overshadows the movie, because some of the stuff these men did was too much even for Hollywood to believe.

I'm not going to recap the whole movie in detail; basically, Wyatt Earp and his brothers and their wives move to the silver mining hub called Tombstone, Arizona. There they encounter the Cowboys, a semi-organized crime gang of red-sashed riders who terrorize the civilians and threaten the lawmen. Wyatt just wants to settle down and live a normal life, but things keep piling up until he and his brothers are sworn in as sheriff and deputies. There's this famous gunfight you might have heard of, but in the aftermath, Wyatt's brothers are taken out. Wyatt and his friend, Doc Holliday, lead a small band of Marshals who go after the Cowboys, breaking their control over the region and restoring law and order.

That's the short version; now go watch the movie yourself, because it's fantastic.

So, the cast. As I mentioned, it's full of stars. The leads are Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp, Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp, and Bill Paxton as Morgan Earp. Dana Delany plays the love interest, and Charlton Heston has a brief cameo as well. The bag guys include Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo, Powers Boothe as Curly Bill and Stephen Lang as Ike Clanton. Thomas Haden Church plays Billy Claiborne, and Billy Bob Thornton shows up as a cowardly bully who gets manhandled by an unarmed Wyatt in one of the movie's juiciest scenes. And there are plenty of others as well; this cast was stacked.

Favorite scenes (and everyone who has seen this movie has them) include the aforementioned bully take-down, the arrest of Curly Bill for murdering the sheriff (while high on some kind of opiates), the gunfight at the OK Corral, and the final showdown between Holliday and Ringo. Actually, any scene with Doc Holliday can be considered a favorite scene; Val Kilmer was absolutely spectacular in this role. Every time I look at a clip from the movie on YouTube, I see the same comment over and over: Kilmer should have won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this movie. To the Academy's eternal shame, he wasn't even nominated. In fact, Tombstone got a grand total of zero Oscar nominations that year, which is a crime against entertainment.

So, what is that makes this such a great movie? Well, it's a very masculine movie. These are men. They have a moral code (or, in the case of the Cowboys, the antithesis of one), they take action when necessary, and they aren't afraid to stand and fight when needed. But they don't go looking for fights; Wyatt's admonishment to his younger brother Morgan that killing a man 'changes you inside' rings true; Wyatt spends the first half of the movie trying to keep a low profile. It's only when Virgil has had enough and enlists Morgan to join him as a town deputy that Wyatt finally accepts the inevitable. And when bad men are doing bad things, it takes good men to stop them, and sometimes there is a price to pay. These men do what has to be done.

Is it 100% historically accurate? Of course not; it's a Hollywood movie. But the OK Corral gunfight did happen. Wyatt did try to stay out of law enforcement in Arizona until circumstances forced him to do so. Doc Holliday really did have the reputation of being one of the deadliest gunfighters in the West. And yes, Wyatt really did shoot Curly Bill at near-point-blank range while somehow managing to not get hit by a single bullet.

The Old West has been mythologized for decades, but it was a real time and place, and there were real men like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday who blazed a trail and wrote their names in the history books. And the Western is the American genre, more than any other. Aside from romance, the western was probably the most popular genre of fiction in America for decades. The first real movie (with a plot, beginning, middle and end) was a western, The Great Train Robbery. Hollywood made thousands of westerns; TV and radio shows like the Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and dozens of others were the most popular of their time. And even when the western began to die off during the Space Age, the most popular science fiction shows were basically westerns in space. Even Star Trek was originally pitched as a 'Wagon Train to the Stars' to get the green light from the studios.

So, I have to give this movie the highest recommendation; it's that good. Check it out, and see what I mean.

Bunnies Gonna Bunny

It's farming season, and there's always lots to do on a farm, even a small one like ours. We're going to start building another chicken coop this weekend to accommodate the thirty young birds that are growing up in the garage right now, and we picked up a couple of female bunnies to give Bugs some companions. They're too young to be in the same hutch as him, though, so they're in a small, separate house while Bugs lives with the chickens in the coop. Hey, he's happy in there.

Here they are: the brown one is Jellybean, and the gray one is Artemis. That's the box we brought them home in back in April. Feel free to make 'Awww!' noises.

Anyway, as we were doing the farm chores last night, feeding and watering all the animals, we found an unusual amount of dirt in the rabbit hutch. And we couldn't find Artemis. Turns out, she was doing what bunnies do: she was digging. We moved the hutch to some fresh grass and I snapped these pictures.

I didn't realize at first just how far she had dug down. But she had disappeared down the hole, and it wasn't until she backed out that I was able to even see her, let alone grab her and put her back in the hutch.

Like I said, bunnies gonna bunny. We're going to have to move the hutch more often if she's going to keep doing that. Or put them on a much stronger ground, like concrete. I don't like to do that, because I know they like the grass, but we don't need holes like that all over the property.

We'll see what happens; for now, we'll continue to make do and figure it out as we go.