Well, it's a done deal. Winter has begun and I and 59 other souls are staying at the South Pole until November. We had the last three flights for the season, and won't be seeing anybody else in the world for all those months. It isn't that it was underwhelming, but there was never a sense of fear or jubilation that I felt as the last plane left. Granted, I was dealing with covering the responsibilities of running the remaining aircraft rescue and fire fighting (ARFF) truck with two of my fire brigade members, but still being on the static end of a station close just felt right. It's this extended, isolated experience that I really want to have-given my career aspirations-and it was nice to finally find myself beginning the process of wintering at the SP.
This evening we kept up the annual tradition of watching both versions of "The Thing" on the big projection screen in the gymnasium. I have to say you can't really appreciate the anxiousness and paranoia of the John Carpenter version quite as poignantly unless you find yourself in Antarctica in the first week of winter, just like the guys at U.S. Antarctic Research Program Station #31. It's kind of like not really appreciating "Tron" unless you've been actually digitized into a video game and made to compete for your life, or like not really seeing the characters' points of view in "Deliverance" unless you've had your dental work complimented on by hillbillies at gunpoint. I enjoyed both movies, and am glad that I got a good film education from my dad early on in life, so I don't write off old flicks as being irrelevant or lame just because they hale from a different era. I actually really liked the sets in both movies, and it is fun to see/hear things like characters trying to raise McMurdo Station on the radio. I'll be doing just that thing tomorrow morning...from the South Pole...in winter...not yet in the dark.
Cheers to a great experience!
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2 comments:
I've never seen the 1950's version, but Carpenter's gets regular rotation on cable from time to time. It's a favorite of my Dad's. While it didn't freak me out half as much as Alien did, it's still a fun flick.
Any movie that incorporates or is set in familiar surroundings/activities is bound to be a lot more fun. It was a blast to watch the film with the perspective of "being there", and playfully nit-picking the deviations from reality.
Alien and Aliens may be a double-feature for our "drive-in" in the gym sometime. The latter totally freaked me out as a kid.
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