Scobe | Frank Scoblete

The Best Science Fiction Movies

These are the best science fiction movies I have seen. I did not put in the Big or Gigantic Monsters as they have their own category. Also zombies and vampires go it alone. I also could not rate them in order. I just have two categories — the best of the best and almost the best of the best. Some movies such as Frankenstein are in Horror Movies; Superman in Comic Book Movies.

THE BEST OF THE BEST

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): A peaceful alien comes to Earth to warn us about our warlike ways. The first thing that happens to him? He gets shot. His robot returns the fire. Great film with a great message from the 1950’s – we better watch out.

The Thing from Another World (usually called “The Thing”) (1951): This movie turns up the heat and the suspense to the highest level. Brilliant overlapping dialogue, as good as you’ll ever see in a movie of any type. The “Thing” has landed in the North Pole and is hungry and fixated on reproducing. Only a team of soldiers and scientists stand in this creature’s way. Scary as all get out. Wow!

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): The original and still the best of a half dozen attempts to duplicate it. They are here; they are taking over a small town, and then the planet and they might have already taken the shape of your relatives and friends. Another knockout movie. I was a kid when I saw this movie and couldn’t sleep in the dark for a couple of months. Were my parents really my parents?

Planet of the Apes (1968): Oh, yeah, our close relatives rule “some planet” on which an American astronaut crash lands. The apes hunt humans on this planet, experiment on them. Sadly, the humans on this planet are mute. Our hero played by Charlton Heston is not. Great cautionary tale. Where is that planet?

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1976): More aliens are coming to earth, this time they are friendly. Try to rent or buy the extended version as Richard Dreyfuss gives a great performance of someone obsessed with meeting them.

Star Wars (1976): Terrific space opera. I am sure just about everyone has seen it. The characters have become almost iconic, even the robotic ones. “Use the Force, Luke.”

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): Great retelling of the original tale but lacks the magic and absolute terror of the first. Still a really fun and scary movie.

Alien (1979): “In space no one can hear you scream!” That was the advertisement and people in the movie and in the audience screamed. Great cast trapped with that horrible creature looking to devour them.

Time After Time (1979): Jack the Ripper time travels to the 20^th Century. He checks out the television news showing scenes of war and carnage and says, “I am home!” He is followed by H.G. Wells. Can Wells stop the murderous Jack the Ripper? Wonderful time travel movie.

Altered States (1980): Take some mind altering drugs; go into a sensory deprivation tank and see what happens. Discover what it (meaning life, the universe, everything) all means. You’ll go ape!

The Empire Strikes Back (1980): Even better than Star Wars with deep, dark resonance. Whatever you do don’t watch Lucas’ relative new Star Wars prequels because all of the suspense of this one is ruined by those.

Blade Runner (1982): AI “humans” are coming to get us. Fun all the way.

E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982): Nice alien. Nice kid. Nice movie.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982): Oh, yeah, Khan returns and he is pissed off and determined to kill Captain Kirk. Great acting, great battles.

The Thing (1982): Good reimagining of the original movie. Not as good; not as scary but still one of the top science fiction movies of all time.

Starman (1984): E.T. for adults. Strong movie about an alien (Jeff Bridges) on Earth looking to get home.

The Terminator (1984): “I’ll be back.” Oh, yes, he certainly will. The machines of the future try to save themselves by sending a killing machine (Arnold Schwarzenegger) into the past to kill the mother of the human resistance, Sarah Connor, before her son, John Connor, can be born.

Back to the Future I, II, III (1985, 1989 and 1990): Each one is superb. Rarely do you watch a trilogy where each movie is absolutely great. Time travel at its best. Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd delight.

Aliens (1986): The original Alien was a horror movie in space. This one is an Indiana Jones type of movie. Non-stop action when the action gets going. Great female heroine played by Sigourney Weaver.

The Fly (1986): Surpasses the original Fly and really shows how a man can become a fly. I hate bugs! But Jeff Goldblum as the Fly is totally great and truly disgusting.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986): A great time travel movie as the crew of the Enterprise goes back in time to San Francisco. Right up there with the Wrath of Khan.

Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991): Now the bad Terminator of the first movie has become the good Terminator and a shape shifting new Terminator is sent back to kill John Connor, who is now an annoying teenager played by an annoying actor. Still, it is a great movie.

Groundhog Day (1993): A truly great movie about a day – the same day! – in the life of one man.

Twelve Monkeys (1995): A fabulous time travel movie with Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt. Intense all the way, surprising, with terrific performances. Go with it.

Face Off (1997): A good guy exchanges faces with a bad guy. The bad guy exchanges faces with a good guy. Both step into the other’s life. It is brutal, action-packed with an amazingly wonderful ending at a funeral. John Travolta versus Nicholas Cage in a battle at the finish to the finish.

Galaxy Quest (1999): Satires are tough to pull off. This is pulled off with aplomb. Think of the Star Trek actors being lampooned but at the same time there is excitement and fun all the way. You don’t even have to know anything about Star Trek because the movie works on its own.

Signs (2002): Great movie about aliens landing on someone’s farm – but also landing all over the world. We see a small battle between one man and his small family against them. Can a former minister who has lost faith in God defeat these creatures on his property? Excellent theme underlying the entire movie. Great performances by Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.

Serenity (2005): One of the greatest television shows Firefly continued as a movie. Loved the show and loved this movie. As Sheldon Cooper said, “I can’t believe Fox cancelled this show after one season.” I can’t either. Movie is terrific by the way. Joss Whedon at his best.

War of the Worlds (2005): I like Tom Cruise and he is excellent in this telling of H.G. Wells’ tale about a Martian invasion of Earth. Dakota Fanning is also magnificent as his daughter.

Star Trek (2009): The reboot that scared me. How could you have other actors playing iconic characters from the first series? Turned out to be a fabulous film. The actors caught the essence of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Never thought this movie would work. Boy was I wrong.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011): This should start a series. Excellent story, even pays homage to Planet of the Apes. Well done all around.

THE GOOD ONES

The Invisible Man (1933)

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

This Island Earth (1955)

1984 (1956)

Forbidden Planet (1956)

The Fly (1958)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

On the Beach (1959)

The Time Machine (1960)

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

The Omega Man (1971)

Slaughter House Five (1972)

Sleeper (1973)

Soylent Green (1973)

Westworld (1973)

The Stepford Wives (1975)

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

Somewhere in Time (1980)

Scanners (1981)

The Dead Zone (1983)

Return of the Jedi (1983)

Dreamscape (1984)

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

Brazil (1985)

Cocoon (1985)

Predator (1987)

The Blob (1988)

Big (1988)

The Abyss (1989)

Predator II (1990)

Total Recall (1990)

Demolition Man (1993)

Fire in the Sky (1993)

Village of the Damned (1995)

Independence Day (1996)

Men in Black (1997)

Starship Troopers (1997)

The Truman Show (1998)

Matrix (1999)

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Men in Black II (2002)

Minority Report (2002)

Terminator III: Rise of the Machines (2003)

The Day after Tomorrow (2004)

District 13 (2004)

I, Robot (2004)

I Am Legend (2007)

Avatar (2009)

Terminator Salvation (2009)

The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

Real Steel (2011)

The Hunger Games (2012)

Men in Black III (2012)

Looper (2012)

Gravity (2013)

Live, Die, Repeat (2014)

The Martian (2015)

Ex Machina (2015)

Major Disappointments: All the “Next Generation Star Trek” movies. While none was bad they just didn’t have “it.” Terminator III was a decent movie but a replay of Terminator II with a female shape-shifting Terminator.

All three of George Lucas’ new Star Wars films (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) should never have been made. These also ruin the suspense and surprises of the original trilogy, the first two of which Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back were brilliant and the third (Return of the Jedi) was good.

Prometheus is the prequel to the Alien series — it stunk. I was hoping the characters would die. Alien III was even worse. Seriously, who cares about vicious prisoners? Let the damn alien eat them. I could not believe they killed off Newt just like that when we spent almost three hours cringing when her life was in jeopardy in Aliens. Killing her was a disgrace. And Ripley’s death scene? Ludicrous, pretentious, poorly conceived. Alien Resurrection was idiotic but still tops Alien III.

Alien versus Predator had some good moments but is not one of the top science fiction movies. Nor are the other two predators versus aliens movies worth watching — but compared to the three new Star Wars clunkers these could be considered Gone with the Wind.

Evolution had a good premise but someone should have awakened David Duchovny and explained to him that he had to act, not nap, during his scenes.

All the X-Files movies missed the boat or the space craft or whatever the hell they needed to rev these pictures up.

Arrival has Amy Adams in it. That’s the best thing about this bomb that tries to be sophisticated and winds up just silly.

The Wizard of Oz is a totally overrated movie. I didn’t even like it when I was a kid. I think I’ll get some criticism but the movie should go back to Kansas and never leave.

NOTE: I will let you know what I think of the new movies after I see them. I tend to wait for them to come out on Blu-Ray and I watch them in my home theater. My sound system and television are better than the movies and I can stop everything, go to the bathroom, get more popcorn and pick up the movie where I left off. I only have a small problem; my wife telling me, “Turn down the sound, Scobe, you are going to kill our parrots!”

[Read Frank Scoblete’s books I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack, I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps and Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! All available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Take It Easy

I remember when I was a teenager experiencing my first bout with alcohol. At the time in New York City the drinking age was 18 and at 18 – vavavoom! I went to my first bar in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I think the bar was on 98^th street on 4^th Avenue in the St. Patrick’s parish near Fort Hamilton. (I wonder if that bar is still there?)

I ordered a beer. My friend also ordered a beer. We drank slowly, savoring our first taste of what had been the forbidden fruit; or the forbidden fruit juice. It wasn’t delicious but it was booze! I was drinking booze just like all the other grizzled men at the bar. I wasn’t grizzled at that time in my life but I felt a part of a larger society, men who drink.

My second glass of beer went down more smoothly and a little faster at that. The third went faster and my taste for the beer grew, in fact I ordered another before I even finished the one I was on.

The night started to get hazy and I was now socking them down. My friend socked them down too and then he went to the bathroom. I am not quite sure when. I had a few more beers by the time he came back to the table.

“I got sick,” he said.

“Ha! Ha!” I laughed. “You can’t hold your booze like I can.” I then patted what I thought was my cast iron tummy. “Ah ha!” I rejoiced.

Somewhere in a dim dizzy world I was walking down 4^th Avenue towards the Verrazano Bridge which had recently been completed. I found myself puking all over myself and everything near me. I rolled into the bushes and passed out. I had no idea what happened to my friend. In fact, I never even thought of him.

A light was shining in my face. “Uh, uh,” I mumbled.

The cop said to someone behind him, “Is this your son?”

My father came forward and said, “Yes.” Dawn was at hand. I had been in the bushes all night.

I don’t remember how I got home. I do remember that my father and I did not say a word to each other, or if we did I have no recollection of it.

At home I took off my clothes, got into the shower, and all was hazy but my growing headache. I went to sleep and when I woke up late that afternoon I asked myself, “What did I do? What the heck did I do last night? The whole evening was shot to hell.”

And that is what many casino gamblers feel the next morning after a night that started off slow and happy while ending fast and horrible.

Casino gambling can be like drinking. You start off totally in control, play in a relaxed fashion, but as time passes you play faster and faster. This is especially true of slot players. If that slot player also drinks as well then…well, then I am sure you get the fast-motion picture.

Table-game players increase their bets as they hang around the tables and if those players drink…well, then I am sure you get the expensive picture.

The next morning many casino players ask themselves the same question I did so long ago, “What did I do? What the heck did I do last night?”

I am not telling people not to play casino games; these games are fun. I am not telling casino gamblers not to have a few drinks (only a few mind you). But I am saying this: Restrain yourself. Do not increase your speed of play; do not bet more as the night wears on.

I no longer have to worry about winding up in the bushes under the lights of the Verrazano Bridge. I know how much I can drink and I know I do not have a cast iron stomach. I know that if my father were still alive he would not have to scour Bay Ridge to find his unconscious son.

Casino gamblers should learn such a lesson as well.

Abortion and Dogs

I used to love dogs. I really did. I didn’t love dogs the way some people on Facebook love them. Maybe these dog-lovers were dogs in their past lives, if past lives make any sense whatsoever in the big scheme of things.

I see people showing pictures on Facebook of them kissing and cuddling and curling up with their dogs, and also writing ecstatic words of love to their furry little and big friends. I do not knock their deep and abiding love for these creatures, even those weird little Chihuahuas that (hard though it is to believe) we created from noble wolves. If dog lovers love “Butch,” or “Whimpy Woodle,” or “Peggy Pugnose,” hey, that’s their thing. The fact that some dog-lovers actually sleep with these carnivores is somewhat strange don’t you think?

I had a great dog, Sam, a Golden Retriever, who was mild-mannered, relaxed, loving and gentle (she had to be gentle since my two little boys –played really rough with her). I have to say I had really fond feelings towards that animal. If there is reincarnation Sam is now a person whose picture is on Facebook cuddling her dog.

But something changed in me over the years. My tolerance level for a dog’s stench, their drool, their constant slobbering just became too much. And it all became summed up in a dog called Cheney, my son and daughter-in-law’s attempt to have a pet before they had the ultimate responsibility – two beautiful children.

Since both of them worked, Cheney was brought up by himself. He was a huge Golden Retriever, weighing close to 100 pounds. He was largely unschooled. He smelled like crap mixed with bad breath and a hint of death. Unfortunately, he also thought of himself as a lap dog. He’d leap on you if you sat on the couch; his ass in your face and his tail wagging against your cheeks as if he was slapping you. Man, you needed a gas mask to survive the odor.

At dinner, the beast would hide under the table and if you turned your head to talk to someone his tongue lashed out like a lightning bolt to suck up whatever you left unprotected on your plate. (“Hey, what the hell happened to my steak?”) His tongue was like those frog’s tongues that shoot out about a yard to catch some poor flying insect.

Cheney was not fun to be around. His farts were awful. They could depopulate a native village.

Cheney put the finishing touches on my love of dogs. Now I just tolerate them – and, to be honest, I often can’t stand them. I do not, however, wish them any harm nor do I wish their human lovers any harm either.

And that’s why I just don’t understand dog lovers who are pro-abortion or, as they call it, pro-choice. They love these smelling, drooling, slobbering beasts but babies don’t connect with them. I write this because a ferocious dog lover I know is a leader in the pro-abortion movement. It is almost like a religion with her; a religion only surpassed by her love for her dogs – a smelly lot. Her pictures of her dogs are all over the Internet too. She even does dog rescue. In her mind humans were created in the image and likeness of the divine being – Dog. (God spelled backwards.)

I am not saying that the dog lovers who are pro-abortion do not love babies that have finally struggled out of the womb; many do love the little imps and many more tolerate them despite the fact that the little lovelies poop and spit up and drool and burp and fart, just like their dogs. But for some weird reason when a baby is inside a womb, they make all manner of silly excuses to remove the kid’s humanity from him or her. That allows them to kill the little one with lack of conscience.

I read a long (intolerably long) essay by some lawyer (not my cousin Maria or Margaret) expounding on all the reasons why a fetus was not a human being. Essentially it all boiled down to not being out of the womb or able to live on its own. (I don’t know one infant who is able to live on his own, do you? Even a new born dog can’t live on its own.)

The need to strip a human of his/her human qualities allows us to kill that human with no stirrings of our conscience. I understand that. I also understand the need for us to so label those we wish to kill. Jews were defined as less than human by Nazi’s, so why not kill them? They are annoying vermin and many of them are communists, more vermin, so exterminate them and goosestep into the future to create the fourth Reich. You can make a list of all the people throughout history who were defined as non-people which then gave the “real” people the right to kill them.

There is no doubt that societies determine who can be put to death. A society that defines who can be put to death defines that death as “not murder,” just killing. The Catholic Church which now sanctimoniously opposes the death penalty had a blast putting witches and heretics to death throughout the middle ages.

The laws of Moses prescribe the death penalty for a ton of infractions. (Most people are not aware of this fact.) Indeed, the commandment is “Thou Shalt Not Murder,” not “Thou shalt not kill.” How could it be otherwise when in later laws the death penalty is given for various offenses? The death penalty is killing. All the wars Yahweh engaged in were killing. Ask the Egyptians if killing of their first born was killing. I think they would answer yes. But killing is not murder.

That is essentially the argument of pro-abortionists. A fetus is not a human in the human sense as we define humanity now. It can be killed. Society states that the killing of such a fetus is not murder. I do not agree with diminishing the humanity of a child inside a womb. I realize we are allowed to kill it but I prefer giving the little thing the benefit of being a person and not some vermin.

Our society in the form of the Supreme Court says that killing a baby in the womb is just fine; it is not murder. If a woman needs to get an abortion then she can get one. But please do not try to pretend it is just killing some cells or other. You are killing a human being. You are allowed to do that in our society, which is absolutely true, but don’t give the song and dance that the baby is just something of an “other” as opposed to a human because it is not crying, crapping and flopping outside the womb.

In short, I believe we should recognize the humanity of a baby in the womb. Pretending otherwise is just pretend. Early on the lawyer who wrote the interminably long article used the number of cells in the baby to define what a human was; then he went to lack of full brain development (hey, we don’t get our adult brains until 25 years of age – or so – and that’s why teenagers are so maddening); and then he used the “in or out of the womb” treatise. The guy was all over the place in his effort to dehumanize the baby so we could be comfortable killing it.

Why bother to do any of that? Just say that in our society we can kill babies in the womb and be done with it. Let’s not do what other societies have done and fall back on the primitive but seemingly lasting idea that those we can kill are somehow less than the rest of us; in short those we can’t kill because they are not less than us. I prefer reality to illusion in the case of abortion. I prefer it in the case of the death penalty too. A criminal we decide to kill is not being murdered by us, just killed. He’s still a person.

I prefer an honest discussion of the abortion issue without the flim flam of attempts to create definitions that lack substance. We have the right to kill that baby, fine; just don’t say it isn’t a human being.

And give your slobbering, smelly pooch a hug for me.

[Read Frank’s book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available on Amazon.com, on Kindle and other electronic media, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

An Old Hand at Birding

I face the abyss. I am about to turn 70. How is that possible? 70. Seventy?

I would be lying if I said 70 is just a number – it is a number, but one with great meaning; I am at the end lap of life’s race. I can’t pretend that is not so. 70! Time has sped up so that a blink now seems to be the time a year takes, yet I am somewhat slowed. I experience faster and slower simultaneously. I do not put in eight to 10 hours of writing work a day; I am down to three or four.

I still feel I haven’t done all of the things I want to do and I do worry I will not have the time to do them.

The abyss is opening. I see its edges not so far away.

These thoughts weighed heavily on me as my wife the Beautiful AP and I headed for Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge for our weekly South Shore Audubon Society’s Sunday bird walk. Last week we were at the Hempstead Lake State Park. I do love these bird walks.

If you have never been to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge take a trip there. It is a fascinating ocean of nature on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, with lakes and bays and birds galore. You also have magnificent views of Manhattan off in the distance. Raw nature entangled in civilization.

We met in the parking lot. There were about 20 of us, led by Joe our birding expert. I noticed there were some new folks at this walk – there are always a few new folks each week – plus the regulars, a truly nice group of people.

At 9 a.m. Joe led us into the park. There is a single path that goes around what used to be a fresh-water lake that has now become salt ever since tropical storm Sandy smashed through the barrier that had kept the salt marsh on its side of the path and the lake on the other.

Today we would be able to walk the one and a half miles around the lake. Estimates are the lake will again be fresh water in about 20 years. Will I see that?

As we walked I noticed her, an older woman, far older than my approaching 70, who would stop and sit every hundred yards or so. There are benches all the around the lake so people can sit and watch the birds on the water, on the marsh grass, in the air and in the branches of the trees.

She sat and eyed everything through her binoculars. As we progressed along the path, I noticed something. This woman’s eyes were sharp. She’d pick out birds none of the rest of us could see and alert us to where they were.

The great fish-devouring ospreys have returned to the Northeast and use the nesting sites set up to protect them from the perils of manmade havoc in their habitat. But the ospreys were not in their nests as we walked; they were in and around the marshlands, basically unnoticeable as they blended with their environment – but she could find them and point out exactly where these beautiful birds were hunting for Sunday brunch. The osprey’s diet is strictly fish and several she had sighted were eating such fish.

She also walked with a great gait, walking stick in hand, from one bench to another bench where she would scour the water-scape and alert us to the unseen birds.

I watched her for the entire 1.5 miles. She had a zest for birding. She had a fine sense of humor (anyone who laughs at my witty remarks has a fine sense of humor) and she knew her birds. She obviously enjoys her life.

Maybe the abyss is not so abysmal? Maybe I should just do the things I want to do and not worry so much about time? Maybe 70 is just a number – one that leads to other numbers. Maybe it isn’t the end of it all. Maybe, just maybe, seeing this sharp, vibrant person who sees 70 distantly in her rearview mirror, is helping me see 70 through my windshield in a better light.

The Look, the Voice, the Truth

When I mention to people that I am a writer and I often write about gambling and casinos, I will get “the look” from some of them. “The look” incorporates a scrunched up forehead, a slight involuntary sneer, a tilt of the head often followed by the words, “Oh, you’re a gambler?” The tone of the question is in keeping with the scrunched forehead, the sneer and the tilted head – not pleasant at all.

What have I done wrong? Have I murdered someone? Stolen food from a baby? Looted Little Lulu’s college fund?

Being a gambler is not perceived as a good thing as gamblers are often lumped in with problem or addictive gamblers. Certainly, the 54 million people who go to casinos every year are not addicted to gambling nor are those people who play a football lottery daily slaves to Lady Luck’s charms. If you like a glass or two of wine with your dinner are you a raging alcoholic? I think not.

The fact that we all gamble all the time is often lost on most people. That loving couple you see strolling hand-in-hand along the beach (regardless of their age) took a gamble on each other. Would a relationship work out? They had to gamble and see.

The person waiting for the bus or in the terminal boarding his flight or heading up the planks boarding a cruise ship or selecting tonight’s dinner items, or walking across the street or going into a pool or ocean; all these people are taking a gamble. Gambling is a part of everyday life. In fact, it is most of everyday life.

We tend to dismiss the above gambles because we make most of them all the time. You could be walking down the street and a rock falls on your head and injures you – the act of such walking down the street was a gamble.

The biggest gamble people probably take is having children. That is genetic roulette of the first order as you have no idea which genes will be coming out in your kid(s). Will it be the brilliant but overly neurotic Aunt Emma from the 17^th century? Will it be from Karl, the great athlete? Will it be someone with a pleasant disposition? Or will it be the raging serial killer from the 1500s?

Parents have sometimes heard their kid say, “I didn’t ask to be born!” Many parents would love to shoot back, “I didn’t ask for you to be born either. I wanted someone else.” Children? A lifetime gamble that’s for sure.

For most people most of their children turn out to be okay to brilliant – that’s the continuum.

For casino gamblers the continuum would be from those who use it as their major pastime to those who go on occasion. Yes, in life there are outliers; people who gamble until they harm themselves and others, and people who never gamble on casino games. The latter dominates the outlier group.

Most people are rarely in the outlier groups; that’s why such groups are outliers, they constitute the extreme ends.

So the next time someone gives you “the look,” ignore them. They know not what they do or have done every day of their life.

They Fly

The South Shore Audubon Society’s lovable bird walk expert Joe was swabbing some stuff over his face and in and around his ears. Our bird walk was to take place at Jones Beach West End #2. We’d tramp through the underbrush as word had gotten out that migrating birds were in the area in full force. It’s spring; here come the birds!

We were in the parking field, the size of several football fields, waiting for everyone to show up. As Joe was smearing his face, I was engaged in a conversation that would probably make me a couple of enemies in the club. I seem to have that ability.

I had mentioned to some of the people around me that I watched La La Land the night before and that I disliked it. Well, perhaps I used the word awful a number of times and perhaps my wife was about to introduce me as her husband, Archie Bunker. I did not enjoy the poor singing (except for the one strong singer Johnny Legend), the even worse dancing and the story. Two men who loved the movie were crushed and dismayed by my criticism and strongly disagreed. I attributed that to the fact that we rarely see musicals anymore and that people have been hungering for such and La La Land filled the bill. For some reason, the two men didn’t speak to me for the rest of the bird walk. Hmmm.

Then Joe called us to attention. “Folks, there are a lot of mosquitoes in this area. I suggest you use mosquito repellent. They are out there in force.”

Mosquitoes! My sworn enemies! Even as I write this my face is itchy from a half dozen bites; my neck has even more such bites. My wife and I didn’t even think that in this early spring those monsters would be out, flying about, looking for a meal. And I am one of their favorite meals.

I kid you not. If I decide to take the garbage to the curb, I will return inside with a few new bites that swell and set me off a-scratching. My wife has no trouble with mosquito bites. The only upside to this is that my wife has to take out the garbage.

I wanted to find out why some people are the buffet of choice for mosquitoes and why some people are not.

I did a little research on the topic a few years ago. It seems that all humans have various kinds of bacteria on our skin – maybe a hundred different types. But some of us have a kind of bacteria that drives mosquitoes crazy with the munchies. As I stood next to my wife, I never saw one mosquito land on her. I was swamped with the buggers. It seems that I have the buffet bacteria and she doesn’t. Life is so unfair! But then again, there is the taking out of the garbage to balance things out.

We were in the dunes by the ocean, looking for beautiful birds (and we found many) but the flying mosquito monsters were buzzing around even more than the birds. I had a hoodie and I had it zipped to my chin but still my face and neck were there for a feeding. And those monsters were feasting. Every time I smacked my forehead I’d kill a couple, bloody mosquito carcasses were squashed on my fingers.

I learned a valuable lesson over the years; not all creatures that fly are wonderful and beautiful. Some are disgusting. Thus, the mosquito.

They Fly

Then Joe called us to attention. “Folks, there are a lot of mosquitoes in this area. I suggest you use mosquito repellent. They are out there in force.”

I wanted to find out why some people are the buffet of choice for mosquitoes and why some people are not.

I learned a valuable lesson over the years; not all creatures that fly are wonderful and beautiful. Some are disgusting. Thus, the mosquito.

Teachers: The Great and the God-Awful

Most of us probably remember the teachers who were bad or so awful that calling them “bad” would be a compliment. I had a nun in third grade who called me up to the front of the class to cut my tongue out of my mouth for talking. I really thought this was about to happen so I gave it some logical thought, If I just put my tongue out a little she won’t be able to stop me from speaking in the future. It will be just a little snip. I was actually more worried about telling my parents I had been punished. (Oh, by the way, she did not cut any part of my tongue but as a kid I didn’t doubt she meant business.)

I had one biology teacher at St. John’s Prep who never hesitated to throw his heavy textbook at one or another of our student’s head for misbehaving according to his definition. Sometimes he hit them with that ponderous tome, once breaking a kid’s nose. He’d call us “monkeys” and say that “Your parents are monkeys too.”

I was always able to duck in time and was never wounded.

In seventh grade at Our Lady of Angels grammar school, I was taught by a Franciscan Brother Lucian, a red-faced, six-foot five mega-monster who would bring a misbehaving kid to the front of the class and wallop him. He did this in a unique way, holding one hand against the student’s check and walloping the other side of the kid’s face with his other massive hand. No one wanted to get hit by Brother Lucian. It was devastating and such walloping even made some of the tough kids cry.

He’d also fake a slap and if the kid flinched, “Well now sonny, you get two slaps for flinching.” The side of the face that was slapped usually had a big, red imprint of Lucian’s hand on it. That imprint would last almost all day.

He once brought me up to the front of the room and I was thinking quickly about what I could have done to merit this guy’s animosity. He laughed at me when I was standing trembling before him; he was looking down his high body at the small kid before him. “You did nothing wrong except fake me out in the basketball game last night.” He laughed. “Don’t do that again Scoblete. Now go sit down.”

Brother Lucian coached our seventh-grade basketball team. I was on that team but I never got to play. I just sat on the bench. I didn’t know what the hell that guy had against me but he evidently had something. I was the best player on the team.

The following year in eighth grade I not only started on a team that went undefeated, even beating Lew Alcindor’s team St. Jude in the LaSalle Christmas Tournament but I dominated every game along with our awesome center Pat Heelan. (Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul Jabbar and became one of the greatest players in NBA history.) That year I received several basketball scholarships to Catholic high schools in New York City. I was one of the best players in the city at that time. [You can read the full story of “The Real Dream Team” in my book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic.]

Fortunately, those abhorrent, angry, abusive teachers I had weren’t the ones to leave an indelible mark on my life. Instead, there were three others who gave me the tools and encouragement to equip me for success. They all taught at Our Lady of Angels grammar school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

In fifth grade I hated my teacher, Sister Patricia Michael of the Sisters of Charity, who seemed to have a real hatred of me too. “Francis, this essay is awful. You make statements you can’t prove. You keep writing this poorly and you’ll work as a garbage man – and be lucky to get that job.”

Every time I handed in something I wrote she would keep me after school to show me where I went wrong. “Francis, no one can be a good writer who doesn’t prove his case to the reader. I don’t want these statements unless you can back them up. You say here that Lincoln made very anti-Negro statements in some of his speeches but you do not quote any line from a speech. Where is your proof?”

And sometimes she would hit my hand with the strap if it looked as if I were daydreaming. She didn’t hit too hard – nothing like Brother Lucian.

In sixth grade I had Franciscan Brother Jonathan. He was a young man but a kind guy who never once hit a student. He was delighted by my writing and told me that “Francis, you will become a professional writer someday. Never give up writing. Just keep practicing.”

He knew a lot about theatre and never stopped praising the performance arts. We actually got to read real plays with real meaning. He would often be told by his superiors not to have his students read “adult” literature. He finally left the brotherhood, married a former nun, and pursued his love of theatre.

My third great teacher was Brother Barnabas, who demanded that I achieve an average of 90 or I would not be allowed to play on the basketball team. In those days you were seated according to your academic performance: the top students in the front of the class and the failures in the back. “You are too smart to be sitting in the back of the class with the idiots. You’d better get those grades up or you will remain a nobody.”

Barnabas was the coach of the eight-grade basketball team and I really wanted to be on that team so I brought my A-game to my academic life.

He also once told me, “Scoblete, you are going to be the guy to guard the best player on the other team. I expect you to shut down these great players. And kid, you are going to be the guy who will take the last shot in a close game and dribble to stall for time.”

I was even one of the three players guarding Lew Alcindor from the front, conveniently stepping on his feet as often as I could get away with. Alcindor was 6’10” at the time! I was 5’7”!

So my three elementary teachers put thoughts in my head. Thanks to Barnabas I was never afraid to put myself on the line. My father also had that philosophy and it stuck.

Jonathan was right, I did become a professional writer. He had seen a talent in me and told me about it. He also got me to love theatre. In 1978 I started my own theatre company with a fellow teacher. We worked the boards for a dozen years. I enjoyed performing before audiences. I considered teaching a performance before an audience – an audience that didn’t pay to get in and some who really didn’t want to be there (toughest audience in the world!).

My family was poor when I was graduating high school. I was lucky that I had a scholarship that paid my St. John’s high school tuition. Would I go to college? No one in my extended family, all of us from working-class parents, had gone to college. If I did, I would be the first.

I didn’t even know what the SAT exam was; just that one of the priests at the high school told me, “Scoblete, you are taking an exam tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep. Bring a pencil.”

I applied to Ithaca College because it had a special program for 12 students called Triplum where you would major in three subjects, literature, history and philosophy. If I could get into that honors program a scholarship was possible.

My parents had no money, so I had to get a scholarship or go into the navy. I also knew that even if I got a scholarship I’d have to work, maybe full time, to send money home to my parents. But first things first: that scholarship.

On the entrance test you were given a topic and the honors committee would read your essay and let you know if you made the program and whether you’d be one of the three to get a free ride at the college.

I knew that if I didn’t get a scholarship I’d never make it to college. I journeyed to Ithaca, took the test, journeyed back home to Brooklyn and waited. Several days later I received my results. Yes, I had made Triplum and, yes, I did get the scholarship. I would become a college student.

That September I went to college and on the first day of the first Triplum seminar the professor said, “We had a remarkable essay handed in for entrance into the program. It had everything an essay should have; strong statements of opinion and facts to back up those opinions. I was quite impressed by it.”

I looked around the conference table at the members of the seminar. They all looked so intelligent. Which of them had written such a great essay?

“Mr. Frank Scoblete [holy shit!], you should be applauded for such a fine example of writing. You should be proud of yourself and you absolutely deserve the scholarship to our college. Keep up this good work.”

At that time I was so Brooklyn-born, that I used “yous” as the plural of you. I said “terlet” instead of toilet. When I first opened my mouth at the seminars I would get looks and some of the students would snicker at me. It didn’t matter. I was in college on a free ride!

On the winter break I went back to the convent of Our Lady of Angels. I asked to speak to Sister Patricia Michael. She met me in the lobby.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” I started.

“Oh, yes, I do, Francis,” she said.

I then told her how grateful I was that she took the time to teach me how to write a proper essay. I told her about Brother Jonathan liking my writing and then I told her about the scholarship based on writing a single essay and how it was considered an excellent essay.

I then told her that I had done this because of her. She had taken the time to develop my talent. I thanked her.

She cried.

[Read Frank’s book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available on Amazon.com, on Kindle and other electronic media, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Birds of a Feather

When I first took up birding in late September of 2016, I figured two things; that the majority of birders would be nuts or so severely neurotic that they could pass for nuts, and second, that the entire group would be composed of progressive leftists and Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders Democrats.

I got those ideas over the years by knowing nothing about birding or birders, and my first talk with a birder on one of my first South Shore Audubon Society birding walks incorrectly confirmed the progressive nature of the birding population.

I opened my conversation with this woman by relating that my recent trip to Cuba disgusted me by the filth, poverty, and unemployment of the country. Even the ships in the harbor were rusty! [Read https://frankscoblete.com/cuba-triumph-revolution/, October 15, 2017)

She listened to me and then said she and her husband were really impressed by the country and the people on their trip to Cuba. That had to be impossible because every other building was a decaying dump and little had been done to fix the crumbling once-great architecture of Havana. I didn’t argue with her because she was fierce in her belief in Castro’s revolution; a true progressive, she probably cut her teeth on the 1960’s love for the Communist movement.

She didn’t have anything negative to say about the revolution’s golden boy, Che Guevara, the official executioner of the regime. He probably lovingly watched the executions of thousands of people — that is, those he wanted executed. I am guessing good old Che was a hero to her as he is to the government of Cuba.

But I was wrong. The birders in our South Shore Audubon Society aren’t anything like a coherent group. Yes, most are of the left but there are plenty of Trump supporters. In New York City and its environs, the leftist Democrats rule by something like two or three to one over Republicans and conservatives. So I found the many rightists in the society surprising.

Now, many of my own opinions are leftist but I do not share the wide-eyed love of communism — a failed, violent philosophy that destroys societies. [Read the Black Book of Communism.] But I do have affection for some of the Trumpian ideas and I respect plenty of the basic conservative principles. I do not, of course, buy into the right-wing evangelism and anti-science nature of the ultra-right.

Aside from the love (or like) of birds, the members of our society are philosophically diverse but they all basically agree on several issues: protection of the environment, protection of our national parks and protection of the habitat of our feathered friends and other animals. Habitat is a key ingredient in the protection of birds.

The rightists and the leftists agree on these principles and that brings everyone together. They are birds of a feather.

[[Read Frank Scoblete’s Confessions of a Wayward Catholic and The Virgin Kiss. Both available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and other electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

The Resurrection of Jesus

The most important holiday in Christianity concerns the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb; this holiday is now known as Easter. Tales of this miraculous event set Christianity on a path of total religious domination in the Western world.

Christianity is still the largest religion in the whole wide world, even though the fecund followers of Islam are quickly catching up.

Ancient literature is filled with gods and humans who rose from the dead, those humans often becoming immortal. Any study of mythology will find ancient texts littered with the walking dead. Jesus, of course, is worshipped by many Christians and thus his rise from the dead fits both of those ancient patterns—Jesus is both a god and an immortal man.

Christian apologists—experts at defending their beliefs—call the ancient pagan resurrection myths a foreshadowing of Jesus. Those myths are not true but Jesus’s resurrection is true.

Certainly Christmas as practiced by us in the West is considered the celebration of the birth of Christ; yet Easter is the pivotal event in Christianity. If Christians did not believe that Christ rose from the dead there would be no Christians at all.

Christianity was (and is) an adaptable religion and, yes, many of its holidays have been drafted from other sources. There is a good chance that the life of the Roman god Mithras played a singular role in determining the birth date given to Jesus.

Easter Sunday – although pictured as a fun time of rutting bunny rabbits and eggs of various types – deals with a serious issue, a man/god coming back from the dead. One can speculate that bunnies and eggs represent renewed life in the spring and that Christianity adopted and adapted these images for its celebration of the continued life of their resurrected Lord.

The belief of many Christians is that the words and stories in the New Testament are factual, historical events, meaning such tales are absolutely true.

Jesus did in fact resurrect individuals in the Gospel stories, including Jairus’s daughter and Lazarus.

But now I am also looking for an answer from religious folks to this quandary in which I find myself. When Jesus died, hundreds, if not thousands, of people rose from their graves as well. This is clearly stated in the New Testament. (Check out the end of the Gospel of Matthew.) The Roman Empire may have been literally littered with those who had formerly been dead.

So where did all these dead, but now mobile people go? Were they alive as those of you reading this are alive, or were they just the undead? Were there legions of rotted corpses that had dug their respective ways out of the ground and the tombs staggering through ancient Roman cities? In fact, were the dead conscious or just reanimated bodies? Did they re-die in the future? If so, when? If not, where are they now?

I enjoy the ancient myths of the risen gods and humans but the New Testament is giving us some awesome events that modern religious folks believe are true and such folks should therefore have some reasonable answers for what troubles me.

Are these tales true? Did all those dead people come back? If so, what happened to them?

[Enjoy Frank’s book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and other electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]