My introduction to monster movies came via Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man when I was … young. It was a Saturday afternoon and I only saw the end of it, but forever after that I knew about those two icons.

Yesterday I introduced Jacob to those horror titans. He’s watched all three Creature from the Black Lagoon movies now and liked them (the first is his favorite), so I figured it was time. He sat on my lap in the recliner and we watched poor old Larry Talbot beg for death for a little over an hour before duking it out with the Monster. It’s still a fun way to spend a hot afternoon.

I have to say the graveyard setting at the beginning of that movie is just about perfect. Everything you could want in a Halloween set is right there. The crows, the blowing dried leaves, leaning tombstones, and that hulking Talbot crypt bathed in the light of a full moon. It’s a thing of beauty. The black-and-white photography of that time was just right, too. Colin Clive’s nocturnal excavation at the beginning of 1931’s Frankenstein is very nice, but the technology of the time — the sputtering light — takes something away from the creepiness of what’s going on.

Besides watching the movie, I made good progress on the editing of Ulrik yesterday. I’m about halfway done … and sad to admit half of that was done yesterday. The work goes pretty fast once I get down to it.

While we’re on the subject of childhood, as I sat in the front yard last night watching fireworks with the girls I couldn’t help thinking back to when years were marked by holidays, starting with Valentine’s Day and the decorating, in school, of the white paper sacks. Then St. Patrick’s Day, then my birthday, then the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Rinse and repeat. Kids never think about how good it is to be a kid and mark time by holidays rather than paydays and bill due dates.

And, of course, no Fourth of July would be complete without a thought to Kathy, a childhood girlfriend — one of the few before Kim. When I was about 12 or 13 we sat on the curb of her yard lighting fireworks after most of the other kids had gone inside. About 10 years later she and her boyfriend were murdered in a drug deal gone bad on a Fourth of July night. Makes you think about the paths you choose in life.

Choose well.