Time and Numbers

Every so often I write something to try to get some of the lurkers, who read my blog, to stop and say hi. This is another of those posts.

I am a numbers person, so I am fascinated by the statistics that are generated for this blog. Some topics seem to bring more people. Books, Haunted houses, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Moon Landings are all big draws. Big of course is a relative term. This blog has been averaging about 15 readers per day. My maximum in 1 day (that I know of) was just over 80. The average this week was around 25. I realize that some of the ‘readers’ I am seeing are just robots or data mining sites, but when they find something that, in the programming, is found interesting, they leave blog replies. Some of the people who come to read just won’t do it.

I know a couple of the ‘shy’ people, and I don’t really expect replies from them (they know who they are). There are others that I think would be very interesting to hear from.

Things I would like to know about you. How did you find this blog? What do you want to read here? What country/state are you from? Do you come back often? Am I boring you? Just pop in to say hello. Again, until you are ‘vetted’ (good political term, no?) your replies will only be seen by me, or maybe the owner of the place, he once ‘hacked’ in for a April Fools joke… But he is a good friend of mine, almost like a long lost brother. So if you don’t want them to be seen, let me know in the response, and I’ll get rid of it. Me, I’m just curious…

Other things I want to know. Why is a site in Russia interested in my blogs on Superman Movies? Why isn’t the same site interested in Batman? Just wondering..

This is just stuff I was thinking about this Saturday morning…

Loaded with tags, just for fun? Just having a bit of fun, that’s what blogging is all about.




Books as Movies

I’ve been writing a lot about all of the comic book movies I’ve seen, but not to often about books that became movies. This may be a on going series in books that eventually became movies. I was talking with one of the other bloggers around here, and something brought this up. (Old age is creeping up on me, so I can’t remember what it was.)

Anyway, I started complaining about good books and stories that became rotten movies. I understand the reasoning behind the changes script writers make when converting a book/story to a movie. Some things flow better in words, than they do on screen. Somethings needed for a good movie are missing from the book. Two different media, so it makes sense that some changes would be made.

The first on my list is a story by one of my favorite authors, Isaac Asimov. The story was “Nightfall”. A classic science fiction tale about a planet that never had night. With many suns in its skies, true darkness came on very rare occasions. The story was how the people reacted to the up coming event, and the effect it had on them. It was a very gripping story, that I thought would make a good movie. I didn’t get to see it when it was in the theaters, and only saw it many years later on video. Let’s put it this way I wasted money renting it from a library.

They forgot to change the names to protect the innocent. I can understand why it took years before another Asimov story became a movie.

Now it has been years since I’ve seen that movie, and I’m not sure if anything could cause me to see it again, but here are a few things I remember.

1) Terrible acting. David Birney was the lead character, and he as stiff and boring. The rest of the cast made no impression on me at all. I remember the lead because he was sooo.. bad.
2) Constant looking at the Suns/Sky with freaky music and video effects. Once would have done enough, but over and over again???
3)They advertised this as “Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall” I think he gave permission, and the used the character names and book title. Everything else had nothing to do with the original story.
4)The sets and locations for the movie just bit dust.
5) It was 83 minutes too long.
6) I kept thinking it would get better, it never did….

If you want some real fun, read the reviews on IMDB. I’ve spent too much time on this already.