"This land was once, green and good"

Yesterday I bought the movie "The Dark Crystal". I knew what all of the characters where named for the most part, but I didn't remember the story. The details of the story anyway. So my Beautiful Wife and I are watching the movie. The narrator is telling the history of the story. He says, "This land was once green and good, before the crystal cracked". I thought, hold the phone, I have heard that recently; in fact I know all of this. It isn't that my memory was that good. It's the opening lyrics for "The Crystal Method" song "Trip like I do". Which I thought was very hip. It's not the same voice as the narrator in the movie, which somehow I like even more. I forgot how beautiful and enchanting this film is. It is simply amazing to me that this film was made in 1982. Jim Henson was a genius.

I have seen "The Dark Crystal" tons of times when I was a kid. Not in the movie theater though, we didn't go to the movies that often. You see when I was growing up we had the movie on CED disc. Our first CED player was a Zenith and we got it at GEMCO. Mom and Dad had put it on layaway. I remember when we picked it up. It was a Friday night and we even got the movie "Dumbo". I remember going home and watching it all the way through and feeling like I had stayed up really late (9:30pm). I must have been 8 or 9 years old. Then the next morning we got up early to watch it again.

It’s really funny the flood of memories that comes back thinking about these CED movies. The little store in Arcadia that we use rent the CEDs from, the library of CEDs that Grandma and Grandpa use to have. In fact we had just come home from the Video store when I got my finger partial cut off in the car door of our old 1973 ford pinto station wagon. I had the movie ”Alice in Wonderland” in my left hand, and I took the tip of my ring finger off with the car door on my right hand. The same car door, that my Brother and I would ask Mom to leave the window rolled down so that we could jump through it like they did in “the Dukes of Hazzard”.

I remember when Dad figured out to hook up the CED player to the stereo. (This was like in 1985-86 mind you) and Dad had these big tower speakers that he had built. They were taller than I was at the time. Anyhow us kids were watching the movie “The Neverending Story” and Mom was ironing. It got to the scene where the Rock Biter was riding his stone scooter and the floor shook. It was so cool. It felt like you where in the movie. I looked over at Mom grinning and she smiled at me and pointed at the measuring cup full of water on the ironing board and you could see the ripples in the cup from the stereo. We also use to watch the CEDs that were music videos for kids, It was called DTV (Disney TV). and it would have a montage of cartoons edited to go with songs like Hall and Oats’ “Private Eyes”.

I just did a search on ebay for CED. I was amazed with what came up. Hmmm, I may have to pick a couple up for Nostalgia.