Not to worry. The pugs will return. In the mean time, please take a moment to be enlightened by the following public-service announcement:

Every so often, a movie comes along that really makes you think about the effect we human beings have on the planet. No, I’m not referring to An Inconvenient Truth. I know a lot of you are saying, “Ooh, Al Gore! He should have been president instead of Monkey Boy and even though his wife is a real buzzkill, we just love him.” These are all valid points but just hear me out.

The movie I’m talking about is Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. Monday night’s bartender brought the video to work with him and played it all the customers. I must say that I was impressed. I was also drunk. That and watching the film with the sound turned off inspired me to read a plot synopsis from IMDB in order to fill in the gaps.

This research confirmed what I began to suspect after my third drink: this was the most important environmental movie ever made.

In the film, a malevolent behemoth piggybacks to earth on a meteorite and starts devouring pollution (hey, it could happen). Now then, reverse logic might dictate that a creature living on a diet of Japanese industrial waste would shit bonsai and cherry blossoms. Not so in this case. Instead, Hedorah (the Smog Monster) spends his after-meal time spewing flatulence more noxious than an old Chevy Impala with a dead rat in the oil pan.

Something must be done. But if you’re familiar with movies of this genre, you already know that the Japanese military is about as effective against giant monsters as it was against the Enola Gay. Therefore, it’s up to Godzilla (née Gojira) to save the world. Needless to say, Big G tears Ol’ Smoggy a new one. The movie ends with people realizing that their polluting ways have brought calamity upon themselves and humanity better clean up its act pronto.

The movie was released in 1971. Think about what the planet would be like if we had heeded its message then. For one thing, we wouldn’t have to endure some political has been who thinks enough of his message to drone on about for almost two hours but not enough to put on a rubber suit and start laying down the smack.