Everything Reminds Me Of Planet Of The Apes

I uploaded the image above for a post from a couple of months ago about Mars research taking place in the Utah desert. It reminded me of images from the 1968 film "Planet Of The Apes". I see that movie everywhere.
This image from the GRIN-NASA website of a crashed test plane looks like the spaceship from the opening of the film.


The only thing this photo is missing is a bearded Charlton Heston as Taylor, the misanthropic astronaut.
Many years ago I was (mis) fortunate enough to view the infamous Pamela Anderson - Tommy Lee sex tapes.


Much of it was shot on a houseboat on Arizona's Lake Powell. While viewing Tommy push the horn button on the boat with his penis, I was thinking, "That's where they filmed Planet Of The Apes."

Take a look at the image below. Look familiar?


It's a beach in Malibu that's been used a gazillion times in movies and TV shows. When I see it, I don't think Rockford Files. I think Planet Of The Apes. Final scene.
There's a rock climbing wall nearby at Malibu Creek Park called the Planet Of The Apes wall - not because they filmed anything there, but the sets for Ape City were built nearby (so was the set for MASH).

I was at the local Natural History Museum over the holidays this year. There is a great hall with taxidermy displays like this:



I see some moose. But I think of Taylor's fellow astronaut, Dodge, stuffed like an animal in the Ape City Museum. Freaked me out as a kid.

In high school I took a science fiction literature class. I was assigned to read Planet Of The Apes. I never read it.
Five minutes before I was to give an oral presentation about the book, I was desperate. A classmate who sat in front of me, Chris Egan, had read it, and he gave me a quick rundown. He was pretty sharp and understood the class structure of the book's ape society. (Within months, he was killed in a car crash along with two other students. He was a big Pink Floyd fan, and it still makes me sad that he never got to hear "The Wall" that was released two years later.)
I stood at the front of the class and said, "Well, there were orangutans, chimps, and gorillas, and um..." The teacher made me sit down because she knew I hadn't read it. I sometimes think about that.