K-Squared Ramblings

Word, Fire, Borg and Spam

• RT @ThisIsTrue: AMAZING false-color NASA satellite pic of the damage caused by LA’s #StationFire. #
• Hah! Today’s flashback post is about the time I dreamed I auditioned for Borg: The Musical. (Sadly, I didn’t record any details.) #

Tech

• Odd: the Weather Channel #Android app is 3 times the size of Sherpa. What did they do, forget to compress the graphics? #
• Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of disks on the freeway. Or a pigeon w/a datacard. #
• Realized while writing “Go to Help…” that it would be easy to make a very unfortunate typo. #
• WTF? MS Word 2007 *still* has no keyboard shortcut for Find Next…and it’s not listed in the Customize Keyboard dialog! #
• Aha! It’s called “RepeatFind” even though the button is “Find Next” and DOES have keys…Shift+F4 & Ctrl+Alt+Y??? Standard is F3 or Ctrl+G! #
• Saw a good typo on a tech forum: Windows XP “Service Park 2″ #

Spam Silliness

• RT @lol_spam: Spam subject: “I have Salvia! Join me ” – I misread this as “saliva”…and almost did a spit-take (really!) #
• I don’t want *more* spam, but a wider variety would be nice. The funny stuff is mostly sex, drugs & watches w/occasional acaí. #

Final Battles

• Movies: Standing in theater lobby listening to competing CLANKing from Star Trek & Terminator: Salvation. #
• Wheel of Time: They really couldn’t come up w/a less cliche title than The Gathering Storm? Really, A Memory of Light Part 1 would be better. #

Casablanca…IN SPACE!

The original Star Trek TV series was famously pitched to the network as “Wagon Train to the stars” (Wagon Train being a then-well-known Western). Star Trek: The Next Generation was in the same mold, with Deep Space Nine described as Gunsmoke (in space!). Babylon 5, while not a Trek series, appeared around the same time and was described as Casablanca (in space). “Sooner or later, everyone comes to Babylon 5.”

So it was kind of odd tonight to watch an episode of DS9 that basically was Casablanca in space.

In “Profit and Loss”, the owner of a local bar encounters the love of his life who disappeared years ago. But she’s here with the leader(s) of a foreign nation’s underground resistance against a powerful military regime — and that regime wants to capture her companion(s). There’s also the matter of obtaining an object so that they can leave safely. She could stay here with the bar owner, but in the end has to leave. Meanwhile, there are shifting alliances as the bar owner has to deal with the local chief of police and other citizens with their own agendas.

According to the writeup at Memory Alpha, the episode was originally going to be more like Casablanca, even titled “Here’s Lookin’ at You…,” but they had to change it due to legal pressure.

On Ebay: Angel DVDs, Tori Amos CDs, and a Star Trek T-Shirt

I hope you won’t mind me using this blog for a little self-promotion. We’re selling off some duplicate CDs and DVDs, plus a Star Trek T-shirt from the Paramount panel at Comic-Con International 2007.

• DVDs: Angel Seasons 1-5 (individual season boxed sets)
• CDs: Tori Amos “A Piano” boxed set (massive 5-disc archive of hits, rarities, alternate mixes, etc.)
• T-Shirt: Star Trek (XL) from the new J.J. Abrams movie. Handed out at San Diego Comic-Con in 2007, still has the original 12-25-08 release date on the back. It’s never been worn.

Here’s the link to all the auctions. Most of them run through Sunday, May 24.

Star Trek: Experiencing Seismic Activity

Finally went to see the new Star Trek movie on Friday, and enjoyed it quite a bit. As a long-term fan (if a lapsed one — I only watched the first 3-4 seasons of DS9, and gave up on Voyager and Enterprise after only a few episodes each, and still haven’t seen Nemesis) I liked it a lot.

We went again Sunday afternoon to see it in IMAX, but the 4:00 showing sold out while we were in line. So we bought tickets for 7:10 and bummed around the mall for the next three hours. Not my first choice, but with Terminator: Salvation taking over the IMAX screens in a few days, it was a limited window.

So we were in the movie during the earthquake.

Quake

Not that I noticed. I’d just leaned over to Katie to whisper something about a music cue reminding me of another soundtrack, so I was moving, and didn’t notice that the chair and floor were moving. (Similarly, I managed to miss the Whittier Narrows quake despite the fact that everyone I knew felt it. As near as I could tell, I must have been standing at or walking to/from my locker at the time.) But a murmur went through the entire audience as they realized what had just happened.

The timing was perfect, too — right at the point that characters in the film open a huge, loud, grinding door to a remote outpost. People thought at first that it was the speakers rumbling. Everyone settled down immediately and went back to watching the movie, but it was the second most popular topic of conversation among people leaving afterward.

Crash

It reminded me of another real-world/movie confluence, way back when I saw Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. That film opened with a massive explosion in space that sent a shock wave so far that it hit Captain Sulu’s ship, the Excelsior. Either at the moment of the explosion or at the moment it hit the ship, we heard an incredibly loud BOOM!, and thought at first that it was just a very impressive sound effect…until we noticed that the curtain was draped across a quarter of the screen. The curtain rod had broken during the movie. After a few minutes they stopped the movie, canceled a showing of something else, and moved us all over into another theater (it was opening night, and they had a theater full of Star Trek fans who’d waited for several hours to get in — they were not going to risk our wrath by sending us home, even with refunds).

Back to the Film

Judging by audience reaction, there were definitely lots of people seeing it for the first time today, so I’ll keep this non-spoilery as much as possible.

• The film manages to recapture the Kirk, Spock and McCoy dynamic that gave the original show its heart.
• Each character gets at least something to do, even if it does focus heavily on Kirk and Spock.
• The actors really manage to convey the same characters, rather than new characters with the same names. Especially McCoy and Spock. Karl Urban in particular seems to be channeling DeForest Kelley the way Ewan MacGregor channeled Alec Guinness in the Star Wars prequels. (And yes, Kirk is different, but there’s a reason for it, and that reason is critical to the story and his character’s journey.)
• The plot moves and holds together (mostly).
• The effects of course are incredible.
• They remembered that Trek can have humor — something that ST: TNG and later shows seemed to avoid as if it would somehow taint their artistic value (except when Q was around).
• The nods to established elements of the series, from character quirks to design elements to music cues, that are there if you know what to look for, but don’t bog down the story if you don’t.

I had no problems with the obvious canon changes, and thought that the huge event 1/3 of the way in was probably the best way they could recapture dramatic suspense and establish the idea that anything can happen.

In fact, the things that bothered me have very little to do with other versions of Star Trek. Again, trying to be as non-spoilery as I can for the people who haven’t seen it.

• Supernovas are not that dangerous unless you’re in the same solar system. For planet X to be destroyed, it would have to have been that planet’s sun that went supernova.
• Another planet, to provide the view that it offered of a significant event, would have to have been a moon of the planet on which that event took place.
• Engineering doesn’t look like a spaceship. It looks like a brewery.
• It relies heavily on the same dead-relative-as-motivation trope that’s bothering me so much in Flash: Rebirth. But I can see what they were going for and why they did it.
• A piece of miracle technology is invented which would revolutionize space travel to the point that it would make any further voyages irrelevant, and will most likely be ignored because of this. (Of course, the TV series did the same thing all the time.)

Music

Also, while I liked the music in context, it’s very repetitive. The theater was playing the score while we waited for the film to start, and an awful lot of it is the same theme, over and over, in different arrangements.

My favorite Star Trek music is a toss-up between James Horner’s scores for The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, and Cliff Eidelman’s score for The Undiscovered Country. We were talking about the music before the movie, and neither of us could think of anything else Eidelman had done, so I looked him up on IMDB. It turns out that he’s written music for about 20 films since Star Trek VI, and I recognized almost all of them…I just hadn’t actually seen any of them.

Line Items for 2009-05-17

• Midnight. No movement on freeway. Note the parking brake is on. (photo) #
• Home! That traffic break turned out to be for an overturned car that landed sideways. It’s 1am…time to slee #
• Bubble (photo) #

Trek Trip

• Not in Star Trek IMAX b/c they sold out while we were in line. Got tix 4 next show, but now we have 2.5 hours to kill at the Spectrum #
• Star Trek meets reality: when we registered at Robinson’s May for our wedding 5 yrs ago, the barcode scanner was called a phaser. #
• Aaargh! In Apple store and the song used in those interminable Air commercials just started! #
• Everyone else in the movie theater noticed the earthquake earlier. No one got up to leave, a murmur just passed through the audience. #
• Earthquake timing was good: right when they open a huge, loud door on the ice planet. #

Line Items for 2009-05-15

• Apparently there’s a big #foodallergy event on Twitter today. Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of those. No, I’m not listing them all on Twitter. #
• Wal-Mart using its power for good? RT @ThisIsTrue: Wal-Mart: Suppliers MUST Go Green by 2012 or risk being cut off #
• I always forget how much sugar Pick Up Stix puts in their sauces. I could probably wash it down with a milkshake. Or maple syrup. #
• Review of the HTC Magic Android phone: basically a G1 w/o keyboard, so for me it’s a review of next week’s OS update #
• Out to dinner, then Star Trek! Soon I’ll be able to stop avoiding spoilers! #

Cardassian Reality TV

Every time I hear an ad for “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” It sounds like “Keeping Up With the Cardassians” #

Does the Star Trek universe have reality shows?

Hotel Rush Fallout, Frost/Nixon, Trek Headline, BSG

• Long day: ComicCon hotel rush, work, drive to LA for Frost/Nixon at Ahmanson theater, drive back w/ stop for coffee+cheesecake. Sleepy. #
• San Diego Union-Tribune on ComicCon Hotel Day (no, I’m not quoted) #
• When headline limits go bad: “STAR TREK Official Movie Prequel Comic Boldly Goes to iPhone And Goo” Sorry, I don’t want a comic that melts. #
• BSG=WOW #

Not Quite “Paradise”

We watched an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine from Netflix this evening, called “Paradise.” Sisko and O’Brien investigate signs of human life on a planet with no charted settlements, and find a village of people who have been marooned for ten years in an area where no modern technology works. “Fortunately” they had someone who was an expert in low-tech living, and so they’ve built a small community there.

And they keep coming back to that word, “community,” even though by “community” they basically mean “what Alixus wants us to do.” It becomes clear that they follow her with cult-like devotion, such that if she merely suggests something — say, that one of the villagers seduce Sisko to make him feel more welcome — they’ll do it. Eventually it turns out that she not only caused their emergency landing, but created and still maintains the field that keeps anything technological shut down.

In the end, O’Brien shuts down the field and exposes the fact that their “community” only exists because Alixus wanted to prove a philosophical point. The Starfleet officers take her into custody to answer for the fact that she let people die because she blocked access to modern medicine. By this time it’s amply clear that she doesn’t actually care about the people in the community, just that it follows a form that proves her right.

But aside from one person saying “You lied to us!” no one objects. And they all stay, because this is their home, and they’ve formed a community, and because, Alixus claims, they’ve discovered their “true identities” instead of being stuck in a high-tech society’s pre-defined roles.

Of course, it would have been more effective if they’d shown some of this self-discovery, rather than that they’d simply exchanged a technological pigeonhole for an agrarian one. Or that the villagers were actually connected to one another, rather than simply that they all were willing to follow their leader.

If the episode was trying to make the point that even though their society was established under false pretenses, they actually gained something from the experience, it failed utterly. It doesn’t show a tight-knit, thriving community, but a bunch of followers who have just lost their leader. “Fortunately” they seem to have gained a new one.

La Mancha

Home from seeing Brent Spiner in Man of La Mancha. Very good. #

Update: Here’s a friend’s review of the production. #

Picard’s Pills

Just got spam from “Patrick Stewart” for body-part enlargement. Reminded of that one SNL sketch with the cake shop. #

Exit stage left, pursued by a Claire.

Yeah sure, Heroes X-Men blah blah blah, but wait, there’s more. I’m getting a distinct vibe from the latest episode that has less to do with mutants than with good TV. This makes me very happy, all the more because I didn’t pick up on it until the third-to-last ep of the season. Of course, that could be just a lack of recent J. Michael Straczynski in my life.

Warning: the remainder of this post contains spoilers for Heroes through episode 1.21 “The Hard Part.” Also, if you haven’t seen Babylon 5 and Memento, or at least have some working knowledge of the two, you probably won’t be able to make head or tail of it. (God knows I can’t, and I wrote the darn thing.) The more background, the better. Read the rest of this entry »

The Trill of the Chase

Some recent bizarre-but-true spam subjects:

Dinky $ch001girl$ of the universe

Obviously trying to avoid keyword filters (not that it helped), but come on—”dinky?” When was the last time you saw that applied to a person? And what exactly is a “schoolgirl of the universe?” It sounds like a new anime series or something, with schoolgirls and jet packs, roaming the galaxy to defeat evildoers.

trill boxing

It’s the fight of the 24th Century! In this corner: Curzon Dax! In this corner: Odan! Who will win? All I know is it won’t be my free time; when I looked up the names, I found Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki with waaay too much info. And there’s all kinds of stuff that’s happened since I stopped watching in the mid-1990s.

It lets a woman ride you like you’ve never been ridden before!

Sent to a spamtrap with a woman’s first name. Sure, you’ll reach a few who might be interested, but statistically speaking you’re better off targetting men. Or, if you take it literally instead of figuratively, horses. Last I looked, though, there weren’t too many horses with email. Unless you count pwnies, I suppose.

Only in Vegas

You know the routine. We can’t pass up a bizarre image without taking a photo and posting some sort of comment. Not even on vacations.

The drive to Las Vegas from southern California is simple: make your way to the 15, head north, and keep going until you get blinded by the neon. The ⅔ mark is Baker, CA, a small strip of restaurants, stores and gas stations in the middle of the desert, famous for the Bun Boy and the world’s tallest thermometer. Baker has something new: Alien Fresh Jerky.

We were staying at the South Coast Hotel and Casino, the latest megasino to open, which is a bit off the strip. At first I was a bit worried about finding the right exit. As it turns out, it’s the first giant hotel you’ll see as you approach Las Vegas from the south…about two miles before you actually have a chance to get off the freeway! (They have a free shuttle to the strip, though that had its own share of problems.) They put us in a room on the 24th floor, which had a great view of suburban South Las Vegas. Read the rest of this entry »