The title demonstrates how, even if you’re just a bit off, you’re still off. Don Everts has some of the nerdiest examples in his books. And why do I read his books? Why, that’s a question of redundancy.
Redundancy is also when a Deep Space Nine officer sees a ship burning on screen and tells everyone that the firefighting systems are inoperable.
We watched “Babel” tonight, which fits in really well with today’s gibberish theme on the bloggh.
This morning I rebelled against my doctor’s best wishes:
Things accomplished:
Then I sat down to watch the pilot episode for the original Star Trek.
You think they look weird from the front? From the back, they look like they’re wearing prosthetic behinds on their heads.
I think it’s cool that Captain Pike’s first officer is a woman. A woman in a commanding office in the military, leading an away team to rescue the captain, is pretty pioneering. Boldly going and all that.
But my five hours were up and I started to think that I was the one seeing illusions in The Cage.
My Wii won’t read discs, which, you know, is what it should do. It’s especially frustrating when you’re tired. I ordered a lens cleaner. $10 straight from Nintendo versus $38 from Amazon. Hopefully it’s just a smudged lens. It’s really tough seeing my youngest be disappointed when I have to tell her it’s not working.
Why did I need the five-hour boost?
Too much grifball. This is Slade running it in to score:
This was post-midnight. It’s summer, right?
One of the side effects of watching mainly Netflix (my only currently-aired show being So You Think You Can Dance (you wanna make something of it?)) is that any comment I make about a show is akin to *SPOILER ALERT: E.T. PHONES HOME*.
But the chance to draw Kim Cardassian was too entertaining to pass up:
Now, that joke has been done. Where I boldly go is The Latinum Situation:
Are the Kardashian-Jersey Dominion still influential? I’ve been a little out of it. (Refer back to the whole Netflix Paradox.)
Click on the thumbnails if your eyes can sustain the damage from zooming in. The same caution can be applied to the new Weird Al video. So disturbing, so true, so hilarious.
Yep. That’s Weird Al.
A special thanks goes to my in-laws. My birthday gift was perfect. I like to write. (You may have picked up on that.) I was looking unrealistically at a Macbook Air because it has the instant-on/long sleep feature. I could write and not have to wait for a long boot.
You know what? My new technique boots even faster:
When I chatted with Mike Lupica, he said his biggest technology was a really nice pen. The slightly-Thernadier thing about being a librarian is that students lose really nice pens all the time. (I swear I don’t go too “Master of the House” on them.) Lupica writes most of his drafts on a big legal pad. Christopher Paul Curtis, author of The Watsons go to Birmingham, wrote his first novel on a legal pad in the public library.
I found that when I sat down to start a short story this week, I cranked out a thousand words pretty quickly. It’s funny how distractions decrease on a piece of yellow paper compared to a computer screen. The only distractions are the myriad of other ideas zipping through my brain. For those, I write them down:
The Apple Dapples thing was going to be an LL Cool J-esque rap:
When I say “Apple”, you say “Dapple”/ Hey-o!
but, even though generic breakfast cereals have a very limited budget for advertising, I’m going to keep that one for myself.
My wife and I have started in on Deep Space 9. I didn’t really follow the show since high school was kinda busy. I pretty much watched whatever was on after basketball practice while eating a Marie Callendar’s fettuccine alfredo frozen meal. Yeah, I’m predictable. I’ll have more comments on the show as we immerse ourselves in the intrigue that is Garak the tailor. I have a hunch that he may not be telling the whole truth.
I was going to write up a Father’s Day post, but that would have cut into Sisko time. It was to be a grand celebration of fathers from entertainment, like Homer Simpson, Darth Vader, and That Guy Who Let His Kids Go Without Him to a Park Full of Cloned Dinosaurs.
Sisko is actually a cool dad, aside from the whole “raising a son in an intergalactic casino on the disputed borders of a provisional government”, but no one beats Atticus Finch.
My kids think I’m pretty cool, too, which is amazing. We do share some common fashion interests:
They also get me. Check out this awesome gift I got:
A full-on easel with six canvases. So cool.
Tonight I’m going to see Pirates of Penzance, so this article might be of use, but since I just wrote up the character sheet for Captain Gravix (the Runnin’ Gungan’s still alive, surprisingly enough), it’s this type of analysis that interests me.
The thing I’ve got to wonder is why sci-fi spaceships always fight on a two-dimensional playing field…
No matter what, you have to enjoy an article that includes this sentence:
There is some apocryphal literature to support the opposite notion, but it originates entirely from the notoriously propagandistic New Republic descriptions of the exaggerated exploits of Wedge Antilles and his X-wing squadron.
I must say that I am amazed.
I don’t know how such a beautiful dance instructor from the 1950s time-traveled just to flirt with me:
I told her that I had my own ship. My friend Zaphod uses that pick-up line all the time.
But that’s not the captain that we’re talking about. We’re concerned with things that matter: hair, angst, and a general sense of captainery. So, without further delay…
The Results
I asked you which captain had the best hair.
20% said Kirk
33% said Solo
47% said Mal
Winner of Best Hair: Mal
I asked you who suffered more angst.
13% said Solo
38% said Kirk
50% said Mal
Winner of Angst: Mal
Then the big question. Who do you trust with your life?
10% said Solo
20% said Kirk
70% said Mal
It should be noted that one vote for Mal was from someone named “Inara”. You comedians. Even without that vote…
Winner of our Trust: Mal
Adding up all of the votes, the clear winner of Best Captain goes to
Malcolm Reynolds!
So, while the old school franchises duked it out, it was the show that got cancelled quickly that won.
Sounds about right.
I did have two Firefly moments this week. One involved a conversation with a student teacher that made me feel old.
Me: I love the show Firefly and I know my writing was influenced by it.
Student Teacher: Firefly? Sounds familiar. I think we were required to watch a clip of that in one of the classes I took in high school.
Me: When was that?
ST: 2007
It sounded like she was referring to it as a historical document. The other Firefly-ish moment was today when someone brought me a candy bar I mentioned in the book I just wrote. She had read the book and thanked me for writing it because, not only did she like it, she loaned it to her 16 year-old son and it got him reading again. They fought over who got to read it each night. It was extremely exciting for me.
I wonder how Joss feels every time he sees someone dressed up like a Browncoat.
So, to celebrate Mal’s win, I give you
The Ballad of Jayne
and, my favorite
You can’t take the sky from me.
If you haven’t voted in round one or two, make sure to do so. I’ll tally votes on Friday.
It would seem that we here at the bloggh are on the right track. Have you seen io9′s March Madness? We could have saved them the trouble. That I just saw the io9 post today is proof that all nerds will eventually come back to this debate.
But we will settle it – or John Hodgman, Minor TV Star and Judge, will have to make a ruling.
The final round is simple: How well do you trust the captainery of the captains? If you were on a 747 captained by Kirk, Solo, or Mal, who would you want flying the plane?
Put more simply: Who do you trust with your life?
”
Solo would get you there quickly, but you’ll probably take a shortcut through a swarm of black holes or pay an exorbitant price for passage. Kirk will think quickly and creatively. However, most of it will involve cheating of Kobayashi-Maru proportions. If you do stick to the original agreement, Mal will get you to where you need to go. Just don’t cross him or, by his pretty floral bonnet, he will end you.
I will not reveal the results to round one just yet. There are still districts waiting to report and final chads that have not been dangled. I don’t want people’s votes to be swayed for the next round.
Round 2: The Angst!
You will be getting results at the end showing how each captain did in each round, so that should relieve some of your angst. Today’s focus is on the captains. I’ve said before that heroes are defined by their villains. A part of this is shown by the horrible situations the heroes get thrown into. We wouldn’t cheer for any of them if they just sat around talking and drinking Earl Grey tea.
Oh, wait.
I’m going to blame my English teacher roots, but all three – yes, Mike, all three – of the captain situations described here are my favorite examples of these captains.
Some ground rules were implemented in the selection process. All three situations are from the movies/TV show.
The Angst
Kirk:
I don’t think anyone will argue that the end of Star Trek II through the conclusion of Star Trek III is Kirk’s finest even though his happy day is crushed by both genetic super soldier and Klingon boots. Kirk watches his best friend/first officer die semi-slowly/fully-horribly to save the crew of the Enterprise. When they then investigate Genesis, Kirk’s son is killed (worst week ever) and the ship has to self-destruct. For being such a leap-first Starfleet officer, he really does put the needs of the many over his own.
Solo:
Empire Strikes Back into Return of the Jedi. He’s about to be frozen in carbonite (why the heck does Cloud City even have such a precarious chamber? Prejudice versus Ugnaughts?) after being sold out by a supposedly longtime friend. Solo has the awesomeness enough to say, “I know” to Leia in front of many people in scary helmets. In a move that made Joseph Campbell clap like a schoolgirl, Solo is reborn through the pain and wakes up blind. The scoundrel who doesn’t put his faith in anything but a blaster must now rely on his friends.
Mal:
Captain Mal gets into trouble every episode, but I think the one that summarizes it best is “Out of Gas“. Any episode that starts out with a captain bleeding to death is going to be angsty. The captain must survive in order to save his crew and his ship. The three timeline storytelling in this episode is tricky genius and a brilliant way for the crew of Serenity to go out swinging versus cancellation, bringing angst for us all.
So…which captain has the best angst moment? I know I’m probably leaving off some favorite moments (Kirk’s five year mission went how long?), so don’t be shy /sarcastic laughing/ to leave a comment.
Even though I have my own personal opinion (Solo survived the Imperial Academy, Mike…he knows chain of command), I want to give as much illusion of opportunity for impartialism as I can in deciding a battle that could prove larger than Picard vs. Kirk.
These three captains, from three different franchises, share one thing in common: their egos are larger than the Enterprise vs. the Death Star. Now, you could get into a debate of which captain’s creator is a better writer, but today I posit that all three are characterized well for the roles they fill.
We will need a different criteria, a far superior method for evaluating worth.
We will judge them by their hair.
Han Solo
Captain Solo sports a natural, slightly-tousled part down the middle. The fluff says that it’s been a while since he’s been in a respectable enough establishment to get a haircut. (That and his story was filmed in the 70s.)
Mal Reynolds
Captain Mal shares a derivation of the space scoundrel look. What separates him from other ne’er-do-wells is that he can sometimes acquire hair gel since he doesn’t have a death mark on his head in every system. (Just most of them.)
James Tiberius Kirk
Captain Kirk: the best space-age polymers the United Federation of Planets can offer.
Editor’s note: Mike has brought up that Kirk’s hair is cut off. This is an egregious error in our attempt to bring you fair and unbiased reporting when it comes to speculative fiction coiffures. Here is an additional photo to help out Kirk.
Now watch the votes swing.
Three very serious choices, but who will win? I made it tough on you, Devin. ALL are the nerdy option.
Facebook stalkers, click here for the survey.
The only thing missing is McCoy in a Suns jersey. That would be…shazam.
This site has 80 reasons to be a fan of William Shatner.
This one, him singing to George Lucas, is one I can’t believe I missed:
In April, old CBS shows will be streaming on Netflix. That means The Twilight Zone and the original Star Trek. (We’ll also be seeing Cheers and Family Ties.)
In December, ABC/Disney made a deal with Netflix for more content. I don’t know if you noticed the influx of made-for-Disney channel content, but that’s why. Side note: is it just me, or is every single show that’s made for ABC Family not something that I want my family watching?
The Steelers are going to win the Super Bowl. Just ask Madden 2011.
I’m considering a CoverIt Live post that day. Any takers?
Madden’s done a decent job (the software, not the yelling guy) for the last 6 out of 7 Super Bowl predictions it has made. It’s like how Watson beat Ken Jennings. The guy running the project said that Watson was more like the computer from Star Trek than HAL-9000.
I submit for the jury V’ger, Nomad, and M5. The crew of the IKS Amar doesn’t share your optimism. Why’s that? They’re dead, you pointy-eared monster!
Let us not forget our own entanglements with the BlogghBot 3000.
What’s funny is IBM (makers of Watson) was the inspiration for the name HAL. (Shift the letters down a value.)
You may have seen that tomorrow at 2pm ET (Eastern Time, not Drew Barrymore’s “special friend”), NASA will be making an announcement that will change everything (like a Ferris Bueller type of change). You can watch it streaming here.
I want to know what it’s going to be about (hopefully more important than the Beatles being on iTunes…like I didn’t have the One
So here’s Pop Quiz 14 (Facebook stalkers can find the quiz here).
Admiral Yularen’s excited
One reader asked about how to pronounce my team’s name. Here’s the answer:
And Mike – What have you done? I was actually rooting against a player simply because he was on your roster.
For this, we need fight music.
If you don’t have kids, store this away for later reference.
Some of you may have seen the Wonder Pets:
“If you stare at the duck long enough, the duck stares back at you.”
- Nietzsche (paraphrased)
The best way to survive Wonder Pets is to not watch them.
But if your toddler has found them on Netflix and frankly you have to do dishes, here’s the solution:
Change the lyrics of the songs to match classic sci-fi.
The episode featured a chimp in space. A meteor was coming dangerously close.
Captain Guinea Pig: Mr. Ming Ming, take evasive maneuvers!
The Duck: The shield / the shield is failing
The shield / the shield is down
The Turtle: I’m givin’ ‘er / all she’s got sir!
The Duck: This is sewious!
Makes the show more palatable.
Much like a stay in Arkham, singing will help you keep your sanity.
See? He’s a happy fellow!
When I watched the first Star Trek movie, I, like many of my ilk, needed a transition period to separate our Sylar emotions from our Spock emotions. (Both subsets of emotions being under the ‘weird’ category.)
We watched the first 26 minutes of the Gospel of John movie on Netflix streaming. It’s actually really good and I wish it would gain in popularity. I get nervous when a movie claims to be word-for-word from a gospel, but it does it well. If you have a Netflix account, I think it’s worth your time. (I would have watched more but my daughters needed breakfast.)
Henry Ian Cusick plays Desmond on LOST and plays Jesus in this movie. Much like the Sylar/Spock anomaly, I wondered if I could separate those two characters. It helps that Desmond exists in two timelines at once and has a different perspective on life. I’m just waiting for Jesus to call to his disciples, “Come to me, brutha, if you want to live.”
Can I spend a moment of your time as an advertisement for Netflix?
We don’t have cable and we were very annoyed when Saturday morning cartoons got replaced by Horseland (it’s a show about a land…full of horses) and Skechers advertisements (the Really Tall ads do have more pathos than Horseland, though…)
Boo to you, horses, and your lame attempt at an E/I certification.
Now we can cue up some decent shows. I just found Fraggle Rock yesterday in instant streaming. I had only seen parts at a babysitter’s house growing up. This should be an intriguing foray.
Yesterday was my wife’s talent show for school. I watched my daughters while my wife taught. My youngest wanted to run around, so the two of us left my oldest in a row on her own.
From the back of the audience I pulled out my phone to text my oldest and then realized that she’s a lot more mature than I give her credit for. For some reason I thought she had a cell phone.
I was conflicted with how to manage my youngest during the talent show. Some young mega-violinist was on stage performing a great solo but my daughter wanted to make some noise. I heard the familiar sound of one lightsaber hitting another and looked down to see that she had attached the markers end-to-end to create an elegant weapon from a more civilized age.
How can I shush that?
Today I stayed home from work due to a scratched right eye. Today consisted of laying in bed while watching Hulu Simpsons. Did you know that Star Trek Generations is on there now? In the darkened milieu of my Hibernation Chamber, I pondered what it would look like to have a throw-down between Avatar acolytes (I think ‘fan/fanatic’ is putting it lightly) and Macross mavens. Giant transforming robots, no matter how capitalistic, are still cool.
Another fun mash-up from today: Buzz Lightyear as a River/Dollhouse character from Joss Whedon. He has memory loss; his altered perceptions cause him to blank out and shoot lasers at people. I believe that he is the prototype for a Firefly character.
Do you remember these clips from Sesame Street? Did that cake guy always trip? Is the cake guy Jim Henson?
Watching Sesame Street today on non-Hulu it was the habitat/40th anniversary episode. That was playing the last time I stayed home sick.
Saturday, to de-compress from our coordinating/catering, we watched the G.I. Joe movie (not the cartoon movie with Nemesis Enforcer…that would have been more realistic). Yes, I understand that the Bloggh should have certain standards and now I have learned my lesson.
Here’s the set-up: Cobra creates genetically-engineered fearless soldiers. So, if they’re so fearless, why do they scream in panic when they fall down a conveniently-placed shaft and/or have a grenade shoved under their collars? Next time, can I get hired to read over the script? $10 for a quick run-through. Was it supposed to be gritty or cheesy? The language says gritty. The impalements say gritty.
Seriously: next time you watch the film, keep a tally of how many people get impaled in the movie. Double the score for each time the spike is revealed stabbing through another device, like a datapad/pillar/Hummer.
I don’t care what anyone tells you, take it from me: Marlon Wayans is cheesy in the film. Plain and simple.
I was okay with one thing they changed about the franchise, though. I like that Zartan can switch faces. The action figure just turned a sickly blue in the sun. But replacing the president as a shapeshifter? X2 did that well with Senator Kelly. Heroes copied that. G.I. Joe copied that. Through the Xerox effect, the initial luster has dulled and the copy has become muddled and inky.
I also broke down and got Tomena Sennar for my brother’s bachelor party. Yes, it is as psycho as advertised. It was a great way to keep the guys’ attention while we waited for Mike to bail us out with Rock Band 2. With the left-over WiiPoints, I sent Mega Man 3 to myself. I hadn’t played that game for 15-20+ years. I beat Tomena Sennar before I went to bed on Friday night.
Let’s just say video games have been dumbed down over the years. My wife laughs at me losing horribly to a game I could beat as an elementary school kid.
And yes, Chaarli, today’s wootshirt is very librarian-esque:
I don’t know if anyone else experienced this, but I think that the opening ceremonies’ ice zombies cast a field of sleep spells. I missed everything after that, except for brief moments when I woke up to get a CD from J to find a shaman walking through the Aurora Borealis and when I typed up some e-mails at midnight without my glasses on.
I must have been really tired, though, since I could have sworn I saw Nick Jonas and Snoop Dogg singing with Celine Dion.
Wait. That was real?
And I bet you’ll try to convince me that I saw a time-traveling Elvis confront Mike who thought he was Pablo Picasso.
That was real, too?
(Picasso at the Lapine Agile by THE Steve Martin is actually a fun show and yes, Mike, you did become a convincing Picasso.)
One thing that I did pay attention to last night was the montage leading up to the opening ceremonies. The landscape is spectacular and the tourism ads made me actually consider living in Vancouver (we all get one government-funded orca, right?). But the video bit about the six American diplomats being rescued by Canadians grabbed my attention.
Modern history is a blur in my memory. I can remember Tienenman and Kosovo, but the Iran hostage situation in 1979/1980 I don’t know much about. That was always the last chapter in our history textbook but we never got to it.
So, especially for you punk kids that follow me on Facebook, here’s the Canadian Caper.
53 Americans were held hostage on November 4, 1979 and on January 20, 1981 they were released (notice the proximity to Reagan being sworn in). It’s all right around when the Iranian Ayatollah came to power to replace the shah monarchy on February 11, 1979. The U.S. helped the shah get medical attention and as punishment, extremists captured the Americans. Things have calmed down in Iran, right?
The image I put at the top of this post is a sketch from Ken Taylor, Canadian ambassador to Iran. John Sheardown and Ken Taylor kept the six diplomats (all in the 25-34 years-old age bracket, scarily enough for my own personal relevance) in their personal residences until they could sneak them to Zurich on Canadian passports – Canadian passports that were forged, along with fake Iranian visas.
The Canadian government and the CIA worked together on a cover story. A movie called Argo was supposed to be made and there were even movie posters created and a fake PO Box in Los Angeles set up. Tony Mendez, CIA make-up specialist, worked with John Chambers (Star Trek and Planet of the Apes make-up guy) to change their appearances to look like a frumpy film crew. (Clayton, how does that make you feel?)
The Canadian embassy in Iran mysteriously shut down for the day. Ken and John also moved their families back to Canada. Ken, John, and their wives received the highest civilian honor from the Canadian government.
An award should also go to Jean Pelletier, the Canadian journalist who figured out what was going on before the plan was completed. He pressured the newspaper to not run the story until the six hostages were safe. The others still had a long time to wait, but I’m sure the family of the six were thankful.
The United States started saying “Thank You, Canada” on signs all over the place. Also, if you were Canadian you ate free for a while.
To be fair with me not knowing much about the Canadian Caper, many of the details were hidden until 1997.
Ken Taylor with Governor General Edward Shreyer