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Dec232007

The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz

From Jaquandor comes the latest silly Internet quiz. This one is something a bit different, as it asks you to identify sound clips from various sources rather than simply answering questions. And my results are:

Take the Sci fi sounds quiz I received 92 credits on
The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz
How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 is

 

Weird. I thought sure I’d gotten all of them. I even identified most of them before the end of the clip. Oh, well… I suppose I should take some comfort in the fact that not even I am 100% geeky.

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Dec222007

2007: A Musical Review

As I mentioned the other day, this is the time when everybody starts recapping the previous 12 months, trying to gain some perspective on the year just winding down or at the very least remember just what exactly has gone on lately. In that spirit of recollection, have a look at this:

***VIDEO MISSING***

Love those boys at JibJab. Extra credit to them for playing off Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” a song that I always loved because I knew what more of the events referenced in the lyrics actually were than my friends did. (I’m all about establishing my own intellectual superiority.) In fact, I think Billy ought to revisit that tune once a decade or so, to keep it all up to date. Think of it, Billy Joel, the keeper of recent American history! That’s a much more impressive title than mere musician…

(Hat tip to Brian Greenberg, who probably found this specifically because of the Billy Joel connection. It is your destiny, Brian…)
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Dec222007

Things That Suck About Living in the 21st Century

‘ve been thinking for a while now that I really ought to start a new series of curmudgeonly rants here on Simple Tricks called “Things That Suck About Living in the 21st Century.” Now, to be fair, this is a pretty amazing time we find ourselves in. We have technologies and luxuries undreamed of only a few decades ago: we can carry thousands of songs around on objects the size of a pack of smokes (or smaller, depending on the model); DVDs and hi-def TVs are a boon for movie fans (although they arguably come at the price of losing — or at least drastically transforming — the communal theater-going experience); the InterWebs give joe-schmoes like me a public forum to talk about any damn thing we wish, as well as a means of tracking down all those obscure Star Wars collectibles we missed out on as children; and the new Dodge Charger is a pretty damn nice-looking car. (That last one was for Anne; enjoy, honey!)

But there are also a lot of stupid little annoyances these days, stuff that can only be explained as a result of somebody, somewhere, abandoning all common sense. It’s like some evil, shadowy cabal somehow gained control over the workings of our society and decided to redesign all those everyday items and mundane procedures that used to work just fine for the express purpose of driving people crazy.

My first example: cash register receipts.

Continue Reading…

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Dec212007

That Which Endures

Wil Wheaton’s been watching classic Trek, specifically the episode where Kirk fights the reptilian Gorn, which Wil hasn’t seen in years:

I’d … forgotten about Spock’s suggestion that maybe the Gorn were protecting themselves when they attacked the human outpost on Cestus III, and Kirk’s initial refusal to consider it. It was pretty brave to put the idea out that someone you automatically assume has evil intentions may have a very good reason — from their perspective — to think the same thing about you. A big part of American mythology is that we’re always the Good Guys who are incapable of doing anything evil or wrong, and I thought it was daring to suggest — on network television in 1967, no less — that maybe it’s not that simple.

 

Even though Star Trek frequently looks silly and cheesy, I think it says a lot about the writing and the stories that audiences have not just overlooked that, but embraced it, for the last 40 years. I’ve seen movies that spent more on special effects for one shot than Star Trek spent in an entire season’s worth, but I didn’t care about the characters, and the story didn’t stay with me for one minute after it was over. We know it’s just a guy in a silly rubber suit, but when Kirk empathizes with him and doesn’t kill him, it’s still a powerful moment, and the message it sends about compassion and empathy is a powerful one that’s just as relevant now as it was then.

Yep. That’s why Star Trek endures. It’s got nothing to do with the dated special effects that everyone seems to be so concerned with these days. It’s the one quality that classic Trek consistently had and which all its successors achieved only intermittently, and that’s good storytelling that actually has something to say. Something that, more often than not, remains relevant — or at least interesting — even after 40 years. God, I love this show… and I’m thinking that maybe I’ll throw a few of my Trek DVDs onto the agenda for my holiday break…

(Incidentally, if you didn’t catch it, this post’s title is a play on another classic Trek episode I’ve always especially liked, “That Which Survives.” Lee Meriwether turning sideways into a two-dimensional line and shrinking into a dot, the way the picture on the old black-and-white TV I had as a kid used to when I turned off the set, really freaked me out when I was young. Still does, actually… a very eerie effect.)

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Dec212007

My Golden Compass Daemon

I’ve not read any of Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials series, and I really don’t have a lot of interest in seeing the film version of the first book, The Golden Compass. (My reluctance has nothing to with the controversy over whether the story promotes atheism, in case you’re wondering. No, the problem for me is more basic than that. The trailers look great, with an impressive cast and wild-looking airships and an alternate-reality version of Victorian England, all really cool, pulpy stuff… and then the damn, cartoony, armor-plated, talking polar bear shows up and suddenly it all becomes extremely silly-looking. Seriously, the Coca-Cola bear just ruined the whole thing for me, like a pin into a cheap balloon.) However, I’m always up for a silly Internet quiz, so when I saw a link over at Puffbird’s LiveJournal for a test to determine your Golden Compass daemon, naturally I had to take it…

(A daemon, in Pullman’s universe, is apparently a sort of animal avatar of a person’s soul. Or some damn thing. I don’t quite get it. But then, I didn’t quite get my D&D character either.)

Continue Reading…

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Dec202007

What D&D Character Am I?

After a long, long period of trying to deny my true nature and pass for cool, I finally came out of the closet, er, comic book store, about ten years ago and announced proudly to the world that, yes, I am a geek. I think I’ve got plenty of street cred to justify the title, what with the Star Wars/Star Trek fanboy thing, the dozens of tattered sci-fi paperbacks that I devoured during my misspent youth, all my college-years debates over whether a Star Destroyer could beat the Enterprise in a fair fight (Duh! Of course it could!), and, of course, the toys and ephemera and other crap that I collect (quite a lot of it still in its original packaging, just as The Collector would insist). But there’s one particular subset of geekiness that’s never really grabbed my interest, one big hole in my curriculum nerdae that prevents me from becoming fully actualized as a true-blue, Wil Wheaton-level hardcore Geek Master, and that’s… gaming.

No form of gaming, be it electronic, board-, paper-, or card-based, has ever held my attention for long. Just not my thing, I’m afraid. I’ll admit to having some fond memories of the early-80s video arcade experience, but nothing beyond what every Gen-Xer probably shares; shoveling quarters into Donkey Kong and Zaxxon was a novelty that eventually lost its luster. As for role-playing games, the ultimate initiation into the world of the geekly arts… well, I went to exactly two Dungeons and Dragons sessions in my youth before deciding that the whole thing was kind of silly and pointless; all the different kinds of dice and little charts with arcane formulae and numbers and such frankly left me baffled and wondering what the big deal was. I went back to my paperbacks and left the RPGs to the folks whose idea of fun was crunching a few math equations, because as best as I could figure, that’s all D&D really amounted to. In all the years since then, I’ve never once felt like I missed out on something.

Until today. Right now, I’m wishing I’d spent a little more time hanging around the fringes of the RPG scene, because then at least I could interpret my results from the latest silly Internet quiz thing:

Continue Reading…

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Dec182007

The Cover to End All Covers

A Beatles tribute group doing “Stairway to Heaven” in the style of the Ed Sullivan-era Fab Four? It’s like a message from the Bizarro World, or that alternate universe where Spock has a beard; everything seems familiar, except it’s so very, very wrong… just watch it and tell me if this isn’t one of the stranger things you’ve ever seen and/or heard…

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Dec182007

Christmas Meme, Part 2

Huh… it would seem that when I did that Christmas meme a few days ago, I somehow failed to copy over a number of the questions from SamuraiFrog’s blog, and then I failed to notice the omission. I just now saw that Jaquandor has also snagged the meme from SF, only his version is obviously much longer. So, obsessive-compulsive sort that I am and in the interest of completeness, here is the rest of the Christmas meme, presented for your edification and/or amusement, assuming you can find any of either in these silly things:

Continue Reading…

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Dec182007

Max Headroom Sings!

Wow… how is it possible that even with my vast collection of ephemera and miscellaneous junk, not to mention my insatiable appetite for trivia and an unceasing affection for the decade I most closely consider my Formative Years — that would be the Awesome 80s, for those who haven’t been paying attention — how is it possible that I have only now discovered that our favorite imitation AI once recorded his very own smarmy Christmas tune? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Merry Christmas, Santa Claus (You’re a Lovely Guy)” by Max Headroom:

An immortal classic for sure, right up there with “What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb).” For the record, I found this fascinating little piece of pop-cultural flotsam here. And I promise this will be the last time I mention M-M-Max Headroom for a while-while-while.

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Dec172007

Ten Bears

Ah, crap… I just read that Floyd Red Crow Westerman, the Native American actor who played all the “wise old Indian man” roles over the past couple of decades, died earlier this week, too. He was 71.

Floyd is probably best known for playing Ten Bears, the kindly village elder in Dances With Wolves (still a great damn movie, and I won’t hear any dissenting opinions just because Costner has fallen out of favor), but he really did turn up anywhere a similar type of role appeared: notably in the films Thunderheart, The Doors, and Hidalgo, and on television in Northern Exposure, Buffalo Girls, Dharma and Greg, and even The X Files. I used to joke that he had basically taken over all the parts that used to be played by Chief Dan George back in the ’70s, but I think Westerman maybe had more of a presence than George did; he always radiated gentle wisdom and a warm, wry sense of humor, whereas George was often more taciturn and unknowable. I predict Westerman is going to be the popular image of an Indian sage for years to come.
Interestingly, the article I linked to above says he was a musician as well, and considered that his primary vocation. I didn’t know that.

I write a lot of little obituaries for celebrities whose work has affected me in some way, but many of them are not necessarily people I ever had a desire to meet. Floyd Westerman is one of the ones I wish I had known.

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