Next week’s TV Guide landed in my mailbox this morning and with it came the final results of that poll I mentioned awhile back, the one about various favorite and non-favorite aspects of the Star Trek franchise. As a public service for any of my readers who may care but don’t have their own subscriptions to TVG, I will now post what America — or at least the minority of it that votes in Internet polls — had to say about these oh-so-important issues.
I’m a couple weeks late in commenting on this, but I wanted to acknowledge the recent death of John DeLorean. DeLorean made a number of important contributions to automotive design, including helping to create the high-powered “muscle car” craze of the 1960s. (The Pontiac GTO was DeLorean’s idea, a groundbreaking combination of a huge engine with a fairly lightweight body. The success of the “Goat” subsequently inspired an entire class of speedy gas-guzzlers that still enjoy near-legendary reputations among car enthusiasts.) However, he will forever be remembered for the unique sports car that bears his name, the Delorean DMC-12.
From the Department of Stuff That’s Really Kinda Lame But Nevertheless Amuses Me Terribly (DSTRKLBNAMT) comes news that hardcore Star Wars fans are already lining up outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for the May 19th premiere of Revenge of the Sith. They have a website (naturally), a charity connection to help make it worthwhile, and, according to a report on Boing Boing, they are answering the pay phone on the corner. So if you want to talk to a geek with a lot of time on his hands, dial (323) 462-9609.
This past weekend found me enjoying the springtime weather in Salt Lake’s Sugarhouse area, which, for you out-of-towners, is the closest thing to a Bohemian district we have in these parts. Back when I was a student at the nearby University of Utah, it was a run-down pit: eight or ten square blocks of decaying bungalows, boarded-up storefronts, seedy coffeehouses, and leftover head-shops run by guys who hadn’t gotten the memo about the ’60s being over. It was the place you went if you wanted to have your fortune told or your nose pierced. It was probably also the place you went if you wanted to score some weed, although I personally wouldn’t know about that. That was never my thing.
I loved Sugarhouse back then. I loved the mildly disreputable atmosphere, and the heady smells of patchouli and tobacco and old-building mustiness that wafted from open doors. I loved to shop in the weird little holes-in-the-wall where you could buy a statue of Ganesh or a cheap “pre-owned” paperback of On the Road. And I loved to watch all the exotic people: punks, metalheads, flower children, gypsies, derelicts. To a kid from the white-bread suburban frontier of the straightest city in America, it was deliriously cool.
Remember when some whack-job tried to assasinate Pope John Paul back in ’81? Eddie Murphy commented on that event on his very first album of stand-up comedy, which was recorded just a year later. My friend Kurt Stephensen owned that album. He and I must’ve spun it about a thousand times on his crappy old Yorx record player, laughing ourselves sick in his musty basement bedroom. We believed we were so grown up and sophisticated at the age of fourteen because we were listening to a profane comedian tell jokes about the Pope and President Reagan and a lot of other sacred cows. So to speak.
Well, thanks to the extensive collections of the Bennion Archives (also known as my basement), I’ve managed to come up with my own copy of that album and review the applicable passage. It’s still funny, and not nearly as blasphemous as I used to think. In fact, I suspect that Karol himself would’ve seen the humor in it. So, to brighten your Monday afternoon, here is Eddie Murphy on the subject of shooting the Pope:
“What’s your rationale for shooting the Pope? I guess the guy figured, ‘Hey look, I want to go to Hell and I don’t wanna wait on line with everybody else.’ …You walk up to the door with your ticket, they say, ‘Shot the Pope? You can go right through, man.'”
I am not Catholic, nor even what you’d call religious, but I have to admit that I was moved by the news of Pope John Paul II’s death over the weekend. As a political progressive, I disagreed with many of his teachings, particularly on the subject of contraception. However, the Pope himself — a.k.a. Karol Wojtlya — always struck me as genuinely decent and kind-hearted man, and the world always suffers when we lose one of those.
Rest in peace, Karol. You deserve it.
Up to now, I haven’t wanted to even mention the words “Terri Schiavo” on this site, for a number of reasons.
First, because this story has received so much attention in both the regular media and the blogosphere, I suspected that most of my readers were sick of hearing about it and were coming to Simple Tricks in search of something a little more frivolous. (One of my three loyal readers essentially said as much in a recent comment.)
Secondly, my own views on this matter have been shaped by deeply personal experiences with death, lingering illness and quality-of-life issues, and I didn’t see how I could comment on Schiavo without dredging up a bunch of stuff that I frankly don’t want to share with the whole InterWeb. Let’s just say that my opinion is a lot less hypothetical or philosophical than many of those you’ve been reading.
Finally, this situation has been the sort of hot-button issue that is sure to spark a fight, regardless of how reasonable you may think your own position. I haven’t had the stomach to argue about it, in large part because of Reason #2 above.
But now that the poor woman has moved on to whatever awaits her, I would like to make a few remarks. I hope this isn’t a mistake on my part. Let me be absolutely clear that I am not looking for a fight. I just want to say some things that have occurred to me over the past few weeks. If you’re sick to death of this subject or can’t discuss it without getting all huffy, then I invite you to skip this entry and come back another time.
Dana Carvey on Live with Regis and Kelly this morning, speaking in a “gosh-and-begorrah” Irish accent:
“You’ve got to be grateful in this life. You’ve got to be grateful there’s not a tiny man in your pants whacking at your weiner with a hammer.”
Timeless wisdom indeed.
As I promised at the end of the previous entry, I’d like to say a few things about Dirk Benedict’s essay on the new Battlestar Galactica series. Be warned that things go off into some distinctly ranty territory toward the end. I didn’t intend to rant when I first started writing this, but I got on a roll and managed to say a few things I’ve been trying to think of how to say, so take it or leave it at your discretion.
The other night I was lurking on a message board, silently observing the continuing bloodshed between the Old-School Faithful and the Remake Upstarts over which version of the television show in question most deserves to be blown out an airlock. The links were flying fast and furious as each side tried to bolster their own insecure opinions with external references. It didn’t take long before the links started looking more interesting than the pointless, unwinnable argument, so I clicked one of them. I found myself reading a year-old harangue by none other than Dirk Benedict, the actor who played the original (male) Starbuck in the ’78 version of Battlestar Galactica.
(I know what you’re thinking: aw, frak! Not another Battlestar Galactica entry! Not after that big long rambling review, and that angry rant last week, and all the references dropped into entries throughout the two months before that… I don’t blame you for feeling that way. But I think this is kind of interesting, so please bear with me.)
It’s not a pretty piece of writing. From a technical standpoint, Dirk has a rather odd way of putting his thoughts together, and from a substance standpoint, he comes across as something of a male chauvinist. He’s pretty bitter about the remake (at least he was when he wrote this), and some of his comments are, if I may say so, curiously Republican in tone. (I say “curiously” because I’ve always assumed Mr. Benedict, who is a well-known advocate for New Age-y macrobiotic diets, was one of them wacky California libruls. It seems he’s a bit more complex than I have given him credit for.)
Still, he makes some good points, and I found the essay both amusing and thought-provoking. I couldn’t find an original source for the essay, so I am reprinting it in its entirety here. Enjoy.
