Michael May says something beautiful about Dr. King that bears repeating:
He may not have searched for lost treasure, discovered ancient civilizations, or killed aliens in outer space, but he was one of the bravest men this country’s ever known.
And he did fight monsters.
Bravo, Michael. Very nice…
Catching up on some of the news from over the weekend, I see that the mysterious “Poe Toaster” made his annual visit to Edgar Allan‘s grave, leaving behind the customary tribute of roses and cognac for the author’s birthday. This pleases me; I was afraid the controversy last fall over the Toaster’s identity might have disrupted or even ended the tradition for good, and that would have been a real shame. We need these strange rituals and half-legendary figures, I think. If we ever clear up all the mysteries, the world will be diminished for it.
I was a little bummed to hear, however, that “the visitor no longer wears the wide-brimmed hat and scarf he donned in the past.” That’s too bad. I’ve always liked the idea that the Toaster was actually Lamont Cranston…
For anyone who cares, Paramount has posted a high-quality version of that very cool teaser trailer for the perhaps-not-so-cool Star Trek reboot. You can check it out at the movie’s official website.
…why you won’t be getting any snail-mail today:
If you’ve never heard the entire speech, you owe it to yourself to watch this clip. It’s a little long, but it’s powerful stuff. And it’s quintessentially American: injustice identified and loudly denounced, over and over, until change is wrought. This is what I was talking about last night, the progressive spirit of the early ’60s that among many other, far more important things, fueled the philosophy behind a little TV show I grew up loving. I admire it. In my cynicism, I can’t help but wonder if it’s still there somewhere in the American character, just sleeping, or if it’s been washed away by complacency and fear and all the shiny baubles that distract us. I also wonder what Dr. King would think of this brave new world of the 21st century. Have we come far enough yet on matters of race to satisfy him? How would he have reacted to 9/11? Would he have spoken out against the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? And would people still listen if he had?
John Kenneth Muir, a prolific writer and unabashed fan of the genre TV and movies of the 1970s and ’80s, has a few comments inspired by that Star Trek reboot trailer I mentioned on Friday. While I’m not as receptive to this project as he seems to be, he nevertheless hits several nails squarely on their heads, and he even manages to give me a new perspective on how and why Abrams-Trek (as I’m starting to think of this project) may be a good thing:
In the months ahead, we’re all going to be tempted to second guess the new movie. Is the right actor playing young Kirk? Do the Vulcans look like Romulans? Where is Gary Mitchell? Didn’t Kirk serve on the Farragut before serving on the Enterprise? That’s what fans like us do. We can’t help it. I know I can’t help it.
…I want a faithful Star Trek movie, but at the same time, I desperately want a Star Trek movie that my son Joel, when he is old enough, will love. I want a film that will inspire a generation of kids. I want today’s kids to grow up with a reinvigorated, exciting, adventurous and bold Star Trek…a moral, progressive and heartfelt franchise like the one I grew up with and which, in many ways, made me the person I am today. I don’t want Next Gen political correctness, I don’t want the Love Boat in Space where the crew’s family beams up to the Enterprise to go through some uninspiring family drama. I don’t want fictional adventures in Holodecks…that’s masturbation, not boldly going. And I don’t want the United Nations in Space. I want what Star Trek was once about: space exploration….going where no man has gone before. I want excitement, adventure, and heart. I want Captain Horatio Hornblower in space again…not some kind of incestuous, insular vision that only a few die-hard Trekkies can appreciate. We must re-define faithful, I believe, in this case. I want a film that is faithful to Star Trek‘s pioneer spirit and Star Trek‘s swashbuckling heart. If I get that, but Kirk never served on the Farragut, well…so be it.
Much of the bloviating I’ve done on Star Trek over the years has been along these same lines, if not in these exact words: in my opinion, what all the spin-offs lacked and what the franchise drifted farther and farther away from over time is what Muir terms a pioneer spirit and a swashbuckling heart. (Thanks, John, for giving me the framing that I’ve never quite managed to articulate!) I would dearly love to see a film or television series that successfully resurrects that same spirit and heart, that inspires kids to look to the future with hope and imagination instead of indifference or fear, and which makes cynical old farts like me feel young and wide-eyed again.
Okay, even if you don’t think LOLcats are funny, you’ve got to admit this is a cool picture:
moar funny pictures
This image is the first official still released from the upcoming feature-film reboot of Star Trek, and our first glimpse of what the good ship Enterprise is going to look like in this all-new take on the classic TV series. Just consider it the photo that launched a thousand blog posts. Click on it to be taken to a nice, big, magnifiable version that we can all obsess over.
As you can see, it depicts our old friend under construction. It’s a powerful image, capable of inducing Pavlovian drool responses in old-school fanboys like myself, not to mention the spontaneous generation of truly astounding levels of geeky analysis.
If you’re going to be happy living in Utah, you’ve got to like — or at least be able to tolerate — winter weather. After all, this is the home of “The Greatest Snow on Earth™,” as our ski-and-tourism industry likes to say. (I understand other states with ski industries will argue that point; hey, that’s marketing!) And the truth is, I do like the wintertime, for the most part. As I’ve said before, there are few things as beautiful as our local mountains after a fresh snowfall. And I like wearing jackets and coats just fine.
However, it seems like there are three or four weeks every year when various geographical and meteorological factors gang up on Salt Lake, and the temperatures drop to levels more appropriate for Siberia or the planet Hoth or something. We’re in the middle of one of those cold snaps right now, and I seem to be less and less tolerant of them with each passing year. I’ve got the long underwear and the sweaters and the scarf, and I’ve even been wearing a stocking cap on my poor old balding head while sitting at my desk in the drafty New Proofreaders’ Cave, and I’m still chilly, and it sucks large round rocks.
I know, wah wah wah, nobody like a whiner. But you just have to express these things once in a while, for your own psychic health.
The last couple of nights, standing on the platform after work waiting on my train home has been miserable enough that I’m thinking of investing in an outfit like the ones Chevy and Dan are wearing in the poster above. What does everybody think? Are fur coats prime for a comeback?
Via SamuraiFrog, some silly quizzes and their results:
A meme about reading, ganked from Jaquandor:
