Ohbalto Online Welcome to the new blog. Same as the old blog.

Missing Star Trek ShatnerKirk ScenePosted by dhoffman on November 23rd, 2009

I think I’ve been up front about this in the past but I’m not really a Star Trek fan.  Well, that’s not true, exactly.  What it is is this: I’ve never really watched the shows.

Oh, I watched the original shows, as reruns with my dad, when I was a kid.  And again, recently, with the HD re-releases, by way of iTunes.  And I saw that not-nearly-as-awful-as-everyone-says-but-still-pretty-fucking-dull Star Trek: The Motion Picture in its original theatrical release (and enjoyed a nice, deep slumber).

I believe I’ve seen the rest of the movies, up through First Contact, in the theater, as well.

I never watched Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager or Generations (that’s all of them, right?).  Which is to say, I might have been in a room when they were on, but I didn’t *watch* them — which is to say, *follow* them.

But still, I like Star Trek.  I think the original crew is the best.  I love the fact that, culturally, James T. Kirk has sort of become . . . well, almost a mythological figure.  You can say, “Captain Kirk” and people know what you’re talking about, same as if you’d said Dracula or Superman or Hercules.

Which is to say, they’d know vaguely what you’re talking about.  They’d be aware that Captain Kirk had a space ship and they’d know about Spock’s ears and they’d know some other stuff — tribbles, Kahn, hot green alien girls.

Same as they might know Dracula’s name but not that the “fearless vampire hunters” are Harker, Godalming, Seward and Van Helsing.  Superman fights Lex Luthor and maybe they know that, but they probably don’t know about other, lesser-known villains.  Hercules?  Maybe they think of Lou Ferigno or (gasp!) Kevin Sorbo, but do they know in the original myth, he brutally murdered his wife (while, I believe, under another god’s control, but what can you do, right)?

So: Captain Kirk.  James Tiberius Kirk.  A part of the language.  I really dig that, the notion of that.  It’s something (almost) from my lifetime that could just live on with us, as a people, forever.  A hundred years from now, will future astronauts jokingly call their commander, “Captain Kirk”?  Maybe.

All this is preamble for the following.  It’s the original scene, as written but never (so far as I know) filmed, from J.J. Abrams’ recent Star Trek movie.  I’d heard about it, and honestly, reading it, God, I wished they’d filmed it.  It would have been just the barest taste of William Shatner.  Just enough to make folks have little geekgasms.  Not too much — and in no real context — to overshadow the new cast.

And it would have tied things together beautifully.

So, here you go, first, the link: Linky-Poo.

And here, in case it gets pulled, or something, the quote in full.  Obviously, if you haven’t seen the film . . . well, what are you waiting for?  The thing came out on DVD and Blu-Ray last Tuesday.  Get with it.

Here you go:

This begins during the scene where Spock Prime meets Quinto’s Spock at the end of the film:

How Many Times Seeing Star Trek is “Too Much”?Posted by dhoffman on May 27th, 2009

Two good nights in a row and the lizard writer part of my brain is twitching and telling me I can stay up stupid-late three nights in a row and nobody will notice.  The insane bundle of nerve endings has never had my best interests at heart (except in a purely abstract sense, I suppose) and though it pains me, I think I must deny it.

A very curious thing has happened.  Jessy and I saw the new Star Trek movie in the theater, in Imax, opening weekend.  One night last week, we went back for a second (non-Imax) viewing.

We both want to go again.

I really don’t think I can remember the last time I wanted to see a movie THREE times in the theater.  More, I’m worried that if we cave and hit it a third time, we’re just going to want to go in for a fourth viewing.  That’s unheard of; normally, Jessy won’t watch a movie on DVD unless more than a year has passed from when we saw it in the theater.  She wants it to be fresh, or something.

This weekend we’ve got Up and Drag Me To Hell opening.  Both are movies I’ve been anticipating for some time (New Pixar?  New Sam Raimi horror movie?  Yes please!) and as unlikely as it seems, we seem to both be thinking, now, how can we catch Up and Drag Me To Hell AND Star Trek again and retain our dignity?

Neither of us are Trek fanatics by any stretch of the imagination.  There’s just something about that movie that connected with us.  Maybe because, unlike almost everything else that comes out, Star Trek offers a positive look at the future.  Or, maybe it’s just that rare coming together of disparate elements to somehow be much, much greater than the individual parts.

Tomorrow is Thursday and I will get back to Chapter Seven.  I’ve been doing a good job, of late, ending the night with the beginning of a new section, then coming back the next night to polish that section off and get a little jump on the next night’s work.

A Busy Weekend (where have we hard that before?)Posted by dhoffman on May 17th, 2009

Kind of an interesting, social weekend.  We drove around a fair bit, took turns running errands, saw friends and family from both sides and finished things off by realizing our refrigerator (which some may recall once tried to kill us) is finally giving up the ghost.

A busy weekend like this is, typically, crap for getting much writing done.

So it goes.

We also snuck off to see Star Trek a second time.  No Imax this time and while, yes, improved visuals would have been nice, I really think this movie works great even in normal-o-vision.  We both agreed we liked it even more the second time — in spite of the lack of Imax, not because of it.

Star Trek is something special.  It’s one of those movies where you see it and, I believe, it becomes a part of you.  You see something happening on the screen and it’s a moment you mark.  Not the moment in the movie, but the moment of the movie.

Neither of us are Trek fans in particular.  I don’t know if this helped our appreciation of this movie, but it certainly didn’t hurt it.  More, we’re eagerly looking forward to the next one.  I’d say such a thing counts positively towards the revitalization of a franchise, wouldn’t you?

——————–

Also, I got Jessy to sit down and play a game of Stone Age on Saturday night.  That’s a Euro-style (or, “designer”) board-game.  This particular game is all about worker placement and picking the right roles at the right time, developing your culture and its economy and generally managing a lot of different things all at once.

It’s a hell of a fun game.

We started playing about 10:30 on Saturday night and, what with learning the rules and flow and checking things as we did them wrong, and all, it was nearly 2:00am by the time we were finished.  The mark of a good game is that, at 2:00am, neither of us was “going through the motions” to get to the end.  We were glad to hit the hay, of course, but if we had a knock out another half-hour to see who won, we would have pushed through.

Stone Age is a good next step for us, in terms of gaming.  We’ve been playing things like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride.  Stone Age is our first “worker placement” and/or “economic” game (granted, it’s quite light on the economic front) and I’d say, objectively, it was a smash-hit.

——————–

Oh, I didn’t get much, if any, actual writing done this weekend.  Chapter Six is still about 100-200 words from being completed.  I started Chapter Seven (great, quick, tone-setting scene) and I’m hoping to knock out the finish to Six tomorrow night and get rolling on Chapter Seven.

Animals has between four and five chapters, and maybe an Epilogue, left to go.  We’re a pinch under 60,000 words and going strong.  As much as I’m dying to get cracking on Painted Ocean, I’m really looking forward to pushing through that second draft of Animals, making the changes I’ve been working over in my head, bringing things to the level, on the page, on which they exist within my head and heart and, I suppose to a lesser extent, my notebook.

Onward, then, to sleep!