May
15
More Star Trek musings
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While I don’t take back my previous statement about a lot of Star Trek being shit, I will admit to being a fan of The Next Generation and DS9 in the day. It’s just that in retrospect, after watching BSG, I am a bit spoiled. The way I see it, Star Trek (at least the series I mentioned), was good SF television. BSG is good (actually great) television period.
But on to the Star Trek. There was another Voyager episode on the other day and it dealt with the burgeoning Seven of Nine/Chakotay relationship. I think it was the finale.
That made me think of the various inter-crew relationships on the various series.
So, I pose to you, the readers, what was the best, most believable relationship on the various Trek shows? And what was the worst, most clumsy, ridiculous relationship?
Here are the ones I remember:
1. Ryker/Troi
2. Worf/Troi
3. Picard/Crusher
4. Data/Yar (maybe not a real relationship, but I thought it deserved mention)
5. Kira/Odo
6. Worf/Dax
7. Bashir/Ezri Dax
8. Neelix/Kes
9. Paris/Torres
10. Chakotay/Seven of Nine
11. T’pol/Trip
Those are the only relationships between main crew members that I can remember (I’m not counting relationships like O’Brien and Keiko since she was a secondary character - though I did like the way that relationship progressed over the two series). I also didn’t watch Enterprise much, but I read about the T’pol/Trip thing recently.
So, I open it up to you - which was the best? Which was the worst?
May
14
Star Trek…
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…can be such a load of shit.
My god, I’m sitting here watching a Voyager episode (don’t ask) and it’s appallingly bad.
BSG has spoiled me for a lot of other shows.
May
12
BSG and movies
Filed Under movies, television | 2 Comments
Watching Battlestar Galactica this season, I have been struck, particularly recently, by similarities to movies. War movies.
Two episodes ago, I was getting a strong Private Pyle vibe from the Chief. This week, I was getting a strong Apocalypse Now thing from Starbuck’s crew. Not quite a river, but similar. The further they go, the stranger things get, and the more tense.
I’m wondering what next week will bring.
May
11
Kiwi Time
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This is my second time at trying to post this. I’m at my parents’ for Mother’s Day and his computer is rather twitchy.
What I was trying to say is that over the last couple of weeks I’ve been having Kiwi experiences.
Two weeks ago, I saw Crowded House at the Fillmore (Irving Plaza). It was general admission, so I was close enough to see Neil Finn clearly. He invited the PS 22 Chorus, an elementary school group from Staten Island to open the show. He’d apparently seen a video of them singing one of his songs and he liked it so much that he had them come on stage for the show.
They performed three songs, including Private Universe. Then the band came on stage and did the song with them. YouTube has a video of it.
Because YouTube embedding seems to completely throw off the formatting of my site, here is the link, if you’re interested:
It was great. Say what you will, but there is nothing wrong about kids singing. It was a great start to the show.The rest of the show was great as well. I’ve come to like and respect Crowded House over the last year and Neil Finn’s voice is still incredible. They are definitely seasoned veterans on stage, but they also have a bit of a casual approach, ad libbing and playing songs that weren’t on the list. They even invited one of the audience members from the front row up to sing and play with them on one song, a song he apparently performed with them back in August in California.It was a great show.Then, this past week, I went to see Flight of the Conchords. Twice. The New Zealand comedy duo, stars of their own HBO show, winner of the Grammy for best comedy album, Bret and Jemaine, two of my favorite people in the world. Both shows were great and slightly different. On the second night, I helped my brother dispose of his tickets, ending up 8th row center at the Town Theatre. They played almost every song I wanted them to play. With the exception of Leggy Blonde, which I will forgive them for since it’s more a Murray song than anything. I was happy that my seats were better than Susan Sarandon’s and Tim Robbins’ seats, which were about 8 rows behind me.
Both shows were incredible and made me a very happy individual.
Only one way to top this, and that’s a trip to New Zealand. Maybe next year…
P.S. I was in Park Slope yesterday looking at apartments and I saw Mel from the Flight of the Conchords on the street. I had to stop myself from making a noise of excitement.
May
9
Hour of the Wolf - Saturday, May 10
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I thought I should mention that for those in the NY area, I will be appearing with the rest of my writing group, Altered Fluid, on the Hour of the Wolf radio show with host Jim Freund.
This will be the second appearance of the group, but my first. It should be interesting. We will do a critique on the air of one of Matt Kressel’s stories.
The show is from 5 to 7 AM (I know - I need to get there earlier than that) and is broadcast on WBAI 99.5 FM in the New York area.
Apr
29
I am currently at a work meeting, staying in a hotel, and I am continually confounded by the state of internet access in major hotels in major cities. We live in an era where internet access is often vital, where wifi access in portable devices is commonplace and yet I am astounded that the quality of that access is often worse than the rural areas I’ve visited. Not only is wifi still a rarity, but the wired access, in addition to being costly, is just plain awful. Web pages take a minute or more to load. Downloads aren’t even feasible. These are hotels that cater to business crowds. I just don’t understand it. My company is currently paying ridiculous amounts for internet access that is less reliable than the internet I had ten years ago.
And that there is probably the problem. Companies will expense out shitty internet, while the local, non-chain coffee shop in my neighborhood provides decent wifi for free. There’s no need for it in this world.
Is it me or is that backwards?
Apr
10
Cons
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Last year was the year of attending cons for me. I was at five, all told: New York Comicon, Wiscon, Readercon, Wizardworld Chicago, and World Fantasy.
This year, however, I will be attending only one, my usual, World Fantasy. I will be a Clarion West during Readercon and San Diego Comicon, both cons I was considering attending, and I will miss NY Comicon this year.
But World Fantasy is my favorite, and the one I feel most comfortable at, and maybe, by then, I’ll have another sale under my belt. I can only hope.
If you’re going, I will probably see you there.
Apr
7
Watching Superman II: The Donner Cut
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While watching the Donner Cut of Superman II for the first time, and doing a little web research on the film, I came across the fact that the director brought in to direct Superman II after Donner was removed from the project, and the director of Superman III, Richard Lester, was also the director of A Hard Day’s Night. The Beatles film. For some reason that absolutely blows my mind. I’m sure many out there already knew this, but it was a discovery for me.
Apr
3
Your Mom’s Basement
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Some of you reading this know that I am one of the founders of a website called Your Mom’s Basement. YMB, as we affectionately call it, was created to be a source for coverage of the so-called geek culture. We wanted to produce articles about the things were geeked out about - books, comics, games, movies, and more. And we have. For just about three years we’ve done articles and interviews, reviews and parodies, and even the occasional video. And it’s something we’ve been proud of.
But we are all doing this for free, and real life has a way of intruding, and lately there hasn’t been much content.
That is soon about to change. In order to increase our content while decreasing the amount of time it takes to produce it, we are moving to a group blog approach. Think BoingBoing or Engadget. Since we have some great people working with us, we selected seven, and we will be putting up content as we can, covering the same things we did before, but with a bit more of our unique personalities thrown in.
I invite everyone to come take a look at what we have to offer. There’s just the announcement right now to speak of, but there will be more to come. And there’s some previous content from the past three years that is still up and available. We’re looking forward to entering our fourth year and I’m looking forward to increasing our audience. Maybe you’ll want to stick around.
Apr
3
A changing world
Filed Under books, general | Leave a Comment
On the subway this morning, I looked across the car and a man was sitting down reading a Marvel Comics Avengers collection. To my left was someone reading a Jonathan Lethem book. To my right was someone playing a videogame on their PSP. At a later stop, someone got on reading a Terry Pratchett novel, and another person came on reading Edgar Rice Burroughs. And I thought to myself, when did the rest of the world start moving closer to me? Has there really been this shift in tastes or was I just not seeing it before?
It was a strangely surreal moment.
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