Time To Sit This Round Out

I did it last year, and I'm going to do the sane thing again this time around. I'll be taking a brief hiatus for the summer, mostly because I'll be away from a computer for most of it. Go out and live your lives until I return sometime in August. You know what a life is, right? It's the moments that happen while you're waiting for stuff to occur. We'll talk about it later.

Khan You Be Serious?

As if enough of the internet space isn't going to be wasted by the new Star Trek film, I feel compelled to weigh in here as well. I was never much of a trekker myself; I experimented a little my first couple years of college by watching TNG reruns on Spike, but I never crossed over that final frontier. I personally have not yet seen the film, but I have heard from normal people that it wasn't bad. I suppose that's alright on the surface. I always hate it when I waste ten bucks on a crap movie (which is why I'm still debating whether or not I'll see Angels & Demons).

On a slightly deeper level though, I think that things are getting a little out of hand. I just saw a commercial that claimed, "It's this generation's Star Wars!" First off, I don't appreciate people throwing around the name of my beloved Star Wars. I'm not trying to start a flame war, but c'mon, they're not even in the same ballpark. Star Wars was created by a rogue filmmaker who wanted to make a tribute to the beloved radio serials from his youth. It has elements of Flash Gordan, sure, but also some Western and even a little Greek tragedy for zest. Star Trek however at its core is science-fiction and occasionally borrows from other genres for a gimmiky episode here and there. Not that the show is superficial; it touches on some very important fundamental themes about human nature, but still sci-fi.

Star Trek is the crystal meth of nerd-dom. It is used by people alone in a dark basement when no one is around; that is its proper place in the universe. What this film is doing is fucking with the natural order. There are two conceivable outcomes:

1. This flashy tent-pole movie takes Star Trek and waters it down in order to make it more palatable for the masses. If I sound all Fahrenheit 451 here, that's not the idea. I'm worried about the nerds. We are taking one of their societal doctrines away from them and giving it to everyone. It is a corruption of their very way of life. It's the same as everyone suddenly believeing in Jesus because they give him sunglasses and a talking dog sidekick named Zippy. We can't pull the nerds out into the sunlight; they're really pale and would probably all combust...then who will help you out the next time you can't send an email attachment?

2. The film is a smash success with both nerds and the hoi polloi alike. Everyone embraces the emerging Roddenberry Renaissance and Star Trek does become the next new thing. New fans, demanding to catch up on the trend, will endlessly peruse three decades worth of reruns and back-issues. They will then realize what they have been missing out on all this time. I will skip over the piddly maneuvering and skip straight to the end game...the revival of William Shatner's career. I had hoped that with the conclusion of Boston Legal, Shatner would relegate himself to doing crappy hotel-finding commercials until he finally faded away into obscurity. A revival in Star Trek would only have the opposite effect. Of the two evils I have presented, this is by far the more evil.

Only you can control which future will occur and which one we'll all have to visit when we accidentally enter a wormhole where one of the other ones happened and everyone has a goatee and acts like an asshole; although for me that probably means that I'll be clean shaven and volunteer at hospitals for a living.