Attention Overload!

Wow, is there a lot going on right now. Big things, little things, consequential things, trivial things, nerd things, political things, sporty things, personal things, many combinations thereof.

Now, the personal things tend toward the nerdy and trivial. Don't want to get anyone's hopes up. But between the news, pop culture, and baseball/softball, my brain is jam-packed with musings.

Some, about the latest debasing of Major League Baseball by its own commissioner, were posted yesterday, so no need to rehash that except to just say once again—because there's never a bad time to say it—that Rob Manfred is horrible. But related to the All-Star Game are musings about the gathering I hosted here for it; I invited a bazillion people, but knowing it was for an event that has lost its luster and that started at 5:00pm on a weekday, I figured maybe seven or eight people might show. I overestimated by a few, but we had fun and I ate way too much junk food, including some oddly-made pizza from Spiro Not-Agnew's down the street and so-so store-bought guac. (Always worth it to make your own guac, dummy.) Thanks to Abe, the one person from my umping world to pop by for a while, and Mack and Erik for bringing some of the junk food. (Abe didn't know my dietary preferences, so I skipped his, but still thoughtful.)

That was Tuesday night. Last night was my softball team's final game of the year—we play a really short season, for better or worse—which was typical: We lost by a lot, only got to play a little over half a game because of the enforced mercy rule, and in my one at-bat I swung blind as the sunset was happening right behind the pitcher and tapped out 1-3 but still managed to tweak my ankle running to first. Kind of fitting, really.

Meanwhile, I went to see the new Superman film and enjoyed it. If you want a good rundown on it, I recommend Erik's review, I basically agree with everything he says there. I now want to see it a second time to better gauge my feeling abut it as it was somehow both really good and kind of a drag and I can't quite put my finger on why. It's very comic-booky, for lack of a better description, as opposed to the gritty/angsty Zach Snyder version of Superman or even the operatic Richard Donner Superman; in some ways, that's great, kind of my wheelhouse, there was a lot of funny stuff in it that required that sensibility. In other ways I thought it was maybe too fast-and-loose with conceptual reality with its "pocket universe" and off-hand inclusions of semi-intelligent "troll monkeys" (though that made for one of the biggest laughs) and an unexplained kaiju-like giant monster that was the least effective sequence for me. But on first viewing, I'd say Superman (2025) ranks below Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006) but way ahead of Man of Steel (2013).

Also, the long-awaited season three of Strange New Worlds premiered last night with two episodes. Both eps were good, neither was great, and there was plenty of good character stuff and smart dialogue to meet my high Trek standards.

Those all fall in the pop-culture/trivial/personal buckets. As for the big political world-affecting stuff, I find myself navigating a mix of outrage, hopefulness, hostility, schadenfreude, anxiety, callousness, and trepidation. Which is, let's face it, the new normal, but with new dimensions given the latest info:

• The MAGA civil war is fascinating as some of the cultists belatedly realize that their champion actually is a lying garbage person who gaslights them and thinks they're stupid. The fact that they see this only because they bought into a conspiracy theory he and they promulgated for years that he is now denying hasn't sunk in yet, but hey, baby steps.
• Today's publication of an article in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, that reinforces what most of us already knew—that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were two peas in a pod in their depravity and criminality—is outstanding, as it is causing the wannabe dictator and his minions to panic and dig themselves deeper into the hole they're in with the cultists. I've oft wondered what it would take to get the cult to turn on this subhuman stain when none of the prior atrocities seemed to make a dent, and it figures that the answer is apparently reneging on an implied promise to inflict cruelty on people they don't like.

• With all that creating chaos for the White House, official spokesmodel Karoline Leavitt told the press corps that our wannabe-dictator has health issues—which, again, duh—that she plays down as minor but actually might well prevent him from finishing his term of office.

  The demented occupant of the Oval Office has Chronic Venous Insufficiency, which in and of itself is not a big deal. Lots of senior citizens deal with it. But the patient in question is not "lots of senior citizens," he's an obese rage factory who doesn't believe in exercise and maintains a fast-food diet. And this has progressed enough to include Stage 5 or 6 elements, e.g. venous ulcers (evident from photos of POTUS47’s hand and the lie from his press secretary that he was bruised from aspirin and an overabundance of handshakes). Whether the hand wound is from the CVI directly, a complication of it, or from something else, it indicates something more serious than swollen ankles. Add to this the daily evidence of cognitive decline and one has to wonder if the CVI is severe enough to have hindered blood not just to the extremities but to the brain.

  What makes this especially hinky is that the White House—in the first term and in this one—never reveals anything about Dear Leader's health. They give bogus doctor notes from their very own Dr. Nick that say he's the healthiest person that ever lived. We got no information when he had COVID. We got no information after he was mildly wounded when someone took a shot at him last summer. They never reveal anything about his health, yet today Leavitt said he has CVI, probably the most innocuous explanation for the photo of his swollen ankles.

  It's probably true as far as the CVI goes, but what's not being said? Is he looking at heart failure? What about vascular dementia? Has he had a stroke? It sure fits the observable circumstantial evidence that long-standing CVI (pun not intended) correlated with lack of circulation to the brain begetting vascular dementia accounts for a lot of his nonsensical rants and wandering tangents and inappropriate dozing off. (Then again, this is the laziest, stupidest, most emotionally stunted public figure in the world, so all that crap might have nothing to do with his blood flow.)

  Might this health admission be the first step in a soft coup by the oligarchs that want JD Vance to be emperor? Might it be a first move in a fallback contingency should the Epstein mess actually catch up with him—he could resign for health reasons, get pardoned by Vance, and completely avoid any accountability for anything?

  And why am I conflicted about the prospect of PseudoPresident Convicted Felon dying of heart failure soon? Frankly, that's a better scenario than a pardon.

Oh, and CBS canceled Colbert because they need to not piss off the regime in order to get FCC approval on their corporate merger with SkyDance. That's just lovely. (Skip the below video to about the two minute mark for more context.)

Tagged Politics, Movies, Star Trek, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Softball, Posted on July 17, 2025 at 9:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Saturday rant

Being angry is merely the default state for most of us here in POTUS47’s reign of American carnage. How could it not be with every action, every speech, every embarrassing Troth-Sential post, every unhinged and tyrannical impulse to come out of the White House since noon on January 20th?

But today my anger had kicked up a few notches to irate.

And this time not so much at POTUS47, although he is, of course, a mammoth factor in all of this. No, today my ire is aimed at the entire Republican party.

Each and every Republican elected official and, yes, many of the people that voted for them. I know a lot of them were duped and hoodwinked, but others were all-in on ushering in bigoted despotism, so they get some emotional fury too.

Why the uptick in bloodboil? Look no further than the allegedly Supreme Court.

Yesterday the six corrupt and illegitimate justices occupying SCOTUS ruled that lower courts have no say over the lawless authoritarian power-grabs of President Temper Tantrum. They also overturned Supreme Court precedent on a free speech case, told public schools that parents can exempt students from learning anything they choose on religious grounds, and told Louisiana voters to shut up about gerrymandering until at least 2028, among other things.

SCOTUS has destroyed its legitimacy completely with the anti-Constitutional and pro-authoritarian rulings as well as the slow-walking approach in deliberately failing to hear critical cases over the past few years. The six so-called "conservative" justices have been tools of POTUS47’s fascist takeover and are as dangerous to the rule of law as is anyone in government.

And they are being allowed to be such, allowed to further shred the Constitution, allowed to whittle away the rights of everyone in this country, by the Republican party.

Republicans, thanks to our dumb electorate who already lived through the 2017-2021 horror show and apparently learned nothing, have the majority in both houses of Congress and thus have the power to put an end to these abuses of power right now. Today. In fact, they are the only group empowered to do so by legal means—I mean, the Cabinet theoretically could invoke the 25th Amendment and remove POTUS47, but the very reason most of them are in their positions is that they won't do that under any circumstances.

So that leaves Congress.

But Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a feckless toady. Steve Scalise, Tom Emmer, Kevin Hern, they are either fascists or cowards; the rank-and-file House Republicans include even worse individuals. If they were not, if even some of the Republican House caucus actually believed in and abided by their oaths of office, they would bring articles of impeachment to the floor immediately for at least a dozen officials. If the Republican contingent in the Senate were even partly beholden to the Constitution and the values of a democratic republic, the impeached would be promptly convicted and removed from power.

The blob of sociopathic insecurity that is the president would be first among the list to be impeached, but Vice President Hillbilly Elegy has betrayed his oath of office as well, and then there are the Cabinet secretaries—the stunningly incompetent RFK Jr., the rage-drunk Pete Hegseth, the empty shell of Marco Rubio, the cruel criminal cosplayer that is Kristi Noem, the should-be-disbarred AG Pam Bondi—and at least four Supreme Court Justices. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are corrupt as hell, John Roberts uses his position as Chief Justice to support lawlessness, Brett Kavanaugh perjured himself countless times in his confirmation hearings. Gorsuch's seat was stolen. (Barrett's was technically legitimate despite the political opportunism that allowed her nomination, so there's less of a case for her.)

This Supreme Court has already:

• Ruled that women have no say in their reproductive health
• Ruled that Presidents can commit crime so long as it's "official" crime
• Declared that racial gerrymandering is fine so long as it can be masked as "partisan"
• Ruled that altering semiautomatic rifles to be automatic ones is perfectly fine despite acknowledging the intent of law to ban them
• Ruled that bribery is fine so long as its after the fact
• Allowed a purely speculative case with no standing and no potential redress from harm that sought to proactively allow a business to discriminate against homosexuals to gut a state public accommodations law
• Illegally took a case it had no right to hear as it was brought by entities with no standing in order to overturn a law passed by Congress regarding student loan policy, purely for ideological purposes
• Allowed municipalities to criminalize homelessness
• Ruled that the department of Health and Human Services may ignore the section of law that allows Medicaid recipients to choose their healthcare provider from "any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required" in order to penalize providers it disapproves of
• Ruled that the Executive Branch may, in effect, deport people without proper notice or due process so long as they do so before a lawsuit is filed
• Ruled that no court may issue injunctions against patently illegal actions by the Executive (or, presumably, anyone else) except as relates to the specific litigant bringing suit, meaning anyone's rights may be infringed at will unless and until one sues in court, and then only that litigant will be granted any redress should they prevail in court

You want to talk about "activist judges?" There they are.

We have this court because (a) Republicans in the Senate stole a nomination from Barack Obama and gave it illegally to POTUS45; (b) our dumb electorate was snookered into voting for Republican POTUS45 in the first place; (c) Senate Republicans chose to confirm three appointments to the court by POTUS45 despite  those nominees' demonstrated abuses, perjury, political intent, and fealty to a corrupt president; and (d) no Republicans in Congress will remove any of the justices despite their corruption and their wanton disregard for upholding law and Constitutionality.

There is so much about this time we're living in, this post-2016 era, that will require enormous repair if and when the despotic administration of Donny Cruel Whinybaby is overcome. So many safeguards that will need to be enacted, so many protections against rogue Justices as well as rogue and unAmerican electeds.

But that requires getting through to the other side of this safely, and right now I just see preambles to the worse that Star Trek told us we'd have to get through before the better comes. SCOTUS' blessing to criminalizing homelessness is a step toward Sanctuary Districts. SCOTUS declaring that the law only applies in certain areas and to certain populations puts us on the path toward balkanization of the United States and the second civil war. President Psychopath's bombing of Iran could easily lead to nuclear proliferation and escalation in that region that involves mushroom clouds, from which it isn't a big jump to WWIII and the post-atomic horror. We can only hope we get a visit from the Vulcans by then to shock us into sanity.

Tagged Politics, SCOTUS, Star Trek, Posted on June 28, 2025 at 11:38PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

We're not even three weeks in

The Bizarro Cabinet just got another supervillain, as Russell Vought—architect of Project 2025, champion of pain and chaos, and admitted enemy of the Constitution—was confirmed by every Republican in the United States Senate. (It's fitting that our new Director of the Office of Management and Budget shares a surname with the evil corporation that employs Homelander and the other psychopathic superpowered maniacs from the comic-book series and TV show "The Boys"; I mean, it makes it very easy for him to be on brand.)

All of the Republicans in the Senate have just declared themselves to be anti-American and in blatant violation of their oaths of office. Every one now is under grounds for expulsion. Of course, they're also running the joint, so they won't actually be expelled. But I want Democratic leaders to remember this and other confirmation votes when they regain Senate control, assuming we actually have elections in 2026.

This guy, along with Kash Patel and possibly Tulsi Gabbard, is the most dangerous of all of POTUS47’s absurd nominees. RFK Jr. and now-Secretary of Defense Hegseth are also horrifyingly bad, but Vought is straight-up destruction personified. And all 53 Republican Senators voted "aye."

Assuming we survive this presidential term as something still resembling the United States of America—and, yeah, that's a big "if"—I don't see how the Republican Party can come back from what it's become. Its very name has already become an Orwellian term of irony, just as Presidential Puppet-Master Elon's "Department of Government Efficiency" is really about being "efficient" in destroying the government.

I realize people out there don't want to come here for yet another screed about the political hellscape we now live in. It'd be more fun to post about the great TV on now—anyone watched "Paradise" on Hulu yet? It's terrific—or how I'm eager to see the upcoming Fantastic Four film, or even complain some more about the Commissioner of Baseball being a fool and a disgusting boil on the face of the sport. But the calamities just keep coming and the speed at which our country is dissolving into oligarchic chaos is relentless.

I am heartened that Democratic leaders have (belatedly) started standing up for us, the law, and sanity. I am hopeful that the pushback we have already seen is but a glimmer of the backlash to come. But normal avenues of resistance seem impossibly inadequate to the moment—yes, regaining control of Congress in the Midterms will be enormous, but we have to get there first and still have elections not under the control of King Elon and his puppet the orange-faced moron.

We'd have a real chance at saving ourselves from this self-inflicted bloodletting if even a portion of elected Republicans respected their oaths. But today they have doubled down on betrayal. They are insurrectionists just as much as the January 6th rioters were, and if they are not ether stopped or driven to grow consciences, that war Captain Pike told folks about in the SNW pilot seems inevitable.

Please absorb the two videos below for further edification. And please make use of the link in the sidebar to write your representatives and let them know you want this country to remain a democratic republic.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Star Trek, Posted on February 6, 2025 at 7:59PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Travelogue III: Lost on Capella IV

Day 3

(Or, "Which way to Raffi's camper?" Or, "There's never a Metron around when you need one.")

Thursday's leg of the trip involved boring scenery but high-speed traffic concentration on possibly the least pleasant stretch of Interstate 5 that there is, though there's competition for that. But I turned away from the Interstate to make a bit of a detour to a particular nerd attraction: Vazquez Rocks.

A favorite location for Hollywood studios to venture to, the state park has featured in roughly a bazillion TV and film productions—Westerns, mostly, but plenty of other things where a desert environment with some visual interest is called for—including, of course, Star Trek, where it has doubled for several alien planets as well as for itself in an episode of Picard. I can hardly believe I'd never been there before this.

I arrived at the little visitor's center a bit after noon and procured a map of the park, which noted the relatively small area containing the "famous rocks" and a short 3/4 mile trail leading to it. (You can drive to that spot, there's a large dirt parking area suitable for a big studio trailer and a production base to set up, but I preferred to hike it.) Soon I found myself wandering in the imagined steps of Bill Shatner as he tried to evade a Gorn and De Kelley as he tried to lead a pregnant wife of the Te'er to the safety of secluded caves.

It's impressive how little actual area can be manipulated by the camera to appear vast. The park itself is plenty big, but there's only so much of it one could get to with 1960s-era TV cameras and recording equipment. The same formations used in the "Arena" episode for the Metron planet appear in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, shot from slightly different angles, to form Vulcan cliffsides. The canyons of Capella IV from "Friday's Child" are a few yards from the ones in "Who Watches the Watchers."

And not for nothing, but props to young Bill Shatner—these things are not easy climbs. I went up to what I think is the spot he hurled the styrofoam boulder down on the poor guy in the Gorn suit from and it took some doing. Getting down was even more challenging. (Of course, if I were still 35, as I continue to be in my mind and am repeatedly frustrated to discover I am not, it probably would have been a breeze.)

[EDIT: In observing a still from "Arena," I now see that I was fooled by good camerawork and stagecraft; Shatner actually, it seems, pushed the boulder off from a relatively low point near the parking area, they merely made it look like it was up where I climbed to. Still, props to Shatner anyway, more to director Joseph Pevney and DP Jerry Finnerman.]

The real challenge, though, came a little later.

After satisfying my nerd pilgrimage, I headed back along the trail to the visitor's center. At least, I thought I had. At some point I inadvertently strayed from the trail proper, thinking I was on track but in fact was probably following the paths made by fellow wandering space tourists and soon realized I was not where I thought I should be. On the one hand, this was fine, I got to see more of the big park. On the other hand, I had only planned on a 3/4 mile hike back and I'd not brought any water with me.

This became a problem. I'd relied on my sense of direction to go at least toward the visitor's center, but my internal compass failed me and it was high one-p.m. PDT, with the sun directly overhead and offering no navigational help. Away from the "famous rocks" there weren't many opportunities for shade and I was getting dehydrated. At one point I neared some barbed-wire fencing, which I knew from the map was the border of the wildlife preserve and nowhere close to the visitor center. Shit.

Trail

Not a trail

Not from an episode. Probably built for some western film back in the day. It served well as a rest point while I tried to reorient myself.

I was completely turned around and had added a mile or more to my return hike if I could find my way. When I started to shiver a bit—bad news when it's approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit—I had a brief fear of collapsing and becoming meat for a le-matya. But I pressed on and eventually came to a trail marker. Not the trail that would get me where I needed to go, but still a marker to refer to and a trail to follow. It led to a trail junction and I got to an auxiliary parking area, from which I just followed the dirt road back to the visitor's center, a little shaky but no longer in danger of being a meal for Vulcan predators. I downed half a dozen cups of water from the center's water cooler, used the facilities, and returned to my car only mildly worse for wear. Despite re-hydrating and eating half a sandwich from my cooler the dehydration headache persisted for the rest of the day and overnight, but a giant soda from AM/PM and a generous use of my car's A/C as I continued along my way served me well.

The remaining journey was through the high desert, near Mojave and Edwards Air Force Base and through some desolate blah California landscape between a few small towns. I chose to avoid Interstates again, adding maybe half an hour to the drive, but I wasn't in any hurry and arrived at my dad's place before dark, having survived the dangers of Capella and the hunting grounds of the ten tribes of the Te'er.

But what of Lazarus?

Tagged Star Trek, Traveling, Posted on October 25, 2024 at 1:46PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Bright spots

Gifts from the field

Though my climb back to stable orbit continues, it's been slow going and I've not gotten a lot accomplished of late. But there have been a few highlights that perked me up a bit:

• Mizuki went in to see the vet yesterday and was a champ. Scared out of her little kitten mind, but bravely got through being groped and stuck with needles and she's now had all her shots until next year. She was very popular with Dr. S and the whole staff at Cats Exclusive and I have to admit I liked it when she ran from the technician back to me when they were done with the shots. Don't worry, Tiny Moon, I've gotcha.
• I umpired a playoff series the other night, three games, and when one of the guys playing in the second game showed up early he saw I was the ump for the night and texted his teammates: "We got Tim tonight!!" It did me good, I wasn't feeling too well before heading to the park. That team won their semifinal but lost the championship game to a squad that also knows me by name now. The softball season is coming to a close soon, but meanwhile it's nice to be appreciated there.
• Relatedly, last week (or sometime? The days have all melded together lately) I umped another game with The Leftovers, who presented me with a team-branded beer cozy. I don't drink beer, but it functions as a Coke cozy just fine and I discovered they name-checked me on the thing:
  
  
  That's pretty great. Many thanks to Neal and the rest of the team.
• Lower Decks is back! The new season got off to a pretty good start, not the best but still fun. I guess if you're a Voyager fan you'd appreciate it more, but that to me is the bad Trek. On the other hand, they made great fun of some of the goofiest/dumbest things about that series, so that's a plus. I see this LD ep as less of a "valentine" as a well-deserved mockery of some really terrible Star Trek.
  
  

Tagged The Black Hole, Umping, Star Trek, Cats, Posted on September 9, 2023 at 11:53PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Hollywood on strike

I just started "Silo," so it's not on my list yet, but it might get there. So far so good.

With the Writers' Guild of American and the Screen Actors Guild both on strike—for very good reasons I wholeheartedly support, for whatever that's worth—we likely won't be getting much in the way of new TV for a long while. Nothing good, anyway; I'm sure there will be lots of brainless unscripted "reality" garbage and revivals of old game shows galore, but the real stuff we look forward to might be off the menu for the duration of what could be a lengthy battle with studio greed and exploitation.

So what to do in the interim? If you're like my dad, nothing changes; he doesn't watch much TV outside of news. But if you're like many of us, you'll need to find something to fill your entertainment hours. For those sorts, I have recommendations.

There's been so much quality programming out there since the streaming era dawned and chances are you've missed some of it. I'm sure I have too, so if you like something that I don't mention below, say so in the comments and maybe I'll give it a look.

But these shows are gold. They might not all be your personal cup of tea, but the quality of production and writing in them are top-notch. So add these to your streaming queues if you've not already partaken:

Other recent/current shows are also worth a look—Only Murders in the Building, Hello Tomorrow, Russian Doll, plenty of others—but those listed above are my cream of the crop. Of course, even I have not seen everything. What are some of your faves from the last couple of years? Sound off and let me know.

Tagged Star Trek, TV, Posted on July 29, 2023 at 4:54AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

The Grim Reaper comes for all

Vin Scully

I know, that's a morbid, depressing headline. But it's true, and as one gets older—and as I personally can no longer pretend I'm not firmly within middle age—the people in the world who leave us are more and more often people we have a personal connection with in some fashion. At 53, I'm not in the stage where I'm scanning the obits for people I know or anything, but I am in the stage wherein the public figures that reach their ends are a kind of contemporary.

Recently there have been a couple of those for me, and, naturally, my friend Erik beat me to the punch in writing up reflective memorials for them and I can't improve on his remarks. But I will say a little bit anyway.

For the great Vin Scully, longtime broadcaster for the Los Angeles (and before that the Brooklyn) Dodgers, who passed away on August 2nd at age 94, Erik noted the achievement of sheer longevity Scully accomplished thusly:

 One of the first games he broadcast for the Dodgers, when he was a mere stripling of 23 in 1950, was an exhibition game against the Philadelphia A's, managed, in his final year, by Connie Mack, who had been born in 1862, just after the Battle of Fredericksburg. So just those two men connected the U.S. Civil War to the present. Remarkable. If you want to put it in baseball terms: Connie Mack began playing professional baseball in 1886, and managed professional baseball from 1894 to 1950, at which point, at that exhibition game, you can imagine him tagging off to Vin Scully, who broadcast professional baseball games another 66 years. So it's 1886 to 2016. That's the entirety of the sport, really.

Vin was my introduction to baseball entertainment. I grew up in a minor-league town, where there was a Triple-A team affiliated with the Astros (and Rangers before that) and where the local TV station occasionally ran Padres games, but the local radio ran Dodger games. Nearly every night (or afternoon) in the spring and summer I could tune in to AM 1400 and hear the almost musical phrase, "It's time for Dodger baseball" in the dulcet tones of Vin Scully, followed by "a very pleasant good afternoon to you wherever you may be."

I never was a Dodger fan, but I was always, always a Vin Scully fan. There are/have been other good baseball play-by-play pros—your Jon Millers, your Gary Thornes, your Dave Niehauses—but there has ever only been one Vin Scully; no one has ever been as good at that job. Vin not only narrated the game for you, he made it art. He (and presumably his staff of minions) prepared so meticulously for every broadcast that he had stories about even the most no-name of journeyman callups to relate during breaks in the action. He famously lip-read arguments on the field between managers and umpires, substituting creative metaphors for the swear words when he interpreted for the radio audience. (My favorite of Vin's substitutions was “'that's fertilizer,' Lasorda yelled, ‘100% fertilizer.’”) He made the most inconsequential blowout game between teams long eliminated from the pennant chase entertaining.

Vin was also the regular TV guy on the NBC Game of the Week for much of my growing-up years, setting my standard for televised games as well as radio. He had a decent repartee with color commentator Joe Garagiola on NBC, but he was always best as a solo act, just chatting with the listener one on one. Or, as he put it himself, "I tried to make believe I was in the ballpark [grandstands], sitting next to somebody and just talking." In modern times, when thanks to the Internet and MLB.TV one had a choice in such things, when I had the option of watching a game with the Dodgers' broadcast feed or the opposition's, I would always choose the Dodger feed because of Vin. Heck, sometimes I would tune in Dodger games as background noise while doing something else, just for Vin.

Scully was the best for a lot of reasons, but one key element was a sense to know when to stop talking and let the moment speak for itself. He described his approach to the gig this way: "The game is just one long conversation, and I'm anticipating that, and I will say things like 'Did you know that?' or 'You're probably wondering why.' I'm really just conversing rather than just doing play-by-play. I never thought of myself as having a style. I don't use key words. And the best thing I do? I shut up."

Erik lists some favorite Scullyisms—“Bob Gibson pitches like he's double-parked”—but there have been so many that I both heard myself and read quoted by others that I couldn't pick favorites. But there is one that resonates more and more in my middle-age, from a game Vin did between the Dodgers and the Cubs in the late '80s and regarding the Cubs' slugging outfielder: "Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day. Aren't we all?"

Nichelle Nichols

The other obit from this month that hit my world was that for Nichelle Nichols, famous for portraying Lieutenant Uhura on the original Star Trek, who died at 89 years old. Erik again has a better tribute. As a champion-level Star Trek nerd I of course know all the oft-told stories about Nichelle and her Trek history—how Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her to remain with the show when she was thinking of leaving; how she inspired Whoopi Goldberg and plenty of other young African-Americans just by portraying a competent professional on network television; how she didn't know ahead of time that her audition for Star Trek was for her former affair partner, Gene Roddenberry, whom she left because she didn't want to be the "other woman"; how Bill Shatner sabotaged the alternate-take filming of the alleged "first interracial kiss" scene with her, insisted on by network suits, to ensure that the kiss would make it on air despite NBC's worries about alienating racists in the South—and how she turned being typecast as Lt. Uhura into a way to reach out to the scientific community, working with NASA on minority outreach and recruiting several applicants who would become prominent astronauts and administrators for the agency (including shuttle astronaut Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space, who "returned the favor," as it were, and appeared as a transporter chief on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation).

I never met Nichelle personally despite seeing her in person at a number of conventions. I've never been an autograph hound or anything like that, so didn't wait in line to speak with her and have her sign stuff, but I did enjoy her appearances and the occasions she would close out her bit with a verse or two of "Beyond Antares."

A class act, a quality human, and a loss to the world.

Nichelle had been in poor health for a while, it wasn't a shock to learn of her passing, but it still gave me a sad, as the kids say. We've now lost De, Jimmy, Leonard, Majel, and Nichelle from the original core crew, not to mention Rene Auberjonois and Aaron Eisenberg from Deep Space Nine.

I'm at that age. The obits are more often for folks that were somehow important to me now.

(Oh, and to answer Erik's question, Nichelle's character of Uhura got her first name, Nyota, non-canonically in novels in the '80s; it was only in the J.J. Abrams movie of 2009 that it was first used on-screen. Fanfiction attempted to name her "Penda" previously, but we can all agree the final choice was the better one.)

Tagged Star Trek, Baseball, Vin Scully, Nichelle Nichols, Posted on August 11, 2022 at 4:50PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

"Star Trek: Picard" season ends in disappointment

"I read once that a commander has to act like a paragon of virtue. I never met a paragon."

"Neither have I."

—Eve McHuron and Captain Kirk, "Mudd's Women"

It's been a week now since the first season of Star Trek: Picard came to a close and I've almost gathered my thoughts about it. They're a bit muddy and uneven. It started out so well—or, at least, it set up some great plot elements with terrific dialogue and character writing. And as things progressed through the ten-episode run, it built on them nicely—until they stopped.

The final few episodes were just a letdown. Not entirely; there's good stuff in all of them, but there's also some lazy maguffiny stuff. More importantly, some of those really interesting setups were just resolved with a throwaway line of dialogue or ignored altogether. It's like they hit episode 6 and then realized that they were past the halfway mark and oh crap now what do we do with all this stuff?

It's extra disappointing because Michael Chabon was the showrunner and I love Michael Chabon. Brilliant novelist. Great with characters. Knows his Star Trek. And yet this kind of fell apart. Star Trek: Discovery also suffered from some of this same kind of trouble in its first two seasons, though, and there is a common element on the staff: Executive producer Alex Kurtzman. Is it his fault? Maybe. But I always default to blaming him because he worked on the J.J. Abrams movies, which cared not a whit for what makes Star Trek good.

Picard sets up these big issues in its premise, with the Federation having abandoned their rescue/relief mission to save their historical enemies the Romulans from the Romulan system's impending supernova, a decision made at least in part because of a massacre at a Mars shipyard by android laborers. The fallout from the massacre included a ban on all synthetic lifeforms, something Jean-Luc Picard, of course, vehemently opposes. The abandonment of the mission and the synthetic ban lead to his resignation from the fleet and a lot of personal drama and trauma. So when none of this is satisfactorily paid off, it's a humongous failure of the writing staff.

The android attack was, unsurprisingly, engineered by secretive paranoid Romulans even though it harmed their own interests. This is pursued and builds to the greater threat that the season hinges on, all great, but then the resolution is a big nothing. The secret paranoid Romulan anti-android cult is not only not satisfactorily explained—they basically just come off as stupid dupes enthralled by ancient stories—but as they are about to wipe out the android population at the secret hiding world, deus ex machina appears in the form of Acting Captain Will Riker and a fleet of UFP ships that intimidate the Roms into simply retreating, and then they leave too, apparently never to return, which makes zero sense. But this confrontation is apparently all it takes for the Romulans to give up on their zealotry and for the Federation government to rescind their now-15-year ban on androids when they wouldn't hear of it before, and we get no details on it. It's just an expository line of dialogue, "oh, and the ban is lifted, so all is good now!" Say what? How?

Where's the dramatic scene that shows how the government overreaction played into terrorism and was self-defeating, providing a valuable lesson to be learned about not abandoning principle out of fear and ignorance? I'm not saying we need a hit-us-over-the-head teaching moment ala "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," but this was supposedly the underlying theme of the whole season. From Picard fighting Starfleet and his government on their bad decisions to seeking out the sleeper-agent-type android Shoji to exploring the victimhood of the Borg and the potential redemption (and exploitation) of the XBs (ex-Borg) to the myriad references to our beloved Mr. Data, it's not unreasonable to expect the story to resolve itself around this theme. Instead we just got some big action stuff (along with one truly brilliant and touching scene of character depth), a bit of a troubling introduction of a new technological and storytelling element that will in a broad sense have to be ignored lest it completely change Federation culture (much like J.J. Fricking Abrams did with magic blood reversing death in the abominable Star Trek Into Darkness), and all the loose ends and forgotten plot points.

I gather from stuff I read on Twitter, that infallible source of reality and facts, that the Riker scene was a late change. It was supposed to have been Admiral Clancy, who we saw Picard argue with in the early episodes, that came to the rescue and that, perhaps, might have mitigated some of the lost opportunity issue with the fleet and government having to acknowledge and rectify their errors. Or not.

Sigh. I have high expectations for my Star Trek. And this show had a lot going for it, not the least was Chabon and his gift for character and dialogue—which were well used, no doubt; I loved (for the most part) the episode set at the Riker/Troi home. But pacing the plot, creating drama by needlessly killing characters off (RIP Hugh, loads of XBs, Maddox), working in more needless death in the form of Riker and Troi's deceased son (killed by a disease made incurable only by the synth ban—what? dumb), just ignoring the broader ramifications of your whole theme... Fucking Kurtzman. (I will continue to blame him until there's evidence pointing elsewhere.)

I gripe because I care. I love Star Trek, I want it to live up to its own high standard, and when it fails it's a blow.

Oh well. At least this show isn't Voyager.

Tagged Star Trek, Posted on April 2, 2020 at 4:02AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

But is it Star Trek?

Last month the latest Star Trek series premiered and, naturally, I have thoughts.

Like the other currently-in-production series, Star Trek: Picard is a streaming-only, online-delivered product doing its part to make Lt. Cdr. Data's declaration that television as we've known it will only last until about 2040 come true. To save ourselves a bit of coin, some friends and I get together to watch episodes here, depriving CBS of several individual subscription fees. (They're doing OK, though.)

There is a difference of opinion about this show. Both in my Trek Night posse and in the wider culture. Some, even, in my own head. It's a complicated production. By and large it seems accepted that the show is a good piece of sci-fi, but does it rise to the level of Star Trek?

It's the same criticism that Star Trek: Discovery gets. On Discovery it's a more understandable complaint. They chose to play fast-and-loose with established canon in a prequel series and had to do some damage control on it; they canned the initial showrunner, Bryan Fuller, who is a huge fan and knows his Trek, and gave it to Alex Kurtzman, who, fairly or unfairly, has the taint of J.J. Abrams on him from their collaboration on the feature films Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness, both of which were decidedly not up to Trek standard and the latter of which is a truly awful piece of work; and while the correctives in the second season were welcome, the show still has a bit of a doom-and-gloom aspect to it that rankles when the Star Trek future is supposed to be positive and hopeful. I still like it, lots of stuff there is good, and with year two I do think it counts as "real Star Trek."

Kurtzman is in the mix on Picard as well, but the writing staff here is led by one of my absolute favorite novelists, Michael Chabon. Someone who knows how to write and craft a story, someone who respects the Trek legacy, someone who knows about building characters. So already Picard is way better than Disco in some basic structural ways. But is it Star Trek?

I say yes, though I see some validity in the counter-arguments. In Picard, the story suggests failures on the part of the generally-utopian United Federation of Planets, hints at conspiracies to undercut the values our heroes are supposed to embody, and there's great disillusionment with the noble Starfleet organization that has been home to Trek heroes prior. And—in stark contrast to Star Trek: The Next Generation—it features characters that are deeply damaged: Raffi's conspiracy theories drove her family away and drove her to addiction issues; Rios had an as-yet-unspecified Starfleet experience that gave him some form of PTSD that left him a bit fatalistic; Picard himself has been nursing an outrage that damaged him; and Agnes...well, she's profoundly guilty about something and has probably been victimized by a Romulan spy. Even one of our villains seems to be conflicted to some degree. There are also relatively minor things that seem a bit "wrong," with references to individual wealth and Rios lighting up cigars here and there. (Nick Meyer may have thought smoking was a thing in Star Trek, but in that respect he was an idiot.)

But Star Trek has always been a vehicle to reflect issues of present-day society in a science-fiction wrapper. We had allegories to topics including the Vietnam war, segregation, and birth-control in the late ’60s; species extinction, ozone depletion, drug abuse, and traumatized veterans in the ’80s; glaznost, homelessness, gay acceptance (sort of), and terrorism in the ’90s; and a rather heavy-handed 9/11 reflection in the ’00s. So why not have Picard reflect the troubles of today—the United States has lost its way and has withdrawn from the world and become more isolated, so having the Federation abandon its humanitarian (I'm sure the Federation has a better word for that that isn't speciesist) mission to aid the Romulans and institute overreaching new laws in the name of security could make for a fine story, depending on the resolution (still to come). And our heroes—Picard himself and his motley crew of misfits—are upset with this. Jean-Luc Picard is probably the single-most idealized character in Trek canon and though here in his later years he is a bit jaded it's largely because his culture is not fulfilling his idealism. He is still the embodiment of moral goodness even if the civilization around him is stumbling a bit.

Plus, political conspiracies are nothing new to Star Trek. The difference (so far) is that when they've been story points before they were resolved heroically and to the culture's benefit. Is there even a political conspiracy afoot in Picard? Undoubtedly so, but it's not yet been revealed, and when it is how will it resolve?

There's also been a bit of confusion in my group here about what all has been drawn from Treks previous and what has not; Picard uses a fair amount of canonical Trek as its foundational bedrock, but most of the characters are new. There's a lot of implied backstory that assumes you know this history and can use it to fill things in. (There's a prologue novel—The Last Best Hope, by Una McCormack—that spells out a lot of that backstory, but it's not a necessity, just a rich supplement.) For someone like me, that's a plus; I'm steeped in this world and know all the deets better than some real-life history I should probably be up on. But I can see where it might bug others.

I've also seen objections to the fact that some of the characters swear in Picard, which is a silly criticism, and to some of the gore, which is not. Frankly, I'm more perturbed by Rios' smoking.

I like the show a lot. Whether it lives up to the high ideals expected of it remains to be seen, that's the nature of a serialized story. But I have faith in Michael Chabon. And I recommend it highly.

Tagged Star Trek, Posted on February 23, 2020 at 9:09PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Moving Beyond

I'm still sad, but this movie was a good salve

I've been pretty dang depressed this last week. Losing Pixel has been hard, and when things start to level off into a sense of "normal," I'll run across a clump of her fur between couch cushions or something, or just realize that my big new condo feels really empty without my lovely ball of fur and attitude running around it. It's kind of refreshing in its way, because being depressed when there's a clear, external reason to be depressed is a kind of novelty for people like me that take medication to keep the personal black hole that follows them around at bay. But I am working my way through it. Still procrastinating on some things, but starting to get other things done and putting my mind to positive things. Intermittently.

One coping mechanism this week has been one part lazy/one part distraction/one part mood-enhancer, and that's movies. I've watched a few movies this week. Erik suggested one, People, Places, and Things, about a cartoonist with a fucked-up love life. He thought I'd relate. He was right. It's a nice little movie. I also watched Irreplaceable You, which is about a character dying, which I thought might be good perspective but just turned out to be sad (though Christopher Walken has a fun curmudgeonly supporting role). Also Laggies, about a directionless 30-ish woman who backslides into adolescent habits, which I rather enjoyed. But also some good old reliable "comfort food" movies: Spider-Man Homecoming (as fun as I remembered), Thor: Ragnarok (funnier than I remembered), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (fun, but too dumb/shallow for repeat viewing and more violent than necessary), and tonight, Star Trek Beyond.

I'd watched Beyond once before since it left theaters, and liked it well enough but maybe not as much as I did when I first saw it. This time I give it a lot more credit. Simon Pegg and his writing partner (whose name escapes me at the moment) pulled off something really impressive: They made a movie that has the modern-studio-mandated action set pieces and spectacle that also has a solid Star Trek story. It is much better than the 2009 J.J. Abrams Star Trek and a billion times better than the idiotic mess that was Star Trek Into Darkness. Granted, that's a low bar.

Still, it's a really enjoyable movie. It has its issues—Captain Kirk is really stupid in one critical point, something that could have been avoided with a few lines of dialogue to propel the story/action without making him an idiot—and the Villainous Plot™ has a MacGuffin (two, actually) that doesn't have enough explanation to make any sense. (Oh, and a motorcycle? That's 100+ years old and runs great and has fuel in it? Really? OK, I'll let that one go.) But the villain at his core has a nice backstory (not well-developed enough, but points anyway given the need for ACTION SPECTACLE), the story flows well, our heroes are handled (for the most part) well. And the in-jokes/callbacks/homages are organic and serve the story (unlike in Into Darkness, where whole sections of the movie are poorly done callbacks/recreations there for no reason except to be callbacks). And they're funny. Simon Pegg does subtly funny really well. 

It's a shame it didn't do the box office business its immediate predecessors did. But as Erik has pointed out time and again, a sequel's ticket-selling success is largely based on the quality of the previous movie, not its own. And STID, let's be generous here, sucked. But there may not be a follow-up to this one. Which might be OK. Star Trek is not nearly its best when treated as an action franchise, and that's what Paramount Studios seems to think these movies need to be, and the rumor mill has a possible sequel written or co-written by Quintin Tarantino, of all people. Hard. Pass.

Anyway, Beyond is a fun movie. I liked it (again). And it picked me up a little bit.

Tagged The Black Hole, Star Trek, Pixel, Movies, Posted on September 1, 2018 at 3:59AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

STS-51L

Space Shuttle Challenger - 1/28/86

As a futurist/sci-fi nerd kid, there were two ways one could've gone when it came to following the space program: rapt attention and obsessive cataloging of every development and mission, or a blasé acceptance of its ordinariness and general disappointment in the lack of "real" progress in every development and mission. By the '80s, I was in the latter camp.

In late 1985, when I was 16, things at my school were a little bit space-happy because the principal, Sr. Judy (yes, my school was run by nuns, though they were rather unconventional nuns), had applied to and was a finalist for the teacher-in-space project. She had a shot at being on the January '86 space-shuttle flight (she would ultimately lose out to Christa McAuliffe). So it became a thing, lots of NASA-based stuff being taught and a mock space shuttle was built for students to go on "missions," which would parallel actual shuttle missions and approximate some of the astronauts' experiments and other educational goodness as well as give the experience of living in a confined space for days, just like the astronauts—except for the pesky gravity, which kind of ruined a lot of the approximation stuff, but still it was a great thing.

I, however, was in some ways already living in the future, being a sci-fi nerd and Star Trek expert, and was even teaching a course on Star Trek to my fellow high-schoolers (based on a college course I read about that tackled philosophical and scientific questions and issues presented in the episodes). Space shuttles were old hat. Primitive, even. Wake me when there's warp drive.

So, on the morning of January 28, 1986, while most of the school was gathered around a TV and a "crew" was in the mock space shuttle, monitoring the launch of STS-51L, I wasn't with them. I was in a smaller room, with a group of a dozen or so others, introducing Episode 5, "The Enemy Within," ready to engage in a discussion on the makeup of personality, whether traits are inherently "good" or "evil," and whether one needs the unpleasant elements of humanity to be a functioning whole person.

Just as the transporter malfunctioned and split Captain Kirk into two people, someone burst into the room and said "the shuttle blew up."

It was a stark reminder that this old-hat, primitive stuff was still, in our real world of the 1980s, the frontier.

We abandoned the Enterprise for the day and I spent the next several hours doing what I could to improve the TV reception and follow along while the school debated whether or not to continue the mock shuttle mission (they did) and ponder Sr. Judy's good fortune at not being chosen for Teacher in Space. Also figuring out what O-rings were and trying to fathom why we depend on such fragile materials for things like a spacecraft.

Anyway, Challenger is in some ways my generation's "where were you when Kennedy was shot" moment; it arguably stalled NASA and set back space exploration for years, and remains a potent moment in personal history.

So. Here's to the crew of STS-51L. May we keep on exploring and advancing, and risking, out into the big black, boldly going where humans have yet to go.

Tagged Star Trek, NASA, The '80s, High School, Posted on January 28, 2018 at 6:28PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Disco Fever

Now that we've hit the halfway mark in the first season, some more refined thoughts on Star Trek: Discovery.

Short version: I like it, it is proving to indeed be good Star Trek as well as good sci-fi, though the "spore drive" that much of this season relies on stretches the "sci" part of things pretty far.

Longer version follows...

See full post: "Disco Fever"...

Tagged Star Trek, Posted on November 8, 2017 at 2:23AM   |   Permalink   |     |