Writer's Block: Take a Leap

Got married.

Star Trek (2008 film)

This will be a long one…
I saw the trailer for the new Star Trek film while I was at the Apple Store last weekend waiting for them to replace my power supply. Now I’ve been a Trek fan ever since Mom and I came home from shopping one night to find Dad watching “The Ultimate Computer”. But for original Trek. I never did like “Star Trek – The Degeneration”, wasn’t happy with DS9, Voyager, or Enterprise. Quite frankly I had quickly come to the conclusion that Rick Berman was a total incompetent who didn’t understand Trek, and shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the show. Now I know a lot of people who thought ST:TNG was pretty good, others how liked DS9, etc. I know a lot who liked the four movies he was involved with. I thought they stank.

So now Paramount has hired J. J. Abrams to do a new Star Trek movie – one that predates the original series, but involves the original characters (who will of course be played by new actors). Should I rejoice? Or should I scream in terror (remembering what atrocities were committed in making the Thunderbirds, Avengers, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and Lord of the Rings movies).

So can J. J. Abrams do a proper Star Trek movie? I admit, I am doubtful. While he has a large list of credits to his name, most of them are things I have not seen, and probably would not care to see. Here’s a list of projects he’s been involved in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Care_of_Business
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regarding_Henry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_Young_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon_%281998_film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Ride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_%28TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_%28TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_About_Brian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_Flyby#Superman:_Flyby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloverfield
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_%28film%29

I specifically decided to do my research on Wikipedia instead of IMDB, as the main information posted on IMDB comes from the production companies, and I wanted an independent view. From what I read none of these projects really sucked. Success is some times harder to evaluate – while I know a lot of people who loved Lord of the Rings, I hated it, and thought that Peter Jackson should have been sued for ruining the story.

So at present I’m sitting here wondering if this will be worth watching. The last 20 years of Trek have been pretty bad. When the fan films are better than the official product, and they many of them have been, you’ve got major problems. Does Paramount have enough corporate smarts to have hired the right guy to handle this?

Right now I doubt it. But I may see the movie at the theater anyway. Of course if I don’t like it I will let everyone know.

Oh – and you can get the trailer here:

http://www.startrekmovie.com/

This is different than the one I saw last weekend. And I see some problems with it already, which anyone who’s read the Stephen Whifield Star Trek book should catch it.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – 2005 Movie

OK – so Space has it on tonight. I heard it was bad, but could it be that bad.

Yep, it could.

About 25 years ago I remember seeing a BBC production of the book, and while done on the cheap, it was brilliant. This is sooooo bad that the director, producer, and writer should be banned from the industry.

ARGH!

Animals

Vicky and I took the dog for a walk last night. I don’t know what was in the air, but we had an insane mutt on our hands. I had him on the long leash, and he bounded up on a lawn and was rolling around in the snow, then he tried to snowplow the lawn with his nose, bounced all over the place, and nearly knocked a tree over.

What a happy mutt <GRIN>.

Pain

The pain in my leg is really getting to me. It isn’t getting worse – it’s just to damned constant. It really interferes with life. Some examples being:

1) Since Dad died, we have his dog, and I promised that Mark would be well taken care of. One thing I do every night is walk Mark. I love walking him, he’s a big lovable mutt, and those walks are the high point of the day to him (at least the way he bounds around I assume that he likes them). Problem is it hurts to walk him. And I really enjoy walking him. Yes, I could bug the boys to walk him, but I enjoy doing it. So I’m going to continue even if it does hurt like hell. Besides, it’s the only exercise I get.

2) My power supply died on the Mac, so I drove to the Apple Store at Yorkdale Mall. As usual there was a lineup, and here’s me stumbling around with a cane. I would have loved to wander around the mall more – I’m not a shopper, but Yorkdale has some neat stuff. Instead I spent a lot of time sitting on a bench reading a history of the 100 Years War. I like reading – but I would have liked to look around more.

3) There isn’t a comfortable way to sit. I can’t stand, I can’t sit, and I can’t spend the entire day on my back. The pain while I’m at work messes up my concentration, and makes me somewhat evil tempered.

4) There’s work around the house I should be doing (none of the kids are capable of doing it, and a lot of it is stuff I know how to do, but can’t explain (electrical work for instance).

I do have an appointment to see a pain doctor – but it’s in the middle of next month. In the meantime I’m chewing through Tylenol 3’s like their candy – ran out tonight, got to go see the doctor tomorrow and get another prescription.

How annoying life can be some times…

Let me see:

1) One of the kids managed to get an IRCBot installed on his computer – as a result our cable provider cut us off for a week.

2) My leg is killing me. My Doctor has finally decided that since he can’t see anything wrong with it, he’s refering me to a pain specialist. In other words, don’t fix the problem – fix the symptom. Of course if they do manage to get rid of the pain that would be wonderful, it’s just after 10 years of putting up with it, I’m a bit skeptical.

3) Heather’s computer went boom. Totally. I was at work at the time, and didn’t think anything of it when she called back an hour later with the news that she’d found her restore DVDs and was going to fix it. Of course the DVDs turned out to be toast, and they wiped ALL of her data. All of her recent song writing, the novel she’d been working on, the family genealogy work – everything. She figured at this point that the computer (an Acer Aspire 5100 Notebook) was physically trashed. When I got home I downloaded Ubuntu 7.10, and tried it as a live CD – computer booted up perfectly, at which point I could see the damage that the restore disks had done (I’ve since found out that Windows Restore disks usually wipe out your data – Microsoft doesn’t seem to care about all of the work that you’ve done). I talked to her, she agreed to try Ubuntu, so I got it installed, got it working with the Windows wireless drivers, got WINE installed so she could run Windows programs, helped her get used to it (which only took about 5 minutes – Heather is good with computers).

Oh, and while I’m trying to type this Luck decides that the best place for him to sit is on the keyboard…. OK – so I have 10 pounds of Arnold Schwarzakitty trying to help me type.

The next month has got to be better – I hope.