A trailer for the upcoming Star Trek film is now online. I like the iconic use of the Enterprise, although the first few seconds had me half-expecting to hear Pete Bob Seger start belting out “Like A Rock”. And, man, Spock is starting to sound old. I hereby volunteer to serve as the human vessel for his katra when the time comes. A little Vulcan mojo might help me score with the ladies.
Three-quarters of you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, do you?
Much of the Internet is in a twitter with the observation that we are exactly one year away from the end of the Bush Administration. In some ways, it already feels like his presidency is over. The upcoming State of the Union address is not getting so much as a whisper of attention in the press and the recent coverage of his trip to the Mideast was distinctly perfunctory. The nation is reaching the end of its long road trip with Bush at the wheel and it’s anxious to get the hell out of the car and hitch a ride with someone, anyone, else.
In related news, Oliver Stone–the self-important director of a lot of self-important movies–is commencing filming on a biopic of George W. Bush that could be in theaters by the end of the year. I’m no movie executive, but I’m not sensing a lot of pent-up demand for a cinematic treatment of this man’s life. Nostalgia usually takes a few years to kick in. But if nostalgia for this president ever sweeps the country, break out the suicide pills because we will be well and truly fucked.
I’m going to a movie this afternoon with a friend (Atonement), which means that I’ll probably miss the first half of the Packers-Giants game. So, nobody tell me the score until I’ve had a chance to watch the whole thing on my TiVo (which, when skipping the commercials, should only take a couple hours). One of the nice things about not living in Green Bay is that I can go see an epic romance on game day and not have my masculinity questioned.
Scientists are now implanting electrodes in the brains of monkeys to control robots located on the other side of the globe. You know what this means, don’t you? A decade or two from now, I’ll be spending my free time playing a more sophisticated version of Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots with some lab chimp strung out on military-grade amphetamines. It could be great reality television, as long as the monkey is kept in a remote location. I’m not about to let some augmented primate fling its poo at me every time I win, no matter how much the network is paying me.
Bobby Fischer is dead and the world is a little less weird. We’ll probably never see another chess rock star again and maybe that’s a good thing. Look how this one turned out.
The BBC has a good article covering the Oscar Pistorius controversy. Pistorius is an athlete who is missing both of his and he runs on carbon-fiber prosthetics. He petitioned to compete in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but the ruling committee denied his petition because his prosthetics are “technical aids”. Here’s footage of Pistorius competing in a race in Rome.
I’ll post thoughts on this when I’m feeling more coherent. Thanks to my friend Rosie for the tip.
Hasbro and Mattel, co-owners of the copyright to the original Scrabble game, are asking Facebook to remove the ridiculously popular Scrabulous app. See, this is why people hate lawyers. Everyone’s minding their own business and having a little fun when–BAM!–Mr. Corporate McLackey, Esq. decides that he needs to do his part to make the world just a little drearier. Well, they can take away our Scrabulous, but they can never take away our FREEDOM!
I promise that’s the one and only Braveheart riff you’ll ever see on this blog.
It’s independent film week here on The 19th Floor. NPR is running a story about Rolling, a documentary featuring footage shot by three different wheelchair users. The site also features a few clips from the doc and I was compelled to smile at the familiarity of the lingering crotch shot featured in the second clip. Imagine the carnival of horrors I would be subjected to if I ever had to venture into a nudist colony. More disturbing is the third clip: a woman’s wheelchair stalls on the way home from a party and her paratransit driver refuses to help her get inside her house, so she remains stuck in her driveway for what looks like hours.
If I mounted a camera on my wheelchair, I would shoot footage of my daily elevator rides in my building. Our elevators are on the small side and occasionally people have to high-step over my footrest to squeeze themselves in. They’re usually cool with this, but occasionally I’m the recipient of irritated glances and heavy sighs. Whenever this happens, the impulsive side of me wants to feign concern, apologize for being such a nuisance, and invite them to sit on my lap.
Thanks to my bestest friend Amy C. for the tip.
Last night, I caught the second half of Today’s Man, a documentary in PBS’ Independent Lens series. The subject of Today’s Man is Nicky Gottlieb, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome in his early twenties. People with Asperger’s tend to be extremely bright individuals who have great difficulty deciphering and responding to the cues of everyday social interactions. The film, directed by Nicky’s sister, tracks him over several years as he tries to find work and a place of his own. It doesn’t flinch from some of Nicky’s obsessive and occasionally irksome behaviors, which are on full display during a confrontation with a job supervisor. But the director’s love for her brother is what gives the documentary emotional heft. Check it out if you can.
We don’t have flying cars yet. We’re not taking vacations in low-Earth orbit. Our computers aren’t talking to us in soothing conversational tones. But brace yourselves, because the forces of progress are going to change our lives in dramatic ways. Imagine…being able to rent movies…on your computer. Imagine…being able to purchase digital music…that will play on any device. Imagine…being able to download things…really, really fast. Truly, we live in an age of wonders.
I understand that the future will come in a series of shuffling, incremental steps rather than a heady rush. A decade from now, I might marvel at how we ever put up with [insert today’s cutting-edge but inevitably kludgy and obsolete technology here] for so long. But until I get to have sex with robots, everything else is underwhelming hype.