Posts Tagged ‘William Shatner’

Revival House: “KHAAAAN!!!!”

KhaaaanWith the most recent Star Trek movie coming to video November 17, I felt it would be fitting to revisit what most people (myself included) think is the best of all the Trek films, 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. If you’re curious about what I think of J.J. Abrams’s reboot of the franchise, check out the episode of my podcast in which me and my cohost, Lisa Soloway, review the new Trek and compare it to The Wrath of Khan. In short, I thought the new film was a lot of fun and incredibly well cast, but I was seriously weirded out by the whole “alternate timeline” plot, and ultimately felt it was a weak concept upon which to reboot the series. While I do understand why the filmmakers made that choice, I still feel like it was a cheat from a writing standpoint. But what the hell, the movie is undeniably a fun ride, and I admit I’m just nitpicking because I love Star Trek so much.

In a sense, Star Trek II was itself a reboot of the franchise, as many people didn’t like its predecessor, 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture (personally, I’ve always loved it, as stated in a previous column). It’s interesting to note that director Nicholas Meyer, like J.J. Abrams, didn’t come on board as a fan of Star Trek — he’d reportedly never even seen a single episode of the 1960s TV series. Up to that point Meyer was best known for writing and directing the excellent Time After Time (1979) and writing both the novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and the screenplay for the 1976 film adaptation.

(more…)

How Bad Can It Be?: “Star Trek: The Animated Series”

howbadcanitbe

My usual modus operandi with this column — and the reason why its title is phrased as a question — is to look for signs of quality in cultural products for which I have no reasonable expectation of finding it. I’m not even necessarily expecting that Hannah Montana DVD to be bad — I’m just not expecting it to be very good. My hope is always to be pleasantly surprised. Oh, I hear the same word-of-mouth that you all do, and I know the received wisdom as well as anyone else; but usually I can shrug them off and try to approach the work with an open mind, hoping against hope for something good.

There are times, though, when my own prior experiences lead me to approach my subject with a pre-existing anticipation of its crapulence, and that shit is hard to shake. Such is the case with Star Trek: The Animated Series, released in 2006 in a handsome boxed edition, which I have just re-encountered for the first time since seeing it in its original run. (more…)

Bootleg City: Evan Dando and the Lemonheads

To celebrate/exploit the release of Varshons, the new covers album by Evan Dando’s Lemonheads, Bootleg City is covering its own covers-filled edition from July 27, 2007. Of course, back in those days there was no Popdose.

“But Mayor Cass,” the children always ask, “where did people go when they wanted to download music for free and write comments underneath the accompanying text that was only tangentially related to said text?”

“My my!” I answer. “What big words you have in your … um … don’t tell me … starts with a V …”

That’s when their smiles usually vanish. “Fine, we’ll dumb it down for you, old man. What was it called before it was called Popdose?

Kids. They really do say the darnedest, most f**ked-up bulls**t.

For those who don’t know, before there was Popdose there was Jefitoblog, and whenever its creator, Popdose’s Jeff Giles, was foolish enough to allow guest writers to contribute, he’d often have to upload all their MP3s for them along with all their text. Uploading MP3s is a time-consuming, hand-cramping, soul-fisting process. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun being mayor of Bootleg City, but if there was a way to charge you people a nonreading tax so I could buy some child labor that would upload the MP3s for me, I’d do it in a heartbeat. (Of course I wouldn’t underpay them. I love those little octothorp ampersand percent sign exclamation points.)

However, I’m glad Jeff no longer has to upload songs for me, because (1) he does more for Popdose than you’ll ever know and deserves our eternal gratitude, and (2) I don’t trust him one bit with my stuff. Never have, never will. The real Jeff Giles writes for Newsweek — who does this “Jeff DeWester” impostor think he is?

(more…)

Sugar Water: Running Scared From Progress

sugarwater.gif

I didn’t accomplish much in April. Now it’s May.

Oh yeah, I did ask my long-term, short-tempered girlfriend, Aimiee, to marry me, as threatened in my last Sugar Water column. And the answer was no, but don’t start crying for us just yet. See, she wants to marry me, but as she put it, “If gay couples can’t legally marry in Illinois, why should straight people like us have that right? Plus you abandoned Xing, our seven-year-old adopted Chinese son who’s actually our daughter, in Nebraska right before that safe-haven law was changed last November, which brings up a wide range of trust issues.”

See, all I have to do is convince the Illinois Supreme Court that gay marriage isn’t a threat to the moral fiber of our state — or Chicago’s chances of hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics — and Aimiee will be my wife. Of course, at the beginning of April I was pretty crushed since there seemed to be no way Illinois would legalize gay marriage, but suddenly its corn-fed neighbor Iowa was down with hot man-on-man lifelong commitment and kinky girl-on-girl sacred vows.

Yes, Iowa and Vermont accomplished something much more important in April than writing a new Sugar Water column, though they’re welcome to sub for me at any time while I watch syndicated reruns of the so-bad-it’s-good TV show Boston Legal to prepare for my Supreme Court appearance. Unfortunately, the recently canceled “dramedy” hasn’t taught me a thing about how the law actually works. William Shatner doesn’t play a starship captain on this spin-off of The Practice, but it might as well be another self-punched notch on his science-fiction belt since it’s so far removed from reality. The attorneys at Boston Legal’s fictional firm are constantly being arrested or sued, and that’s when they’re not suing each other just to kill some time. In real life you’d take your business elsewhere if it weren’t for the fact that they win 99 percent of their cases, thanks to sanctimonious courtroom speeches delivered by James Spader that employ zany one-liners and statistics from the latest issue of Newsweek in equal measure. In the final episode, which aired last December, Shatner and Spader’s characters went before the U.S. Supreme Court to defend their right to marry each other even though they’re not gay.

(more…)

Unsolicited Career Advice for… Jandek

To know the unknowable is one of the great pursuits of sentient beings everywhere.  Has been for as long as there’s been sentient beings.  But to truly know the unknowable (or at least be rendered confused and queasy from it), spend an hour or two listening to and pondering the music of the outsider artist Jandek.  Or, like Uncle Donnie, stumble upon him completely by accident and start writing him harassing memos, offering career advice.  Your call.  – RS

TO: Jandek
FROM: Don Skwatzenschitz
RE: Career Advice

I know who you are, Jandek. Oh, you think you’ve pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, but I know where you are and where you live and where you’ve made all 55 of your records—every last uncomfortably atonal, virtually indecipherable one of ‘em. How, you might ask? I have friends in the Houston suburbs who had me over for dinner last month while I was in town for the John Basedow Abdominal Exercise Seminar and Chili Cookoff. You might know my friends—Carrie and Tom Milkowitz. As in your next door neighbors Carrie and Tom Milkowitz?

As I sipped my Manhattan on their back deck and watched you pick snap peas from your garden, it occurred to me that you could be so much bigger than you are. I mean, I only knew you from Spin magazine and that documentary done about you a few years back. I’ve only recently started making my way through your voluminous discography (I can only do it while my wife Mitzi is out with her canasta group, or when she’s asleep), and there’s some interesting stuff in there. And by interesting stuff, I mean uncomfortably atonal, virtually indecipherable stuff. But it’s all marketable, if you take my advice and try a couple things: (more…)