Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Whoever came up with the idea of making Star Trek: A Space Odyssey must have been smoking crack. Was it you, Roddenburied? Come on, fess up!
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan
The best thing is how Khan--and yes, he is supposed to be descended from the great Khans of outer Mongolia who ruled much of Asia and much of Europe for a time (before Alexander finally kicked them out)--how Ricardo Khan Montleban kept quoting from Moby Dick in the last 30 mins of the movie, regarding--get this, it's funny--regarding WILLIAM SHATNER as his great white whale. He must have been aware of how far he'd fallen from his once transcendent eyrie (he was a genetically engineered super-human from the 20th century Earth, after all--a mad villain from some series of terrible wars that took place apparently in the 1990s), had to perceive the irony of swearing everlasting enmity to a colossal force of nature only as profound as a B actor with a bad hair-piece: "To the last I grapple with thee!" quotes Ahab-Khan to Moby-Shatner, "From Hell's heart I stab at thee!" suitably overacted by Montlebaun (gotta give him credit for his best role, you know--he definitely got into the Star Trek spirit and hammed it up enough), "I spit my last breath at thee!"
This grand idea of importing great literature into the Star Trek universe (where it could serve to illustrate just how poor the rest of the writing really is) was repeated in a later movie (number 6: The Undiscoverd Country) where they've got this Klingon who quotes Shakespeare (played by Christopher Plummer who, incidentally, has played the actual Hamlet). The film's title is also from Shakespeare, although to Hamlet the Undiscovered Country was death--God knows what it is to whoever wrote this. So... How the hell does a Klingon learn Shakespeare, and what could possibly compel him to recite it (indeed at the very moment of his death, he doesn't pull out a good Klingon line--"It is indeed a good day to die" for instance--but goes all Lawrence Olivier and opines: "To be or not to be..." BOOM!); that's kind of like a 16th century Caribbean pirate who drinks Diet Coke and reads Lady's Home Journal for recipe ideas.
Star Trek 3: The Search For Spock
In the previous movie, Shatner just met his supposed son for the first time (some momma's boy science geek who dresses in overalls and has a big eighties hairstyle), didn't get along with him for the five minutes they interacted, then promptly dropped him off on the Genesis planet (or wherever--he makes it back to the GP at the start of this movie). Now suddenly Shatner's got all this emotional investment--mainly since a dirty Klingon bastard opened Shatner Jr's belly--and goes all Charlton Hestony and weepy and furiously vengeful. What I want to know is, where was all that pride and love and protectiveness while the kid was growing up? He's like 40 by the time the Klingon cuts him. Oh, I see, now you want to be a good dad, eh Shatner? Now when it's time to get revenge by blowing up the Enterprise.
Yes! This is the movie where Shatner steals the Enterprise from Star Fleet then blows it up through a self-destruct sequence in order to get revenge on a few Klingons. The whole thing seems a bit preposterous; they've been in lots of scrapes tougher than that one and never had to resort to such an extreme measure. But when it blows up--and maybe this is just because I grew up geek--it's very upsetting to watch. Every time I see that movie, I cry out "Noooooo! This can't be happening! Noooooo!" Just like I did in 1984 when I saw it the first time; and I remember an entire geeky subculture in that year all crying out in the same way, a great united chorus of "Noooooo!" The Enterprise is a profound symbol after all, of hope and courage, of resilience and, and, and of other things too.
When the Crew That Cannot Be Killed Despite Innumerable Attempts watches their beloved space-car go down in a pile of sizzling debris, Shatner says to McCoy: "My God, Bones. What have I done?" McCoy then provides his best Doc Holiday reply (as after Wyatt Erp's last slaughter): "What you had to do. What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live." Silly, and so so tragic.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Nothing of much interest in this one; it follows a very formulaic Hollywood screen-writer's plot, and feels very eighties watching it now. Strange how fast that decade got lame and embarrassing. I can't wait to see how I'll perceive the nineties in a few years.
I made the mistake of trying to buy a book in The Mall yesterday. Barnes and Noble didn't have it--a novel by Mark Leyner that was recommended to me, something about professional tetherball competition (which is my favorite sport)--so, rather than taking the dull drive to the other Barnes and Noble (aint there always another Barnes and Noble), I made that sickening plunge into the Mall Parking Orbit (MPO. Def: an eccentric system of satellite lots and garages servicing large shopping malls, often the setting for criminal acts of inhumanity, especially during the Christmas season. Other mall orbiting bodies include mid-priced theme restaurants, movie theaters, and IKEA.). Seizing the opportunity for some hands-on research, I confirmed the hypothesis that it takes approx. 15% longer to find a spot in an MPO than in any other public parking facility (aside from airports), and approx. 30% longer than any rational human being would spend looking. I parked farther away than should theoretically have been possible (modern parking theory is somewhat remiss in its failure to address the spatial warping properties of Mall Orbits) and left my balefully Firestoned Ford Explorer to the mercy of the parking lot thieves (a misnomer, as they are really more interested in simple vandalism).
The first shock when you enter the Mall on a Monday afternoon is the unexpected (indeed: unpredictable) volume of people you will find there. I had not thought the economy had undone so many! Here are strolling slackers with golf-shirts tucked into their jeans, young girls lugging shopping bags with pretentious French names printed on them, lumbering women both pregnant and stroller-pushing (who believe they own all public places due to their brilliant production of wailing offspring), and suburban hoodlum wanna-bes with regrettable tattoos and trace elements of facial hair. (I've hated summer vacation for the full decade I've been deprived of it; a bizarre practice that causes more problems for we misanthropes than I can begin to describe. Three of the four groups of Mall prowlers I just listed are directly attributable to the malicious lobbying of the National Teacher's Organization for summers off.) The Mall was so crowded that I was forced on numerous occasions to actually divert my intended vector in order to avoid collision. Intolerable!
Then there are all the miscellaneous indignities that must be suffered at the mall: the guy who doesn't even touch the door that you're holding open for him (like I'm his frigging butler or something), and then doesn't thank you for your servitude; the group of yammering clones who stroll in an even row so that you can't pass them; the lobotomy experiment who turns the corner of the stairs on the outside and--worse than colliding with you--stops short and stands and stares and waits for you to get out of his way; the bookstore customer who passes between you and the shelves you're browsing and doesn't excuse himself (also applicable to video stores); and of course the person of similar ilk who slides right in front of you while you're trying to interpret the mall-map.
The King of Prussia Mall, King of Prussia, PA, is one of the largest shopping malls in the country, and currently leases space to three booksellers (two of which, incidentally, are owned by Barnes and Noble). In order to find them, you must consult the random-access mall-map that begins with "You Are Here", and cross-reference it with a catalogue of stores. This much is typical of most malls. But due to the volume of stores in this particular mall, the retail cartographers decided to cross-reference regions rather than actual stores. This means that you can find out what area your intended retailer is in, but not the exact location. But the maps don't tell you that! There's no FAQ attached to them! So I found myself standing for long minutes staring at a GNC prescription-alternative-for-the-really- muscular-or-really-fat type store, frowning like a dimwit (take note, Jane!), and wondering if I was still in the right mall. The summer-vacationers flooded around me, the mall-cops made threatening eye-contact (which might have actually been sexual since all those guys must be gay), and--despite my fervent incantations--the bookstore did not magically appear. Making the best of my available tools, I went into the GNC and bought some standardized Gingko Biloba. As advertised, it improved my mental acuity by replacing the tar in my brain with actual oxygen, and I was soon able to deduce that the bookstore was, in fact, just around the corner.
Repeat above paragraph for each subsequent book retailer. None of them had any titles by Mark Leyner. I was not surprised--on the contrary, I have a great history of such failures, most of them pre-e-commerce: the fabled 1985 Frank Zappa Quest that I'd conducted across the vast parquet floors and through the "can-I-help-you- with-this-concept-of-alphabetization" asking music shops of every area mall; the even more frustrating decent-chess-set hunt which, lacking any hope of targeting a specific store, resulted in a dreadful campaign of carpet-shopping (similar to carpet-bombing but involving a bit more selectivity); and of course--what fellow victim of it could ever wipe it from their post-traumatic-stressed memories--the eternal and mind-rending labor of trying to locate the right [piece of jewelry deleted].
These mall bookstores would make Dante reconsider his ninth plane. They're all crowded with sticky children madly banging toy xylophones and incessantly pushing the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" button on books with speakers (for God's sake, books with speakers!), and perfume-reeking house-fraus perusing the Opera Book Club racks or driving their strollers down aisles just narrow enough to ensure their clipping my heels no matter how I brace myself in preparation. They have spiraling cyclone stacks of Stephen King and John Grisham novels that threaten to topple and crush you, cluttered Bargain Bins featuring titles like "The Danielle Steele Omnibus" and "Introducing Windows 3.1"; they have, on the one hand, entire sections dedicated to "Men's Adventure" novels, and on the other, one general fiction category that places Anton Chekov next to Jackie Collins, and Robert Graves next to that crazy woman with the alphabetic titles (S is for Shut the Hell Up Already You Silly Lunatic).
Okay, I admit my judgment sometimes fails me. And I also admit I'm not as good at keeping some promises as I am at keeping others. But I hereby I vow once again never to enter another one of those smarmy little mall bookstores. It took me less than a minute to order the Mark Leyner novel from Amazon. I've learned to be happy with waiting for it to be delivered.A friend told me to drop the Marlboro Lights finally and try some elitist euro-tobacco, some French "brunes" called Gauloises.
First off, he said, they're better for you--which seemed kind of like saying testicular cancer is better for you than prostate cancer--because they don't have all the nutty chemical additives that American cigarettes have. Okay, fair enough, although I suspected I was probably just as addicted to those chemicals as I was to the nicotine. Secondly, he told me they're probably cheaper. Huh? I ran through a list: import costs, vice taxes, multiple distribution layers, retail selling from scarcity, lobbying from giant corporations with more power than the sum total of all French economies in history; those Gauloises didn't have a prayer of competing with old Philip Morris.
I disagreed with the principles but agreed to try the Gauloises. The only local tobacco shop likely to carry such exotic fare is in the Mall, and yesterday I entered that very (terrible) place.
A pack Gauloises costs nearly $7.00. Yes. Strike down myth number two. I had paid for them before the price even registered in my brain--which is something I do sometimes, perhaps proving the theory that I am, in fact, a dimwit--but who really expects to pay more than half that for a pack of cigarettes? Secondly, these things taste like cigars! Which is an uncomfortable experience since I've been trained not to inhale cigars; so they inflict a conflict of impulses on me. Very confusing. So typically French.
So the Gauloises have joined the small pile of reserve cigarettes that helps to clutter one of my bookshelves (along with such worthy comrade packs as Marlboro Ultra Lights, Dunhill International, and Camel Ultra Lights Special Select Turkish Wide Blend). And I am stuck pondering what might possibly motivate someone to purchase and smoke such ridiculously expensive and foul-tasting tobacco. I fear I am forced to pass judgment: only a pretentious poseur would do so (note the Fr. spelling; pretty clever, huh?).I find I am honestly confused by this; it reminds me of the giant clock/library Stewart Brand is always preaching about now, the one Danny Hillis is building in the desert that is supposed to last ten millennia and tick only once per annum. I read Brand's book on it--The Clock of the Long Now, which for me summons images of decrepitude and techno-worship found in Gene Wolfe novels--and while I think it is certainly a... well, a *cool* idea, I am unable to grasp how it's supposed to change the world's perception of time and the future; can a single act, like that of building a clock or performing a centuries long piece of music, really change anything? Would we really want it to change anything, allow an artifact that much influence over our lives (which is the reserved domain of religion)? Or is it enough that it's just a cool thing to do? It reminds me of a quote from a Sufi poet named Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi--culled from a book of quotes some years ago, rather than from any extensive readings of Sufi poets--but a perennial source of inspiration: Start a huge foolish project like Noah. It makes absolutely no difference What people think of you.
But does the current generation (as generations before them) now impose too few responsibilities on their progeny? Is there a pressing need to add more maintenance tasks--and ostensibly pointless ones at that--where the existing ones might already prove too great (e.g. the legacy of foreign policy decisions that lingers like background radiation on the surface of the world's enmity; suffocating, politically motivated restrictions placed on future industry; foolhardy treaties and alliances with slow impacts like rust on the mettle (sic) of our collective resolve)? Will they argue that infinite, open art-projects may serve as reminders of this responsibility, as the eternal flames and monuments at Holocaust museums serve to remind of the necessity of vigilance over our Terran cohabitants?
I see minefields of reminders spreading out from the information chaos of our generations, and conflicts of morally exaggerated imperatives, some so ill-defined that the lines between politics, art, philosophy, and technology are so blurred we submit ourselves to superstructures impossible finally to fully perceive at all (as the denizens of Wolfe's Long Sun structure cannot perceive their own world). I see meaning forcibly attached to objects once free of such containers, and meaning obtained by committee. I see trends like these sprouting up with weeds and daffodils, each another attempt at the preservation of their creator's own peculiar ideas, and more an attempt at the persistence of ego and name than any grand philosophical (or world-altering) heritage--more Ozymandias than Aristotle.
When human life becomes so trivialized that the reproduction of oneself into gene-carrying offspring is so commonplace as to pose a problem rather than a boon to the world, those who fear death the most start huge foolish projects and ask of the future their continuance. It is no longer the artifacts of our labor that we pass along to our children, but the bloated remains of our limitless egos. One day we will all externalize the evolved products of our genes--our super-genes--into personalized, pseudo-mimetic, projected structures like irresolvable brain-blocks impossible to fit with peers into collective arrangements, and leave them scattered on finally inhuman landscapes, out in the distant collapse of time, surrounded by infinite things.