Author: Chris S.

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MoviePass vs. Movie Club

After a couple of days of rumination, I decided to cancel my MoviePass account and signed up for Cinemark’s Movie Club.

MoviePass simply had too many hoops to jump through, and felt restrictive.  The unlimited movies per month is nice, but truth be told, I only get out to see maybe 2-3 movies per month, at best.  And if I don’t see a movie at all that month, the $9.99 charge is wasted.  Like last month, when for some reason it wouldn’t let me see Black Panther during opening weekend.

Movie Club, on the other hand, will roll over any credits I don’t use in a month.  I can buy tickets online instead of 100 yards from the theatre, I can buy multiple tickets at a time, and I even get to wave the online service fee.

Oh, and there’s the 20% off at concession stands.

We’ll see how this goes.

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Martha’s Mix Tape

Every morning at 7:30 AM, on the local 80s station (I Heart the 80s), Martha Quinn plays a ‘mix tape’ of 3 songs linked by a theme, like 3 songs with the word ‘love’ in the title, or something  similar.  Sometimes she’ll say ahead of time what the theme is, sometimes she’ll give a hint.

This morning before she played it, she asked, “What would link Information Society and the Bangles?”

Geek-that-is-me thought that the obvious answer was Leonard Nimoy.

She then revealed that it was indeed 3 songs associated with Leonard Nimoy, or Spock.  The songs were:


Spock sound clip


Artist is the name of a famous Vulcan diplomat who officiated at Spock’s wedding in “Amok TIme”


Hey, look who’s in this video!

And I was not aware that Leonard Nimoy was a family friend of Susanna Hoffs.

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I Don’t Want To Grow Up…

What can I say about Toys R Us closing that hasn’t already been said?

Like many folks, it’s a place where I grew up.

It’s the place where I grew up.

The Colma location was where my parents took us for birthday and Christmas gifts, and the occasional time for doing a good thing.

It’s where my friends and I would stop on road trips, in our 20s and 30s, and for me, through my 50s.

It’s where I think we got our first home computer, the ViC-20.

The big Space: 1999 Eagle One Transport, a Christmas gift.

Micronauts.

Most of the Star Wars toys that I ever owned, including the Millennium Falcon that my parents bought for me after telling me they would if I cleaned the house, which I did from top to bottom, to their shock, er, surprise that same day when they got home from work.

Great Mazinga, a birthday purchase after my godmother gave me money in my birthday card. I saw a $20 bill held by a paper clip attached to the card, and when I handed the clipped money to the cashier, she handed a second $20 bill back to me, along with the rest of my change. Talk about surprised, that was more money than I ever had, prior to getting and saving allowance from my parents.

The first Jeff Gordon die cast car that I owned, still sitting in my workstation at the office.

Midnight release of toys for the Star Wars prequels, I think I went to all three of those. They had them for the last three recent Star Wars films.

G.i. Joes and other action figures, from Megos to Marvel Legends.

Fisher-Price Little People.

Plastic model kits.

Estes Rockets, which my Dad was reluctant to let me get into, until he saw a launch at Candlestick Park when my brother was learning how to drive and park. Dad took me to Toys R Us to pick up the Estes Rockets X-15 starter kit, later that day.

I’m not 100% sure it’s where I got the Six Million Dollar Man, or the first Battlestar Galactica toys, or even various early Star Trek toys.

I do recall getting the 12″ Indiana Jones figure there in 1981, but never seeing the original 3.75″ Indy figures.

And the last thing I got from Toys R Us?

The Infinity Gauntlet.

With time I could go on and on about other items acquired from TRU over the years, but I won’t.

I’ll just say that I’ll be sad when the stores close. But the memories will stay with me.

I’m a Toys R Us kid. And I always will be.

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Space Tea

ThinkGeek is having a Pi Day sale, so I decided to get a couple of items, including a new tea infuser.

I’ll probably leave this one at work, since I also ordered some loose leaf tea online.

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Tactical Retreat

Man, social media is so mentally draining nowadays.

Or maybe it’s Daylight Savings Time.  Whatever.

Between the overly opinionated and the toxic fanbois, I just need to be away from that for a bit.

So of course I come here to my blog.

Which I suppose is my own Fortress of Solitude, so to speak.

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Guh

I’m not sure why this year’s Daylight Saving Time has left me feeling worse than in past ones.

It could simply be because getting older sucks.

Blah.

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Sleep

“Maybe if I put the iPad down I can get to sleep.”

Yeah, no, didn’t work.

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Flash!

I’m not sure if I’d continue to use my camera often enough to justify getting a flash for it, let alone that new Auto Intelligent bounce model that comes out soon.

Canon Speedlite 470EX-AI

$399.99.  Flashes aren’t cheap.  Neither are lenses, but I got more use out of the two extra lenses I have than I think I would from a flash, either this one or one with less bells and whistles.

And how often do I do portrait photography, anyways?

Ah well, maybe I should get back into taking candids/pictures in general, and then decide if I want to invest in new gear.  I hardly use my monopod, for example.

As I tell people, I take pictures.  I’m not a photographer.

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The 50s

March 8, 1968: premiere date of Star Trek episode ‘The Ultimate Computer’

A new computer system causes havoc while being tested aboard the Enterprise.

This episode is one of the few that greatly benefited from the HD remaster process from a few years back.

I love that they utilized a similar starbase design from the Star Trek: Vanguard novel series.

Original:

Remastered:

The camera rotated around the war games task force as the got into formation for the attack.

“Hit on the Excalibur.”

In FASA’s Star Trek The Role Playing Game, my ‘ego’ character (Commodore Christopher Saguisag) was aboard Excalibur (as a lieutenant or ensign) when the M-5 attacked and destroyed her.  Salvage parties found my character in auxiliary control, wearing an experimental ‘life support belt’ which saved his life.  Years later that character would serve aboard the rebuilt/refitted U.S.S. Excalibur (NCC-1788) as her commanding officer until the Battle of Wolf 359.

This one is certainly in my top 5 all-time favorite episodes list.

Say goodnight, Dr. Daystrom…

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Flashback: 1978

7 (ABC) STAR WARS – Drama
R2 is re-captured by the Jawas.  Luke and the gang plot to rescue him.

When I was 11 years old, I imagined that instead of another Star Wars movie, we would get a Star Wars television series.  This was around the time that we had had both a Logan’s Run TV series, and a Planet of the Apes TV series, so it made perfect sense, to me.  I even came up with possible TV Guide listings, like the one above.

I was more than excited when we got a second movie, a couple of years later.

More time passed, and we got more movies, and finally some animated TV series.

But I had always hoped that a live-action series would happen one day.

And now it looks like it’s happening.

I know a lot of folks, including some friends, and of course the toxic fanbois, are decrying this, claiming that Disney is milking the franchise.

Fair enough.

But when George Lucas stated that he was leaving Lucasfilm in the best hands when he sold his company to Disney, what the hell did you think was going to happen?  More periods of no movies?  More books and comics that not everyone reads?

Movies and television are the most accessible form of entertainment.  Lucas himself was too busy running the rest of his company to focus on Star Wars or even Indiana Jones, for that matter.  So why not hand the reins over to a company that could commit the time and resources to create new Star Wars?

And for those who claim that Star Wars isn’t special anymore because of this ‘over exposure’: it was never special to you in the first place.  Not in the way you think it should be.

All those years of nothing but the Expanded Universe, which was consumed by the most diehard fans, but not to the average MOVIEGOER, made for great discussion at conventions or the comic shop or online, but not over casual parties or dinner gatherings.  And if you did find folks talking about Star Wars outside of ‘typical’ venues, they were sometimes in hushed tones, and possibly mocked by others present.

Disney has made Star Wars accessible to everyone.  The jocks who would tease me back in the day are now sporting First Order t-shirts.  The girls who would point and giggle at me and my friends when we were younger are sporting BB-8 purses and Rebel infinity scarves.

This is progress.  Progress that I never thought I would see.

This is my own ‘It Gets Better’ moment.

So when the announcement came this morning that Jon Freaking Favreau was signed on to produce and write a live-action Star Wars TV series, I cried.

Cried because another dream from childhood was coming alive.  And this one is a doozy.

I can’t make anyone change how they feel about anything, particularly Star Wars in this case, but I can sure as hell bask in the joy of this.

STAR WARS TV IS HAPPENING

I had to double check to see if I typed that right.  Damn these tears in my eyes.