I feel bad that I didn’t continue doing this throughout the year, either for my friends who turned 50, nor the Star Trek episodes that premiered 50 years ago, or movies that first screened in 1967.
That said, Happy Birthday to all of my friends who have turned, or are turning, 50 this year. May you all live longer and continue to prosper.
—
October 6, 1967, premiere date of Star trek episode ‘Mirror, Mirror’.
A transporter mishap slips Captain Kirk and his companions into a parallel universe, where the Enterprise serves a barbaric Empire instead of the Federation. This episode spun off several plotlines in Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.
Spock with a beard is an image that always intrigued me. It’s why I tried to maintain a similar style of facial hair back in my 30s.
[placeholder for picture of me with goatee]
Years later I would meet Barbara Luna (Marlena Moreau) at WonderCon in San Francisco.
[placeholder for picture of me and Barbara Luna]
The one thing that always puzzled me was the idea that the Terran Empire’s ships orbited planets clockwise, instead of counter-clockwise.
Never really looked for an explanation. It just seems silly.
Glenn picked me up for the Giants game at the usual time.
The clouds in the distance looked dark and were cause for concern.
It appeared that there might be some light showers at game time.
There were, along with thunder and lightning, which caused the start of game to be delayed until 7:55pm.
During that time, we found shelter and ate our Cha-Cha Bowls.
The rain subsided and we returned to our seats for the starting lineups and the National Anthem.
The rain started up again during the anthem.
Chris Stratton retired the first Dodger batter, Curtis Granderson.
And then the downpour started again and Glenn and I hightailed it out of there. It wasn’t enough to get soaked, and the temperature was warm enough that it didn’t feel as uncomfortable as it should have.
We stopped by the Dugout Store to do some browsing, but didn’t pick up anything.
Glenn dropped me off at home, where I got to watch the second half of the Chargers-Broncos game, which was more stressful at the end than it needed to be, with the Broncos blocking the game-tying field goal to seal the win.
After the game I switched channels back to the Giants game, where they said that the game would resume at 10:50pm.
Ack.
So I went to bed listening to a live Giants game instead of the midnight replay.
I woke up around 2:30am and heard the end of the game, Giants 8 Dodgers 6.
As I sat there at AT&T Park tonight, during a game where the Giants were playing spoiler instead of contending for a playoff spot, I came to realize that THESE are the games that I enjoy watching and going to.
Prior to 2010, I grew up watching a lot of bad baseball in San Francisco, so I’m used to this. It’s what’s comfortable to me as a Giants fan.
The three championships?
Anomalies.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that they’ve won 3 in 5 years, but for a majority of my lifetime, this never happened, nor did we believe that it would ever happen, prior to 2010. The prospect of rooting for the Giants as a defending world champion was (and still is) a very alien concept to me. It made me less relaxed at games, or watching at home.
But now that they’ve been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, the mindset changes, and while a majority of fans are disappointed, I find myself more relaxed and can enjoy the games.
Now, if we can do something about the idiots trying to start the Wave during the game…
My cousin Rich was kind enough to invite me to the pre season home opener between the Broncos and the 49ers.
Coin toss
As much as I’m content to watch sports at home, nothing beats being among the crowd during a live event.
We stopped by Chik-fil-a before the game. I’d never had it before, so I ordered grilled chicken nuggets.
At the stadium, the weren’t going to let us in because if their “no outside food” policy, so we had to scarf down our meals rather quickly. Once we finished, we made our way to our seats, just in time for kickoff.
We stayed in our seats through the first quarter, then went around the stadium. Rich was looking for a friend who might have been able to let us sit in the lower bowl for a bit, but he was not working the game.
While walking around and checking out the new banners and stuff, we noticed that there were banners for 4 of the five 49ers Super Bowl wins. The missing one? Super Bowl XXIV. I wanted to take a picture under it while wearing my Elway Broncos jersey.
Eventually we met up with the recently retired GY, working his first game at the stadium. After chatting for a bit, it was halftime, so we decided to go home.
Thanks again to my cousin Rich for the opportunity to see the stadium, and my boys from Denver, again.
This is a quick rundown of our first session with this new system.
There are 5 of us plus a GM. We all created characters, and not one of us created a human/humanoid player character.
GM: Nels
Bruce: droid
Dave: droid
Ray: lizard
Glenn: turtle
Me: koala
We got through a ‘training’ session with our characters’ new employer, who hired us to do a thing.
We got a ship, which was a piece of crap, so we flew to where Bruce’s character’s ship was located, and that’s about where we stopped. I think.
We may have ended on the planet where we have to do the thing.
So far, it’s much more straight forward than our experience with Mutants and Masterminds, which makes sense since Hyperlanes in basically Space D&D 5E.
Oh, and Grok (my koala character) is armed with a pistol and an axe. The choppy kind, not a guitar.
I like going to this convention because it reminds me of the one we used to go to when I was in high school. It feels more intimate than a San Diego Comic-Con or even WonderCon.
I stopped by the recently opened Dunkin’ Donuts beforehand and grabbed a donut and coffee. They have really good coffee.
About 10 minutes before 10 I walked over to the line, of which there were two, so I walked to the front of the line to ask if this line was for presale ticket holders or for ticket purchase. It was the presale line.
Amusingly enough, the purchase line went quicker than the presale line, because they had 4 people at registers for ticket purchases, while the presale line had ONE person checking tickets and crossing names off a list. Not a big problem, except for the mouth breathers behind me griping about the other line moving quicker.
All told, I was in line for about 5 minutes.
As I waited in line, I peered over the registers and saw Dirk Benedict at his autograph table.
Love the character name…
In 1978, he was THE MAN, at least to me. Battlestar Galactica was on TV, I would watch every episode, in the days prior to VCRs, and I liked Lt. Starbuck more than Captain Apollo.
So did my sister, Jen.
Flash forward to 1999, when I first met Richard Hatch at some convention in San Francisco. I later saw Hatch at a couple-few WonderCons, and San Diego Comic Cons, either on a panel or at a table signing stuff.
Flash forward again to today, and I finally got to meet THE MAN.
I stood in line and listened as Dirk Benedict was talking very casually with the guy in the picture. Dirk’s a very chatty guy. The next guy, in front of me, also got to talk to Dirk for a minute or two, and the guy asked me if I could take a picture of the two of them with his iPhone, which I did.
Then came my turn. I said hello and shook his hand, and then Dirk said that he liked my glasses, because they were like his, and he quickly whipped them out and posed for me with them on.
I then mentioned my meeting Richard Hatch back in 1999, and he remarked that Richard did many more shows than he ever did. He only does maybe 3 or so a year. He then said that he missed Hatch, saying that he was a great guy, and he was sad that they wouldn’t be doing panels together anymore.
He signed the picture shown above, and then I asked his assistant if she would take our picture, and she did.
This is actually the second photo taken, because Dirk wasn’t happy with the first one, which actually looked much like this one.
I said thanks, as did he, and I moved on to the dealers room.
Marty McFly cosplayer
I really didn’t see much in terms of cosplayers.
Cops and MandaloriansFamily of cosplayers!Robin caught a bad guy!
Seriously, this was it, though I did see a guy dressed as the Green Power Ranger as I got ready to leave. I didn’t get his picture.
I wasn’t really looking to pick up anything, but I couldn’t pass this up:
King Tut, my all time favorite Batman ’66 villain!
I made it around the dealers room in less than 20 minutes. I saw a few cool things, like this:
This vendor was asking me and a couple other vendors where he should get Dirk Benedict to sign his Colonial Warrior helmetHe was also selling a very nice display piece of the Galactica herself
I was out of there by 11:00 am, about the same amount of time I spent last year. I had another event to attend, Games Day with friends.
