WHY I HATE NEW MOVIES

Every now and again I make the horrible mistake of going to my local video store and, in a morbid fit of maybe-there’s-something-NEW-here-that’s-cool, rent a new release. Such evenings always wind up a complete disaster, but like a moth to the flame, the mood seizes me a couple of times a year. And like a fool, I obey it.

Last week I went to Casablanca Video and brought home Star Trek, this year’s blockbuster starring Chris Pine as James Kirk, and Zachary Quinto as Spock. An admission -  Star Trek is a part of the basic fabric of my life. I grew up watching the original series, and it’s canonical in my love of 20^th century American art. I am, however, one of those snobs who thinks that Next Generation is pitifully awful (in seven seasons, I think there are 20 episodes worth your time), and Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise are beneath contempt. Without question: the only TRUE Trek is Shatner and Nimoy, period. The rest is crap.

But my snobbery aside, the new Star Trek is a remarkably, almost impossibly, stupid fucking movie. For those of the chosen ones who haven’t sent it: in the year 2362, a star is going supernova, threatening to destroy the planet Romulus, home of the evil Romulans. The very-old Spock is dispatched to the scene in a small ship so he can inject “red matter” into the star, creating a black hole to swallow the super nova, thus saving Romulus. However, he’s too late; the star destroys Romulus before he gets there. Spock still manages to shoot the red matter into the super nova, creating a black hole that swallows Spock’s ship AND the Romulan ship Narada, despositing them (via a time warp, natch’) in the year 2233.

The enraged captain of the Narada, Nero, seeking revenge for the death of his beloved wife on Romulus, captures Spock and his ship, takes Spock’s supply of red matter, and injects the red matter into the planet Vulcan, creating another black hole that destroys Vulcan. Take that and like it, Spock. Prior to destroying Vulcan, Nero maroons Spock on a nearby moon so Spock can watch the festivities first-hand. The rest of the movie follows the young James T. Kirk and Spock trying to stop the evil Nero, with both future and present-Spock meeting face-to-face at movie’s end.

Some questions came to mind:

1) Once it was clear the star was going supernova, why didn’t an evacuation of Romulus begin? Why is it up to a mere one man to save the entire planet?

2) Doesn’t Star Fleet have teams of scientists to work on this? Why is a single geriatric Vulcan ambassador dispatched to save an entire planet?

3) When Spock arrives at the supernova, he has to take the time to leave his ship’s cockpit to go extract some red matter, and shoot it into the super nova. Are you kidding me? They couldn’t find one more loser to go on the mission with him so that one person could pilot the ship, and the other could deal with the red matter?

4) What’s up with Spock having to take the time to leave his ship’s cockpit, walk to the rear, extract some red matter from a giant vat of the stuff, and load it into the device which he then shoots into the super nova? Wouldn’t all of that be done ahead of time, so that once he was there, it was just a matter of aiming and firing the device?

5) Why would Spock be traveling with a shitload of red matter (allowing Nero to destroy Vulcan)? Would he really take enough red matter with him to create a thousand black holes – as he does in the movie – or doesn’t logic dictate that he just take enough for the situation at hand?

6) If you create a black hole to swallow up a star, doesn’t it then swallow up everything else nearby? Would not Romulus be spared the super nova, but destroyed anyway by the black hole?

7) Even if Romulus weren’t destroyed by the black hole, wouldn’t all life on the planet die anyway, having been deprived of the light and heat of its sun?

8) Creating a black hole where one didn't exist - and creating it that close to Romulus - would completely alter that part of space, probably destroying (or at least drastically destabilizing) the entire solar system to which Romulus belongs. Doesn't that violate at least one Starfleet law? Are these guys allowed to fuck with entire solar systems whenever they please?

9) After being marooned, Spock-the-Old stands outside, looks into the sky, and sees Vulcan being reduced to dust by the black hole. How could Spock see this? If Vulcan were so close that he could see it swallowed by a black hole (in daylight!), wouldn't the moon he's standing on also be destroyed by the black hole?

10) Reeling after the death of his mother and home planet, Spock-the-Young angrily demands that security get the headstrong, argumentative Kirk "off the ship." We cut to a shot of Kirk being jettisoned from the Enterprise in a small pod; he winds up on the same moon as Spock-the-Old. 'The hell..? Yeah, I get it - Spock is losing it, but would they really take the time to put an Acting First Mate in a pod and maroon him? Wouldn't this at least raise some eyebrows on the bridge? And anyway, wouldn't they want to hang on to all escape pods, considering the danger they're in? Isn't standard procedure to throw Kirk in the brig?

Sheer fucking idiocy, friends. I’m sick of this crap. Plot holes were easy enough to overlook in the original series because it was done on a shoestring budget, and had tons of charm. (And William Shatner is God.) Nowadays, J.J. Abrams has a $140 million budget, and years to come up with a workable script. I do not understand how fuckin’ garbage like this gets made, and I sure as shit do not understand why loser-ass fanboys flock to it in droves, shelling out cash to the tune of a $385 million gross, and guarantees of three more sequels. And you wonder why I love Ed Wood movies?

Neda

I don’t mind saying in this day of shit-awful Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger movies, NRA buffoons and Death Scenes videos that I am not at all desensitized to violence and horror.  Been feeling fucked up all day after watching the footage of Neda Agha-Soltan dying in Tehran.  One of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen.  The girl falls to the ground, her face still alive for just a moment, a look of numb shock, and then her eyes roll back, and blood streams out of her mouth.  Then her nose.  People start screaming and crying.  There’s blood pouring out everywhere as a guy starts CPR, and you realize, when her eyes rolled back, that was actually it - that was the moment she died.  Violence, this awful violence, and then death. Eyes back, blood all over her face, people screaming and crying. You're watching this young woman's last seconds as a living being.

I try and leave everyone alone to do their own thing, and do my own thing, but so often it seems like we’re not happy unless we’re inflicting misery and suffering upon our own.  It’s this feeding off the pain of our own that leaves me wondering why it’s worth it.  Any of it.  I don’t get any kicks from watching a lion attack, kill, and eat a zebra in a National Geographic special, but I understand it.  The lion isn’t a sadist.  He’s not out to inflict horror on zebras because he’s a heartless, cruel sociopath.  It’s what he needs to do to survive.  It’s the order of the food chain.  My fourth-grade teacher explained that one to me, and I understood it.  The lion didn’t eat another lion.  He ate a zebra.  The bald eagle didn’t attack another bald eagle; it went fishing.

Today I watched the footage of Neda, and when it was over, I sat back in my chair, and thought, Jesus, is this the best we could do today?  There have been days when the best, the very best I had to offer was drinking four beers, jacking off, and laying in bed pondering the career arc of John Agar. Days like those were certainly nothing to be proud of, but what the fuck?  They were benign enough.  Nobody got hurt.  The next morning everything reset.  You could aim a little higher at 8am the next day. 

When the best we can do is seek power, seek wealth, allow our base instincts to guide our actions, and take pleasure in fucking with people, causing them pain, anguish, misery…

It’s amazing anyone can carry on.  It’s amazing every last one of us isn’t on prozac, seeing a shrink, hanging themselves in a closet.  In fact, I start understanding those who believe that they’re being abducted by the greys; those who believe a shadow government controls and crafts everything that happens on earth, even the seemingly random events; those who believe that the world will end in 2012; those who believe an invisible man lives in the sky, keeping tabs on everything they do, casting them off into the fires of eternal damnation if they break his rules.  It’s running and hiding, no doubt, but it begins to have a certain logic to it.  How to take it head on when we we’re so cruel to each other?  There’s no real answer. This is How It Is.

 

Green trees call to me

I am free – but life is so cheap…

We Just Get By However We Can

Not sure what to think anymore. That descending arpeggio on Lily Allen’s “The Fear” sounds beautiful. "Everyone's At It" mesmerizes me. Does that mean I’m a fuck up? Have you ever had one of those nights – or weeks, or months – where it just doesn’t make sense? The whole thing? Where you realize that you didn’t seize the opportunities, didn’t throw caution to the wind, and played it safe? It’s one thing to look back at a single year of wasted time, but two decades… I find myself retreating, hiding in fucked-up fantasies. The things I am doing, that are supposedly great, things of substance, are just specious interactions with truth. I know that’s what’s happening, yet attempting to move the auto-pilot switch into the off position is… what, scary? Why all the fear? Can’t figure any of it out. Feel worthless, pathetic. 

Vaughn, NM

I've found that the smaller towns have as much to offer architecturally as the larger cities. I was in eastern/central NM this last week on business. The following three pix are from Taiban, and Vaughn. This downtown area of Vaughn isn't even visible from the street. In ten years it'll probably be a mound of rubble, and no one cares to save it. No one has the money to save it. We are a sad lot.

Rachel Dunlap

“There’ll come a time, everyone you know will say goodbye…”

-Minipop

A friend of mine once said that life is a series of paths that converge and diverge.  I was talking about people I had known that I wasn’t in contact with anymore. A few didn’t matter; a few more I missed. I didn’t even know where they were. I could track them down, but then what? It had been 15 years. You want everything to be like it was – you want to pick up where you left off. You remember them the way they were back then: young, totally crazy.  But a lot changes in 15 years.  Maybe everything.

 

Rachel, I don’t know what I would’ve said to you if I had been able to see you again.  I don’t know that we would’ve had anything to talk about.  But for what it’s worth, I found myself thinking about you every now and again these last 20 years, and every time I did, it was with much fondness, and the curiosity: I wonder what she’s doing now?  These paths of ours diverged early on – Jesus, our ages then were less than the time that’s gone by since – but the moment they crossed always meant something to me.