Walter Koenig from Star Trek

Very interesting Q&A with Walter Koenig, "Chekov" from Star Trek.

I asked him about the Russian accent --- whether he had to work on it or if he just turned it on.

He said he went out and got a book, and his father was Russian, so he did have to work on it a little.

He said he's always regretted though that he doesn't feel he nailed the "melody", the tonation and singing nature of Russians speaking English.

Not as much of a surprise, he said he enjoyed working with George, Nichelle, James, Leonard.... not much love for William Shatner.

I did think it interesting, when asked about how they all get along since Leonard Nimoy passed. He said it depends... Then he said "I hope to never speak to George [Takei] again."

Wonder what the backstory is there.

Some additional thoughts from Billy Dee Williams Q&A

He doesn't think about ethnicity in characters. He wants characters that are unique from Billy Dee Williams and leaves race discussions to other people.

He says if he could have been in any film it would have been A Streetcar Named Desire.

Lando!!!

His grandkids calls him "Grandpa Calrissian"

He was legitimately injured by a squib in the pit of Sarlacc scene. Busted up his toe. He said Harrison Ford kept going with it.

He was always impressed by the sets on batman and the craftsmanship. Thinks the people behind the scenes should get more credit.

Influenced by Rudolph Valentino and Marlon Brando.

"Did you keep anything from the set?" "No. I should have kept the cape." Says the cape was a big part of the character.

My solemn vow

I hereby pledge not to give Megatron's age out in weird amounts that require extensive mathing.

"Oh she's 21 months!"

"Crap ok... 12 months in a year so that's 9 left over, but we're only seven months into the year so that means really it was November three years ago? Or December? Does this month count as a month?"

I'll stick to reasonable fractions of years or just say when she was born and leave it at that

Did you mean to say Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz?

Random thought... If you type in German does iPhone still helpfully suggest other similar words you may be about to use?

Three suggestions and each one is something like schwarzswinehundfluffenveldt? It seems that'd take most of der screen ja?

The answer to the one and only question

No, not 42.

This is all I ever get to say to anyone anymore.

I'm sleeping okay. When things "go right", we give Megatron a bottle and put her down by about 10 pm. She can sleep till 3 am or even 4 am, TheMrs feeds her (I'm helping out as needed). This feeding & changing is generally 45 mins - 1 hr. Then when I get up for work around 6:40 am hopefully she's still asleep.

Now... You have to think of something else to ask when you see me 😏

An open letter to Koala Baby Changing Tables

To the company responsible for Koala brand Baby Changing Tables,

Your product appears to be defective.

I placed Megatron on it, left her there for a minute, picked her up... still the same baby.

Megatron week one

It's now been one week since "Megatron" joined us. I want to get some thoughts out for posterity, and hopefully some things more interesting than just "She's cute, we're tired."

- We're SO appreciative of the time, insights, and support provided by my sistah, the doctah. She made a beeline over here when the contractions started heavy and stayed right by our side... basically sleeping in a chair for a night, meeting us at the hospital, talking with all the doctors and nurses and answering every possible question.

She even saved us from an underinformed pharamacist, whose misinformation would have made TheMrs's recovery much more challenging. She was also there when we had to make a tough decision on just how the kiddo would join us, and through all the best and the worst of the first stages. :) Our moms have been great as well... the only way TheMrs has been able to get some extra catnaps whilst the kiddo is well taken care of.

- We didn't expect her to be over 10 pounds. Or to be 22 inches long. Or to be born with a full head of hair! I'm clinging to the notion that a bigger baby has a headstart on the stages of growth. We'll see if that holds up.

- SwaddleMe was a great idea. I'm really glad someone came up with it, and it's come in handy.

- We took a few classes on things like diapering, nursing, how to be a good dad, etc. We've also solicited advice from family, and read a few books. Has it made everything super-smooth and made it easy-peasy? Of course not. But hopefully it has served us a couple of ways... not making some of the dumber mistakes, understanding why things happen, developing a sense of what's "normal" for newborns that hopefully lessens after a little time, and other things in that category. Hopefully it's at least braced us a bit.

- TheMrs is doing really well so far, handling the new reality like a pro and taking good care of "Megatron". I'm trying to help out where I can along the way... little chores here and there, holding the kiddo long enough for breaks/getting things done, etc. It will be especially challenging once I head back to regular work, but for now it's been doable.

Onward and upward!

Better living through Night Court Season 15

I'm sure I learned pretty much everything I need to know about the childbirth process from the most informative source ever... 80s and early 90s sitcoms.

Let's see...

* At some point she has to shout "YOU DID THIS TO ME!!!" That's usually right before the last push.

* I have to wear a (tear away) long-sleeved dress shirt so she can rip one sleeve off.

* For some reason I will be sent to go boil water.

* one of the nurses must be heavy-set, black, and not about to take no sass, sugar.

* we have to take as many taxicabs as possible the mile or so from here to the hospital because that's where the baby is usually born. That or in a broken elevator, with a nervous man in a dark business suit.

That pretty much covers it, right?

Kiddo Klass

Class covers important issues including:

* how to sit in the waiting room smoking cigars whilst all the nasty business is being taken care of

* do you tip the doctor?

* how old does a baby have to be to bring you your slippers?

No more crack before bed

I dreamed that I was having a conversation with a couple of random people walking down the street about how the new Colorado Rockies (MLB) owner is pretty out there... That he's the only one where none of his players are in the union because he doesn't believe in it, so when the looming baseball strike comes they may still be playing.

Also, about how he's been a very vocal voice for legalization of marijuana and wants to allow it throughout his stadium at home games.

I said that like it or not, MLB said they wanted a different and challenging kinda new owner for that team, and here it is.

Mind you, I don't think any of the above is the least bit true, and I have absolutely no idea who the owner or owners of the Colorado Rockies are. Or why I'd be thinking of them in the first place.

Hey, would you remind repeating the last 5 minutes of your conversation for me?

Don't be this guy.

You're at an event and you walk up to a small group chatting, and clearly catch the END of a story.

"He'll never go back to THAT store again, lemme tell ya!!!"


Do NOT say "Hey! Who won't go back to that store? Wait, what store? Why won't he go back? Tell me!"


Let the moment go. Hell, you've actually lucked out, the story's probably over, you can even if you really want to try to join in moving forward.

Everyone who needs to understand the details of the anecdote clearly got it. "Hello. Can you summarize the key points of everything you just said to all these people for me?" is at best awkward and in practice kinda rude.

Add in that even casual storytelling has thematic elements --- a sense of timing, buildup, humor, etc... asking to have it Cliff Noted for you will never read you into the experience.

You missed the train. Get the next train.

"I like sugar syrup isn't as catchy"

If you're drinking a vanilla half-caffeine mocha caramel frappuccino with extra foam and whipped cream, don't say you "need your coffee lolz!!!!"

You clearly don't like anything resembling coffee.

Think they'll have that on the mug in the gift shop?

You really should choose for your child a name that's something original, and yet something with which you have a positive association.

That's why we're eagerly anticipating the coming arrival of MostofTheScenesInReturnOfTheJediThatDon'tHaveEwoks Washington Gerber.

A Clockwork Red?

Posted by Anna Kournikova to Facebook today

Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.


I'm not sure how to say Clockwork Orange in Russian. But then the book is barely in English to begin with.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

Looking at buzzfeed lists of stuff 90s kids look back fondly on -- some of which actually came AFTER my youth (or perhaps my parents just didn't feel a compelling urge to have purple ketchup in the house)... I wonder if we're rapidly approaching some sort of weird folded over on itself again state of "metanostalgia".

In five years will we be saying "hey, remember how there used to be all those remember this list articles?"

What happens when we cast our thoughts back fondly on some collection of nostalgia that was retro style in the first place? "Hey, I found this old 'Which Happy Days character are you' Quiz!"

I think that's probably the day SkyNet becomes self-aware.

Hunger games part 3 part 1 review

Okay, a couple of big caveats...

1) I haven't read any of the Hunger Games books. I'm not even familiar with them. So I won't have any "this was left out" or "they should have included this part from the book..."

That's not necessarily a disadvantage. Films shouldn't depend upon a lot of outside knowledge by their audience. If you can't portray something that was in the book that's a fault of the movie, not the moviegoer. Ya know, provided it's not a Bible movie or Sherlock Holmes or something.

2) this'll never be a movie blog. To really dissect a film you probably oughta watch it multiple times. So outside of the occasional Star Wars rant or my House of Cards binge, you won't see much "Men on Film" here...

That's already more preamble than this movie got... and that's a shame. It's full of characters making reference to past events Katniss "missed", and it's never shown to us, occurring or in flashbacks. 

That wouldn't be so bad, except what we get instead is about 1/3 a film of Katniss sorrowfully surveying the leftover rubble and about 1/4 a film of her buckling under the pressure of everything that happened (offscreen).

There's always a bit of watering down the punch when a trilogy is stretched into a... ummm... quadrilogy (is that a thing?). Suffice it to say this is a 90 minute movie that feels like it had 40 pages of script that just said "Katniss looks sorrowful."

There's a weird bit where the Rebel Alliance blows up The Emperor's hydroelectric dam (I'm just gonna go ahead and use Star Wars terms here because reasons). And so the ENTIRE Capital city is 100% dark. Not one generator, hell, no one lit a candle or started a fire. The Rebels in their Hoth base seem to all have lanterns and such and even use them freely when the base's oxygen is cut to 14% (which itself seems dodgy), so apparently they're not in short supply.

There were occasionally episodes of 24 or Hpuse of Cards where at the end of think "Well, shit... Nothing really happened. But then I guess someone can't die EVERY week. Sometimes you gotta have one that is really just moving chess pieces into position." 

So I guess ultimately that's what this was. A movie Millard Fillmore. Not good, not bad, just sorta caretaker to get you along.

It's just frustrating. You don't start Jedi by having your characters chat about Luke getting his hand chopped off and Han getting frozen, then show 30 mins of Leia mope. Throw the audience a bone.

How about a Jar Jar Binks prisoner exchange?

So, Sony is quashing The Interview in response to terrorist threats from interests in North Korea.

If they really wanted to get some international heft, the North Korean government shoulda blocked Matrix Reloaded. I think we could have given a Nobel Peace Prize for intervening there.

So my letters that they honor Demolition Man remain unanswered

So apparently Time's Person of the Year is "The Ebola Caregivers" or some such collective.

Meh.

I never care for it when they get cute and do something other than have the Person of the Year be, ya know, a Person. They've done this with increasing frequency recently... the person of the year will be "Earth" or "You" or some such vaguery.

It seems to be an attempt to be clever, but I think once they broke the seal by not having it be an individual they've since gone to the well too many times (how's that for a tortured mix of metaphors?)

Though to be fair, a bit of Wikipediaing (is that a verb yet?) sees apparently their first time being cute was 1950 with "The American fighting-man". What would a 1950 equivalent of "Meh." have been?

Also on the final list, apparently, was "Ferguson Protestors". I'm just glad at least they didn't pick that. Not for any haughty political or racial reasons... just that awards like this seem to suffer sometimes from a bias of recency. Whatever is freshest in our minds is the "biggest" thing that happened in the year. Apparently last year they very nearly gave it to Miley Cyrus, who "coincidentally" had just had the fococta twerking thing on MTV. At least cooler heads prevailed there, with his Popeliness just beating out the first woman who ever shook her ass while dancing.

They should make the whole plane out of the turkey

Blah blah after the turkey something something a-NAP-polis!!!

Wokka wokka

Red state, blue state...

We survived the silly season of a lot of talk of red states and blue states...

And then there's this.

"Scoreboard"!

Don't Go Vote

Your social media channels are presumably clogged up like 836 in an afternoon rainstorm... though instead of 2004 Honda Civics that don't signal right or left you're lost among political comments that do nothing but signal right or left. Today, it's dominated by one message: "Go vote!"

My sentiment is a bit different. I say Go vote**!

** Unless you are the kind of low-watt bulb that votes based on something like "Which candidate you'd rather have a beer with", which one looks better, for/against "The Hispanic-sounding name", or some other such inanity. 

I'm not just saying "Go vote, unless you're an idiot" (well okay that's actually most of my point). There's a bit more nuance here though.

If you haven't voted until Election Day but always planned to go out today, and you read up a bit --- or ask a friend you know who's really into politics, or even just print out the endorsements from a likeminded organization, then please go vote.

If you have a friend on Facebook who says "Go vote", and your response is "Oh that's right, that's today isn't it?" then do us all a favor and stay the hell home. Vote for America's Next Top Voice Can Dance With The Stars and leave the republic to people who won't go in and Christmas Tree the Scantron.

Updating

"Uhhh yes I'd like to exchange this LeBron Heat jersey for a Dolphins jersey.

Which one? Oh... Is Jason Taylor still on the team? Wait no I heard he might go to the Jets or something."

First Church of Bacon: Confession

Bless me fryer friar, for I have sinned. It's been like 12 hours since I last had sausages.

So, there's this whole cottage nerdherd industry that's popped up around pointing out that eating bacon is a damned fine idea.

There are shirts proclaiming the love of bacon. BaconFreak.com is a store site entirely dedicated to all the products you can get, including a not-small page called "Bacon Beverages" (which apparently is distinct from the "Swine & Wine" section). Jim Gaffigan has a whole shtick in his standup routine about bacon in all its awesome glory.

Here's my penance. I love bacon. I also am a (sadly increasingly) big fan of ham. And sausage. And pepperoni. And pork chops. See, it turns out that pork can often be prepared into a variety of tasty dishes.

So, why are we treating bacon like it's something we just discovered and named for the first time ever?

Gimme a million dollars and I'll call her whatever you want

So have you picked a name?

Nunya.

Nunya? That's unusual. What is that, Russian?

Short for "Nunya Damn Business."

Ebola? More like SHEbola! Am I right? Huh?

Gonna launch a new app, specifically for people who want to get the latest stats, profiles and news on today's professional bowlers.

I'm calling it E-bowla.

I'm hoping it goes viral.

The ability to eat your meat AND have your pudding.

I've been hearing a lot of discussion about how Jameis Winston is killing his NFL career options because of college chicanery.

I dunno, it's worth pointing out that the two longest careers for Noles from the previous championship were Lavernaeus Coles (who got kicked off the team) and Sebastian Janikowski (who was supposedly nearly kicked out of the country).

I'm sure a lot of teams are really thrilled they passed on Dan Marino because he mighta partaken in the ol' devil weed in college. Randy Moss and Warren Sapp probably are just fine with how their careers turned out, thanks.

Man code confession....

I regularly forget which one is the Big Ten and which one is the Big 12.

I'm sure this is partially my brain rebelling against the fact that there are now fourteen teams in the Big Ten and ten teams in the Big 12.

At least I know which teams are generally grouped together... I just seem to have a block against which stupid moniker they're clinging to.

Also... Army uniform now comes with sneakers.

This blog has received EXCLUSIVE VIDEO of how, exactly, the Obama administration expects to honor its promise that it can confront ISIL in Iraq and Syria without introducing any boots on the ground.

Review of I, Alex Cross by James Patterson

I, Alex Cross by James Patterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

You can give this one a pass, and you won't be missing much.

There isn't much in this book that could be considered thought-provoking or even especially challenging.

When a man who's readily recognizable and highly connected in the White House is committing sex crimes, and then the author makes a point of saying it's not the VP and the president is a married woman, well... it weren't the butler.

I saw another reviewer here bring up an excellent point as well. Alex Cross doesn't actually UNCOVER much of anything in this book. The Brit (Nicholson?) hands him a video of the crime, and Generic Agent X hands him another video of the crime. A witness tells him who did it, and they go off to arrest the guy. Cross doesn't actually DO a great deal in this, at least in terms of investigative work. It all drops in his lap.

Once you get past a small handful of characters (Cross, his central casting grandmother, and to a lesser degree Bree), there's almost no description or fleshing out of characters. The various elected officials & staffers are all interchangeable and pretty one-dimensional, as are any other cops. I guess it's unfair to criticize a thin central character in the middle of what's a serial of books but it's also telling that at the end when Cross proposes to Bree... to that point I had no idea she wasn't his wife.

It's largely inoffensive, and I pushed through the CDs relatively quickly. I'd say it's relegated to beach reading, but it doesn't even have the benefit of a lot of dramatic tension or suspense that would make it light yet entertaining fare.

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