That's what I said

I do not see a difference here.

The New Star Trek Movie

Spoiler alert: I saw the new Star Trek movie.

I was at work when I refreshed Twitter. Right near the top of my feed I could see that @vita_mn had said

Vita.mn invites you to BOLDLY GO... tonight at its premiere party for STAR TREK. 2 pairs of tixx available now. Email christian@vita.mn!

And ten seconds later I was in gmail. I wrote

I want them! How do I get them?

and was subsequently informed that I had already done all that was necessary.

And that was it. I had tickets to an advanced screening of a movie I've been anticipating for approximately three years. But not just an advanced screening--eight days before it comes to theaters. Seven days before regular people who win tickets get to see the "advanced" screening. In fact, according to Vita.mn, I am a taste maker. And my taste says this movie was fuckin' boss.

Better than Iron Man. And, yes, Better than the Dark Knight. (Note: I will not compare individual performances. Heath Ledger's Joker was a villain for the ages and was--somehow--way above the rest of that film.)

I will not bore you with spoilers. Suffice it to say the film stays close enough to the spirit of Star Trek to satiate this canon-aware fan. No, that's not right. I'm not just canon aware, but canon expectant. Ok, fine, here's a minor spoiler: this movie breaks canon. But if you really care you probably already knew that, right? I won't bother reviewing something you haven't seen past saying it was even more badass and fun to watch than the ads make it look. I dare say it nearly surpasses both Star Trek VI and Star Trek: First Contact. Nearly. If you wanted to determine which was the best of the three, you'd probably have to toss all of them in the air and see which one landed closest to the center of a target that denotes quality. That is how good this movie was.

I'm going to hold off on full-on analysis of the movie until I see it again next week (and when everyone else has seen it). However, I would like to note the demographic makeup of the crowd who saw this movie with me. This screening was made up of people who were in the know (plus me, Emily, and the other two people who were fast enough to get tickets from Twitter) about this movie, according to Christian. The rest, apparently, was made up of people who know Christian and their plus-ones. This made for an interesting mix of people, broken out approximately as such:

55% obvious nerds

40% obvious hipsters (Seriously. Skinny jeans? Still?)

5% indistinguishable/me and Emily

All in all I am really happy to have won tickets to see this movie. I am a little rueful that I was unable to share the devirginization of this rebirth with my best friend and collaborator Donavon. However, I believe it was worth potential perceptions of betrayal to see one of the best, most exciting films I've seen in years.

People Watching Backstory

I was sitting in Urban Bean this afternoon doing some work. I was unable to listen to music, because, like always, I had forgotten my one pair of headphones at work. This always makes for some great people watching.

Normally, the people watching gets up to a moderate level of interesting: I've seen cartoonists, graphic designers, study partners, couples fighting, and any number of lone laptop hunchers. I can generally figure out what's going on, more or less, and it generally seems pretty benign.

Today, however, I saw two people I couldn't quite figure out.

A man, maybe in his early or mid twenties, was sitting next to a woman somewhere between twice and three times his age. He was a husky build: not fat, exactly, but not lean. Even in his chair he seemed tall. His hair was cut short but was obviously thick. He was loud.

She was almost his exact opposite: She was meek in stature. She had fine, white hair in a pony tail. When she leaned over to speak to him I could not hear her--her mouth barely even opened.

They both pecked and squinted at laptops; the man's looked about 5 years old, the woman's looked about 10 years old. He shouted into a phone, giving an awkwardly large ramble of information to the person on the other side before asking if they had any studio or one bedroom apartments available. He was asking for openings immediately, or, failing that, the first of May. "I just moved to town and I need something as soon as possible." He made many of these calls, each time asking for the same standard information from people who want to sell it to him; yet, he remained uneasy and spoke quickly, tripping over his words at times.

They seemed to have only two qualifications: they need it cheap and they need it now.

Why don't they have a place to live? And where did them come from?

They don't have a place to live because they picked up and left where they were without a plan. The were in a hurry. Their only change of clothes was probably bought at Wal-Mart at 3am.

They are obviously lovers on the run. They came from Elsewhere--the town where her Old Man started asking too many questions. The man was almost insistent on giving his nonsuspiciously generic name before anything else: a little too eager to cement his new alias, perhaps.

Did they kill her Old Man? Or was he so scorned that he is after them with an ax? Whatever the reason, they fled to Minneapolis, a city small enough to be a less than obvious refuge, big enough to melt into the background.

And then he said "I'm going to MCTC this summer and my mom is going to cosign my lease."

A likely story.

Music for Warm Weather

I really enjoy the differences between seasons. And I don't just mean the temperatures, I mean things like the clothing, the food, the activities, and I really really enjoy the different music.

I don't mean Christmas music versus not Christmas music. I mean music you only listen to in the fall. Or music that really puts you in a summer mood.

I am getting really excited for my summer music.

On Art's Summer Playlist:

Upbeat songs by Beck
311's blue album and Grassroots
Dookie by Greenday
The good songs from the A Mighty Wind soundtrack (mostly anything by the Folksmen or the New Main Street Singers)
Lots and lots of The Offspring
My dozen or so favorite Cake songs
Who's Johnny by El DeBarge
Boys in the Hood by Dynamite Hack
Old Shit/New Shit by Eels
Sugar by System of a Down
Summer Time by Mungo Jerry
The Devil's Song by Marcy Playground
Bullet by Bob Schneider


And so on. These are my summer tunes, just itching to get out and play.

But for now, I am ringing in spring, as I do every year, with a little Tom Lehrer:

Star Tribune: Should Gomez Be Sent to the Minors?

Star Tribune reader Howard asks: Should Carlos Gomez be sent down to the minors for a while? That would give him time to get his head straight, which, according to Howard, is needed:

Gomez has one single in his last 19 at-bats and a .103 batting average. He looks lost and dispirited and there’s no way (other than the “give him time, he’ll snap out of it” speech) that playing Gomez regularly came be justified right now.

You know what? No. Because if we take Gomez off the roster and send him to the minors, what am I going to do with this?

The Kind of Spontaneous Publicity That Makes People

I am forever enshrined in Google's Street View feature:





Things are going to start happening to me now!

Ode and Plea to Cat

Dear Cat,

Cat, I love you. I truly adore you. How could I not? You writhe and jump about in bids for affection without equal. You gently prod with face and limb--not for food, but for affection. How could you not be loved? You bathe me, and at times I let you, because I know it comes from the love center of your brain the size of a walnut.

For years, I counted among your most adorable and lovable habits your interest in cellophane. If it was crinkly and clear, it was in your paws. It was killed as if it were a mouse. You would parade around your meager living space, head held high, mewing your triumph through your clinched, plastic-clutching jaw.

But, recently, you have taken on a new, not so adorable, not so lovable habit. Your infatuation with plastic has, shall we say, matured. Like a girl with boys, you have graduated from wanting to experience your object of desire purely with mouth and hands to wanting it inside you. And as your father (of sorts), I entirely disapprove.

This is not because I do not want you to be happy. I was brought no small amount of joy when it was simply a proud strutting and shouting, plastic in mouth. But your new level of interest has become a problem.

For you see, Cat, when you eat plastic, you do not digest it. You swallow large sections of wrapper and they are rejected by your digestive system. They are not, then, deposited in the designated plastic pan, but on my floor, among other stomach contents, which, as a mere animal layman, I am only able to identify as "nasty stuff."

Dear Cat, I implore you: stop ingesting prophylactic wrappers. Stop eating the wrappers of DVDs and other things in wrappers. If I could take you to an obedience school to teach you that the trash can is not a place to fish for toys, I would. Alas, your brain is large enough to lovingly bathe me, but it's not large enough for much else. So, dear Cat, I will write you a letter on the Internet, in the (futile) hope that you will stop eating the plastic from my garbage and throwing it up on my floor.

A Terrible Time

Dear 5:40,

Why must you taunt me?

If you were 5:20, I could take a nap. If you were 6:00 I could be on my way to a fun, social evening filled with Chinese food, bar trivia, and beer. But no, you must place me frustratingly in the middle: nap-desirous, but time deficient.

And that's how blogs are born.

Sincerely,

Sleepy on the Internet