Still Standing

Yesterday concluded the toughest school year of my life. It's interesting being 30 and challenged academically, even if the challenge lies in my awful study habits.

As I've said ad nauseum here, I'm just relieved to finally have a few weeks in which to breathe, get my brain reorganized, and rejoin the fight in the middle of June.

It'd also be nice if it stopped fucking storming some time soon.

First, in order to understand, you must be brought low:



I don't really know what to say about that, so let us move on.

New Stuff
I picked up the new Star Trek 1-6 Blu-Ray set yesterday, to celebrate the conclusion of my finals. I am like a little kid when it comes to buying prettied-up Star Trek episodes and movies I already own, bouncing around joyously while Archer/Kirk/Picard/Sisko/Janeway yells 'FIRE!' as my wife shakes her head at the thousands of dollars I've spent over the last 15 years to make sure I own the 'definitive' version of each episode/movie.

I am a Star Trek junkie.

Both of the Blu-Ray sets that are out (Star Trek season 1 and Star Trek 1-6) are great in terms of visuals and sound, but a little perplexing when it comes to actual content. The season 1 set, like its DVD predecessor, is missing the Cage, the original pilot submitted to and rejected by NBC, which featured an entirely different cast, except for Spock. This ended up w/ season 3 on DVD, which made sense in terms of broadcast order, but was still annoying, since it clearly takes place before the events of season 1.

Additionally, the movie set doesn't feature any of the director's cuts from the DVD set, which means they'll be trotting out the final versions around the time of the sequel to this year's Star Trek.

Speaking of the movie...hmm...I'll talk about it more in depth next week, but here's the basic feelings I have now:

- I was really worried about how I was gonna react to the 'alternate universe' gimmick they used to give themselves carte blanche with the storytelling possibilities, and they handled it well

- this film has the best opening of any Star Trek film or episode up to this point

- the casting was brilliant

- the film was paced beautifully

- Nero is the lamest villain in Star Trek history; we know next to nothing about him, don't really care about whatever it is he's feeling, and never spend enough time with him to feel very strongly one way or the other about him

- I don't know how I feel about the film being absent of the core Star Trek values; I'm not saying I needed a preachy scene, but one of the things that defines Star Trek is a moment in which a character has the principles of the Federation challenged, and they make a choice, one way or the other; I enjoyed it, but it seemed to lack the intellect of all non-Voyager Star Trek stories; I could have sworn that Brannon Braga was a secret consultant

- as I said, I liked it, but I was left wondering if it was a Star Trek action film, or an action film dressed up as Star Trek

- you will perceive this as being 'nerdy,' but I assure you that I must do it in order to make sense of this strange universe: 'Star Trek' is the fourth best Star Trek film behind 'the Wrath of Khan,' 'the Undiscovered Country,' and 'First Contact.'

- this film is definitely geared more toward generic humans rather than Star Trek fans, though both will enjoy it

As I said, I'll write more about it later, after I've seen it again, and had some time to actually think about it and discuss it (I've been up to my eyeballs in fucking academics since I saw it.)


Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

The Future
I downloaded the new Fable II DLC, 'See the Future,' though I've not had a chance to even touch it yet, due to the aforementioned Finals, and a family emergency that came up last night. I should be giving it a shot tonight.

I've estimated that I've spent, roughly, the GDP of a small European country on Disgaea 3 DLC, and I've hardly touched any of it. It's a situation akin to addiction, wherein my brain says, 'that right there is something branded with "Disgaea," which means you must have it.' One day...one day...

I'm really looking forward to Terminator: Salvation and Drag Me to Hell, as well as True Blood on Blu-Ray.

Well, I was gonna embed trailers but embedding is disabled by Warner, so I guess they don't want fans to help them promote, so I won't link to the films, either.

The Past
I was driving to the hospital last night, to see my mother (don't wanna get into the details, but she's going to be fine), when I saw that one of my old restaurants had been closed.

It was the restaurant in which I'd been hired as a dishwasher at 18 years old, and then I was running when I was 26. I knew they were struggling, and I suspected, for a number of reasons, that they were gonna shut down, but to actually see that a place that had housed so many memories, spread out over so many years, shuttered and ripped up like that was a little disturbing. I was sad, to tell ya the truth.

It was a place where I had memories acting like a dumb, jack-ass kid, throwing knives around, making out with female coworkers, napping in the walk-in cooler, and all kindsa idiotic, fun stuff.

On the other end, I remember being the leader that cracked down on shit like that, and matter of fact, my history was one of the reasons they installed me there when I came back to the region, since I knew most of the crap that the kids would try to pull.

In many ways, that store helped define me in ways that are almost silly. I mean, come on, a crappy job teaching a boy what it means to be a man? Pfft!

Really, though, I did learn a tremendous amount from some great people while I was there, and was rewarded with some great leadership positions, and it's sad to see the place go.

Wrapping Up
So, I'll be back tomorrow, and I'm resuming my M-F blogging schedule, so you can count on regular spewings from me each afternoon. I'm still working out my summer schedule w/ my day-job employer, but it's looking like I'm gonna have a nice, chill schedule, and I'm gonna have time to work on some personal projects.

First up, I'll be doing some editing of some very old writing of mine and I'll be making my first Team Fortress 2 map as an excercise. From there...well, we'll see. I'd still really like to do a NWN/NWN2 mod.

So, anyone seen Star Trek? What'd you think? Have you tried the new Fable II DLC? Have you tried any of the Disgaea 3 DLC? What'd you think of either?

Lemme know!

-Blaine