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Is Star Trek Tiki???? |
Cammo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 18, 2006
Posts: 1827
From: San Diego
|  Posted: 2009-05-13 12:05 pm Permalink
I mulled over the phone conversations while driving to the movie. There really seemed to be a universal hatred, at least a revulsion, of anything “Trekkie”. This wasn’t just a San Diego thing, a friend in Canada had been talking about it too. Trekkies had so muddied their own bathwater that it almost seemed planned, like a dog systematically pissing on fire hydrants to mark his territory.
Star Trek, to me, felt …. well ….pissed on.
Was that the point? Was it some sort of bizarre ownership thing, to make a club so repulsive that only diehard fans and ones who believed in the same hardcore principals could join? And then speak for and own the criticism of a creative property? To be so obnoxious that they clear the room of any reasonable competition?
Or were they just a bunch of dicks?
The documentary film “Trekkies” had been made in 1997. It introduced the whole world to the fan cult, and I think it was initially made as a fun comedy film about adults dressing up year-round in Halloween costumes. As the filming went on and more Trekkies were contacted and gave interviews, it fast turned into a black comedy. Some of these Trekkies were geniuses, some were professional people who used Star Trek to promote and enjoy their businesses. But some were very odd indeed; stalkers, slightly disturbed, and passionately involved in the underlying philosophy of Star Trek’s pacifist basis.
Which is ridiculous, of course.
Because the whole point of Roddenberry’s pilot film “The Cage” was to dramatize the idea that it is far better to have a hard but realistic view of your life than to enjoy a self-serving illusion. It’s simply better to enjoy being yourself than to pretend you’re something else.
So it was with dragging feet and a sinking heart that I actually made it to the 1:00 afternoon showing. At this point I had major doubts about the film and my ability to enjoy it at all. San Diego has two IMAX theaters that run commercial films. This was the best, the centerpiece of the whole multiplex, a new theater with even newer speakers that had been refurbished just days before, and it cost 16 clams 50 to get in.
So here was the first thing I saw:
Yes, an entire TABLE OF TREKKIES! They were sitting around selling Star Trek toys! At least that’s what it looked like; when I got closer I realized that they were just showing off their toys, which weren’t all that great to begin with. They look creepily-played-with, actually. I don’t think they realized how bizarre it was to be showing off your slightly beat up, yellowed-box set of Shatner and Nimoy dolls in front of a giant sign with different people playing the same characters.
Look at the picture - I wish I could make this stuff up.
Which makes you wonder – what will happen to the classic Trek collectible market when Billy Shatner isn’t seen as being Kirk anymore? Like, in other words, last weekend????
But the saddest guy at the table, the absolute lamest thing I've ever seen, (I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of it) was the guy at the end who was showing off his collection of STAR WARS toys! That's right, somehow he had snuck in and had one of those Darth Vader toy boxes that hinge open to hold leetle teeny Darth Vaders inside...
...he was SO proud of it.
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GROG
Grand Member (first year) 
Joined: Jun 21, 2006
Posts: 6265
From: Tujunga
| Posted: 2009-05-13 12:18 pm Permalink
Not a single Trekkie in sight when GROG went to the packed Imax move, or at least none that were in costume. The crowd applauded at the end of the movie and alot them stayed all the way through the credits.
_________________
GROG miss Tiki-Kate
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Cammo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 18, 2006
Posts: 1827
From: San Diego
| Posted: 2009-05-13 1:53 pm Permalink
"Not a single Trekkie in sight..."
Maybe GROG not know what Trekkie look like.
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dogbytes
Grand Member (8 years) 
Joined: Mar 24, 2002
Posts: 2240
From: seattle, wa
| Posted: 2009-05-13 1:56 pm Permalink
bought our tix online for the cinerama ~ i'm bringin my camera incase there's trekkies.
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lucas vigor
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 12, 2004
Posts: 3453
From: "I've chopped my way through real jungle
| Posted: 2009-05-13 3:28 pm Permalink
How about vintage star trek actress? Grog know what dat look like?
http://enterprisewax.com/images/star_thumbs/barbara_luna_framed.jpg
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atomictonytiki
Grand Member (8 years)
Joined: May 14, 2002
Posts: 1272
From: Bangkok
| Posted: 2009-05-13 4:20 pm Permalink
I'm just back from seeing the new film it were great but what the fuck was that accent all about? A Londoner doing an impression of Ewan Bremmner (aka Spud from Trainspotting) talking a bit like a Dundonian. Sometimes he's not even doing the accent but the Glasgow audience did appreciate it when Scotty went "Get tae!".
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Mai Tai
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 21, 2004
Posts: 1430
From: Exotic Isle of Alameda
| Posted: 2009-05-13 4:44 pm Permalink
Quote:
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On 2009-05-13 12:05, Cammo wrote:
Was that the point? Was it some sort of bizarre ownership thing, to make a club so repulsive that only diehard fans and ones who believed in the same hardcore principals could join? And then speak for and own the criticism of a creative property? To be so obnoxious that they clear the room of any reasonable competition?
Or were they just a bunch of dicks?
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So that settles it... Star Trek is indeed tiki.
It's all painfully there in black and white, folks:
Some of these Trekkies were geniuses, some were professional people who used Star Trek to promote and enjoy their businesses. But some were very odd indeed; stalkers, slightly disturbed, and passionately involved in the underlying philosophy of Star Trek’s pacifist basis.
Which is ridiculous, of course.
Trekkies had so muddied their own bathwater that it almost seemed planned, like a dog systematically pissing on fire hydrants to mark his territory.
Star Trek, to me, felt …. well ….pissed on.
it cost 16 clams 50 to get in... ...So here was the first thing I saw:
They were sitting around selling Star Trek toys! At least that’s what it looked like; when I got closer I realized that they were just showing off their toys, which weren’t all that great to begin with. They look creepily-played-with, actually. I don’t think they realized how bizarre it was to be showing off your slightly beat up, yellowed-box set of Shatner and Nimoy dolls in front of a giant sign with different people playing the same characters.
(complete with devolution of tiki/Buffet/hippie/Parrothead/Dead-Head/Bacardi/Wildsville-Man comment)
But the saddest guy at the table, the absolute lamest thing I've ever seen, (I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of it) was the guy at the end who was showing off his collection of STAR WARS toys! That's right, somehow he had snuck in and had one of those Darth Vader toy boxes that hinge open to hold leetle teeny Darth Vaders inside...
...he was SO proud of it.
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 "It's Mai Tai. It's out of this world." - Victor Jules Bergeron Jr.
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woofmutt
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 26, 2002
Posts: 2584
From: Seattilite Telstar
| Posted: 2009-05-13 4:55 pm Permalink
"Not a single Trekkie in sight when GROG went to the packed Imax move...The crowd applauded at the end of the movie and alot them stayed all the way through the credits." -GROG-
Yes, not a single Trekkie...A whole Imax theater full of them.
_________________
Attribution is the sincerest form of flattery.
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Cammo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 18, 2006
Posts: 1827
From: San Diego
| Posted: 2009-05-13 4:56 pm Permalink
**** Spoilers! If you haven’t seen the movie, see it first before reading this! ****
So the movie flat out ROCKS. It’s designed to rock, they hired the right guys to make it rock, and ROCK IT DOES.
It rocks in the right places,
It rocks with the right sound,
If it rocked any harder
They’d have to shoot it down.
It’s full on giant scale hits you right off with a great nod to the son-of-a-gun naval tradition (look it up) of Kirk’s birth, lots of tattooed bad guys, heck they throw everything at you plus the kitchen sink and then go for more. It’s a BIG movie. I don’t know if I would have paid 17 clams for it, but 16-50 was a deal, bub.
The best scene by far was right in the middle, usually where all the old Star Trek movies would slow down a bit and try to get philosophical. Instead, they just throw Kirk, Sulu and some red shirt out of a shuttle craft and tell them to go destroy the bad guys, cause the fate of the entire Galaxy hangs on them.
That’s it. That’s about the whole plot.
So in a scene ripped right out of Heinlein, they do a scream jump and for once you get a real taste of the silent emptiness of space as these guys drop head first to the planet below. They slowly fall, hit the atmosphere, and MAN you can feel the sweat as their suits heat up and the gravity kicks in and they try to keep cool before chuting out, getting yanked up out of control and trying to stay in formation, that drilling platform is coming up real fast and you get only one chance to be a hero and this is it, boys.
Now if the fate of the entire Galaxy were hanging on my shoulders, I’d get a pulse rifle or two, then jump out of the shuttle. Actually, considering that the Enterprise seems willing to arm its crew, even the guys in the cafeteria to the teeth, I’d grab about 60 phasers, bombs, pulse disruptors, anti-grav decoys and 6 or 7 other redshirts to shove in front of me while I’m setting the fuses and lobbing them from about 50 feet in the rear.
But Kirk just doesn’t think that way. He goes in UNARMED. He goes in with a pack of cigarettes and a slippery-handled phaser that keeps flying out of his hand with the slightest breeze. It’s good that Sulu came along, cause at least he brings a sword in his back pocket. Kirk would be Kentucky Fried Chicken without that sword. But that’s Kirk for ya, all balls, no brains, where’s da smokes?
The whole scene goes on and on, to a final mid-air beam out that saves their lives JUST as they were about to make a big strawberry jam stain on the planet’s rocky hills. It’s pretty dang exciting, not the least of it all about being filmed by shaky hand held camera effects, and swirling crab shots that keep showing you the 3-mile cliff edge they’re fighting on.
Industrial Light and Magic apparently did the harder effects shots, and they did such a good job Star Wars now looks as cheesy as the original Jaws shark. This may not have been such a good idea in retrospect, but George Lucas has been looking awfully confused in the media lately anyway.
Here’s my only beef; I don’t like the beam-up effect.
It looks like people are getting attacked by bees. They’re supposed to Beam Up, not Bee Up. With all those little effects dials and buttons and storyboarders and digital hi-resolution 3058807 terrabyte playback systems they have over at ILM, you’d think they’d come up with something a weedle bit better. Maybe they didn’t WANT to. Maybe it was a tiny bit of sabotage on ILM’s part, not to make the beam-up look very cool. It’s a mystery that may never be solved. Who cares anyway? The movie ROCKED.
The other killer cool part of the film was the very simple scene of Spock declining to join the Vulcan Institute of Science. It was underplayed perfectly, as Spock realizes slowly but firmly (at the same time with the audience) that the Institute is just as prejudiced as the bullies he’s grown up with. It’s subtle, and goes right to the heart of anybody who’s been stiffed by a smirking snob, and that’s everybody in the room. I could feel the entire audience shifting in their seats, siding with Spock, getting drawn in. It’s a classic Star Trek moment, a scene Bob Justman would have been proud of.
Who needs a plot without holes with scenes like that every once in a while?
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Unkle John
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Oct 22, 2003
Posts: 1216
From: Middle-of-the-Ocean, TX
| Posted: 2009-05-14 08:21 am Permalink
Quote:
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On 2009-05-09 13:54, Hakalugi wrote:
Maybe this will clarify things:
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Ah yes, a Horga'hn fertility statue from Risa.
There's currently one up for sale on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Star-Trek-TNG-DS9-Horgahn-statue-prop_W0QQitemZ330329362140QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4ce92a0edc&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A4|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A0|293%3A1|294%3A200
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Cammo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 18, 2006
Posts: 1827
From: San Diego
| Posted: 2009-05-14 11:44 am Permalink
Holy Mysterious Sexual Practices, this thing is really cool!
That's it.
I guess Star Trek IS Tiki.
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little lost tiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jun 12, 2006
Posts: 7463
From: Orange,CA-right near the Circle!
| Posted: 2009-05-14 12:06 pm Permalink
Star Trek is Tiki
and Cammo is Lame.
end of story...
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atomictonytiki
Grand Member (8 years)
Joined: May 14, 2002
Posts: 1272
From: Bangkok
| Posted: 2009-05-14 1:30 pm Permalink
Star Trek isn't tiki but Risa the pleasure planet is defiantly poly-pop, behold the Risan Mai-Tai..
A Risan mai-tai
A Risan mai-tai was an orange cocktail beverage garnished with two fruits served on Risa.
Malcolm Reed and Trip Tucker ordered Risan mai-tais when they spend two days on the planet in early 2152. Tucker later wondered whether his headache was caused by the mai-tais or by getting shot. (ENT: "Two Days and Two Nights")
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Unga Bunga
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jun 06, 2003
Posts: 5738
From: CaliTikifornia
| Posted: 2009-05-14 1:39 pm Permalink
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Jungle Trader
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jan 04, 2003
Posts: 3693
From: Trader's Jungle Outpost, Turlock, Ca.
| Posted: 2009-05-14 4:39 pm Permalink
THAT bush NEEDS a tiki.
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