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BE VERY, VERY QUIET. I'M HUNTING FANBOYS!
I've been a science fiction fan for most of my life. It started with Star Wars and then Battlestar Galactica, then my interest in SciFi exploded when I first saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Whatever I did on the weekends in 1983 & 1984, I made sure to catch Star Trek reruns on Channel 32 (I recall 6pm Saturdays & 5pm Sundays) until I saw all 79 episodes. In the meantime I also became a fan of Doctor Who and The Twilight Zone. Around 1995 or 1996, WPWR-TV Channel 60 started airing reruns of one of the oddest, yet masterful Science Fiction shows in the history of television - The Prisoner. The Prisoner is a show that takes most people awhile to "get", but once you understand the genius in the storytelling, you cannot look at TV drama in the same way again and you start to understand what Newton Minnow meant in describing TV as "a vast wasteland". In 1987, WPWR started airing Star Trek: The Next Generation. The first two seasons of Next Gen sucked big-time, but the third through the seventh seasons were pretty good.
TANGENT ALERT: In 1990 I wrote a scathing criticism of Star Trek: The Next Generation for a Television Analysis class at Columbia College. The title of my essay was "Bastard Son". I got an "A". Each of the Star Trek series following Next Gen was awful in its own way: Deep Space Nine: obnoxiously pseudo-religious and overly sullen. Voyager: Flawed premise, weak execution, illogical plotlines and a woman driving a minivan around the universe. Enterprise: Boring characters, awful writing, horrid premise, bad theme song. One of the greatest SciFi series ever, Babylon 5, ran from 1993-1999 and proved that a quality Science Fiction series didn't need to adhere to a limiting formula as each Star Trek spin-off had. Babylon 5 ruined Star Trek for many SciFi fans because it was so much better. Comparing Babylon 5 to the last 3 Star Trek series like comparing The Matrix to Plan Nine from Outer Space. But I digress. The rise in popularity of Star Trek: TNG also ushered in an era of new Star Trek fans, and coincided with the advent of the "Fanboy". There are two definitions of what a "fanboy" is: 1. A blindly passionate fan of various elements of geek culture (e.g. sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, video games, anime, Lord of the Rings, etc.), but who lets their passion override social graces. 2. A pop culture "fair-weather" fan who gorges themselves on the object of their affection, only to eventually overdose, discard, and move onto another obsession. One of the traits of a Fanboy is that they quickly consider themselves an authority of their obsession, despite glaring knowledge gaps and inaccuracies in the basics. A Star Wars fanboy thinks the special edition versions of the first 3 movies are better than the originals. A comic book fanboy thinks special issues with four different covers are great, so they buy each variant. A post-Next Gen Star Trek fanboy considers the original series dated, but enjoys talking about Kirk, Dr. Spock and Lt. Uhuru. Last week, the Tribune's Eric Zorn had his Tempo-section colleague Maureen Ryan co-blog with him on his notebook web page. She's a Star Trek Fanboy. In her Monday, February 2nd post (the bold italics are mine) under the headline "Get Your Geek On": But then I also got thinking about whether, aside from Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhuru on "Star Trek," there have been many memorable roles for African-American, Hispanic or Asian women in science-fiction film or TV? If there have been, and I'm just not remembering them (which is entirely likely), email me...and let me know. Uhuru? Try Lt. Uhura. To me, "Uhuru" is a glaring error, for being both a Fanboy mistake AND a name misspelled (It doesn't take a genius to figure out why I'm a stickler for spelling names accurately). It just stuck out there and annoyed the hell out of me. I decided not to bother correcting her, figuring that many Trekkies would be emailing her about it anyway. Besides, perhaps it was a pop culture-challenged editor who naively corrected the spelling. On Thursday, February 5th she did it again under the headline "Geek Girls"! In an earlier post, I noted that Mos Def has been cast as one of the leads in new "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie, and then I wondered "whether, aside from Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhuru on 'Star Trek,' there have been many memorable roles for African-American, Hispanic or Asian women in science-fiction film or TV?" What the hell?!? In the post after that she says she's a "Trek" fan...but she can't seem to get the damn character's name right! Some fan. Well...I'm writing way too much on a small observation that made me laugh at her, not with her. It's not like John Kass is writing a column about Mayor Daly, or Steve Johnson writing about Ron Majors, or Clarence Page writing about Colon Powell. The only distinction Lt. Uhura has is that she was the recipient of the first interracial kiss on American TV. So what if the name is misspelled, right? I'm John Koocheye. |
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MUSINGS
Daley Dose of Daley the DoofusThe many news conferences lately where Mayor Daley pretends to answer questions about the hired truck scandal are quite revealing. The Mayor's habit of not answering direct questions, shrugging off questions he doesn't want to answer and rambling on incoherently reveals that he's hiding a truckload of information. His crying performance while reading a prepared statement to the press after he came back from vacation was brilliant. It was nice to see that he was sorry. It's just too bad that he was sorry to be caught and sorry the US Attorney and FBI were going to start digging into things. Not for a minute do I believe he's sorry for wasting all that tax money. It's great to see the Chicago media run with this story. Richie says that he's taking full responsibility. So, um, when a person takes full responsibility in the real world for screwing something up at their job-like, maybe wasting millions of dollars--how often does that person remain in that job? If Daley is taking full responsibility, what repercussions will he absorb? What will his punishment be? How will me make it right? The answers, of course, are: none, none, and he's going to fire the people he hired to handle things then hire different people to handle things-people he can trust, unlike those fired people who he thought he could trust. Riiiiiight. Daley looks dirtier than ever. I was wondering if perhaps Sis Daley was spinning in her grave over this mess, but I doubt it. I don't think integrity has ever been valued much in the Daley family, so this scandal has no moral meaning to them. It's become crystal clear to even the politically myopic that Richie does not respect the citizens of Chicago. If he did, he'd stop his transparent bullshitting and start answering the tough questions from the media. The media is empowered to act as the voice of the people and a check on the government. By stonewalling the media, the Mayor is flipping off Chicago residents. Hey Richie, we all think you're "number one" too! Molly Ivins: serial borrower In Sunday's Tribune, columnist Mary Schmich wrote that she wanted to launch a campaign to heighten awareness of conversational plagiarism. The genesis of this idea was a recent Molly Ivins column in which she lifted a description of Arnold Schwarzenegger from another writer. Molly was called on it, and she shrugged it off saying she had heard it from someone else. Molly doesn't think this is plagiarism. Thing is, Molly's career is riddled with things that are "not plagiarism". The worst of which was a Mike Barnicle-like incident in 1988 in which she stole stuff from author Florence King. Yet Molly continues to write, unfettered. Personally, I have the same respect for Molly Ivins as I do for Barnicle, Patricia Smith, Jayson Blair and Bob Greene -- zero. I became familiar with her columns while living in San Antonio, Texas and find her phony Texas-folksy act grating. I have no problem with borrowing short quips and ideas to spice up your own ideas, but the fact that she has borrowed other people's quotes and ideas with attribution ranging from zero to slipshod disgusts me. Stung by Sweeps Monday night's late news sweeps stories were an interesting mixed bag. First on Channel 32, Mark Suppelsa told me how I could get VIP status with airlines, rental car agencies and even theme parks. Cool. But if I leave my home, Channel 9's Juan Carlos Fanjul told me that it only takes 180 seconds to be robbed. Damn. I was thinking of going to the mall to search out some single women, but Channel 5's Anna Devlantes told me that there are dangers zones at malls where I could be robbed or assaulted. The good news is that Channel 2's Stacia Dubin told me about online dating and how it's successful for a lot of people. Whew! That was good news because I was beginning to think I'd have to find a mail order bride in Central America or something. Then Channel 7's Chuck Goudie told me about how Costa Rica is a popular place for American men to visit for the sole purpose of having sex with teenage prostitutes. Damn! Why am I always the last person to find out about these things. I am definitely going to stay in my home, cancel the VIP trip to Costa Rica and do me some Internet dating. TV news is so helpful! I told ya so In the September 26, 2003 issue of the CME, I wrote: Three shows that will probably fail this fall: CBS' The Handler (Joe Pantoliano is a good character actor, not a lead), The WB's Tarzan (Puh-leeze…) and Fox's Skin (Romeo & Juliet set in the porn / politics arena? Riiiight.) 3 for 3. I'm good. |
