50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
And now, a chance to use "blog this page" in performancing:
It’s a little weird for me to make the news that I’m editing, but
when you’re as up to your +3 Helmet of Monty Python Quoting in geek as
I am, sooner or later, it was bound to happen. Thank you for your
indulgence. Your case of Bawls is in the mail.
SuicideGirls News Geek Your Humble Geek Editor Talks to the Global Gaming League
Last night I watched an amazing episode of TNG called Family.
It is a truly wonderful episode that focuses on the human element of Star Trek. It is very dark and very heavy. It deals with the consequences of some very serious events from earlier in the series: Picard’s assimilation by the Borg and subsequent stint as Locutus, Worf facing his parents for the first time since his discommendation in Sins of the Father, and Wesley’s first face-to-face meeting with his father, Jack Crusher, via a holographic message which Jack made for him when Wesley was born.
It is a fantastic opportunity for the Patrick, Michael and me to take a brilliant script, filled with wonderful dialogue and complex relationships, and show the world what we can do as actors.
Partick and Michael are brilliant. They make the very most of every single scene, especially when Michael deals with the conflict between Worf’s need to
suffer for his discommendation with his obvious love for his parents,
and when Patrick finally lets Picard’s fall completely
apart as he acknowledges how helpless he felt at Wolf-359 and deals with its aftermath. It is a Ron Moore script that previews the depth and pathos that I have come to love on Battlestar Galactica, and they are absolutely outstanding in it.
And me? Ron gave me a chance to really shine, to explore some complex emotion and take Wesley beyond the two-dimensional caricature I often complained he’d become. I finally had a chance to explore and perform a human side of Wesley as he sees the face of his father and hears his voice for the first time in his life. I finally had a chance to really do something after years of saying "Aye, sir, warp six, sir" . . . and I fucking phoned it in. I sat there and I made all my stupid little faces and acted like I cared, but It’s painfully clear that I was halfway out the door. I totally and completely blew it. I was ashamed as I watched my eighteen year-old self last night, and rather disgusted by the time my scenes were over.
I looked extremely tanned, so the episode was probably shot in summer, and I’m sure I would have rather been at the beach with my friends instead of wearing a spacesuit on stage nine, but it’s no excuse. I was expected to be professional and do my job, and instead I was a bullshit hack who didn’t show up for work. I suppose the director could have knocked me into shape, but who knows what was going on at the time for him? And who knows if I would have even listened to him? After all, I was eighteen and I knew everything. I had the whole world figured out.
There were so many opportunities in that scene: opportunities to look at him and try to see myself in his eyes or hear myself in his voice; opportunities to make a rare emotional connection with a scene that didn’t involve a lot of techno babble and opportunities to just be simple and honest and truthful. As an actor, I should have thought about all the things we never got to do together, I should have done everything I could to stretch the moment out as long as possible, so the audience is left thinking that Wesley is going to sit in that holodeck and sob and miss his dad and watch that thing over and over for the next several hours. At the very least, I certainly should have allowed myself to feel the resulting sense of loss, but as a fucking douchebag teenager I didn’t feel anything. I’m pretty sure I walked into stage nine completely full of myself, and didn’t stop checking my watch until I was done with the scene.
Jesus, what a pathetic waste. What a complete and total fucking waste. On that day, I didn’t deserve to wear that uniform, and I certainly didn’t earn the right to call myself an actor.
It is such a great episode, and I’m so ashamed and disappointed that I didn’t realize it at the time.
Ron, if you happen to read this: I am so sorry. When I saw you at Grand Slam, I thanked you for all the gifts you gave
me over the years; I’d forgotten about this one (probably because I
didn’t appreciate it at the time, in all my teenage arrogance and I am so sorry that I disrespected your work and didn’t honor the gift you gave me. Your work deserved better, and I was too much of an idiot to live up to the material. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to create something so wonderful, only to watch it destroyed by an arrogant and entitled teenager. I am so, so sorry.
I have learned much since I was eighteen. In fact, I became aware of what a douche I was about a year after I filmed this episode, and realized that I need to get the hell out of Hollywood and find out who I really was and who I wanted to be. I spent the next three years working all that shit out, looking at myself in the mirror every day until I could truly say that I liked the person I saw reflected back.
These days, I don’t take anything for granted, and I always do my very best to rise to the challenge of the material I’m lucky enough to be given. I wouldn’t change anything about my life, because the person I am today grew out of the person I once was . . . but I’d sure like a chance to take that wonderful material and do it justice.
Hopefully, I’ll get to watch an episode tonight that I can feel proud of.
(image from Memory Apha)
Afterthought – I put a version of this in comments, but here it is for the rest of all y’all (or is it all y’alls? all of y’alls?): It is important to me to examine and reflect on my life, whether it’s something I’m fiercely proud of, like my performance in Best of Both Worlds I & II, or something I’m not proud of, like the things I’ve written about here.
When Family was over last night, I had a visceral feeling of shame and regret as strong as the feeling of terror I had writing about my first day of high school yesterday. It’s lived in me all day, so I finally decided to write about it tonight.
I don’t intend for this to become some sort of big pity party for me or
anything, and by writing this, I don’t feel that I’m sitting in a funk,
dwelling on the past, wasting he present (I’ve done lots of that in the last few years, and I think I’ve hung on that cross enough, thank you.)
I absolutely love who I am today, both as a creative writer/actor and as a person. When everything is stripped away and I am left with nothing but my naked soul, I am very comfortable with what I have. I wouldn’t have that if I didn’t reflect on all the peaks and valleys of my life, including moments like these.
Now that I think of it, if I didn’t have such respect for Ron Moore, and if I hadn’t just seen him two weeks ago, I may not have had such a profoundly powerful reaction to my performance (or lack thereof) in his episode.
Anyway, if I didn’t tear down the wall from time to time, I’d just sit here and wait for the worms to come, and nobody wants that. Trust me.
This is the second time in about forty minutes that I’ve wanted to change the title of an entry. First: "when i’m boss of the universe . . ." should be called "new slang", or "gold teeth and a curse" if I wanted to be slightly more obscure and rewarding to anyone who figured it out.
"i call the big one bitey" is a nice homage to a long ago time when The Simpsons was still consistently funny, but "antmusic" would be cooler. "dirk wears white socks" would be even better, but "kings of the final frontier" would probably be the most obscure and rewarding (the ant habitat was originally designed by NASA, and I’ll let you figure the rest out on your own.)
Now this is a little weird: iTunes must know that I’m writing about music, because for the last seven songs, it has taken me on a little time warp to my teens. These songs are listed in the exact order that they came up. It was set to shuffle through my entire library (currently organized by album title), which is pretty eclectic, so the choice of tunes is particularly eerie.
Songs with their associated memories:
Cinderella Undercover – I am driving my brand new 1989 Honda Prelude Si 4WS to work on Star Trek. I don’t know why, but in all of my memories, it’s early morning, it’s cold, and it’s a little foggy. I loved that car, and it’s the same one that was just slightly better than Patrick Stewart’s, if you’ve heard that story.
Don’t Be Square, Be There – My friend Guy (who was also my stand-in on TNG) introduced me to Adam and the Ants via the Kings of the Wild Frontier album. I can still see the tape, an old TDK number with "Adam and the Ants" on one side and "Kings of the Wild Frontier" on the other, written in Guy’s realy cool architect writing, in a smoky grey case with no paper insert. Guy lived in Costa Mesa, and after I got my Mac II — in color, with four fraking megabyes of RAM, man! — I’d put it in my car and drive down to Guy’s on the weekend so we could appletalk our machines together and play NetTrek and Spaceward Ho! People often asked me in interviews how I avoided the drugs and partying scene that claimed the lives and futures of so many of my peers; I’ve just realized that this is a major reason why: when they were getting high and courting the paparazzi in night clubs they were too young to be in, I was sitting in Guy’s house playing really geeky games.
Still Ill – When I was in my very early teens, I had one of those massive teenage crushes that consumes your every waking moment and requires you to listen to endless hours of The Smiths in your bedroom wondering why she doesn’t like you "in that way." This particular crush was on Kyra, who was so beautiful, and so smart, and so cool, and so a senior when I was a freshman it was never going to happen. Kyra introduced me to The Smiths (on Vinyl, no less), the Violent Femmes (in her BMW 2002 while we were driving to see Harvey at a local college) and was goth before goth was goth. Though I had such a massive crush on her, we were great friends, and she never broke my heart.
Pale Shelter – I heard this on the radio in my mom’s car on my way to my first day of public high school at Crescenta Valley High School, and it will always remind me of that day. I was terrified. I remember sitting into first period history class, and not even knowing that I was supposed to write "per. 1" on my papers. I remember that it was nothing like I’d seen in movies and on TV, and how the kids in all my classes were so cruel to me. I was shy, I was scared to death, and I was so withdrawn as a result, they all decided that I was aloof and arrogant and I never got a chance to correct that first impression. Wow – as I write this, I can feel that terror all over again. I feel it in my muscle memory and in my soul. Gods, I felt so tiny as I walked across the quad on that first day, like a little kid who lost his mom in the department store. The time I spent at CV was the absolute worst in my life.How Beautiful You Are – Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me was the first compact disc I had, and it’s a good thing, too. I love this record so much, I would have worn it out in any other medium. This was also during the "W + K 4EVR" phase, and, nerdly little artist that I was, whenever I heard this song I longed to go with her to Paris and dance in the rain together. You know what I just realized? I don’t think I ever told her that I was so fiercely head over heels for her, and she either knew and didn’t call me out, or I had the perfect combination of infatuation and insecurity to keep it to myself. I wonder where she is today, and how she’s doing? Hrm.
Charge of the Batmobile – My best friend, Darin, lived just over one mile from my house, across windy streets up in the hills above La Crescenta. We were such Batman geeks and we were such stupid teens, we frequently put this song on my tape deck and drove way too fast across those windy streets late at night between our two houses. It’s a miracle we never crashed or hurt anyone or anything.
Phonetic Alphabet – NATO – This is from disc 2 of The Conet Project. I never heard a numbers station in my teens, but I spent a lot of time listening to my shortwave radio and my police scanner (I told you I was a geek) so it reminds me of sitting in the dark (because shortwave listening is so much better when you’re in the dark, for some reason) late at night when propagation was better, spinning the dial and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world to hear transmissions from the other side of the planet. I’m glad the Cold War is over, but boy do I miss the SW propaganda broadcasts.
And the Conet Project is the perfect coda to this trip in the wayback machine. That invisible woman’s voice, sending a message to some unknown person in an unknown land, shot into the ionosphere and back, captured by someone else in another time is almost too perfect. If I saw it in a movie, I’d never believe it. Good thing this isn’t a movie.
"romeo, romeo, lima, yankee, november, oscar, oscar, zulu . . . end of message end of t–"
Two words I’d like to remove from the Universe:
deets – The word is "Details," not "deets." "deet" is an important ingredient in insect repellent.
peeped – Did you look at it? Then you saw it. You did not "peep"
it. And your friends? They are your friends. They are not your "peeps."
Your "peeps" are tasty little marshmallow chunks, shaped like birds and
covered with enough sugar to give you type 2 diabetes after one box. They are especially tasty if you let them reach the perfect point of almost-too-stale before eating them.
Thank you.
For the last several months, I’ve been editing the technology newswire at Suicide Girls. It’s been a lot of fun to interact with the community over there, and I’ve had a really good time digging up hawesome, amusing, and informative tech stories for them.
In the last month or so, the overlords are making some changes to the site, including the newswire, to make more than just a pin-up site. To that end, they’ve recently added a ton of new writers and editors, and changed our sections around quie a bit.
Last night, my section was changed from technology to geek, and I went from being the technology editor to being the geek editor, complete with shiny new title. I just about shot a d10 out my nose when I saw the change! Bow before me, for I am geek! Snort. Snort. 3d8 + 4
According to the announcement, "Geek is about video
games, comics, role playing games, computer hacking, Linux, OS X,
mocking Windows Vista, etc," so I’m pretty psyched to add comics and games to the list of news I can write and edit, now. I’m especially happy that any ambiguity about the deductibility of certain research materials has been effectively removed, as well.
I think it’s time for a trip to the Last Grenadier, then to the comic shop. For, uh, research. Yeah.
Snort. Snort.
42.
Update: In comments, Elayne says, "I don’t get it. Why are you writing for a pinup site in the first
place? I think it’s pretty unwelcoming for female readers to begin with."
It’s a valid question, and one which I imagine crossed more than a few minds. I know lots of you (about 16000 at last count) read this via RSS and may miss comments, so here’s my response:
I don’t have any problems with writing for SG, because I don’t find
their content offensive in any way. I really like the people I work
with, I like drawing a small paycheck to write and edit, and the little
chunk of community I’ve interacted with there (mostly geeks like me)
have made me feel very welcome.I completely respect that not everyone thinks SG is okay, though,
and if you’re personally offended that I write for or am associated
with the site, I completely understand and support your decision to not
read my stories there, or even stop reading my blog entirely, if you
feel that strongly about it.Personally, I feel like it’s a Venn diagram of Playboy, Vanity Fair,
Cosmo, and a flurry of tattoo and goth culture magazines, and I don’t
find the content exploitive or pornographic in any way. But your milage
may vary, and whatever that milage may be, I respect it.
Oh, and at my suggestion, the newswire has been made entirely safe for work, so you can read the news (like my story today about Facebook turning down 750 million while reportedly holding out for two BILLION dollars, which features a bonus Back to the Future reference, and some musings on how stupid online advertisers are) and interviews without encountering teh boobies. You’re welcome (I think.)
One more, after a few more comments:
There is an entire page at Suicide Girls dedicated to
addressing all the various rumors and allegations:
http://suicidegirls.com/trash/There are also numerous testimonials from several of the models, who
all seem pretty happy with the site:
http://suicidegirls.com/trash/testimonials/I’ve noticed that most people tend to project their personal biases
and and preconceptions into the site: if a person is opposed to nude
modeling (for whatever reason) they tend to think the site is
exploiting women, and are prone to uncritically believing the various
charges made against the site and its owners. If people are cool with
the nude modeling (male or female), they tend to discard the rumors,
and if they have an opinion at all on the "exploitation" issue, tend to
conclude that it’s more empowering than, say, modeling for Suze Randall.As I said before, since I am an editor on the newswire, those issues
don’t affect or concern me. The models I know all seem very happy with
their work and enjoy being part of the site; the people I have worked
with on staff have been fantastic, honorable, and respectable people
(unlike the people I worked for at G4, for example.)
And I made with a whole bunch of the funny (to me at least) in this story about finding out where your Xbox was born.
No thank you, I! Thank! You!
