I promised myself that after my plethora of Halloween influenced posts that I wouldn't have the traditional "Bah-Humbug" attitude in my blogging tone that I usually do during the holiday season.
That promise pretty much went to complete hell after this week. My strong belief in the fact that people turn more rude, obnoxious and greedy once the holiday season draws near has been proven time and time again.
Within the last week I've been stressed out with a unrealistic workload, I've been almost run over by some yuppie ditz in her silver sports car in the parking lot of a Best Buy and my TV watching seems to have been jammed packed with X-mas commercials that popped up THE DAY AFTER Halloween.
BAH HUMBUG indeed!
Now, believe it or not, despite my anti-seasons greetings attitude, I do find myself actually being quite thankful for some things that are currently going on.
First and foremost, I'm thankful that a very good friend of mine is beating her battle with cancer. I'm also thankful that my very good friend, Goof, will be in town with his family and I'll be seeing them this Thanksgiving weekend. I'm also thankful that I have a pretty decent network of friends and family.
So there are a few shreds of light shining through the tares in the dark fabric that is the Holiday Season.
Speaking of family, I'm sure my sister, Dizzy Lizzy, has been having a blast this week since it is NEW-MOON-PALOOZA week. Though my sister is in her 30's she communes with the legion of tweener girls that are all broiled up over the latest pretty boy glimmering vampire movie that was released to some pretty bad reviews this week.
Much as I did with the Star Wars Prequels, my sister immersed herself the whole midnight showing experience. Then she saw it a second time later in the weekend. Though I'm not a big fan of sappy, teenybopper Twilight "vampire" stories by author Stephenie Meyer and the movies based on her novels, I do like to see my sister geek out over something that is somewhat genre related.
On to something completely different....
This past week saw the DVD release of last summer's big blockbuster, Sci-Fi piece of pure joy called Star Trek. A rebooting of the original TV series. Of course I went and grabbed that baby off the store shelf. When I did so, I realized that this would be the first Star Trek movie that I'd have in my whole DVD collection. That's a pretty sad state of affairs for me since I pride myself on being a geek. Luckily, right there next to the Star Trek DVD was a three disc compilation of three of the best Kirk & Spock movies, The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home.
This morning when I got out of bed I popped into the DVD player The Wrath of Khan. It had been a while since I last saw it. Quite a few years in fact. So this morning a got a full viewing in. I do have to say that this really is the best Star Trek movie out of all of them. Sure, the latest reboot is quite spectacular and was my favorite movie of 2009, but there's a few things about Wrath of Khan that really hits the Star Trek spot.
First of all you have a very clever script. Back in 1982, who would have thought that taking an episode from the original 60's TV series ("Space Seed") and building upon it to create an entire motion picture would have worked so well. You also have the fortification of the relationship between Spock and Kirk. You get to see just how close their friendship is through Spock's ultimate sacrifice.
Second, you have the larger than life villain of Khan Noonien Signh, a genetically enhanced superhuman who was exiled by Capt. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise on a doomed planet in the original TV series only to escape the planet and seek revenge on the Enterprise in the film. The role is wonderfully filled by the late, great Ricardo Montalban. Montalban plays the role with great relish and vigor. Some may say his performance was a bit over the top, but for a character who was not only abandoned on a soon to be desolate planet for 15 years and lose the love of his life there, I'd be a bit over the top also. Besides his performance is a perfect match to William Shatner's big as life Captain James T. Kirk.
Third, you get a pretty decent space ship battle. It's not a crazy, fast as light dog fight, like we've seen in the Star Wars films. It is a slow, brutal, methodical, ship to ship blast-fest. It's very reminiscent of the old pirate ship battles out on the seven seas.
I'm glad I watched it again! I keep forgetting what a kick-A movie that is. Here's a clip of one of the more famous scenes in the movie.
As for other viewing pleasures, I've been renting the third season of Dexter (Excellent!), the first season of Rome (Pretty darned entertaining!) and hopefully soon True Blood (Far more vampirerific than the above mentioned series.)
As for video gaming, when I've had time, I've delved deeply into Borderlands (see gameplay here). Even though it's a first person shooter, it has the same type of addiction level as a game like Diablo. There's a lot of loot to collect and skills to build up. It's pretty friggin' cool so far. I'm just hoping it going to be quite epic and long.
I'm also looking forward to Mass Effect II that's coming out soon.
That's all there is for now. If I don't post here before Thanksgiving have a happy turkey day!
Zangz.
