Filed under: Golfist Cinema, Golfist Wintertime Diversions | Tags: Baltar, battlestar galactica, Cylon Plan, Kara Thrace, Ronald D. Moore, Six, starbuck, The Final Five Cylons, The Plan, Tricia Helfer
One of the greatest television shows ever created was Battlestar Galactica as reimagined by Ronald D. Moore. The Mini-Series brought the core of the show, a story about a nuclear holocaust and the travails of the survivors, and brought it into the present with an examination of our culture at war without and within. It showed the best of humanity and its worst, and showed the Cylons to be far more complex than an army of Terminators. The whole show ended earlier this year with a very memorable and complex finale that capped an opus that stands up there with the best storytelling. So it was with a bit of trepidation that I downloaded and watched Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Some people panned it as an editors’ cheap trick, a kind of über fan-film of the kind you watch and cringe at on Youtube.
I disagree. It filled several plot holes that never made sense in the original series, such as the appearance and disappearance of the Librarian Six, known as Shelley Godfrey. I enjoyed this because it fills these plot holes. But like the filler that is used to repair actual pot holes, the patch work is noticeable. The scenes visually jump around and older original footage runs into obviously freshly shot footage that tries very hard to look seemless but isn’t. They also left you with a final plot hole -the whereabouts of a dark haired 6.
That said, it is a fitting coda to a great series. They really should stop now. I only hope they don’t try to make a movie. There is a spinoff, a prequel, called Caprica that looks at the origins of Cylons, but it rates only about 6 out of 10 where the original miniseries was an 11.
Filed under: Golfist Wintertime Diversions, golf culture, my golf | Tags: new york, philadelphia world series, phillies, world series, yankees
It was 2001 and all the world was rooting for New York. The World Series was playing into November because of the start of the War at the End of the World that would define this decade. The whole team was still there -Joe Torre, Bernie, Paul, Tino, Luis, Scotty along with Andy, Jorge, Mariano, and Jeter. Characters were on that team -Knoblauch the head case, and Clemens the man who chucks lumber in anger because of ‘roid rage.
It was pretty much a done deal it seemed, a fitting tonic to soothe the wounds of a city in mourning. The loss to the tandem ace pairing of Schilling and Johnson was hard but in the scope of the events that had taken place only a few months before, it was unseemly to complain too much. Bully for the ‘Backs. Life will go on, no?
But we lost all those guys the subsequent year, and it was never the same again. From 2001 to the fall of 2008 when the Yankees didn’t even make the post season, it was very clear that no amount of money could buy back the chemistry of the early Torre years. 2004 seemed automatic but revealed the weakness of the Yankees flailing arms and the team seemed broken and grasping for a way out of the cave.
The core was always there, but they seemed apart from a team that was never equal to the sum of its parts. This year, it seems different. That threeway happy dance in the infield of A-Rod, Jeter, and Teixeira at the end of the ALCS is something different and not seen in a long time.
My belief is that the fate of the country, and even the world is tied to the health of New York City, that city of Babel that will prove or disprove humanity’s ability to get along. The Yankees are an important barometer of the city’s health. A Yankee team that is doing the happy dance in the inaugural year of the new stadium is nothing but good news for everyone, even Philadelphians.
I congratulate the Phillies on their pennant, but they must now do their patriotic duty and service to mankind by giving a good show, even win a game or two in Philadelphia, and bring the show back to New York for a final Yankee victory in game 6. It would be the only decent thing to do.
Filed under: Golfist Art, Golfist Wintertime Diversions, Naturalism, golf culture | Tags: brushes, David Hockney, iphone app
As I have said, the iPhone brings out the creativity in individuals in ways that are unmatched by any other personal gadget. It has become the screen of choice. I have been playing with the iPhone app Brushes which let’s you create compelling artwork. David Hockney recently featured in the NYTimes now does much of his art on the iPhone. Several New Yorker covers have been created on iPhone by Jorge Columbo (link).
My latest piece was done in bed while watching the Yankees lose to the Angels. It’s my view to the right. More to come, but this device does not cease to amaze me and a tablet device will become de rigeur among creative people.
The golf season is over in Iowa. It may be nice this weekend, but flu from the swines have cut short any idea of swinging into a 35 degree wind chill day. Thus, I have decided to try my hand at novel writing. I came across a post about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, link here) which is a challenge to all the unpublished authors to write a 50,000 word novel in one month (or 1667 words a day).
Wow -a medical drama? Wry observations about golf? NO WAY. I asked myself, “What would make me the most money in the shortest amount of time and that means getting onto Oprah’s couch and rubbing my chin and looking serious?”
It means CHICK LIT, baby!
I’ve already set on the title of the novel: “The Abandonner: a Memoir of Regret.” If that doesn’t give you cramps and make you want chocolate, you aren’t a woman! Controversy? Undoubtedly! Best Seller? Dan Brown’s got nothing on me! Who is that masked man? The guy who rocks your Kindle, now come to Papa!
Filed under: Golfist Cinema, Golfist Wintertime Diversions, golf culture, golf philosophy | Tags: censorship, cultural decay, elitism, fox, fox news, idiocracy, movie, news corporation, rupert murdoch
I just picked up Idiocracy from Amazon (link), finding this gem for all $4.99. It can be found on Youtube in bits and pieces. It is a brilliant indictment of our cultural decay. After it was made, it was released in only 7 cities and then conveniently buried. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the News Corporation, Fox, Fox News, 20th Century Fox, and much of the pro-Bush media likely had a hand in killing this movie which savages the corporate supported dumbassification of the land.
It can be interpreted as elitist, but elitist in the sense that smart people monopolize intelligence in an unfair way. The genius of this movie is that if you’re really stupid, you will laugh your ass off.
Nobelist Paul Krugman (they hand out those things to everyone these days) and NY Times columnist and Princeton Economics professor discusses the demise of American public education in his column today (link). Education was once celebrated. A generation ago, The Paper Chase was popular. Today, it’s variations on Jackass.
Filed under: Golfist Cinema, Golfist Wintertime Diversions, Video | Tags: Nero, Romulan Empire, Star Trek, Trailer, Trek Trivia, USS Enterprise, USS Kelvin
There is no golf in science fiction that I know of. This doesn’t keep me from enjoying science fiction immensely. The new Star Trek movie is coming out and looks to be a huge bangup. Among Star Trek fans, there are two factions. Those who prefer Big Action are offered up episodes and movies involving wars with Klingons, Borgs, and Khan, and even thrown a planet eating monster that looks like a giant doobie. Those who prefer Big Ideas are given time travel stories (including one involving a sarcastic, cloacal time portal), moral dilemma recapitulating the issues of the 20th century, and anything involving empaths (people who can sense the emotional state of others -WTF!???!?!?). Then you have tribbles and fembots.
JJ Adams takes a turn at the old wheel, coming off his Cloverfield and Lost successes, and the preview shows a definite red state Big Action tilt. You see a mavericky kid and young adult Kirk speeding along in various fossil-fueled vehicles. The bi-specied Spock is seen trying to bludgeon a crewmate in this preview. (J’ever notice that Obama may actually have some Vulcan in him as well?). And that’s the thing, when the quintessential blue stater Spock is kii-yaa-ing and hacking at people, you know where the movie is going.
The Star Trek vehicle needs reinvigoration after spending many years in the Big Idea doldrums. I tried
watching the first season of Enterprise but just couldn’t get over the show being stupefyingly boring. Reimaginations of “classic” shows inevitably have to incorporate the mood and tempo of the contemporary audiences.The remade Battlestar Galactica is the greatest television show ever, and you should have heard the shrieking about Starbuck being a girl in certain geek quarters. The best science fiction balances the Big Ideas with Big Action. Ridley Scott is a master of this with Blade Runner and Alien.
There are elements of homage in the preview. There is a Dreadnought class starship getting blown up -this is a reference from the Star Fleet technical manual. This kind of detail shows that JJ Adams and the writers are shockingly incredible Trek geeks. This would seem to me that they took their custodial duties with regard to the Star Trek canon seriously. Or it may just be a random teaser designed to draw in the middle aged Trekkies along with all the teens and twenty somethings who know nothing about Trek. I’m holding judgement and praying it’s not Star Trek Kids.
The missing Dreadnought, inspiration for many pages of spiral notebook art
Addendum: The ship in the HD preview (much clearer) is clearly not a Dreadnought, but rather a some kind of modification of either the Scout or Destroyer Class starship called the USS Kelvin with a topside crew/engineering pod in the picture shown from the back below:
Warp Nacelle on Bottom? or Blinding LED Rear Light
Riverside, Iowa
Addendum: Prequel is available on iTunes as an iPhone App. Engaging comic book about the Romulan Apocalypse and time travel. Time travel is the sci fi equivalent of the dream sequence -it’s usually a sign of unimaginative thinking. It does allow for drastic changes to canon -after all -we are on another time line. The linearity of the timeline is something established by HG Wells, who avoided the going back in time to blow up your parents conundrum. The Planet of the Apes movies dealt with a non-linear timeline, and most recently, The Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles basically acknowledges that there is a fifth dimension -a history of time -meaning that linear views of history and causality can change so that the totality and end results are different over time. Kind of like seeing a full circle on the kaleidoscope rather than just a ray on the kaleidoscope. In this kind of world, there is no canon and JJ Adams can do what he wants. This is far more pleasing than the stupid negative universe where everything is opposite.
Addendum 5/14/2009: I saw it last weekend, took my seven year old and wife on Mother’s Day. The movie knocked my socks off. Everything makes intrinsic sense now. They needed to fluff up the old shaggy franchise, and they hit it out of the park. It was very entertaining. Iowa is elevated to the status of planet with cut scenes between Vulcan and Iowa. Also, it is clear to me that the canyon seen in the trailer is in fact a quarry used to deliver matter to be transformed Trek-style into starship plating. The Enterprise is made of Iowa dirt! Watching the movie in a theater in Des Moines was very special. My son who had been watching classic trek on the iPod Touch now thinks Star Trek is almost as good as his Clone Wars.
Filed under: Golf politics, Golfist Wintertime Diversions, Liberty, Naturalism, golf culture | Tags: adultery, bad economy, dating, depression, exploitation, Fendi, Jean Harlow, keeping up with being kept article, lack of golf, new york times sunday magazine, recession, seekingarrangement.com, sugar baby, sugar daddy, sugar mommy, unemployment
Jean Harlow, Sugar Baby
The NY Times Sunday Magazine featured an article (link) which I’m sure raised eyebrows throughout married households on East Coast. Or at least I thought it would. I tried to bring it up with my long-suffering wife, J, this past weekend. Trying to stir outrage, I asked, “Did you read that article in the Times about the website young, attractive women can go to sign up as sugar babies?”
www.seekingarrangement.com
Refusing to rise to the bait, she clacked away at her keyboard of her Macbook. I pressed, “I read this and think, why didn’t I come up with that?” I think I was meaning to say, “why didn’t I come up with that?”
Click, clack, Facebook post, clickety-clack, email, clickety clack, google search -”getting rid of pests.” No joy for me.
In medieval times, there was a spectator sport called bear baiting where you put a bear in the pit of a theater, and audience participants would jump in and poke the bear with a stick.
I poked, “Women can sign up for free and they get matched with a sugar daddy. It strips dating to its essentials.”
Every once in a while, I play this potentially fatal game of bear…I mean wife-baiting. It lets me push boundaries, probe for any weaknesses (absolutely none found so far, 15 years in May!), and bargain for man-stuff. Motives for this Sunday afternoon shenanigan?
- Boredom from lack of golf
- Desire to show that 15 years of marriage has not left me slowly turning gay (okay, so I use moisturizer, exfoliate, and watch What the Buck on YouTube -but it’s manly now because Esquire and Dr. Oz say so…….okay – show tunes are not gay).
- Create an alibi for leaving www.seekingarrangement.com on my browser history
- Final push for my next toy acquisition
- Because I love her
I decide to invade Poland, “It’s outrageous! What do these guys think they’re doing, purchasing the attention, conversation, and comfort, of attractive young college-age women? It’s a terrible thing to see, America being turned socioeconomically into a third world country where middle-aged men with money can take advantage of women in need of college tuition (and Fendi purses).”
Clickety, clackety, click. The focus of this woman, my lovely wife, is mind-bending. I give up. She wins. Love, set, match – Sugar Mommy. I go to play with my son and his Lego Star Wars models.
Filed under: Golfist Wintertime Diversions, golf culture | Tags: golfism, Redstone, shell houston open, spring golf
Spring approaches and the sap rises from the root. The days are noticeably longer, and golf approaches. I feel ready this year, more than any other year. Two things are different -I have practiced through the winter and my swing is groovy when I keep my head down. The other is my mental outlook is different. I am dreading the putter far less this year than any other year because I am approaching it no differently than any other club in my bag.
My experience on Sunday is illustrative of both my past and hopefully my future with the putter. On more than a few occasions, I got on in regulation at the tough Redstone course, site of the Shell-Houston Open Tournament in a few weeks. I three putted, but the reason I missed was mostly because of distance errors and not complete misreads, hurried slapdash efforts at shoving the ball in. The proof was in several putts made from over ten feet, and many 4-5 footers were made as well.
The real secret sauce though was a mental trick picked up from Chopra’s book. It is based on yoga, and brings about the stillness that you need to execute shots. Good golf to all -I am vacationing in a secret location this coming week, but hopefully will be able to squeeze in a round if weather permits.
PS -We saw several snakes during the round at Redstone including a poisonous water mocassin. I think that these fellows will likely come into play in the marginal areas around the water hazards. The course has few OB’s but is ringed in red hazards.
Filed under: Golfist Wintertime Diversions, golf culture | Tags: diorama, display, exhibitionism, natural history museum, smithsonian
I love Natural History Museums -the image above is from the Smithsonian from a trip last year. Their dioramas bring out clinical details that are missing in zoos. Because of the artifice of stuffing animals and posing them in au naturale, these collections hark back to menageries and freak shows. The animals we choose to display and how they are displayed reflect a lot about ourselves, and I find it no different to walk through a Natural History museum (or the Evolution Museum as Tina Fey’s Palin quipped) than it is to peruse a Damien Hirst exhibit. 
Harvard’s collection is a must see, especially if they are exhibiting the glass flowers. New York’s will always hold a place in my heart because it captures that 19th century optimism and obsessive compulsion for collecting (killing) ever rarer and more difficult to obtain specimen. It also does not shy away from displaying people, although they are mannequins and not stuffed (I think).
I would volunteer in a heartbeat (when it comes my time) to be stuffed and displayed in my white oxford button down shirt, khaki’s, and loafers with a plaque Homo sapiens sapiens korean-americanus nerdificissimus maximus et bellygazingus. Put me next to the chimps.
Filed under: Golf and Religion, Golfist Wintertime Diversions | Tags: Christmas, druids, old christmas tree, pagan tree sacrifice, post holiday, recycling christmas tree
We used to get “real” Christmas trees when we were living in New York, but it was the disposal of the trees that made me sad. There is something definitely pagan about sacrificing a a living being for holiday purposes.
An old Christmas tree and an unwanted corpse share many features. They have overstayed their welcome. They shed. They smell funny. You have to hack off limbs if you want it to fit in the garbage. They are best dumped in state parks off hiking trails –I recommend transporting in a black Lincoln Town Car which is virtually invisible in town, roomy trunk. Even better if you have a wood chipper.
Now, we stick to a plastic tree.
