Trekkie Tantrums

(Oo-er, 3 posts in within a week)

I am going to be brutally, brutally honest here and divulge a terrible secret about myself.
Ready?
Here goes... I am a Star Trek fan! *Cue dramatic music*

Yeah, I used to be really into Star Trek when I was around 6-10 years old. I've seen the films, watched (almost) all of the series, I owned a few video games, I even went as far as going to a convention. It was that big a part of my pre-teen life. I never experienced such a thrill with anything else like I did watching those half-hour inter-galactic dramas unfold.
Sadly, I never watched it past 1o years old. It somehow lost its appeal. Star Trek doesn't appear to have such a accepted niche in society as Star Wars has, people are not shunned for being Star Wars fans. That's sort of why I stopped liking it, because I realised that none of the cool kids watched Star Trek Voyager excitedly while drying their hair on Thursday nights. Also, I noticed that after the Voyager series finished, Star Trek got really crap. I mean, seriously crap. It's almost like the writers decided to start smoking crack and wrote all the other series in underwater tanks upside-down. I never even bothered with the last series. Star Trek fizzled into nothingness in my life, and out of society.

Anyway, the reason for this little outburst is the upcoming film set during the original series next summer being done by that bloke behind Lost and Cloverfield (JJ Abrams). I'm not sure if this is a reason to be excited, because I never watched Lost and the trailer for Cloverfield made me feel motion-sick, but a real reason for me to be excited is that Simon Pegg is playing Scotty and Zachary Quinto (AKA the gorgeous Sylar from Heroes) is playing Spock. This is sort of an attempt to resurrect the series, apparently.
Pictures:


Now then, guess what all the Trekkies are writing about the most? Could it be the updated look of the ship? How good the actors look? Nooo...
What the Trekkies are moaning about incesently is the fact that Kirk is wearing a black shirt.
Yep, that's about it. Nothing could apparently be worse than a change of colour to the aged fans of the original series. They should be glad that somebody cares enough to try and update Star Trek, not a simple colour change. It's practically a dead franchise; nothing has been made from it since the last movie, nobody really cares anymore, especially anyone from my age group. Hell, I don't care about it that much anymore.
This guy sums up everything for me in a nutshell (even though I resent the fact he compares it to Star Wars).
Basically, it's ridiculous that fans of a series that can be declared "dead" are complaining about something as small as a costume change. If that is all old fans can say about the new film, then they might as well not bother going to see it because a lot more has probably been changed besides the costumes due to the desperate need to update the original series.
The problem is that Star Trek fans, probably like a lot of science fiction fans, are retardedly picky. Apparently there is a whole sub-culture within the sub-culture of Trekkie-ness where fans base the rarity and value of merchandise by serial numbers. Talk about anally retentive... This is probably what is holding that community back. Maybe this will always be the case. Maybe it is beyond saving.

Whether or not this revamping of the series will work is beyond me. I'll probably go and see it by myself secretly when it comes out and then feel all dirty and geeky for the rest of the week. I almost think that Star Trek should be left alone; it seems to be one of those things that made living in the 80s and 90s bareable if there was nothing else on, but it has no place now.

Live long and prosper.

Hanging with the clowns

Will Farrell-what is the point of this man?

Look at that "Love me" smile... you make me sick!

12 solid hours of watching his film career unfold on a bus from Zurich has taught me that possibly his only merit is his unbelievably annoying voice and equally irritating "Oooh look how awesome I am" demenor that comes naturally to underservingly famous comedians like him. I sat through all of Anchorman, Zoolander and Blades of Glory and I didn't laugh once. In fact, I found his so-called "humor" a complete failure, mostly being attacks on women and homosexuals. I thought as a race we'd got past such humor, but apparently once again America is trailing behind. Add to this the face-pulling lunacy that Jim Carrey and Robin Williams have practiced to a fine art, and you have possibly the most childish and irritating comedian I have ever had the misfortune of watching.
I've found it rather interesting that in any movie that stars Will Farrell, Owen Wilson (an equally irritating actor/comedian) and Ben Stiller feature with him. Ben Stiller is actually not bad as far as his acting is concerned (see Meet The Fockers and Meet The Parents), so I find it a shame that he is associated with such dire comedians.

It is totally beyond me how anyone with a brain cell can find someone like Mr Farrell remotely funny. Another offender of the same calibur is Jeff Dunham, the (in)famous ventriloquist responsible for Achmed The Dead Terrorist, who has no doubt been plaguing you in the form of ringtone adverts for a while.

Die...

Believe me, if you've never seen any of Jeff Dunham's work, avoid it like the black death. You'd have more fun flossing with razor wire. Allow me to elaborate; I watched a skit with one of his characters, a puppet fashioned to look like a middle-class, middle-aged American man called Walter. Again, sexism and homophobia a-plenty, but two things stood out for me; his "catchphrase" is a sound resembling a donkey giving birth to a elephant through its ear, which always results in an eruption of hysterics from the audience (most of which looked like trailer-trash in the show I was watching). Making stupid noises is really not funny or clever unless you're drunk or stoned. Secondly, there was a moment that I watched open-mouthed when a member of the audience left the hall to go to the toilet. Dunham clocked this, and decided it would be pants-pissingly hilarious to wait for, no joke, around 7 minutes for the guy to return from the toilet, the audience again laughing hysterically. How is that clever, witty or funny? I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it.

It's certainly true to say that it appears to be American humor that frustrates and annoys me, and one could say that this is because I am English and therefore tuned into a different type of comedy. However, that doesn't mean that all British comedians are therefore hilarious to me; Ricky Gervais, the man responsible for The Office and Extras, is very much a one-trick pony in my eyes.

Resembling David Brent in more ways than one...

Now don't get me wrong, I loved The Office. It was smart, tragic and hilarious. David Brent was a cringeworthy character that I truely hated, but I never expected him to revisit me in Gervais' other work. The protagonist in Extras is very much the same deal; awkward, embarrassing and un-funny. One could say that perhaps that character was designed to be the same as David Brent, but then check out Gervais' stand-up; it's the same again. It does seem as if awkward and un-funny is the only act he can pull-off, which is why I can't understand why people find him funny.

Comedy, in the end, is subject to the audience. Someone out there must cry with laughter at everything Jeff Dunham says (I actually know someone like that personally), and apparently enough people find Will Farrell funny to keep him working on films. Someone found Ricky Gervais so funny that he was named Outstanding Lead Actor for his performance in Extras.

I'll stick to Dylan Moran and Eddie Izzard. Cake, please.

Cookie Monster

Alright, I'll cut to the chase. Today's lesson is on a certain tv-show involving a set of random people who get locked in a house under heavy surveillence for a pre-determined amount of time. Yes, it's Big Brother. Ironically, my original topic (now deleted out of sheer boredom) was on all things Orwellian, but an entirely accidental glimpse of Big Brother 9 made me change my plan.

Yes, Big Brother is on it's 9th series, and is swiftly going even more downhill than ever (though how that is possible after the Celebrity BB with George Galloway and Pete Burns, I don't know). If you track the housemates from the first series to the current, you'll notice soon enough that suddenly the contestants became bizzarre, including transvestites, asylum seekers and tourettes sufferers. Obviously, this was Channel 4's idea to get more views, and sadly, it seems to have worked.
A lot of the time the 'excitement' comes from arguments and romance (presumably because a large chunk of BB's viewer's are unable to get excitement from their everyday lives), not from the contestants themselves. Or so I thought, until I saw Kathreya during the current series:



Remind you of anyone?



Clearly Channel 4 have lowered their standards- this is nothing short of freakish. If Kathreya were only blue and hairy, she'd be the most accurate impersonator of Cookie Monster known to man. What kind of normal person's dream is it to- and I quote BB 9's website here- "travel the world and taste cookies in every country"? I kid you not.
Another sample from her massive repertoire designed to brutally rape the human existance include- (on her shape) "If you love jacket potato you will love me", and of course, her "Happy House" song, which I simply refuse to put up here, so you'll have to go hunting for it.

I feel that, all joking aside, Channel 4 are becoming a bit too discriminatory now when it comes to picking housemates. Big Brother used to be popular because it forced a group of normal, average human beings who had never met before to interact under observation- this clearly has changed. Now, it appears that contestants are picked because they will make "good tv" because of their quirky and downright weird behaviour or less than average appearence- for example, Darnell, the albino, or the ever present "token gay guy" in almost all series, who is often camper than a row of tents (see Dennis). If BB is feeling particularly racist, it might throw in the odd ethnic minority for viewers to laugh at innocently.

Am I being scathing? I don't think so. If you look at the housemates, you will often notice that the "different" ones are deliberately stirred up by events and activities, which I think is rather cruel. Then again, maybe it is the fashion for all reality TV shows to be cruel and unforgiving to those who are the most unstable- for example, in shows such as I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. Maybe it's time everyone woke up and realised how unfair these shows are, before we all start watching Japanese game shows.