To boldly reboot where no one has rebooted before ...

OK, in case you've been encased in a block of carbomite* since 1966, here's a recap:

Star Trek (the Paramount sci-fi franchise) had effectively written itself in a corner. Nemesis was depressing. Enterprise was inspiring, but had never built a fan base. J.J. Abrams, of Lost fame, pulled a clever hattrick. He lost the whole series of series that had gone before. Abrams rebooted Star Trek, not in the sense of reimagining it, but in the sense of shit-canning its existing timeline.

All the storylines. All the plots ...

Gone.

Star Trek (the Original Series)
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Voyager

Gone. Not to mention ...

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek: The Search for Spock
Star Trek: The Voyage Home
Star Trek: The Final Frontier
Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek: Generations
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Nemesis

Also gone.

A ballsy move on Abrams' part.

Even the freaking original Star Trek pilot The Menagerie (starring Jeffrey "good-enough-to-play-Jesus-Christ-but-not-up-to-the-task-of-seducing-green-women" Hunter) as Captain Pike is gone, because it happened after the disruption to the timeline in this movie.

To be fair, Star Trek: Enterprise remains canon, because it happened before the disruption of the original Star Trek timeline. Everything else ...

Is gone.

It's as the Star Trek universe was an Etch-a-Sketch drawing.

And Abrams picked it up and shooked it to a randomized nothingness of pure potentiality.

OK, so, what's up with that?

Essentially, a pissed of Romulan travels back in time, kill Captain Kirk's father and blows up Vulcan. Kirk winds up on the Enterprise after cheating on his Kobayashi Maru finals. Captain Pike winds up in a wheelchair again -- but he's not horribly disfigured and promoted to Admiral, so it ain't all bad. Kirk, in the process, saves planet Earth. Yay. Oh, forgot to mention, through clever manuevering, Kirk winds up in the Captain's chair of the Enterprise a full 5 to 7 years before he does in the original series. Essentially, this punk kid from Iowa winds up as a Starship Captain at the age of freaking 24 after being booted out of the Star Fleet Academy.

Abrams has managed to do a few big things:

He's jettisoned all the existing storylines and made infinite storylines possible.

He's also shitcanned the later, darker and/or more politically correct Star Trek incarnations. He's gone back to a young Kirk and the original crew -- a cocky, womanizing, Testosterone-soaked Kirk who, literally, sleeps with a green woman as the movie opens. Along with Kirk, there's a conflicted Spock, a 17-year-old Checkov who pronounces his Vs as Ws, a cranky Dr. McCoy, an engaging Scotty, a fencing master Sulu, and a multilinguistic Uhuru with her drop-dead gorgeous legs in the miniskirt of the future.

The diehard Trekkies who never accepted Star Trek: the Next Generation and all the rest of it will eat it up.

The 20something target audience -- who have no stake or nostalgic buzz from the original material -- will also eat it up.

Storywise, Abrams proves himself brilliant. Hey, great storyteller. Lousy logic, lousy science. (A black hole isn't a dimensional gateway, it's a dimensional trash compactor. There ain't no such thing as red matter. If the Romulans attack Earth with a ginormous intergalactic can opener, the evil ship would be surrounded with earth vessels attacking it. Etc., etc.) But, screw science and logic. It's a ripping yarn, however preposterous.

*This is a double pun, not a mistake. In "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back," Han Solo was encased in a block of CARBONITE. In "The Carbomite Maneuver," James T. Kirk bluffed his way out of an alien standoff by saying all Federation ships came equipped with a self-destruct device triggered to explode a lump of CARBOMITE.

Quisp saves earth

The above is evidence why John K is my favorite animator. The comic timing is nothing less than perfect.

Re: sites for sore eyes

OK, kids. You'll note the new link to John Kricfalusi's web site. This is the man responsible for Ren & Stimpy and The Goddamn George Liquor Show, not to mention the incredibly sexy cartoon video he did for Bjork. John K is, simply put, a cartooning God. To say I agree with his cartooning philosophy is not to say enough. But let's have it out anyway.

A cartoon is a cartoon. Cartoons ain't life. Disney's so-called "imitation of life" is more accurately an imitation of death. I.e., it's an unholy recipe for creating animated zombies: stinking corpses that shuffled around and refuse to die.

John K's website is pretty much a graduate level college course in the history of 20th and 21st century cartooning -- with a special nod to the Pre-Cambrian explosion of creativity that took place in the 1930s and 1940s. His cartoongods are Bob Clampett and Tex Avery. They stand on the mountaintop as a result of their ceaseless experimentation.

What's happened since (largely inspired by Disney, but giving credit to cheapness and gutlessness as well) has been a devolution. A slavish devotion to model sheets. A fear of going "off-model" akin to pissing on the Holy Grail.

I like to call myself a cartoonist. John K's site makes me want to earn the title. He inspires me to work harder at it. He bitchslaps me to realize the level of mediocrity I've accepted in my own work. He reminds me what it was like when I was 14 years old and I'd stay awake all night -- drawing and redrawing -- just to get the damn thing right.

Writers bitch and bitch about how hard it is. You should try cartooning sometime.

Writing is just something I fell into because it's easier.

And -- you wanna hear something really funny?

It pays more.

The Chemical Muse

Heard interesting interview -- didn't catch source, either NPR or Nation Magazine's radio show, still tracking it down. According to Dr. David Hillman, the muses of the Ancient Greeks (ah, those fabled daughters of memory) were drug pushers. Homer was stoned.

If you'll check out the picture, he has very, very red eyes.

Quote of the Day

Fairy tales don't need to tell children that dragons exist; children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales exist to tell children that dragons can be killed.

- G.K. Chesterton

This reminds me of my favorite scene from Aliens in which Ripley discusses the existence of monsters with Newt, a child who'd been hiding in a facility overrun with the acid-blooded alien creatures ...

NEWT: My mommy always said there were no monsters. No real ones. But there are.

Ripley's expression becomes sober. She brushes damp hair back from the child's pale forehead.

RIPLEY:(quietly) Yes, there are, aren't there?

NEWT: Why do they tell little kids that?

Newt's voice reveals her deep sense of betrayal. She's seen that the world can be just as terrifying as her most primal child's nightmare if not more so, and that's a lot worse than finding out there is no Santa.

RIPLEY: Well, some kids can't handle it like you can.

***

Monsters exist. But monsters can be killed.

Amen.

101

April 11 is the 101st day of the year.

The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101 or NGC 5457) is the location of planet Uriel, the home of the angelic beings disguised as crazed witches in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

In The Matrix, Neo's apartment number is 101.

In 1984, the torture room where you face your personal definition of "the worst thing in the world" is Room 101.

There are, of course, 101 dalmations in 101 Dalmations.

Hey -- fuck you, America!

This North Korea talking. We talking to you! Hey! We not out of the picture! Look at that rocket! That big rocket, huh? Size matters! You don't tell us what to do! We fire off big rocket we want to! That's just a satellite rocket! Sorry you can't find a satellite, you calling us a liar? Fuck you! We don't have a nuclear program but we could if we wanted to!