5 Greatest Spaceships of All Time

They'll never exist. Not in reality. But I sure wish they did. I'd gladly fly in any one of these.

1. USS Enterprise

My first love. I talked about it in another post a couple years ago, so I won't rehash it here, but it's still the starship against which all others are measured. I want to live on the bridge.

2. Eagle 1

Space: 1999. So dated, so disregarded, so wonderful. Again, I wrote a post about this a while back but suffice it to say these craft inspired a lot of imaginative play. I wanted to build my own mock-up of the cockpit. And wear my custom-made shirt with a single red sleeve.

3. Millenium Falcon

I know what you're saying. "What a piece of junk!" Well, she may not look like much but she's got it where it counts, kid. And, sadly, I quoted that from memory. Yes, I am a nerd.

When I used to imagine what I'd do if I were granted three wishes, I developed a complicated list that would result in me having a full sized, working Millenium Falcon with unlimited fuel and the knowledge of how to fly it. I figured I could at least run as a high end competitor to Federal Express using a slogan like "When it absolutely, positively has to be there right now." I figured I could shuttle people and stuff between continents in a matter of minutes. Ah, the dream life of being a courier. Sadly, I did not make an allowance for also obtaining a Wookie co-pilot. Or a life.

4. Sky One 

UFO took place IN THE FUTURE. 1980 to be exact. *sigh* It involved a shadowy organization (see what I did there?) fighting malevolent marauders from outer space. While the moon-based interceptors were cool (and I still have my Dinky Toys version of it) I always thought Sky 1 was more cool. It launched from the ocean, attached to a submarine, then flew into the atmosphere to shoot down flying saucers. Yes!

5. Jupiter 2

Speaking of flying saucers, this Lost in Space ship WAS a flying saucer - but one built by the good guys! It also seemed to have the property of being bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. How else could they have jammed the chariot and pod in there, not to mention the voluminous lower lever of living quarters. But I loved the spinning lights on the undercarriage and as stupid as the show it self was, the ship was always cool. And the robot. Duh.

What did I leave out? What are some of YOUR picks?

Holy Donuts

 A Short Story

            Torus of love. Frosting of light. Sprinkles of peace.

            Wherever we gather, whenever we gather, we take the donut, we break it and we bless it, saying, “Take. Eat. Holy pastry purchased for you.”

            And so it is with the coffee. We fill our mugs and bless them, saying, “Brown liquid of understanding, poured for you. Take, blow gently, sip. Creamer is in the back for any who need it.”

            And the service begins.

            Most days, Jack shares first.

            “Good morning. My name is Jack and I love donuts.”

            “Hello, Jack,” we reply.

            “Sunday mornings were all about the donuts,” he begins. “My parents popped an 8-track into the stereo, usually the Kingston Trio, but sometimes Neil Diamond or America’s Greatest Hits. Then Dad would say, ‘Let’s go,’ and we’d hop into the car and drive the ten blocks to Dunkin’ Donuts. I’d always pick the chocolate crème filled, even though I kind of thought it was gross. My sister would get maple logs or some other godawful thing. I used the comics section of the Sunday paper to capture the drifts of powdered sugar.”

            Here he gets a little misty-eyed. “Damn, I miss those times.”

            And we raise our mugs to Jack and we dunk or not dunk, depending on our personal choice of donuts, and we take a large bite, savoring it, trying to become one with the donut, even if only for a moment.

            After we go around the circle – always a circle – I step up to the center and make my plea.

            “Friends, we thank you for coming. We thank you for partaking in the holy donut. And we thank you for your generous love offering of cash or gift cards.”

Folks drop what they can spare into the coffee canister I keep perched on a chair next to the door. They shuffle out, with promises to return next week.

Today, a young woman, she’d called herself Ruth during her testimony, held back after the rest of the group cleared out. She helped me stack chairs.

“I wanted to thank you,” she said. She couldn’t have been more than 25. Not conventionally pretty, she maintained an air of disarray that vanished, I’d noticed, while partaking in the donut.

“No, no,” I said. “Thank you for coming. We wouldn’t be here without folks like you.” Trite, I know, but in my experience, donut worshipers prefer their pastries large and their talk small.           

            She stacked the last chair and followed me to the front of the room.

            “I just know there’s something in them,” she said. “It’s, well, more powerful than us.”

            I nodded. “The sugar. Real addictive. You’ve got to be careful.”

            I flicked off the lights and motioned for her to lead us out of the room. She lingered in the doorway.

            “No,” she said. “It’s more than that. There’s an energy. A light. You guys seem to understand it. There’s power there, something…” She trailed off, bit her lip, then finally walked outside.

            I pulled the door closed.

            “We all sense it,” I said.

We put the group together last year when Jack and I found ourselves waxing poetic about the appeal of donuts. We started meeting at a local Dunkin’ Donuts until a rather dour woman named Charlotte started going on and on about Krispy Kreme. So to be more ecumenical, we started meeting at a local rec center.

            “Well,” I said, “thanks again for helping straighten up.”

            Ruth nodded, shoved her hands into her pockets and walked toward the parking lot.

            I locked the door, then turned to find myself face to face with her.

            “Oh,” I said.

            “I’m Jessica,” she said.

Before I could ask about the name change or even blurt out my own name she backed me against the door and kissed me.

And kissed me.

And kissed me.

I did not resist.

She took two steps back, shoved her hands back into her pockets and then smiled at me.

“The power of donuts,” she said.

I nodded. The power of donuts indeed.

“Same time next week?” Ruth who was actually called Jessica asked.

All I could do was nod and watch her vanish into the darkness.

Torus of love. Frosting of light.

Burrito

A Short Story

Kevin unwrapped his burrito, poking at the interior with his spork.

“I knew it,” he said, spearing a particularly large kernel of corn.

“It’s called a veggie burrito,” I said. ‘What did you expect?”

Kevin flicked the kernel onto the floor, where it landed near the leg of my chair.

“I expected vegetables,” he said, re-rolling the tortilla. “You know, mushrooms, kale, bean sprouts. Good healthy stuff.”

“What planet, exactly, are you from?” I asked. “You’re lucky there’s anything more than rice and beans in that thing. You’re lucky there’s a cheese-like substance in there to hold it all together. Count your blessings, my friend.”

He took a tentative bite of his burrito, then muttered, “Corn is the devil’s vegetable.”

“It’s a grain, not a vegetable,” I said.

“That’s exactly my point!” He wadded the burrito into a ball and flung it across the room. It smacked into the wall, leaving a brown smudge on the fading yellow paint.

“Nice,” I said.

Kevin shrugged. “Plenty more where that came from.” He reached over and grabbed one of my nachos.

We sat in silence for a few moments, polishing off my nacho platter.

“We ought to clean that up,” I said, staring at the remains of Kevin’s burrito.

“Go ahead,” he said. He stood and crossed toward the exit. “You coming?”

“You’re really not going to clean it up?”

“It had corn in it. Corn!”

“Excuse me.”

I turned to see two men in black. One held out his wallet, flashing a badge.

“We’re from the Corn Refiners Association. We’re going to have to ask you to come with us.”

Kevin glared at the men. “Are you kidding me?”

“No, sir, you’ve violated the by-laws of the Corn Refiners Association.”

“What are you talking about?”

The men in black grabbed Kevin’s arm and dragged him outside to a giant corn cob shaped paddy wagon.

“This is ridiculous,” Kevin shouted, struggling to free himself.

“I’m sorry, sir, the by-laws are very clear.”

They shoved him inside and slammed the giant cob behind him.

One of the men approached me.

“Sorry for the trouble,” he said, handing me a thimble-sized container of high fructose corn syrup.

I watched as they drove Kevin away. Later, I stopped at one of those roadside stands and bought a bushel of corn. Mmm. I love corn. All hail corn!

The Burbs

I paid good money to see The Burbs in the theater. When it was over, I wanted my money back. And my time.

The Burbs came out the year after Big. It was THE NEXT TOM HANKS MOVIE (I think Punchline was the next movie production-wise, but it got held back. I saw it at a preview sometime after The Burbs. At least this is how I remember it 2 decades later.) Anyway, anticipation ran high for The Burbs due to the charm of both Hanks and the movie Big. Plus it had Carrie Fisher in it, always a boon to big Star Wars nerds like me.

(By the way, does anyone else recall in 1988-89ish when Starlog printed a story titled something like "Is Star Wars Fandom Dead?")

Anyway, expectations were high. But The Burbs fell flat. Labored and unfunny, I remember little about the film except that i was bitterly disappointed.

I knew nothing about the Varese Sarabande Soundtrack Club (original incarnation) until after it died, so the initial release of the soundtrack completely passed me by. I eventually heard the End Titles on the Varese 25th Anniversary set and it didn't really strike me as anything extraordinary. It has a pleasant enough tune, with a goofy Patton pastiche and then the "hilarious" whistle stuff at the very end. in short, it didn't make me want to fork over the big bucks for the out of print club cd.

Then the expanded edition came out.

I ordered it, caught in a wave of Jerry-mania. My expectations were again high. Here was music that fetched a high dollar on the resale market, so it had to be good, right?

Lesson learned. Sometimes a CD is scarce for a good reason.

This score left me flat, just like the movie, It's Jerry in his mickey-mousing comedy mode, which is hardly Jerry at his best. Goldsmith and comedy generally never went well together. And this movie, which strove to be both weird and funny, didn't even benefit from a fabled "Jerry scored the ideal movie in his head rather than the crappy movie in reality" boost. It's just as labored and unfunny as the film it accompanied. Really, the End Titles neatly sums up the entire score. Everything you'd ever really want from The Burbs is contained in that suite.

So if you're one of those just now getting into Jerry and kicking yourself for missing the now sold-out deluxe edition, don't worry. You're not missing anything. It's just another bottle cap in my collection and one I rarely dig out.

Win, Lose or Draw

A post at Topless Robot about the Top 20 Nerd Commandments plucked a painful memory for me. Specifically, this commandment:

5) All nerds must be able to sketch, from memory, the basic outlines of the Millennium Falcon, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), and the TARDIS.

Yes, I drew the TARDIS as my big project for a High School art class. Sadly embarrassing in retrospect.

But then there was the embarrassment of doing something similar on NATIONAL TV.

In 1988, I appeared on the game show Win, Lose or Draw. Midway through the game, it was my turn to draw and I was shown my phrase: Beam Me Up, Scotty. As a lifelong Star Trek nerd, it felt like some kind of strange providence. But in my nerdliness, I could not figure out how to parse up the phrase into chunks that the "celebrities" could then guess. So I started drawing what I thought was a passable Enterprise, hoping the celebrities would get the Trek reference and start throwing out catch phrases.

It did not happen.

Vicki Lawrence, the host, complimented my drawing afterwards, but it didn't help. My celebrities were Peter Marshall, aged host of Hollywood Squares, and Marc Summers of Nickelodean game show "fame." He told me when I sat down on the couch that he had never seen even a single episode of Star Trek.

Sigh.

In the end, though, I did win the game. Woo hoo!

Favorite memory of that game: Our female celebrities were two women from soap operas, neither of whom I'd heard of before. I still can't remember the name of one of them. The other was Jackie Zeman who people later told me they recognized. At one point, while the women's team was taking a turn, we sat on the couch watching. Peter Marshall nudged me and pointed at Jackie, who was leaning forward displaying her cleavage. Peter Marshall smiled and winked at me.

Last memory: While I was being introduced, Vicki asked if there was anyone out there I wanted to say "Hi" to. I couldn't think of anyone right off hand, so I said something like "How about that blonde in the front row," indicating a very attractive young woman sitting in the audience. Well, for the remainder of the game, whenever I was on screen playing the game, viewers were graced with cutaway shots to that blonde in the front row. When the episode was over, I stood around chatting with Vicki while Marc Summers did what I should have done, what, in my infinite stupidity, I didn't even think to do -- he made a beeline to that blonde in the front row and started chatting her up.

And I'm embarrassed about the Enterprise.

Sigh.

Like Nothing You've Seen Before

Last night I saw part of a documentary about the making of Avatar, and one phrase just stuck in my craw. Cameron said a couple of times that he wanted to create something you've never seen before.

That's funny, because in my mind, if that was his goal, it didn't work. (As I sort of covered before.)

The plot, as has been mentioned in many places, is as old as the hills. White guy goes native. Seen it.

And don't get me started on the music.

Aliens. The movie, that is. It's influence is EVERYWHERE (as I mentioned before) in Avatar, from the colonial marines to the loader-like AT-AT things to Sigourney Weaver to the Paul Reiser-type corporate weasel guy to the design of the hardware.

The aliens. As in the life forms on Pandora. The devil dogs seemed not far from the "dog" that Christopher Lloyd's Klingon kept as a pet. The dragon-looking flying things were, well, dragon-looking. The blue people were, well, very much like people except with pointy ears and tails. Never seen pointy ears and tails before. Horses. Hammerhead dinosaurs, not anything like that Hammerhead guy from Star Wars or, I don't know, hammerhead sharks.

Landscape. Floating mountains. Like from an old Yes album cover. Trees. Waterfalls. Wow. How original. Oh but the forest floor lights up. And they have intelligent dandelion puffs. Wow.

Or am I just too jaded?

Ark of Venus

Paul Magrs blogged about keeping a list of all the books he's read and, more specifically, books he's forgotten. I, too, have been keeping a record of all the books I've read. Mine started in 1987. I also tried to think through and list books I'd read before that, going back as far as I could. Lots of books inevitably slip through the cracks of time, but a lot of them came back to me. I haven't yet gone through the list of Alfred HItchcock and the Three Investigators books I read, but I know I devoured tons of them.

One of the books that "got away"was called Ark of Venus by Clyde B. Clason. In, oh, third or fourth grade, I moved to a new school where we participated in something called the SRA reading program. One of the books was Ark of Venus. I remember reading it and the descriptions of the jungles of Venus and the wacky space monkey they found. But I never finished reading it. I think we moved again before I got to the end, or the semester ended, I don't know the reason, but I didn't get to find out what happened to the intrepid space family and their space monkey in the jungles of Venus.

Flash forward to post-college and I mention this book to my friend Clif who, it turns out, remembered reading the same book when he was a kid. I was in Houston by then and I decided to see if I could find it at the library. They actually had a copy in the stacks, dug it out and let me borrow it. I read it. And now it's on my list of books read.

Sadly, it's now been another 15 years since I read it in Houston and I still couldn't tell you how it ended.

Amazing how, thanks to the miracle of the internet, I can find an image of the cover of this obscure book.

My Ramblings After Seeing Avatar

I fear I’ve lost my sense of wonder.

I kept being pulled out of Avatar. The 3D effect often offered problems, a sort of going-out-of-phase that would last for awhile, maybe the length of a reel, like there was an occasional projector issue. When this problem occurred, subtitles, for instance, would look double printed and therefore really hard to read. The 3D distracted me because of these problems. Maybe it was my glasses. Maybe it was my eyes. The  friend who came with me didn’t seem to have any problems.

Next, I kept getting pulled out of the experience because of the bits I saw and heard that seemed lifted out of other movies. The spaceship at the beginning featured rotating arm things just like the one on the Leonov in 2010 (a similarity I sort of liked because I was seeing it in the year 2010). Of course, it’s a sensible design for artificial gravity, but still, it distracted me for a minute. The design of the sleeper chambers like in Alien. The Exoskelton suit thingy which was a sort of cross between Ripley’s loader in Aliens and the mini AT-AT things from Return of the Jedi. The space marines in general.

Horner. Sigh. Almost immediately I heard THE MOTIF the danger motif, those triplets this time sounding VIRTUALLY IDENTICAL to moments in Star Trek II. Then there was the recurring use of a section that seemed lifted from Brainstorm. And the opening bars of the theme that eventually turned in to the lame song at the end sounded EXACTLY like the opening bars of that Titanic song. Oh, Horner, Horner, Horner.

The plot points seemed overly easy to follow and predict. The biology on this alien world seemed essentially terrestrial. Humanoids, really? Oh, but they only have four fingers, so that’s different. And they’re taller and have tails. Wow. And trees. Just like our trees. And dogs. And big dragon things like we’ve drawn for centuries. I guess I just expected it to be more, well, alien. And I still can’t even begin to consider the physics of floating mountains.

But, all that aside, I enjoyed it. I wish the 3D wasn’t so intrusive in its lack of consistency or me, but I appreciated the way the effect added depth to the proceedings (when it was working) without resorting to a lot of “throw the spear at the audience” moments. I enjoyed the feeling that this was a world that was very thought out, both the Marine’s world and Pandora. James Horner did his job and made music that worked in the film. And it was a nice, big experience, one that would be difficult to duplicate on a small screen.

But I feel like I mostly appreciated it intellectually without ever getting sucked in emotionally, and this is where I think I’ve lost my sense of wonder, my ability to suspend disbelief. I shouldn’t CARE about physics or astrobiology or lifts from previous movies or Horner’s being Horner. But my stupid brain wouldn’t let me just sit and get sucked in. As a kid, Star Wars completely enveloped me, sucked me in so I was unaware of anything but the movie while I was watching it. But these days I can’t seem to do it. I guess Star Trek, which I loved (and let’s not get started on stupid physics there) got a lot closer to completely sucking me in, and I was able to appreciate the “meta” qualities of it as nods to its own history as a franchise. But instead of reveling in  a new world and moviegoing experience, I was lifted out too many times. I REALLY wish the 3D had been flawless for me, I think that would have really helped. But I wish I could also turn off my big stupid brain and just appreciate the movie for just being itself.

Hawkins. Goldsmith. Brilliant.

I've never seen the TV show Hawkins. Essentially, nobody has.

Originating as a 1973 TV movie starring James Stewart, it became a short-lived series and vanished into oblivion. From the descriptions, it sounds like a progenitor to Matlock.

The show disappeared. But the music lives on.

Thanks to Film Score Monthly, Jerry Goldsmith's score for the pilot film, Hawkins on Murder, made it onto CD. And I'm so delighted that it did.

The disc opens with a rather shocking sting of electronics which soon gives way to the Theme from Hawkins. It's a terrific little title tune, also used in the subsequent series. It's eminently hummable and just plain charming. It mixes a sort of Goldsmithian americana sound with a touch of electronics, setting up musically the idea of a country lawyer in the big city. Goldsmith really was a genius at making music that truly deepened and underscored thematic material from the films themselves.  When I sat on Main Street practicing my saxophone, I'd often tune up by playing the theme from Hawkins. It's one of Goldsmith's unappreciated gems.

The remainder of the score for the film crosses into pretty typical territory, covering nice suspense builds and a touch of melancholy, with that sprightly Hawkins theme sometimes easing into the picture. There's a lovely theme, a Sarabande, often introduced with solo guitar, and some eerie Moog moments.

Synthesizer also features prominently in the next section of the CD, the score for an Andy WIlliams telefilm called Winter Kills. It, too, features a rather jaunty Main Title, but this time surrounded by some pretty harsh music. A lot of it has the same feel as the early segments of Logan's Run.

The third section of this wonderful CD highlights Goldsmith's score to a much-loved TV movie called Babe. Anchored by a lovely title tune introduced on guitar and harp, it's delicate and tender, bouncy and rhythmic, and, ultimately, tinged with sadness.

Goldsmith's contribution to Hawkins only lasted for the pilot film. The subsequent series featured scores by other composers, including the great Jerry Fielding. His music for Hawkins appear on another FSM release, Zigzag / The Super Cops. Fielding creates some lovely takes on the Hawkins theme while also bringing in his own signature sound. Some spots even reminded me directly of Fielding's Star Trek
work.

I love Jerry Goldsmith. I love TV music. This disc is, as those darned kids today might say, all win.

Five Favorite Discs from 2009

Let's face it. 2009 sucked.

Unless you were a soundtrack nerd. For us, 2009 was a neverending roller coaster ride of holy grail releases. Hanover Street. Back to the Future. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Escape From the Planet of the Apes. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Freakin' Khan. Just to name a few. It's a wonder any of us have any money left to buy food.

Yet amidst this treasure trove, many of my personal favorites actually emerged from the more humble, ordinary releases. And, so, here are five discs you might have missed.

Twilight Zone: The Movie. Okay, so this one did not fly below anyone's radar. For me, though, it was a mind-blowing revelation.I've owned the LP since, well, 1983. But apart from enjoying the lovingly recreated theme from the TV series, the album got very few spins. It just never hooked me. Enter FSM's knockout expansion. From the thunderous percussion that opens track 2 to the sometimes slashing sometimes swirling strings that flit and surround the "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," this is a score that truly deserved an expansion. Each section contains delights that simply never appeared on the original suite-form release. I never understood why folks clamored for a rerelease of this music until I popped it into the cd player. Truly an outstanding release that would top the list any year it arrived. But the Jennifer Warnes song still blows.

Captain Nemo and the Underwater City. I've never seen the movie. I'd never even heard of the movie. But something compelled me to shell out for this disc and I couldn't have been happier that I did. Angela Morley's music is delightful, a sort of melding of golden age and silver age sounds that also plays like a cross between a sixties feature score and a sixties tv score. A few cartoon-y moments pop up around the more lyrical passages, but it makes for a solid album and it's remarkable that this kind of score could find a release anywhere at all ever, let alone a release so lovingly produced by the always thorough FSM crew. And, yes, one of the main themes does have a resemblance to part of Goldsmith's Supergirl.

Space 1999: Year Two. Look. If Space: 1999 is the red-headed stepchild of science fiction tv, then the second season of the show is some sort of freaky mutant zombie buried underneath a boarded up closet. It was juvenile and ridiculous when it first played on television and it's all but unwatchable now. But I still love it. I harbor a secret love of the 70's tracksuit-style jackets, the absurd dismissal of many fundamental laws of physics, and the leaden-paced, nonsensical storylines. And I've had a crush on Maya that's remained unabated since 1976. For years, decades even, Derek Wadsworth's jazzed up, synthy theme tune for season two stayed right at the top of my holy grail list, until the mid-nineties saw a promo release of some of his music for the show. When I saw that Silva Screen was releasing a new disc of his Year 2 music, I wasn't sure if I should spring for it, in light of the promo I already owned. But ultimately I did and I'm happy to say i made the right decision. The new disc is terrific, offering numerous passages that don't appear on the promo, and all of it crisp and gorgeous. I never heard the 2cd Fanderson release, so I can't compare it to that, and the new release lacks the nifty alternate themes from the promo, but as an addition it's simply invaluable. The music itself is dynamic and jazzy in a seventies Spyro Gyra kind of way. I can't always sit through a whole episode of this stuff, but I can always sit through this entire disc.

Inside Daisy Clover. I'm not really much of a golden age guy. But there are a few specifc scores that I'll snap up if they get released and, well, if the movie stars Natalie Wood, there's an ever bigger chance of me going for it no matter what era it's from. Inside Daisy Clover remains one of Natalie's better films and the score that accompanies it is also well done. I've long loved the "You're Gonna Hear From Me" song but to hear it done by Wood herself amidst the bonus material was another chance to realize why, sadly, she was nearly always dubbed. As we say in the South, bless her heart she tried her best. This is a dynamite 2 disc set of great Previn music and alternate takes and unused songs and I just love it. (By the way, I loved the original novel even more than the film. It's still a great read.) A real treasure for music fans and Natalie Woods fans alike.

Which brings me to Love With The Proper Stranger. This is easily my favorite Natalie Wood film, and the tender, lyrical score finally FINALLY got a release at the end of this year. It's a typically lovely effort from Elmer Bernstein and is paired with another score to a film called A Girl Named Tamiko. The score is short and sweet, with a few tougher passages depicting some of the rough times the characters face. You can easily add the Jack Jones song not included (and not missed) and give yourself the full bells and banjos treatment. Go see the film, then you'll get that last reference. Oh, never mind.

From the Film Score Monthly blog