Resistance Is Futile
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
“He’s dead, Jim. You grab his tricorder and I’ll get his wallet.”
It is hard to believe but some people have no idea what that means or where it comes from. It’s sad really and only goes to prove the end of civilization as we know it is ending and…
Wait a minute, surely you of all people recognize it? Really, you don’t? Well I’ll be damned. You must be one of those kids born in the 90s and far too young to have watched the original Star Trek. Dr. (Bones) McCoy is saying those very words to Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the Starship Enterprise when they found a dead Klingon or maybe it was a Romulan. It really doesn’t matter one space alien is as bad as the other. The Klingons were uglier and looked like someone planted a turtle in middle of their foreheads. The Romulans looked a lot like us except they had pointed ears similar to American Republicans.
That priceless line is across the front on one of my favourite t-shirts. It was only after some young pup of 50 asked me what it was supposed to mean I realized the world had passed me by. Even William Shatner was affected. He lost his job as a Star Fleet officer and is now eking out a shabby living making TV commercials. How he manages to keep that 4,000 square foot mansion in Los Angeles is a mystery. I suspect his wife works.
But I am not going to write about Star Trek but some other crap that interests me. I am getting old. I’m not complaining since very few people reach my age and I still look remarkably like my picture in the 1956 Oricolle Yearbook.
I have noticed however some of the movies I loved a half a century ago seem to have lost their zing and now that I think about it the stars are all dead and have been for lo so many years. Last night Mary and I watched It Happened One Night. Actually Mary didn’t watch it at all. She fell asleep (it didn’t come on until 9. I woke up in the middle of it. It was terrible racy for its day. Clarke Gable was seen in his undershirt and Claudette Colbert’s showed her bare leg which must have driven the censors wild in 1934. I know I could hardly contain myself.
There was a remake in the 50s, a musical, You Can’t Run Away From It starring Jack Lemmon and June Allyson I liked better but the critics didn’t. Perhaps my love for June had something to do with it. (I hope Sophia Loren doesn’t read this, our romance is already on shaky ground. She never returns my calls and refuses to leave Italy – not a good sign that one of the great loves of modern times will ever be consummated.)
It seems that if a movie or TV series was any good at all, there will be a remake. Star Trek, The Next Generation is a good example. I quite liked it even though Jean Luc Picard was bald. It is hard to imagine why some beautiful alien maiden would get a charge out of running her hand (or tentacles) over his bony head, but some women like doing that I understand, although God alone knows why. I suppose hiring Patrick Stewart for the role is really a good thing – him being handicapped and all. The studio could hire one less hairdresser, although it meant another can of Johnson’s Paste Wax.
I’m sure my age has something to do with it but the new Star Treks and even the latest Superman movies don’t do anything for me. It may be they are far too fast and noisy for an old codger like me. The space ships go too fast and the women too. In the movie Space Troopers, wherein the good guys fought giant insects like the kind that live under your porch, we saw a bare-chested young lady in the shower. I was appalled and had to be taken away in an ambulance. I watched it several times and was appalled every time until our health insurance provider threatened to cut us off and return our premium. So now I only watch it while visiting someone in OSMH.
Incidentally in the little community of Moore’s Falls there is a Lois Lane. I’m glad someone remembers her. Or don’t you remember her either?
