One Last Trip to Ceres

I have less about an hour before it's not the weekend any more, so to keep my promise to all four of you who read this, you're getting part one of my story, tonight.

Normally, there won't be anything you have to read before reading something I've written, but, see, I wrote this whole page of exposition that didn't really fit in the story. So, rather than delete the whole thing, I wanted to post it. It's a little background on the universe this story takes place in.

One other disclaimer: this story is in its raw form. I did very little re-writing. I wanted it that way because I want to hear your feedback in the comments. Remember what I said in my first post? Well, whether you like it or don't, tell me why. Help me get better.

Here's a little bit of exposition..

Since the completion of the International Space Station in 2010, the governmental space agencies of the world had made great strides in space exploration. Private spaceflight was also booming and proved to be an industry that was quite lucrative for those involved, whether they contracted to government agencies or focused on the private sector. In fact, it was probably more successful than the government programs.

The great success of private spaceflight was accompanied, shortly after, by crime and piracy. While that can be a story in and of itself, needless to say, private and government vessels were soon armed to protect themselves in the depths of interplanetary space.

In the years of exploration, trade and turmoil, considered to be the Golden Age of human spaceflight, Earth’s governments recognized the need for ships that could defend themselves and other vessels, continue exploration, and supply its outlying facilities. A substantial fleet was built that could do all of those things. The vanguard of the old Fleet, the Challenger, was the last of its generation. Challenger was one part explorer, one part work horse and one part defender. Those who served aboard her were regarded as world heroes.

Nearly one hundred years since the last piece of the ISS was locked into place, after this age of exploration and excitement, the world’s space programs had stranded themselves on a plateau. Budgets were being cut. Interest was waning. Those stationed on Earth’s outposts in orbit, on the moon and the few facilities even further out in the Solar system, wondered what their fate would be.

It wasn’t as bad as everyone thought. It wasn’t good, either. Most of the “inner core” facilities would be maintained. The cutbacks only really affected Earth’s small fleet of exploration vessels and those outposts in the far reaches of the system.

At this point, the Mars Science Platform was dismantled. Old, large ships of the past were being decommissioned and sold off to make way for smaller, cheaper single-mission vessels. The government was re-tooling its role in space to focus on defense, and leave exploration up to private companies. It seemed to make sense and it was cheaper. All that remained was the evacuation of Ceres Base in the asteroid belt so it could be sold to a private company.

Due to miscommunication in schedules for the decommissioning of old ships and the completion of new ships, Earth endured a period where private ships, contracted by the government, were the lifeline to Ceres.

Because it was the most prestigious vessel, Challenger was saved from sharing the fate of its sister ships. A private foundation raised the money to turn it into a museum, to preserve that age which seemed to be fading away. While the ship had not been turned into a museum, yet, it had been dry-docked for over a year. Some would consider this an honor. A tribute to the past. Others, though, thought it was an insult to an Old Dame who still had a lot left to give.

So, if that interests you, and you wonder what could possibly happen in a universe like that, click here and read the first part of my crappy little story.

Or, click here: One Last Trip to Ceres, Part I

Part II will follow sometime soon.

This One's For the Fanboys(and girls). So Say We All.

I haven't written in over a week.

I'm not apologizing or anything. I'm just stating the obvious. I've been busy. I didn't have anything to say. My story wasn't done yet. It'll happen. :)

On the story front, it's done. I'm going to have the first part posted soon. This weekend, if I have anything to say anything about it. So, that's that.

Today, though, we're going to talk about Battlestar Galactica. Rather, my friend Marc is going to talk about it. BSG's fourth and final season started two weeks ago. Marc has written a five-part essay about the themes of the show, and what that could mean going into this last season. A warning: if you don't watch the show regularly, read the essays at your own risk.

Here they are:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Also, set a side some time to read it. It's brilliant, but it's long. If you watch the show, and enjoy the show, you'll appreciate Marc's analysis. It brought to light some things that I've missed or forgotten over the last five years.

Look for part 1 of MY story (which is, as yet, untitled) this weekend.

I promise.

Really.

(05 01 2008 Update: I fixed the links to Marc's article. They were frakked up. It wasn't my fault. :))

To Boldly Go... Ruin Star Trek

I was going to wait to spring upon you that I like Star Trek, but I guess I kinda did, the other day. Anyway, this is something I have to get off my chest.

Star Trek is not a comedy.

Apparently, J.J. Abrams missed that memo. He must've missed it because he didn't pass it along to his writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, either.

You're probably not familiar with Orci and Kurtzman's work. I mention them together because their resumes are i-fucking-dentical. I was going to try to display that here, but instead go here and here to see their credits on imdb.com. Go ahead. I'll wait.

...

See? Exactly the same. Exactly as stupid. You may notice that they wrote Transformers, which "graced" theater screens, last summer. Now, I don't know how much of what we actually ended up seeing was what they wrote and how much of it was Michael Bay. I'll be the first to blame Bay for Transformers. In fact, look for a future article called "Michael Bay Raped My Childhood." Bay may have trumped Kurtzman and Orci and re-wrote a lot of it, but they never protested. They didn't take their names off the script.

From a financial stand point, I guess that makes sense, but, I can't imagine two credible writers being morally okay with leaving their names on something like Transformers. Given their resumes, though (identical! I still can't get over that. It's creepy!), I argue that not only are they okay with poorly written, juvenile tripe, but that they set out to accomplish that in the first place.

Normally, I wouldn't care. There's a "Scary Movie" or "Epic Movie" or the like every month, practically, and I just shrug it off and keep rolling. Transformers hurt, though. Those of us who were little six-year-old boys during the Transformers hey-day were promised a lot of things by Kurtzorci (that's my name for them, since they're identical) that they did't follow through on.

Okay, I've digressed quite a bit. My point is, they've already got a mountain of crap under their collective belt. They've already proven, to me, that they can't treat a beloved franchise with the respect and dignity it deserves. How can we trust them to handle, properly, a franchise that's even more beloved and venerable (yes, Star Trek is. I'm serious)?

Maybe, hope lies in J.J. Abrams? Lost is pretty good, right (I don't watch it, but I hear it's good...)? Maybe he'll pull a Bay, and re-write a lot of Kurtzorci's work... except in a good way? Maybe he'll save it.

'Fraid not.

Remember: I said Abrams missed the memo that Star Trek is not a comedy. Turns out, three of the six major characters are being played by actors that, as far as I can tell, have only ever had comedic roles in... comedies. John Cho is playing Sulu. He's most well-known as Harold from Harold & Kumar. Comedy. Simon Pegg is playing Scotty. He's best known from Hot Fuzz and Sean of the Dead and most recently starred in Run, Fat Boy, Run. Comedy, comedy, comedy. Anton Yelchin is playing Chekov. He was most recently in Charlie Bartlett. Comedy.

Lastly, there's Karl Urban playing Dr. McCoy. He's not a comedy actor, but he did play "Vaako" in The Chronicles of Riddick, which was inadvertantly hilarious. So, I'm counting him, too. Actually, I'm not, but I think that anyone associated with Riddick shouldn't be allowed to work for at least ten years. It's only been four.

That's not everyone. I don't know anything about the guy playing Kirk or some of the other actors. I like that Zachary Quinto is playing Spock. He plays Sylar on Heroes. He's a good actor. He could do comedy, I'm sure, but he's not known for it.

So, there could be some good things about it. For now I'm suspending my disbelief on continuity and things like that because I don't know anything about the story. I will go see it, but with great reluctance. I just worry that with a producer who, despite his other potentially good work, seems to be ignoring fundemental elements of the franchise, in one hand, and a pair of writers who have, together, undisputedly man-handled another franchise, in the other hand, all we'll be left with, as fans, are two handfulls of mistreated American pop-culture.

At best we'll get something like the Brady Bunch movie. At worst, we'll get Harold and Kumar Save the Galaxy, or better yet: Star Trek Movie (see what I did there?).

Star Trek deserves better.

Find the Contractor: The Game!

So, the story I keep threatening you with is becoming bigger and bigger. I think it's safely moved out of "short story" classification at this point. I'm going to finish it, go through it again and streamline it. I was planning on having all that done by Monday. We'll see. You'll have to forgive me if it's later than that.

The weekend is coming up, and I'm sure some of you will probably go to a bar at some point this week. Here's a game you can play: Find the Contractor.

I don't mean a Blackwater contractor or a Haliburton contractor (though, you can claim bonus points if you actually do find one of them). I'm talking about the re-roof-your-house contractor or the mow-your-lawn contractor or the pour-a-new-patio contractor. Here's what to look for:

• Wearing some sort of worn baseball cap. Possibly backwards. Sometimes with a construction company's logo on it.
• Some sort of facial hair.
• Flannel.
• Some sort of rugged jacket with a hoodie underneath.
• Boots that used to be another color, but are now the color of dried mud.

Now, the level of difficulty for this game depends exclusively on geography. If you're a hipster and you only go to bars that serve twelve dollar martinis, then the odds of finding a contractor are slim... but you get more points if you do find one. If you live in the suburbs, especially if it's a suburb on the edge of civiliazation and rural-ality, then the odds go up and the points go down.

So, this weekend, when you're out and about, try it. It can provide some much needed entertainment when there's a lull in the conversation.

(Brought to you by the makers of "Find the Douschebag.")

It's Called a Web Log

I hate internet shorthand. It drives me crazy. It has to stop.

I got tricked by it when I was young. I discovered the internet back before many of you, I'll wager, even knew what a computer was, and before the rest of you knew how to use one. I got into this shit back when 1200 bits per second was fast (that's 1,200 bits, compared to something like 3 to 10 MILLION bits per second, that today's cable and DSL services can achieve).

So, I've been internetting for a while. Okay. I was young back then. I thought "lol" and the like (didn't see much "omg" back then) were cool. I was known to use a "brb" or a "bbl" or something more often than not. I could write all kinds of jacked up emoticons (making :) look 19th-centuryish). But then, something amazing happened.

I grew up.

If one is older than twelve years old, one should not be mistreating the English language in such a way. Lots of our ancestors went to a lot of trouble to shape our language into something useful. While it was left open to adapt and evolve, I'm pretty sure no one had "wtf" or "n00b" in mind.

I've heard of being young at heart, but for Christ's sake. If you're not twelve, write with a little dignity, please. Some people have said to me, "It's the internet. We don't have to try. We can be lazy here."

WRONG.

It's the English language, whether it's in a book, on the TV, a street sign, a store sign, or the internet. Treat it with respect. It's the only language you've got (this does not apply to those talented over-achievers out there who can speak two or more languages).

That brings me to the two worst culprits of this bastardization of the English language: "podcast," "blog" and all the derivatives therein.

PODCAST
Our first perp, "podcast," is a pretentious offender. It is derived from the ubiquitous iPod that Apple has successfully shoved down our collective throats over the past seven years. The very nature of "podcast" suggests that there are no other mp3 players that have existed or will exist.

That's all a "podcast" is. It's an mp3. You can play it on your computer, you can play it on the thousands of brands of mp3 players (gasp, yes, they do exist) other than Apple's iPod. Some lucky folks out there can even play them in their car without the use of an iPod or any other mp3 player.

I'll spare you how several brands of players out there are actually better than an iPod and how iTunes is the devil. That's another topic for another day. "Podcast" is an arrogant, assumptive title for a piece of media that can be played on many different devices. It's like calling "software" a "computer program" because you can only run it on a computer...

...oh, wait.

BLOG
"Blog" is often seen wreaking havoc in the streets of the English Language, hand-in-hand with "podcast." It's even worse than "podcast," though, because at least "podcast" is a genuine compound word ("pod" and "cast" - both real words). "Blog" is something totally different. A mutated, reject of a word.

No one but the likes of Dr. Frankenstein could take one letter from a real word (weB) and the whole word from, er, another word (log) and create an unholy amalgam of letters that flips off the English language anytime anyone utters it. It's a wonder the villagers haven't hunted it down, yet.

Oh, that's because everyone and their mother writes a blog -- I'm sorry web_log -- these days. Like "podcast," it distracts the general populace from it's blatant raping of English with the cool concept to which it's attached.

The creation of "blog" reminds me of an episode of Star Trek called "The Omega Glory." The people on the planet the Enterprise was visiting had a copy of the Declaration of Independence, but they didn't understand how the letters were grouped together, so they were pronouncing it differently. They came up with "blog." Kirk set 'em straight, though, and I'm going to set you straight, now.

"But, Ipsy," you might say. "You have a blog, you idiot." No, I have a web_log. But, I am an idiot. You might go on to add, "Ipsy, your web_log is hosted by Blogger. You're a hypocrite!" All right, well, you have me there. But, I'd argue that I never have had a problem with the concept of an online journal. Clearly I don't; I'm using one. I went with this site because the few other web_logs I visit seem to be hosted here, too. It was a matter of convenience. Sue me.

What it all boils down to is this: on the Internet, until very recently (thanks, YouTube), all we've had to express our thoughts was the written word. I, for one, like to be taken seriously when expressing my thoughts, unless I distinctly point out otherwise (and I will, a lot; don't worry).

I guess I'm old-fashioned, but I think twelve year old girls should sound like twelve year old girls. Adults should write and express themselves like adults.

Not like twelve year old girls.

THANK You...

Stop Making Movies About My Books

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide, In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside, Gleamed another adapting of...

The Onion sums up what I thought the first time I saw a commercial for Horton. I was wrong, though: Dr. Seuss isn't spinning in his grave; he's about to burst out of the ground and hunt down those who have forsaken him.

I don't feel right leaving you with just that; it's not enough. Here are some other fun places to go:

Excelsior News - I hang out here, with some nice people, to talk about all forms of entertainment.

Fully Ramblomatic - All you need to know is that it's funny.

X-Entertainment - Websites come and go, but this one has been around for what equates to an eternity on the Interweb Tubes. It has inspired me on several occasions.

Okay. I feel better now.

Enjoy.

The Flats Will Rise Again

All right, so, now that we've had our introductions, and I've told you what my favorite music is, let's get down to some business, hm? This site may not be all about Cleveland, but it will certainly be a frequent topic. There are quite a few projects going on, or that are about to get started, in Cleveland. The biggest, and most ambitious of which is The Flats.

The Flats are basically the banks of the Cuyahoga River where it spills into Lake Erie. Moses Cleaveland landed there when surveying the area in 1796. Lorenzo Carter, one of the first settlers, built his home there. During the industrial revolution, it was a hub of manufacturing and shipping, which caused the city to swell with activity.

In the late 1980s, the area became a very popular entertainment district. Bars, resturants and music venues lined both banks of the river. It remained so until about 2000, or so. A series of drowning-deaths and other unfortunate incidents started a domino effect that deterred people from coming there and strangled the establishments along the river, forcing them out of business.

In the eight years since, most of the flats have been a boarded-up ghost town, with the occasional shooting or stabbing to liven things up.

Lots of people still remember how bustling the flats were just a short time ago, including me, though I was a bit too young to really enjoy everything there was to enjoy down there. The problem is, I don't have the money, or the resources, or the skill to do anything about restoring it to what everyone remembers.

Scott Wolstein does, though.

Wolstein is driving a $500 million project to re-vitalize the East Bank of the Flats. Instead of a strip of bars and music venues, though, Wolstein's plan includes a mix of office space, apartments and condos, shops and entertainment. If you're reading this and live in the Cleveland area, the plan seems similar to Legacy Village, in Lyndhurst or Crocker Park, in Westlake. It's supposed to be more family friendly. I think, given that it doesn't rely on just one niche (entertainment, business, or whatever), it has more sustainability than before. Given what happened, before, I'm sure that safety precautions will be taken to ensure that water-accidents don't happen again (in fact, from the concept I saw, it seems that no establishment is actually on the bank -- it's set back quite a ways).

A lot of projects get talked about in Cleveland, but seem to never happen, or take forever and a day (Euclid Corridor, anyone?). This is happening. Groundbreaking is in June. From what I've read, the plan is to have most of the project done (save for a residential building) by late 2010. That's a little over two years from now for you time-challenged folks.

This, combined with other projects that I'll talk about in the coming weeks, are vital to Cleveland. They must happen. Cleveland was such a great city for quite a long time. Except for a brief period in the early-to-mid 90s, suburban sprawl and poor management have all but killed it. I think that this is an important time for Cleveland to re-vitalize it's core Downtown area because (among other things), gas prices are going to get worse before anything gets better (meaning, we cut our addiction to oil), and people are going to want to live and work in the same place so that they don't have to travel as far. That's why I've done it. That's why others will.

The image above shows what will be built on the East Bank site. You can find a larger image here. All of the buildings in white will be finished by 2010. The red buildings in the lower-left corner will be finished some time later.

Here're some places you can go to learn about the Flats and Wolstein's project:

• A brief primer on The Flats.
• Cleveland's Plain Dealer has a great collection of Flats-related news

What do you think? If you live in the area, share your thoughts. If you don't, what does your city do to ensure the vitality of its downtown area? What resources (like a river or lake) can it take advantage of?

Ladies and Gentlemen...

While I'm gearing up to unleash the first story, of many, upon all of you (all of you potentially existing readers, anyway), I thought I'd let someone else entertain you first.

If you like music you should make it a point to go here: http://www.butchwalker.com/

Butch Walker is a great artist, who, simply put, will rock your face off. That's all the description you really need. Would you rather have your face or hear some good music? I think you know the answer. You don't need your face to enjoy music. Just your ears. Soon, Butch Walker will have a legion of faceless fans.

I met him once. It was the first time (of which I was aware) that he came to Cleveland. It was in a side-room at our House of Blues. It was not a big room, so people used words like "intimate" to describe the setting. It was a different kind of concert in that the acts didn't play their entire sets one after the other. They all played a few songs, then let the next act come out, while they played back-up. Hotel Cafe Tour... that's what it was called. It was an awesome show.

Anyway, I was walking to the restroom during the show, and the hallway leading to it just happened to be past the left-hand side of the stage (if you were to face it). As I headed that way, there was a bit of a jam-up near the stage itself and, as I waited to get through, Butch was standing right there. I shook his hand. It was pretty cool.

Butch has and will be releasing all kinds of stuff this year. He released a live double album in February. The cool thing about this is that it's all online. You don't have to go to a music store. There's no record label raping the artist for all they're worth and tossing a few cents-per-album back at them while they're cleaning themselves up. You give money to Butch (or not) and you get a a zip file with twenty-three live tracks of goodness. This is just like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails did last year. This is the beginning of the end for the Music Industry as we know it.

You should be happy about that. Unless you're a record label executive.

So, go to Butch's site. Do the things there to hear his music and stuff. Let me know what you think.

Reluctancy

It begins.

I didn't think I should do this, at first. Most people I've encountered, who have a web_log, shouldn't have one. I thought I was one of those people. I don't have a band. I'm not an actor. I'm not running for office. Who the fuck cares what I have to say about stuff, and junk?

Good question.

This is an experiment. I'm going to talk about some things. I think Cleveland is in the beginning stages of turning itself around. I want to share that with people (and maybe, together, we can make sure it happens). I will share things that I think are funny. I will share things that piss me off.

Basically, I'm going to do whatever I want.

Mostly, though, I will try to unleash stories upon you. I like to write and I haven't done enough of it for a very long time. So, I will write for you. I want to entertain you. You can tear my work to pieces, or tell me how much you love it. Just do one thing: tell me why. If it sucks, tell me why. If it's awesome, tell me why. I want to learn and grow and become better.

There's really no other purpose for this site but to entertain you. That makes me happy. I don't want money. I don't want my fifteen minutes. I just want to make someone laugh every once in a while.

So, here's something to set the tone:

Shredder's feeling a little queasy about this.

Time will tell, Chrome Dome. Time will tell.