Seven Twenty Four Sixty
This would have been my late husband’s 53’rd birthday. I’m going to gather up some of the things I know about just him -separate from me- so this will always be a place to remember his character and quirks.
He was a sports lover who was medically barred from doing sports. Baseball was his first love, so he became the statistician for a church team as soon as he was able. The television was held hostage, spring through fall, to nightime and weekend baseball. I got caught up on my reading. He needed his baseball fix so much that when we traveled to Canada he had a small radio with him that was able to catch the WERE signal bouncing off both lakes Erie and Ontario nine hours to the south…so he still caught his games. He was a real Browns fan…and a dedicated indoor soccer fan when the Force was in Richfield, OH. They had a moment of silence for him at a game after he died. I thought it a bit ironic since he was never um, silent, at a Force game.
He collected baseball cards. Not as much as comics but a significant amount. He wasn’t in it for the special or the valuable, he was in it for the records and roster of his team (The Indians) and a team he and his sister hated (The Yankees).
He worked with Tony Isabella at Cosmic Comics in the 1970’s for a short time.
My husband had both a temper and an “I’mright” complex some of the time and this caused enough of a rift there at Cosmic that he was asked not to work there again, but the friendship did continue. He referred to John Byrne, DC comic writer as “Ego,the living planet.” I’d hate to think what he’d call Peter David. (and I *like* Peter David’s work!)
When I first knew him in 1976-77 the spare bedroom in his home was filled to the ceiling with his comic collection. This also included his homegrown mimeoed “Sun Comics,” that included the adventures of “Mr. Zip.”
He seemed to have three types of comics.
1. “I gotta read this!” current new collections that he bought simply to read and then they eventually became :
2. “I gotta make space,” boxes and boxes he would sell and eventually undersell at local comic stores, at conventions from reserved tables and even out of the trunk of his car.
3. “The collection: While this could be fluid as well, these were DC singles and series mostly Silver Age, or current (I’m talking late eighties here) that had some value and/or personal significance. It only grew, for a long while, and then when he hit college he began to strategically sell it off…it did help pay for a significant amount of his undergraduate and graduate education. These would be the books sold only at conventions, with attention paid to price guides and competitors tables, and barter, barter, barter, haggle, negotiate etc. That was one of the things he almost had down to an art form…knowing when the negotiation should end to get the price he was willing to take…the skill served him well at his “day job” at a campus bookstore. People would come in looking for printer paper and leave with that, plus disks plus ink, plus etc, etc, etc.
He loved science fiction films and movies but never got into reading what I snidely called “real books.” We met on the compromise ground of graphic novels. I still wish I’d kept those late eighties “Green Arrow” series. I also introduced him to the coolness that is a John Williams film score. He loved them all. We also had a weekly must, and met on the couch to watch the various incarnations of Star Trek. He would have loved the new films.
Musically, he stepped away from the evangelical prohibition against rock. He loved Yes, Rush, Genesis…as well as Clapton…and when anyone from church would raise eyebrows and question his faith because well, there were comics and rock and roll in the house and Those Were Bad… He shrugged it off.
He saved the hardcover reading for his schooling and it paid off. He had a quick mind and a quicker typing speed. When he went into the ministry he embraced becoming a theological nerd because it asked the same devotion to timeline and character development needed by the true comic fan.
He’d been taught cooking by his mother when she grew tired of waiting dinner on him when he came home late. It was simple food, but a real relief to come home and have something made already. Now, if he’d only been as well versed in kitchen cleanup… 🙂
Space and the stars, too. Watching them on a summer night in the backyard. Learning their names. Studying those ships and trips to the moon. The good side of a sense of childlike wonder about such things.
And he laughed a lot. To help him deal with what he had to deal with.
That’s who he was, in large part.
So now, there’s a place on the net with his birthday on it, that will tell who he was long after I’m gone.
Happy Birthday, dude.
Is Glen Beck an American Citizen?
Or, was he born offplanet?
He’s persona non grata at the
Vulcan Embassy — banned for emotional outbursts.
Both the Romulans and the Cardassians kicked him out of their secret police, because propaganda and coup d’etats etc, they are something you don’t see coming and Glen is too obvious.
The Borg spit him out of the collective. Too oogy to assimilate.
The Federation didn’t want him, because he was always going around to primitive planets, flouting the Prime Directive by selling The Plan to any old body who would pay for it.
And the Klingons have a hit out on him because he called the leader of the High Council a fascist progressive communist socialist…
New Trek A Love Letter (One small partial spoiler)
I have only one nit to pick, so I’ll do that first….for 99% of the film none of the older musical scores were referenced or used in their entirety.
Reasons I love this:
The writing got almost everyone nailed (McCoy occasionally skated perilously close to parody, and even that was lovable…. and when he wasn’t doing that he was amazing.)
I completely bought into: Chris Pine’s Kirk, (Kirk in particular was marvelous…stripped away of the parody that he got made into, he resonated with such original series episodes as “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and “Balance of Terror.”), Bruce Greenwood’s Pike, Sulu and Uhura.
Zachary Quinto’s Spock took a bit longer, because from the trailers he was clearly “outside” the level of emotional control we’d seen from Nimoy’s Spock in the original, except under alien influence or, well once every seven years.
But the movie has a reason for a less controlled Spock, and a compelling one, which I bought wholeheartedly.
There was plenty of homage to the original, and many Trekker’s might say too much.
(It was fine for me. I’ll take beloved lines and attitudes and riffs whenever they come.)
Unlike “The Motionless Picture,” (the first ever Trek Film) you didn’t waste 15 minutes of film staring up at the FX of the movie sized Enterprise…
But she was a brilliant piece of starship, as I’ve noted prior (and that was the first time I teared up a bit.)
One liners referenced both the original series, and, indirectly the animated series of the seventies, with an elementary school age Spock being tormented by his classmates. as well as the last primetime spinoff “Enterprise.” The villain felt like “Nemesis,” the last film before this, in the design and colors of his ship.
Nimoy as elder Spock…a graceful turn firmly in continuity with the nuanced character he’s given us before… as per usual for him. (Yeah I cried.)
There have been some changes though, that I can’t recount without spoiling things.
Non-fans and fans alike: Tempus Fugit. Quick. Go see this film.
The word is given. Warp speed.
Midlife And Treachery 
