Tag: picard

Panic Level: Rising

I HAVE A GIG IN EIGHT DAYS!!!!  SWEET CHRISTMAS, I HAVE A GIG IN EIGHT DAYS!!!!

IAmNotReadyIAmNotReadyIAmNotReadyIAmNotReadyIAmNotReadyIAmNotReady

Here’s a bit of symbolism to demonstrate how I feel right now:

Yesterday I ordered some packs of guitar strings from Amazon.  I also ordered a little musician’s exercise tool.  It’s kind of like one of those things that you squeeze with your hand but instead of squeezing one thing you have four, one for each finger.  I was planning to spend the last week or so before the gig working out like a mad man in the hopes of not having the same problems I had back in November.

When I placed the order the estimated delivery date was 1/27.  When the order was processed the delivery date was changed to between 1/27 and 2/3… two days after the gig.  Yup, that sums up my current state perfectly.

Now that I’ve vented about that, let’s get back to Picard.  I found out this morning that there are a couple of prequel sort of things out there.  Tie in’s might be a better term.  The first is a three issue comic series called Star Trek Picard – Countdown.  I started my lunch break by reading it… well, reading 2/3 of it because issue #3 doesn’t come out until next week.  Admiral Picard, Romulans, and a predicted super nova.  Enough said.

There is another tie in too.  On CBS All Access there is a series called Star Trek Short Treks (I think… that’s the name, isn’t it?).  I was looking at it yesterday but I didn’t watch any of them.  Turns out the most recent episode, titled Children of Mars (again, I think) is somehow related to the new series.  It’s 8-9 minutes long so I watched that too.  Two school aged girls, both of whose parents work on Mars, are having a really crappy day at school and they really don’t like each other.  No spoilers, but it telegraphs the ending pretty clearly and it still hit Mr Overly Emotional in the feels.  I should also state that this clip proves that Peter Gabriel is literally timeless.  David Bowie too, but mostly Peter Gabriel.  If I were the director I probably would have passed on Gabriel’s cover of Bowie’s Heroes in favor of Genesis’ Return of the Giant Hogweed, but that’s just me.  Heroes made more sense in terms of the story but it doesn’t have an awesome riff like Hogweed does.  Again, just me.

Speaking of Genesis, apparently Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, and Phil Collins were seen together at a NY Knicks game the other day.  80’s Genesis reunion confirmed?  What else could it mean?  I’m sure Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett were around too.  Were the Islanders playing that night?  Maybe they were there instead?  I’m sure we can count on a full reunion any day now.  The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway rides again?

Damn… I need to practice.

Picard Part III

This is the bummer part of the story.  Play some really sad music while you read this one, okay?

Harry just came home from work.  He had a Calculus mid-term and a Spanish mid-term and then he worked a full shift at the restaurant.  The man is beat.  He just wants to watch a Disney cartoon or two and then pass out from exhaustion.

Which means we’re not watching Picard tonight.

(Robert wipes away a tear)

Even worse… this weekend is a dad weekend, not a mom weekend.  That means I’ll see him when he wakes up tomorrow, but we won’t get to hang out again until Wednesday.

Wednesday.

(Robert wipes away a second, larger tear)

That means he’ll watch episode one with dad, and I’ll watch episode one tomorrow night while I’m at my mother’s house, nana-sitting.

(Robert is full blown balling his eyes out now.  Turn up the volume on the sad song)

It’s okay though.  We’ll watch episode two together next week.  I’ll just hold on to that.  I was looking forward to watching the new show with him.  We only got a couple of Mandalorians together, but I was hoping for a little more shared experience with Captain Picard.

We’ll always have episode two… I hope.

Picard is Here

Plot a course for my living room TV, maximum warp.  Engage.

I was up pretty early today, hours before I needed to punch in to work.  The first episode of Picard is out, and we actually have access to it.  I had the time and the means to watch the whole episode but I couldn’t do it.  My step son and I were talking about it last night.  He’s not that much of a Star Trek TNG fan, but he was definitely interested in the new show.  I said we’d watch it together.  That means I either had to drag him out of bed at a shockingly early hour on a day where he has two brutal mid-term exams, or I have to wait until tonight when he comes home.

Oh the waiting is killing me!

Jen and I watched some clips of Sir Patrick on a talk show and… well… he’s really old now.  He’s 79.  I have to admit that when I first saw him play Jean Luc Picard back in 1987 I thought he was old.  Captain Kirk was my Star Trek reference, and here is this middle aged bald dude… he’s just too old!  Well, Sir Patrick was 46 years old when TNG debuted… and that’s two years younger than I am today.  Damn it.

Anyway, he was on this talk show and he looked every second of his 79 years.  It kind of scared me.  They are already talking about a second season.  Is he going to be able to keep doing it?  (this next sentence is definitely colored by the passing of Neil Peart) Is he going to be alive a year from now?  It gave me this totally irrational need… if we are going to lose Sir Patrick, I have to make sure I see every episode of this new show before he goes.  That makes ZERO sense, but what can you do, right?

Step One: The clock needs to hit 5:30 so I can punch out.
Step Two: Harry needs to get himself home!

Make it so!

Two Instances of Hypocrisy

I’m a hypocrite.  It’s official.  Pull up a chair and I’ll bore you to tears with two stories of hypocritical hypocrisy.

First: When CBS released it’s streaming service I said no.  No way.  Even as a lifelong Star Trek fanatic I couldn’t do it.  I waited until the first season of Discovery came to iTunes and I watched it there.  I did the same thing with season two.  In fact, I just watched season two, episode four while eating my dinner tonight.

But… Picard.  How can I possibly live in a world where there is a Star Trek TV series about Jean Luc Picard without actually seeing it the second it comes out?  I can’t do it, I just can’t do it.  I promised myself I wouldn’t watch the trailer because it would make me want to subscribe.  It didn’t work.  I subscribed and then watched the trailer.  Hypocrite.  Hypocrisy to the max.

Second: I posted something not long ago about how the number of visitors to this page had doubled when I started posting every day (1×2=2).  I said I didn’t really care if anyone visited the page at all because that’s not why I do this.  I do this to yell at the universe.  It’s not Facebook, I’m here with the expectation that no one is paying attention and I like it that way.

Then last week I read a post on reddit where a user in the blogging subreddit mentioned that their traffic increased by a factor of 10 after they started employing some simple SEO techniques.  They started tagging everything and using categories, things like that.  Blah, said I.  I bet if I did the same thing it wouldn’t change anything.  For the last couple of weeks I’ve been tagging the crap out of stuff and I started using categories again for the first time in ages.

Well… ummmm… traffic hasn’t increased by a factor of 10, but it sure has increased.  Ummm… woops.  Hello to all you new folks who have stumbled on my hypocritically hypocritical stupidity.  Thanks for stopping by.  Donald Trump is a fascist… anyone still left?  Okay.

I like interacting with people on Facebook.  I kinda like interacting with people on Twitter, but I usually don’t.  My twitter is about 1/4 bitching about that fascist, Trump, 3/4 links back to this page, and a few random Bruins and Red Sox posts for flavor.  Tumblr… hehe, just kidding.  This page isn’t for anything like that though.  This is a blathering idiot blathering.  If you’re cool with that, fine.  I’m thinking about looking into turning off comments because 99% of them are spam and the wordpress.com spam blocker catches them all.

Whatever.  Get off my lawn, you nasty kids!  The hypocrite is hypocriting, or something.

Addendum: Good at hypocrisy, bad at SEO.  After all that I forgot to add tags to this post.  You can’t see me laughing at my own dumb ass self, but trust that I am.  Also, I think I need to add a television category.  Should I go through the previous 11,555 post (that number is actually accurate) and search for references to television so that I can add them to the category?  No.  The answer to that is a solid, hard, definite no.