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In Shakespeare, Theater on June 19, 2009 at 5:28 pm

Along with The Tempest, King Lear is probably one of my two favorite Shakespeare plays. I remember, very clearly, the process of reading it for the first time.

It was my birthday, my eighteenth birthday, and I couldn’t sleep. I looked up at the clock and saw that it was three in the morning, but no part of the mechanisms of sleep complied with that. I knew that I would miss three hours of rest, that I would be a unslept and groggy on my first day of legal adulthood, so I figured that I might as well do something productive with my time. I got out King Lear, which I needed to read for English later that week. I read the whole thing before my first class started, pretty much unable to put it down. I found it surprising. It was so very, very dark that I was inescapably captivated by it. It’s a play with storms, insanity, torture and death aplenty, and I couldn’t put it down, even though I found myself getting more bummed out as I continued to read it.

The morning of my eighteenth birthday, King Lear depressed the hell out of me. Reading it for the very first time with no idea of what happened at the end gave me this feeling of “Oh god, there is nothing positive about the world.” So of course it’s become one of my favorite bits of literature ever, and I jumped at the chance to see it on Thursday in Cathedral Park.

When one thinks of the phrase “Shakespeare in the park,” one often imagines fumbled lines, missed cues, and the inarticulate trampling of iambic petameter. I showed up fully expecting the production to be very “okay” and was surprised to see that the Portland Actors Ensemble did a terrific job. In face, the “in the park” aspect of it was one of the best things about the production. The outdoor venue and public space were a serious asset for the whole thing, rather than a liability.

Take a look at that picture of the underside of the St. John’s Bridge there. You like big, creepy gothic stuff? I know I do. Well, how do you like them arches? Now imagine some old dude screaming up up at those neo-gothic arches and shouting “And thou, all-shaking thunder, smite flat the thick rotundity ‘o the world!” Get the picture? Pretty fucking sweet, huh? Even better than that, it was actually raining. Not as much as it really could have been- not enough for Lear to have a full-blown storm to rage at, but it was a nice addition, nonetheless.

It was also neat to see the actors entering and exiting from all directions. Yes, I know that having actors climb through the fourth wall is something that’s been around for quite some time, but when done right it’s still highly cool. More than having entrances and exits via the stairwell that ran through the audience, though (there it is in the picture) was that after the intermission the doorway in the arch was taken down and one could see the actors striding toward the center of the stage, sihouetted in the archway before they made their entrances. Having Edmund in shadows in the background while Glouster wailed up at the sky behind his bloody eyemask was really, really fucking cool.

By the end of the play I’d totally forgotten that I was at a free performance. No, scratch that. I hadn’t forgotten that I was at a free performance. Rather, the DIY-ness of it all just increased my enjoyment of it. They were using a public space instead of a set, fairly cheap costumes, there was ambient noise from the bridge and the street, everyone was getting rained on, and that made it all better. This wasn’t art inside some hermetic space or presented in some sort of pristine matter. The messiness of the situation granted it a certain kind of authenticity. That’s what it had- authenticity. That’s what I want, what so many people of my age and type want. Something stripped of artifice and slickness, or at least something that is conscious of such. Moreover, lack of artifice should be supplanted with a certain unfeigned enthusiasm, a truthfulness and security in one’s actions and creations, an unsentimental sincerity that seems to pervade the DIY aesthetic. Lear in the park certainly had that.

I had a blast, and am certainly planning on seeing their next performance, Henry IV Part One. Also, I rented Ran, Kurosawa’s film based on Lear. Totally epic, and the subject of a future post.

Gayest Post EVER!

In Politics, Portland, Sex on June 16, 2009 at 5:59 pm

Puttering around Sunday morning, I thought to myself, “Well, I could sit on my ass and listen to economics podcasts, or I could go snap pictures of crazy shit at the gay pride parade.” I like to think that in my own internal brain-battles, I tend to err on the side of “crazy shit.” I pried my eyes and ears loose from the internet, took a shower and hopped on my bike. I found myself behind a rather butch array of women on mountain bikes and thought “Yep, I’m going in the right direction.” Downtown was overcast but not dreary, warm but not sweat-inducing. All in all, a good day for it.

I found myself near the start of the Parade in Portland’s nicely green South Park Blocks. A brass band was playing a song I vaguely recognized but couldn’t really place. Once it got to the chorus I recognized it as Dancing Queen, and smirked with recognition. The crowd and participants did not disappoint. Sure, most of the people were just holding signs and waving and such, but there was no shortage of weird costumes makeup. The gentlemen below were not extras from Amadeus, but rather on a float promoting affordable housing.

This guy was waving around a sword and shouting “God save the queen!” a lot. I have no idea what he meant by that, but the atmosphere was only improved by having a Don Quixote show up. He was waving that sword around quite enthusiastically, and I wished that I could have directed him to an obliging windmill.

Inevitable political digression: There were plenty of people (like the folks below) who were parading about their own unrelated political agendas at the parade. I can understand why they’d do this- the liberal, open-minded population of Portland was out in force, and they wanted to both energize the base and target a demographic that would be more inclined to agree with them.

I found their presence, though, to be a little weird. The whole atmosphere of the parade was one of joy and liberty. Even though I’m not gay, I do appreciate what the gay movement has done for everyone. Because of lots of really dedicated people demanding respect, the field of what is sexually “legitimate” has been expanded for all of us. Even though there’s still a lot of work to be done with regards to reformatting the stupid bits of American culture, there was a general atmosphere of celebration and achievement. A lot has changed for the better, and we should really be happy about that. Oregon used to have a governor who was an out-and-proud member of the KKK. Now, Portland has a mayor who’s an out-and-proud gay dude. That’s real progress.

Hearing familiar angry shouts about how we need a revolution or whatever clashed with that feeling. I suppose the right has it’s own contingent who love being victims as well. In the midst of party-town were a bunch of people whom I think secretly love being “oppressed.”

But enough about the angry socialists. Check out this dude’s nipples!

Gyration!

Other, different nipples!

Zombies!

I found this group especially endearing, actually. It was gay parents and their kids, and for whatever reason, they’d decided to dress up as monsters. I like the idea that whatever someone’s aesthetic is, it’s welcome and legitimate. Whatever sort of style you’ve got (in this case “zombie”) is a potential catalyst for niftiness. This might sound trite, but I like aesthetic and stylistic pluralism. Seriously! Hooray for multitudes! Hooray for the varied panoply of people and stuff! Woo!

And of course, hooray for mostly naked chicks. Yes, most of them would want absolutely nothing to do with me or my filthy, filthy testosterone (unless some of them had unladylike anatomy that was not on display) but I found them visually appreciative nonetheless. Also, a rather tall drag queen told me that I was “beautiful.” I said, “Thank you, so are you!” I’ll take praise from all quarters.

All in all, a lot of fun, and quite the display of awesomeness and drove home my admiration of Portland. Since I’ve been back, I’ve really come to appreciate this place, more than I was ever able to in high school, when I last lived here. I know that there are lots of other fun, liberal cities, but this one is mine. This place, this effusive and varied place, is my home. The next time I leave it will probably be for good, but in the meantime I’m immensely happy to find that my geographical parent is more awesome than I could have ever hoped for.

King Abdullah Has A Posse

In Politics on June 12, 2009 at 10:12 pm

As much as teaching in Japan challenged me, there were two pretty fundamental areas where me, my students, and Japanese coworkers pretty much agreed about the basics of things: politics and religion. Yes, yes, I know that you’re probably thinking “WTF, Joe?” at such a statement, but I’m talking about the very basics here. We all believed that democracy was pretty good, that having elections and whatnot was a desirable form of governance. On the front of religion, we shared various shades of nonparticipation.

So, it’s been quite different teaching students from Saudi Arabia.

I’ve got to admit that, on paper, I’m not Saudi Arabia’s biggest fan. In fact, I think it is something of a disgrace to the modern world. The fact that we still have a religious monarchy on the face of the earth would be mind-boggling in and of itself, but that coupled with the country’s atrocious human rights record makes Saudi Arabia’s existence truly staggering. This is the future, after all. Why the hell is there still a country where women can’t drive and beer is illegal?

(Okay, I know the answer is some form of the resource curse, but it’s still weird.)

Anyway, I’ve got a bunch of Saudi students in my class now, and it’s been a fairly enlightening experience. This kids (and they are kids- around college age) are extraordinarily bright, and are from fairly well-to-do (and I’m guessing more liberal) families. They’re well-travelled, and a joy to have in class. However, I do find it a little weird that they don’t drink, and are filled with all kinds of effusive praise for King Abdullah.

As much as I like Obama, I still think that, on principle, his words and actions should be highly scrutinized, and I worry about the cult of personality that he seems to have. My skepticism regarding heads of state, though, is not shared by my Saudi students, who have nothing but good things to say about their king. King! A guy who actually got his job as a ruler because of the accident of his birth. They absolutely love the guy, and whenever they talk about him I listen for little rustles of dissent. I haven’t heard any yet. They are, though, in my class because of a scholarship set up by His Majesty, so that might explain part of it.

I’m not waving about the firebrand of demoncracy in my classroom. That’s not my job, and I wouldn’t have the interest or energy to do so, anyway. I find it all to be fascinating, though. My Asian and European students are more than happy to complain about their governments and specific politicians in familiar ways. The current PM of Korea has a grand total of zero fans in my classroom.

So the most-loved world leader that I get to hear about is an absolute monarch who doesn’t allow critics of his country to travel there. They love the guy. I’m not saying that it’s good or bad, just really danged interesting, and hearing about it is a nice occupational perk.

Wait… Those Aren’t Dead Yet?

In Conundrums on June 7, 2009 at 1:13 pm

It’s the start of summer, and I’ve seen and heard ice cream trucks lumbering around Portland. This might sound strange, but I can’t shake the feeling that they really should be obsolete by now.

I do not have a coherent reason why this should be, but some gut part of me seems to think that ice cream trucks really should have gone the way of, say, milk delivery and personal letters. Their presence seems to have this unshakable quaintness about them, as well as this aura of imminent obsolescence. Whenever I see one I think, “How much longer? How long is this business model going to be tenable before it collapses? Surely driving around in a truck and selling cold treats will become a thing of the past eventually.”

I suppose I find it odd because it is so irredeemably analog. The business model is basically “Let’s physically enter urban areas, announce our presence, and see if people want to buy our stuff.” There’s not much in the way of sophisticated marketing there, nor is there a way that consumers can shield themselves from the advertising. I’m so used to seeing ads on the internet that target particular sites I like or stuff on Facebook that’s tailored to my interest that hearing marketing (i.e., ice cream truck music) that’s targeted at literally everybody seems sort of weird. Moreover, I’m quite used to blocking popups, deleting spam, and ignoring banner ads. I gloss over lots and lots of marketing every day, so it’s sort of odd to hear something that is so unavoidable and, by extension, retro.

I’m sort of alarmed by this expectation, too, though. I guess it’s good to be able to accept change and such, but I also just sort of expect institutions and things to die, be replaced, or be upgraded. I find myself having bought in to the idea of planned obsolescence, anticipating additional shininess and often wondering how long something or other will last. I’ve often wondered what will kill Facebook, for instance, and I wonder what we’ll use instead of Google in twenty years. As nice as it is to be able to speculate, there’s a certain amount of morbidity to this mindset. Instead of thinking “hey, it’s hot… oh look, ice cream!” I think “Wait.. those aren’t dead yet?” That’s probably not the most fair attitude to have towards venerable institutions, ice cream trucks or otherwise. I can hear one right now, as non-dead as ever.

China! (Possibly, Maybe)

In Jobs, Travel on June 2, 2009 at 9:33 pm

Even though I didn’t get the Foreign Service job, I’m still planning on living abroad again, and eventually working for either the government or a political organization. One of the best ways to get one’s foot in the door with that is joining the Peace Corps, and yesterday I was nominated for a position in China.

The recruiter told that things may change, and that this was all tentative. However, because of my experience as an English teacher, she said that she’d rather not send me to an ordinary English teaching position. Instead, the Peace Corps wants me to join their teacher training program, wherein I’d be teaching future English teachers both advanced English, and how to run a class. Most of these positions are in China, but the program has other locations in Asia as well.

I’m thrilled with this, and very much hope that circumstances allow me to go to China. I quite enjoyed it the last time I was there, and would very much like to learn a bit of Mandarin. What I find especially amusing, though, is that if this whole thing plays out, I’ll be in a situation already described by two of my favorite books.

River Town Peter Hessler is a memoir by a former Peace Corps volunteer about being in a teacher training program in China. The book and its sequel Oracle Bones are both excellent. I would not say that the books encouraged me to apply for the Peace Corps (those seeds were planted long ago) but they certainly made me want to travel and write more. I can’t recommend them enough.

So, I’m on track to do precisely what one of my favorite authors has already done, which is sort of cool/weird. It would be like joining the army and having the exact same assignments as Hemingway or something.

In any case, I’m thrilled to not only have been nominated for a position at all, but also for one that demands a certain amount of experience and expertese. Plenty of people whom I’ve talked to about the Peace Corps have said that there is a certain “hippy” factor to a lot of the volunteers, and the recruiter made it very clear that this program would be an actual, regular job. No chance to hippy around, though she did not say so in so many words. I couldn’t be happier about it. Of all of the positions that I could have been offered or nominated for, this would have been in my top five. I’ve still got to get poked and prodded by medical examiners, wade through tons of paperwork, and do a bunch of other stuff. But, I’m definitely leaving again, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

In Which I Go Camping Whilst Wearing Funny Clothes

In History on May 28, 2009 at 7:19 am

“Come to mass!” said the scantily-clad man with a drum, “stripping nuns!” He left it at that, running away to spread the word to other campsites. I was sitting below a fair amount of archaic ship’s rigging when I heard this, wearing a frilly shirt and a sash about my waist. A friend of mine, also dressed as a pirate, said “sounds interesting.” We decided that stripping nuns could make for an amusing evening.

For years in Eugene, I knew several people involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism, the historical reenactment group wherein people go camping whilst dressed as people from the late Middle Ages or Renaissance. Because of my work schedule I never went to an event, and it was only until this past Memorial Day weekend, years later, that I finally was able to join some of my Eugene friends in their camp that was set up, rather impressively, to look like an old ship.

“It’s basically camping,” said most people, “but with funny clothes.” That much was true. For much of the event, we did normal camping-type activities, but dressed in historical costumes. After a bit, my self-consciousness about my appearance left, and I just took in the experience of it all- the experience of being surrounded by people in sashes, tunics, bustiers, boots, and an assortment of impressive hats. Tents were set up with flags and banners announcing the names of the households and such, and a the guy who went around collecting the trash bags in a wagon shouted “bring out your dead!” as he made his rounds.

In the center of the campground was a merchant’s pavilion with a variety of vendors selling mostly clothing. There was the normal kind of silvery jewelry that you would expect to find from street vendors, a very large tent selling historical garb, a guy selling swords and other implements of destruction, belly dancing supplies, pirate-themed flags, pottery, and stickers that you could put on your car that said things like “I believe in dragons” and such. Celtic knots and pirate flags were everywhere, and in the center of it all, several people were fencing.

Having fenced in college, this was really the most impressive bit for me. I spent most of my time as a sword groupie, watching lots of rather impressively armed dudes stabbing each other. It’s been a while since I did any kind of martial art or sparred with anyone, so watching the simulated violence very much made me want to pile on a bunch of gear and stab someone. If I go to one of these things again, I’m hoping to con someone into loaning me a spare set of stuff so that I can I fence.

This fencing, though, was very different from what I was used to. At the U of O, my instructor was very much a classical foil fencer, and we spent most of our time with the standard French foil. This stuff, though, was much less formalized. For one thing, it was in the round rather than on a line, and most of the fencers held something in their off hand, be it a dagger, additional sword, or buckler. About the only person I saw who didn’t have a parrying tool was my friend, the self-styled “Captain” of our ship camp. He just had a foil, which is probably how I’d fight.

Anyway, I want do something combative again in the near future. On a totally unrelated note, an acquaintance of mine who was a former amateur wrestler showed me a rather amusing throw the other day, and that was fun.

Oh yeah! Stripping nuns! See, I opened with that bit because it was catchy and such, what with the “stripping” and all.

Quite some time after dark me and few friends made our way to campsite set up by a “religious” group. When we got there, a guy dressed up as a cardinal was exhorting the crowd from a pulpit, while several dudes in miters looked on. Someone had a rather dramatic ram’s skull on a staff, and it loomed over the crowd in nicely spooky/ironic way.

“I think there’s a fifty/fifty chance,” said one of my friends, “that the stripping nun is a dude in drag.”

“I think it’s greater than that,” I said, “an ordinary strip show wouldn’t be weird enough.”

The cardinal got the crowd good and worked up with a comedy routine, and soon enough he announced the coming of the stripping nun. Sure enough, it was a rather sizable (but spry) dude removing bits of a nun costume to reveal rather un-nunlike lingerie beneath. Of course the crowd went wild. It’s a simple formula, really. It goes like this:

Sex + The Catholic Church + Homoeroticism = Pure Comedy Gold

After the stripping nun, a guy dressed up as cardinal/pimp did a comedic sermon, and later on there were songs with filthy lyrics. All in all, a good, bawdy time at the expense of one of the world’s most prominent religions.

So, I quite liked my first experience dressing in historical garb. It seems to be the sort of thing that attracts the sort of quirky, odd, creative people that I like to associate with. It may very well also attract socially dysfunctional mouth-breathers as per stereotype, but on the whole I enjoyed myself. Most of it seems to have a “Hey guys, look what I did!” sort of feel, with people showing off their garb/artwork/martial prowess/crafts/performance skills/general oddness.

Quite nifty, all of it. Ridiculous, yes, but also awesome, which is no contradiction, as far as I’m concerned.

A Minor Setback

In Jobs on May 26, 2009 at 3:27 pm

Very few people who apply for the U.S. Foreign Service get job offers. About 2% of all applicants get offered jobs. I knew this going into the process, so I was not surprised earlier today when I got a letter informing me that, because of my experience, I will not be offered an interview in Washington, D.C.

Given that 80% of the people who take the Foreign Service Exam fail, I can’t exactly call this a blow to the ego. I passed the intellectual part of the application just fine. After that, came the biographical vetting. I knew that I was competing with people who law and master’s degrees and people who have lived abroad more than me, so I’m not exactly surprised. Still, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t upset at least a little. I am still proud that I passed the initial test, though, and will probably reapply after I have more experience under my belt.

At present, my Peace Corps application is doing fine. I don’t doubt that they will take me, given my experience abroad and as a teacher. I was offered a Peace Corps interview very quickly after my initial application, and it went well. I’m still going abroad long-term again, but I on a fallback plan.

Not that I have any room to bitch. I applied for a very, very privileged and elite position, and I’m still on track to accomplish my long-term goals. I have no regrets whatsoever about applying. Passing the Foreign Service Exam was a tremendous affirmation, and I’m not going to waste energy on regret. Peace Corps, here I come.

Back To School!

In Jobs on May 20, 2009 at 4:32 pm

I’m a teacher again. Specifically, I’m teaching ESL in Portland for Kaplan, the test prep company. After quite some time casting about for jobs, temping, and in general looming about and hoping that I’d win the Employment Lottery in the midst of a recession, I’m doing the same sort of thing that I used to do one ocean away. I’m quite pleased with this, really. Not only is it nice being employed, but I’ll cop to the fact that I’m really happy that I have an ego-affirming brain-based job that caters to very smart people. I don’t consider myself too good to wait tables, but it’s very nice to get paid because I have a big, squishy brain.

So far, the job is quite different from what I did at GEOS, which is nice, because towards the end of my stay in Japan GEOS was getting under my skin in lots of really irritating ways. As much as I liked (most of) my students, the company itself was less than inspiring. Kaplan itself is a subsidiary of the Washington Post, and so far my distant corporate masters seem pretty benign. It’s the arrangement of the school itself, though, that I’m quite liking.

For one thing, my students now come from a variety of backgrounds. Most of them are from Saudi Arabia or Korea, and if they want to talk to each other, they have to use English. I quite like this built-in incentive in the class, though clumps of like nationalities do tend to sit together, something I’ve tried to break up when I have them do group work.

That’s something else I like. There are a lot of them, and I can run large-scale class activities. Previously, I had between three to five students in a class most of the time, and while that setup has its advantages, the change is nice.

So far, though, the thing that I’m most pleased with the fact that I have the same students every single day, for three hours at a time. I did like the variety at GEOS, teaching different students throughout the week, but I often wondered what I could do as teacher if I had the same students more often. Now I have an opportunity to find out. Running a large class for three hours a day is quite different than running weekly hour-long sessions. The students themselves seem like a good lot, mostly university aged students. They’re all quite bright and creative, which makes things easier on my end. A few of them have rather fiendish imaginations that show up in their creative writing assignments.

This is all very nice for me, really. I had an interview with the Peace Corps (Plan B) a few weeks ago, and was told that if they take me (which they probably will) I’d most likely get put in a teaching position, barring some sort of unforseen torrent of English teachers into the program. I’m angling to get the Peace Corps to send me to China, and given that that’s where most of the English Teaching jobs are, that’s not an impossibility.

If I get invited to an Oral Assesment with the Foreign Service (Plan A) it definitely wouldn’t hurt to be able to say, “Well, yes, I just so happen to spend quite a lot of time talking to foreigners on a regular basis. It’s kind of my thing.” I’m hoping that a State Department functionary will perhaps raise their eyebrow in approval at this, or at least give a “hmm” of mild interest.

So, things are great for the time being. I have a nice place, a job, plans for the future, and have been satisfied with my recent creative pursuits. I could get used to this.

Dear Various Ex-Students of Mine: You Were Totally Right About Tipping

In Rants on May 17, 2009 at 12:27 pm

Back in Japan, I often tried to explain the idea of tipping to my students. They didn’t seem to get it. They thought it was weird to pay for a product/service twice, essentially, and wondered why the process wasn’t streamlined into a single payment. Tipping, they said, seemed stupid.

I’ve come to agree with them.

I initially defended the practice, trying to find justifications for it, but after comparing three months here versus over two years in Japan, I’ve come to realize that the Japanese (and several Europeans) are right: tipping is stupid. Everything should just be at a set rate and servers should be provided a living wage for what they do. Abolishing tipping might drive up the prices of goods and services, but if we’re all paying the same relative amount to a given sector as we are already, it really shouldn’t matter. It’ll just make things easier. I can’t really formulate a defensible argument for tips anymore. After living with such comparative efficiency, they seem clunky and archaic.

My Japanese students were right all along, and the U.S. should really abandon tipping. And, while we’re reformatting the culture in general, we really ought to implement the metric system as well. Also, I want a pony.

Addendum: This is not to say that I myself will not tip. I will. Service personnel are exempted from minimum wage laws, and when they are taxed tips are included as income. For that reason, I will continue to do so. I would rather, though, that prices were a bit higher, and service people were paid sufficiently.

A Seriously Geeky Post About Star Trek

In Movies, Science Fiction, Television on May 16, 2009 at 8:09 am

I saw the new Star Trek movie this week, and I thought that it was quite good. I’m not really going to write much about it, though. I’d rather talk a bit about Trek in general.

I have no idea when I started watching Star Trek. Sometime in middle school, maybe. Perhaps earlier. I don’t know if I saw the original series or The Next Generation first, but regardless, it had a big influence on me when I was young. I don’t just mean in terms of aesthetics or taste- I’m talking about my actual worldview with regards to politics and philosophy and such. Star Trek, in part, made helped make me the liberal humanist that I style myself as today. Yes, I really mean that.

Back before the horrible prequels, I remember constant debates among young nerds about which was better- Star Trek or Star Wars. I occasionally went back and forth in these debates, but I most consistently said that Star Trek was better. I didn’t think it was necessarily better because of the acting or writing, but because of its ideas. At the end of Star Wars, Luke turns off his computer and just “uses the Force.” He lets himself go and only uses his instincts. I can’t really see a Star Trek character doing the same thing.

As intuitive and gut-trusting as characters like Kirk and Riker were, they didn’t rely on pure emotions or suppositions. They thought about things, and characters like Spock and Data were often chimed in as the voice of reason. As good as Kirk’s instincts were, he was still reasonable and unimpulsive. He wouldn’t have turned off his computer while fighting the Death Star, and that’s why I always sort of preferred Star Trek- it was, as Spock would say, logical. The things that saved the day were always things like expertise, clever applications of technology, or diplomacy. There was no room for Star Wars‘ woo-woo mysticism. The very presence of Spock sums it up nicely- the character that served as the sage and voice or morality was also the most logical.

It’s easy to accuse Gene Roddenberry of being optimistic about all of this. His future is bright, shiny, and almost utopian. However, I have to give Roddenberry credit for this in a way. Not only did he believe that technology would advance, but that ideas and social norms would as well. So much SF simply maps on the values of the present to an imagined future. In Roddenberry’s view of the future, though, humans have gotten over racism given up smoking, to name two examples.

Yes, smoking. Back in the sixties, NBC thought it was odd that no one on the Enterprise smoked, like normal sixties people. There was a bit of pressure on Roddenberry to include weird space cigarettes in the show, but he refused, maintaining that by the 23rd century, us humans would know better. Not only would people of different ethnicities work side-by-side, they would do so in a healthy environment. Looking around now, we have a black president and smoke-free bars, only forty years later. Roddenberry’s optimism wasn’t entirely baseless, it seems.

Many of Star Trek’s episodes (both in the original series and the Next Generation) were basically geeky problem-solving sessions. The Enterprise would encounter something like an alien being, a machine, a new society, etc., that was hitherto unknown. The crew would scratch their heads about it and theorize about how it worked, usually while sitting around a table. After a bit of action and a few dead redshirts, there would be some kind of deunoument usually brought about by the ingenuity of one of the crew members. Kirk would would use his wits, Picard would flourish out some clever diplomacy, Geordie or Scottie would spout technobabble and make the ship do something impressive, McCoy or Crusher would make a startling biological discover. In any case, the crew would use their newly found revelation to get out of the jam, and then there would be a nice little meditation on the interesting scientific, social, or philosophical consequences of what just happened.

I loved this stuff. I still do, in fact. (Thinking about it right now, I’m struck by how much Trek resembles Isaac Asimov’s short stories. It all has this “Hey, guys! Isn’t this interesting!” quality to it.) It makes for fun episodic television and appeals to a certain kind of person who thinks way, way too much. It is not, however, “rollicking” or “fun.” The sort of speculation and head-scratching that happened on Star Trek certainly invited parody, and if it wasn’t done well it just came off as heavy-handed. More than heavy-handed. Leaden. William Shatner expounding on the significance of things in general can be just as easily tedious as it can be charming.

As the franchise regressed, I eventually get really, really bored of Trek. I didn’t really like Deep Space 9 or Voyager, and I actively loathed Enterprise. Insurrection and Nemesis were both sort of tepid movies, and I didn’t come to expect anything new or fresh from the franchise. When the new movie was announced, I just sort of said “meh.” I was very surprised to see that not only did it not suck, it was actually good.

The new movie succeeds because it seems to have the same kind of ideological underpinnings of the original Trek– Enlightenment values in space- but keeps them as just the underpinnings. The characters who save the day are still a diverse scientists, geniuses, and all-out supernerds, and the bad guys are a bunch of militaristic, tribe-like nationalists. The movie, though, doesn’t get preachy about it. The original principals are there, but it has none of the heavy feeling that seems to descend when William Shatner puts his hand on his chin and broods behind his eyebrows. Instead, it was really zippy. Zippy! It was a movie that went “Zoom!” in the best way possible. Watching a fun, zippy Star Trek movie is kind of like seeing a really geeky guy getting over his own awkwardness and start dancing. I like Star Trek again. This feels sort of weird, being all suffused with nostalgia. Zoom!