Coming Soon: Nerd Boner

Excited? Yeah, I'm excited about the Star Trek reboot. Let's say I'm cautiously optimistic. For every "Batman Begins" we get an "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull-Fuck." J.J. Abrams' oeuvre has never really done much for me. I thought his "Mission Impossible III" was just OK. Never really bought into "Lost" or "Alias." Maybe, someday I'll sit down with the DVD box sets and try a little harder. And according to this New York Times piece, Abrams has been given the liberty to deliver a radical and non-canonical Trek (to borrow a favorite phrase of the Trekker cognoscenti.)

Just checked out Abrams' IMDB page and was surprised he was credited with the script for "Armageddon" - a preposterous film I shamelessly admit I find quite entertaining - although I didn't see much evidence of quality film making.

And so help me Jesus H. Christ, but the new Enterprise bridge looks like an intergalactic Apple Store.

Gizmodo has an early look at the 'Trek' flick and points out Abrams' fondness for lens flares. Lens flares are sort of like the old blinking tag in HTML. Too easy and scorned by professionals. Lens flares are a much maligned design no-no, right up there with the Comic-Sans typeface. Me? I always liked lens flares. Maybe it's time for a revival. Then again, I'm pretty unprofessional. But I tend to agree with the design overlords about Comic-Sans.

Not so surprisingly Harry "Hairy" Knowles of Aint It Cool News has a fawning review. Oh Harry! Your magic-filled childhood must have been wonderful but I'm pretty sick of hearing about it.

Abrams "guest edited" a recent issue of WIRED that incorporated ciphers, codes and puzzles. I spent quite a few hours trying to figure out the secret messages within. Especially interesting is a snippet of an article in the back pages (continued from a non-existent page) about the Koabayashi Maru, a oft-cited "Trek" trope from "Wrath of Khan." The article is a bit rambling and incoherent but on closer examination, it's pretty obvious that it's some sort of coded message but damn if I could make heads or tails out of it. Cryptology is not my forte.

P.S. It looks like the blinking HTML tag still works. At least I can see it in Firefox. I thought it was "depreciated" and ghettoized a long time ago. Hooray for the old school blinking text! I'm rocking the HTML like a 1998 porno site.