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It’s been a Star Trek kind of day for me. Well, let’s face it, most days are Star Trek days for me, and have been since the early ’90s when I reached tweenage and, instead of being annoyed with my dad for watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on Friday nights, began to adopt this branch of sci-fi as one of my personal favourite escapes from reality.

The Trekness today began when I was surfing some music blogs in preparation for my radio show and visited what is arguably one of the best music blogs of all time, Said the Gramophone, and found this picture accompanying one of the posts:

As per the watermark, the image originates at another blog I follow: The Drex Files, written by Doug Drexler, an illustrator, designer, and visual effects artist who has worked on Star Trek stuff since the ’70s. His blog is a treasure trove of Trek-related trivia, memorabilia and miscellania, so it’s no surprise that he’d feature this rad photo of Leonard Nimoy in costume on the Paramount lot, leaning in a decidedly GQMF-style against a car of unknown vintage, make and model (it’s discussed, but not resolved, in the comments to the original Drex Files post).

Not an hour after this photo popped up on my screen did this video. It’s a fanvid created by starcrossedgirl that mashes up Original Series footage with Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” throwing in a little Alice in Wonderland footage for good measure. The hyperdramatic acting styles of Shatner and co. lend very well to this kind of “crack”-vid.

Watching Original Series footage of any kind, lately, makes my mind jump to another televisual love of mine, Mad Men. The celebrated period drama is currently set in 1963, three years before Star Trek first aired. But I can’t help contrasting the straight-laced lives of the Mad Men characters with the fantastical divergence of Star Trek. I wonder if modern audiences, both self-professed sci-fi fans and not, are more sanguine about the fantastic than mid-century audiences were. I mean, we’ve had 50 solid years of colour motion pictures telling sci-fi stories, showing us wildly alien aliens, strange new worlds and larger-than-life heroes and villans and, more recently, heroes who sometimes are also villains.

Not to mention the fact that science fiction has become science fact. My flip-up cell phone looks an awful lot like Captain Kirk’s communicator. And you can’t tell me that this:

(GE portable ultrasound machine)

Doesn’t look a lot like this:

(Dr. Beverly Crusher with medical tricorder)

That is all.

(Zoe Saldana and Chris Pine, a.k.a. Lt. Uhura and Capt. Kirk)

Continuing my tradition of posting each month’s scrapbook later and later with each edition, here’s September. Once again, the soundtrack is on the melancholy side. Perhaps for October I’ll return to some booty-shaking pop-rock. Can’t say I regret picking Snowblink’s “When Pushed from a High Branch,” though. It’s super beautiful.

Yes, my video scrapbook posts are getting later and later. But that’s how it goes, sometimes, especially as the summer is drawing to a close and you’re exhausted from working too much at your summer job (yes, that’s right, I’ve been out of school for years but still take seasonal work).

August continued to disappoint on the weather front — too little sun, though not quite as much rain as July — but still provided some bright points in the form of blue lakes and green trees. Take a look.

I haven’t posted in awhile because July got seriously out of hand. In the sense that I had to work way too much and on top of that I got sick. So I had little time for extras, and the video scrapbook is also on the light side. If you’re wondering, as a Winnipegger, where the Folk and Fringe Fest footage is, well, I can explain. I missed Folk Fest this year due to the wedding you see in the video, and I got sick during Fringe. It wasn’t my most thrilling month ever (hours spent at computers doesn’t make for gripping footage, and frankly neither does the buckets of rain we had). But this video does have: pretty people, pink balloons, fireworks, chocolate cake, sidewalk chalk, road trips, babies, flowers, water towers, and candy.

Another exciting development is that the soundtrack has diverted from its usual hipster Brooklyn origin to something closer to home — Saskatoon’s Volcanoless in Canada. Sometimes I just like the sound of a good prairie rock band with a killer singer.

What is it about a midweek holiday that makes the remainder of the week so off-kilter? I guess it’s obvious — the break in routine throws you (and by you, I mean me) off.

Wednesday was Canada Day, and while I did get the June Video Scrapbook finished and uploaded, I did not post it here.

In this video, look for:

-Buttons

-Lots of small children

-Prairie sky

-Tractors

-Sand

-A better shot of Vassan so his auntie can get a look at him

-Dancing

-More dancing

Summer time means lots of weddings and, accordingly, lots of wedding socials. (If you’re not from Manitoba and don’t know what I’m talking about, see here.)

Over the weekend I attended Stacey & Joël’s social at the Crescentwood Community Centre. I didn’t actually take any photos — I only took video shots with my June scrapbook in mind. Here’s the happy couple dancing:

That same night, my friend Cynara was attending a non-wedding social that was (partially) in her honour in another part of town. She and some other social-goers took this photo, which, it has been suggested, might well-serve the Wikipedia entry linked above.

The rye bread, the cheese cubes, the mustard, the cold cuts.

I haven’t gone to near as many wedding socials as most. This partly has to do with my religious upbringing and also to do with the fact that apparently my friends are not (yet) the marrying kind. That said, anyone who’s spoken with me on the subject knows I have myriad opinions on the subject of what I call the Wedding Economy. That term, for me, does not refer to the increasingly consumer-based nature of the wedding, the thousands of dollars in debt, the expensive dresses and over-budget extravagance, though I’m not a fan of that, either. What I’m talking about is the understood material transfer that takes place when one attends a wedding. The expectation that your gift is basically payment for an ticket invitation to the party. And of course, nowadays, that “gift” is usually expected to be money, with everyone putting in small-to-medium font in the bottom corner of the invitation, “Presentation.”

To me, this feeling of commercial transaction that has come to underlie all wedding invitations is uncomfortable (at best — distasteful at worst).

I don’t write this a an indictment to anyone reading who has had a wedding or even put the dreaded P-word on the invite. I’m just saying I hate it when social interactions run parallel to monetary ones, which it often feels that weddings do.

In Manitoba, where wedding socials are essentially fundraisers, the proceeds going towards the ceremony/reception, a house down payment, a honeymoon, what-have-you, there has been some backlash against the concept. It comes quite understandably, I think, from people who have felt obligated to attend many, many socials over the years and thus have been rather exhausted by the Top-40 playlists, the endless parade of silent auctions, the watery cocktails and yes, the sweaty cubes of cheese on the buffet table. There’s also been backlash against couples soliciting businesses for wedding social silent auction prize donations.

Still, the wedding social is a part of the Wedding Economy I have less issue with, on the basis that the obligations involved are less murky. Ten dollars usually gets you in the door, to enjoy DJed music (of varying quality; always check before you go. Stacey hired the city’s premier party DJ), to drink inexpensive liquor (something in which I no longer partake, but hardly begrudge anyone who does), and to eat the oft-maligned but no-less-delicious social spread (the rye, the meat, the cheese). As for the silent auction — hey, some people get off on that. I, never being much of a gambler, don’t, but I also do know people who have won freakin’ Wii gaming systems at socials, so there you go.

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