Star Trekkin'

Robbie, Thomas and I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night at the Alamo Downtown.

On a side note, I still don't see how (1) nobody else had ever thought of having a movie theater where you could enjoy real - and not overpriced - food and adult beverages during the show, and (2) while the Alamo was going about delivering this heretofore unrealized necessity of existence to the masses, regular movie theaters decided that they didn't suck quite enough, and therefore that you should have to sit through so many loud, big-screen commercials before your movie starts that by the time the opening credits roll, you just want to go home and have a Tylenol, or perhaps some heroin.

In my college days, I remember, the Dobie used to play artsy slideshows before the movie started. These consisted of photographs with meaningful words or phrases scratched onto them with a pin. OMG. SO 80's.

The Alamo plays features for you before the film starts, but the features are AWESOME. Like, last night, they played a montage of (probably not quite) every instance and configuration in which DeForrest Kelley delivered the "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a _______!" line, all back-to-back. And they played the "Star Trekkin'" video, which I highly recommend if you haven't seen it. They also ran the popularly acclaimed "worst fight scene ever made," from the Star Trek episode "Arena," where Kirk engages in hand-to-hand combat with a large rubber lizard creature wearing a leopardskin sheath in which Thomas suggested I'd look quite fetching (unless he actually meant the rubber lizard suit, I'm not sure). The fight scene leaves you wondering if perhaps the actors thought the studio would play the clip at double-speed when the episode was actually produced. And they played an Onion spot about how echt Trekkies were all bent out of shape because the new movie has good acting, special effects, and action sequences, and therefore has diluted the brand by appealing to the kind of people who don't even speak Klingon.

(Actually I can relate to that - it's why I don't like the new "Doctor Who." If you can't see the stagehands' feet scampering along beneath the advancing Daleks, what's the point? What's the point???)

And they played this.


Live long and prosper, dude!