I guess I put off going for too long.

Offering a sad commentary on the state of the Star Trek franchise, the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas will shut down Star Trek : The Experience this fall.

Part simulator, part environment, part museum and (of course) part gift shop/restaurant, the Experience opened 10 years ago during the height of popularity for the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies. The exhibit gave fans a chance to examine a Trek time line with a collection of sci-fi relics. Then visitors could talk to a Klingon over a drink after strolling across the bridge of the Enterprise.

But, the exhibit isn't drawing the fans it once did -- just as the franchise is fading off the public radar. While J.J. Abrams is hustling to save Star Trek on the big screen, it's too late to save it in Vegas.

The collection of props, costumed "aliens" and adventure simulators was a welcome, nerd-friendly escape from the hustling sleaze and nonstop pinging of slot machines filling the rest of the town. There's no word what will be done with the emptied retail space in the Hilton, but the museum props, ship mock-ups and other bits of Trek history will be returned to Paramount.

CBS/Paramount statements indicate the search is on for the Experience's new home.

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All of my friends who were lucky enough to be able to visit Vegas and the Experience told me (in no uncertain terms) that I really needed to go see it. Now it will close, never to be seen by me. Can I be a true fan without the Experience?

Still, I don't think it would be as powerful to me as it was to one former cast member:

The Experience will always be special to me, because, as I wrote in the Geek in Review (excerpted from Dancing Barefoot):

The Transporter Chief says, "Welcome to the 24th century. You are aboard the starship Enterprise."

She could have said to me, "Welcome to 1987, Wil. You are on Stage 9."

She touches her communicator and says, "I have them, Commander."

We leave the transporter room and walk down a long corridor which is identical to the ones I walked down every day. I realize as we walk that, in my mind, I'm filling in the rest of the sound stage. I'm surprised when we don't end up in engineering at the end of the corridor. Instead, we are herded into a turbolift, where we enjoy some more special effects. The turbolift shakes and hums . . . it's infinitely cooler than the real ones we would stand in for the show.

When the turbolift doors open, and reveal the bridge of the Enterprise, I gasp.

The bridge is a nearly-perfect replica of ours, with a few minor differences that are probably imperceptible to anyone who didn't spend the better part of five years on it. The hum of the engines, which had only existed in my imagination on Stage 8, is now real. I stare at the view screen, where a beautiful starfield gives the appearance of motion. I remember how much I hated doing blue screen shots on the bridge and how much I loved it when they'd lower the starfield. When I looked at those thousands of tiny mirrors, glued onto a screen of black velvet, I could lose myself in the wonderful fantasy that this spaceship was as real as the view.

I am consumed by hypernostalgia.

I am 14-years-old, walking out of the turbolift during Encounter at Farpoint. Corey Allen, the director, excitedly tells me, "Picard controls the sky, man! He controls the sky!"

I am 15-years-old, sitting in my ugly grey spacesuit at the CONN. My fake muscle suit bunches up around my arms. I feel awkward and unsure, a child who desperately wants to be a man.

I am 16-years-old, working on an episode where I say little more than, "Aye, sir." I want to be anywhere but here.

I am 17-years-old, wearing a security uniform for Yesterday's Enterprise. I am excited to stand in a different place on the bridge, wear a different uniform, and push different imaginary buttons.

I hear the voices of our crew, recall the cool fog that hung around our trailers each morning from Autumn until Spring.

I recall walking to the Paramount commissary with the cast, on our way to have lunch meetings with Gene before he died.

I have an epiphany.

Until this moment, all I have been able to remember is the pain that came with Star Trek. I'd forgotten the joy.

It's obviously an important place to me, though I don't expect it be nearly as important to anyone else in the world. I've always said that it's something every Star Trek fan should, uh, experience, at least once.

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To have been on the show at the age of 15, even if it was as Wesley Crusher (whom everyone loved to hate. At the time) now that would have been an Experience.

I was woken from a dead sleep this morning at 7:00 am to be told that Ann Johnson had passed away during the night from respiratory complications.

She asked me, several years ago, when she left her townhome for an assisted living facility, to oversee the moving of her stuff. It took me far longer than any reasonable person should expect, about a year. The delay was on my end, not hers. Patience was never one of Ann's virtues, but she showed far more patience with me than I had any right to expect.

During the course of sifting through the volumes of video tapes housing the most cherished memories of her lifetime, the crates of magazines and fanzines for the various shows and groups she was following or was a member of; and, of course, the tons of collectibles and artwork that she had amassed through a lifetime of collecting, I found the following photograph.

I thought at the time "this is the way I want to remember Ann." I'm glad that I was able to dredge up a copy from the records so that I could post it here.

The word is given, Ann.

Here's a link to her journal page at AOL. Yes, she was an AOLer, but I never held it against her.

I don't know how long The Revolution will continue without Ron Paul to lead it, but I did pick up a copy of his book when he was in town for the book signing tour today. I've already read a good portion of it. I wouldn't do the book justice if I tried to review it myself, so let me just point you here; The Revolution: A Manifesto.

On the subject of Ron Paul and The Revolution, I ran across this video:

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I daresay I've probably blogged my last on the subject of Ron Paul. But then I've been wrong before.

I have listened to all of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (wish I could say the same for Common Sense. I'm still missing the first 40 or so of those) and they've all been good. I would have had a hard time picking the best episode...

...Until now. I know, I know, this episode was rough, it didn't have the polished edges of the rest of the episodes.

But
It's
James Burke!

C'mon.

I've been a fan of this guy since I saw Connections 1 several years ago. I just recently caught Connections 3, and I guess I'm going to have to track down Connections 2 on my own because no one seems to be airing them.

I'm apparently not the same caliber of fan that Dan Carlin is, though. I've never even heard of American Connections before, and I put The Day the Universe Changed on my wishlist based on Carlin's glowing praise alone.

While all of the interview was worth listening to, I was intrigued by Mr. Burke's latest project The Knowledge Web. While not really up and running yet, the concept sounds a lot like Connections; which was intriguing to me at first glance because it reminded me of the way I used to read the encyclopedia; not from front to back, but from reference to reference.

Can't wait to see it finished.

Two of my favorite people, one interviewing the other. John Stossel did a series of web interviews with Ron Paul, all of them quite interesting. Here's an excerpt of the intro:

Despite relatively low poll numbers, Paul has had a big influence on the presidential campaign. That's in part because he's raised a ton of money, and in part because of the passionate following he has on the Web. It's one reason we're posting my interview with Paul only on the Internet, where the debate about Paul is very active. In fact, he's the most Googled presidential candidate.

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You can go on to read Stossel's notes on the interviews, or watch them on the site. You can also watch them here.

I thought every Stargate fan would have known this already; but I mentioned that there will be additional SG-1 stories released to video to a fellow fan the other day, and they hadn't heard the news. I guess some people still have real lives they have to attend to.

So, if you haven't heard, there are two Stargate movies due to be released straight to video, supposedly tying up loose ends left over after the SG-1 series finale.

First out will be Stargate: The Ark of Truth which is purported to be the end of the Ori story arc. While the story of the Ori is one of my least favorite story arcs, I would really like to see how they end this, so I'm looking forward seeing it even though it's not about my favorite parts of the show.

The other straight to video release is called Stargate: Continuum. This film I'm really looking forward to. It features the return of Richard Dean Anderson as Major General Jack O'Neill (without a doubt my favorite character in the show) and some excellent footage filmed at the US Navy's Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station in the Arctic, 200 nautical miles (370 km) north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. There's a video clip on the MGM site that highlights the filming of these scenes (click here) there's an Ark of Truth video in the gallery as well. Rumor is that this will be a time travel story featuring Baal attempting to reverse the successes of the Tau'ri by altering the past. I actually like time travel stories (even if they are done too often in SciFi) as long as they are internally consistent. Stargate's track record on this is a bit spotty, but I'll try to keep an open mind.

You can pre-order Stargate: The Ark of Truth at Amazon now. Continuum isn't available yet (more's the pity) but I'll be keeping an eye out for it. You can also get the really cool complete SG-1 series box set. It's at the top of my wishlist.

Cybertar sold for a respectable $5,500 last night. I'm not going to complain about that price, although the artist did. I tried to explain to her that she didn't go for the cute factor, didn't have a famous person's signature on the sculpture (and wasn't already famous herself. Yet) or incorporate a famous person in the composition (although it does say "Dell" in about 4 places) and didn't do the cultural equivalent of scream "Keep Austin Weird" somewhere in the piece. If she had done that, a five figure price would have been guaranteed.

[This lead to jokes concerning incorporating flashing LED's into the body of the guitar, something that would be bound to get any geek to pull out his wallet. LED's that spelled out "Keep Austin Weird"? Top seller]

The full results of the action can be found at the Julien's website. A grand total of $693,000 raised for charities in and around Austin.

The big winners of the night were also the ones that I personally found most impressive; Trip to the Light Fantastic, Reflections of Austin and Striking Texas Gold. The reason they are impressive might not be apparent in the photos. All of them are 360 degree mosaics (all of the surfaces are covered) of tiny little pieces of glass or stone, all of them meticulously glued into place by hand. How they got them finished in the time alloted is a mystery to me.

Most underrated painted guitar: Fractal; it's a picture, inside a picture, inside a picture, inside a guitar. Or maybe I just looked into opposing mirrors too much as a child.




Most underrated sculpture: Gibson Tree; This sculpture was featured on the cover of XL, and it still didn't draw more than a 10,000 price. This was also an impressive display in the amount of time invested by the artist (the stand was molded to look like a tree trunk that the guitar had been carved out of) If any artist at the auction had reason to be disgruntled, this artist does.


Several of the guitars were donated back to the city for redisplay on the streets of Austin. While I can appreciate the charity of this action, I have to wonder who will be responsible for maintenance of the artwork once it's back out on the street. I can't imagine that the artists will be willing to continue maintaining the art for free; and as a libertarian, I don't really think the gov't should be saddled with this cost to be paid for at taxpayer expense. Maybe a private organization will step forward and offer to maintain the art, as has been done in other cities with public art displays. Only time will tell.

This is becoming a habit; a habit that makes me laugh. Can there be harm in that?

When I heard that the 6th funniest person in the world was going to be at Cap City this week, I jumped at the chance to sit in on one of his shows. All I can say is, if Last Comic Standing is accurate (tongue firmly in cheek here. See my previous post) then I better stay away from the shows featuring the top three. I might die of a heart attack.

Doug Benson was one of the finalists on LCS that I intended to see if he ever came to town (Cap City isn't listed as an official tour location at LCS' site) I'm glad he made the trip.

This is the part where, if I was trying to write a real review, I would try to describe the type of comedy that Doug Benson does (an herbalist with a passion for his subject of choice...?) A task that most people fail at horribly. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I don't have to try, I can take the easy way out and just point you to his clips on Comedy Central or YouTube, and save myself the time and embarrassment of trying to describe why I find him funny.

[I will say this; I watched him wander around the stage for an hour with a mic cord tied around one leg, and a mic stand rolling around behind him, waiting for him to trip over either of them. He managed not to do that, and even climbed the angle iron stage display at one point, without killing himself; only to miss the last step coming off the stage as his set was over (bad architecture, not clumsiness) and nearly break his neck tripping over our table. First time I ever felt the need to apologize to a comic for laughing at him]

So, watch the clips. If you think that's funny, go see him in person. I guarantee it'll be better than the clips. Just go.

---

Did I mention The Marijuana-Logues? Super High Me? (a preview of which is showing at Drafthouse Lake Creek at 4:20 Saturday as a part of the Austin Film Festival; yes, it starts this week!) He was hawking some other disk that I just completely spaced on. Wish I could remember the title...

Remember that 10 foot guitar I mentioned earlier this year?

The displays are down, the artists are touching up the damage that weather and vandals have exacted upon their artwork; and come next week, the guitars will be auctioned.

Come on out and join in the fun!

eBay Auction Link