The Damned At The World’s End

Published: May 29, 2013 2013

I heard about “The World’s End” before I saw the trailer, where a British group of middle-aged childhood friends return home to attempt a legendary pub crawl of drinking 12 pints from 12 pubs in one night and somewhere along the way getting ambushed by zombies. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost already did that movie, “Shaun of The Dead,” where all the characters are trap inside a pub surrounded by zombies. “The World’s End” needed a better premise than that if I was going to hand over my hard-earned money.

And then I saw the trailer.

The movie, besides being about a legendary pub crawl, is a remake of the “Village of The Damned” movies. The 1960 British version and the 1995 American version were based on “The Midwich Cuckoos” by John Wyndham, where a remote village undergoes a mysterious event for 24 hours and every child-bearing female becomes pregnant with alien children who are born with pale complexion, blond hair, glowing eyes, great intelligence and telepathic powers. Like the cuckoo bird that lays its eggs in other bird nests, the children become a threat to humanity.

With glowing eyes, robotic behavior and blue ink for blood, the damned at “The World’s End” is looking pretty damn good.

The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins By Leonard Nimoy

Published: May 22, 2013 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGF5ROpjRAU

Leonard Nimoy sings a ditty about Biblo Baggins the Hobbit in the Spock vs. Spock car commercial. Since golf was a prominent theme, I thought this was a cute reference to “The Hobbit” movie about the ancestor of Biblo Baggins, Bandobras “Bullroarer” Took, who loped off a goblin head into a rabbit hole to invent the game of golf.

Not quite.

The song, “The Ballad of Biblio Baggins” was sung by Nimoy for a variety TV show in 1967, when “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of The Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien became popular with the baby boomers in the United States. As “Star Trek: The Original Series” was in production at the time, Nimoy sported his Vulcan haircut during this appearance.

The Spock Vs. Spock Car Commercial

Published: May 22, 2013 2013

The Spock Vs. Spock car commercial came out just before the release of “Star Trek Into the Darkness” in the theaters was probably more revealing about the movie than the worst kept secret about who the super villain would be. (The inclusion of Carol Marcus played by Alice Eve was a dead giveaway.) One of the best kept secret was a cameo by Leonard Nimoy, where the younger Spock (Zachary Quinto) called the older Spock for help.

I saw the movie twice in the same week. The first time was at a sneak preview showing hours before the official midnight showing at the AMC Cupertino Square, where the audience—some dressed in costume—were hooting and hollering whenever major characters introduced themselves and events unfolded. The second time was with a general audience at the Camera 12 Cinema that was less enthusiastic about watching the movie, perhaps overwhelmed by the stunning visual effects and convoluted storyline.

As for the commercial, I found it fascinating that Nimoy would drop an F-bomb when he discovered that his golf clubs wouldn’t fit inside the trunk. If he played golf on a regular basis with this car (unlikely since it had no license plate), he would have already known that the golf clubs wouldn’t fit in the trunk. His emotional response seems… illogical.

Welcome to Kicking The Bit Bucket Blog!

Published: May 15, 2013 2013

After shutting down my 15-year-old BBS/website/blog, Once Upon An Albatross…, at the end of last year, I put the replacement blog on the bottom of my to-do list and forgot about it. If I didn’t have the time to fiddle around with a personal blog about Silicon Valley and California life, I probably wouldn’t have the time for it later on. The replacement blog came bubbling up on my to-do list this past month, going from a vague idea to something concrete.

Meet the new blog, same as the old blog.

Over the last few years on OUAA, I figured out what I wanted from blogging: being able to comment on the events of the day, point out the absurdities of daily life, and piss into the wind from my soapbox.

With summer blockbusters at the movies, the presidential election for 2016 heating up, and O.J. Simpson back in court, I’m ready to start blogging again.

What’s a bit bucket and why would anyone be kicking it?

The traditional definition of a bit bucket is a place where computer information disappears. A programmer may redirect the output of a program to the NULL device (i.e., /dev/null) to prevent it from appearing on the screen. When data was stored on punched cards during the mainframe era, the bit bucket held the chads that were punched out of the cards.

(This blog has nothing to do with the source code hosting service, Bitbucket, or the related blog post with a similar name. Something the Google search didn’t reveal until after I bought the domain name. If you’re looking for bit bucket as one word, you come to the wrong place.)

As for kicking the bit bucket, it’s more like kicking a habit. After my father died from lung cancer last year, I blogged every other day to relieve the pain I felt. Blogging for the sake of blogging became a bad habit. I’ll blog at least once a week. Maybe more, maybe less.

I hope you enjoy the new blog!