Take Me Out to the Holosuite

References: “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Written by Jack Norworth, 1908.

Episode Synopsis

“Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, I don’t care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame. For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out at the old ball game.”

When I was [insert some random childhood age here], I played on The Braves with my brother. I pitched and played 1st base. I’m not sure what he did—my only memory is of him in his baseball uniform sitting in the dug out reading. Sports really weren’t my brother’s thing, though I couldn’t blame him. He was practically blind and we didn’t realize he needed glasses until he was 13. Suffice it to say, he wasn’t the greatest baseball player.

It is the bottom of the 9th. We’re down by a run and the pitcher just struck out the second batter (a kid who spent more time digging his nose than anything else). I’m on 3rd base where I’ve been waiting, desperately hoping for a hit to give me my ticket home. To my horror, my brother stands and grabs a bat and a helmet. He’s up. This sounds awful, I know—but even then, I was competitive and losing felt so much like the end of the world. I remember watching him, mouth open, as he approached the plate. He could’ve been taking an afternoon stroll for all the urgency he showed. I yell something encouraging to him to remind him of what’s at stake. He looks at me as if to say: “it’s only a game.” I close my eyes. The pitcher checks his bases, then let’s one fly. Strike one. I’m not sure my brother even saw the ball whiz by. More words of encouragement (or maybe I said: just close your eyes and swing!). The pitcher looks my way as I take my lead. He throws a curve ball low but inside. Strike two. Oh god, I think, we’re going to lose. My brother calmly takes a practice swing as the crowd cheers. This is it. The pitcher smirks, he smells blood in the water. He winds up and let’s one go. A fastball right down the middle. I close my eyes waiting to hear the ump yell “strike three!” Instead, I hear the bat connect and the ball sails over our heads to the outfield. Even my brother looks surprised. I run and slide into home. We win. This is the first time I realize the importance of teamwork. This is when I fell in love with sports.

My whole life, I’ve played sports: soccer mostly, basketball at times, but I’ve tried them all. After playing four years of soccer in college, I found myself at a loss with what to do with my life now that soccer was over. I got used to having a team around me, sharing my wins, my losses, with a bunch of my closest friends. Now, all of a sudden, I was out on the pitch—team-less. I meandered through a Master’s degree and two or three mind-numbing, wouldn’t-wish-it-on-my-worst-enemy jobs. But there was no satisfaction. No duende or sense of flight. Soccer provided stability, purpose. A goal to work toward.

This week’s episode, “Take Me Out to the Holosuite,” features the lighter side of Star Trek and speaks to every weekend warrior, the winners, and the losers. The senior staff must come together and learn how to play baseball in order to beat an old Academy rival, Captain Sovok—a Vulcan with an all-Vulcan team. For two weeks, I thought about baseball, about sports and about life. I watched the World Cup, delved through my best and worst sports memories, searching for a theme for this week’s blog. And I kept coming back to this idea of teamwork.

Life is so much easier with teammates. People who are vested in your successes and failures. People willing to throw down for you. I finally realized what this episode meant to me. As adults, we build our own teams. We pick our friends; we hold on to the good ones and let go of the not-so-good ones. This applies to our families as well. Some of us may go it alone (I think these are the golfers and tennis singles players) and some of us may substitute teammates frequently and fall into one crowd or another searching for just the right fit. But the strongest teams are the ones that stick together regardless of skill level. The teams that endure are those that accept the not-so-great players (like my brother), the players who make mistakes (like Green—England’s goalkeeper who dropped the ball into the goal for the US), and the goal scorers. I realized it’s not so much the score at the end of this game, but the experience of playing and who you choose to play with.

As I continue this blogging project, I keep expecting grandiose realizations about Star Trek and about life. Instead, I am constantly reminded of the simple lessons. You would think at this point in my life I’d have figured out the so-called simple stuff. Turns out a reminder every now and then works wonders.

Episode #4: If Wishes were Horses.

Check out the trailer here. The entire episode is on youtube in five parts as well.

Oh, and all you loyal followers—try not to leave so many comments on my page. It’s crowding my blog posts.

End Transmission.

An Aside on Trek-nology

For those of you not in-the-know, Star Trek technology is created now by researchers and scientists. This is the latest, greatest example. Other Trek-nology includes the hypospray (a replacement for the needle, this device actually pushes molecules of the medication through the skin without damaging it, so: no pain) and the cell phone (doubtful? Check out the communicators used by the original Star Trek crew).

Star Trek Tech meets world: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/apple-ipad-weve-reached-star-trek-nology/12305

Through the Looking Glass

Episode Synopsis: Click Here.

References:

1. a looking glass: a mirror, or more specifically, a ladies' dressing mirror

2. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll. The sequel to Alice in Wonderland.

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic" (Carroll 1871). Spock and Tuvok might have some Vulcan sentiment to challenge Tweedledee's un-apparent logic. But so it goes, through the looking glass: The rules of reality shift left, down, backwards and we arrive in a different world with the same players in an entirely different game with entirely different rules and the experience begs the question--if we change the reality, will we be the same?

This week's episode featured Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) and the alternate universe (one that comes up a few times over the course of the show). The alternate universe is the Star Trek Universe flipped upside down. The Bajorans (with help from the Klingons and the Cardassians) enslave the Terrans (that's us). This reality is about survival. This changes people, fundamentally. So, this week I spent a lot of time thinking about coincidences, opportunities, and what-if's. Let me illustrate.

Yesterday, my family came over to help move furniture. My new kitty, Dax, is terrified of strangers, so of course she took one look at my brother (6'0", 300 lbs.) and ran. She ended up on top of the kitchen cabinets. It took about an hour and a half to set up the new furniture and move the old stuff out. As we were about to leave, my roommate and I realized that we had left the door open and Dax may have ran out. This led to a search (and eventual rescue). After searching the apartment, I climbed onto the counter in the kitchen thinking she'd be on top the cabinets. She wasn't. Then, I noticed a small rectangular space behind the cabinets. Dax had wedged herself in and was stuck like a dead cockroach with her feet up on her back. It took another hour, a call to my brother for a drill and saw, and one completely ruined cabinet to free her. As if this weren't harrowing enough, the second I let her go she bolted out to the patio and jumped onto the balcony and proceeded (slow motion to me) to jump from the 6th floor. I managed to grab her back leg as she went over (and got scratched for my trouble). I locked her in a room for safety after that.

Now, many of you (maybe 6 of the 7 followers on this blog) are thinking: dumb cat. For me, it was a realization of what-if's. What if we walked out. And when we arrived home six hours later, I'd have a very dead, very squished kitty stuck behind my kitchen cabinets. OR. What if she leapt off the balcony and fallen six stories (in which case I'd have a very broken and most likely dead kitty).

There seem to be numerous opportunities for each of us to fall through the looking glass. My older brother deploys to Afghanistan in July for a year--his third deployment in this god-awful war. I don't imagine what reality is like there. I don't imagine the living conditions, the endless desert, the heat, the struggles of the Afghani people, the violence, the terrorists, the thousands of soldiers younger than I am sweating in the Afghani heat. I don't compare that to my life as I brush my teeth in my two-bedroom apartment, as I sip beer and watch the sunset over the Wai`anae mountain range, as I drive to and from work in my air-conditioned car, as I sit here free to write whatever I want. Don't they know the looking glass is fiction? It's not supposed to be real because it's a story.

I see the world and the people in it striving for the ideals of the Star Trek Universe. We all want to be free. We want to pursue our passions. We want to live in peace. But the damnable looking glass presents us with an alternate universe rife with IED's, executions (just last week the Taliban executed a 7-year old boy accused of spying), death, and suffering.

So what's the up side? That there are men and women like my brother, like Ben Sisko, willing to put it all on the line (to experience the looking glass and perhaps be changed forever) in the hopes that one day the Star Trek Universe will be the reality. And the alternate universe (i.e. our reality) and it’s Tweedledee logic and god-awful endings will be nothing but a bad TV show. Just like Alice, I hope to wake and find this looking glass universe nothing but a dream.

Episode #3: Take Me Out to the Holosuite (as requested by SamJam)

End Transmission.

Babel

Begin log.

Date: June 7, 2010.

This morning, I woke to babel. Coming from the apartment next door. Convenient for me, Episode #1 is all about this. Thanks for the segue loud, obnoxious neighbors. Note to self: move.

This week’s episode comes from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—a show that aired in the 90s for seven years and the first Trek to deal with large-scale war. You see, Star Trek is all about peace and unity. Working together (yes, with aliens) towards a common goal. Obliteration isn’t normally one of those goals. Check out the brief episode synopsis here: http://www.trektoday.com/episodes/ds9/season1/babel.shtml

“Babel” references the Tower of Babel, a story from the Bible where mankind, united under one language, builds an enormous tower to commemorate our awesomeness and supreme coolness. God gets pissed. Have we no humility? Thunder, lightning and different languages for all. The point? Well, I’m no religious scholar, but I think the point is: communication is everything.

Each day I go out into the world and attempt (emphasis) to communicate. This is how awkward it is:

K. goes to a “business” seminar and runs into a classmate. K. is dressed like a writer with jeans, running shoes, and a grey jacket. Everyone else is dressed in business attire. She goes to sign in.

Classmate: Hey! Long time no see! How have you been?

Mind you, I went to school with this person for six years and we never spoke. Not once.

K: Oh, hey. Good. How are you? (forcing the fake smile)

Classmate: Oh, you look, er, good. It’s nice to see you. Blah, blah. Blah. Blah and blah.

I’m not being smart, I really can’t remember what she said in our ten minute conversation. So, anyhow, we wrap up this oh-so-interesting conversation. She flips through the registration list to sign me in. Then:

Classmate: What was your name again?

Son of a—. Case and point. We babel a lot. We speak words to each other that don’t mean anything. We have entire conversations with people we don’t know (and probably never will).

I took this class as an undergrad about love and eros. We had to read a book by Anne Carson. She wrote about how words on a page create tension. I see her idea like this: words float on the surface of this deep lake (or ocean, whatever). We can only see the words, but beneath them there are mysteries, meanings, subtext, and depth. Some people can sense the tension. Sense that the words don’t truly represent what a person means.

See, in the episode, one by one, the crew looses the ability to communicate. They are stricken with aphasia. They would see a tricorder, but say “window”. In essence, this person would be cut of from the world. Lots of talkie, talkie. No meaning. Remind you of anything?

I thought this blog would be “easy” to research and write. Turns out: not so much. I spent the week communicating, but all I got back were mixed transmissions. (SamJam walks in at this point and says: I thought you were going to write less than that? Lol. I like to babel.) I’m always looking for the point. The final end-all-be-all message. For Star Trek, it’s easy-peasy. Space is dangerous. Avoid viruses that imitate aphasia. Should you be stricken, don’t worry. Someone will help. In real life, we create tension between us. We dabble in the niceties—the how-are-you’s, the I’m-good’s. (The angry neighbors are at it again. She says: Don’t you love me? He says: It’s complicated.) We send out transmission after transmission in the hopes that we will find someone who truly understands the signal.

And when no one does? We babel on.

Episode #2: Through the Looking Glass (Deep Space Nine). Here's the trailer (pls. ignore the dramatic voice over guy):

End Transmission.