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My girlfriend hasn’t seen Star Wars.
She hasn’t seen Star Trek: anything. No 2001, no Matrix, and pretty much nothing else that’s considered required viewing in the world of science fiction. The list goes on even outside the world of science fiction: Forrest Gump, The Godfather, Goodfellas, Amadeus, Casablanca and The Great Escape. She’s seen none of these. If aliens abducted her and asked her what kinds of movies people on her planet liked, those aliens would attack us knowing they would easily destroy us. If you’re enemy like Legally Blonde, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Little Mermaid and Sleepless in Seattle, you wouldn’t be scared of him either.
And, yes, he deserves to die.
But…back to science fiction.
I’m not stupid enough to sit her down and force her to like science fiction because I know that won’t work. I believe that the best way to educate someone is to make him want to learn about it. Luckily, I sit around and draw comics all day. And, as most of you know, with that comes an impermeable fortress of science fiction knowledge.
But first, let me say this: there’s a lot of bad sci fi out there. These days, sci fi has become synonymous with action and not with science. Millions of dollars are blown on one CGI shot, while only thousands are spent on making the script…THE THING THE MOVIE IS BASED ON! It burns me up when I see how misdirected Hollywood can be.
Star Trek is my favorite. What got me hooked was Picard and TNG. The other day I bought the entire series of Voyager, which, although it was hard to admit at first, I like way better than TNG. I know the original series and I’ve seen the first seven movies, but I think the heart of what Star Trek is about is best captured in episodic format of TNG and Voyager. Sisko’s voice drives me up the wall so don’t ask.
My first attempt was a year ago. I mentioned how I was into TNG and she rolled her eyes. But I didn’t let up.
I came at her like ten well executed Battles for Endor with a hundred, million Ewoks. I told her about how it’s not about the science as much as it is about us. I told her about how hopeless the human condition is and how important it is to look to the future and not just the present. I told her about how, in Star Trek, everyone works to better themselves and how all the shit that make modern life unbearable (hunger, greed, selfishness, etc) is gone. I told her about the possibility that everything we experience could very well be a computer program while our bodies are powering machinery. I told her about the T2 paradox, the brilliance of 2001 and how awesomely bad Queen’s music was in Flash Gordon. Light sabers were flying around, Chewie was doing back flips, and Han Solo was dodging asteroids behind me as I jabbed my finger into her shoulder while driving my point home.
It didn’t work. Overkill. So I backed off and went back to my material. I realized that I needed to find something in sci fi that a girl would be into. Not a Leia. Not an Aeon. Something more respectable and independent. Like a Captain Janeway. It was perfect.
Months passed and I didn’t mention a thing. When she brought up something sci fi, I let it go. I pretended like I didn’t care because I wanted to reel her in a little. If she asked me about what my IDW Star Trek comic was about, I wouldn’t tell her and I knew that she’d wonder why. And that was compelling to her. Even though she won’t admit it today.
Then I endured some of her shows, thus building up points in my favor. I figured that by watching Gilmore Girls and Sex and the City she would owe me a few shows of my own. So I started her off on Futurama, the episode where Lela discovered that her parents were with her during her whole life and that she wasn’t alone. And that concept was enough to get me a second episode! So I showed her the one where Fry leaves his dog in the past, and my girlfriend was crying at the end! Soon she was watching it on her own, unknowingly getting a dose of sci fi in with her cartoon! It was perfect.
And then yesterday it all came together in one, glorious moment. I threw in Star Trek Voyager, the episode where the doctor tries to teach 7 of 9 to date. Once she got past how large 7’s boobs were (something many of us still haven’t gotten over), she was into it! She even laughed out loud! I think she even nodded her head from side to side when the characters sang “You are my Sunshine”! But the moment I felt sure victory was when she asked about the holodeck.
“Where are they now?” she asked wondering why there was a dimly lit bar on the ship.
“The holodeck. It’s too hard for you to understand, though, so forgot about it.” (me pulling away to create more intrigue.
“What’s the holodeck?” she asked.
“I’m trying to watch. Go away.”
“What’s the holodeck?!” she jammed her fingers into my armpit and started tickling me. I finally surrendered.
“It’s genius! It’s pure magic! It’s a room where you can create anything you want and it’ll seem real!”
“Anything?” she asked.
“Anything! It’s a way for the crew to relax, train, or travel during their off-time without having to leave the ship!” I couldn’t believe she was asking. I’ve been ready to tell her about the holodeck from the moment we’d met.
She looked back at the television and then back at me. And then it happened.
“I wish we had a holodeck.”
“Me too! Yes! I love you so much! And I can’t believe you just said that!” I sang. She caught her mistake and realized that she had just nerd-ed out.
“No. No! That’s not fair!” she said trying to back-peddle. I couldn’t start laughing. Finally I calmed down and put my hand on her shoulder.
“Welcome,” I said. “Welcome to the rest of your life. What you just said…about the holodeck…about wishing you had a holodeck of your own…that is the essence of sci fi right there.”
“But it’s such a cool idea!” she argued.
“I know it is, baby. I know.”
When I was 12, I used to draw comics in the attic of an old comic book shop.
The place was run down, nestled into some rainy trees beside an old road in Dracut, Massachusetts, next to an abandoned drive-in and the Merrimack River. I was joined by about 10 other comic book guys, all of whom were in their 20s and all of whom wanted to draw for a living.
It’s one of my fondest memories, even though none of them liked me much. I was the one always working, always quiet and a little nervous, usually keeping my head down and listening to them argue about books, movies and heavy metal. This one guy, Jeremy, would sometimes sit down and prod me about stuff, which at the time, I new nothing about: Pantera, Frank Miller, and The Crow. He’d stick in tape after tape of his mixes to see my reaction to his tastes in speed metal. And one day he changed my life forever by introducing me to that artistic/punk rock/anti-establishment/hate-everything-that’s-popular mentality that I’d be dealing with for the rest of my life.
He pulled out Pearl Jam’s album, Ten, and gave me an uncertain look.
“Now, everyone these days is into Pearl Jam,” he said, “which is cool, because they’re a good band and deserve to get played.” He popped it in and paused, looking at me once again, his finger lingering on the “play” button. His eyes were looking through me, into my very being. “Normally I don’t like radio friendly music, but I was into these guys before they got popular.” I sat there and waited for the tape to play, but he continued standing there and staring at me with that serious look.
I didn’t know it but I was being introduced to the artistic mentality.
Before they got popular will forever echo in my memory. When he said it, I didn’t understand what he was talking about, so I filed it away for a while. Was Jeremy suggesting that it was wrong to like something that was popular? That didn’t make any sense at all. I thought it was okay to like “top 40 music” and anything that MTV played. And my only defense for being so wrong was that I was just a stupid kid.
For those of you who may not realize, what Jeremy said to me is the essence of what the artistic spirit is made of: an unwavering, insensitive, nonsensical, white-hot hatred for things that take away one’s aura of individuality.
Now of course, it doesn’t make any sense to hate music that’s popular. Despising Thomas Kinkade paintings will only keep you up at night. Wishing that Bob Ross fans were burned alive inside a giant Michael’s craft outlet is conducive to nothing. It’s pointless to smash your TV whenever you see an ad for a Disney vacation. Walking around in a swarm of hatred with your chin touching your chest and your gaze aimed through your eyebrows with 4 heavy metal records playing inside your head simultaneously is while walking through a rainstorm is, admittedly, pointless. So why do it? Why do these artist types do it?
Because someone has to. Someone has point out that Disney is treating masses of people like they’re the same happy moron who wants to travel to Florida. Someone has to acknowledge that Bob Ross was a 30-minute hack and that, regardless of the freedom of opinion, it is wrong to like him. It’s wrong to like Thomas Kinkade, too, along with Boston, Journey, Kansas, and anything that MTV tells you to like. The laws are made by "the man" trying to keep us all down, people who go to church are dangerous, and mohawks aren’t supposed to look cool and that’s their function.
Being a demographic is an insult. And being any kind of demographic is what the artist is against. So don’t roll your eyes at our unfounded, senseless rage for the things that you like. And don’t awkwardly cross the street when you see one of us traveling toward you with our head shaved, boots stomping and our laces undone. Thank us and our righteous, self-imposed burden because we wear it for you.
It’s been a long time but I still remember the name of the guy who first gave me a wiff of the artistic things to come. “Before they got popular,” he repeated. “In fact, a lot of the bands that you hear on the radio, I liked them before they were being played; before other people knew about them.” Then he pressed play and we hung out and listened to Pearl Jam. And that’s why I remember that his name was Jeremy.
I’ll miss Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter. He was one of the good ones.
Yeah, he’s over the top and crazy, waving his baby in front of a hungry croc and doing back flips off of their heads. But you got to admit that he’s living the dream. He didn’t go to college and came from almost nothing, but he built an empire and began self educating, which is more than most people ever do. Besides, he rocks the almost-mullet better than even MacGuyer.
Turn on the TV and won’t see many real men left. CNN will show you a bunch of whiny politicians, none of whom will man up and be about something regardless of the polls. Then you’ve got Tom Cruise sliding around in his socks with Ellen while fucking what’s-her-face to make a baby for a marketing scheme to help sell Mission Impossible 3. Donald Trump, one of the most high powered men in history, still ends up having verbal slap fights with Rosie O’ Donnell for exercising her freedom of speech. Or how about our oil-happy President who can’t use a polysyllable without falling over? Real inspiring.
The younger generations grew up on video games and don’t know how to change a tire. They hang out in bars and lie to girls in order to get laid. They’re afraid of commitment. They don’t know who they are. They gather around the water cooler at brag about how fast their computers are. The new men are sue happy. The new men are afraid of cops. The new men are afraid to fight. The new men aren’t about anything except for snowmobiling on the weekends and reliving the glory days playing T-Ball while listening to Bruce Springstein.
That’s why I’ll miss Steve Irwin. He died the way he lived and that’s inspiring. And now he’s gone and we, the boys of the world, are left with one less beacon of what masculinity should be.
I used to get the shit kicked out of me in 1st grade when my dad forced me into Catholic school.
I was growing up in New Hampshire which was 110% white and was forced to wear a uniform to school and pray during class. The school was under funded and run by a priest of some kind. There wasn’t even a playground outside. Instead we got to run around for 15 minutes in the parking lot and, if we were lucky, allowed to throw a Nerf football around.
My family was from the better part of town while the school was located in the shitty part; a defunct church that, like those who attended, was in dire need of repair. The kids who attended were from the local neighborhoods whose parents forced them to attend out of proximity, not because of God. They were the misfits of the streets forced into grade school-daycare and they hated it. And a lot of them hated me.
I was tall for my age and, apparently, that called for an ass whooping. I was terrified to go there and felt helpless during recess as I was hunted down by kid-sized piranhas with mullets. Not even the teachers gave a shit. I actually looked forward to class because I was less likely of getting killed with a teacher watching.
I tried everything to make it stop. I hung out in a five foot radius of a teacher during recess. I’d pretend I didn’t hear someone calling me names to my face. I even tried to not notice my Nerf ball being throttled into the back of my head when some asshole stole it. I even tried to tell a teacher but she didn’t want to hear it.
She didn’t want to hear that something was wrong. Is this telling of hardcore religious people? I think so.
This one kid in particular was a real problem. He was two years older and was big for a third grader. He had a constantly red stained mouth from the packs of Kool-Aid he’d shotgun before school started. After all, he needed his energy if he was going to pry me away from a fence and drag me across the entire parking lot. I was terrified of him. I was afraid of his Kool-Aid power. When I saw him devouring a packet with hate in his eyes, that only meant that I was next. I didn’t even feel safe praying for my life because I was afraid he’d catch me and whip me with my plastic Rosary beads.
The ones who came to my aid were the only ones at the school who I thought were scarier than this bully: the rock guys.
I’ll always love those rock guys from the 1980s. The late 80s when monster rock was in full, head-banging glory. Before Kurt Cobain destroyed it with REAL music. To clarify, it’s not the rock I like. I hate that shitty music and its fake attitude. But I was a huge fan of the fans.
You know the type, those kids on the street who never want to let the glory days go: long hair, leather jacket, tight jeans, cut off t-shirt revealing tight white-boy abs, unlaced army boots, walkman with a Guns n’ Roses or Motley Crue tape inside. They were usually found in pizzerias luring next to Pac-Mac machines or stomping on cans in a back alley somewhere. Today, Rock Guy (as I like to call him) is hard to find but he’s still around, pumping Megadeth in his Camero and keeping it real.
So I show up at school one day with my dad. His attempts to walk me to the door to protect me never worked. In fact, the extra ass kicking I got because of dad walking in only made it worse. I waved goodbye to him like I was on the deck of the Titanic after seeing the actual movie.
I walked up to the front door of the school and quickly tried to get in. I was focused so hard on my peripheral vision (to avoid getting side tackled), so I didn’t see him coming at me from straight ahead. The bully grabbed me and before I knew it I was being gorged with my orange Nerf ball. It was slightly wet because I had left it out that night in the rain. It was like being attacked by a sponge.
Suddenly Rock Guy and his friends came out the door and saw what was going on. Rock Guy snapped into action and grabbed the bully by the ankles and ripped him off of me. Rock Guy knocked him into the brick wall and held him there while his Rock Friends looked out for Teacher. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but Bully tried to shriek away. Each time he fells to his knee Rock Guy would pick him back up and re-plaster him to the brick.
Rock Guy told the bully to leave me the fuck alone while hitting the bully with his own hand (saying fuck usually made me sad because of Jesus and all, but it suited Rock Guy). It was funny to watch because each time Rock Guy leaned into the bully his long hair would fall into his face and he’d have to wipe it back behind his ears. It was effeminate, but still hardcore. Between hair fixings I saw Rock Guy’s angry face. He was good looking but was in total rejection of it with his Rock style. When he was done with the bully he handed me my Nerf ball back and told me that the bully wouldn’t bother me anymore. And he was right.
At the time I didn’t know why Rock Guy did what he did. But I think I do now.
The misfit kids, the kids of the street, the ones who stay out too late and never seem to have anything to do, they all are ready to answer some sort of calling. Rock Guy, the self proclaimed outcast of society (like Rock Guys everywhere) loved doing heroic shit every once in a while just to prove that they still have a good side. Rock Guy wants to prove that Rock Guy isn’t simply about beer night and can crushing; that deep inside him is a knight in leather armor armed with a wallet chain that’s ready to do the noble thing if he can. Why? Because that’s rock and roll.
I was in cub scouts and other clubs and was always a loner, but I remember Rock Guys all over always being nice to me. Once on a trip to DC I wasn’t feeling well and one of the older scouts was told to watch me for the day while the rest of the group went out. Rock Guy took me to a mall and we hung out in the arcade. He bought me candy and told me dirty jokes and tried to cheer me up.
As I looked up at him I realized the irony: he was so cool, yet he dressed so bad-assed. I felt safe with Rock Guy because everyone else was afraid of him even though he was so cool. I saw what Rock Guy was on the inside. Rock Guy didn’t even wear his scout uniform, because those uniforms are gay. Nothing can contain the glory of Rock Guy, especially not a weak-ass handkerchief and a tiny metal loopy thing.
So, Rock Guy, if you’re reading this, or if you’re a Rock Guy somewhere and wonder whatever happened to those little kids that you stood up for…thank you. I know your factory job must suck because it’s unlikely that you ever went to college or finished high school, I know it seems like you should have applied yourself as a kid instead of playing too much Atari, I know that you know those glory days are over and that people don’t understand your Camero-driving ways…but I do. And thank you.
I’m terrified of the ocean. But I love looking at coral and seeing pictures of enormous whales leaping out of the water. I guess it’s the idea of the ocean that I like: the great unknown, the danger, the adventure, and the crushing depths. It draws me in even though I’m terrified. But it got me through religion.
I became an atheist a few years ago after 22 years of trying to be a good Catholic. It’s the same story that a lot of “collapsed” Catholics have: too many questions and too much guilt for asking them.
A good friend of mine was a recovering Catholic as well. He got me into punk rock and taught me a lot about art (I’m a professional illustrator). We hated everything together and we still do. Sometimes we hate for no reason, other than the fact that it brings us closer. If it’s popular, chances are we make fun of it. We laugh at Michael Bay movies and cringe at Top 40 music on the radio. Unfortunately they don’t make a pistol that holds enough rounds for us to make the world into what we think it should be by the process of elimination.
He didn’t believe there was a God and at that time I did. We’d have discussions about religion, it’s origins, the human need to believe in something, and a lot of other ideas around the entire topic. I wouldn’t call it a debate because in a debate you need two people who are passionate about a topic, and my passion about religion was already waning at that time. I’d been living in Hollywood over the previous year and, even though the Bible said that God was everywhere, he sure as hell wasn’t in LA.
My friend and I drove from Denver to Encinitas, California for some surfing right after I’d decided to try being an atheist. Again, I hated the ocean. I’d seen people stabbed in the ankles by stingrays, stung by jelly fish, and exit the water bleeding with lost toenails. My sister almost drowned once off the coast of Puerto Rico when the rip tide sucked her out from that abandoned beach we found.
Still, I wanted to try surfing and welcomed the chance to get through my fear of the ocean. My thought on fear is that if I throw myself into a situation without remorse then maybe I’ll power my way through it and come out a little less afraid.
I sucked at surfing. But at least I managed to get out there and try it. Since I was a kid, I’ve been working out a few times a week and did okay paddling out through the surf. The waves were pretty big and I fell down a lot, but I was handling it.
It was the end of the day and I was more tired than I realized. Our plan was to head in. It was getting windy and the water started to seem really cold after the sun set. Even under the wetsuit you could tell that it was time to get in. It felt like the water was about done with us and I wasn’t about to argue.
I tried to hop the next wave in. I even managed to muscle my way on top of the board and even set both of my feet down. Suddenly, something in the wave gave me an extra boost and sent me toppling over the front of my board. My last visual before hitting the water was seeing a huge, upside-down wall of white water. I caught half a breath and was suddenly submerged.
I felt the board being taken from my hands and then the sharp tug of the leash around my ankle. My back was hitting rocks and sand was stuffing my fingernails. I couldn’t tell which way was up and realized that half of my last breath was filled with ocean water. My breath gave out and I almost panicked. My first reaction was to pray and ask God for help, something I’d trained myself to do over the years.
Then I hate a moment of clarity as I swirled around under the rolling wave, my body turning into a human sized roll of sushi with all the seaweed. It all made sense to me at that moment: people pray because they need hope and because they want to think that they have some unexplained power over their circumstances. But I was an atheist and I’d be damned if I’d give up that easily.
I applied logic (atheists love believing in things they can prove). I knew I had air in my lungs and, if I just waited, I’d eventually rise to the surface. People rarely die while surfing and I was attached to a giant, floating surfboard. I chose not to panic. And before I knew it I was breathing again, taking deep breathes and looking around for my friend. I found him and we paddled in together, then went and ate some burritos.
If I was religious and prayed at that moment, it’s likely that I would have given God credit for saving me. But an atheist doesn’t believe in God and neither did I. I was my own God. From then on, all I needed was to believe in my own abilities to live my life.
It was scary at first, giving up that idea of an invisible man in the sky. But in a way it’s also empowering. My life came into sharp focus because I could prove what I believed in: science, logic, and reality. It wasn’t so vague anymore. I was Christian because I was taught to be one in New England. And if I was born in India I’d be Hindu, and if I was born in ancient Egypt I’d be worshipping a man with a dog head. To me, it’s all created by man because man is the most dynamic animal on the planet and he has the ability to dream and wonder what happens to him when he dies.
I have nothing against people who believe but I have a low tolerance for people who try to argue with me about religion. You can’t prove that there’s a god. You can’t say that you KNOW there’s a god because you don’t. You believe it and you have faith, and that’s cool. You can only know something you can prove, and feeling God inside of you isn’t proof.
Thanks for reading.