The New USS Enterprise

Entertainment Weekly has released the first official photo of the new USS Enterprise, which is really the old USS Enterprise, from the J.J. Abrams movie due next year. If you look closely, you can see a shuttle approaching.

Oh, she looks sweet. Enough like the original TV version to make me happy, but with a few modern tweaks to bring her up to speed. I like it. The original Enterprise is still my favourite starship of all time, and this sustains that. I was worried she’d be silver and armoured and sleek, but Abrams has kept the look and feel of those 1960s models.

“If you’re going to do Star Trek, there are many things you cannot change,” Abrams told EW. “The Enterprise is a visual touchstone for so many people. So if you’re going to do the Enterprise, it better look like the Enterprise, because otherwise, what are you doing?”

This is just the latest suggestion that this movie might be exactly what the franchise needs. Abrams appears to be on the right track.

Of course, not everyone agrees with me.

Today’s Morons: Really, Really Stupid Teenaged Thieves

Today’s Morons are a gang of juvenile burglars in Bentonville, Arkansas, who turned up at a metal recycler yesterday and wanted to sell a chunk of something. The owner looked at it, weighed it, then offered them $30 for it — and they accepted.

He paid them, they left, and he called the police; it was a silver ingot worth $15,000. Police tracked the kids down and discovered they’d ripped off two safes, which contained the ingot, $25,000 worth of rare coins and a first-edition D.H. Lawrence book worth $5,000,

“They’re kids, they had no idea what they had,” detective Mike Stegall told the AP last night.

A silver ingot weighs 62 pounds, so you can imagine the work that went into (a) stealing it and (b) getting it to the recycler. I guess they missed the stamp that says “silver” on it.

The items belonged to a property owner; one of the six people charged is his young handyman. This guy then admitted to a bunch of other crimes around town, including arson, theft, etc. It must have been the guilt eating away at him. Or the stupidity.

Boy, I’ll bet cops like it when their job is this easy.

The Obamas’ New Dog?

This is Macchu Picchu, a Peruvian Hairless Dog belonging to a family in Lima, Peru. It’s called a hairless dog because it is.

Its owners want to give the five-month-old pup to the Obama family, as Barack Obama pledged to buy his daughters a puppy if he made it to the White House, but one of his girls is allergic.

The president-elect said he would look into non-allergenic breeds, and preferred a pound puppy (“A mutt like me,” he said, and that’s his best line in a long time). I don’t think he was considering this wretched-looking creature.

Can you imagine having a hairless dog? It just strikes me as too strange to really think about.

Star Trek: Family Guy

I’ve managed to avoid ever seeing Family Guy, which some people say is very funny but seems to me a bit, uh, stupid. From what I know of it, it has a lot of smart pop-culture references, but is also crude and a little mature.

But I may watch at least one episode in the new season: creator Seth McFarlane has hired the Star Trek TNG cast to reprise their roles.

Seth is no stranger to the Trek world. He’s a fan who parlayed his star status and played Ensign McFarlane on a couple of episodes of Enterprise, and Patrick Stewart appears on his other series, American Dad, which I also have never seen. Seth has popped Trekness into his shows before, but this is a full-on cast reunion (no word on Wil Wheaton, though).

This is from an interview Seth just did with the Associated Press:

Q: “Let’s talk about what pays the mortgage: Family Guy. What’s new for the seventh season?”

MacFarlane: “In one episode, Stewie kidnaps the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They (the original cast members) all came back, reunited to do their voices for us. Brian tries to legalize pot in Quahog (Rhode Island, where the show is set). Peter tells the story of his ancestry. Down the line, we have our Family Guy abortion episode, believe it or not. Hats off to Fox for letting us take some risks, as always. There can be a lot of trouble, but at the end of the day, they do generally step up for risky, sensitive, topical stuff.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think there should be cartoon shows about abortion. Not that the topic should be ignored; it’s just that kids watch cartoons and a lot of parents don’t, so it would be easy for little ones to tune into this show without their parents realizing how mature the content is. This goes beyond abortion and drug references; there’s a lot of rough language and sometimes the Griffin children don’t listen to their parents. Perish the thought!

That being said, it will be cool to see animated Trek again, even if it’s a one-time deal. Hey, it’s Trek on TV, and that’s never a bad thing.

Star Trek Spoilers

Okay, some monster spoilers are out. Don’t click if you don’t want to know.

I wanted to know, despite myself, and I can say this movie is going in a direction I didn’t expect … but I like the sounds of what’s going on. So far, so good.

Also, I watched Smokin’ Aces again, this time paying more attention to Chris Pine, and you know what? The kid’s got close to Shatner-level charisma. I think he’s going to pull this off, and pull it off well. My confidence in J.J. Abrams remains high.

Watchmen: A Sneak Peek

Here’s a look behind the scenes of The Watchmen. It’s an interview with Malin Akerman and Carla Gugino, the two Silk Spectres, with a lot of quick shots of the actual filming. Quite cool.