Nuyorican Obituary

I am  very, very, very wary of this new Star Trek movie, due out May 2009. I have seen advance pictures and the latest trailer and, frankly, it makes me wonder, What’s the point? Sure, you got a new Spock. I’ve seen him and liked him on Heroes — a show that often gets on my nerves for something I can only describe as its “sense of self-satisfaction.” In fact, he is probably my favorite thing about Heroes. Everyone else is so angst-ridden! It’s like Spider-Man 3 every week sometimes. But he and the rest of the cast, especially the dude playing Kirk, just seem like actors fitting the current model of attractiveness playing younger versions of  beloved characters. To sum it up, it looks like Star Trek Babies. (See Muppet Babies, A Pup Named Scooby D00, X-Men: Evolution, James Bond Jr., the execrable Smallville, et. al.—i.e., the babyfication or juniorfication* of familiar characters in order to appear fresher and to appeal to a younger demographic.)

I am admittedly a canonist from way back. Unlike many other, undiscerning fanboys, I believe, in the world of serial characters, an established canon should be considered a benefit, something that adds layers of history and complexity to an ongoing story. If you screw with canon, you’re just being lazy or egotistic.

I would have preferred if this movie were a complete reboot — new look, new history (based very loosely on the old framework), and completely new takes on old characters. Like the new Battlestar Galactica, which is so new and reimagined I have zero emotional connection to any of the characters. (Nor will I have them when the overly convoluted show choaks and dies of its own preciousness soon.) What the new Star Trek movie seems to be is a prequel, a prequel that totally screws with canon (just for starters — Kirk driving; anachronistic Romulans; Kirk meeting Pike).

Altogether, I understand why they would want to do keep to part of the TOS world, and even include the godlike Leonard Nimoy. They do not want to disenfranchise the old, old fans of the franchise. A financial decision, clearly. Much more so than a wise one, creative-wise.

In my deep fan’s heart, I honestly would have preferred if they’d waited till Shatner and Nimoy had kicked the bucket. (Which I hope does not happen for many, many years.)  Cue “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes. The film feels sacrilegious somehow. It’s as if you had a family reunion, and two younger people showed up as your grandparents, wearing the same old cardigans  and still yelling at each other about who farted worse in the car ride over. See, I think a lot of what old fans love about Star Trek is not the space stuff, the utopian future crap, or even the green-skinned aliens, etc., but rather the charisma of the actors from the original, the humor of their interaction, and their embodiment (using now-unpopular acting styles) of archetypal roles.

And, honestly, perhaps this reaction of mine is because my fanboy’s heart has been broken too many times. I now go into any new genre movie very cautiously, very jadedly. In this way, I am not so terribly disappointed. I can go into Indiana Jones 4 and leave saying, “Oh, at least it was nice to see him in the old costume again.”

* By which I do not mean this charming piece of juvenilia.

… I must be dreaming. Lots of good things happening lately. What I will tell you is that I’ve had a short story chosen for publication in Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery (Arte Público, due out spring 2009). I usually don’t like to talk about these things until I have the actual printed book in my hands. But I have signed a contract! Which is pretty darned cool anyway.

I have had the pleasure of working with great editors Sarah Cortez and Liz Martinez.  I met Liz, I believe, through the story I had published in Murdaland. Funny how way leads on to way. The book will include stories by new and veteran writers writing about mystery, detective, and crime fiction from a Latino POV. I told Sarah and Liz to promote the book with the slogan “This time the accent is on crime!” But they didn’t respond when I said that. Sometimes it’s best to just ignore me when I try to be funny. Just like you would do with a child having a tantrum. Just make sure I don’t hit my head on a table or anything like that.

A listing online describes the book this way: “This groundbreaking anthology of short fiction by Latino mystery writers, Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery, features an intriguing and unpredictable cast of sleuths, murderers and crime victims. Reflecting the authors’ and society’s preoccupation with identity, self, and territory, the stories run the gamut of the mystery genre, from traditional to noir, from the private investigator to the police procedural, and even a ‘chick lit’ mystery.”

FYI: Mine is not the chick lit story.

It continues: “Hit List collects for the first time short fiction by many of the Latino authors who have been pioneers in the mystery genre, using it to showcase their unique cultures, neighborhoods and realities. Contributors include award-winning writers such as Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Rolando Hinojosa, Manuel Ramos and Sergio Troncoso, as well as emerging writers who deserve more recognition.”

I don’t have a complete list of my fellow anthology compadres, but I will let you know when I do. In the meantime, I have another story under consideration for another anthology. I’m keeping my balls crossed that all will go well.

We delayed the launch of the November issue of AsininePoetry.com (yeah, like you even noticed!) till the Friday after the election — so we could feature some poems about the beginning of a great era of change. Or the certain end of the world. We got lucky. This time.

The latest ditties:
“The Polls” by Scott Emmons
“Last Call on Wall Street” by Richard Cairo
“Countdown” by Gene Tashoff
“Fortune Cookie Fortunes” by Elizabeth Swados
“Real Estate of Mind” by Moody Potomac
“Houses” by Marina Jane
“My Cat Fetches” by P-Woody
“My Cat Felches” by V.S. Frimmit
“Snookers” by Natalie M. Dorfeld, PhD
“Dear Johnny, Part 5″ by Casey

Only the first two poems ended up having any sense of timeliness. But several poems were about real estate, even though none of them even tangentially addressed the mortgage crisis. Sigh.

“A great battle has been today here fought!”