back Stateside

[xparrot]

So, gnine and I survived the move, as did our luggage, all 6+ 50 lbs bags of it (minus the other six boxes that are coming by sea, which we'll hopefully see again in a month or two...keep your fingers crossed for them! Also keep them crossed for my marimo, one of them fell apart, and not sure they'll recover...) We're now ensconced in the brother's house in Seattle, which is slated to be my home for the next...um...I have no idea. gnine abandons me for the U.K. in a couple months, but for now we're settling in here...

Bit of a culture shock, being back in the U.S. (the store clerks chat with you! Everyone on the bus can understand what you're saying, and you can understand most of their conversations! ...And of course one of the first conversations we overheard were two teen boys discussing Final Fantasy...you can't get far from Japan these days.) Pluses to being back: cheap Mexican fast food (mmmm bean burritos, how I missed you!), cats I can pet (kitteh~~!) and the Star Trek movie is already out (opening today in Japan) so I got to see it last night:

As an old-skool Trekkie, it was for the most part, squee~~! for me, with a couple minor quibbles. Loved all the characters, thought everyone did a superb job. They were all so excellent that one got impatient during the f/x space battles, wanting to get back to the real action, the people, which is how Star Trek ought to be. And the spirit otherwise was perfect, from the barroom brawl to the starship shots. Spent much of the film squealing and dolphin-clapping because, it's Star Trek! On screen again!

I can't hope to pick a favorite among the chars - agree with everyone else that McCoy is just fantastic (such a perfectly crotchety young man! Even though his brown eyes kept making me double-take) but Simon Pegg's Scotty just killed me ded. And Chekov was so adorable! And Sulu - heeeee, when he said he knew advanced fighting I was like, wait, what does he know except fencing? And then he had a sword and ahahahah beautiful! (Also that was right after the poor red shirt died, as a a good red shirt must. BWAHAHAHAH!) Kirk was suitably crazycakes (and if I had moments I was impatient to get him off the screen and get back to the other chars, well, that's right, too!) and Sylar Zachary Quinto did an amazing Spock, though his voice drove me nuts, it was so very much not Nimoy's baritone (that's really a compliment to Quinto, he so perfectly caught Nimoy's intonation and inflection that it sounded just like him, only an octave too high; I kept wanting to adjust the sound when he spoke...)

My main quibble was with Uhura - I liked a lot of the way they re-realized her character (mainly by giving her one - and giving her first name in official canon, finally, that's the first time "Nyota"'s actually been used on screen, right?) But she's the only major female character (save Spock's refrigerated mom) - so of course she has to be romantically involved. Because really, what else do women really do besides have romantic relationships with men? And be the responsible non-dorks, while everyone else gets to be silly little boys. Siiiiigh. (Also, if pon farr was going to go out the window along with Vulcan, I feel sorry for Nurse Chapel, who doesn't even get a cameo, much less snag Spock...)

I did appreciate how the franchise has been rebooted - alternate timelines are so very canon anyway, so now both versions of the 'verse can peacefully co-exist. And Nimoy's Spock bridging the gap was perfect, and he did a marvelous job...his exchanges with Kirk were a bit heavy-handed script-wise, but still, you could feel the affection, how much he'd missed his friend. Besides, y'all know how much I love intersecting alternate universes, so this was just, eeeee~!

And there were a lot of other things to love, too, like all the aliens in the background, this Federation looked almost almost as multi-species as it was in the books. And how all the crew was established as geniuses in their fields, and massive neurotic DORKS as well (three cheers for dorks in space!) which is what the Enterprise should be (even if it is a bit of putting all their brilliant eggs in one easily self-destructed basket...) And Kirk & Spock beam down together in blatant violation of any sort of sense - and oh, the video-game style transporter locking was all nifty (even if it gave me Galaxy Quest flashbacks) - and Chris Pike ended up in a wheelchair and the shuttlecraft are the same absurd boxes and oh! Star Trek! <3333

Definitely would like to see it again! And sequel, please?



Also, with the bro, there has been the obligatory YouTube sharing: I saw the Superman theme song a while ago, but I didn't realize the guy had done more - I especially enjoyed Jaws and Terminator 2, and the Batman theme proved what I've been saying since I saw Dr. Horrible, that there needs to be a superhero musical. Badly. Also liked Halloween even though I've never seen the movies - it's actually as creepy as it is funny, and weirdly effective for that.

Comments

[gritsinmisery.livejournal.com]

My sister spent a year in Japan teaching ESL to middle-schoolers, and hated the cold and damp.

So when she and her husband decided to drop their lives in S. Carolina (Clemson told him he wasn't getting tenure, no way no how) and move to Seattle, I said, "Why? It's just like Japan, except that a few more people speak English as a first language."

She was not amused.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yup, ESL teaching is the way to go! Cold and damp, though - hmm, where was she? That's not how I'd describe Kyoto, certainly (though I grew up in New England, so my definition of "cold" doesn't include most of Japan, or Seattle winters XP)

[gritsinmisery.livejournal.com]

I don't remember, it's been so long... somewhere Fukishima / Yamagata / Sendai - ish, I think. As for cold -- she was born in Louisiana and while she was living in Chicago when she went over to Japan, it's the damp, not the actual low temps, that get to one.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Ahh...I was never in the Sendai area, so I don't know how damp it is there. The rainy pre-summer season does get wet, but that only lasts a month or so in Kyoto...my biggest problem was the Kyoto summers, which were stickily humid and brutally sweltering - miss a lot about Japan, but not the summers!

[crashtestskater.livejournal.com]

which has started by the way. You left just in time. We've had rain for 3 days then a couple of nice ones. We're getting due for more rain. And yeah, the humidity is starting to climb. It's not too hot, but I've turned on the dehumidifier to be comfortable.