Things To See #5

My, my, August is nearly gone!

It seems like the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention just blinked in and out of existence - and there was so much preparation and growing anticipation for it for a whole year! This was the best convention I have been to so far, hands down! Awesome line-up, fascinating panels! I had a chance to see several actors I have been dying to meet for ages, got some wonderful photo ops and autographs! As my sister says: "Rinse and repeat next year!". We are, unfortunately, past the "golden age", the mid/late 90's, when multiple shows were on the air and everything crackled with Star Trek but we have reached an era of significant anniversaries - 45th of TOS last year, 25th of TNG this year, 20th of DS9 next year and 20th of VOY in 2014. I am glad to see that the fandom is very much alive and kicking, though the franchise has been pronouced dead far more than once. Star Trek Lives!

 

Tomorrow is my trip to the Big Brook location with the AMNH! I have yet to visit the the Enterprise Pavilion on the Intrepid and the new Spiders Alive! at the AMNH, so these two are still on the "to see" list. Among the other events of interest:

 

September 7th - 13th - the first Indiana Jones movie in High Definition will have a limited release nationally. They say the quality is so good, Spielberg himself's jaw dropped, and that's saying something. (Update: It was "nice, nice, not thrilling but nice" - like visiting an old friend, good old-style adventure. Less of an incredible "cleaned-up" visual than I expected but it was still great fun to watch this movie on the big screen. Also the preview of The Hobbit was absolutely tantalizing!)
September 20th - limited theatrical release of an old Queen documentary from the 80's - Live in Budapest. The most convenient location is in one of the Chelsea's theaters. Another fun night in NYC. (An outstanding concert!!! The DVD is going straight on my Christmas wishlist.)
September 29th - if I manage to register, a trip to the Red Hill, PA Early Tetrapod location with the New York Paleontological Society. Devonian terrestrial fossils!!!

October 12th - 14th - New York Comic Con. I figured I will attend only on Friday. Saturday is predictably going to be very intense, and I think I have had enough of intense convention Saturdays for this year. The most I am looking for is to get Christopher Lloyd's autograph!

October 16th - JK Rowling will be in New York City for a signing event relating to her new book. And incidentally, the new HP Wizard Experience Movie Boxset is coming out in the beginning of September - it looks fabulous but I'm not exactly tempted to rush out and buy it. The mix and match of different formats, not much of any extra material (i.e. extended editions are done only for the first two movies). The box itself is amazing, true, with all those replicas. But it's all flash only. And of course, the revised and expanded HP Film Wizardry will be out some time soon as well.
October 26th - 28th - the fall Chiller Theatre. Again, I am opting for a limited Friday only experience, with a projected autograph from Joan Collins.
October 27th - 28th - the Morristown Armory Antiques Show. Love these! I have acquired a few antique maps and art prints over the year from these shows. Not the point though, it is a lot of fun even just to look at what is being offered by the vendors.

The TNG Theatrical Event

Forgot to mention - I have attended the The Next Generation Theatrical Event a couple of weeks ago, which was tremendous! The event was organized to tie-in with the release of the First Season in Blu-Ray. The showings were organized throughout the country with pretty decent turn-out; the NYC one even got an unexpected guest!
What a gorgeous quality (how about that Chrystalline Entity, eh)! The atmosphere was wonderful - naturally, everyone in the audience has seen the two presented episodes before (many times, too) but somehow watching it with a group of fans made it even more special! I really hope they will hold similar events for the rest of the seasons!

Summer Continues

So the unpleasant heat continues. Bleh!

But the August events are upon us.

The Olympic Games are kicking! So many great performances! Of course, you can't compare London to Beijing but, I believe, these are one of the best Olympics in history. Unfortunately, NBC fails, again, to produce truly quality broadcast (5 minutes of actual sports, 15 minutes of "she was born in a small town")! Egh! What are you going to do...

The greatest party in the universe is next week!!! Can't really think about anything else at the moment.

And as far as the space-related things are concenrned, the Mars rover Curiosity is landing today!