Semantic Nonsense: Fathoming the Unfathomable

Fathom Events’ The Wrath of Khan

As you may remember, I have some history here with the second Star Trek movie.

Having never turned up a chance to see a Star Trek movie in the theater since I was old enough to effect it (sadly, my first was Star Trek V), I certainly jumped at the chance to see the best of them all, and the Director’s Cut version, no less.

However, I had a few notions of the event that turned out to be unrealistic. I was expecting a theater quality experience, and what I got was akin to the projector booth just running the DVD.

I’m no audiophile, but a movie theater’s sound system is so far beyond the average television’s speakers that even a layperson can hear the slightest difference in audio quality. Unless somebody absolutely crushed the bitrate, I personally have not been able to discern compressed audio from uncompressed audio since the MP3 files became mainstream. In the theater last Sunday, I heard the compression loud and clear (so to speak).

The video quality was likewise lacking; indeed, it’s the first thing that inspired the comparison to the theater just using the old DVD. And I say DVD because the Blu-Ray looks and sounds a universe better on my super-cheap TV.

I really don’t get what the quality issue was. I used to go watch old movies (Most recently, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jaws), in a theater that was literally in the middle of the woods back in Maine, and they looked and sounded just fine.

I don’t know if this is the norm for Fathom Events screenings, but this experience has made me leery of going to another one.

The Orville debuts

Seth MacFarlane’s first live-action show is a high-budget love-letter to Star Trek: The Next Generation, but with more of MacFarlane’s style of humor.

While the comedy is downright tame compared to Family Guy’s current status quo of relentless shock humor, the writing still fits neatly into the style he’d known for. Trying to make the show more serious (as befitting a 1-hour time slot) mellowed it out to something even more family friendly than Family Guy’s more laid-back original run.

Still, the whole thing is a tad awkward. There are a few characters who are playing the whole 25th century Not Starfleet thing straight, while the rest (including MacFarlane) drive the humor by simply bring 21st-century tropes into the future setting. It’s an interesting take to create a version of Star Trek with more comedy without going into a full parody like Galaxy Quest, but the different styles clashed to awkwardly in the first episode. I don’t really envision that getting better, but time will tell.

SNES Classic deathwatch

Yesterday, preorder party-pooper Toys R Us tweeted it would be holding a midnight launch of the SNES Classic at stores nationwide.

But while I was in the middle of pitying Toys R Us for giving themselves two Hunger Games Black Fridays this year, they doubled-down on their party-pooping by saying the tweet was erroneous, and that there would be no midnight release.

What the heck is going on at Toys R Us?

Today, in another Trojan horse of marketing, all branches of Nintendo announced that the SNES Classic will stay on the market through Spring of next year, and will be replaced come summer with a new round of the NES Classic.

While this is good news for people raring for another chance at the NES, SNES fans shouldn’t be celebrating their good fortune as I have been seeing many do on social media.

Why? Two reasons.

1. This is the same release window the SNES Classic had when it was first announced, so nothing changed.
2. There was absolutely no mention whatsoever of producing more SNES Classics than originally planned.

Seeing as nothing actually happened, the SNES Classic deathwatch will continue as per normal.

Kit Kat flavor of the week: Green Tea

I have a lot of gimmicky favorites when it comes to Kit Kats. The Reverse Kit Kat was wonderful, even if it only ever existed here for a few months. The mint Kit Kats are a winter staple. And the Triple Chocolate Kit Kats, I proclaimed at the time, were so amazingly tasty that they ought to have completely replaced the regular Kit Kat.

But the real, true, honest-to-goodness once and future best Kit Kat ever created by mortals will is the Green tea Kit Kat. I’m at a loss to describe it short of simply saying that every taste and every texture fits together in such perfect harmony that I’m surprised there aren’t any videos using it as proof of a benevolent god’s existence like there are for bananas.