RIP - Leonard Nimoy - UPDATED

You will be missed, sir.

Here is the NY Times article.

---  UPDATE ---

And a fitting farewell posted on another site that I feel needs to be borrowed.

Readership Spike

Literally.

So in a day I get a few readers.  After a new post, I get 30 or more.  But on Monday, I got 616 hits.  That quickly put me over 50,000 pageviews of all time, but I just have to wonder, why?

I mean it weird.  Its like someone, in one day, read my archives or something.

Because it's not like a single page garnered any coordinate spike of interest.  And I've kind of lost my international following.  The only country that really is lit up this week is the USA.

I guess while I may have some sort of draw, I don't have the international draw that John does.  He's talked about previous big readerships from Russia and other places.

The Tools and the Talent

So this morning when I bumped onto the sidewalk at the BART station and I was walking to the gate, my bike started acting like it didn't want to roll.

As I walked, I checked the brakes and the shifters, and everything seemed all right on that end.  Finally I just carried it until I got to my chosen door location, and looked it over.

Somehow, my rear tire spear (axle) had come out of it's mounting on one side, so the tire was rubbing against the frame.

And that's why you always carry tools when you bike.  The train was due in a couple minutes so I shucked off my helmet, vest, and gloves, and reached into my pack for my allen wrench.  I almost immediately grabbed it and laid it in my helmet.

The trains are pretty empty at 6:15, so I got my spot with a seat, and quickly loosened the spear, re-positioned it, and tightened it up.

Everything's back to normal.

I'm not a Boy Scout, but I do my best to be prepared.

It's Just Not Done

So, today I found myself struggling a bit with using what I feel is the correct word.  I discovered that popular culture has limited me on the words that I feel comfortable using.

I do not like to use the word "assume".  Essentially this goes back to an old episode of "The Odd Couple" when Felix is on the offensive in court.  The man he's up against states that he assumed that something had happened.  Felix latches on to it and writes the word "ASSUME" on a chalkboard.  He then circles three parts of it saying, "When you assume, you make and ASS out of U and ME."  This was one of the funniest things I had heard at that time, and it really stuck with me.

Then of curse there is Yoda.  A geek never "tries" to do anything.  For as the master says, "No!  Try not.  Do or do not.  There is no try."

Sean Connery fans would never do their best.  "Losers always complain about doing their best.  Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."

When a person asks how you think they did, you don't tell them " That'll do," because likely in the back of their mind they'll hear, "...pig." at the end of it.

And what is the best way to acknowledge a request made by someone you love?

"As you wish."

The Long Way

Television is fluid.  The things we watch come and go.  Sometimes they linger and leave a mark.  Sometimes it's not the show, but the producer's vanity card.

Nobody who watched TV in the 80s can hear "Sit, Ubu, sit... Good dog." and not bark (at least in their head).  And of course the MTM kitty meowing.

The favorite of ours now is Chuck Lorre Productions.  They are great little bits of personal philosophy and/or humor after some of our favorite shows.

A couple weeks ago, #482 came up and I took a picture of it.  I imported the picture into Word, printed it as a PDF and had Acrobat run an OCR on it.  I copy, pasted, and edited it up, and now have a nice word document of it.

Then when I thought to write this blog, I thought I'd link to any sort of page Chuck Lorre might have.

As you can see by clicking the above link, he has all of his vanity cards available to read.

But nothing acquired easy is as appreciated, right?  So anyway, here's #482:

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #482

The things I have spent my life depending on are undependable.   Because they are things.   And things  re, by their very nature, subject  to change.  This applies to people as well.  People change.  People leave. Inevitably we all leave.  The world, therefore , is essentially an unstable, uncertain environment.  That's why I choose to believe in, and depend on, an unchanging, eternal, omnipresent non-thing.  I prefer not to call it God, because the very word tends to thing things up.  So I try not to call it.  I try to experience it.  Easy to do looking out at the ocean.  Hard to do looking up at the ocean.  Easy to do when you look at a baby.  Hard to do if the baby is next to you on a long plane flight.  Easy to do when you look at a pretty girl.  Hard to do if you were once married to her.  Clearly what blocks me from transcendence is judgment.  If I were able to suspend having an opinion on drowning, other peoples' baby’s vomit, and alimony, if I could simply see these things as they area - actions devoid of meaning until I give them meaning - I could experience some semblance of union with the infinite sublime.  I'd instantaneously transition from neurotic sitcom writer to one seriously badass guru dude.  People would travel great distances to ask me for guidance with their personal problems.  I'd wisely tell them "It is what it is."  They’d judge this as being ridiculously inadequate advice and punch me.  But I'd be okay with it because I'm, you know, exalted.

Many Miles

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I like long weekends for the extra free time it gives me to take long rides.  This weekend I racked up over 70 miles.

I did two rides to Craneway Pavilion in Richmond.  The weather was nearly perfect: warm, and almost completely still air.  Sunday was nicer with a little cooler temperatures.

Monday, I decided to do the Oakland Bay Bridge again.  It's a nice challenge, but I needed more time out, so I took the split at the gate afterwards and headed into Oakland.  This branch took me into the Port of Oakland, and I ended back up at the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.

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Now, I now it's not a race, but sometimes it's just the fact that there's someone in front of me that I have to ride that much harder to get in front of them.

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A corollary to the above is that some songs are dangerous on an iPod while your'e riding.  The soundtrack to the new Tron is a good pace music but just makes me want to go fast.  Speed Racer is very dangerous.

Tales of Reading

So recently I've read a few books that were about the making of entertainment.

John Cleese's autobiography was tons of fun with both the tales of him growing up, and also his lessons on just what humor is.  At least his interpretation on what he thinks humor is.

Then I read the first two books in the These are the Voyages series which are an episode by episode account of the writing, casting, and filming of "Star Trek" the original series.  The stories in this one are really fascinating whether about Shatner and Nimoy, the back and forth with the network and Roddenberry, or even the growth of D.C. Fontana from secretary to science fiction writer.

But the jewel of books was As You Wish by Cary Elwes.  Written from the man cast as the Man in Black's perspective of his journey to becoming Westley, it also has accounts from interviews from the rest of the surviving cast, Rob Reiner, William Goldman, and Andrew Scheinman, as well as an afterward by Norman Lear.  I'm jsut going to have to watch the movie again.  The stories of how everything happened and what happened behind the scenes just rekindles my interest in the movie.  And Elwes' style of writing is as easy to hear in his voice as John Cleese was.