Sunday, January 13, 2019

Ten Years Ago

A game is going around Facebook: 
post side-by-side pictures of yourself from 2009 and 2019.
Some call this the Ten Year Challenge, some, the How-Hard-Did-Age-Hit-You? Challenge.

I think this is FB at its worst, as it invites people to silently crow about how they still look the same or (more commonly?) to publicly flagellate themselves for having gained weight or whatever.

I'm not sure why people willingly do this to themselves. Any attention is better than none?

I do love time lapse photography, however, and Before & After shots, and scavenger hunts, and show and tell, so I looked at my January posts ten years ago, here on my blog for a Compare & Contrast.

Among other things, almost exactly ten years ago I'd made a last-minute motivational macro of Captain Kirk for my online 2009 Star Trek calendar:


(The quote is from a version of the King Lear story--"I love you as fresh meat loves salt".
The screencap is from the 1966 episode "Charlie X" (the one with Robert Walker Jr.), from the amazing TrekCore.com archive. 
Fans (some) call the light across Shatner's eyes Kirk Light.)

I was blogging a lot (a lot!) about Star Trek: The Original Series in 2009.  I hardly do anymore, but as it happens, yesterday I'd bought 57 Star Trek VHS tapes (for $25) at a thrift store (not mine) with the intention of cutting up the covers, with their soft printed photos, to collage the old fashioned way, with scissors and glue.

After years of smooth digital images, I extra-appreciate the nicks and ridges of handmade collage. 

I made my first one this afternoon:

(William Shatner (Capt. Kirk) is Canadian, you know. 
Pop Quiz: Can anyone name the ST episode?)

I'd saved the cookbook because the fish dishes on the cover, before I cut them out, looked like Wayne Theidbaud's paintings of cake

I did post these Kirks side-by-side on FB: "From Digital Meat to Paper Fish".

I'm happy that I am, in this way Kirky way anyway, the same as I was ten years ago. 

3 comments:

  1. City on the Edge of Forever? Isn't that Dr Mccoy's POV, looking at Kirk, after Bones has erroneously injected himself with some drug and goes a little crazy?

    That cookbook is priceless. Canadian Fish Cook Book? I see things like that and I think that back in the olden days it must have been dead easy to get published.

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  2. "Kirk Light" -- I love it! Star Trek TOS did often use that unusual form of lighting, didn't it?

    I love your collage, too! I haven't heard of the ten-year challenge, and I think I won't go there. :)

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  3. VIVIAN: CLOSE!!!! You get a Gold Star for being reeeeally close---it is a crazed person's view of Kirk, but it's Spock in "Is There in Truth No Beauty", after he's looked at the Medusan ambassador without his protective lenses.
    Kirk is holding the lenses in this shot--they're underneath the salmon. :)

    The fish cook book was published by [darn, now I can't find that page--my room is strewn with bits of paper] something like the Canadian Fish Board.

    STEVE: You're right--the lighting director was Jerry Finnerman, and he said that he used lighting wildly to create a sense of other-worldliness---cheaper than sets (though it was an expensive show),
    . . . AND--I just remembered––he shot Kirk like a Hollywood star--Garbo, say!

    ALSO, Finnerman used lots of color filters---NBC had just committed to broadcasting all its shows in color and they wanted to glam it up.

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