Fast Food Revisited

Eric Schlosser obviously has his own opinion of fast food – and I have mine.  I don’t eat nearly as much of it these days as I used to – and only abstain completely during Lent, a particularly onerous sacrifice which makes Easter Sunday that much more meaningful – but I still love much of it.

 Chipotle.  When it first came out, I initially shunned this place as pretentious, although the first one I saw open was only two blocks from my apartment.  It is, very much, an upscale Taco Bell, but much more than that.  Rather than Taco Bell, which slaps your taco, burrito or chalupa in the back, out of your sight and control, according to a predetermined formula, with Chipotle it’s made right in front of you to your exact specifications, so no one can sneeze, piss, or spit into your taco without your knowledge (unless you ask them to).  And the ingredients taste like normal, real food (which can’t be said for Taco Bell), no headless chickens or cannibal cows.  Once I discovered Chipotle and its steak soft tacos, it was ADIOS Taco Bell.  Incidentally, I can’t seem to enjoy the various copycat upscale competitors, Moe’s Southwest Grill, California Tortilla, Baja Mexican, Baja Fresh, etc.  They all seem like bad imitations, no matter how hard they try, though they do taste more wholesome than Taco Bell.  Remarkably, I’ve never seen ANY TV ads for Chipotle.  They’re no longer owned by McDonald’s, for those of you who do the “who owns who so we can boycott them” analysis.  Given the Mayan motif in many of the stores, an “Apocalyptica” tie-in might have been appropriate, if Chipotle ever went for such things.

 Taco Bell.  As noted above, I used to like this place, until Chipotle showed up.  The steak quesadillas are good, but not much else.  The stuff tastes machine-like, plastic, and fake, more so than any other chain.  Blah.  Does anyone miss “Yo Queiro Taco Bell” with the live-action Ren?  They must have the same R&D dept as Pizza Hut (see below).

 Roy Rogers.  Before Chipotle, this was my favorite, so much so that we used to call it “The Temple.”  Fortunately McDonald’s hasn’t killed all of them, so I can enjoy a huge, juicy roast beef sandwich (on a Kaiser roll!!) in Frederick, Leesburg or Franconia.  And the fries, cut so damn big, are equally irresistible.  Sorry, but Hardee’s and Arby’s don’t cut it; the roast beef tastes like ham and they ruin it with a sesame seed bun – leave that for the burgers, you clueless dumbasses.  The curly fries are the only things going for them.  I don’t think I ever saw Roy Rogers himself in person in any of the places, but he did show up in the ads.  The first Roy’s opened in 1968 at Bailey’s Crossroads, Falls Church, Virginia (I’ve actually eaten there, and now it’s a McDonald’s…of course.  Someone from Roy’s should buy the first McDonald’s in San Bernadino, California, if it’s still there, and turn it into a Roy’s – perhaps the current owners, the Plamondons, will tackle that sensitive operation).  The largest fast food location in the world was the Roy’s at the Stamp Union at the University of Maryland, College Park – if only because the eating area also doubled as the eating area for the University’s own Stamp Union eateries.  My sole fast food employment experience, all six nasty weeks of it, were at the Stamp Union eateries (which is another story….).  There are still a few Roy’s at the rest areas on the New Jersey Turnpike.

 McDonald’s.  “Evil Clown”, as we began calling them after they bought out Roy’s and started shutting them down or converting them into yet MORE McDonald’s (as if there weren’t enough already).  I’m ambivalent about McDonald’s.  I like the McNuggets and Selects, but I would never touch a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder.  I really hate complex tastes, so any kind of burger where they add in everything but the kitchen sink – particularly mustard, mayo, pickles, etc. – really stinks.  If I want a burger, I’ll go to Fuddruckers and get a huge, well-made burger that I can dress the way I want: just with ketchup.  (Is Fuddrucker’s fast food?  A judgment call on that one.)  However, for breakfast, McDonald’s has the best pancakes, aside from IHOP.  Where are the Hippie Meals with McAcid (“do you believe in acid?”).  Everyone already knows about McDonald’s, anyhow, and I kissed their McAss in the FFN & Reefer Madness blog.

By the way, what is Grimace??

 Burger King.  Since Burger King’s main deal is the Whopper, another of these burgers with too much shit inside, BK is not a big one for me.  At least their breakfast menu has Mini Cinis.  The fries here are good, though not as good as Roy’s.  Where are the Burger King glasses?  All the movie tie-ins these days are for kids meal toys.  (Why no “Reservoir Dogs”, “Eyes Wide Shut”, or “Scarface” tie-in?  Come on!)

 Wendy’s.  Lame – they make a “big” burger by stacking up the smaller, thinner ones.  Uhh, yeahh.  Once was enough for their crappy excuse for a hamburger.  But the chicken nuggets and fries are worth indulging in. RIP Dave Thomas…no, not the Doug McKenzie guy from SCTV.

 Five Guys.  Not a bad burger.  This started out as a local – Arlington, Virginia – chain with just a few locations, then expanded dramatically in very recent years.  Now there’s one in Frederick to tempt my mom, though with a Roy’s right next door, the temptation can’t be that strong.

 KFC.  Quality chicken, though I can’t stand dark meat or “buffalo wings”.  The crispy skins on the chicken are a guilty pleasure.  Even the crispy strips are great.  I’m not big into chicken, but I’ll go with KFC every now and then.  Back in the 70s’, several KFCs were Gino’s (1959-82), with an indistinguishable menu.

 Long John Silver’s.  Along with Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips, the only seafood-oriented fast food place I know of, and both are equally thin on the ground in my neck of the woods.  There is a LJS in Falls Church, but I’m not aware of where the nearest ATF&C is.  Both were pretty much the same, not bad, but seafood is not my cup of tea.

 Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Krispy Kreme vs. Montgomery Donuts.  I’m not a cop or a donut guy (Homer Simpson: “donut….”) so this really isn’t my scene, but once I discovered KK it was all over.  While the KK donuts freshly baked at the store, right off the flat rack, are heavenly – well worthy of Homer’s drooling adoration – the ones that make it to the supermarkets aren’t worth considering.  For some reason Montgomery Donuts had a store policy of always having a cheap shitty radio cranking out the local news channel. 

 Baskin-Robbins vs. Carvel vs. Cold Stone.  I’m not much of an ice cream guy; to me Dairy Queen is in a league of their own.  Among the lesser lights, BR is probably the best.  Carvel had the ice cream cakes, but to me cake should be cake, right?  If I want ice cream I’ll eat ice cream.  They did have the chocolate-sprinkled Lollapalooza, though I don’t know if they still have it.  The one in Gaithersburg was right next to the record store where my brother got Hotter Than Hell (KISS) and I got a Sha Na Na record (which of those two bands filled the stadiums, huh?).  Cold Stone is not to be confused with the idiotically named Stone Hot Pizza.  You know, like Queen’s “Stone Hot Crazy” and the wrestler “Stone Hot” Steve Austin.

 Bob’s.  Only in Brazil – the first one opened in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro in 1952.  The guy who started Bob’s in the 50s used to work for McDonald’s, so it’s no surprise that this Brazilian chain is virtually indistinguishable from McDonald’s.  Not bad at all, if you like the burgers, fries, and drink deal, but nothing special beyond that.  They don’t have any evil clown or bizarre, H.R. Pufn’Stuff like psychedelic characters to entertain the kids and freak out the adults.  It’s just remarkable that Brazilians can pull off such a good copy of McDonald’s.

 Habib’s.  Another only in Brazil, Portugal and Angola (when I think of fast food, I definitely think of Angola).  This is Lebanese fast food – go figure!  Not only that, they serve beer and caipirinhas!  Mixed drinks at a fast food place?  Amazing.  Even more remarkable, the guy who founded it in São Paulo is Portuguese, not Arab!  Top menu items are esfiha (not bad with meat filling) and kibe, sort of an egg-shaped grenade of ground beef laced with onions (blah).  They were going to expand to the US in 2001, until that minor incident on September 11 made Arab things somewhat unpopular here.  They might as well have called it McJihad’s for all the good it would have done.   If the war in Iraq ever ends (?) maybe they can get Habib’s going here.  There is no Habib’s in Lebanon, but there is Taco Bell in Mexico.  Go figure.

 Burger Chef.  Gone, but not forgotten (1956-1982).  BC used to have these fantastic pop-up meals, a different one each week, consistently week after week.  You never knew what you’d get, it was like the Grateful Dead of fast food.  Although the food was garden variety fast food (burgers, fries, shakes) the packaging was unique.

 Red Barn.  Another casualty of the Fast Food Wars, starting in the early 60s and ending in the 80s.  I can’t recall the food being particularly special, but the barn motif was unique.  I still see former Red Barns under new mgmt as banks, dry cleaners, etc. in the same barn-like building.  Somewhere there’s a barn out in the country shaped like a McDonald’s, probably the scariest place you could be if you were a McCow or a McChicken.

 Jack-in-the-Box.  Unlike Burger Chef, which is defunct nationwide, JitB only lost the Reston, Virginia location but is still thriving elsewhere in the country.  We went to the Reston one back in the 70s, but the only special element in their menu were the tacos, long before we even knew Taco Bell existed.

 A&W.  I’m not a big fan of root beer, but this place has decent food.  Not so decent, though, that I feel compelled to visit the only one I know of still in existence in my area, in Chantilly near the intersection of 28 and 50.

 Dairy Queen.  They had one at Walnut Hill, in Gaithersburg (near the Kramer’s where we got the Star Trek shirts mentioned in the last blog), which closed ages ago; now they seem to be coming back.  Although it has a non-ice-cream menu – including burgers – I only go there for the delicious hot fudge sundaes.  They used to have Dennis the Menace as a mascot.

 Mario’s.  A local sub place in Arlington, only ONE location since the 50’s and now open practically 24 hours a day.  They make the lousy square-sliced pizzas (not that great) but they have the best steak & cheese subs anywhere, bar none.  The meat is super thick, no one else does it that well.  On Wilson Blvd. east of Ballston and west of Clarendon, two blocks from the George Mason University School of Law – I had lots of subs on lunch breaks during law school.

 Jerry’s Subs & Pizzas.  Excellent subs, a good 2^nd to Mario’s, and the pizza is damn good considering how cheap it is.  They have a great chopped steak sub, and several chicken subs.  The Beast is too big for me to finish even half of.  Their radio ads are pretty good.

 Subway.  I had a “Falling Down” moment when I tried their new steak sub, which looked NOTHING like the ad – totally lame.  They may have nice, freshly baked bread, but little of value to actually put on that nice, freshly baked bread.  No grill!  It’s all healthy, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean it tastes that great.  I can endure their meatball subs or grilled chicken breasts, but the steak subs are low quality.

 Quizno’s.  BLAH. Toasted subs, rat meat.  I can’t stand this place.

 Vocelli’s.  They took over from Domino’s as my favorite pizza delivery chain.  What can I say?  My particular taste in pizza.  I first had it out in Centreville at my brother’s house, and they gradually expanded into my neighborhood, thank God.

 Domino’s.  A close second to Vocelli’s.  The breadsticks are also quality.

 Pizza Hut.  VOMITO.  I can’t stand their cheese.  What diseased cow do they come from?  The breadsticks are quality, though.  For some reason the lunch buffet pizza is not bad – but why it should be any different than the usual pizza, I have no clue.  Usually the all-you-can-eat stuff is noxious trash compared to the a la carte menu, here it’s the other way around (this is why I avoid Old Country Buffet and the other all-you-can-puke buffet places).  I will say this: they are the most innovative at coming out with bizarre variants, like stuffed-crust pizza, though it would mean more if the cheese wasn’t so disgusting.  Maybe their R&D Dept. is a bunch of stoners high on weed – truly inspired!!!  Picture a house full of stoners, cluelessly toking and eating pizza, listening to the Dead, Floyd, Allman Brothers, while behind a two-way mirror, unknown to them, Pizza Hut scientists in white lab coats holding clipboards diligently monitor the unwitting subjects, waiting for them to come up with yet another “totally radical” pizza innovation – and laughing when the stoners recognize, in Pizza Hut commercials, that “dude, they totally ripped off my idea!!!” and then get paranoid (rightfully so) before, like, crashing.

 Papa John’s.  #3 after Domino’s and Vocelli’s.  Not bad, just not as good as the others.  Their breadsticks, though, are a bit weak.

 Incidentally, I just got back from New Jersey (just outside NYC) and had some fantastic New York style pizza.  For some reason it’s practically impossible to find it outside the NYC/NJ area, though there are countless places around here which claim – incorrectly so – to have so-called “New York style” pizza.  It’s good pizza – though not necessarily the best.  The worst pizza is a tie between University of Maryland Dining Services and any of that cake/pie/crap they call “Chicago style pizza”.

 Little Caesar’s.  Now few and far between – most of the ones in my area are now Papa John’s - but an excellent deal when they were around.  Their carry-out special was unbeatable, so we’d gladly go there to pick it up.  My first night I had my base Firebird, November 22, 1992, we went out and got Little Caesar’s TWICE.  Good memories.

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD)

Despite what happened with Marge in the kitchen, Shelbyville cannot lace Springfield’s (or anyone else’s) water supply with LSD: the drug is too unstable and complicated, and gets broken down immediately by the chlorine and other chemicals in the water treatment plants.  This is the same reason the water supplies are essentially immune to potential biological terrorist attack, as these chemicals attack bacteria as well.  In any case, the effects would take an hour or two to really get going, not instantaneous as happened to Marge.  

 In the Beginning, there was Sandoz.  Working on ergot alkaloids for Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, Albert Hofmann (one f, two n’s) invented lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938.  They marketed it as Delysid.  Can you imagine the ads today?  “Delysid is not for everyone…consult your doctor about Delysid.  Side effects may include…”.   Having successfully developed several other (non-hallucinogenic) ergot compounds which became commercially successful for Sandoz, he put LSD aside for the time being.  In 1943, he dusted off the LSD and began working on it again, and accidentally ingested it through his skin, becoming the first person to trip on it.  Soon after he took another trip, resulting in a horrifying bicycle ride (wartime restrictions limiting gasoline engine vehicles).  The rest is history.  His book, LSD: My Problem Child is remarkable, although only half of it is really about LSD itself.  The drug definitely changed him, although he remained the efficient, normal-looking Swiss chemist with the analytical mind we expect from Germans/Swiss.   

 Eventually Sandoz was embarrassed by the publicity surrounding LSD and stopped making it.  The premier LSD source of the 60’s, Augustus Owsley Stanley, III, better known as "Bear", claimed to be able to make purer LSD than Sandoz itself; his variety “Blue Cheer” became the name of a SF metal band, and his poetry graces the inside covers of their albums, but he is usually associated with the Grateful Dead and claims he was never very impressed by Blue Cheer.

 Effects. LSD is the most powerful drug known to man, as noted in the Guinness Book of World Records.   Doses are measured in micrograms, not milligrams.  Although it’s been produced in tablet and liquid form, blotter paper (as shown second left) is probably the most popular and well known, and certainly uniquely open to artistic interpretation, something that can't be said about a drug which is injected, snorted or smoked….LSD doesn’t have to be injected, snorted, or smoked.

Low doses.  The spaced out feeling like a mild fever, or Darvocet/Percocet.  Something isn’t quite right, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Still able to have something close to a normal conversation.

            Medium doses.  The visuals show up – trails, colors are brighter, glow, and begin to melt into each other.  Patterns, like wallpaper and oriental carpets, begin to shift, swerve, or scroll; lines on a flannel shirt will dance, woodgrain breathes.  Grass grows before your very eyes.  Album covers breathe and begin to act up, like the living portraits in Harry Potter.  Speech becomes more difficult as the brainwaves no longer directly connect thoughts to spoken words – someone inside (who?) has to translate from the brain to the mouth. 

            Higher doses.  Totally out to lunch, on another planet.  More intense visuals, and the mindf**k goes into overdrive.  The self dissolves into the universe at the molecular level, the ego disappears and nothing has any true meaning anymore.   You’ve shifted into a completely different dimension.  Welcome to “where the hell am I now???”

There is no “cure” for a trip, but thorazine will calm down a bad trip somewhat. Theoretically, a bad trip can happen to even the most experienced tripper, but it's most likely when LSD is taken carelessly  in the wrong set or setting - or if it's given to someone without their knowledge ("Somebody Put Something In My Drink", as the Ramones might  say); the Dead were notorious for doing so, so much so that it was common knowledge to avoid eating or drinking anything in their presence.  Syd Barrett's friends would constantly dose him, thinking they were doing him a favor by keeping him tripping 24/7, ultimately not helping him. 

 The CIA.  It experimented with the drug in the 1950s in the MK-Ultra program, as fully described in Acid Dreams, by Martin Lee & Bruce Shlain.  It turned out to be a lousy truth drug: the subject was as likely to spout complete nonsense as the “truth” (however that could possibly be defined under the influence of the drug), with the interrogator scarcely able to tell one from the other.  It was also useless as a mind control drug, because its effects were so unpredictable and (as noted above) it breaks down in the water supply.  The CIA finally gave up on it altogether, about the same time certain anti-establishment elements discovered it.  This is the twisted part about LSD: it started out within the darkest depths of the establishment, the CIA, and then went to the counterculture.  Before Leary (mentioned below) there was Captain Alfred M. Hubbard, one of the CIA’s biggest fans of LSD.

 Merry Pranksters.  Yes, these are the anti-establishment elements, led by Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) – they ran out of the Beatles’ 1964 tour screaming as they couldn’t handle “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” on acid.  Kesey & crew, with a plentiful supply of still-legal LSD, painted a school bus (“Furthur”) dayglow colors and toured the country in summer 1964, freaking out unsuspecting locals who had yet to experience LSD or hippies.  Eventually the Acid Tests evolved, group parties in California where a warehouse would be rented, a vat of electric Kool-Aid (laced with LSD) was there for communal drinking, and a house band, the Grateful Dead, would play – all in safe, nonthreatening environment where you were surrounded by like-minded (?) people and not thrust out into a hostile outside world of squares and pigs.  In London the same experience was imitated, the house band being Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.  Kesey’s antics are best described in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

 Timothy Leary. The all-time ultimate LSD guru.  After a mushroom trip in 1960, he discovered LSD and proceeded to lose his job at Harvard.  From then he preached the LSD gospel to everyone, convinced that LSD could solve all the world’s problems.  Hofmann met him a few times in Switzerland but felt that Leary was responsible for attracting too much unwelcome attention to LSD and encouraging its use among people who really should NOT be tripping.  Eventually Leary got off his acid trip (after a vacation in exile in Algeria, Switzerland, and finally picked up by the FBI in Afghanistan) and turned his attention to space travel and the ultimate final trip, death itself.  Before he died he engaged in a series of public debates with G. Gordon Liddy, his erstwhile nemesis as a NY prosecutor in the late 60s.

 Change the world?  The hippies, including Leary, felt that if LBJ or Nixon could just be dosed, they would wise up and stop the war in Vietnam.  Highly unlilkely. The effects are unpredictable even for the same person tripping more than once – each trip is completely different, like a snowflake – much less predicting how it would affect the President.  For all we know, Nixon might have decided to nuke North Vietnam.  Not good. 

 Acid Casualties.  Charles Manson & Syd Barrett, who I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs, are the most notorious.  Hofmann, though, notes that no one has ever died of an LSD overdose, which can’t be said for heroin.  Much of the anecdotes about people flying off rooftops because of an LSD trip gone wrong usually turn out to be urban legends (remember Pop Rocks?).  The rumors that LSD damaged chromosomes turned out to be complete nonsense, as Generation X has ably demonstrated (these kids are normal, right?).  And the top ranks of corporate America are full of baby boomers who consumed vast quantities of acid in the 60s and eventually rejoined the mainstream rat race like everyone else, none the worse for the whole “experience.”

 It’s the music, man.  Of course, far beyond Timothy Leary or Charles Manson, the ultimate legacy of LSD is in the music we listen to today.  Although much of the LSD-influenced music was psychedelic with little appeal to those not already disposed to take LSD, marijuana, mushrooms, etc. – notably Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and Hawkwind – a substantial amount was, and is, accessible to those of us who would never dream of tasting the temporary madness of LSD, but who can nonetheless enjoy the music made by those who did dare to “turn off their minds, relax and float downstream”, the biggest example being the Beatles and their masterpiece, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Very little of Sgt Pepper is psychedelic in the sense of “Interstellar Overdrive” (Pink Floyd), “Dark Star” (Grateful Dead) or anything by Hawkwind or King Crimson.  The LSD effect is more subtle than that: it’s the whole concept of the album and how it all fits together; “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is just the ambassador of LSD within the album itself, to those not in tune enough to recognize it in the whole, the big picture.

            But that’s not all.  To the extent a second wave, an “equal and opposite reaction” in the Newtonian sense, of 70s rock developed, mainly Black Sabbath and punk rock (remember that “Pink Floyd Sucks!” t-shirt?), in defiance of the hippies and California sound, we have a secondary ripple from LSD.  From there, you get the bands Black Sabbath influenced, i.e. Metallica and the whole dark heavy metal genre, and its offshoots such as grunge, meaning that LSD’s impact on music is far beyond the Beatles, Hawkwind, Pink Floyd or the Grateful Dead.  Again, even if some metalheads wouldn’t dream of doing LSD, they still listen to, bang their heads to, and enjoy, music which was indirectly caused by the very drug they shun.  There's also a whole newer genre of heavy metal, which developed in the mid 1990s and continues today, called stoner rock, a genre which deserves its own blog entry in its own right.

             Finally, that brings us to Blue Cheer – not only named after LSD, not only having Owsley’s poetry on their albums, but merging both the San Francisco sound with the darker noise of Black Sabbath and proto-metal...arguably the first stoner rock band.

Star Trek - The Original Series

I finally watched all 79 episodes of the original series (ST/OS). Born in 1969, I was too young to have seen them when they were originally shown in prime time for the 1966, 1967 and 1968 seasons. From the introduction it’s apparent that the series was intended to run for 5 seasons, but NBC pulled the plug, due to low ratings (???) after only 3. I saw it as a child growing up in the US in the mid-70s in reruns, but never saw anywhere close to all 79 episodes until now. Even so, as a child 90% of the plots would have simply gone over my head. I recall my brother and I had the uniform shirts (yellow and blue), the action figures (!), and I had the phaser/communicator/tricorder toy set.

I never turned into a Trekker or Trekkie. When the Next Generation (ST/NG) debuted in 1985, at first I ignored it. Later on, after some anniversary special, I picked up on the Next Generation and got to enjoy it; I also watched Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but at some point my interest dropped off again. I have seen all the Original Series movies and the Next Generation movies as well.

Characters.
Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner). The man. Although he does have his charm with the ladies, he’s not the horndog all the commentators seem to make him out to be. And he can think or bluff his way out of a situation, if necessary. Picard (ST/NG) is somewhat more cerebral than Kirk; Kirk is who Trekkers WANT to be, Picard is who the Trekkers ARE.

Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Half human, half Vulcan, second in command of the Enterprise and Science Officer. Can be counted – in most cases – to have a logical view of things. He invariably kicks butt whenever circumstances put him in the Captain’s chair, yet even the evil (“Mirror, Mirror”) Spock doesn’t seek power. Drinking game: drink whenever Spock says “Fascinating….”

Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy (DeForrest Kelley). Human, all too human, and somewhat contemptuous of Mr Spock’s Vulcan side. His favorite line: “He’s dead, Jim.”

Chief Engineer Scotty (James Doohan). Thick Scottish accent, gets the job done in less time than he predicts – because he was sandbagging all along. Like Spock, he kicks ass in command.

Lt Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). As Abraham Lincoln observed in “The Savage Curtain”, she’s a “fine negress”. Funny, I never considered her attractive when I was a kid, but as an adult I can’t help noticing her stellar legs.

Sulu (George Takei). Helmsman, I guess. Sulu is fairly reliable, except in “Naked Time” and “Return of the Archons”.

Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig). Russian helmsman. I don’t see him drinking vodka – much less drinking Scotty under the table – or doing Cossack dances. And why wasn’t he speaking Russian to Irina in “Way to Eden”?

Clearly, reviewing all 79 episodes here would be impractical. Better, then, to observe certain trends, themes, and patterns (of force?) – some episodes qualify in multiple categories.

The Best. This is my humble analysis, which Trekkers may or may not agree with. “The Enemy Within”, “The Naked Time”, “Space Seed”, “City on the Edge of Forever” (w/Joan Collins), “Friday’s Child”, “Wolf in the Fold” (written by Robert “Psycho” Bloch, a horror writer influenced by, and good friends with, H.P. Lovecraft, who based the protagonist of his story “The Haunter of the Dark” on him); “Errand of Mercy”, “Mirror, Mirror”; “A Private Little War”; “A Piece of the Action”, “The Enterprise Incident”, “Requiem For Methuselah”, and “The Turnabout Intruder”, the last episode, loosely ripping off H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Thing on the Doorstep”.

Humor. These episodes have some elements of humor or lighthearted plots. However, “humor” is relative here: you won’t be rolling on the floor laughing. “Mudd’s Women”, “Shore Leave”, “I, Mudd”, “The Trouble with Tribbles”, “A Piece of the Action”, and “The Way to Eden” (space hippies! - perhaps unintended humor...).

Arena. Superior (?) alien civilizations force Kirk and/or the Enterprise crew to participate in quasi-gladiatorial combat to satisfy their own perverse amusement. “Arena”, “The Gamesters of Triskelion”, “The Day of the Dove”, “The Savage Curtain”, with “Bread & Circuses” also qualifying, quite literally.

Romulans. The #2 bad guys after the Klingons, and closely related to Vulcans. “Balance of Terror”, “The Enterprise Incident” – in which Kirk is surgically altered in Romulan disguise, part of an elaborate Federation plot to steal cloaking technology from the Romulans. Spock’s job is to seduce the female Romulan commander. Note that Spock also had a role in the ST/NG episode where Picard impersonated a Romulan.

Klingons. The #1 bad guys. Here they look like badly dressed humans with goatees, unlike the “bumpy forehead” version which developed with the ST/OS movies and continued with ST/NG and Lt Worf. “Errand of Mercy”. “Trouble with Tribbles”, “Friday’s Child”, “A Private Little War”, and “Day of the Dove”. I don’t think I recall seeing any female Klingons in the original series.

Babe Alert. First off, I love the ST/OS uniform for female members – with its provocatively high skirt amply demonstrating the female form and the legs in particular, with spectacular effect for Lt Uhura and Yeoman Rand. In ST/NG they all get some formless unisex sack of a Hillary Clinton pantsuit, except for Deanna Troi, who gets her own version of the uniform, marginally more revealing. Apparently sex is obsolete in the ST/NG future. 

Second, certain episodes feature some amazing babes: “Mudd’s Women” (Mudd’s women, of course), “Conscience of the King” (Kodos’ daughter Lenore); “The Galileo 7” (a Yeoman), “Shore Leave” (Ensign Barrows), “A Taste of Armageddon” (Ensign Tamula); “Friday’s Child” (Julie Newmar, aka “Catwoman” from the original Batman series); “Wolf in the Fold” (no less than THREE babes, all murdered by Scotty!); “I, Mudd” (more of Mudd’s women – except for his wife!); “Mirror, Mirror” (Kirk’s mistress Marlena); “A Private Little War” (Nona, the #2 babe); “The Gamesters of Triskelion” (Shanha); “The Paradise Syndrome” (Minemanee, Native American babe – the TOP babe of all 79 episodes!); “Return to Tomorrow” and “Is There in Truth No Beauty” (a VERY YOUNG Diana Muldaur, aka Dr Pulaski from ST/NG); “Patterns of Force” (babacious Aryan babe); “Whom Gods Destroy” (Yvonne Craig as green Marta); “The Lights of Zetar” (Lt Mira Romaine, hooks up with Scotty); “The Cloud Minders” (Troglyte babe), “That Which Survives” (the “robot” woman), and “Requiem For Methuselah” (Rayna).

Evil Woman. Some misogyny shows up, with an Evil Woman every now and then – or else, she is not what she appears to be. “The Man Trap”, “The Menagerie” “A Private Little War” (Nona is the worst), “That Which Survives”, “Catspaw”, and “Turnabout Intruder”.

Romance Among the Stars. Kirk was a handsome devil, a ladies man, and the captain of a starship, so it’s not surprising that he – and some of the other characters – did hook up, though no one gets married or has a stable relationship. Rank has its privileges: Kirk gets the most stellar pussy. “Conscience of the King” (Lenore, Kodos’ daughter); “Shore Leave” (meets simulation of ex-girlfriend); “City on the Edge of Forever” (falls in love with Joan Collins); “Mirror, Mirror” (evil Kirk had a mistress); “Private Little War” (Nona tries to hook up with him); “Gamesters of Triskelion” (teaches Shanha about “love”); “By Any Other Name” (teaches alien woman, Kelinda, about “apologies” = kissing); “Eleen of Troysius” (Eleen tries to seduce Kirk); “The Paradise Syndrome” (actually “marries” Indian babe, who gets pregnant with his child); “Wink of an Eye” (hooks up with superfast alien woman); “Mark of Gideon” (alien woman seduces him to get sick); “Requiem for Methuselah” (hooks up with Flint’s girl Rayna).

Spock has his share of romance: “The Naked Time” (Chapel); “Amok Time” (his betrothed, T’Pring); “This Side of Paradise” (Leila); “All Our Yesterdays” (Zarabeth); and “The Cloud Minders” (Droxine).

Chekov has only two: Irina, who dropped out of Starfleet Academy to join the hippies ("Way to Eden") and the Clanton moll in “Spectre of the Gun”.

Scotty murders three women in “Wolf in the Fold” but has a true romance with the delicious Lt Mira Romaine in “Lights of Zetar”.

Finally, Bones gets Catwoman (Julie Newmar) in “Friday’s Child,” but has a more substantial relationship with Natira in “For The World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky”.

Spock vs. Bones. I love the running somewhat-friendly rivalry between Mr. Spock, the half-Vulcan science officer who ruthlessly represses his human side’s emotions, and Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy, the ship’s medical officer, who embraces subjective emotions, almost an Apollo vs. Dionysus “reason vs. love” dichotomy. On ST/NG all the crewmembers get along as a big happy family, and even Data’s attempts to emulate humanity, rather than to embrace his machine identity, are patronizingly admired by his human comrades. There was no ship’s counselor on the original Enterprise, no Deanna Troi to sense our emotions and work out our issues. If you had a problem, you had to shut up and deal with it, however you could manage. Scotty had the recipe for the original counselor: ALCOHOL. (On the other hand, the ST/NG Enterprise also had Holodeks, which were as much for training and therapy as for sheer amusement). Although the rivalry shows itself in bits and pieces throughout the series, “The Galileo 7” and “The Ultimate Computer” are especially remarkable for putting it in full view.

Spock Goes Nuts. Somewhat related to the previous topic; for whatever reason, Spock loses control of himself and acts out of character, much to Bones’ amusement – or dismay. The top episode for this is “Amok Time”, in which Spock has to return to Vulcan to “mate”, but it also shows up in “This Side of Paradise” (zonked out by an indigenous plant), “Mirror, Mirror” (actually still logical, just evil), “Return to Tomorrow” (Spock possessed by evil alien), and “All Our Yesterdays” (Spock regressing 5,000 years into barbarian Vulcan). In “The Menagerie” he appears to go nuts and hijacks the Enterprise to Talos IV, but his motives are eventually exonerated.

Utopia is Not an Option. Despite the Prime Directive, which forbids Federation personnel from interfering with a foreign civilization, the Enterprise can, and does, find various planets which have a system which – as Spock notes, “works for them” – and for whatever reason, typically because the Enterprise itself is directly threatened, has to shut down the Utopia forever. “A Taste of Armageddon”, “This Side of Paradise”, and “The Apple”.

Imminent Destruction. A huge machine, a huge amoeba, or a paranoid space probe, threatens to destroy everything in its path, and it’s up to the Enterprise to figure a way out (at the very last moment, of course). “Operation – Annihilate”, “The Doomsday Machine”, “The Changeling”, and “The Immunity Syndrome”.

Alternate Earths. Earth-type planets far away from Earth itself are found which decided to pattern (!) themselves on certain interesting segments of Earth history. “Bread & Circuses” (based on Ancient Rome), “Patterns of Force” (based on Nazi Germany). and “A Piece of the Action” (1930s Chicago).

Greeks. Although science fiction, Star Trek gives us two episodes of Ancient Greeks: “Who Mourns for Adonis” and “Plato’s Stepchildren”.

Social Commentary. Gene Roddenberry couldn’t resist, from time to time, talking down to us and preaching some sort of deeper lesson. “A Taste of Armageddon” (bureaucratization of war); “A Private Little War” (mutual assured destruction), “The Omega Glory” (traditional US values); “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (racism), “The Mark of Gideon” (birth control/Malthus), and as heavy-handed communist Michael Moore propaganda in “The Cloud Minders” (Karl Marx).

But these are mild by comparison: ST/NG is 100x worse. I could go on about references Picard makes to contemporary society having solved all issues of material wealth, but the ultimate proof are these: FERENGI. The Ferengi are clearly the ST/NG writers’ attempts to externalize capitalist values into an alien race and then unfavorably depict them as greedy, dishonest, ambitious, etc. Their Rules of Acquisition are just one of many negative references. Every Ferengi who behaves characteristically for his race – notably Quark on Deep Space Nine – is held up as an unsavory character, like any thief, rogue, drug dealer or pimp. Only Quark’s nephew, whose business acumen is almost nil and behaves like a nonmaterialist human, is portrayed in an unequivocally good light. As Riker indicates, with some contempt, that Ferengi correspond to Earth development at a lawless, relatively primitive time, as if humans have evolved to a higher level, from capitalism to socialism (and they deny they’re Marxists?). Fair enough – if you’re willing to suspend disbelief and buy into teleporter technology, warp drive technology, time travel, etc. they can probably assume you have just as much necessary imagination to suppose that socialism somehow works in the future whereas it clearly does not work here in the early 21^st century. It’s science fiction, after all.

While I think of ST/NG as being far more "politically correct" than ST/OS - even to changing the intro from "where no MAN has gone before" to "where no ONE has gone before" (as if there may have been places where a WOMAN had been, but no MAN)(???) - even ST/OS has its own share. Look at the crew picture: we've got Uhura, a black woman, and Sulu, an Asian man. The white males are from Iowa (Kirk), Scotland (Scotty) and Russia (Chekov). An alien, Spock, is the 2nd in command and science officer. The scientist, the Federation's top computer expert, in "The Ultimate Computer" was a black man. The higher civilizations they encounter are typically androgynous aliens of dubious sexuality (aside from asexual energy beings, but even the "Metamorphosis" energy being turned out to be female!). We even have a disabled person, Captain Christopher Pike, in "The Menagerie" (Parts I & II, aka "The Cage"). Granted, the captain is still a white male (Kirk), the only female commander in any episode, that I can recall, was the Romulan in "The Enterprise Incident", and I don't recall any Jewish or Hispanic Federation personnel. But give them credit for being "PC" in 66-68 without being too over the top.

Kirk vs. The Machine. A somewhat luddite approach, technology is not always good – so Kirk has to come to the rescue, destroying a vicious computer by twisting its logic in on itself into an irresolvable contradiction which causes the computer to self-destruct in frustration. “Return of the Archons”, “The Changeling”, “I, Mudd”, “For The Earth is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”, and “The Ultimate Computer”.

H.P. Lovecraft. I suppose it’s inevitable that some part of the horror writer’s ideas, which touch somewhat on science fiction, should find some expression in the Star Trek episodes, on rare occasions. It’s actually not in “Wolf in the Fold”, the Bloch-written episode, but the following: “Obsession” (star vampire-like being); “Is There in Truth No Beauty” (alien being whose horrible appearance causes insanity in any who view its true form); and “Turnabout Intruder” (evil woman trades bodies with Kirk).

Looking to the Future. Several episodes are either recycled or give basis for either the movies or the Next Generation, or have people later going on to better fame: “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (recycled to ST/NG with Dwight Schultz as Barkley); “Mudd’s Women” & “Eleen of Troysius” (Famke Jannsen ST/NG episode); “The Naked Time” (recycled to ST/NG, as the “Naked Now”); “Balance of Terror” (Mark Lenard as a Romulan, he later became Spock’s father, Sarek); “The Squire of Gothos” (Trelane = Q); “Tomorrow is Yesterday” (slingshot effect around sun re-used in STIV “The Voyage Home”); “Space Seed” (Ricardo Montalban as Khan, comes back for STII “The Wrath of Khan”); “City on the Edge of Forever” (Joan Collins); “The Apple” (young David “Hutch” Soul); “A Piece of the Action” (Victor Tayback, aka “Mel” from “Alice” and countless other TV shows); “Assignment Earth” (Teri Garr); “The Enterprise Incident” (recycled w/Picard in ST/NG); “The Wink of an Eye” (plot ripped off for a “Six Million Dollar Man” episode); “All Our Yesterdays” (Mariette Hartley); “Return of the Archons” (precursors to Borg collective). Also, Majel Barrett, aka Luxana Troi from ST/NG (and the voice of the computer), was Roddenberry’s girlfriend/wife and he got her the recurring role as Christine Chapel, Dr. Bones’ assistant. She had an unrequited crush on Mr. Spock.

The Worst. Of 79 episodes, I suppose they couldn’t get it right all the time: “Spock’s Brain” followed by “Charlie X”, “Miri”, and “The Alternative Factor” are some of the weaker ones.

I’ll be looking forward to the upcoming prequel movie, even though Nimoy and not Shatner will be involved – Bones and Scotty are dead, unfortunately. We’ll see how it works out. Finnegan (from "Shore Leave") and Irina (from "Way to Eden") should show up if the film takes place while the crew members were originally in Starfleet Academy.

Ho Chi Minh + LBJ = Sgt Pepper?

Here’s a radical idea: add Ho Chi Minh and Lyndon Johnson and you get: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 Think about it: would the massive upheaval, the social revolution, the counterculture, have happened if (A) North Vietnam hadn’t invaded South Vietnam, and (B) LBJ hadn’t sent US troops into Vietnam in 1965? 

 Back in the early 60s, we were like the late 50s: crew cuts, rock’n’roll, Elvis, anti-communist, obey authority, no drugs, etc.  We trusted the government just as we trusted our parents, to tell us the truth and look out for our best interests.  LSD was in the hands of the CIA and a few knowledgeable souls such as Ken Kesey, but otherwise unknown.  There was a very small fringe - beatniks and communists – but they were a very small minority and off the radar of mainstream America.  The Beatles didn’t even put out an album until 1962, and even then it was Please Please Me. 

 By 1970 everything was different.  Woodstock, Altamont, LSD, Kent State, you name it.  Even if the counterculture represented a minority – as distinguished from Nixon’s “Silent Majority” – it was still thrust in America’s face, impossible to ignore.  The war itself was on the news, as were the protests.  A threshold was reached where ordinary people were capable of doing anything.  The Beatles had put away their matching outfits, grown their hair long – or even beards – and Lennon and Yoko posed naked on their album cover.  Even the Beach Boys (???) were singing about marijuana, meditation, all that New Age crap.

 Clearly something happened.  But what?  What did the WAR have to do with it?  The war stretched the government’s credibility gap beyond the breaking point for all but the most diehard right wing reactionary.  During WWI and WWII it was expected that the government may have been fudging a little on its propaganda, what Churchill called “terminological inexactitude”, but so long as the war was being won and the results didn’t stray too far from what we were being told, it didn’t matter too much – we assumed we were being told this for our own good and that our own government was looking out for our own best interests, like parents telling their children about Santa Claus, a harmless story for the benefit of the child’s happiness and well being.

 But Vietnam was different.  Ordinary people could tell that what they were being told didn’t match what was really going on.  Body bags + violence + an unconventional war against an unconventional opponent; it didn’t help that the war was being fought with one hand behind our back.  Instead of invading North Vietnam on the ground, we bombed it from the air; and we know from experience that you although you can’t win a war without air superiority, air power alone won’t win the war without “boots on the ground” – it’s a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for victory.  We could see the napalm, the arc lights, the destruction, but not the victory.

 Tet January 1968 was probably the last straw.  Up until that point the White House, Pentagon and General Westmoreland had been telling America that the war was being won, that the enemy was on its last legs.  Then POW!  The VC and NVA attacked everywhere at once, overrunning much of Hue and breaking into the US Embassy compound in Saigon.  Although the NVA and VC eventually lost all the territory they had gained – suffering horrible casualties and wiping out the VC as a military force – the political damage was done.  The irony was that NOW the war was winnable, but no one – not even the military – believed it anymore.

 It was this destruction of government integrity, how they betrayed our trust (“Born on the Fourth of July”, Daniel Ellsberg, etc.) which ripped our social fabric apart at the seams.  We were a democracy, but we could no longer trust the government, as if our parents, who we loved and respected, turned out to be selfish, lying bastards.  The world was turned upside down.  Now anything was possible.  Black was white.  Night was day.  Drugs were OK.  Promiscuous sex was OK.  And Revolver and Sgt Pepper (as well as the Grateful Dead and Piper at the Gates of Dawn) stepped in to fill the void.  These albums, this music, fit our mood, our spirit.  They described exactly how fucked up, how confused, how crazy we felt.  If America hadn’t been corrupted and weakened from within, if the bond between government and people hadn’t been ruptured, all this counterculture would have remained a small, weak, insignificant margin outside the mainstream, out of sight, out of mind.  The music might still have been made, but it would not have had the impact and the success it did, instead remaining obscure like Bloodrock, Hawkwind, and Blue Cheer.

 In each place, the US and London, a social revolution was going on.  The youth of the counterculture had come to the conclusion that: (A) the establishment looked out for its own interests, not those of the public at large, and not for the younger generation – who it sent to Vietnam to fight its wars; (B) it established arbitrary rules which restricted the freedom of young people to express themselves; (C) it was possible, nevertheless, for youth to rebel against this corrupt authority and take control of their lives, and (D) there was no shortage of outlets for this rebellion.  The music – especially Pink Floyd & the Beatles, and the San Francisco bands, reflected this change, casting away the old restrictions and going off into new, uncharted territory where anything was possible.  Sgt Pepper is the finest example of this: 4 guys going into the studio without having to worry about satisfying mobs of screaming teenage girls or whether they could reproduce the music onstage. 

 LSD.  Undoubtedly, the catalyst for channeling the severe social distortion of the Vietnam War into the creative and productive outlet of music was the drugs, and none more important than lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, or acid.  The drug is too important to fully address here, and deserves a full blog entry in its own right.  But for here it’s enough to argue that the drug was responsible for no less than Sgt Pepper, Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Pink Floyd), Blue Cheer, the Grateful Dead, Hawkwind, and countless other bands.  Lennon has always denied that “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was about LSD, but the song title and lyrics, plus Lennon’s own extremely irreverent and cynical personality, convince me that his denial was really an elaborate put down, an inside joke, a slap in the face, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone who ever listened to the song closely.  By expanding our consciousness, by smashing outside the box of conventional thinking, the drug opened new horizons.  Not all the music was good, but the best of it was some of the best ever made, and could never have been made without the LSD.  Sure, these same bands had made quality material in the early 60s, but alcohol, cigarettes, even marijuana, were no substitute for what Jimi Hendrix called “the experience”.  LSD was the only game in town.

 The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and others in London’s Underground movement were watching America, particularly San Francisco, and the shock waves rippling through America from the Vietnam War – including Woodstock, which was an anti-war protest festival – flew across the sea into the streets of London, and channeled through the artists and musicians by LSD, were engrooved into vinyl for the rest of us to experience and enjoy even to this day.  Thanks to Uncle Ho for invading South Vietnam, and President Lyndon Johnson for sending US troops to defend it.