To TC, things like “schedules” are a nebulous concept difficult to grasp — as any of our subscribers will tell you. Thus, having shifted the editorial updates to the weekend, I am once again wildly inaccurate. At least this one has appeared AHEAD of when it should, simply because I didn’t write it. This week, I hand you across to Chris Fata, for:

THE STAR TREK EXPERIENCE

LAS VEGAS HILTON
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
11 APRIL 1998

This American Ambassador drove to Las Vegas, the desert Oasis only 5 1/2 hours away, owned by most of the Mafia (sorry, Cosa Nostra) to spend a weekend doing some silicone research for your editor, as well as satisfy my mild TREKKER obsession and take in the new STAR TREK EXPERIENCE at the Las Vegas Hilton. Firstly I would like to say that it was slightly relieving to be staying at the Las Vegas Hilton, not only cause I got a smokin’ room rate of $49 per night, not only cause the LV Hilton is a really pretty and clean place, still a classic casino and maintained beautifully, but also, the LV Hilton is a little off the beaten path, away from the main strip on Las Vegas Blvd. LV Hilton is on Paradise Road and Riviera.. a little ways north of the STRATOSPHERE hotel, so there is not too much vehicle traffic on that street.. I had gone through such a serious ass traffic jam on my way there, because the sun was just going down and the BIG HOTELS had just put their lights on, so I wanted to see the strip at night.. The Pyramid shaped LUXOR, the cartoonly royal EXCALIBUR, the stately NEW YORK, NEW YORK with it’s miniaturized (yet still HUGE) New York city skyline including the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney Island Amusement Park outside..etc…etc..BIG MISTAKE, especially after you’ve been driving with the sun in your eyes for the last 6 hours and your head was pounding… Traffic was at a virtual stand-still with everyone and their mother doing the exact same thing I was doing.. LOOKING AT THE LIGHTS. – what was I thinking? Well.. regardless of my ignorance, I made it to the Las Vegas Hilton without murdering anyone.

Many facets make the STAR TREK EXPERIENCE complete. All the foreplay goes into action here.. You are bombarded with visuals, the likes of which start your sci fi juices flowing, you begin drooling as you walk past the front desk (after receiving my room key – which is a magnetic strip containing a STAR TREK SCENE – as if they think I am gonna return that key to them!) and find yourself inside the SPACEQUEST Casino.. where the slot machines work if you interrupt a light beam with your hand.. motion sensors! It’s all very techno, silver and space like. Including all the music piped in. It’s either Jan Hammer (Beyond the Minds Eye) or other out-worldly type tunes.. As you leave the SPACEQUEST CASINO you encounter the SCI-FI ZONE a gift shop containing all manner of really cool things you positively cannot live without. I found LUNAR PHASIC CLOCKS, ALIEN AUTOPSY – THE BOARD GAME, GALILEAN THERMOMETERS, GLOW IN THE DARK EVERYTHING and of course, STAR TREK MEMORABILIA including Barbie and Ken dressed as original cast Star Trek personnel. Stepped up to the ticket booth and bought my ticket – $15.00 gets you inside the STAR TREK EXPERIENCE.. However, the Promenade Retail Shops (recreated from the Promenade at Deep Space 9) and QUARK’S BAR are free to roam and gawk at, but I shall share them with you in a moment.

For $15.00 you are allowed as much time as you need to gaze, wonder, learn and absorb a TIME LINE that starts with Galileo and ends with the destruction of the BORG in the 25th century, including graphics, video clips from all the tv shows, movies and spin-offs involved with STAR TREK. That is one side.. on the other side, you are also allowed as much time as you will ever need to look at, read about and study intricately almost hands-on all the clothing, weapons, scanning instruments, accessories and last-minute built weapons and problem solvers also from all the tv shows, movies, and spin-offs associated with the show.

The mistake that most people made, I noticed, is that they were in such a hurry to get on the actual ride that they by-passed all this universe of information, memorabilia, technology described not in a *prop* sense, but in a very real scenario… how it was designed, what it’s use was for and why… not why they needed it for this episode, but why it was necessary for the Federation or for this planet or this species’ survival… I found the summaries for every item fascinating in themselves. A lot of love went into the archival treatment of all the objects.

The ride? I would like to say what it was about, but about 50 million TREKKERS who didn’t see it, and even some who did, would probably seek me out and vaporize me with a phaser on *10*. Let’s just say that the EXPERIENCE is just that. Interesting, amusing, exciting, nostalgic, and more fun than the DeLorean at Universal (I’ll say no more). *Wow* is one of the adjectives you would use at many of the turns before the actual ride itself… The actual ride itself is turbulent, and fun, and depending on who is riding the shuttle, may be a cheering, screaming gas… but all in all… a true experience that you will remember.

Upon leaving the EXPERIENCE, one is escorted into the PROMENADE… a recreation of the Promenade on Deep Space Nine, with shops selling everything STAR TREK, Bajoran photographers ready to take your photo and *morph* it into a picture with other STAR TREK characters in it with you, clothing shops ready to tailor you, collectibles shops that sell everything from shot glasses to the actual CAPTAIN’S CHAIR on the original tv series. There are also neat working gadgets all over the PROMENADE that allow you to play them. For example a working *Replicator*, a DATA ACCESS COMPUTER port just like the ones on the ENTERPRISE BRIDGE, giving you complete personnel information on all the characters.

Sitting at QUARK’S BAR gives one the sense that one is indeed on a space station with all it’s furniture and glassware of the future. This American Ambassador had, at the suggestion of someone she thought was her friend, a drink entitled *WARP CORE BREACH*, served in something the size of a kitchen sink with two straws in it.. Apparently seven different types of liquors mixed with several juices.. a sort of Otherworldly Long Island Iced Tea. Let’s just say that I was lucky to be staying at the same hotel I drank said drink at. Crawling seemed to be the only option afterwards.

Before I close I want to say that the biggest *WOW* issued from this Ambassador’s mouth came as I happened to look up whilst sitting at my table (and BEFORE my drink came, thank you) and saw that on the very very high ceilings there was an entire universe of stars and several Federation and Non Federation Vessels floating there. The models were huge and lit up.. I was breathless. I must’ve looked like a complete fool staring up at the ceiling for twenty minutes like that. My neck is still throbbing and I can’t get the drool stains out of my shirt…..

Do I recommend the STAR TREK EXPERIENCE?? I think so…

It was my birthday earlier in the week — I’d just like to say thank you for all the cards, presents and good wishes that I received. That is I’d *like* to, but I am now at the age where I am more inclined to regard birthdays as another nail in my coffin, rather than any occasion for celebration. This is because there are pretty much no new milestones left to reach: 16, 18 and 21 are all markers, but once you get past those…well, reaching 26 and no longer being regarded as the spawn of Satan by car insurance companies is scarcely worth cracking open a can of Stella.

It is somewhat startling to realise that, by the time he was my age, my father had completed National Service and was married with two kids. I think it’s probably a generational thing, with people tending both to get married later, or even not get married at all — the concept of “living in sin” is now seen less as one step up from being a serial killer, and more as a perfectly sensible idea to discover whether a more permanent arrangement would work. Indeed, the prospect of marrying someone with whom I *hadn’t* lived together, seems highly strange. [Though, let’s face it, words 7-12 in that sentence are largely superfluous, and as for the prospect of kids, I’m firmly with Amanda Donohoe in ‘Lair of the White Worm’ on THAT topic]

I do, of course, remain deeply immature, and am proud of it — especially when I look around at the alternative. I still consider myself as a delayed teenager; the town where I grew up was not what anyone would describe as wild, and so I missed out on all the usual pursuits such as goofing off school. Now, I am making up for lost time, and goofing off work as much as possible. I can’t really gripe, as looking back over the past year with its ups and downs, I’m probably in a better state than at the same point last year, in the majority of areas. No new TC out, admittedly, but hey, everybody’s life has got static…

And the award for “most misguided attempt to cheer me up” goes to the friend who came out with: “Well, you ARE only half-way to being sixty-four”. Those former doyens of Sarf London pop (and thus local heroes) Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine sang about “growing old disgracefully”, and it’s an approach which I personally intend to take to heart. Though I’ve certainly crossed a few things off my “to do” list over the past few years, I’m sure there are plenty of places, experiences, and novel sexual practices yet to be tried. You’re only as young as you feel — and the morning after my birthday night out, sixty-four was not far from the truth. I have vague memories of ending the night in a curry house, and me waving my credit card around and saying, “No, I’ll pay for everything”, but I’m sure this is just a beer-fuelled hallucination…

It has not been a good week for music celebrities. Tammy Wynette and Cozy Powell join that jam session in the sky (Cozy should at the very least make harp practice kinda interesting), while George Michael got caught…doing SOMETHING in a Beverley Hills toilet. Not so much cottaging as mansioning, perhaps? But personally, the saddest piece of news was the death of Wendy O’Williams, former lead singer of The Plasmatics.

I think I’d better explain who they were, if the reaction at work is anything to go by i.e. “Who?”. They were the archetypal punk band, with an act which consisted largely of things like chainsawing guitars on stage, while Ms.Williams costume consisted largely of Sellotape. While their musical skill was perhaps questionable, you couldn’t doubt their energy — after having a show banned in London in 1979 the group retuned to New York, and were helicoptered onto a New York pier. There, in front of some 20,000 people, Wendy drove a Cadillac into a stage loaded with explosives, jumping out of the car seconds before it hit the stage and the whole thing blew up.

But, of course, WoW will remain forever in the hearts of trash film fans for her stellar performance in ‘Reform School Girls’, the women-in-prison movie to end all women=in-prison movies. As bad-girl Charlie, she was the perfect foil for Sybil Danning’s evil warden, ending up ploughing a bus into a watch tower at full speed. Typically, WoW insisted on doing the stunt herself, smashing through the windscreen and climbing up on to the roof, all as it drove along at about 40 mph. They had to do the scene after she was officially off the picture, because the insurance company had a fit when they heard about it.

This wasn’t *quite* her only movie role, but I’m not away of anyone who’s seen her appearance in ‘Candy Goes to Hollywood’, where she apparently does a perfect imitation of the thing with ping-pong balls that they do in Thailand… I could believe it though, as the still from ‘Reform School Girls’ on the right shows, she wasn’t exactly unfit.

In the end, taking her own life is perhaps not too much of a surprise, sad though it undoubtedly is. She seemed to possess a self-destructive streak, manifesting itself in a variety of ways, such as the incidents described above. But still, it came as a shock; somehow, I’d envisaged her settling down, having kids, that kind of thing. Instead, I’m going chug a beer, howl at the moon, and go watch ‘Reform School Girls’ one more time. RIP, Wendy.

I’m not going to apologise for being late again — ‘cos from now on, updates to this page will take place at the weekend [er, probably — there are at least two weekends upcoming when I’m going to be away, in which case…well, let’s just say that all bets are off]. A decade of wage slavery has taught me that there is no such thing as a late project, there are only those where the schedule has proved to be inadequate…

An interesting week at work: not only was I offered the change to escape from the tyrannical tedium of my current department (albeit probably only for a slightly different flavour of tyrannical tedium), and they announced that the company is going to move to Docklands.

The reaction of most people to this announcement was pretty much as you would expect, even though the plan isn’t to go there until 2001. Indeed, in some circles it’s seen as a cunning ploy to get rid of people without having to pay them any redundancy money: the new building has enough room for 8,000 people, and we suspect the current number employed is a couple of thou more than that. I’m not sure whether I would want to go or not, it’d probably wouldn’t add that much more on to my journey (caveat: assuming they actually FINISH the Jubilee Line extension by then), but I will have cashed in my share options by then, currently a large pair of golden handcuffs tying me to them.

There were a couple of things in the announcment that amused me. There will apparently be “underground parking for over 300 cars” — which may sound a lot, until I refer you to the number of people who’ll be there, mentioned above. It works out as one space for about every 27 employees, excluding any for clients. This may be taking car-sharing to unheard-of levels. The other sentence to provoke a snigger was that this will apparently “provide real benefits to customers, shareholders and staff”. The first two I can ALMOST see, but if the tone in the office is anything to go by, the only staff who will feel any “real benefits” are the three who live in the area anyway.

Previously, I talked about the bizarre culture of technology in the company, whereby we get hurled onto the bleeding edge, just as we are finally coming to terms with existing tech, and feeling comfortable. A similar kind of thing takes place with office locations: in ten years, I have worked in three different building, and am now back in the same one in which I started. And that’s ignoring moves within a building, between floors, and re-arrangements of desks which seem to occur on a weekly level. And, of course, none of it makes the slightest difference. It’s almost as if the company compensates for having made a touch short of five billion last year, by engaging in ostentatious and conspicious consumption.

This is somewhat worrying, as history is littered with the wreckage of civilizations which did much the same thing — thousand-year reichs and all that. Egyptian pyramids, Aztec temples, Kremlins: even Canary Wharf itself, which was something of a legacy of the Thatcher years. Maybe some future generation will stand at the foot of an incomplete 41-storey office block in Docklands, shake their heads, and mutter something about follies.