LIVING IN ANALOG

When I was eleven years old, I scraped together $16.00 and bought a transistor radio to put under my pillow at night. Sometimes, especially during the summer when I could stay up late, I’d listen to Radio Mystery Theatre, but most often, I tuned the radio to static. Then I pretended that the hum of white noise in my ear was the sound of warp engines, and that I was a crewmember safely ensconced in my bunk on the Starship Enterprise as she patrolled the galaxy.

I was thirteen when I almost came to blows with a classmate who said that Battlestar Galactica was cooler than Star Trek. He met my reasoned, logical argument about why Kirk and Spock were superior to Starbuck and Apollo with dismissive laughter, and in frustration I shoved him against a locker. Fortunately, my history teacher, Mr. Weik, who witnessed the entire occurrence, made it through the crowd that somehow instantly appeared, and stepped between us. (Not so fortunately, he also tousled my hair and chuckled. “What’re you trying to do, Star Trek Junior,” he asked, “get yourself killed?”)

At sixteen, I dated a girl who said she really liked Pink Floyd because he was an awesome guitar player. I was serious about music in those days, but she was cute so I let it go. When she told me that Ringo was her favorite Beatle (“Because a lot of people don’t know it, but he’s a really good songwriter”), I let that go, too. (Because she was really cute.) One night, though, after she had fallen asleep during what is arguably Star Trek’s best episode, The City On The Edge Of Forever, and I was enthusiastically explaining what she had missed, she listened politely and said, “I don’t know. I’m sure you like it, but I’ve just always thought Star Track was boring.” Final straw. I immediately broke up with her after we finished making out.

Sometime in the early 90’s I managed to finagle his phone number and called Patrick Stewart at home. I’m not sure what I thought would happen if he actually answered; I guess I assumed that after an awkward moment or two, I’d put him at ease, and we’d have an enlightening, intelligent conversation about his career, or how cool Star Trek was or something. Well, he did answer, and I suddenly realized how stupid I was – Too stupid even to say, “I’m sorry. I think I’ve misdialed.” No, I said, and I remember it exactly; “Uh, this doesn’t sound like Brian’s Tacos…” He chuckled in that Shakespearean baritone, and said, “No this is certainly not Brian’s Tacos.” I stammered an apology, hung up, and such was the depth of my delusion that within an hour I had convinced myself that we had had a scintillating conversation.

I offer the above anecdotes, not only as evidence of my adolescent idiocy, but also as proof of my devotion. I loved Star Trek. I was obsessed with it, actually. And while I’ve outgrown most of my other childhood obsessions - CB radios, Defender, Erin Gray (well, cb radios and Defender, anyway…) - my fascination with the Enterprise and her crew is still there, lurking inside my psyche like the Ponn Farr, always ready to explode in a burst of irrationality.

Sometimes, as when I spent a few minutes with Zach Quinto, who plays Spock in J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek reboot, it appears as an embarrassing burst of fanboy gushiness (“Oh, man, I’ll bet your eyebrows are gonna look awesome!”), but more often it shows up on my debit card in the form of some sort of expensive, but useless Star Trek related knick-knack, like the gorgeous $1200 Enterprise model I have sitting in my studio. Luckily, I’m able to justify many of these purchases as job related expenses; As an illustrator specializing in licensed properties, I spend a lot of time depicting pop-culture icons, and to do my job well, it’s essential that I have accurate, expensive, limited edition, collectible reference. At least, that’s the line I take with my wife and the IRS. Fortunately, the IRS believes me.

It hasn’t always been this way. For the first five years of my life, I was totally unaware of Star Trek. I remember that I enjoyed television, and Captain Kangaroo in particular, but back then I was still a free spirit, addicted to nothing except sunshine and presweetened cereal. One night, though, as my Dad flipped back and forth between our two local channels, I caught a flash of Susan Oliver morphing from a beautiful blonde spacegirl into a wizened, totally hideous hag (with really, really dry hair) in the Star Trek episode The Menagerie, and the spell was cast. That first image scared me, but it was also really cool, and when a week or so later I saw an episode with Mr. Spock, I was hooked. Back then, Star Trek had completed its network run and was in syndication, but it wasn’t on everyday. It just sort of popped up, I guess whenever the station had a hole to fill. And so I spent a lot of time in front of the TV waiting for Star Trek, and while I waited, I drew - mostly Mr. Spock, since those elegant ears and angular eyebrows made it fairly easy to come up with some sort of passable likeness. Spock was also my favorite character, and throughout elementary and middle school, he was a huge influence on me; I practiced raising one eyebrow, and walked around trying to look at things “logically”.

By the third grade, I’d seen every episode multiple times, and even had a stack of audiocassettes I’d made by lugging my dad’s gigantic “portable” tape recorder into the living room and setting it next to our television’s tiny speaker. It was also somewhere around this time that my mom gave me one of the James Blish Star Trek novelizations, and for awhile I forgot about everything except struggling through that book, and then working my way through the rest of the series. Soon, I was both reading at a high school level and wearing a pair of glasses that I occasionally used to burn dry leaves on the playground.

At some point, I put together the idea that the characters Kirk and Spock were played by actors named William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, and I made it my business to watch whatever they did. I loved In Search Of… a documentary series Nimoy narrated about unexplained phenomena. I watched Shatner on shows like Kung Fu and The Six Million Dollar Man, and for one fantastic week in 1977, I feigned the flu and skipped school so I could see both Shatner and Nimoy compete against one another on The $20,000 Pyramid. It wasn't as exciting as when they battled to the death in Amok Time, but the result was the same: Nimoy soundly defeated Shatner, and I used the victory as ammunition in the constant battle with my other dorky friends over who was better, Kirk or Spock.

Spock was my guy, at least until puberty arrived, and everything, including my voice, changed. My feet grew three inches in three months, and my parents, wary of spending money on shoes I would almost immediately outgrow, began buying everything three sizes too big. I grew my hair longer to cover the rash of pimples that took over my forehead, and then promptly caught my bangs on fire while leaning over a Bunsen burner in Science class. In my stylish corduroy bell-bottoms and aviator glasses, and with my thermally redacted hairline, I imagine looked like a just divorced middle-aged man. And worst of all was that as all of this occurred, I was falling in love with Pam McNally, pretty much the most beautiful real girl in the world. She sat next to me in English, and during the few attempts she made at conversation, I responded as I thought Spock would, coolly, and with an air of sexy disinterest. Of course I sounded like a total bastard, and she eventually quit talking to me.

After that, the stoic, almost monastic, Vulcan didn't seem so appealing. Sure, girls liked him, but apparently, 23rd Century girls were more advanced than those from my time, and besides, it seemed obvious that he didn't really like them (Well, he may have, but as anyone familiar with Vulcan physiology can tell you, he only acted on his feelings every seven years, which wasn't nearly often enough for me. I acted on mine about every seven minutes.). In fact, it was almost as though Spock was afraid of girls, and for me, that hit a little too close to home.

But James T. Kirk wasn't afraid of women. In fact, he was whatever the opposite of being afraid of women was. And he had his priorities straight: 1. Starfleet 2. Spock 3. Women. I thought that was about right. And so, while Spock was still cool as I entered adolescence, Kirk was uber-cool - He was the handsome, confident, man-about-space that I aspired to be, and I was pretty sure that once I had the half-smile, sparkling eyes, and self-confidence down, the galaxy (and all the girls in it) would be at my feet. Ultimately, I mastered the half-smile, and while the sparkling eyes were a little tougher, I did eventually get contacts. I’m still working on the self-confidence.

Eventually, time and circumstance began to conspire against me, and I spent less time with Star Trek. I quit buying Star Trek novels and let my pointed sideburns go natural. I watched only a few episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, and I’m not sure I ever saw an entire episode of Enterprise. I don’t think it matters, though, because at this point, Star Trek, like a benign version of the parasite that nailed Spock in This Side of Paradise, is a part of me.
And I’m comfortable with that. I’m happy with who I am today, and I’m content, both with choices I’ve made (excepting, of course, the blue velour Starfleet uniform shirt I wore through most of sixth grade), and in the knowledge that I turned out the way I did, not in spite of Star Trek, but, at least partially, because of it.

Star Trek depicts a universe where concepts like honor and friendship mean something, and where doing the right thing is not just important, but essential. The hours I spent watching taught me at least a little bit about those principles, and about the optimistic future we can expect if we put them into practice.

The Star Trek books I read throughout my childhood and adolescence not only honed my reading skills and deepened my appreciation for stories well told, they eventually led me to weightier stuff – to work by authors like Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury - and it wasn’t long before I realized that Star Trek was just a small part of a much larger world – A mysterious, welcoming place filled with rockets and robots and Royal Crown Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot tennis shoes.

But most of all, Star Trek has been there, waiting to make me feel better, for nearly as long as I can remember. Through my rotten, insecure, nearsighted adolescence, it was there every afternoon at 3:00. It was there for me as my first marriage failed (And, for the record, had nothing to do with it.), and as I struggled through those first lean years as an artist. (In a happy galactic coincidence, those years ended right about the time I was commissioned to do my first Star Trek related work for money – The cover art for a Star Trek: The Next Generation paperback.)

And although it’s been years since I tried to call a cast member on the phone or punched someone with a differing opinion, sometimes, late at night, when bills are due, and deadlines are pressing, and sleep is a long time coming, I turn on the radio next to my bed and find some static. Then I close my eyes and listen to the sound of my ship’s engines as we drift through the stars.