Hot Nerd Girl

Tag: majel barrett roddenberry

  • 7 Nerdy Things From Hot Nerd Girl’s Office

    A while back (maybe September?) I posted on the Hot Nerd Girl facebook page that I was having a hard time figuring out how to organize all of my Star Trek stuff in my office.  The fans

    a) thought it was a really great problem to have

    and

    b) demanded pictures. 

    I promised I would take some once it was all done.  I’m still searching for a few of my smaller posters but it’s done for the most part.  Just in time for Christmas and all of the relatives coming to town 🙂

    So here are the pictures I promised as well as some background on some of the items.  Sadly, about half of my collection is in storage in Idaho (had to put in somewhere when I went to college) so hopefully someday I can run up there and bring it all back down to SoCal.

    This is my whole office area aka my little slice of heaven aka where all the magic happens.  I infiltrated the area above the TV as well.  Because I could.

    Yes, I interrupted my game of God of War III for you.

    1. The Posters

    Regarding the posters: the one on the right you’ve probably seen me gushing about on the facebook page because my picture (and some of yours as well!) is part of the mosaic.  I finally got it framed and hung up which was no easy task since it had to hang over the giant monstrosity that is the entertainment center.  The Spock poster I’ve had since middle school and I literally took it with me everywhere I moved. That’s 13 moves and 13 walls it has hung on.  He’s been one of the few constant companions I’ve had and I find his presence very comforting. 

    No matter what I did I couldn't prevent the reflections on the glass. Sorry.

    2. The lifesize Worf

    I got my lifesize cardboard cut out of Worf from my step-uncle.  He used to keep it in the coat closet. When visitors would come over and hang up their coats they’d get startled by Worf and usually scream at which point my step-uncle would laugh and laugh and laugh.  It was my kind of prank.  When he retired and moved he passed Worf down to me.

    My own personal Chief of Security

    3. The Autographs

    I’ve got quite a few autographs, including several in a Star Trek: The Next Generation book.  Of these four I got three of them in person: Nichelle Nichols, Michael Dorn, and Marina Sirtis.  The Majel Barrett one I got while she was alive but was no longer appearing at conventions.  I heart her so much that I bought it anyways.  I wish I had met her.  I did meet her son, Eugene “Rod” Rodenberry Jr. at a convention in 2002.  He was a nice guy. 

    Super awesomesauce

    I came upon my World Premier of Voyager cast autographs via my cousins best friend.  She worked on the series and knew I was a big fan so she gave me her Voyager cast photo some years back (did I mention that she’s now one of my fave peeps on the planet?)  It’s kind of hidden behind my Tribbles because I have so many damn stuffed animals. 

    If you don’t know their name, just call them “Robert” and chances are you’ll be right

    4. Data and the Holograms

    My Data bust was a High School graduation present.  In the past he sat on my bookshelf with all of my Star Trek books…of which there are way more than I care to admit….but he now has a place of honor on top of the entertainment center.  I have an insane love for this bust and I’m not really sure why.  I guess I was seduced by how ridiculously awesome it is.  The picture on the left is a hologram (see below) and the picture on the right is of me, my brother and my nephew at the Star Trek Exhibition in Riverside (California, not Iowa).

     
    Spinerfems ftw!

    For my birthday a few years ago my friend Hayden took me to Star Trek: The Tour down in Long Beach and bought me a hologram picture of us being “beamed.”  I wish I had access to this technology because I would take SO MANY holographic pictures.

    Hey Scotty? How about throwing in a couple of Romulan Ales when we reach the surface? Cool?

    5. The Mousepad

    This may seem like just a mousepad BUT it actually holds a lot of significance for me.  I got it when I went away to college.  Why is that important?  Well, because I went to school in San Francisco because it’s the future location of Starfleet Academy and I wanted to be as close to Starfleet Academy as possible. And yes, I am completely serious. In addition to my university diploma, I also have a Starfleet Academy diploma and a Kobayashi Maru certificate (signed by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy no less).  This is a prime example of why I consider myself a Nerd/Geek/Dork combo.

    Yes, I'm THAT big of a nerd.

    6. The Ships

    My Dad is a total perfectionist and I adore him for it even though it meant I couldn’t leave my homework out as a kid.  When he does something, he does it perfectly.  When we were kids he bought 3 Star Trek models and painted them.  The two smaller ones have been lost for years but the largest one, the Enterprise NCC-1701-D is alive and kicking.

    Thank God for invisible thread

     I have another NCC-1701-D that is 2 feet long but it’s one of the items up in storage.

    My Dad also gave me my Star Trek mobile.  It’s a little faded after all these years but it glows in the dark and I love it.

    If I ever have kids this is what they have to look forward to

    7. The Scripts

    I am very lucky in that I’ve been surrounded by amazing people my whole life. I also refuse to put up with a-holes so maybe that has something to do with it too.  One of the areas in which I’ve been very blessed is my parental units.  Through divorce and random circumstances I’ve ended up with six parents.  One of them is Dean Minnerly aka “Popi.” (Literally) one of the most kick ass dudes I’ve ever known.  He works in the technical side of the entertainment industry and, as a side job, was a contributing writer on The Next Generation for the first two seasons.  One of his biggest contributions?  Helping to kill off Tasha Yar.

    What’s that?  You want proof?  Ok.  Go to Netflix and turn on “Skin of Evil” (you know, the episode with the giant tar monster that kills her).  At the very beginning of the episode Tasha and Worf are talking about Yar’s upcoming martial arts competion.  Worf asks who she is competing against.  He dismisses her first competitor, saying that she will defeat him easily.  Then she mentions that she’ll be fighting Lt. Minnerly next and Worf gets worried.  That’s right folks, Dean (who is a martial artist in real life) wrote himself into the episode.

    Epic win.

    Sadly, he did all of this just before he came into my life so I never got to participate in the TNG awesomeness, but he did give me an extremely rare cast jacket, several scripts, and some HI-larious stories.

    Ok, time to go back in the safe.

    Aaaaaaand on that note, I think I’ll stop there.  There’s more I could show you but that would make for a VERY long post.  Don’t worry all you non-Trekkies, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Thor, Transformers, etc. etc. are also represented here albeit in a much smaller capacity. 

    What can I say?  I’m a good little Trekkie 🙂

  • Remembering the Great Bird of the Galaxy… (I miss you, Gene Roddenberry)

    October is a bittersweet month for me.  On one hand, there’s Halloween and all of the fun festivities that the holiday entails.  But October is the month when several of my loved ones have passed away so there’s also a lot of sadness.  Even though I never met him personally, the one anniversary of someone unrelated to me that I have written in my calendar is Gene Roddenberry’s.  Every October 24th I honor the life of one of my heroes, the man who created and nurtured the glory that is Star Trek.  This year in particular is notable in that it’s the 20th anniversary of his passing.  It’s uber hard to believe that it’s been 20 years already.  Even though I was a kid I have very vivid memories of the day he died.

    So in honor of Mr. Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, here are 16 Facts You Never Knew About Gene Roddenberry, for your nerdy enjoyment:

    1. Most people know that Gene was a pilot during WWII but are unaware that he was a civilian pilot for Pan Am after the war and before becoming a Los Angeles police officer.

    2. He was involved in at least two plane crashes.  The first while piloting a B-17 Flying Fortress during the war that crashed due to mechanical failure just after take off and killed two people on board.  The second was while a passenger on a commercial flight from Karachi to Istanbul that crashed in the middle of the Syrian desert in which he was one of only eight survivors.

    3. He was the speechwriter for LAPD police chief William H. Parker and modeled the character of Spock after him.

    4. He had affairs with Nichele Nichols and Majel Barrett in the 1960’s during his first marriage.  He and Majel Barrett had been lovers for years when he decided it was time to marry her and asked her to join him during a visit to Japan. Gene did not adhere to any particular religion and since they were in Japan they chose to have a Shinto-Buddhist wedding on 6 August 1969. They regarded this as their real wedding, but his divorce was not yet final and they made it legal with a civil ceremony on 29 December 1969.

    5. He tried to reboot Star Trek with the original cast in 1977.  The project was called Phase II.  The network abandoned the project just before filming was set to start.  The project was modified and turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture thanks in large part to the success of Star Wars.

    6. The Next Generation character Wesley Crusher got his first name from Gene’s middle name.  His first name became the middle name of Voyager character Thomas Eugene Paris.

    7. In physics a “Roddenberry” marks the distance traveled at the speed of light during a “traveler year.”  Using the theory of relativity scientists have determined that a “traveler year” is 70.7 % of a normal earth year or .707 of a light year.

    8. Asteroid “4659 Roddenberry” is named after him.

    9. Random personal fun fact: I used to have to go to the Roddenberry building on the Paramount Lot for work all of the time.  The building is very boring and has nothing indicative of its namesake other than a nameplate.  I was very disappointed.

    10. He almost died in a house fire with the rest of his family when he was a toddler but the milkman came and woke them up in time.

    11. He is the first television writer to get star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  (Random personal fun fact: when I lived in Hollywood my apartment was just off of the section of the Walk of Fame that has most of the actors from the Original Series so I walked all over them every day)

    12. During WWII, Gene had a friend named Kim Noonien Singh; after the war Kim disappeared, and Gene used his name for some characters in the Star Trek series (Khan Noonien Singh from The Original Series and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Noonien Soong from Star Trek: The Next Generation) hoping that Kim would contact him.

    13. During WWII, Gene wrote a song lyric “I Wanna Go Home” which became popular among the other troops.

    14. My favorite Gene Roddenberry quote: “Time is the fire in which we burn.”

    15. In 1992, a portion of Rodenberry’s ashes flew and returned to earth on the Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-52. On April 21, 1997, a Celestis spacecraft carrying a portion of the cremated remains of Roddenberry and 23 others were the first to be launched into Earth’s orbit aboard a Pegasus XL rocket from near the Canary Islands. On May 20, 2002, the spacecraft’s orbit deteriorated and it disintegrated in the atmosphere. Another flight to launch more of his ashes into deep space along with those of Majel Barret Roddenberry is planned for launch in 2012.

    16. For Star Trek‘s 25th anniversary, two months before his death, Roddenberry gave TV Guide a list of his top ten favorite episodes:

    Gene Roddenberry created the greatest science fiction franchise of all time.  He didn’t set out to create a phenomenon or to inspire generations of scientists but his “wagon train to the stars” literally changed the world.  As a man he was far from perfect, but as a visionary he is unparalelled.  Countless inventions and advancements are a reality because he inspired people to “make it so.”

    I heart you Gene Roddenberry.  I heart you so much.

    Now where's my goddamn transporter??