As a break from All Enron, All The Time, time for a little culture.

As I said previously, “Rocky Top” sucks big time as a college fight song, but it’s a great bluegrass song, and the genre seems to be taking off in a big way, with a new generation. Over the years, the public’s exposure to bluegrass has been episodic and misleading (Beverly Hillbillies theme song, “Dueling Banjos,” miscegenation, and forced sodomy from the movie “Deliverance,” etc.).

With only this exposure, most people thought of it as music for barefooted southern yokels (which is ironic, since it was actually invented, developed, and celebrated in Kentucky, Chicago, and Indiana), and even the country music industry has treated it like an ugly cousin. Most music stores don’t even have it as a category, burying it among folk (if they have such an aisle) or country. Few realize that it is a profound type of music, a purely American art form (with roots from both the British Isles and Africa) containing elements of jazz, blues, folk, and, done well, requiring great instrumental virtuosity. (Ironically, at least until recently, there was actually a larger following for it in large cities than in the South).

Here’s an article from USA Today Weekend describing the recent bluegrass revival, partly spurred on by the Cohen Bros. movie, “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” but also by the now-easy availability of a wider variety of music via the internet. Like blogging, this is another example of how the net is bypassing big media (and big “entertainment”) to offer music that people might actually want, instead of what suits in towers think that they might, or should want.

Well, it didn’t take them long. The obsessive fans/geeks have already found thirty-seven mistakes in The Fellowship of the Ring. A couple examples–a moving car seen off in the distance in a field, and Frodo (who is supposed to be a barefoot hobbit) wearing a shoe in one scene.

OK, I thought that when I saw the pilot, that this prequel to the Star Trek series had promise. Perhaps it still does. But tonite’s episode sucked. I had hoped that with what happened a month ago, that all this politically-correct script nonsense from Hollywood (and Rick Berman and company) had ended, but this one was probably in the can long before the event, and they didn’t think it was any big deal.

(Note to non ST watchers–if you didn’t see the episode, feel free to ignore the rest of this rant–it is predicated on the assumption that the reader actually watched it.)

First of all, it really got off on the wrong foot with me when he is on the alien ship, and they offer him a bowl of something, and tell him that it’s the closest they can come to water.

Water is one of the most common and simple molecules in the universe. It is very easy to make. Take two atoms of hydrogen, one atom of oxygen, and mix (shaken, not stirred, and do it somewhere that can safely contain the exothermic energy thereby released).

Then they do this goofy alien sex thing where she (and it’s obvious that she’s a “she” even though “she’s” hairless–you can tell from the shape) and the visiting engineer put their hands in a box of packing peanuts in a holodeck of sorts.

And of course, he gets pregnant. Why am I not surprised?

Much of the rest of the episode deals with how he handles being pregnant, and they use all the stereotypes of a pregnant woman to demonstrate this. Was there some point to this? Are we supposed to now be more sensitive to how a woman in pregnancy feels because we see some redneck guy go through it?

Give me a break. Anyone who was insensitive to pregnant women before seeing this episode will remain so afterward.

Anyone who was not will find it faintly amusing, but no more than that.

I have to say, however, in redemption, that at least at the end, when the pregnant “father” caught up with the “woman” by whom he was impregnated, she found another host for the pregnancy, rather than just flushing it down a sink.

But still, my hopes for a more realistic Star Trek were somewhat diminished by this particular episode.

I probably won’t be posting much in the next few days, for those two or three people who have been logging in to see what I’m raving about currently. I’ll be at the Space Frontier Foundation annual conference. However, on Sunday or Monday, I’ll attempt to post a report on any interesting developments that I discover in the process of attending it.