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Trailers Without Pity: Star Trek

I don't really Trek these days. I at one time I Trekked, mostly because my dad really liked to Trek and I got dragged to movie theaters or in front of the TV whenever a new Trek made itself available.

I thought Trek: The Next was good, but I never watched it religiously. Trek: Voyager and Trek: Enterprise and Trek: Space Station Number I believe I gave tries, but they never really caught my imagination.

I guess the take has always been that Trek was the thinking man's Star Wars, but the new trailer for th J.J. Abrams movie version suggests that this will be the non-thinking-man's Trek.

We tackled it this week for Trailers Without Pity and it, of course, came ready-built with all kinds of comedic baggage.

Hope you like it! Despite some technical glitches this week, we still had some fun with it and had even more fun recording the audio for next week's episode about Valkyrie.

posted by Omar G. at 1:04 PM

Online dating expert: I am not

Reporters always say that one of the reasons they love their job is that every day is different and you never know what to expect. That's great in theory, but sometimes it's also terrifying. You sometimes get thrown into the deep end of the pool and have to become a mini-expert on subjects you know nothing about.

Sometimes you get asked to do it in front of a national audience. My assignment for NPR this week was to talk about online dating. We've made a few runs at an online dating story in the past at my paper, but have never really done anything authoritative on the subject. So I did the next-best thing: I called an online dating coach in Los Angeles and picked his brains until I felt I had sufficient information to pass on.

The segment aired today and it's one of the more fun ones. I recorded it with Robert Siegel, who was in the studio with me in Washington, D.C. when I visited. He's hilarious and very smart and amazingly fun to work with.

Anyway, here's the intro to the segment (in which I either imply that Robert and I might date each other or that maybe we don't use online dating because we are taken; not sure what my brain was trying to say exactly).

And here's the segment itself, in which the subject of dating amongst those in the agricultural industry is explored.

I also posted some extras (BEYOND the segment!) on the All Tech Considered blog.

These segments are also appearing in the NPR Technology podcast. Why not subscribe? It's free and makes you look handsome/pretty and smart.

posted by Omar G. at 9:22 PM

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