So I was watching Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home last night, and one little detail caught my eye during the scene where Kirk and Spock are riding the BART bus over to Sausalito so they can visit the Cetacean Institute and plot their rescue of two whales. This very brief shot comes right after Spock nerve-pinches the rude punk-rocker. Why did I screengrab this?
Because if you look close, you can see that a rider over on the left there, a couple of rows in front of Kirk and Spock, is holding a copy of the late and long-lamented OMNI Magazine. If I could resurrect a single periodical publication, at the same level of quality as at its height, I’d choose OMNI. That mag was such a fun read. The only thing now that comes close is WIRED, but WIRED lacks OMNI‘s willingness to go right into areas of pure speculation, if not outright mysticism.
Maybe now that they’ve brought whales into the 23rd century, Kirk and company could bring OMNI into the 21st!
Amen to that. As technology gets smaller, so do attitudes toward it. People are much more wowed by social networks and cameras in their phones than any kind of big, sweeping science and the changes it can really make. OMNI was a magazine that dreamed big, and we really need that today.
[sigh] I remember Omni. Haven't thought about it for a long time. I think I only saved one issue.
Omni – used to look at it all the time at work without buying it (oops); R.I.P.
Yeah, I miss that magazine. It was so freakin' cool, not counting their awful website when they stopped publishing.