What’s more nerdy: Attending a performance of A Christmas Carol performed entirely in Klingon, or appearing in it? Whatever, it was a load of fun, and only three blocks away at the University of Minnesota St. Paul Campus Student Center. How could I not go?

So, you might well ask: WTF? Imagine if you will, Charles Dickens’ classic translated and interpreted by the Klingon Imperial Theater Company, hosted by a representative from the Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology, and you’ll get some idea. If you’re still not with me, imagine a parody of the Christmas classic seen through the eyes of Trekkies. (Not that I would call myself a Trekkie.) (And not that Trekkies call themselves “Trekkies.”)

The production, put on by Commedia Beauregard, was cleverly written and very entertaining. The audience, not too surprisingly dominated by Star Trek fans, was in stitches most of the time. While the performance was entirely in the made-up Klingon language (except for occasional commentary by the Vulcan), English subtitles were projected on a screen next to the stage.

I managed to sneak a few (flashless) photos of the performance. Here is the scene in which SQuja’ (Scrooge), on the left, is visited by Kahless Past (Christmas Past). Notice that the ghost is the “old style” Klingon:

Here is a scene of happier times from SQuja’s youth, in which everyone is having a grand old time trying to kill each other:

Like the Dickens original, SQuja’ sees what a fool he has been, for seeking gold rather than honor in battle, and vows to change his ways:

A funny coincidence: The part of SQuja’ was played by Michael Ooms, son of Richard Ooms who for years played Scrooge in the Guthrie Theater production of A Christmas Carol.

My partner, Pat, has been heavily involved with the annual fund-raising plant sale at Friends School of Minnesota ever since our daughter started kindergarten there nearly ten years ago. For the 2007 sale, she wondered if it would be possible to do a time-lapse video of the event to help promote it.

After investigating a number of possibilities, I decided that the simplest way would be to use the iSight camera built into my MacBook Pro along with Boinx Software’s iStopMotion.

The venue for the sale was the Grandstand at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, a cavernous space filled with concrete support columns every twenty or thirty feet. I was a bit concerned about leaving my laptop unattended for the week it would take to capture the video, but fortunately we found a well-placed column that had a flat “shelf” about ten feet off the ground. It had just enough space to hold the laptop. There was also a conduit that could be used to attach a security cable.

I still thought it might be a little conspicuous (and tempting) for my not-exactly-cheap MacBook Pro to be visible up there, so I covered it in a make-shift cardboard “disguise” to make it a bit less obvious what it was.

We alerted the fairgrounds security to its presence, but just in case an over-zealous and uninformed security guard happened upon it and thought it was a bomb or something, I added notes and stickers to the outside to explain what it was. And, of course, I completely backed up my hard drive, removed all personal files, logged out of my personal account and set up a temporary user account, in case all else failed and it got stolen or damaged.

Happily, none of that happened. It sat undisturbed for the whole week, shooting one frame every two minutes. I stopped by at least once a day to check on its progress (and to hit command-S to save the footage captured so far), hauling a ladder to and from the site in order to get at it. Unfortunately, some time during the last day of the sale, iStopMotion seems to have crashed, so any video it captured after I hit “save” that morning was lost. (Neither I or the helpful people at Boinx could figure out what happened.)

Nevertheless, the captured video was amazing. I added titles and music, and, well, here is the finished video:

I Rotis for Typophile a few years back…

I Meta man once. I said, “Avenir seen you somewhere before?”

He replied, “I was elected Centaur once. Joanna know what happened? Italia what happened. The Air Force took a Janson me. They put me in charge of Arial maneuvers. But the DIN was terrible. I lost my Tempo and stormed out Didot. I shouted, ‘Avant Gardes posted Ronda clock! To Helvetica Mandarin chief! Peignot attention to him!’

“They said, ‘This Stymie went too far.’ Well, no more Beton Ronda bush. I admit I made some Eras. It cost me my Courier. Univers see it until it’s too late.

“Bodoni hurts when I laugh. Now, I spend my Times Roman the streets.” He walked away singing Myriad a Little Lamb.

I wondered Weidemann was saying all these crazy things.

Franklin, I don’t give a Dom.

(My sincerest apologies. Please don’t bother to Melior complaints to me.)

If you were or are a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 like me, this is pretty cool: RiffTrax. (Via Wired News this morning.)

Some time in the last year or so, I bought, through Amazon Books, Paula Scher’s book Make It Bigger, a beautiful overview of her outstanding career as a graphic designer. If you’ve ordered books through Amazon and haven’t opted out of their periodic mailings, you regularly get recommendations for other books in which you might be interested, based on your previous purchases. It usually comes up with reasonable suggestions, but take a look at the one I received the other day:

We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased books by Paula Scher often purchased books by Peter Hall. For this reason you might like to know that Peter Hall’s newest book, Understanding Disease: A Centenary Celebration of the Pathological Society, will be released soon. You can pre-order your copy by following the link below.

I guess there must be more than one author named Peter Hall.

Yesterday afternoon I went to a packed rock concert with my daughter at the new Minneapolis Public Library. You read that right: a rock concert in a library. The band was Harry and the Potters who, if you have never heard of them, pretend to be Harry Potter (two of them) and play songs inspired by characters and situations in the famous books. (That’s “Bill Weasley” on drums.) The warm up act was Draco and the Malfoys (what else?), who advised the audience that there was no point in staying once they finished. Both bands were very fun, very loud, and very punk rock. Fans do amazing things sometimes.