Last weekend Trish invited me to a movie, by cell phone; Wednesday I turned on my phone to get someone's number and noticed the message; also I learned that No Kidding was assembling to see "Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water," a documentary about people who speak Klingon (who did not thus describe humans; a silicon-based life-form elsewhere in "Star Trek" did). Trish was up for that. I was thinking that No Kidding could possibly be a good way for Trish as well as myself to meet Denver folks. It was my one experience (five years ago, I think) that NK people were freaks, but that was, of course, before I saw this movie. We girded ourselves with water and Timtams and entered.
The father who spoke only Klingon to his baby hoping that the child would be a native speaker? And what, as a native speaker know more words than the creator of the language has authorized? A native speaker of a language that has a grand total of 2500 words, though none for sandwich, a language that belongs to a bellicose, and let's not forget fictional and alien, culture? The kid speaks English fine for a sevenish-year-old, so whatever.
The real danger to himself and others is the fellow who, without obvious physical cause (so I assumed emotional), sounds like Elmer Fudd, describes his ex-girlfriend as a bloody Romulan despite being treated like a queen ("I brought her to all my Klingon conventions"), and, most tragically, considers proficiency in Klingon as undeniable proof of belonging to a(ny) group.
The unscripted dialog ripped hysterical and incredulous snorts and guffaws from Trish and me (and the rest of the audience), but the movie itself also was laughably bad. Was the film technique that gave Michael Dorn's epidermis the quality of looking worm-ridden deliberate? Was there a purpose to the "transitions" that I would call "filler" of water running over probable shower curtains? Did the director premeditate my newborn fear of lampshades, the movie's only, and Dr.-Who-level, prop?
Could there have been some alien intelligence behind it? The director was present--the movie was part of the Denver International Film Festival--and he was alien, being French.