Author Archive: Eric San Juan
Eric San Juan
April 11, 2016
Time has not been kind to the reputation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the first big screen journey taken by Captain Kirk and the Enterprise. Though it got fairly positive reviews in its day, some audiences found it slow and plodding. Once The Wrath of Khan came out and became an instant classic, The Motion Picture was treated like that boring cousin you only think about when you see him at weddings, ignored all year long until you’re forced to think about him. That’s too bad, because the cousin is far more interesting than he’s given credit for. The crew’s first foray onto the silver screen takes what was meant to be the pilot of a relaunched TV series that never quite materialized and…
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Eric San Juan
April 11, 2016
And it starts in five minutes. Something came over me the other day. It might have been Netflix suddenly throwing Trek in my face. Maybe it’s the result of a space slug crawling into my ear. Don’t know. Whatever it was, it resulted in a feeling I’ve pretty much never had in my life: “I should watch some Star Tek – and a LOT of it!” If that sounds like a knock on Star Trek, it’s not. Rather, it’s just to say that I’ve never been anything more than a vaguely casual Star Trek fan. I watched most of the original series as a kid, saw many seasons of The Next Generation and one or two of Deep Space Nine with my old man, saw…
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Eric San Juan
April 10, 2016
For just under three years, I wrote a craft beer column at the Philly Weekly. I enjoyed it. Each week I’d recommend five excellent craft beers. People read it. Breweries liked it. Fantastic breweries like Firestone Walker, Stone, Founders and Victory took notice. That’s amazing. I got to know some amazing people doing it, and also got to try some fantastic beers. But as is inevitable in the news biz, things change. The column was nixed in late 2015, and I was a beer writer no more. No hard feelings! I love the people at PW and still do. Look forward to doing more work with them (and it’s inevitable that I will). Just sayin’ that my days of saying I was a professional beer writer…
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Eric San Juan
April 6, 2016
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. When my buddy Tig Carson asked me to do a nerdy video series with him, the idea excited me because doing nerdy stuff with friends is always a good time. Tig is the curator of Nerd Out With Me (follow them on Facebook here, and Twitter and all that jazz), and the author of A Space Story, a Hitchhiker’s Guide-esque science fiction adventure. I have fun talking about geek stuff with him. The idea of a video series sounded like fun, too. We’d talk about old toys and cartoons from our youth and whatever. It would be a good way to spend an afternoon. Then we set up a spot and filmed some material as a…
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Geek Stuff, Videos, Works by Eric
geek stuff, Hours in the Attic, j.r.r. tolkien, Nerd Out With Me, nostalgia, Tig Carson, tolkien, videos, Youtube
Eric San Juan
April 5, 2016
Twenty-two years ago today, Kurt Cobain killed himself. He was still just a kid, really, talented and tortured and burdened by a weight he wasn’t equipped to handle. Nirvana’s music left a mark on people, but they left as quickly as they came. How strange to disappear when still at your peak. Cobain was a little playful, a little rebellious, and a little punk rock – he taunted jocks, smashed instruments, and thumbed his nose at his fame – but the most punk rock thing he ever did was strap on an acoustic guitar and play one of the most intimate, revealing sets of music of the last 30 years. The boldness wasn’t just in the stripped down set, despite it being unusual for a…
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