As it were…

I was going to tell this story to JT just now, and realized I should blog it. So here it is.

In the summer of 1996, I went to Omaha Nebraska with a friend because I had nothing better to do. There were 3 or 4 of us that went actually, and I had a very good time, just hanging out with people I didn’t know. They were quite nice, which helped a lot.

At the house I stayed, there lived an audio/videophile. He really liked movies and music, and wanted to experience them in the highest quality possible. He wasn’t there that weekend, but his roomie’s knew how to make his home theater system sit up and talk.

He had a Laserdisc system, which is like a DVD, but the size of an old vinyl album, and it took two discs per movie. The quality was all there though. He also had a nice 5 point surround sound system, with speakers on poles in the corners of the room.

To show it off to me, the put me in front of the tv, on the floor. I leaned my head back against the coffee table and got comfortable. They put in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country. The movie starts rather quietly, some theme music, credits, etc, so they turned it up nice and loud. The camera panned through space, and ended up focusing on Praxis, a moon belonging to the Klingons. All got quiet. And then Praxis blew up.

At that point my vision blurred. What they hadn’t told me was that the coffee table was actually a prop to cover the woofer that was 4 feet by 2 feet by 3 feet. And my head was leaning on it.

Much laughter ensued, and I suffered no permanent damage. I don’t think we even watched the movie, they just wanted to experience the death of Praxis with me.