BREAKING: Beastie Boys may have invented the Vulcan nerve pinch

[flvegan]

How so?

We know the new movie takes place around Stardate 2248, which actually corresponds to our Gregorian calendar. So it’s not inconceivable then that a young Kirk would have access to an antique Corvette. But what was surprising about that early scene in the movie is not whether director J.J. Abrams was referring to the original Kirk, William Shatner, being unable to pronounce the word sabotage, but the manner with which he used the Beastie Boys song “Sabotage.”

In that scene Kirk hangs up on his rotten Uncle Frank and then flips out his fancy Nokia media player and picks the song in question. By making this choice, Abrams has now created a universe in which The Beastie Boys exist in Star Trek canon. The song wasn’t played over the scene, it was played in the scene. There’s a big difference. If the song was played over the scene, all of this speculation becomes moot.

If we accept that the Beastie Boys were a music group from the 1990s, still being listened to 200 years later when the new Star Trek movie takes place, then we must accept that their song “Intergalactic” also exists within the newly established universe. As we must accept that the music video for the song also exists.

Do you see where I’m going with this? There’s no indication in the new movie that the Vulcan nerve pinch was taught to Spock by the Vulcan elders. But we do know for a fact that around 1997 or so, The Beastie Boys wrote a song with the line: “If you try to knock me you’ll get mocked / I’ll stir fry you in my wok / Your knees’ll start shaking and your fingers pop / Like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock.”

There’s no indication that Mr. Spock, once traveling from Vulcan to San Francisco to attend Star Fleet academy, would have heard the Beastie Boys song “Intergalactic” but there’s also no indication that he didn’t overhear it as well.

Let’s assume for a moment that Mr. Spock was in the library or grabbing a sandwich in between classes. Someone is bumping the song on their fancy Nokia media player and he hears those last few lines. Now, Spock is rather intelligent, so maybe the idea becomes implanted in his head subconsciously and he tries it out for the first time right before he tosses Kirk out the backside of the Enterprise.

There’s also the obvious time travel aspect that could play a role in all of this — that Mr. Spock went back in time to the 1990s and the Beastie Boys saw him do the Vulcan Nerve Pinch and thus led to the line in their song.

But at this point it’s a chicken and egg sort of thing, until we get more information. Correlation doesn’t mean causality and all that. But it’s too weird a coincidence for people to not be talking about.

http://slyoyster.com/movies/2009/did-the-beastie-boys-inadvertently-invent-the-vulcan-nerve-pinch/

I can almost guarantee that this will be my ONLY Trek-related OP ever.

[ghostsofgiants]

1. Brilliant.

[LeftyMom]

2. Frighteningly, I knew where you were going with this.

:rofl:

[Forkboy]

3. This is clearly the best OP of the week.

:rofl:

[flvegan]

4. This is serious.

Beasties as Vulcan nerve pinch Genesis.

[Orrex]

5. Flawless reasoning. Unfortunately, it presents two other possibilities, as well:

It cannot be excluded that young Kirk may have heard an antique recording of William Shatner performing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Leonard Nimoy performing The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.


Is that the kind of universe that you want to live in?

[flvegan]

9. BUT, Kirk didn't choose to listen to either

and there's no proof those songs were still listened to in that future.

Score one for the Beasties.

[Orrex]

16. Possibilities, I said!

From the current film we have no proof that any other songs from our time survived to Kirk's era. Maybe the Beasties are thought of as the entirety of 20th century music?

[Deja Q]

6. If using vapid pop culture songs in a niche genre in an attempt to make it vapid pop culture

it's just more proof it's vapid.

:D

[Orrex]

7. Fine. Vote Republican next time.

Freeper.


:evilgrin:

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. I sort of wondered the same thing about Star Trek IV.

They go back in time to the 1980s to save the whales. All good and fine. However, during the 1980s as we know it, millions of people were also aware of the television show and movie series Star Trek. Wouldn't then people of the 1980s instantly recognize Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc. as the leaders of the starship Enterprise?

Or did they in fact go back to an alternate version of the 1980s, where Star Trek never existed. But even then, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, etc. would have existed, right? So they would still have been exact body doubles for the actors who would have portrayed them but for the fact the series never existed. Unless we are saying that neither the series nor the actors who portrayed the characters existed....


Okay, enough now. My head hurts.

[Sebastian Doyle]

14. But they went to San Francisco.

And anyone who was in SF from the years 1967-1969 doesn't remember much about those days, including Star Trek. So when they saw Spock walking around in his robe in 1986, they just thought he was another aging hippie (as Kirk actually tried to say he was, but inadvertently called Spock a Mormon instead)

[Rob H.]

10. Those lyrics appear to only be useful to Spock

if he wanted to knock himself out. To whit: "Like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock," rather than "Like a pinch on the neck from Mr. Spock."

:silly:

Seriously, though, as a fan of both Trek and the Beastie Boys that line jumped out at me the first time I heard the song because it's wrong. D'oh!

[flvegan]

11. As a Beastieologist, I've wrestled with that myself.

I finally had to surmise that if one removed the prepositional phrase "on the neck" for context, you'd have "like a pinch of Mr. Spock" meaning Mr. Spock's pinch, that pinch of his not of him. The fact that it's Yauch's line, makes it all the more difficult to envision as an error. Now had it been AdRock (let's admit it here, he rhymes "y'all" with "y'all" pretty often) I'd say it might be a slip.

[LeftyMom]

12. You, sir, need a new hobby

I'd suggest watching Star Trek, but well...

[flvegan]

15. You know, with at least three other songs having Trek references

you Trekkies owe the Beasties quite a bit. They'd be flying an Edsel with cap guns if not for the BBoys.

[slay]

13. Ha - nice!

A very scientific deconstruction of how Mr. Spock could have indeed learned he could do a Vulcan nerve pinch from the Beastie Boys. Bravo and funny too just cause - whoulda thunk it? :rofl: