Like every other former sci-fi geek in NYC, I (sorry) trekked out to see the Star Trek movie on Friday night. My assessment? J. J. Abrams has turned out a well-made B movie: The film moves along at a crisp pace, hits all the key retro-nostalgia moments, and is designed to be pleasing to many audiences—old and young, boys and girls. It’s less hard-core sci-fi than pleasing pop kitsch. While the movie contains a lot of references to Captain Kirk’s unredeemed womanizing, it takes them utterly casually. The real focus here, as in the original TV series, is on the dynamic between young Kirk and young Spock.

But that relationship might appeal more to women than to men, even. When you think about it, for all Kirk’s off-ship womanizing with nubile young female types on new planets, the original show always contained some funny gender-bending in it. You could read Spock and Kirk according to traditional male-female roles, with Spock playing the ur-rationalist (Men are from Mars/Vulcan) and Kirk the heart-on-the-sleeve emotionalist (Women are from Venus/Earth). Kirk was always risking what he shouldn’t risk because of a feeling or an intuition. It’s interesting that in a galactic space, as more species crept in, our vision of a leader was allowed to be more stereotypically feminine in some ways, even though Kirk’s physical type, stocky and solid, had not a little John Wayne to it. Interestingly, as Newsweek reminded us, Star Trek has spawned tons of so-called “slash” fiction about Kirk and Spock’s homosexual love affair. More interestingly, someone at the Huffington Post noted a few years back that most of that fiction was written by women. So, gals just like this friendship. Is that because it messes with our traditional role in a way we find pleasing—because we get to roll our eyes at Spock’s emotional density while identifying with the masculine captain too? Or do we actually identify with Spock, who always seems so oddly vulnerable in his difference from others? Or neither. It seems to me, in the end, that it’s the messiness of the dynamic between the two, the way that the roles can’t be neatly divided along chromosomes, that appeals to female (and male) viewers tired of being pigeonholed by gender.

Tags: captain kirk, J.J. Abrams, movies, mr. spock, sci-fi, Star Trek

The Washington Post is calling attention to the friendship between U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Georgia Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears, who is on some short-lists for the open Supreme Court seat. It's an odd-couple alliance that seems to cast doubt on Sears by bringing up old bitterness over Thomas' appointment. As the Post piece puts it, "The old lions of the civil rights movement in Georgia and elsewhere have never accepted Thomas as heir to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall's seat and legacy." But it seems to me that Sears' friendship with Thomas would be an asset on the court. It's hard to imagine them voting together often, based on her liberal track record, but hey, if she can pull him into a few coalitions—or just out of his calicified social isolation—she'd get big points.

As a Supreme Court nominee, Sears has another problem, though. She won election as Georgia's chief justice in 2004 after a slugfest of an election in which many Democrats, lawyers and otherwise, forked over money and time for her. But now Sears plans to leave the state's high court in June. She'd like to be the president of a college, or do pro bono legal work for kids, she says. Worthy goals. But by departing in the middle of her term, Sears will give Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue the chance to move Georgia's high court to the right. The current split is basically 4 to 3, conservative to liberal, which gives the liberal wing the chance to win by picking off one vote. Perdue's appointee will presumably change the balance to 5 to 2. That rightward shift could stay in place for years, to the intense frustration of some of the people who worked for Sears's election. "It is very disappointing," said Stephen Bright, president and senior counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights. "It appears she doesn't have time to be a judge." Not the best advertisement for becoming a Supreme Court justice.

Photograph of Clarence Thomas by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Tags: Clarence Thomas, Leah Ward Sears, Supreme Court

Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake, the duo responsible for Saturday Night Live's viral video "Dick in A Box," were at it again this weekend, pasting on absurd facial hair and recording "Motherlover," a spoof song in honor of Mother's Day about two friends who really want to love each other's mothers (played, in the video, by Susan Sarandon and Patricia Clarkson). Like really, really: "We both love our moms, women with grown women needs/ I say we break ‘em off/Show ‘em how much they really mean/'cause I'm a Mother Lover/ you're a Mother Lover/ We should fuck each other's mothers/ 'cause every Mother's Day needs a Mother's Night," and so on.

Written out, the lyrics read raunchy, but the overall effect was... sweet. (Not so sweet that you would actually send this to your mother, but sweet enough that you theoretically could). These are two absurd dudes trying to do a solid for their moms, and sometimes that means considering, as they say, "that place that you came out as a baby," which, let's be honest, very few children willingly do. Happy belated mother's day!

Tags: Andy Samberg, Justin Timberlake, Mother's Day, Motherlover, Saturday Night Live