George Takei - Oh Myyy!

Oh Myyy!

there goes the internet

George Takei

Oh Myyy! by George Takei

Copyright 2012 by Oh Myyy! Limited Liability Company

Oh Myyy! Limited Liability Company

1501 Broadway, Suite 2900, New York, NY 10036

www.theohmybook.com

Originally published in digital edition by Oh Myyy! Limited Liability Company, November 2012

Contents

Dedicated to

my husband Brad Takei,

who swore I had it in me

to write another book

and to

my trusty interns,

who demanded

not to be named.

How in the world did a common, everyday exclamation come to be so associated with me? Oh My! truly has become my signature. Many people ask me about when I started saying it, but its actually something Id been using all my life. Oh my! Doesnt everybody say it? Oh my! Now, somehow, its become my brand. For this, I put the blame squarely on one world-renowned rascal named Howard Stern.

I had been on Howard Sterns radio show many times since the early 90s a few times intentionally, but more often not. The times I purposefully appeared were to promote a play I was in or the publication of my autobiography, To the Stars . But more frequently, Id been on because of bandit recordings. Once, Howard surreptitiously recorded me while on the phone with a celebrity imitator pretending, absurdly, to be Ricardo Montalban.

Howard Stern has had his fun with me, and his listeners seemed to be having a hilarious good time listening to his mischief at my expense. I got points for being a good sport, I suppose. The Stern Show techies even spliced my voice from the audiocassette version of my autobiography and manipulated the words to make it seem like I was uttering outrageously obscene statements. They claim they did all this because they love me, but I must say, Ive never been loved in such a bizarre fashion.

Howard also seemed to have fallen in love with me saying Oh my! whenever he said or did something outrageous, like when he asked one voluptuous young woman on his show to take her bra off. Oh my! What else could I say? It was even more apt when she did. Oh my! indeed. Howard, for some unfathomable reason, thought my reflexive Oh my! was hilarious. So he played a recording of it over and over again even when I wasnt on the show. I thought it was silly, but it was also admittedly quite droll.

I first realized Oh my! was becoming personally linked with me when I went on a national book tour for To the Stars . Young men who had patiently stood in line for my autograph would slip the book toward me with roguishly insinuating smiles and ask me to sign it with Oh my! I knew right away they were Howard Stern fans and realized then that it had become my signature phrase.

Oh my! goes beyond a response of amusement or surprise. It is also an expression of awe and wonder. Our world is full of amazing phenomena: a stunningly rapturous sunrise, a night sky spangled with stardust, the fiery beauty of a volcanic lava flow. They all merit a Oh my! Humankinds imagination and innovation is truly breathtaking. Today we take for granted technology that was mere science fiction just over four decades ago on Star Trek . I am a 75-year old man who grew up transported by adventures I experienced with my ears glued to the radio. When black and white television was introduced, that was a sensational Oh my! event. We could see a movie on a round screen in a box in our own living room. What a groundbreaking invention!

Our dazzling tech-driven society today stimulates and inspires me. We have become instantaneously interconnected, not only with other people of this earth, but with far-off planets. A robot we created is now roving the surface of Mars and sending back photos to us on Earth what an amazing achievement. I want to revel in and enjoy this Oh my! world so much so, that Ive begun to accentuate the very phrase. As we all know, the addition of a few Ys adds a certain je ne sais quoi . Hey simply doesnt quite carry the same suggestive appeal in a text message as the more inviting Heyyy. And with that, Oh myyy! was born.

As many a fan has posted on my Facebook wall,

skala, fotografie4you.eu, Alexey Gnezdilov - Fotolia.com. Used with Permission

Dont worry, it took me a while to get this, too.

Social media depends on the act of sharing. Duh, you say. But what is less clear is why we choose to share things through our social networks. Sure, we want to keep our friends and families current, particularly when something significant happens. I got a job promotion. Im a mom again. I need bail money. But that hardly scratches the surface of our modern sharing rituals.

Once upon a time, we had to call or write to everyone we knew with such news. More dutiful friends shared an annual family photo and penned lengthy, form Christmas letters, complete with a Dear X salutation (likely filled in by hand in textbook cursive) and a yearly summary of their notable achievements and news (usually in hard-to-read italic typeset on even harder-to-read blue or red paper). Those chestnuts are rather scarce now in this age of status posting. Perhaps those same people today could simply email a holiday greeting with a link to their Facebook Timelines, all major Life Events carefully laid out, each album informatively and accurately titled, each photo auto-enhanced with red-eye removed.

But beyond important news, lets face it: Facebook and Twitter are filled with information no one really needs to know. At the gym. Ate donuts for dinner. Got shingles.

Its harder to understand why people post this information, and admittedly harder still to understand why we continue to devour it on a daily basis. We post in the sincere hope of providing others a more honest and open sense of who we are, from the very special moments to the mundane. Sharing is an act of trust, for ridicule is an ever-present risk on the Internet today. But Ive recently concluded that sharing is also often an act of deception. More on that later.

On a deeper level, the sharing of our lives on a daily basis is a statement of our values and of what makes us tick. In so doing, friends who are far away may feel close by, and long lost acquaintances or relationships may resurface, often with alarming results.

It is easy to underestimate the impact our hyper-connectivity has upon us as individuals and on the human species in general. We are naturally social creatures, but at least until recently our social interactions were limited to those we saw, spoke to, worked with, and slept with (or stopped sleeping with) daily. In the networked world, there are fewer Eleanor Rigbys to sing about, for even the loneliest among us can venture out with relative anonymity and find solace in the comfort of others lives, particularly if those lives appear equally mundane. By the way, if you dont know who Eleanor Rigby is, you probably were born after 1985 and need to listen to some real music.

There is a voyeuristic quality to it all as well. Before we had Facebook, we began our obsession with reality television, where we followed the lives of complete strangers and watched their dramas unfold, breathless with anticipation for the next meltdown. Smartly edited by experienced producers, these shows made television audiences feel as if they had been invited into someone elses world. And heres the rub: by witnessing the rawness of the emotions, on full display for us all to take in, these real people felt like our colleagues, our friends, our families.