Nibbles and tidbits

Well, I haven't finished my latest book, and Lost is on hiatus until April 24th, and I won't have another Firefly recap until probably tomorrow ... so in the meanwhile you may peruse the following randomness if you are interested.

Peeps. I love peeps – those disgusting marshmallow creatures with the day-glo sugar crystal coating. I can’t eat too many of them because they make my teeth ache, so what I do is buy the small box: I eat one, leave one for my coworker Ann K. (who likes to let it sit out on her desk for a day or two until it gets crusty – yeesh) and squish the last two into Easter cards for my best girlfriends. (Why do I do that? Because it’s funny.) Just today, however, I found some folks who love peeps even more than I do: the Peeps Show II at the Washington Post. I hate to admit it but those are way more creative than just squashing the little guys in greeting cards.

Sweded films. I haven’t seen the new Jack Black/Mos Def movie, Be Kind Rewind, but I have become aware of the BKR-inspired craze running rampant through the internet: sweded films. A sweded film is a very short, extremely low budget (or no budget), fan-made homage to a classic film. This website has collected what they think are the top swedes online right now. My favorite is Jurassic Park, embedded below, but you should check out the rest of them. Predator and Die Hard are dang funny too.



Galaxy Quest. I’m embarrassed to say that I only just saw Galaxy Quest for the first time last night. That’s a funny, silly little movie – lovingly parodying sci-fi shows and their obsessive fans (read: Trekkies). If you haven’t seen it, the premise is that a bunch of washed up television actors from the Galaxy Quest show (a Star Trek clone) are approached by real aliens who have been watching transmissions of their show – and think it’s real – to help save their embattled civilization. The cast is stacked: Tim (Tool Time) Allen in the Captain Kirk role; Sigourney Weaver in the Uhura role; Alan Rickman as the alien doctor (who hilariously never takes off his head prosthetic even when he’s relaxing in his hotel after a long, hard day at the convention); Tony Shaloub (Monk) as the ship’s engineer; Sam Rockwell as the red-shirt; Justin Long (Dodgeball, Accepted, the Mac commercials) as a geeky uber-fan; and Enrico Colantoni (Sheriff Keith Mars) as the leader of the real aliens. While the movie gently pokes fun at Trekkies, it realizes the genuine love these fans have for their genre shows and never becomes cruel. Very cute.

X-Files Season 6. After waiting for MONTHS for Season 6 to become available on my Blockbuster.com queue, to no avail, and then searching all the videostores in town, also to no avail, I finally just bought the darn DVDs on Amazon.com - marked way down to around $20 – how far the mighty have fallen. This season was when the production moved from Vancouver to Los Angeles and, for many hardcore fans, marks the shark jumpage for the show. (Personally, I think it didn’t jump until Duchovny left – Robert Patrick was passable as the new skeptic but Annabeth Gish’s character was just too annoying for words.) I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Season 6 when it aired. There are a ton of standalone episodes – which I greatly prefer to the mythology arcs as there’s only so much conspiracy I can take – with tons of great guest stars, notably: Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin in episode 8; Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) in episode 2; Darren E. Burrows (Ed Chigliak from Northern Exposure) in episode 15; Jesse L. Martin (Det. Ed Green from Law & Order, Dr. Greg Butters from Ally McBeal, and Tom Collins from Rent) in episode 20; Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead, Army of Darkness) in episode 6; and most fabulously, Michael McKean (Best In Show, This Is Spinal Tap,etc., and Lenny from Laverne and Shirley!) as one of the Men In Black in episodes 4 and 5. Great, great fun.