Edible Galactica

Inspired by two Battlestar Galactica sweets that were brought to my attention yesterday, a really detailed Galactica replica in cake form and custom insignia chocolate molds, I decided to round up a bunch more that I'd either seen in the past or had hunted down myself. Thanks for the inspiration Autumn! 

Insignia Cakes

 By Archana Rao at Love Street Cakes, Brooklyn, NY

Simplified version in fondant from Cakes by Charissa

A very sparkly version by Jen in Omaha

A Very Special Galactica Cake

This incredible tiered masterpiece was made by Zoe at Whipped Bakeshop in Philadelphia, PA for Geekadelphia's BSG Party.

Cylon Cakes

 

 Cylon Centurion cake from Sugar Butter Flour in Sunnyvale, CA

 

Cylon Raider cake from Homemade by Jill

Cylon Centurion cake with working eye! (from YouTube)

Mandala Cakes

Starbuck's Mandala cupcakes with pulled sugar mandalas!! By Jessica Petersen at Pie of the Tiger

"Eye of Jupiter" cake by catoholic (also made cool mandala chocolates!)

Dragon*Con Day 2

So, I've been slow on the reporting back, and I've gotta get all of this typed out before I start forgetting the insane stuff!

Saturday was officially Day 2 of Dragon*Con, and it didn't start out so well...

I didn't sleep well on Friday night, and kept waking up feeling crappy. I thought I was dehydrated, so I kept a bottle of water by the bed and kept drinking out of it. When I finally woke up (for good) around 9:00, I was seriously shaky, and it was scary. My blood sugar had crashed REALLY badly. I laid in bed for over an hour before my stomach had settled enough that I could even eat something. By the time I had finally eaten enough to move around, it was, like, 11! So, of course, we missed the costume parade! :( I got dressed in my awesome Triana Orpheus costume (Venture Brothers, for the uninitiated) and trekked to the Hyatt to get in line for the Eureka/Warehouse 13 crossover panel.

The awesome @CapSteveRogers saved us a spot in the line that hadn't "officially started yet" because line timing is so controlled. We chilled in line with our awesome Twitter friends and some annoying girl who kept butting into our conversation. We also got to people-watch all of the awesome Venture Brothers costumes (that weren't mine) since the VB panel was right before the E/WH13 one.

I felt like I was going to pass out again so Hub went to get me some Chick-fil-A. He's awesome! After I managed to feel mostly human, we filed into the ballroom to see another hilarious panel. Well, ok, the few times Eddie McClintock, Neil Grayston, and Colin Ferguson got to talk, it was hilarious. It ended up, being another Q&A panel, and all, that everything was directed at Saul Rubinek, Erica Cerra, and Rene Auberjoinois.  And most of the questions were all serious and stuff.

I'm the tiny purple head right above the microphone (next to a bright yellow shirt)

pic stolen from @EddieMcClintock!

Except when Tia Carrere mentioned that on a future crossover episode that Eddie and Colin should mud wrestle. Then Colin started to take off his shirt, and Eddie stood up and shook his butt at the whole room. I wish I had that on film. Because it was really funny.

Oh, and they REALLY embarrassed Neil with talk about the Fargo-Claudia relationship and how he apparently quite enjoyed kissing Allison Scagliotti. Just like Sean Maher, super cute when embarrassed!

It was fun getting to see the stars of some of my newest fave shows live and to see how much fun the obviously have on set together. We were able to see why the shows are so great - that the casts have incredible chemistry.

And I'm pretty darn sure there's gonna be more crossover episodes in the future. Or at least I got the feeling from the way the panel had such great plot ideas already in mind for future episodes. I sure hope so. When Claudia went to Eureka was one of my faves this season, and it's on as I'm writing this!

After we managed to survive the insanity in that panel, we wandered back to the exhibition halls and checked out the Quantum Mechanix booth, which we couldn't get near the previous day. The coolest thing ever was that we got to play with the (not really working) replica Farnsworth and talk to the guy who designed and built every single one by hand. If they weren't $300, we probably would've bought one. I bought a "Wash is My Copilot" license plate frame and also drooled over a model BSG Viper Mark II which was estimated to start at $1500 when they hit production.

Jake also got a great compliment from a guy who designed much of their Firefly gear, as well. He was told it was nice to finally see a Jayne of the right size and build. See, there were a lot of Jaynes at the con, but not many were tall and muscley like Jake is. He's actually the same height as Adam Baldwin and has similar-sized arms. So he was the best Jayne I saw all weekend. (But I'm biased!)

We ended up eating dinner in line for the Battlestar Galactica panel and doing some awesome people-watching in the Marriott at the same time. See, it should be called Line*Con. Lots of lines. Oh, yeah, and the camera battery died right before we got to see Edward James Olmos, Aaron Douglas, Mark Sheppard, Rekha Sharma, and Richard Hatch (not the Survivor guy)!

This was another panel that was monopolized by the old guys. It was great to hear Olmos speak about some of the technical side of things and the impact that BSG has had on our society like the UN visit and all, but that's pretty much all the panel was. That and Sheppard and Douglas having some kind of hysterical inside joke going on that they couldn't share with us. :P

A few other awesome stories were told by Sharma and Douglas, but I am not going to say anything since they are TOTAL spoilers, and I know some of you haven't seen all of the series yet. <3

The one thing missing from BOTH panels on the day that would have made them even better was James Callis! Baltar/Grant is awesome! 

Before we let the Marriott, I stood *thisclose* to Aaron Douglas, and was going to try to talk to him, but then I realized he was with a bunch of friends and was bitching about his friend who he sent to get drinks and wasn't pack yet. Since he was being social with his own group, I took Wil Wheaton's advice, and decided not to be a dick. But seriously, I wanted to run up to him and give him a giant hug!

From one show about awesome spaceships to another, we left BSG and went to the Browncoat Shindig. It was a big party/dance/concert open to all *Con-goers, but geared towards the fans of the Whedonverse, specifically Firefly. Almost everyone there was in Firefly-themed costumes or tees. Jake was still Jayne, and I was pseudo-cross-play Jayne (cunning Jayne hat and Blue Sun tee).

AWESOME Kaylee dress and the only Badger I saw! (There were at least 4 of these!)

We got to see two awesomely geektastic performances with all Firefly/sci-fi-themed music! I honestly can't remember the names of the two guys who performed first, but they were Filkers with Celtic-y/bluegrass-y fun stuff. The second part was what I'd been anticipating BIG TIME, though. That was a performance by the ultra-cute, super-geeky Marian Call. If you don't know her music, you need to check her out! If you like my blog, you will like her music.

Plus I got to talk to her after the show, and she got all squee-ish when I told her I was @teacher_geek from Twitter. We're online friends and all. :) I also learned she gives great hugs!

Because it had been a "Kara isn't feeling 100%" kind of day, we went back to the hotel after her show and went to sleep. Needless to say, I slept much better, because I really needed it!

Cross-play Hatred and I at the Venture Compound booth. I perfected the Triana-looking-bored pose during the day.

Hump Day Hotties #14

After taking a few weeks off for summer-y things, I'm back in action with a new hottie for ya! This time, as I've been LOVING the new season of Eureka and the fact that I saw the terrible Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason on TV the other day, I decided to dedicate today's post to James Callis. The first role I ever remember seeing him in was as Bridget's gay bff Tom in Bridget Jones's Diary way back in 2001. Then of course, we all know and love him/hate him as Gaius Frakking Baltar on BSG. He's been made a recurring guest star this season on Eureka, as well, and I'm seriously loving him on there. Again, a bit of a character who's very ambiguous. You're not quite sure if you should like him or despise him. I'm not gonna give anything else away for those of you who aren't at season 4 yet. He's even one of the people mentioned with a hashtag a few of us thought up a while ago: #guysinglassesaresexy!

See? Bridget's friends!

#guysinglassesaresexy

Hump Day Hotties

So, I was randomly inspired to create a weekly feature thanks to reading a discussion over at 20sb. I decided, that since Wednesdays are often tough days to get through, I'd try to provide some eye-candy every once in a while. This post is unusually long, as it is the first, but I wanted to share with you some of the hotness that is featured on Battlestar Galactica.

Warning, some pics are moderately NSFW.

To Game, or Not To Game

First and foremost, I am not much of a video-gamer. I like to blame this on my parents. They wouldn't allow us to have any game system in our house growing up, so when I went off to college, and really had access to them via friends for the first time, I felt horribly incompetent. And something to know about me is I'm such an OCD perfectionist, that if I can't succeed in something fairly immediately, I usually won't do it at all. Hence not playing video games unless they're slow-paced and require no button-mashing. Also, I prefer games I don't have to co-op. Thus my love for my Wii and turn-based RPGs.

This is beside the point, though, as this post has nothing to do with video games. It's about games played while sitting face-to-face with your awesome group of nerdy friends. Some of our old friends from high school had started getting together once a week for "Family Game Night" and invited us to join them about two years ago. There is nothing family-friendly about this gathering. We usually drink a lot and create lewd versions of board games. One of my favorites was dirty Scattergories. And we play Adult Loaded Questions too much for our own good, even inventing our own loaded questions quite frequently.

The Nicknames

I've only been on the Battlestar Galactica bandwagon for about a year and a half, but I can honestly say it's probably one of my all-time favorite shows. And one of my absolute fave characters on the show has got to be Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. She's hot, mysterious, and seriously bad-ass.  Because of my love for said character, and the fact that we share the same first name, spelled the same and everything, my geek friends started calling me "Kara Thrace." I even went so far as to be Starbuck for Halloween this past year. <-- See?

Then my poor husband started getting called Mr. Thrace. Not Anders or anything cool like that, just Mr. Thrace. That eventually turned into us getting called collectively "The Thraces." As in, where are we going to host Game Night? At the Thraces'. Who's bringing the movie? The Thraces. Now we are even stored in our friends' phones with those nicknames.

And then, my husband is also a "Toaster." This came about when we were first starting to play the BSG board game. In the game, you are either a cylon, not a cylon, or a sympathizer. The first three times we played, my husband was a cylon every time, and his covert actions cost the humans the game. I told him he was sleeping on the couch. Then on multiple occasions we have BOTH been cylons in the game, so apparently, now, to our friends, we are "Toasters," and they joke about it whenever they get the chance.

This is one of the many reasons I love my geeky friends. Do any of you have awesome nicknames given to you by friends? Any of them awesomely nerdy?

Always a Badger

 I was watching the most recent episode of Chuck and noticed that the one and only Mark Sheppard had appeared as the director of the evil syndicate known as "The Ring." It is not the first time that the great sci-fi character actor has graced the small screen in my living room in recent years. Though it is not the role for which I will always remember him.

That honor will go to the sleaze-ball fence, Badger, from the "Serenity" and "Shindig" episodes of Firefly. Now, he was only in two episodes, playing a minor character, but for some reason, that is how I have chosen to remember him. He always gave Mal and his crew such a hard time for their dangerous work, yet, as shady as he was, I never disliked him.

So, you can only imagine my surprise, when I started watching Battlestar Galactica and saw him show up as the slick lawyer, Romo Lampkin. My initial thought was, "Who else but Badger would represent a weasel like Gaius Baltar?" Unfortunately, I could never quite get past the fact that he was Badger, and kept projecting those traits onto Lampkin. And strangely enough, I never ended up liking Lampkin that much. This is how most of my friends remember him, though, and when I bring up Badger, they seem to question my sanity.

Then, as BSG started to wind down, I started seeing him everywhere. What do I mean by everywhere? EVERYWHERE! He had a small recurring role on Dollhouse. Looked like good ol' Joss Whedon called in a favor from an old friend?

I've been told he was on 24, which I do not watch. Then he was cast on multiple cable shows that I actually love, so imagine my surprise when I start seeing my favorite genre character actor every time I turn on the television: Burn Notice, White Collar, Warehouse 13, Leverage, and finally (and most recently) Chuck.

Though his roles have been minor and short-lived in most of those shows, it makes me happy every time I see his smug face pop up. I always expect the cockney accent and bowler, but he's cleaned up a lot since then. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more of him for the foreseeable future. He's gotta be coming back in the Fall on Leverage as Sterling, I'm sure of it. And I'm waiting on a guest appearance on Castle, too.

I just hope he doesn't get cast on an episode of Caprica. You can't do that. No crossing canons. It isn't right.