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

Good News, Everyone!

For those of you who have been living under a rock for a while, Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's awesome animated sci-fi series Futurama returns from the dead (perhaps as Zombie Futurama? I wouldn't put it past them...) tonight at 10pm EDT for an entire hour of parody-ridden goodness!

My love of this show is something I can definitely blame Hub for. I'd honestly probably never watched any of it (not much anyway) before we started dating. It was off the air, thanks to great executives at FOX who were later turned into Torgo's Executive Powder, by the time we started dating. He owned all four seasons on DVD, and we've watched them infinity times since then.

Then, in 2007, they released 4 straight to DVD movies that were later aired as 4 separate episodes each on Comedy Central in 2008. Then after that, Comedy Central picked up 26 BRAND SPANKING NEW episodes of the show to start airing tonight, June 24, 2010!

The last movie, Into The Wild Green Yonder, was treated as if it were the last bit of the show ever to be made, so the Planet Express ship got sucked into a wormhole, and as Professor Farnsworth says, could take them billions of lightyears away and they might never return.

In a recent interview at io9, Cohen answered a lot of questions about where the show's return will take Fry, Leela, Zoidberg, Bender, and that man without a name, Zapp Brannigan. He also mentioned that Al Gore will be returning for his FOURTH cameo, George Takei for his second, and they've also added Patton Oswalt and Katee Sackhoff to the ever-growing list of celebrity appearances.

Please, for the love of all things crude, crass, and ridiculously over-the-top in the world of science fiction, tune in!

Sci-Fi Lessons

While watching Blade Runner tonight, I realized that I have learned many things about the future from science fiction. Here are the lessons I have learned:

The future is dirty. There are not enough garbage men. All we have is Scruffy, the janitor. (Blade Runner, Futurama)

Our modes of transportation don't seem to be much different. Cars fly but still have tires (Blade Runner, Back to the Future), spaceships can be clunkers (Firefly), and there is mass-transit (Futurama).

There are birds. Lots and lots of birds. Random birds. Like owls and falcons and doves. (Blade Runner)

Everyone understands Mandarin. (Firefly and Blade Runner)

Aliens are plentiful, speak English (or at least we can understand them and they us), and aren't always friendly. (Futurama, Doctor Who, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Clones, evil twins, Replicants, and androids will exist, but they WILL be EVIL. (Like Wil Wheaton)

I am sure there are many other lessons I have omitted here, but don't criticize, share! And please be sure to enlighten us all with WHERE you learned such lessons.

Hump-Day Hotties #3

Today, for your viewing pleasure, I've decided to visit Torchwood. Though I've not seen a whole lot of this show yet, I do love me some Captain Jack and Gwen! They're both great characters, plus easy on the eyes, too. And how can you not love John Barrowman's smile?

The lovely Gwen Cooper

Someone better cheer Captain Jack up!

Goodness, Eve! 

Those eyes... That smirk...

Thank you BBC, for bringing us the Doctor Who spin-off

Return of the TARDIS

So, I will admit, I'm a bit late to the party when it comes to Doctor Who, but I am super excited about the premier tonight on BBCA. I'll actually be at a close family friend's birthday party tonight, so THANK GOODNESS for my DVR! I've heard that the kickoff to the new series with the eleventh Doctor is great from people in the UK and Canada, and I seriously appreciate those bloggers for not giving me any spoilers!

In honor of this, I've decided to go back and watch some old eps from Netflix today, and so I sit, avoiding the pollen storm outside, in a self-created marathon with Christopher Eccleston, the ninth Doctor. I decided to go all the back to the beginning of the revived show and watch series 1. Personally, I prefer David Tennant, the tenth Doctor, as you never forget your first Doctor. But these episodes are still great! Less hair in this one, though. :)

I just hope that the young Matt Smith is as brilliant. (Not quite sure what to make of his hair, yet, though. Even more insane than Tennant's!)

Image from Mirror.co.uk

What are your favorite Doctor Who stories? 

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.

42: It's the Answer

As I was trying to fall asleep last night, for some reason, the date popped into my head as "42," and I immediately had an inspiration, but I had to file it away so I could actually get some sleep. The following is a true story about how a girl fell in love with a Hitchhiker and came to terms with her nerdy side. 

For some reason, Douglas Adams' A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been on my mind recently, so it is no surprise that my subconscious wanted me to write about it. When I was about 12, I was browsing the shelves at my local library on my weekly Saturday morning drop-off while Mom ran errands. I came across a book with an interesting cover, a strange title, and the back-cover promise of being hilarious. That book was The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. As perfect as this book seemed, I could not get past the first few pages. Little did I know it was in the middle of a series I would put at the top of my list a mere 14 years later. 

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.

I'm Baaack (and I'm not Wil Wheaton)!

After a long time of not being a very good (note: consistent) blogger, I actually think I might have some things to say, not to mention an audience this time.

That was always my biggest problem with my blogs in the past. They were before the social media craze, and I don't think anyone truly wanted to read about my boring grad-school life. Now people actually read each other's blogs and comment and link and stuff.

For my first day of this new blog, I am excited to say that I am on Spring Break, so there will be no teacher blog, but I do have a long-time friend coming over to marathon Big Bang Theory with me. This has quickly become one of my all time favorite shows. I'm pretty sure it's because the guys on the show are scarily relatable in my circle of friends. None of them, are, however, physicists. Is a chemical engineer close enough?