SF Signal

At home, not at work, and not with your parents or children nearby, or even your spouse if he or she is easily offended by certain langauge, you should really take a moment to listen to some tracks from mc chris.

My favorite is Fett’s Vette, but the others are good too. Oh, you need to go to Listen, then choose the album ‘Life’s a Bitch and I’m her Pimp.’ You can pick the individual tracks from there. Now if only mc chris and mc hawkings would duo up and we’d have some real mad rhymes baby!

Interestingly, lots of people have remixed his songs – there have to be over a 100 of those on the site as well – amazing really, that anybody would have that much time. Oh well – I’m amazed people have time to post on blogs too, so what do I know.

mc chris is involved with Sea Lab 2021, a show I find to be extremely funny on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. I think about it the same way I think about those episodes of Davey and Goliath I used to watch as a kid.

Filed under: Music

So I was driving this morning and saw a bumper sticker that said “I poke badgers with spoons”. I didn’t know the meaning of the phrase, but I immediately thought it was dirty, and then dismissed that when I saw taht the car had a man, woman and child in it (still, I guess that’s not beyond the realm of possibility these days.)

Anyway, I’m still not certain what it means, but I see you can get hats, t-shirts, stickers, etc. with this nifty catchphrase, some including graphics of a badger getting, well, poked by a spoon.

Google this up and let me know!

Filed under: Humor

I’m not sure why I didn’t cotton to these links at Gravity Lens the other day, but it took John at TexasBestGrok to get me to post them. For Pete of course.

Women in Spacesuits

Babes in Spaaaaaace

Barbabrella Tribute page

Ladies of Star Trek

Celebrities as Orion Slave Girls

I’m pretty sure these are work safe, although the Barbarella one scares me. I’ll let Pete investigate first then report back to us. That’s your homework Pete. Get to it!

Filed under: Meta

Would you believe that the movie Night of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis is filming at Chernobyl?

Filed under: Movies

AUTHOR: id Software

REVIEW SUMMARY: Best single-player game from id Software, lots of fun, tedious at times

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: This incarnation of id’s first person shooter actually has a plot you care about! You play a marine working for a global company exploiting Mars when all hell breaks loose – literally. You have to find out what is happening and put a stop to it. The game makes use of dark hallways, scripted events including awesome audio cues, and in-game cut scenes to move the story along.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Solid graphics, excellent use of in-game cut scenes, nice special effects, excellent audio (both music and special effects), some unique scripted events, and in-game computer terminal use are the new features this game brings to computer gaming. The best feature is probably the use of your PDA for video, email, and audio logs – it really makes the world seem alive with characters when, in reality, you don’t really get to interact with anybody. Oh, and did I mention the game was scary? Plenty of bang for the buck, I finished the game after approximately 30 hours of gameplay.

CONS: No interaction with characters, the levels in the first 75% of the game are WAY too repetitive with the formula of: lights go off, enemy jumps you from behind, killing enemy means another spawns behind you being repeated too often. Being scared is fun, being scared continuously is fatiguing. The levels are so dark you don’t really get to see how good the graphics engine is. Doom 3 is in no way an huge advancement of the genre – most of it is cribbed from Half-Life, and Far Cry also already had many of the elements presented here. I personally don’t have a big issues with this, but id has a track record of revolutionizing shooters, and at least in terms of what single-player brings to the table Doom 3 doesn’t do that.

BOTTOM LINE: Fun game, very scary, and interesting sci-fi plot. It certainly isn’t a dissapointment – unless you expect id to hit one out of the park every time (heck even Mr. Steroid doesn’t do that!)

Filed under: Games

TrekPulse has a trailer for the first season of ST:TOS on DVD. The music is really cheesy and makes it sound like a bad 70′s cop show (“Hooker’s a good cop!” Sorry, 80′s cop show flashback). Otherwise, these DVDs make my wish list.

Update: In another sign that the apocalypse is nigh, there is a web site for…..TJ Hooker! Aaaaaahhhhhhhh! But he’s a good cop. So I hear.

Filed under: TV

If you missed it while it was on TV, now is your chance to own The Tick on DVD! Yes, the live action one. I saw this at Walmart the other day and only the price, $25, kept me from buying it. But still, its on my Amazon wish list.

Oh, and a short trip in the way back machine brings another forgotten TV series to DVD, Sledgehammer!. I vaugely remember seeing this one on TV way back when. It would probably make more sense to me now. Sadly, Police Squad is NOT on DVD. Oh, the injustice!

Filed under: TV

Will be a mid-season replacement on The WB. GF is based on the Wildstorm comic of the same name and is an X-Filesish setting. I’m not too sure of the story, but it looks rather interesting. At least its SF-ish and not the same old, same old. Maybe.

Filed under: TV

The nominees for the 2004 World Fantasy Award have been announced. They include:

Novel

• The Etched City by K.J. Bishop
• Fudoki by Kij Johnson
• The Light Ages by Ian R. MacLeod
• Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
• Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

Novella

• “A Crowd of Bone” by Greer Gilman
• “Dancing Men” by Glen Hirshberg
• “The Empire of Ice Cream” by Jeffrey Ford
• “Exorcising Angels” by Simon Clark and Tim Lebbon
• “The Hortlak” by Kelly Link

Short Fiction

• “Ancestor Money” by Maureen F. McHugh
• “Circle of Cats” by Charles de Lint
• “Don Ysidro” by Bruce Holland Rogers
• “Gus Dreams of Biting the Mailman” by Alex Irvine
• “O One” by Chris Roberson

Filed under: Books

Here’s an interesting conglomeration of RSS and Project Gutenberg. Alice’s Adventures in RSS is a one page a day rendition of Alices Adventures in Wonderland, delivered via RSS. So, you can add the feed to your favorite aggregator and read it one day at a time. There are also feeds for Finnegan’s Wake, Ulysses, and (cool!) The Notebooks of Leonard Da Vinici (not the teenage mutant ninja turtle). A rather cool idea I think.

Filed under: Books

Tired of pesky mosquitoes? Then try Buzz Off clothing, which includes insect repellent chemicals bonded to the fabric. Useful and fashionable too! (In a Steve Irwin kinda way.)

Filed under: Science and Technology

Entertainment Weekly magazine has an article this week titled “The Sci-Fi Playoffs” which, in the spirit of the upcoming Alien vs. Predator opening this coming Friday, pits different sci-fi movie hits against one another. They basically compare like elements of the films and pick the “better” of the two. Omitting their witty comparisons, here are the results (winners highlighted).

• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back vs. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Them! vs. Starship Troopers
• Robocop vs. The Terminator
• Blade Runner vs. The Matrix (draw – no winner)
• Deep Impact vs. Armageddon
• Logan’s Run vs. Soylent Green
• Battlestar Galactica vs. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

Filed under: Movies

AUTHOR: Steven Barnes

REVIEW SUMMARY: Surprisingly poor effort by Barnes

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Aubry Knight is a rising star in the sport of nullboxing (zero-G fighting) when his world collapses when he’s arrested for killing a man (it was in self-defense but you know those coppers) and sent to a maximum security prison burried in the desert of New Mexico. Aurby escapes and runs into a plot involving a drugs, the mob, and a girl.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: The story depicts California years into the future that finally suffers the ‘big one’ (I’m coming ‘Ouisy!) in a very realistic way (people scavenging through the burried portions of LA, for example.) I also liked the underground prison and key aspects of the drugs affect on the main characters.

CONS: This book is largely about characters and for some reason Steven blows it in this one. I wasn’t sympathetic towards any of them, they didn’t behave in a way I could understand (well, except for the villians) and at the end I didn’t care what they did.

BOTTOM LINE: I’m dissapointed – I like Barnes other works a lot and he’s much more adept at character development in his other works. Dream Park is one of my favorite books (along with the sequels) and so I was really hoping for a good one here. For whatever reason this one just doesn’t deliver – maybe he needs Larry Niven to help him out?

Read the rest of this entry

Filed under: Book Review

REVIEW SUMMARY: M. Night Shyamalan’s 4th film packs the suspense and thrills of Signs and a story as strong as Sixth Sense.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A small village in Pennsylvania in the late 19th century. A woods completely surrounds this village, and in that woods there be monsters. A pact is made such that if the people never enter the woods the creatures will ever enter the village.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Good story; very suspenseful; strong performances – especially by relative newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard

CONS: All Shyamalan’s films have a Twilight Zone type twist. Going into the film knowing that, the zinger is less of a surprise when it happens. That does not make this a bad film at all, though, and I wonder if The Village would have been as breath-taking as Sixth Sense was had I not known there would be a twist. Some clown who’d seen the film film already was telling me things to look for, and so my experience was slightly spoiled.

BOTTOM LINE: Very enjoyable film with strong performances. I’d rate this as my second favorite Night film after Sixth Sense.

Filed under: Movies

Weiner Dog Productions has created a cool little flash animation, called futurology, that takes a look at SciFi since its inception, using a hip-hop beat and an asteroids knock-off game near the end. Rather cool. I recognized many SF books/movies mentioned, but I’m sure I missed a few. Check it out. I give 82, its got a cool beat and you can dance to it!

Filed under: Web Sites

If these words stoke happy childhood memories, then you’ll be glad to know that Fraggle Rock is finally available on DVD! Available only at Walmart or from HIT Enetertainment until October. And really, a DVD set with 4 episodes for $12 is not bad. If I can find it locally, I am so buying it. Maybe I can turn my kids on to it, and I think John’s daughter might like it too.

Filed under: Movies

Sci-Fi Wire had a note discussing some of the additional footage to be added to the Return of the King Extended edition. It was from a discussion with David Wenham (Faramir) so its slanted towards scenes that include him.

Filed under: Movies

As part of SFSignal’s continuing coverage of DOOM3, and in a roundabout way to increase my post count – I found this little mod that adds duct tape to Doom3 and allows you to use yrou flashlight and a weapon at the same time. It looks pretty cool (and was on /.)

Filed under: Games

From RevolutionSF, a look at the upcoming SF-ish movies for the rest of the year. Only a couple are interesting to me.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – I’d trade my kids in for a ticket to the one. Luckily, all I have to do is buy one! Robots, dirigibles, flying wing/ornithopter things, spaceships and doomsday devices. What’s not to love?

Star Wars Trilogy DVD – Damn you Lucas, I’ve already pre-ordered these. Even if you did make Greedo shot first.

The Incredibles – Oh boy! I am so there on opening day. Maybe. Now if only we can create knock off characters in City of Heroes….

So 3 out of a bunch. 2 actual upcoming movies. Too bad HWood has to turn out drack like Sound of Thunder (which should be renamed, Sound of Empty Theater).

Filed under: Movies

Paranoia XP has finally been released. This is a total revamp of the classic RPG, Paranoia, which I recall as being fun to play if not totally whacked out and insane.

The even more interesting item is how Paranoia XP came into being. Check out the discussion on how Mongoose Publishing used a blog, community forums, and a Wiki to solicit ideas, discuss consequences and playtest the game. Really cool. So the question is: Is this a useful way to design and build a game? RPG only or could a card/board game work? It does allow for designers to be located in seperate places. What is the potential here? I think it could be rather large.

Filed under: Games