I want to believe

A couple of months ago Biasman decided to get me all excited by lying to me about a new film, a sequel to the 1998 X-Files, X-Files 2.  I don't know why he said this.  I guess he's just  a mean hearted kind of guy.   Even the joking jab about another X-Files movie got me so excited that when I considered how unbelievable that FOX didn't cancel the series when it was on, and how unbelievable that there is a 1998 movie based on the series of course I didn't believe the news of the sequel.  I was heart broken.

Turns out Matt wasn't just having a go with me, for once he knew what he was talking about.  I still don't know if I believe it.  But there it is, and I want to believe it.  

Matt and I are both big X-Files fans, though for the most part we have contrasting opinions about the show.  None the less, we're excited.  So I wanted to take this opportunity to both wax a bit and talk about sci-fi news; because thats the kind of nerd I am.  

I got a bit of a head start on the X-Files compared to Biasman, but there is no doubt that Matt long ago surpassed me in knowledge about this show.  While Matt's been able to see what I can only guess is every episode thanks to DVDs, torrents, and FOX at two in the morning on saturdays I had much more difficulty reaching the show.  When I was younger my parents both watched the X-Files, and I did too... sort of, through closed eyes and gapping fingers.  I was scared shitless by nearly every episode, except any that went along with the main story arc or had anything to do with Aliens.  The reason I didn't find these very terrifying or interesting wasn't because they weren't any good but because not only was I just generally confused by the stories and regularly missed entire episodes but also because when you do watch a show through  tightly closed eyes anticipating the worse it's usually quite difficult to bring anything away a program after about an hour.

I think that's what I really loved about the show though, how for a whole hour I was sitting there, torturing myself, just waiting to be scared.  Why does everything that has ever terrified me in life have to be so damn interesting and intriguing?!  It's just like nearly everything else I've talked about on this blog- just like the draculas and the wolf men and the old Parisian man- I liked the feeling of being scared but I also wanted, desperately, to know what was waiting in the dark for me, even if it killed and ate me after I saw it at least I'd finally know!

The X-Files doesn't scare me any longer but it does get me excited.  Much the same way that when I was little the Goosebumps books and television show would excite and scare me, and truth be told the music from the TV program still does send a shiver down my spin.  I remember first getting my library card, I rushed over to the 'young adult' section, what ever that meant, and grabbed everyone of the R.L. Stine's  books that I could, as many as they'd allow me to take out.  I'd lay them all down on my bed and just look at them, stare at there covers, too scared at the age to read them even if I could have.  I did this every two weeks for nearly a year.

Anyways though, other exciting news about the new X-Files film is that Callum Keith Rennie is in it, that's right Leoben form Battle Star Galactica.  Which also reminds me, BSG is back for a fourth and final season having made it though the Writers Strike.  Don't the NBC CEOs kind of remind you of Cylons? ("I once put a laugh track on a sitcom that had no jokes in it" Side Note: Futurama is back on TV and has four all new extended episodes.)  I haven't gotten a chance to watch the latest episode of the show but I plan to soon.  If you haven't watched the re-imagined series of BSG before I highly recommend it, it's one of the best shows on television, has great political commentary, and is just a fraking good hour of hard sci-fi.  Click here to see what you've been missing.

Also Xzibit and Billy Connolly are going to be in the X-Files sequel.  But frankly I'm just glad that David Duchovny is working, wether it's X-Files, Californication or even another Connie and Carla, anything is good.  

Well, it should be a good summer for sci-fi fans.  If you've got any news leave it bellow of email us.  If you're interested in a good read for the summer try listening to Billy Joel for once and pick up Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. 

Happy Birthday again Matthew

Caleb, fan

A Duo of Sci-Fi Shows Resurrected

Rejoice!

Futurama and The X-Files are both getting new movies... hopefully, and I couldn't be more excited. They're two of the greatest TV shows of all-time, and at least Futurama was ended way too soon. I'll debate with you whether The X-Files was or not...

Here's an interview with Matt Groening on some magazine/website I've never heard of, but it seems legit enough... and I remember reading Groening saying basically the same thing from another source. The basic gist is that they are releasing four straight to DVD movies, then chopping up the movies to play as episodes on Comedy Central. Sounds good to me.

The X-Files news is a little less certain I suppose, given that I can't find any information on it from what resembles an actual news source, but whatever, I don't care. I'm going to just dive wildly into the hope and if my heart gets crushed, so what.

Here's a link of some news and a supposed interview with David Duchovny. They call themselves "the movie reporter"... that's good enough, right?

News about the movie is also on some sort of AOL TV blog. Um... just drink the kool-aid.

Anyhow, it is supposed to be a stand-alone "monster-of-the-week" type movie. For all of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, it's not going to involve aliens and won't be part of the whole alien colonization/government conspiracy/cigarette smoking man overarching plot that went through the series and was the focus of the first movie, Fight the Future. I honestly wouldn't care either way, as long as I get to watch some new X-Files.

Anyhow, I'm sure more news will follow once I find any. For now, I'll leave you with this...



Doesn't it just send chills down your spine?

Box Score

“I’m reading the box score, Scully. You’d like it; it’s like the Pythagorean Theorem for jocks. It distills all the chaos and action of any game in the history of all baseball games into one tiny, perfect rectangular sequence of numbers. I can look at this box, and I can recreate exactly what happened on some sunny, summer day back in 1947. It’s like the numbers talk to me, they comfort me, they tell me even though lots of things can change some things do remain the same.” –Fox Mulder

One day, Mulder reminded me of something my dad once told me, something about how I should love baseball because of how much I enjoyed statistics. My seven year old self never really understood that, because things like wins and losses, points and touchdowns, goals and assists were so much easier to understand than ERAs, batting averages, WHIPs, or slugging percentages. But, not understanding all of that stuff never stopped me from loving the game, and it never stopped me from playing second base, or debating All-Star team rosters with my grandpa on lazy weekday afternoons. And when I grew, and my knowledge of math increased (though I will never admit again that math has ever helped me better understand sports), I began to get what my dad had been trying to tell me all those years before.

Baseball is the game of statistics, the game of numbers. I learned what all those funny acronyms and abbreviations stood for, and what they meant. I learned all the little intricacies of the game, and I fell in love with it all over again. It wasn’t just whacking a ball with a stick and running bases or catching and throwing, it was strategy and numbers that stretched back into the foggy reaches of time, numbers that meant something, that could restore something. I might never be able to recreate a summer day in Boston in 1920, but I can damn well know what happened at Fenway that day. So, I think back and wonder what it was like to watch Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth or Mordecai “Three Fingers” Brown, and I dig up all those charts filled with numbers and abbreviations and marvel at the order and simplicity of it all.

Once at a game at Comerica Park a blonde in the row in front of mine caught my eye. She had her hair back in a pony tale and a baseball cap on her head, and to my amazement she was filling out a score card as she watched the game from the bleachers. She was recording for posterity that day in time. It was quite possibly the most attractive thing I had ever seen in my life. Just watching her slender fingers marking outs with a pencil and seeing her rapt attention at every movement of the game was intoxicating. I understand if that makes me seem crazy to most of you, but I’m sure that someone out there understands. I know Mulder would, at least.

Ballparks themselves are intoxicating… the rumble of the crowd, the call of the vendors, the warm smell of hotdogs and the freshness of the air, the warm sun shining and the inviting sky spreading out in every direction. There is just something about them that is different from all those places called Arenas, Bowls, Domes and Coliseums. They are parks, they are fields… they are expansive and open. I feel sorry for those cities that don’t have a true ballpark, but are forced to share a facility with some other sport. It just isn’t the same. I’m lucky enough to have two of them, though one is a haunted shadow of its former self.

It has been a long time since I was last in Tiger Stadium, but I’ve went past it many times since then and I know it’s still sitting there at Michigan and Trumbell, just waiting. No matter how long it has been, though, I know I’ll remember those long, claustrophobically low tunnels that must still be there, and the field where so many of my heroes and my father’s heroes roamed for summers stretching back decades. I still know those steep bleachers that made you feel as if you were right on top of the field and I can hear the seagulls crying out in my mind. I can still remember sitting along the third baseline, cracking shells and popping peanuts into my mouth, the mitt on my left hand just itching for a foul ball, and my dad next to me keeping track of the game on a scorecard.

Comerica Park is newer, more open, and perhaps the grass is greener now, but I know it will never replace Tiger Stadium. No park can ever replace that old warrior in my heart. But, CoPa is a good park, and the skyline from it makes me think about how much I love the city, despite everything. It’s funny how those surroundings gave me so much courage, how thousands of people around me brought me comfort. It’s odd that friends chattering away and the thrill of a potential comeback victory made me do something that I probably would never have done otherwise. So, I talked to the blonde girl with the scorecard and the Tiger’s hat. I told her that she was beautiful, and she smiled at me. I talked to her, and my heart thumped at her smile and the look in her blue eyes. I felt alive… and it didn’t matter what she said, how she responded, that was never the point. It was only the movement of her lips as she formed the words, not what she spoke, that mattered, the gentle curve of her jaw line and the happiness that I knew my words brought her. So, we talked about the game and ourselves, and it was unbelievable. We talked about filling out scorecards, four seam fastballs and our lives. And it didn’t matter that she had a boyfriend, that I never got her phone number, or that she lived in Cincinnati, because I was happy. Nothing but that one brief moment mattered in the end. Of course, as with all good love stories, the night ended with fireworks, brilliant streaks of neon color lighting up the cool Michigan night. I haven’t seen her since, and know that I never will again, but all that is important is that I was there, watching baseball in a park, speaking to an angel with a scorecard, and that the Tigers won it in the bottom of the tenth. It was exhilaration, it was pure joy, and it was a moment that will live forever through the pencil marks upon a piece of paper. Sometimes, things just seem to come full circle, I guess.

“Shut up, Mulder, I’m playing baseball.” –Dana Scully

Tales from the Internets, volume 1

The first in what I hope to be a long running series of articles about... well, crap, I guess you could say. Just hide the kids, shield your eyes, or just don't click on the links. I find the following amusing... and occasionally just sad or weird, but I make no guarantees that you will.

This site really quacks me up (yes I realize that it was a horrible pun, but just think of it as dripping with sarcasm, or you know... just read the "testimonials" on the site and see how painful it all is). Honestly, I'm not sure whether I find these funny, or just sad. This site actually makes money selling these things? There's a market for rubber duckies that look like Jason Kidd or Moses? Could I make money selling figurines of Charlie Chaplin with bunny ears? So many unanswered questions... All that I know is that I definitely want a cow with a duck bill. I'm still trying to figure out whether or not putting duck bills on random animals is stranger than putting them on humans, though.

Moving along now... Google now has the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Try putting it in the calculator yourself. Just great.

Those Talz can get mighty rowdy when they've had a few too many. Gotta love the Cantina scene.

The truth is out there... maybe. This begs the question of whether Mr. Hellyer is senile, insane, or just missing the lime light. Though, I'm probably more sympathetic to him then I should be thanks to the copious amounts of X-Files that I watch. Where the hell is Mulder when we need him, anyway?

Is that your horn, or are you just happy to see me? Um... I'm at a loss for words. Sick? Wrong? Disturbing? Probably... Fucking hilarious? Yes! I'd put this in the same category as the CelebriDucks except this guy knows it's a joke, whereas those people I'm not so sure about. In any case, I'll never look at a My Little Pony the same again.

And, the most disturbing thing I've seen in a long while... Darth Kitty. No, I don't have anything to say about it.

Thanks to all the people who've sent me these links, though I've probably forgotten who sent me what. I hope you got a laugh... or at least were deeply disturbed from what you saw.