Full disclosure: no matter what anyone says, myself included, I’m on the fence about supernatural phenomena.

I’ve never actually seen one, mind you. My mother maintains that I was friendly with an old man’s ghost as a child, but I tend to fall on the side of “imaginary friend” on that one.

Even so, I’m just enough inclined toward magical thinking that I won’t say this stuff is definitely horseshit. I might believe it is, but I can’t accept it as absolute fact, because even if I can’t say for certain that it is legit, neither can I say for certain that it’s not. (Debunkery notwithstanding.)

For me, it comes down to how stupid the story is.

I won’t say there aren’t aliens among us, but I will say that the lady who told me aliens glued her eyes shut so they could hide her hairbrush probably had some untreated psychological challenges. (Come on, lady. They’re aliens. They can take your hairbrush whenever they want.)

I won’t say my apartment isn’t haunted, but I will say that ghosts didn’t tear down the blinds on my kitchen window. They had been held in place with cheap packing tape and a dirty old twist tie.

I won’t say that the little boy on Ghostly Encounters didn’t see a ghost in his sister’s bedroom, but I will say it’s kind of a funny coincidence that he saw it after spending hours painting a huge model car with nail polish.

Ghostly Encounters is the greatest show on television right now. I’m so sad that they haven’t put it out on DVD. (You can watch clips on YouTube, though, and you absolutely should.)

Every episode features one-on-one interviews with people who look like they don’t really understand where they are, talking about some spoooooky paranormal experience they had.

Then, just when you’re staring at your TV, mouth agape, thinking “Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?” they go to a re-enactment of the haunting, with a helpful voiceover from the victim to explain what you’re looking at and fill in the emotional blanks.

You might think such voiceovers are unnecessary, considering that all they’re doing is explaining a one-minute clip of someone sprawled in bed looking kind of scared and kind of bored while a shadowy wraith walks into the room, does the hokey-pokey or whatever and then shags ass back to the afterlife, but lookit: although DuskTV shows Ghostly Encounters at all hours of the day and night, pretty much the only time I ever watch it is at the asscrack of dawn, hung over and trying to stay conscious while I medicate my cat.

At a time like that, you need some mushmouthed simpleton to explain that she was scared when she saw a huge black figure behind the shower curtain while she was trying to have a pee.

People come on Ghostly Encounters and say the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard in your life, without a trace of embarrassment or hesitation.

I saw one a couple of weeks ago with a woman whose father’s ghost appeared to her, not to pass on some important message or even to say goodbye, but merely to remind her that he was dead. He hadn’t gone missing or anything; he just wanted to drive it home for her so she could move on.

(I ask you: how could anybody truly move on from the loss of a loved one if they thought his ghost might return to them at any time? Get off the stage, you undead maroon!)

This morning I watched in awe as one of those people who phrase every comment as a question spoke of a man dressed in black who sometimes appeared next to her bed, did absolutely nothing, then disappeared.

“I called him The Man in Black?” she said. “Because that’s what he was?” (She was not referring to Johnny Cash.) Then she went on to say she was sad when her dog died, because she loved him.

This was a grown-ass woman, okay? This was a voter. For all you and I know, she could be the medical technician responsible for finding cancer in your blood.

Each segment ends with a cartoon pendulum sweeping it away like one of those cheesy flashbacks on Highlander: The Series, followed by barely credulous commentary from series presenter Lawrence Chau: a tragic man who is very obviously struggling to support these people respectfully.

If I believed that the stories of Ghostly Encounters were even based on supposedly real-life events, I might feel like a jerky jerk jerkface for making fun of them this way. I’m related to several people who tell ghost stories about their own lives, and I’d burn in hell before I’d make fun of them in public.

I just… refuse to believe that the doughy, mumbling dickweeds who give these interviews really encountered ghosts. Okay? I refuse this. To me, the only thing missing from Ghostly Encounters is a Maury-style graphic at the end, urging you to appear in an upcoming episode.

Have YOU ever seen a ghost in a police uniform while you were smoking hash in your truck at 3am and listening to Air Supply with the volume turned all the way up?

Ghosts are not the scariest thing, is all I’m saying.

If you have an aversion to Adam Sandler, do not fret. He’s a wingman in this flick, and he’s really, really hot. It’s weird and takes me by surprise every time.

The Lone Rangers break into Rebel Radio and accidentally take everyone hostage with very realistic water guns. Michael McKean plays Milo, the numb-nuts station manager who plans to turn the station into easy listening. He’s obviously the antithesis of rock and roll. Joe Mantegna (The Simpsons’ Fat Tony) is Ian, the cool-cat DJ who ends up as an ally to the aspiring rockers.

The parking lot of the radio station becomes a huge party, and Chris Farley the cop has to go find Chazz’s hot but bitchy girlfriend Kayla (Amy Locane- how much has her life sucked the last few years?) who has the only cassette copy of the song they want played. David Arquette plays a surfer guy who works at the station. He’s goofy as hell, and I think he wasn’t really acting. Judd Nelson is a greasy record executive, Ernie Hudson is a good-guy cop, and Michael Richards spends the entire movie in the duct work. There’s a scene with White Zombie playing in a club (swoon). There’s even a cameo by–wait for it–Lemmy!

There’s an abounding theme of injustice: suited fat cats controlling music. How many of us writers can find that somewhat relatable?

There are lots of quotable moments. For example, Chazz tells Milo, “You look like half a butt-puppet.” I don’t know what that means, but it’s hilarious! At one point, Chazz riles up the crowd by chanting “Rodney King.” The only black guy in custody is all “What’s that supposed to mean?” and Pip replies, “He’s that guy.”

So, they’re surrounded by cops and have a room full of hostages. The crowd outside is cheering for them, and the viewer is, too. They’re lovable dumbshits with pepper-sauce filled water guns. But they find a way to make their rock and roll dreams come true. Airheads is a throwback to the glitzy days of hair bands, and it just makes me freaking happy. Motorcycles, guitars, long hair, and leather.

Life was simpler back then.

I came across it in a collection of sci-fi stories I bought on my Kindle for a dollar, so that should tell you something.  Specifically, it should tell you that the book is out of copyright, and I paid a buck too much, since you can easily find this book free on any platform. Which makes sense, as it was written in the 1800′s by James De Mille, and not published until after he died.

Manuscript uses the framing device of a group of professors out on a yacht, who chance to discover the titular copper cylinder which does indeed contain a strange manuscript. Since nothing is really going on in their lives the professors read the manuscript in turns, and every once in a while take a break from reading to make comments on the action in the book.

The inner story is of Adam More, an English sailor who is marooned near the south pole and is taken in by the South Poleites (I know, we’re both thinking penguins here, but no. Apparently in the 1800′s the south pole was a subtropical paradise. Go figure). These inhabitants show More every courtesy, giving him gold, fine foods, money, and placing him in the company of a beautiful young woman named Almah, who thinks he ain’t bad himself. Almah is from a distant country (that is, somehwere else near the South Pole)and they bond closely. She calls him Atam-or, because his normal name doesn’t make sense in her language.

Eventually Atam-or learns that the South Pole people have declared every day opposite day: they love death and hate life, love darkness and hide from light, think that poverty is better than wealth, and unrequited love is better than requited love. If he’d just added that they drink Pabst Blue Ribbon “ironically” then he’d have described your common hipster to the ground.

A lot of work is put into making this entirely negative society seem plausible: Every person seeks to give all their goods to their neighbors, and thus sink to the level of paupers. Unfortunately, all your neighbors are trying to give everything they own to you, and you have to be very careful or else you’ll end up insanely wealthy and surrounded by servants and palaces and riches beyond compare. So, be on your guard! It’ll make your head hurt if you try to actually make sense of it. It certainly hurt the main character’s head. A number of conversations read like this:
Atam-or: Hey! Do you like life? Or death?
South Pole Person: Oh man, death totally rocks! I wish I were dead right now!
A: WHAT???? I think life is better!
SPP: WHOA! No way! Well, what do you think about having stuff? Do you like it?
A: Yeah, totally.
SPP: Holy CRAP, man! What kind of mixed-up freaky weirdo are you?

At any rate, Atam-or and Almah fall in love, which means that the people around them think they should give each other up entirely and maybe even be given the “gift” of being killed and eaten, which for them is apparently like winning a Nobel prize for winning so many Oscars. Atam-or and Almah decide they’re not so keen on that plan and try to run away.

The problem is that the manuscript is written by an Adam Moore that was clearly not killed and eaten, so I have a hard time worrying that he’s going to die. Which is why we have Almah, of course. Since it’s not clear she makes it to the end of the story you can go ahead and worry that she might get killed. (Spoiler Alert: Nope.)

Meanwhile, back on the SS Framing Device the professors are arguing about the story. Some say that More is just some sailor who was really bored and decided to write the same story in three languages as a way to pass the time. Others argue that it’s all real, and all the fantastic creatures he talks about are probably just dinosaurs (or “fossil animals” as they were called at the time). Another suggests that whatever the case, More is not a very good writer and probably should have tried harder.

But the thing that makes the whole book surreal isn’t backwards-land, It’s the “civilized” opinions of the “normal” westerners. In the 130-odd years since Manuscript was written our view of the world has changed considerably. For example, nobody at that time had confirmed that there was such a continent as Antarctica, and one character even asserts that “given a warm year you could sail straight across the south pole”. Even more shocking is the 1880′s view of gender relations. Atam-or is utterly surprised when a woman named Laylah romantically pursues him, a shocking aberration from “normal” behavior, and something that Almah would never do. The poor schmuck never seems to come to grips with a woman who shows even the slightest independence, and he keeps trying to get away from the kind, vivacious, competent and good-hearted Laylah, and back to the scared, totally dependent, constantly-swooning Almah. Finally forced to choose between the two he decides to stick with his sad-sack sweetheart who at least knows how proper women should behave. It’s a real triumph for feminism, is this book.

But come on, De Mille never intended to have the thing published. It’s obvious that he was just having fun and wanted to write a story where he got to choose between a couple of hotties who were both in love with him. (Why does that make me think of vampires and werewolves…?) The professors on the yacht absolutely skewer the novel, and take on the air of Mike and the Bots from MST3K. So if you’ve got a few moments and any kind of e-reader, check out a Strange Manuscript!

“Dude, you totally have to see Sucker Punch.”

“What’s that?”

“You totally have to see Sucker Punch.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, okay. Okay, so you know how in the movie version of Chicago, Roxie copes with the horrors of prison life by fantasizing that everything’s some cheery musical number? And you know how in Flashdance, Pittsburgh’s horndogs would rather watch fully-clothed ladies do interpretive dance than see real peelers? And you know how in Showgirls, everyone talks about how Nomi’s the best dancer of her generation or whatever, but then whenever you see her dance, she’s jerking around so violently that you worry she’s going to hurt herself?”

“…I haven’t seen any of those movies.”

“Well, don’t see Showgirls, okay? You wouldn’t like it. I love it like a brother, but you wouldn’t like it, so don’t see it. Promise?”

“Okay…”

“Okay. So. Jeez Louise. Okay, Sucker Punch. This girl’s evil stepfather has her committed to a nuthouse, and bribes an orderly to forge a lobotomy order. And it’s one of those Hollywood nuthouses where even though it’s still fully operational, it’s so rundown that they could be shooting a haunted nuthouse movie at the same time and you wouldn’t even know. All the patients at this hospital are beautiful young girls, because screw you, that’s why, and so the orderly is also maybe whoring them out to guys who are like really really into banging crazy chicks in derelict mental institutions..? I don’t know. It was the 50s.”

“Oh..!”

“Right. And apparently there’s only one neurosurgeon on planet earth who’s capable of hammering a steel spike into someone’s head, so he’s not available to do the lobotomy right away, you know, this girl has five days to spin her wheels and work out an escape plan. So in between coping with her situation and trying to find a way out of it, she fantasizes about a more glamorous life. Only, I don’t know, maybe she doesn’t actually have an imagination, or maybe she’s crazier than the movie realizes she is, because of all the possible places she could go in the limitless landscape of human imagination, she fantasizes that she’s some kind of weird burlesque sex slave who mesmerizes rich men with her sick dance skillz even though she doesn’t take her clothes off or even, like, bare her shoulder for a minute.”

“That sounds a bit–”

“Listen. Jesus. So then even though it’s her own fargin’ fantasy, she then fantasizes that she wants to escape from the burlesque sex ballet or whatever the hell it is, because it sucks the big one. So whenever she’s asked to dance, she goes into this fugue state where she’s not a wronged mental patient or a disco-dancing road whore, but actually, part of an elite troop of skank warriors who prance around in tiny, fetishistic outfits, slaying zombie Nazis and dragons and maybe a gigantic terra cotta warrior or something? I don’t know. Maybe. I was drunk when I saw it.”

“I can tell.”

“Hey. I wasn’t that drunk. I’m a Ladner.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not. If you were really sorry you’d be online right now, buying this movie on DVD.”

“It doesn’t sound like something I would enjoy, Melodie.”

“Well, I’m not finished. If you let me finish, you’d see how great this movie is and then you’d hang up on me so you could watch it right away on VOD.”

“I don’t think I get VOD.”

“You get VOD. Oh my god. Okay. So the thing of it is, they never show her dancing. They start the music, and she sways a little bit like she’s maybe falling asleep standing up, and they cut to the action sequence from her doublethink fantasy hogwash, and then when we come back to the underaged fan-dance whores, they all pee their figurative pants over her mind-blowing dance chops even though we haven’t seen her do anything.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Right? All these actresses have to come running up to her going HOLY CANNOLI WHERE DID YOU LEARN TO DANCE LIKE THAT YOU ARE SO AMAZING THAT YOU CAN SURELY DICKMATIZE OUR WAY TO FREEDOM… but she never actually does anything.”

“…”

“Hello..?”

“Who’s in this… movie?”

“…Emily Browning…”

“…”

“But Zack Snyder wrote and directed. That’s the 300 guy.”

“Oh, I liked that one.”

“I know you did. And the action sequences in Sucker Punch are gorgeous. I don’t even really like action movies and I still loved them. Four or five richly imagined alternate universes, each one unique, each one designed to support the loony conceit that it really is that fargin’ hard to steal a fargin’ cigarette lighter.”

“Ha-ha!”

“And okay, so some people were kind of grossed out by Sucker Punch, and so Zack Snyder clarified that it’s actually a comment on sexism and the objectification of women. I mean, maybe he should’ve run a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie, you know, maybe it’s not totally clear that he spent $82,000,000 on Slutoween costumes and CGI to strike a blow for feminism, but he did, okay? It’s way subversive.”

“I think I have 300. Maybe I’ll pop that in tonight.”

“Whatever. I’m getting you Sucker Punch for Mother’s Day.”

Here’s the thing: I usually try to focus my FTE posts on stuff that’s at least a little bit under the radar. Of course there are exceptions (um, hello, Elf), but for the most part I figure the optimum use of this space is to shine a light on something folks might have missed, or at least glossed over because you couldn’t have known how AWESOME it was.

So a well-received blockbuster from last summer probably doesn’t fit that description. But I rewatched it on DVD the other night (yes, I’ll admit I was a solid 2.5 sheets to the wind by the time we put it on), and it dawned on me that if you’re just the right type of nerd, X-men: First Class is THE GREATEST COMIC BOOK MOVIE EVER MADE.

I qualified that last sentence because when you think of comic book nerds the image that comes immediately to mind is the uber-geek with encyclopedic knowledge who will give a condescending continuity lecture at the drop of a hat. And there’s plenty in this movie for that guy to hate (seriously, several of these characters weren’t even created until the past decade, and that Alex guy is supposed to be Cyclops’ BROTHER, don’t get me STARTED). But if you’ve been reading comics for any length of time and still manage to like them after all these years, you’ve long since learned to let stuff like that go. It may be tempting to get your panties all twisted when Hollywood swoops in and messes up your beloved playground, but actual Marvel canon is just as screwy when you really look at it. I mean, Kitty Pryde has aged maybe six years in the last 30, people. Get over it.

Fortunately, we’ve reached the point where comic book movies are so entrenched in the cultural lexicon that they’re starting to riff on the formula, and X-men: First Class functions as a prequel to the movie franchise, set in 1962 during the week of the Cuban missile crisis. It tells the story of newly-minted professor CharlesP Xavier meeting magnet-powered fugitive Erik Lehnsherr for the first time — the relationship between the two men is pretty much 80% of the movie, and the care with which the filmmakers craft it is how you can tell they’re just the right type of nerd, too.

If you’ve never actually read any X-men comics, the movie works as a fun, solid action flick anyway. But the stuff that it does well is the same stuff that genuinely good superhero comics are doing these days: it takes these iconic characters and finds something new for them to do that reminds you why you love them in the first place. Seeing young Magneto cast as a badass ninja assassin, or young Xavier using his mutants-are-the-future schtick to hit on drunk girls at a 1960s college party is brilliant. Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are flawlessly cast here, too (their bromance is so pure!), and when you see that they first meet when Charles leaps off a boat to save Erik from his own obsessive revenge-fury?

It just explains so much.

As for the rest of the movie, the girl who will be in The Hunger Games and that kid from About a Boy are fantastic as teenage Mystique and Beast (and their scenes together will break your little heart if you’re a big dorky softie like me). But the rest of the cast is fleshed out with cardboard cutouts — mostly all boobs and no gravitas or faceless dudebros. To me, none of that mattered. First Class is a lighthearted, swinging superhero period piece, but it also shines a light on these two men — one full of hope for the future, the other already chewed up by the world into a hardened cynic –and helps us understand why even decades of plastic prison cells and barely-thwarted genocide attempts will never quite tear them apart.

Granted, if you love the X-men the way I love the X-men then you’ve already watched this movie and formed your own opinions. And if you don’t, there’s a decent chance you saw it anyway and thought it was pretty okay. So for bearing with me while my inner fanboy gushed for a few paragraphs, I leave you with this: a spoilerific send-up from HowItShouldHaveEnded.com (a nerd-joy goldmine that probably deserves its own post, and also where I swiped the above headline from).

Enjoy.

Recently I discovered a kindred spirit, someone who clearly loved the adventure genre even more than I did, because he’s started his own company and made a number of awesome new adventure games. The man is Dave Gilbert, the company is Wadjet Eye Games, and the awesome games are the “Blackwell” games: Blackwell Legacy, Blackwell Unbound, Blackwell Convergence, and Blackwell Deception.

The premise of the series is this: Lauren Blackwell has been in a coma for twenty-five years, and has finally died. After her death her only living relative, her niece Roseangela (Rosa to her friends), becomes the heir of the titular Blackwell Legacy: the ability to see and interact with ghosts, and a spirit guide. The guide is a dapper ghost named Joey Mallone, and he’s been the family heirloom since his own death in the 1930′s. He explains to Rosa that she’s a medium, and as such it’s her job to help the souls of those who have somehow gotten stuck in this world cross over into the next. (Technically that makes her a psychopomp , but the only reason anybody ever uses that word is to show off their vocabulary.) She grudgingly accepts this role and sets out to put the dead to rest.

What follows could have easily turned into a buddy flick, with Rosa and Joey learning to love and trust one another in the face of trials and ultimately defeating evil with the power of friendship or something like that. What happens instead is infinitely better. I mean, yes, Rosa does get used to Joey, and over the series learns to accept his presence in her life. But she’s not a cop, she’s a mousey, socially awkward writer of book reviews for a local paper. Joey, despite sprinkling his speech with clichés like “dollface” and “sweeheart”, is more than just a bundle of gangster stereotypes. His personality is more action-oriented than Rosa’s, but being a ghost, he’s unable to take action directly in most situations, and has to convince the more reserved Rosa to take action. The interplay between them is a lot of fun.

Then there are the ghosts.  Unlike most games, these ghosts aren’t strange monstrosities, they’re just… people. For the most part, the reason that they are ghosts is the fact that they’re not convinced they’ve died. Rosa’s job is to help them come to their senses, accept their fate, and move on to…whatever’s next. Some of them are okay with how things ended, some are less happy about it all, but all of them are believable as characters, with full sets of regrets and hopes, even after death.

And then there’s the other star character: New York City. Dave Gilbert is a New Yorker, and his love for NYC permeates the series. Scenes set in real places are painted accurately, with great attention to detail. Actual people from New York become important to the plot in a couple of the games (okay, they become ghosts), and Dave Gilbert did his homework, studied up on these people, and wrote lines for them with an eye to honoring their mannerisms and personalities, while still moving the game forward. It’s an impressive balancing act.

This attention to detail pervades the entire series of games, and makes the games awesome. For example: in the second game you play as Lauren (the aunt of Rosa’s who dies just before the first game, remember) and you can take a picture of a character named Cecil Sharpe. In the third game you visit a recording studio started by Cecil and his son. Rosa never met Cecil, so she has no reason to think anything much of that picture, but as a player it gave me chills.

The entire series is made in old-school adventure game-o-vision, which means we’re talking 256-color VGA-style graphics. This was definitely a choice that the developer made, and he made it work. It feels like you’re playing one of the best of the old games, but without the irritating interface. Gone is the huge panel that takes up half the screen with a grid for your inventory and nine buttons that say things like “move” or “pick up”. Your inventory pulls down from the top of the screen, and everything else is driven by clicking on stuff. Simple.

Also: Wadjet Eye Games has paid attention to the main lesson of the last thirty years of game design, and the series is refreshingly free of mazes and pixel-hunting puzzles that plagued me in my youth. The balance point between “a good game” and “a good story” is tricky, but these games live there. You get all the thrill of finding solutions to seemingly impossible problems along with the joyful experience of listening to a master storyteller.

The games are fairly short, probably around four to six hours the first time through, and another two hours if you go back through with the director’s commentary turned on (which I heartily recommend doing.) Right now you can pick up the entire series on Steam for $20, something I suggest you do right away. Also, you should congratulate me on avoiding a stupid ending line like “it’s a hauntingly good time!”…dang it. So close.

According to the kids at fanlore.org, Yuletide started in 2003. It was about 300 people that year. In 2011 (and now housed at AO3), the participants posted 2582 works in 1439 fandoms. Now, that’s a lot of cake!

In order to participate in Yuletide you must write one story (minimum 1000 words) in one of the recipient’s requested fandoms that includes the characters the recipient requested. In return, you get a story of your own. That’s it. And from such humble requests come the kinds of stories you’d never thought you wanted to read, stories you’d always wanted to see, and stories you didn’t know you needed.

Just to get you started, I’m going to make some recs in five random categories. Remember, if you don’t see anything you like here, you have an excellent chance of finding it in the Yuletide archives:

Incredibly Satisfying Epilogues

There Will Be No Survivors (Except for the Survivors Behind the Curtain, But Pay No Attention to Them) – The Princess Bride. Although there is a puzzling lack of Fezzik, there is Inigo’s innate sense of fairness and Westley’s… Westleyness. This settles my conscience about The Dread Pirate Roberts quite comfortably.

In the House of Dust – Gilgamesh. Men and cities are made of clay and turn to dust. Gilgamesh remembers Enkidu.

Homing – Slings and Arrows. Anna misses the theater, and Geoffrey lures her back to the life she left – only this time, it’s exponentially better.

Sequels You Secretly Craved

The Winter of Banked Fires – X-Men films. This is a brilliant novel-length synthesis of the X-Men sequels that seamlessly weaves First Class into continuity. It also takes the hot mess that was X-Men 3 and uses it as a foundation for building a thrilling future for Logan, Rogue, Charles, Erik and the entire mutant population. (Um. Technically, not a Yuletide story. But SO GOOD.)

On the Road – Gordon Korman – MacDonald Hall series. Bruno grows up to be a campaign staffer for a presidential hopeful, and decides Boots needs to become an American citizen. Long, plotty and delightful.

Interior Explorations of the Text That Shed New Light on a Character

Bright Moon, Who Goes Farther Still – Richard Adams – Watership Down. A deftly written story-within-a-story with rabbit mythology, feminism and Hyzenthlay’s past.

Gus Goes for the Gold Star – Psych. “It’s a little after four in the afternoon on an overcast Sunday in Santa Barbara, and Burton Guster, aka Bigster89, is going for the Yuletide Early Uploaders Gold Star.” This is incredibly funny, and you don’t need to more than you already do about Yuletide to get the jokes.

Five Things They Don’t Teach Fairy Godmothers – Connie Willis – Bellwether. Shirl being Shirl. Divine.

Crossover Perfection

Relatives and Relativity – Doctor Who/Sense and Sensibility. Lovely sisterhood and just how they would react to the Doctor – absolutely pitch-perfect.

The Blest Surprize – Master and Commander/Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This is an astounding little window into Arabella’s life in Faerie, and her chance meeting with Stephen Maturin, who is in his turn, waiting for Jack. It reads like a very small feathered dart landing in your chest – sweet and sharp.

The Ivory Horn – His Dark Materials/The Chronicles of Narnia. This story beautifully reconciles two opposing philosophies with no small amount of grace and tenderness. The twist sneaks up on you, and then you think, “Of course.”

BONUS: Goodnight, Moon – Joan of Arcadia/The Day After Tomorrow. Technically, this isn’t a Yuletide story either, but it’s so brilliant you won’t even care. This chokes me up every goddamned time I read it.

Absolute Crack That Is Nevertheless Worth Your Time

I am Acton Bell’s Metaphorical Manhood. Kate Beaton + The Bronte Sisters = Sheer Manic Brilliance. All you need for this one are five minutes and two links to Beaton’s Dude Watchin’ With The Brontes comics – then plunge right in.

Wait, Wait Don’t Eat Me Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me meets the zombie apocalypse.

So, that’s a taste of Yuletide. You can sift for gold among thousands of stories, and think about signing up for next year! YULETIDE, YES!

Instead I had to wait twelve (or possibly 13) years to discover it, but now that I have I couldn’t be happier.

For those of you who’ve never seen the series, it’s the brain child of Brian Henson and some Australians. The plot is the best of the basics: Human astronaut gets shot through a wormhole, makes a hugely powerful enemy in the first episode and falls in with a bunch of fugitive aliens who just barely managed to capture the prison ship that was transporting them. The ragtag group is made up of a big hairy warrior alien (D’Argo), a tall hairless blue priestess alien(Zhaan), a small muppet alien (Rygel), and the ship itself (Moya), which is alive and has a symbiotic muppet pilot (Pilot) who keeps her flying. Oh, and the merciless commando alien (Aeryn (pronounced “Erin”)) who was supposed to capture them all is forced to join the crew as well.  Also Aeryn’s people look just like humans. So pretty basic stock sci-fi action storyline, right?

Well, kind of. The difference is in the details. The human, John Crichton, is tremendously Genre Savvy.  In his own words: “I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Buck, Flash or Arthur frelling Dent.” (the show uses a number of made up naughty words. “Frelling” is a popular one).

He’s seen Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr. Who and the rest and is aware of just how insane and hilarious his position in the universe is, and laughs a lot. John is actually likable, unlike most of the stars listed above. His first impulse when met with conflict isn’t to raise shields and make demands a la Picard, nor to square up mano a alien and get his shirt ripped off like Kirk. His usual course is to talk to the other person and see if he can figure out what to do next. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but at least it’s something he tries.

The rest of the cast is appealingly well rounded as well, and unlike Firefly “well rounded” in this case doesn’t just mean “has serious issues,” it means “has an actual personality.”  For example D’Argo (the hairy warrior alien) has the traditional heart of gold under all that armor and fur, but is actually a decent warrior instead of just being the Worf, allows the others to gain his trust, and also expects to be required to gain theirs. The characters usually think before they act,  and their actions make sense with their personalities.

So, usually, this is where I say something like “And as for the plot… well, don’t worry about the plot. It’s the characters that sell this one”. But not today. Every episode is crunchy with plot. This ain’t Star Trek, where you have fifteen minutes of set up, thirty minutes of wondering what to do, and fifteen minutes of resolution. Things in FarScape happen fast and furious and all at once. Potential enemies turn into part-time allies and actions from old episodes have consequences now. For example (the entire next paragraph is a giant spoiler, by the way):

In one episode near the end of season one, John Crichton has been captured by the new Big Bad, Scorpius. The former Big Bad (Crais) arrives, ready to kill John, because he thinks John killed his brother in episode one. But Scorpius needs John alive, because some aliens John met a few episodes back secretly implanted some magic sci-fi formulae in John’s brain. Meanwhile, plucky new crew member Chiana (who, to my eyes, is a direct expy of Pris from Blade Runner, but with a speaking part) is working with John’s former love interest Gilina to get the needed medical supplies back to Moya to save Aeryn’s life, because of an injury she suffered in the previous episode. Meanwhile Moya is having a baby. Yes, the spaceship is pregnant, and is about to give birth. Gilina gets Chiana safely back to Moya, and now is working to figure out how to break John out, because she’s in love with him, even though she suspects he loves Aeryn. And this is just part 1 of a two-part episode. Part two is even busier.

And yet, even with these packed episodes, the writers show the characters being themselves, taking care of one another, and even manage to fit in an impressive number of jokes, usually where you’d least expect them. At the end of just about every episode you feel like just saying “yeah!” because of the sheer awesome that just happened. It’s kind of addicting, in the sense of “I watched three episodes while writing this article” addicting. So, I’m going to stop writing now and get back to season 2.

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*My wife, who just read my somewhat baroque opening paragraph, reminded me that I had my gallbladder removed in 1998. I reminded her that she wasn’t there and neither was anyone else who’s likely to read this, so why ruin a perfectly good story with niggling little facts?

Tom Popper (Jim Carrey) has screwed up his family life, but he’s flourishing professionally. Yes, just like the set-up for Liar, Liar. The difference is six penguins and Carla Gugino.

The penguins are amusing and cute. My son laughed like a drunken hyena several times. One penguin honks too much and too loudly (earning the name Loudy), one runs in to walls a lot (Nimrod), one bites (Bitey), and one farts shamelessly (Stinky). The other two are the affectionate Lovey and the leader of the clan, Captain. The individual traits and personalities create a sweet community of adorable animals that charm the younger viewers mercilessly.

The family-in-ruins plotline captures the interest of adults. Carla Gugino is Popper’s estranged wife, Amanda. Every time I see Gugino in a movie, I’m impressed by her ability to light up the screen. Remember her in Son-in-Law? She made Pauly Shore tolerable. Or how about as the troubled psychiatrist in Sin City where her comfortable nakedness distracted the viewer from her recently amputated hand? She’s come a long way since Troop Beverly Hills. Too bad we can’t say the same for Shelley Long.

Gugino remains fully clothed throughout Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which is a good thing since full-frontal would have been a creepy in this movie. Even with clothes, she steals every scene she’s in. Except for the one she shares with Angela Lansbury. Lansbury’s still a powerhouse, especially in the impeccable threads and jewelry she sports in Penguins

Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a cheesy love and redemption movie with a far-fetched plot. But so what? Though it was somewhat predictable, I found the mixture of children’s humor and adult subject matter to be blended flawlessly. It was truly a pleasant surprise.

It was ages before I saw him again, and then, he was puffy and defeated (like many people of my generation) and looking at him, all I could see were incredibly fake-looking (but apparently real..?) hair, and beady eyes set too close together.

He had spent years banking on his two-bit Jack Nicholson impression with no complaint from me, yet now, I’d have taken Nicholson over him. And I don’t mean Five Easy Pieces Nicholson, okay? I don’t even mean As Good As it Gets Nicholson. I mean fat old hoagie-lovin’ Nicholson.

It was over.

So when I channel-surfed my way into He Was a Quiet Man the other day, I watched it in spite of Christian Slater’s involvement. In fact I think it’s fair to say I only gave it a chance because I was too physically and mentally exhausted at the time to make actual, conscious decisions about my life.

Hurrah for being physically and mentally exhausted, as it turns out, because obviously, this movie is fantastic.

Christian Slater is Bob Maconel (pronounced like McConnell, don’t get me started,) one of the invisible men of the corporate world: balding, bespectacled, mustachioed, proud owner of one and a half million short-sleeved dress shirts, he looks like someone hired him to maintain the database in 1975, locked him in the basement and left him for dead.

Introverted, soft-spoken, unimpressive, Bob watches life unfold around him with a mixture of envy and scorn. He doesn’t necessarily want to be a different man–a sexier man, a more charming man, a more exciting man–but it shucks the hell out of his corn to watch other people taking that life for granted.

It’s not that easy to appreciate something you’ve always had, but Bob hasn’t always had much of anything. It’s pretty much just his fish. They’re great fish–attractive, resourceful, and delightfully witty–but no matter how much he enjoys their company each night, he still has to go back to work each morning, and be ignored for who he is, or worse, taunted, as if the fact of his existence isn’t punishment enough.

As you might be expecting at this point, Bob loses his shit one night and decides to murder the hell out of everyone in the office. But wouldn’t you know? Even Death picks the poor bastard last: one of Bob’s coworkers had the same idea at the same time, and murders the hell out of everyone before Bob makes his move.

Bob shoots the shooter instead, and the next thing he knows, he’s a hero to the company, every man’s best friend, every woman’s object of desire. They’re still a bunch of dinks–with seven billion people on planet earth, we’re never going to run out of dinks–but now Bob’s been given honorary membership.

It’s all a bit unnerving, what with one thing and another, but this new life does have one thing going for it: Venessa (pronounced like Vanessa, I told you not to get me started.) The sole survivor of the shooting (other than Bob himself,) the lovely Venessa never even made eye contact with Bob before, but she’s quadriplegic now, and suddenly Bob’s the only person she knows who gives a damn about her.

Theirs is not a conventional romance, but it’s an incredibly sweet one–after Venessa quits begging Bob to kill her. He does everything he can to help her adjust to her new life, and find some happiness in it. They’ve come from such different places that everything they give each other is completely new to them. And if it goes unspoken between them that none of this would be happening if Venessa hadn’t been injured, well. Best it stays unspoken.

As far as the story goes, He Was a Quiet Man doesn’t have many surprises up its sleeve. You can see every little thing coming from miles and miles away. It’s the movie’s style that makes it a standout: it’s a comedy, for one thing. Think about that for a minute and love every little thing about life.

The movie has a streak of surreality as well, and it ought to bug the shit out of you now that whimsiquirkilicious is the MSG of filmmaking, but it fits, somehow. Bob’s aquarium is the aquarium of your actual dreams.

And what of our Christian Slater, he of the widow’s peak and the baboon heart?

I feel like they would’ve cast an actual ugly guy as Bob if they could’ve found one who had some sort of marquee attraction, to save money on makeup if nothing else, but Christian Slater is completely believable in the role, dragging himself around like a kicked dog in a lead cape, flinching away from everything, just as a precaution.

I’d still rather have Hoagie Nicholson, given the choice, but as an actor, I’m ready to give Slater another chance.

I’m sure he’ll be relieved to hear it.