I have my standards

Chad gave me "Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall."

This is probably the most queer CD ever produced. However, if you like old jazz and have ever heard the iconic Judy Garland album, you would love it. I listened to it this morning. It's total bliss.

A Friendly Review

The Friendly Fox is the yum.

The relatively new eatery on South Wayne is a true gem. I went Saturday for a late lunch after doing some holiday shopping. I had the turkey wrap and a coffee. It was the most refreshing meal I'd had in weeks.

The food tasted unbelievable, and while the brewed coffee doesn't quite measure up to my high "firefly or die" standards, it's still quite good.

At South Wayne Avenue and West Foster Parkway, it's only a few blocks from my house. It will be nice to take a quick ride down there on my bike when the weather permits. The cafe is located in an historic edifice with a nice angle-cut front door that evokes days gone by.

The warm wood furnishings and carpet make one feel at home, and there are sofas and tables, with the unique chance to sit on sofa-like cushions in the window sill. Unfortunately, the window faces north and it was overcast, but just imagining basking in the sun on a brighter day gave me something to look forward to.

There was a gentleman taking advantage of free wi-fi and there was a TV graciously stowed above the door and out of everyones way. The unfortunate part was the basketball game on the screen was much too loud for a quiet Saturday afternoon.

In an adjacent room, a half dozen or so armchairs waited patiently for patrons craving the quiet. The location would make an ideal spot for pondering the workings of the universe with a group of philosophers or catching up on the Harry Potter novels.

The staff was helpful but a little slow for people who work in a coffee shop, but it may have been the fact it was late in the day. Another drawback is a single unisex restroom, though it was large enough to divide later, if the extra facility is demanded.


In what has become a very competitive premium coffee society, the Friendly Fox has come armed with tons of tchotchkies for loyal customers to purchase as souvenirs. If you want to flaunt your coffee independence by wearing a Friendly Fox sweatshirt into Starbucks, you may want to bring some extra cash, as they are a little on the pricey side.

Overall, the Friendly Fox's respectable brews and resplendent foods make it absolutely worth a visit. Four out of five stars.

Address:
4001 South Wayne Ave., Fort Wayne, Indiana

For more, visit Cindy Larson's article at The News-Sentinel.

(This review also available on my pro blog, Featured Writer)

The Best Christmas Special Ever

Merry Christmas Everyone. Now Jazz Hands!

Doctor Who or Gay Nerd Heaven

It's late, I'm tired, but I had to blog about this.

Via Towleroad, this may just be the BBC taunting me again about how much cooler the UK is than the US. I have to file this under the "wouldn't it be great if..." category.

Jennifer Saunders might make absolutely the worst doctor ever, but it could be fun. I find it funny that the show has never really taken the forward approach of having a woman doctor, but they must be lauded for their many important stands, especially lately with the new Davies powered themes on sexuality, feminism, racism, and poverty.

Doctor Who is second only to BSG as the best SciFi, so I love to see it take on new directions.

I hope Santa's spam filter blocks her

My sister recently blogged about how she has made the decision not to have children. She has been trying for several years and there has been no luck.

It's kind of too bad. She would have been a much better mother than one of the women in Target today. I was looking for my last present for the bf and as usual, I was strolling around enjoying the sparkling cleanliness and well-appointed designs of the whole store because it was my day off and I didn't want to do all that much besides give myself some retail therapy.

I went past one woman who very politely refused to get her son a Transformers t shirt. "I think that's a little too big for you Ethan." Yeah, she was right. The kid was maybe 8 and it was in the Men's section of the store. No problem there. She was a nice mom for treating her son so kindly. A while later, I ran into them down the snack aisle and she was joking with her kids. The daughter really, REALLY wanted something called Hello Kitty chews. Now to me that sounds completely dreadful, but the mother took her daughter's request in stride. I went down the next aisle because I needed raisins and because the mom was very funny with her kids and I didn't want to seem like I was eavesdropping when I was laughing out loud. For about the sixty-seventh time in as many seconds, the daughter said, "I want some Hello Kitty chews. You said we were getting Hello Kitty chews." To this the mother replied in a sing-song voice "We haven't gotten there yet. Don't get your panties in a bunch."
There was no more out of the little girl.

Sure it was a little off color for a seven year old girl to hear that, but it was rather nice to see kids generally well-behaved. It may have been impolite for the girl to badger her mother so much, but she was really just holding the mother to her word. She'll probably grow up to be a lawyer or an investigative journalist.

Two more aisles over, a mother was letting her daughters choose their lunchables. Suddenly, I thought to myself that Hello Kitty chews didn't sound so dreadful after all. When the girls quarrelled because the older one got the younger one's choice out along with her own, the mother said "Shut up!" She then proceeded to call her daughters ungrateful and throw the lunchables into the cart and said to them, "I'm going to e-mail Santa that you guys suck."

That is completely verbatim what she said. It wasn't quiet either. I'm quite sure Hello Kitty fan and her mom heard them two aisles over. Now I stood there blankly, a few cartlengths away trying to pick out cheese, but bewildered by this inhumane woman. I was so mad that I felt I should say something to the mother. Had I been my sister, I probably would have said something such as:

"Excuse me, but I'm sure you realize I couldn't help but overhear you. I think what you said to these children was inappropriate, quite rude, and in no small way is related to their caustic behavior to each other. Maybe someone should e-mail Santa about you."

Thinking about it now makes me mad that I didn't pay enough attention in science class that I could build a time machine. I am thankful that I have a blog where I can share this with the rest of the world. Perhaps the next time I see any adult mistreating children in this way, I will say something, anything.

Happy Holidays.

And yes, I completely forgot the raisins.

Winter in the City

It's official. Winter has come to the Summit City. I took these last week amid the chaotic ice storms. I was on my way into the paper and thought I'd stop at Freimann Square for some pictures of some of the greatest views of downtown.

Family

I choose not to write about family, most of the time. I have a pleasant enough relationship with them, but I don't want to say the wrong thing and get yelled at for it, so I just choose not to write about them.

That being said, they are really nice people. My parents were especially nice about offering to postpone my birthday dinner due to the blizzard, but I insisted. It was actually a nice time. I had fun playing pool and I got Planet Earth on DVD, among other things.

This is just a post to say that I am thankful for them and their unfailing generosity.

LOL LOL LOL LOL Catz

This is something you can't make up. (From the SFGate's website)

"Red light, green light: Cloning cats is nothing new, but now the clones come in two colors when exposed to ultraviolet light -- regular mint and new cinnamon. The red glow is caused by a fluorescent protein bred into the kitties by scientists at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, South Korea. The genetic manipulation could lead to cures for human diseases, they say."

31 Flavors

Well today's the day. I'm up, I don't know how. Last night I was up waaaaay too late watching Ratatouille. It's so cute. It's a really great animated film, easily on par with the incredibles.

So anyway, I'm going out to brunch with the bf and then I think I might start the day with a cocktail. I feel like my age, but I feel like I have accomplished something — school is over.

My goal was to graduate before I was into my thirties, and I did it. At least, I finished school before I entered my thirties. Because technically a decade doesn't really start on the 0 year, it starts on the 1 year. Just like the first day of the millennium was actually 1/1/01.

What you don't believe me? Well, fine, it is kind of stupid. But really, I finished while I was still 30, which is pretty good after going 9 years part time.

So I'm off to feast on an omelette and guzzle some coffee. Happy Birthday to me and to my fellow Sagittariuses.

All these things that she's done

I desperately want to believe in a candidate, and I think Hillary has captured my imagination. I am a huge Hillarist. I've admired her since I was in high school because she was so radical. She seems to have mellowed, but I think she still has a spark of initiative to lead a new era.

I support the radical progressivism that Kucinich stands for, but I think Hillary will win. Is it just nostalgia? Maybe, but I think she could really ignite a new era of active politics.

I read an article in Fortune that talked about all of her East Coast and High Finance backers. Since she is a US Senator from New York, they have an idea of what she can do for them. That's encouraging to me. It means she could even get the support of die-hard republicans.

It seems risky for a poor college graduate from Indiana to put all his money on someone who could wind up raising taxes, but I would gladly pay hundreds more each year for the change she could bring to the country.

Another video from Jenny Lewis Weeds Intro

sex, drugs, rock & roll and Hee Haw

This is the most awesome video ever.

The universe is defying my bad mood

Just when I thought my day couldn't get any worse, I found an ABBA video on Towleroad.



Thank heaven for ABBA. Now I am relaxed and rejuvenated.

I have an axe to grind

I'm talking of course about Guitar Hero. Or as South Park called it, Guitar Queero. I know this game is hugely popular, but last night was the first time I ever played it.

Oh my deity, I suck out loud.



I tried both of the basic songs "I Love Rock & Roll" and "Take Me Out." I got booed by the virtual crowd. There's something about being booed by those binary bitches that is most unsettling.

The problem with this game is that it uses both the left and the right hands to play the "guitar," which is actually just a big piece of plastic with five buttons on the frets and a strumming bar. I tend to be more dextrous with my right fingers because of working in retail with the 10-key and using the num lock on the computer. Unfortunately, right hand play uses your right hand on the strummer bar and your left fingers for the fret buttons. So of course, I sucked at it. I wanted to try using it left handed, but the other people playing the game were too good and I didn't really get another chance. I think this will be my new mission in life.

The Golden Compass

Yes, I saw it. I was totally stoked about seeing Daniel Craig, and I loved the idea that the central character is a girl, not a boy.

The girl, Lyra, is very intelligent and utterly fearless. She's a bit of a tomboy, but she knows how to use her wits to get by. She goes into a situation with both mental barrels and she does an impressive bit of quick thinking. She does not wait to be rescued, and she puts her life on the line in virtually every scene. She's a great role model for young women because she's both tough and smart.

That being said, here are some of my other reactions:

• The movie seemed to be very simplistic, it was not anti-faith, but rather the Magisterium is portrayed as a power-mad and power-hungry bureaucracy. The magisterium is concerned about 'freethinkers' and 'heretics,' but there wasn't anything specifically anti-religious or anti-God about the film itself.


• The concept of each person having a daemon, an animalistic embodiment of their souls that walks alongside them is kind of interesting, but I had several problems with it. — The daemons seem to mirror the characters' occupations and personalities. If this was the case, it was very classist that the kitchen boy had a puppy dog daemon, the Gyptian boy had a rat daemon, and the porters and other staff had dog daemons. To me, that was like saying if you have a Labrador retriever, you won't be able to be anything in society that is higher than a butler.


• The bear fight scene was far too vicious for many children. Even though it was CGI, the actions of the battle were disturbing to me, and I'm nearly 31 years old.


• The witches were very artfully done, but their physical nature was kind of inconsistent. If they can fly and disappear into thin air, then why can they be shot?


• Sam Elliot was an interesting touch, but he was very out of place. He was a caricature of an old west cowboy and his aw-shucks dialog was pretty much vestigial and pointless.

Overall, I think it made a great looking movie. The action was very intense, at times too much so for children. Using the concept of parallel universes is always tricky though, and this one had some problems, even for a sci-fi devotee such as myself. I would give this 3 out of 5 stars. Somewhere between see at matinee price or wait for video.

Holiday Cards

To my loyal readers and friends:

I am sending out holiday cards and it's gobbling up a great deal of my time. I will write more soon.

Sci fi supremacy revisited

So I got a little acrimonious about Star Trek and Star Wars. I apologize to the fans.

I enjoy both stories very much, but as I commented to Cbutterb, I think that the BSG universe is much more carefully honed than the other two. It is not without its overriding thematic problems in individual episodes and multi-episode story arcs.

That being said.

I need to eat my humble pie when I forgot to even include Firefly for comparison.



Firefly was a great series, and Serenity was a great movie. In reality, the acting was great, on par with most of the actors on BSG. The story lines were very compelling, though at times they were a bit of a rehash of western themes and archetypes.

The most unjust thing was that the series was never allowed to mature into its rightful place among the uppermost echelons of science fiction space operas. Serenity was the last best chance for Whedon to give us something for the ages. Unfortunately, it was hasty and frenetic, trying to cram all too much of a wrap-up into two hours of screen time. It was as though the baby was half born and the doctors shoved it back in. Then with the movie, the baby shot right out of the womb and grew up in an instant.

That's the tragedy of commercial television.

Of course, pay cable is not without its own faults. Queer as Folk proved that with no commercial sponsors to worry about and no audiences to lure, there is no accountability for taste. That sounds like a separate post, but I think I'm too tired.

Why BSG is better than Star Trek and Star Wars

In a recent conversation, I pledged my devotion to the BSG camp of Sci-fi over the Star Wars trilogy (eps. 4,5,6) and over Star Trek.

Here are some thoughts on the subject. The BSG (reloaded) universe is its own special universe. So far, it is separate from human history, though it may be tied to some far distant future, or past (gods forbid it's some scientology propaganda piece).

The Star Trek universe is a futuristic atheist-utopian fantasy where humans have united in spite of their differences upon realizing that we are not alone in the universe, as revealed in First Contact. Call me cynical, but I just don't buy that humanity can change that quickly. Another reason the Star Trek universe is flawed is that the vision and legacy of Roddenberry was corroded and polluted after his death to where misguided series after series were produced by Paramount to capitalize on the beleaguered, grieved fan base. The premises for each series grew thinner and thinner until finally people quit watching and they canceled "Enterprise" with the dreadful Bakula.

The Star Wars universe was a great piece of mythology for its time, but with the logistical problems of not doing the saga in sequence, it left the whole universe open to abject failure through the chaotic invasion of conjecture. The myriad books that expand the canon through eons before and after the saga of the 6 films seems like a cheap, capitalistic merchandising trick. When one realizes how vast the star wars merchandising universe is, one cannot help but lose trust in the motives of Lucas, et al.

All things considered, Battlestar Galactica is not without its own laundry list of faults. The most obvious of all is the boxing episode of season 3. I would have much rather watched a few more webisodes on Scifi.com than sit through the blood splatters just so we could see the memories of New Caprica come to life in the crews' thoughts.

The second problem is the sexuality of 6 and Baltar. Okay, we get it, she uses sex to manipulate people. Humans are weakest when we succomb to our base desires. yeah yeah yeah. We know you use the sex to get ratings. NYPD blue did the same damn thing about 10 years ago.

The third problem is Admiral Cain's lesbianism. It seemed that this was coming years ago, when we met Cain in season 2. It was hinted at somehow, in her body language with her ship's 6. My friend Chad called this a hackneyed stereotype. I think they should have hired Rita Mae Brown or some other lesbian writer to come up with some other way to talk about the issue. The BSG powers that be have been tempting us with Gaeta since the miniseries when we first see him gush over Baltar.

The fourth, and probably most overriding problem is the logic of posterity. My friend Chad and I argue about this in every, and I do mean EVERY BSG convo. A race of people capable of interstellar, faster-than-light space travel would surely have better records of their deities than scrolls, especially when the gods lived with them on Kobol. The only possible explanation is that the fractured, separatist nature of the colonies, and the fact that they were constantly at war with one another until shortly before the first cylon war, means that their militarism dominated all areas of society, and history and archives were never properly maintained.

All in all, the problems of BSG are ones that I largely can live with. The problems I have with the other universes cannot be overcome in my mind.