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It’s that time of year again. Time for the starlets, divas, and metrosexuals to hit the red carpet. And I for one will be avoiding it like a Vin Diesel movie. The Oscars.

There’s a number of reasons why I hate award shows, and the Oscars are truly the least offensive of all of them, but it’s still just as trite and pointless as any other awards show. Award shows are a place for shallow people to break their arms patting themselves, and each other, on the back. It’s a place for people to show of clothes and jewels that rival the gross national product of most third world countries…combined. And people wonder why the rest of the world hates us? Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys, SAG, Spirit Awards, Critics Awards, Tony, People’s Choice…you name it there’s an award program for it. With the Oscars being the pinnacle of all of this, the so called prom of Hollywood.

And it’s not just the shallowness of the whole proceedings, it’s the fact that watching one of these things is the most boring thing on the planet. I’m saying watching paint dry, grass grow, and snow melt is more exciting. I can think of several things I’d rather do and having a philosophical discussion with Jessica Simpson is one if them. So, I’ve come up with a few ideas to make the Oscars a bit more exciting.

• Let’s put some new energy into that long drawn out red carpet crap. Instead of walking down the red carpet a Slip and Slide should be installed, and instead of water I’m thinking mud. With a huge mud pit at the end to catch all those little divas in their Versace gowns.
• If there is some kind of stand off in certain categories like best picture, or actor in a leading role we can always return to the mud pit to hammer it out. Winner takes home the Oscar, loser gets half off the his dry cleaning bill.
• If the Slip and Slide idea doesn’t work to rev up the red carpet how about light saber battles. Picture it; Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep going at each other while in their ball gowns. My money is on Streep, I bet she fights dirty.
• Or we could do away with the red carpet all together and just force everyone to wear the same thing; unflattering Star Trek uniforms. I’m not talking about that I’m-a-counselor-so-I-can-wear-a-low-cut-dress-on-the-bridge Troi uniform either. I mean that hideous, spandex things everyone else had to wear. How ironic is it that in the future spandex is the most popular fabric?
• Now as for the award presentation itself; I’m thinking we should spice it up by releasing pooh throwing monkeys into the audience. Of course animal rights activists might have issues with this, but that’s okay cause I plan on suspending anyone who bitches over a tank filled with mutant sea bass.
• And just because I don’t want to offend all the actors and actresses, let’s make it fun for them too by having lackeys follow them around with full length mirrors. Lackeys who, of course, tell them how awesome they are and make caddy, biting comments about the other actors and actresses at the event.

There you go. This in my opinion will go a long way towards making the Oscars a bit more exciting. Maybe I’ll even watch it if they do these things. But I doubt.

I have a regular Sunday night routine (used to be a Friday night one, but they moved Battle Star Galactica on me). I gather a beer, chips and salsa, and camp out in front of the T.V for a couple of hours of unadulterated geek out time all thanks to the Sci-fi channel.
The Sci-fi channel and I have had a few tiffs in the past. They’ve butchered some damn fine books making them into a miniseries. Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea comes to mind, but I digress. The thing is, I was really getting to the point where I believed everything original on the Sci-fi channel was–to be blunt–shit. But, thanks to a few cylons who look like humans, a couple of messed up fighter pilots, and a narcissistic genius I was hoping the Sci-fi channel was on it’s way to redemption.
And for the most part they are, not only is their Battlestar Galactica but the miniseries The Lost Room was good, and the new Dresiden Files is warming up a bit. I even kind of like their new series Eureka .
Okay, so all that said I still have to ask. Are the people in charge of programming fracking crazy? I’ve noticed in the last few weeks a strange thing during commercial breaks. Wrestling commercials. And not commercials for their sister network USA, honest to god wrestling on the Sci-fi Channel.
I’m going to be honest, wrestling is stupid, asinine and juvenile just to name a few adjectives. But that’s just my opinion, I know there’s millions of people out there who love wrestling, I have no problem with that necessarily. My problem lies with wrestling being aired on a channel dedicated to science fiction and fantasy.
Not that I have to stretch too far to see that wrestling and bad Sci-fi have certain things in common.

1. spandex
2. large breasted women
3. nonsensical plot lines
4. bad guys who are bad purely for the sake of being bad
5. generally appeals to a mostly teenage boy audience

All that said, I personally think the people in charge of programming at the Sci-fi Channel need a serious kick in the head, possibly even a good stoning. It’s my belief people would do less stupid things if public stoning were allowed, but that’s beside the point. The point is, if anyone agrees with me we need to start letting these morons know it. Wrestling can be found on a ton of other channels, it DOES NOT need to be on the Sci-fi Channel under any circumstances. So anyone out there listening, let’s start some mass mailing, or serious grumbling to those people in charge over there. With any luck we can be spared the commercials during Sunday night’s geek fest within months. And that would go a long way toward healing the rift in my relationship with the Sci-fi Channel.

If I was to give an award for the most annoying fantasy creature elves would win hands down. I know, you’re aghast, but I have my reasons. Firstly, The Lord of The Rings. Maybe it was just Orlando Bloom as Legolas, but that was when I first noticed my estimation of elves had dropped considerably from when I was a child.

For some reason the sight of Orlando Bloom sliding down the trunk of that giant elephant (a mumakil if I recall correctly, and god how pathetic is it that I know that) shooting arrows the whole way just made me roll my eyes. It’s never a good sign when I roll my eyes. Of course this wasn’t the only moment in the trilogy that I’d rolled my eyes at the way elves are presented, and this isn’t the only movie or book that brought on such feelings toward the pointy eared little know-it-alls.

I mean what’s not to dislike. They’re smarter, stronger, faster, live longer, and are more beautiful then mere humans. They can move through a forest undetected and drop down from trees surprising any other life form that has dared enter their domain. They’re wise, that in and of itself isn’t bad I like wise, but they’re smug about it and I hate smug. And my biggest beef of all; they think they stand on some kind of moral high ground that we mere mortals could not possibly hope to obtain. I despise the moral high ground, unless of course I am firmly planted on it. Then I lord the moral high ground over everyone. In all honesty though, this happens very rarely. To quote Trent Reznor; “My moral standing is lying down”. And yes, I’ve been waiting since the early nineties to get that quote in somewhere.

I know many writers have taken the elves outside of cliché, or sometimes they’ve feed into that cliché with interesting results. Such as Jacqueline Carey’s Banewrecker and Godslayer books, which is a retelling of Tolkien’s famous series but told from the perspective of the “bad guys”. She plays quite well off the old elf clichés weaving them into her world building, which–despite what some people have said–I found an interesting take on Tolkien’s world.

I guess part of me just wants to see that illusion of perfection broken. You know, I want to see an acne prone teenage elf, or an ugly elf, or an elf that has a terrible sense of direction and has no idea where to find sacred objects or lost knowledge. A clueless elf, that’d be a refreshing change.

So, the other day I was bored. Anyone who knows me knows this is a bad state for me to be in, ’cause usually my mind starts wandering and bizarre images pop into my head. Impulses I can’t explain and won’t go into here make my fingers twitch. I generally try to avoid boredom as much as possible. Idle hands are the devil’s playground, as they say.

To keep myself occupied, though not occupied in any pursuit that would better humankind, I started surfing the net to find out what was going on in the world. By the “world” I mean that small corner of it that interests me, like all good Americans that would be 1) America 2) pop culture 3) celebrity gossip. Though not necessarily in that order. In my running willy-nilly across the web, just looking for something to fill the silence, I stumbled across this article from Slate Magazine written by Adam Rogers.

After first reading the article I was a little miffed. After all, the guy uses the word “geek” something like three times, and not in friendly terms mind you. He wields the word like a sword, “I dub thee GEEK”. His opening paragraph alone was enough to annoy me, never mind the rest of the article. Okay, I will admit it’s not a bad article per se. The subject matter itself is interesting. I just don’t appreciate the tone he uses to talk about sci-fi fans, or the genre in general.

“Ronald D. Moore, the executive producer of Battlestar Galactica, has created a great show with a goofy title. The title isn’t his fault, of course—he’s remaking a crappy 1970s sci-fi relic—and, in any case, it lured in an audience of geeks who will watch anything with the word star in the title. A few months ago, Moore told me (and, more recently, Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Jensen) that the geeky title means a swath of Battlestar’s potential audience doesn’t tune in.” (Read more…)