And I almost had a firstie about French actors on the AVQ&A this week!

Icy stare

One the few things that makes me think the universe might possess a sense of cosmic judgment is the fact that Mad About You’s only lasting cultural imprint is as a punchline in Seinfeld (during the end credits, no less).

Prepare for ramming speed!

And while “Devil’s Due” is one of the more TOS-ish post-season-two TNG episodes, it’s TOS-ish in a good way.

There’s a sort of echo boom from people who became fans in the nineties, but even the youngest of that cohort (which includes yours truly and much of current online fandom) is pushing thirty, older than the blockbuster audience Paramount’s chasing.

And Meyer was smart enough to do the same in TUC—there’s a mano-a-mano fight but it’s a humorous one—while Chang and Kirk meet face-to-face it’s in a battle of wits, but their final confrontation is likewise in deep space (they are, after all, cold warriors, and it is very cold in space).

And sadly it’s only available on the old, now out-of-print DVD (evidently a consequence of the handful of new effects they made for the cut not being up to snuff for blu-ray resolution)!

Mark Lenard did the speaking—and he was mainly cast as the Klingon captain because the producers couldn’t figure out how to squeeze Sarek in.

I got to see Nick Meyer talk last week and he did his impression of Shatner’s first reading and it was unbelievably smarmy, beyond parody Shatner. It was also, needless to say, hilarious (and Meyer’s a wonderful storyteller too).

I’d also like deliver a niche “fuck this shit” to liberal freak-outs. Remember that period after the 2010 midterms when people were suggesting that Obama drop out of the 2012 race so Hillary Clinton (then the most popular politician in the country) run because O was too vulnerable to Tea Party attacks and a bunch of…

It’s the final countdown!

That’s just your standard viviparous birth blessing, @avclub-08ae6a26b7cb089ea588e94aed36bd15:disqus !

Many happy returns!

I vote for “Welcome to the Terrordome”

Had a breakthrough in my research, entering a very productive period

Robert Anchor’s The Enlightenment Tradition: hardly the most scintillating read but filling in some gaps in history/philosophy about one of my favorite periods of history

Rewatching Arrested Development. Can’t stop.

Everything I’ve heard about Brotherhood of the Wolf somehow sounds amazingly stupid and ridiculous awesome at the same time. Does it pull it off?

while the adaptation made by Roger Vadim for Faerie Tale Theatre—itself an homage to the Cocteau film—cast Klaus Kinski as a panicky, neurotic Beast opposite Susan Sarandon.