Glee!

I know I have a whole long post to write about Season Finales, but I have to post about this first.

I am in love with Glee.

The Cast of Glee

This show is freaking awesome. It's about a small high school Glee club, and all of the misfits that join the group. The teacher, played by Matthew Morrison, was in the Glee Club when he was younger, and remembers it as the best time of his life. When he tries to start the club up again he realizes that things aren't quite that easy. There's the black diva, the handicapped kid, the gay kid, and asian girl with a stutter, and the perfectionist starlet. When it doesn't go well at first, the teacher (whose name I wish I could remember) decides he needs new guys, and stumbles across the quarterback singing in the shower. In a very amusing scene, he gets the football player to join the group, and they all start to bond over their love of song.

I admit, it sounds ridiculously gay. But it's such an entertaining cast, with great writing, that you can let it slide. And the songs are amazing, I think. I do not like Journey, but I've been singing "Can't Stop Believing" for two straight days now. In fact that scene actually made me so happy I got physically emotionally, which never happens to me. Those of you with Bit Torrent need to download it right now. Everyone else, you can find the songs on iTunes, and there are previews on YouTube (one of which I posted below).

Last night was just a preview, with the real series starting in the Fall. I'm very concerned because it's on Fox, which in my opinion has a horrible track record of shows. Renewing Dollhouse doesn't absolve it of cancelling Firefly and Wonderfalls, or of their complete lack of gay-visilibity on ANY of their shows. Adam Lambert doesn't count. But hopefully if they put this on after Idol or So You Think You Can Dance, it will carry over enough of the performance kids and stay strong. God I hope it does, as I'm getting really tired of these shows I love getting canned.

Finale Round-up MEGA Post Part 1 - Series Finales

As Adrik has been reminding me, I've been shit about the updates lately. I'm not really sure why I'm so busy, but it has a lot to do with my recent return to Final Fantasy XI. That shit is like cocaine, and I kick the habit for a few months until the white monster jumps on my back again. Anyway, between work and my new show and Jen's graduation party last week, I've been busy busy. Also, sometimes you just don't feel like blogging. Anyway, I want to do a rundown of the finales that have already happened. I'll put the series finales first, then the season finales. If someone could explain how to post links to JUMP to later parts of the article that would be great. WARNING: This is going to be a Mega Post.

***Series Finales***

Battlestar Galactica: Liked it.
This probably deserves it's own post, as it's a major finale for geeks everywhere. I'll admit that over time I've forgotten the things that annoyed me (the first 20 minutes, all that time when they first get to New Earth before people start disappearing) and I can focus on the things I loved (The attack on the colony, Roslin's death, Starbuck's disappearance). Roslin's death was awesome, except it was literally followed by a commercial break, so there was no time to absorb the emotion. It was like 'HORRIBLY EMOTIONAL SCENE 2 seconds MCDONALDS CM". Yuck. I know I'm in the minority that actually liked Starbuck's last scene. I thought it was so cool that she just stopped existing, implying that everything up until this point had been supernatural. So damned cool! I also liked that Head Six and Head Baltar are like angels, although the very final scene was a bit heavy handed. I enjoyed it, as long as I don't analyze it too much. So I'm sad to see this show go. It wasn't always great (Thank you season 3) but when this show was good, it was AMAZING. Notice how it got Bold, Italics, and Caps. Watching BSG was the first time I ever got chills from an hour of TV, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. Which is why I've preordered the bigass Complete Series Box set. God knows where I'll put it. There might be more to say about this, but I feel like the SciFi did all the "goodbye BSG" shit to death.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Liked it. Ish.
I had to think about how I felt about this. I didn't dislike it, but I'm not sure I necessarily liked it. For one thing I hate, hate, hate when they cancel a show AFTER it's finished shooting, so we never get closure. It's one thing to not renew it halfway through a season, so TPTB have time to cram something together, even if it's not as epic as what they might have planned. But to just cancel something without any sort of warning I find to be reprehensible. Especially when that something has a hard-core geek following, cause those Geeks will tear you to pieces. I'd bitch about Fox now but they renewed Dollhouse so they've won some points. Overall I think this show was good, although it got significantly better second season. At first I only liked Cameron, but this season I also started to like John a bit. Sarah annoyed me, and Derek was just alright. I loved the Red head, although I think she was a bit stiff (and not because she was a robot). I'll always mourn the passing of decent Sci Fi, but I think this show was about to get into some serious Time Travel stories, and the time line is already muddled enough. I think Time Travel is really cool, but has to be handled in a very specific way, or else you get paradoxes left and right. OR you get 200 alternate timelines, which is what Sarah Connor was starting to do. That shit gets horribly confusing because you never know who's from which timeline, and then you have to do some major event to consolidate them (a la Crisis on Infinite Earths). So all in all I will say I liked this series and will miss it next season.

Kyle XY: Liked it except for the cliffhanger
I already spent a post talking about this, so we're done. I'm not even going to tag this.

Pushing Daisies: Loved it
This show was so great. I didn't always love the characters (Ok, I really didn't like Chuck at all. And I didn't like Ned when he was mooning over Chuck) but the storylines were always cute and the general atmosphere of the show was fantastic. This cemented my love of Brian Fuller that had started earlier with Wonderfalls (I even caught the crossover. I'm that TV-Geeky). I think it was just a little bit too quirky to gain wide-spread acclaim, but I'm glad it lasted two seasons. I'm waiting for a "Complete Series" set to be released before I buy it (although what if there isn't one and it goes out of print? That's my current Big Fear regarding cartoons, which is why I've spent a fuckton recently buying DVDs before they die). Anyone that hasn't caught the first season at least should really try. I think there were only like 22 episodes of this show total, split over two seasons, so it's not hard to catch up. It's cute and unlike anything else on TV. And Kristen Chenowith and Chi McBride are GENIUS, especially together.

Those are all of the series finales I can think of, but I'll post more if I think of any. And as I must go home now, I'll save the Season Finales for another post. It's probably better to break them up anyway, as I watch so much damn TV.

Great Quote

I was just reading X-Men: Endangered Species, and this made me giggle:

Dark Beast: Tell me about the Greys. Jean and Nate.

Beast: They're both dead.

Dark Beast: Well, Yes. But with that family, I've found it's best to get frequent updates. Exactly how dead, at this moment in time?

One year gone

I didn't want the title of this entry to be quite so emo, but the topic makes me sad, so maybe it's appropriate.


As of yesterday, I've been back in the States for exactly 1 year. It's actually kind of a horrible anniversary to celebrate, because I really miss Japan. I'm not sure I'd want to go back there to live for two years, but I think I need to go back to visit. I met some incredible people and had some incredible experiences, and now I just don't. I still know incredible people, but I don't interact with them as much. And I still have incredible experiences, they're just much fewer and farther between.

So anyway, to celebrate, or more accurately commemorate, I posted pictures of some of my favorite places in Nagoya. These are the places I spent the majority of my weekends in the city, especially once Brian moved to Osaka. There are more places, but I don't want to use up all of the blog space. So I'm just going to be natsukashii for a bit. Sorry if this makes you sad, Adrik.

First Department store I ever went to in Japan. Ads, is this the Honbu side?

The magical clock where we all met

Oasis 21 needs no explanation

As a fun side note, I really liked this building, even though I never went inside.

It's Star Trek!!!!

That was awesome.

I now run the risk of overselling this movie, and then I will lead a legion of unimpressed followers in my wake and it will make me sad. So, how can I sum up this film without having a nerdgasm all over the keyboard?

Great Action.
Awesome special effects.
Believable plot.
Great casting and characters.
And plenty of one-liners and subtle nods to Trekkies everywhere. Including Tribbles.

I'll admit, I'm biased to this movie. But in both ways. I love science fiction, especially Star Trek. I now own the complete TNG, DS9, and Voyager, as well as 6 of the movies. But I also hated the original series, specifically Kirk (to be honest, when I went and watched the Original Series, I actually enjoyed all the storylines that weren't completely centered on William Shatner. Which by season 3 was none of them.). But Chris Pine did an outstanding job as Captain Kirk. He has all the bravado and bravery, without any of the overacting and smugness. I actually like all of the new casting, so I don't need to go character by character. All in all each character got face time (although not as much as Kirk and Spock). I really enjoy how they make room for this story in the overall Trek canon (it's sneaky, but believable for me), and I also enjoy how it's left open-ended (i.e. they don't all die and the Enterprise flies again. Prolly not a huge shock).

There are probably issues with the movie that a second viewing will reveal, but I don't want to get into them right now. Suffice to say go see this movie. Even if you're not a Trekkie, go see it. It's a fantastic summer blockbuster and I hope it makes a ton of money.

And as a side-note, there was no "secret scene" after the credits. I always hate when movies sneak those in and no one tells me, so I wait until the end of the credits and 9 times out of 10 I'm disappointed because I just wasted 5 minutes of my life waiting for the MPAA symbol. So I am sharing now that there is no secret scene.

Top Trek

As we already stated, I am awesome and going to see Star Trek tonight. In honor of that I figured I'd post some top ten/five lists. I say top ten, but it may very well be top 5 for some things. So here goes!

I should specify that I have not seen Star Trek: Enterprise, so I can't make any judgments about anything from that series.



Top 10 favorite Starships
1) Refit Enterprise D from All Good Things...
2) Enterprise E (Sovereign class)
3) Akira Class
4) Defiant class (it's boring, but it zooms!)
5) Romulan D'deridex class warbird (Cause they're flipping huge)
6) Galaxy Class
7) Prometheus Class
8) Nebula Class (it's not flashy, but it certainly looks sturdy)
9) Klingon Negh'Var class (You just feel like these things would fuck you up)
10) Excelsior Class (the Classic, in my opinion)


Top 5 favorite characters
1) Jean-Luc Picard
2) Guinan
3) Kathryn Janeway
4) Seven of Nine
5) Jadzia Dax and the holographic Doctor tie, I think


Top 5 LEAST favorite characters
1) James T. Kirk. To be blunt I hate him with the fire of a thousand suns.
**Edit: After seeing the new movie, I should specify that I hate Kirk-as-played-by-Shatner**
2) James T. Kirk. No, kidding. Harry Kim
3) Chakotay
4) Neelix
5) Jake Sisko


Top 5 Favorite Episodes
1) Yesterday's Enterprise
2) All Good Things...
3) Cause And Effect
4) Year of Hell
5) Sacrifice of Angels


Top 5 uniforms I would cosplay in (oh, yes, I'm serious)
1) Nemesis/First Contact Uniform (As seen in Picard's pic)
2) Post-season 3 TNG Uniform
3) First Contact Dress Uniform
4) Voyager Uniform
5) Future Federation Uniforms from TNG/Voyager finales


Top 5 favorite Alien races
1) Romulans
2) Changelings
3) Borg, before we had to go and humanize them
4) Klingons, as long as there isn't a stupid Kahless type episode. I like Martok.
5) Vidiians, cause they were so freaking scary


So that's that. There are other things I could probably count down, but I don't know what they are at the moment. I'm so excited to see this movie tonight, you have no idea. And the excitement is just growing!

I am a Trekkie

Somehow my sister managed to win two tickets to a sneak preview of Star Trek tomorrow night, and I have to say I'm so excited I could pee. The last Star Trek movie came out in 2002, and even though I loved it, it really wasn't so good. I didn't watch Star Trek: Enterprise because it infuriated me that they changed the canon, but even that hasn't been on since 2005. So four years without Trek and suddenly it's back! (The irony is that there were a whole bunch of years after the Original Series ended.)

It's not really a huge surprise to anyone that's had a real conversation with me that I like Star Trek. All sci-fi, in fact, but The Next Generation was what started it all. Back when the only things I was watching were He-Man and Transformers (and occasionally American Gladiators), I would catch random episodes of Picard and the Enterprise D flying through the galaxy doing all sorts of things that I wished I could be doing. Because I didn't understand the rules of syndication, or apparently how to read a TV Guide, back in the day, I didn't watch it religiously. But everything I caught I loved, and when I moved to my new house I started watching it a lot more. I remember when DS9 came on and I was so disappointed becasue I hated Sisko. I remember when All Good Things... was on and it was one of the best episodes I'd ever seen. I remember going to see Generations with my Dad and getting so excited. I remember tuning back into DS9 because Worf was joining, and there were giant epic space battles. I remember when Voyager launched at the same time as UPN. I remember the media attention when Jeri Ryan was cast as Seven of Nine in that skin-tight uniform. And that's enough "I remembers" to last any reader for years.

Needless to say I'm a giant geek when it comes to Trek, especially TNG. You can give me a random episode title and I'd bet 90% of the time I could give you an episode description. I've read the Enterprise-D Technical manual. Once in middle school I even went as a Starfleet captain for Halloween. Then of course I reached that age where I had to be cool, and put the fandom on a backburner (at least in public) but it never really left me. It morphed into a fandom of Babylon 5 and Farscape and Stargate and Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, although none of those could ever compare. It's really only a matter of time before I get some fancy costume maker to make me a uniform that I can wear to conventions. I used to be embarrassed, but as I get older I'm rapidly reaching the "Fuck 'em if they don't get it" age.

I don't need to be one of those geeks that gets all philosophical about his love of Trek. Suffice to say I am. It speaks to me in a way Star Wars never has. And while I wish they'd go and at least acknowledge homosexuality in the 24th century, the Federation is a place I'd very much like to be. This probably won't be my only Star Trek inspired post in the next few days, especially since I recently watched the original series all the way through, I've got all of the movies on hold at the library so I can watch them all through, and I've recently bought the complete series of TNG, DS9 and Voyager.

Told you I was a geek.