Ninja Throwing Hat

Dimpled Chad Day
Trivia Day
Elizabeth Seton Feast Day (Roman Catholic)
Anniversary - Pop Music Chart
Birthday - Sir Isaac Newton (physicist/mathematician)
Admission Day (Utah)
Independence Day (Myanmar)

Ah …

 

I think I have a new fandom.*

 

It’s not the, uh, usual sort of fandom.

 

I think I just became a raving fangirl of the Mad Hatter.

 

No, seriously. There’s this book called The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor. In the order of Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry** and Ridley Pearson, it is taking a bizarre old charming childlike story, one I never liked, and making it into a kickass swashbuckler adventure full of mayhem and, in the case of this new one, murder. Beddor seems to have the same distaste I always had for the Alice stories, in that they’re sort of plotless and senseless stories about the Wonders Of Imagination, interspersed with bizarre nonsequiturs of logic. In this, there’s a civil war, a murdered royal couple, caterpillar oracles, great bloody battles between chessmen and cards, a dark crystal, a Mysterious Portal To Worlds Beyond, a grinning feline assassin who tears out people’s throats, and—and—and the queen’s bodyguard, Hatter Madigan.

 

Who kicks ass.

 

He’s like every action hero rolled into one. He flings his hat like Odd Job, has trained with all manner of weapon and thus has a backpack full of automatic Batman-Utility-Belt-esque weaponry, is a brilliant acrobat, and wears a long trenchcoat that Beddor loves to describe as streaming out like a cape while Hatter’s whirling through a mad dance of death and destruction. He can dodge bullets. His idea of a successful fight is one where he scares everyone off so that he doesn’t have to kill anybody.

 

Can you blame a bit of mad fangirling of the Mad Hatter? God damn, he should have his own comic book series.

 

Hey, at least I know how to pick ’em, huh?

 

 

*No, Emily. He will not take the place of the blue crush. My crazed love is boundless.

 

**Yes, that Dave Barry. Who’s another fandom of mine.

A Post For My Trekkie Buddies

As long as I’m being a geek, I must note that—at last!—after years of half-assed searching, I have finally found a site where one can download, for free, The Firm’s bizarre hit, Star Trekkin’! As I have many friends who inexplicaby like this song, I thought I’d share my good fortune and link to it.  (Click the speaker to download it, guys.)

 

The gratitude of myself and my goofy friends is owed to Wil Wheaton, who included a link in his blog that allowed me to track down the song.  My Trekkie friends may recognize Wil as the actor responsible for The Next Generation’s insufferable and universally-loathed Ensign Wesley “God I Hope He Dies Next Episode” Crusher, whose twerpiness, youth, and hair that looks like it was carved on activate the inner-school-bully in all of us.*  It turns out that twenty years after it was established that his character was “sort of like Mozart,” Wil has begun an enormously entertaining blog chronicling the episodes of TNG, and redeems himself by being totally aware that Wesley was possibly the least-liked television character ever, and making several jokes about it. Way to accentuate the positive, Wil. And thanks for the song.

 

And now I leave you with my personal favorite verse in the song, as a philosophy that has driven most science fiction for the entirety of its existence:

 

We come in peace! Shoot to kill

Shoot to kill

Shoot to kill!

We come in peace! Shoot to kill

Shoot to kill, men!

 

 

*Fun Fact: Wesley is the direct inspiration for Futurama’s equally obnoxious young genius, Cubert Farnsworth.  The large difference is that the characters in the show as well as the audience all want to punch Cubert, while in Star Trek they seem oblivious to the possibility that Wes could come off as a smug little bugger.