There is some info about the new Tori Amos album
it looks like it's the usually- risky (and sometime contractually obligated, but maybe not here) Cover Album. But there are some interesting songs that are being covered there, and she's done interesting covers since very early in her career, with a wonderful Nirvana cover. And she's doing a Joe Jackson cover, and I've had his greatest hits album living on my laptop all year.

But the picture of her... oh no, i'm shocked....the red hair is gone....

Ventura on UFOs: 'There's got to be somebody out there'
Well of course, we all know that Jesse is a MIB, we've all seen that episode of The X-Files :)

Willy Wonka in Widescreen Petition
I'd kind of feared this might happen -- with DVD becoming more and more mainstream, I've heard that the studios have some research that "the masses" would actually prefer pan-and-scan instead of widescreen, and the studios will therfore go that route. Ick, ick, ick -- I want my movies on widescreen please, so we see the *entire* movie! Especially on something like DVD.

Salon.com Technology | No laughing matter
While it has the horribly-cliched "Bang! Wow! Zap!" header, it's sort of an interesting article about what direction on-line comics have. I'm all in favor of the net for comic delivery -- but I think it tends to work best for comics like you'd see in the newspaper, and I read most of those three-panel ones there. But I think you're getting longer storylines as well -- like what GPF has been doing recently, or even some of the threads that show up in a strip that goes into the paper like the norm. I think it's all going to be a lot more complicated than anyone would imagine....

Russian fans oppressed by police...
spooky. very spooky.

Salon.com Books | Lost in translation
An amusing little article about books that become movies that are then novelized again. I almost picked up the original Planet of the Apes book over the weekend, and I still might do that, as I'm curious about it.

Harry's thoughts on Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones
Well, yeah -- I think we're somewhat jaded these days to these titles. I'm not excited about it really either, but it is a standard serial title, certainly -- as Harry points out.

And I think there is some wisdom of having the word Clones in the title -- they were mentioned in A New Hope, after all, and since they're very topical, it dovetails very nicely. And I'm not sure if the obvious The Clone Wars makes sense, since the movie series is called Star Wars.

But still, it is a blah title. But we'll get used to it. (And I think The Phantom Menace is a good title now.)

Actor wrestled armed robber over son's birth video
heh heh.

Some Cinescape articles of note:

Babylon 5 on DVD
Yeah! And actually, I don't want them to release them to fast, I'd like to be able to digest them all. But I haven't taped the widescreen editions on the sci-fi channel because I want them on DVD.

And then Ewan McGregor slams the new Star Wars title
but with a title like Attack of the Clones, can you disagree with him? And the whole story is available here, apparently with video footage.

Years ago, when I was first discovering Doctor Who, The Universal Databank (and its predecessors) were an invaluable guidebook to the series. Especially back in the day when I thought I'd never see a story that didn't feature Tom Baker, or perhaps Peter Davison. Before these books, I didn't even know about them. I knew that Jean-Marc Lofficier had put it online, but I don't think I've mentioned it here before. So here goes.

Some very nice new Doctor Who covers -- considering they sometimes aren't so good, it's good to see that The Adventuress of Henrietta Street and Dying in the Sun have such good covers.

Doctor Who named cult favourite
In the UK, of course....

AandE.com On TV : NEXT: The Future Just Happened should have the story tonight about how Marillion went to their fan base to fund their last record instead of getting an advance from a record company. (you can see more on the bbc website)

On A&E tonight, 8 PM CST. There is also an accompanying book.

Salon has an article about the whole "George Harrison is Dying" story
And one of the problems of the modern era is that rumors quickly get thrown on the web, and while no one should believe a thing I say, it also gets on news wires that should be believable as well....

I have no neck: What Rocky Horror Character are you?

# 1 the Criminologist
# 2 Dr. Scott
# 3 Brad
# 4 Riff-Raff
# 5 Janet
# 6 Eddie
# 7 Magenta
# 8 Frank N. Furter
# 9 Rocky
# 10 Columbia

Star Wars: Episode II | Special Announcement: Episode II Title
ewww. Attack of the Clones. And I like The Phantom Menace as a title....

Maybe we'll get used to it...

Star Links
fun if you want to check to see what the degrees of seperation between two actors are -- like how you get from Star Trek's William Shatner to Doctor Who's Tom Baker

I, Cringely | The Pulpit
This was a popular link according to blogdex, and I can see why. I think the problem with this thought is that it's still the case that many servers are on some UNIX variant, and will continue to be for lots of reasons (including security). I'm sure MS would love a "better" network protocol -- and they could try something, certainly.

I am disturbed with the idea that XP makes all of the sockets available though.

I just got back from Diversicon, a fun little low-key convention. I love the hotel -- it's fantastic for a small 200-person convention, and very comfortable, and has a lot of charm. Had lots of fun conversations, from Buffy and Douglas Adams and costuming and bizzarre muppet discussions and minesweeper fanfic and jumping the shark and convention programming and whatever else really.

Saturday also had a MISFITS meeting. Ok turn out -- but I think we still need to do better at promoting meetings, and we had some problems with parking and the like. I gave away some Avengers and James Bond videos that I had upgraded to DVD and a bunch of books in a "book/video" swap -- I came away with less than I brought, but I expected as much, and I figure it'll work out karmically in the end anyways. I think it's a good idea for the meetings. Though my problem is that I tend to want to "collect" things I like -- so if it's a book I've read, I'll keep it, even if I'm unlikely to read it again. And I'm not so out of hand yet where I have to get rid of stuff just to get rid of it.

and I just noticed that my duplicate Avengers tapes may increase -- I see that I can get every Emma Peel episode in one DVD package, and I probably will have to do that.