Scare-All No. 1

I'm in the mood to do some Halloween-themed posts - if I can come up with enough, and I don't see it being a problem, I'll probably do one a day leading up to the big holiday. And yes, here in SF, Halloween is BIG - it's New Year's Eve in Times Square big. The party of the year. The moment of don't dream it, be it. It's one of the many things to love about this town - people take their fantasies seriously.

First link: Monsterama. Various rhapsodizing about monsters - Frakenstein, Looney Tunes, you name it - in comic, cartoon, toy, or movie form with a keen sense of why kids do love them so. Fun read, and source also of some darn fun links. Props also to the quotage from the David J. Skal book The Monster Show, a favorite of mine - fabulous survey of the social history of everyone's favorite Universal Studios monsters and more.

Finally... okay, after a week now, I don't think it's me. The Daily Show is suffering an unquestionable drop in quality - the new correspondents all suck. Bad. And those that are still watchable are mysteriously absent - one shot of Samantha Bee all week, and for a throaway gag in the womens' toilet? I gotta wonder if there wasn't also some kind of writer shift to Colbert's show - the humor's gotten a lot more juvenile and, less fortunately, not that funny. Stewart's opening headlines are still worth it, but the rest? (shakes head) Sad.

Colbert, on the other hand... the schtick may grow old fast but for now, the baldness of his mockery is kind of satisfying. Oh, please, let us have moved into an era where mockery is the appropriate response to some of this lunacy. That would mean the discrediting has finally taken hold. Oh, please.

Whose Sci-Fi Is It?

Borrowed from makd. List the 50 most influential sci-fi films, according to John Scalzi's Rough Guide to Science Fiction (try here for the list), bold the ones you've seen.

God, that one was pretty easy. ( The Sci-Fi Movie Thing )