In the aftermath of this year's trivia game I was sitting in Michelle's living room talking to Spooner about all things "Firefly" attempting to make clear how cool this new thing I'd found was. I went so far as to leave him the first disc of the series out of my set--thinking that, after listening to Craig, Sarah and I ramble during the whole weekend he would be an easy sell. Last night I got a phone call letting me know that the seeds we had planted that weekend had germinated quite nicely. The three of us had created two new browncoats--always a nice feeling.


I'm still working on KJ--in fairness though I should point out that it is a extreme stretch of her taste in popular entertainment. She dosen't like westerns or speculative-fiction and since "Firefly" is a melding of the two, well as you can imagine it is taking some doing. The only way the show could possibly be a worse fit is if it we're a space/western/mob drama which, is sounding kinda cool to me but I digress. Incidently, the mob thing is a deal breaker for the lady, she finds the people and situations to be so repellant that enjoyment of the story is utterly impossible. Aside from having no one to talk Sopranos with, I find that kinda cool, so strong is her moral compass in that regard that even fictional mobsters leave her cold. Though the whole "Firefly" thing is still a going concern, and I can wait...


I do have one thing going for me in my mission to make a browncoat out of my love...Joss Whedon. If the man can make her love a TV show called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"--well anything is possible. Truly, I run the risk of over-stating things when I talk of my regard for Whedon's work. I have even caught myself using the phrase 'greatest living writer' which has a nice grandiose ring to it, but is of course, utterly ridiculous. He might well be, but I'm in no place to judge without having read everything else by anyone alive, still there aren't many people whose work I'll patronize sight-unseen. Joss Whedon, Aaron Sorkin, Spider Robinson, Tom Robbins and Neil Gaiman that's about it. (Btw...Why are all my favorite writers men? Kay I'm offically putting out a call for any and all fiction suggestions by writers with xx chromosomes.) That group of writers could call me up and say "I need to borrow $500.00 bucks to finish my new novel/script.", and I would do whatever I could to get it for them.


So, yes, if you are out there reading this and my opinion in these matters is one that you feel you can trust--go put your hands on a copy of "Firefly." You might as well drop the extra $20.00 and get "Serenity" as well cause you are not going to want to wait once you get there. (DO NOT under any circumstances watch the movie and the TV show out of sequence, I cannot be held responsible if you do.) If, you know me, you know of my deep and abiding love for "Star Wars," know how much a part of my life that world is...


"Firefly" and "Serenity" are better.

Tip O' The HAT

Terrible Live
Originally uploaded by Helmer, J.

The year was 1997, your friend and humble narrator was sitting in the Apocalypse lounge on the campus of SCSU; smoking and listening to the table full of physical plat/custodial staff talk about work stuff. If you ever want to know what really goes on someplace like a State university--seek out these folks--I was getting a whole other education I wasn't even paying for. When I wasn't evesdropping, I was reading Robert Anton Wilson's "Shrodinger's Cat Trilogy--and I suddenly ran across the phrase "Trick Top Hat." Something clicked. I pulled out what was ostensibly my History folder and began to write; Wilson book still open in front of me just pulling random phrases and Images from the book and fitting them together as best I could. I eventually came up with what I thought was a cool song lyric to take to my bandmates--Eddy Burke wrote music to it and it went into our set list. Always a fun song to play cause the lyrics confused the hell out of the audience; plus Eddy had written in that loud/soft/loud Pixies--Nirvana style which made it a cool switch-up style wise.

Years pass. The band dissolves in a very garage-band "It used to be about the music, man!" kinda way. I put a copy of some of Terrible's lyrics up as a section of my webpage and forget all about it for the most part.

Eight years later I'm up in the middle of the night (one of my periodic insomia adventures) and I punch my name into Google's search bar. Yes, I'm man enough to admit I've 'Google-d" myself...and I run into this. It is odd enough to find yourself quoted--and credited for something years and years after you created it. Still, stranger to me, was the fact that I hadn't the slightest idea what this guy was talking about--you'll notice that it's prefaced as 'a message from Chris_Titan. I don't know who or what he is, and looking arround the rest of the blog--I can't make much sense outta anything that's there. Does anybody out there reading this speak paranoid-delusional? Maybe it's some sorta weird meta-joke or a art project?

An odd little message from myself at 19 shows up years later being quoted--and now I suddenly have a connection to this author. It is a strange feeling to write something, forget about it, and have it pop up years later. Makes me wonder what othe sorts of web-detrius I've got floatin about.