Showbits

It's April Fool's Day, which is often a relished opportunity for creative mischief. An outlet for such comic imagination used to be StarTrek.com — up until its managing geniuses were summarily executed. Fortunately, their past efforts are timeless and are still available through the magic of the Internet Archive. Courtesy its Wayback Machine, I present to you the hilarious news reports of April 1, 2005 (links will load slowly — be patient):

• Star Trek: Enterprise Saved … With Strings Attached
  
• Several New Star Trek Pilots Rejected
  
• Your Mirror Universe Twin and You
  
• The Galactic Enquirer
  
• GQ: Gorn Quarterly
  

Remember that three years ago this month, we were on the cusp of the cancellation of Enterprise. To see that first headline above set my heart atwitter — until I remembered the date. It was cruel of our overlords to toy with our emotions so carelessly… but they made up for it with the excellent Mirror Universe FAQ.

A few other pieces were not captured by the Wayback Machine but have been reposted to a Trek message board:

• Bakula Debunks "Holodeck" Rumor
  
• BBC to Remake Star Trek
  
• New Series Announced: Klingon Eye for the Starfleet Guy
  

It's nice to know humor will survive into the 24th century!

I can't help it: I love LOLcats. I hang onto the I Can Has Cheezburger? RSS feed for morsels of happiness in an otherwise bleak work day. Certainly some fans have taken the meme too far, such as translating the Bible into lolspeak — not that it's irreverant, but more that it's an incongruous pairing. And creating a lolcode programming language is just too esoteric.

But I didn't realize the opportunity for an effective extended work of lolspeak until today, as I was perusing the guest list for the upcoming ROFLCon. Finally, here is a match made in heaven: two of my favorite pursuits combined to form… LOLTrek.

Alas, only one episode of TOS has been adapted to this pidgin tongue, and it doesn't take long to scroll through its 60 frames. But a variety of inside jokes and consistent internal humor makes it a fun treat. Enjoy!

With the live-action Justice League film on hold, it may be some time before we see The Flash, the fastest man alive, brought to the silver screen.

So in the meantime, satisfy yourself with the 1989 marvel that is The Wizard of Speed and Time:

Okay, so maybe it's not as good as the 22-episode live-action Flash TV series that premiered on CBS just a year after the above Wizard made his debut. Unfortunately, I was not a comic book junkie until 1996, so what Wikipedia calls a short-lived but critically-acclaimed series never registered on my radar. But now the complete collection is available in one convenient DVD box set. Anyone have any recommendations about it?

As per our annual tradition, we here at Showbits wish you a very merry holiday season, courtesy our friends at RiffTrax:

Hat tip to Satellite News.

It was ten years ago that I first became aware of The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn. The political commentary and satire that are the show's hallmarks provided welcome relief from the doom and gloom of daily newspapers and evening news. The show lasted only a short time with its first host but has enjoyed great success with Kilborn's successor, Jon Stewart.

Now the entire archives of the Stewart era are available for free online viewing at the show's official Web site. Comedy Central's library features an easy-to-use slider for calling up specific days, months, and years of episodes, as well as offering a standard keyword search. It's easy to find and watch classic interviews such as with Scott Bakula or Jeri Ryan, or more recent episodes such as an aforementioned critique of Representative Wu's analysis of the White House administration:

(Hat tip to Slashdot)

R. A. Salvatore once opined to me that today's readers grew up predominantly with the visual medium of television. Accustomed to quick action and short narratives, they don't need the amount of detail that J. R. R. Tolkien invested in his novels.

If so, maybe that explains that why I can't bring myself to read Lord of the Rings. Believe me, I've tried, at a variety of points in my life; but no matter how (im)mature I am at the time, I just couldn't get into it. I'm not against the concept, though; like with Shakespeare, I just need the story delivered in another medium.

So combine LotR with comic books, add an acerbic wit, and what do you get? The DM of the Rings, a web comic that uses stills from the live-action films to theorize what LotR would be like played as a Dungeons & Dragons game. Observe as the party is railroaded to key locations:

Indulge in out-of-character conversations on the slopes of Mt. Cahadras …

	… Dread the coming denizens of the Mines of Moria …
and resolutely defend the residents of Helmsdeep.

This satirical narrative encompasses the entire film trilogy but focuses on Aragorn's party and their perspective on the second and third films. As a former role-player myself and current fan of the Knights of the Dinner Table comic book, I loved this unique and irreverent take on a classic tale. A couple of marathon sittings will make an enjoyable experience of its 144 strips. When you're done, go behind the scenes in Fear the Boot's interview with the comic's artist, Shamus Young. You may also enjoy Darths & Droids, a similar approach to Star Wars Episode I.

(Tip of the hat to Showbits reader GeneD.)

Courtesy TrekToday comes the 11-minute comedic film The Blacksmith and the Carpenter. Robert Picardo plays the titular iron worker, a fishing buddy of the Son of God who, like Judas, finds his loyalties torn between friendship and finance. The jokes are a bit hackneyed (and, depending on your religious persuasion, blasphemous), but it's fun to see and hear them cracked by Voyager's Doctor.

(Tip of the hat: IT Blogwatch)