Sidebar Update

It's Sidebar Update time. Let's skip the formalities and get right to it!

The current Object of My Affection is Olivia Munn, host of G4's Attack of the Show!. (G4 is a television channel that you've never heard of, unless you're very nerdy.) I'm actually a bit behind the curve on this one, as far as nerd crushes go; the lovely, funny, and yes, a little bit nerdy Ms. Munn has been all the rage in nerd circles for a while now. Her appearance at a Star Wars convention earlier this year in a Princess Leia slave costume, as pictured on the sidebar, caused seizures all across the internet. I have to thank my good buddy Lew for forcing me to watch her program; I have instantly fallen in love with her, as he knew I would.

Currently, in my Kurt Vonnegut Project, I'm reading the first of the few Vonnegut works that I had actually never read before, the short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box. So far, it's just as good as Welcome To the Monkey House, which is very good indeed. And joining the Finished list are Mother Night, Bluebeard, Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons, and The Sirens of Titan. That makes a baker's dozen Vonnegut books I've enjoyed so far. It's amazing how much I've forgotten about many of these books. I wasn't surprised by the greatness of Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat's Cradle, which I've reread before, but I was delighted to rediscover how wonderful Mother Night (about an American spy in Nazi Germany who inhabits his role a bit too well), Bluebeard (a bitingly funny look at modern art through the eyes of Rabo Karabekian, a minor character in Breakfast of Champions), and Sirens of Titan (Vonnegut's second novel, and surely the most traditionally science fictiony of his works) all were. Damn, I love me some Vonnegut!

Watching: my Babylon 5 DVDs. I'm stuck on Season 2 right now; the 4th disc in the set won't play, and I have yet to get to the store to exchange it. But up to then, I was enjoying tremendously the dense plotting and long-term foreshadowing that made this series one of the best sci-fi shows ever.

Listening: Bad Religion's latest, New Maps of Hell. It hasn't overwhelmed me, but it's a very solid, back-to-punk-basics album, with several songs that get in, rock your face, and get out in two minutes or less. The longest of the 16 tracks is an epic 3:40; the first track is actually called "52 Seconds," which indeed it is (not counting a few seconds of amplifier buzz at the beginning and end).

Hating: Whoopi. Nuff said.

The Bonus Dodgers-clad Object of My Affection is the severely hot Nikki Cox, in a decidedly non-traditional uniform. Bless her heart. Hey, did you know Jay Mohr just married her? I didn't. That son of a bitch!

And the Lyric of the Moment is from "Apeman," by the Kinks. It just seemed apropos, what with Russian bombers threatening to violate Norwegian airspace and suchlike. We've officially backslid 30 years. The Iraq War is old news. Get ready for the new Cold War! You guys have fun with that, I'm going to go hide on an island for a few years.