...

Riddle: You are in a room with three monkeys ... one has a banana, one has a stick, and one has nothing but gaslighting, snarky comments. Who is the smartest primate? Answer: You, you magnificent primate! See, no matter how misleading Monkey is, no matter how he tries to gaslight you are smarter. You see through the condescending trickery and psych warfare. You will outsmart Monkey one day, even if it feels a Sisyphean at times. Ask Kirsten Pagacz, a.k.a. Kirsten Weirdsten. She not only dominated her Monkey, but trained him to do her bidding, not the other way around, when necessary. Subduing this trcikster presented her with the ...

"Hey, whose leg do you gotta gagoosh to get an Amaretto Disaronno around here?"                                                 -Vinnie, Family Guy, "Christmas Guy" Tradition wraps itself around The Holidays like a thick, Irish cable-knit sweater: shopping, socializing, gifting, baking, travelling and visiting with family - those fams carefully curated, as well as those into which we are born. Some fams are just wackadoo and amusing enough to engage you into horridly uncomfortable, severely awkward card games. (Note: Cards Against Humanity NOT rec for play with children, nieces, nephews, parents or grandarents. Equal opp embarrass...

...

                         ...

...

   ...

Gwen Stefani’s You Make It Feel Like Christmas is a modern take on the traditional Christmas specials that we all grew up with and love. Featuring musical performances and fun, holiday sketches, this one-hour primetime special captures Stefani’s infectious spirit and iconic style. It takes her accessible joie de vivre and the love in her heart and shares it with audiences around the country.  Stefani performs several songs from her holiday album, “You Make It Feel Like Christmas,” as well as several festive favorites, including “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Baby.”   Special guest appearances include Blake Shelton, the six-time winnin...

         ...

                   ...

"I am so surprised you watch that. It just doesn't seem like you." Yes, I do; and, no it doesn't. Allow me to share my Pop secret with you, kittens. This gape-jaw surprise, that I watch The Real Housewives of Orange County, amongst other RH franchises, is an alarm I have heard more than once. It's true, it does not fit my modus operandus for TV viewing. My druthers lean toward Arrested Development, TURN, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Versailles, Anne With an 'E', Flaked, The Durrells in Corfu and Absolutely Fabulous. Well, shame be damned, in fact, I do watch RHOC, RHONJ, RHOA and RHOBH. If it pleases the court ... my argument for the defe...

What are we going to do tonight, Brain? Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world! A simple yet brilliant storytelling device. Core, classical elements of drama. Man versus man. Evil archetype endeavours to take over the world; perky protag thwarts said-takeover. From Harry Potter to Shakespeare to Star Wars to every episode of Scooby-Doo, some bastard is trying to make it reign evil and it's up to a few benevolent souls - always with great hair - to save mankind. Pretty standard fare. Purge the pernicious pests so we all can get back to normal life and our frisée salads and Shiraz at Nordstron Café. Yet ......

Based on the sci-fi mystery novels penned by James S.A. Corey (a nom de plume serving the endeavours of the writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franc, Leviathan Wakes) The Expanse titles have spread like flowering spores into a SyFy original series. Some two-hundred years in the future, a now-fully-habitable solar system serves as the ripe-for-rivalry mise-en-scène. Space provides the optimum landscape, especially space under colonial administration, to host not one, but all three classical conflicts of storytelling: man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself. It is in this expanse where a new breed of mankind operates in roug...

As author Jennifer Susannah Devore works diligently, her wee fingertips tattered to the bone, editing Book IV of her Savannah of Williamsburg series of historical-fiction, she finds herself currently obsessed with AMC's resplendent, American Revolutionary War drama, TURN: Washington's Spies. Well, of course she is, you roll your eyes. She's JennyPop. Anyone who knows her even moderately well knows of her love affair with the 18thC.: art, architecture, fashion, history, literature and so on. To boot, the series is shot on-location in Virginia, including her fave American hamlet, her former home of Colonial Williamsburg. I w...

  Sometimes you just want black goo instead of gravy on your Tofurkey. Luckily, there's the SyFy Thanksgiving weekend marathon ... starting with the Helix Black (Goo) Friday Marathon. Leave the Tofurkey carcass, and that annoying cousin visiting from Cal Tech, on the front porch as a decoy and enjoy a horrific, Holiday weekend of persistent pestilence from SyFy: Arctic goo, King-sized Troubles, a cross-country zombie muster and so much space turmoil. Just in case football, Free Birds, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and a Friends Thanksgiving marathon don't fill up your plate, unbuckle your pants, America; SyFy is serving up...

Hold on to your tether lines, space cadets! SyFy is adapting 3001: The Final Odyssey for TV! The telescopic future has arrived. Sir Arthur C. Clarke's 1997 novel 3001: The Final Odyssey will be adapted into a TV-miniseries, Syfy announced from New York on November 3, 2014. The engines powering this adaptation are H-town legends Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Killing Lincoln) and David W. Zucker (Numb3rs, The Good Wife, Killing Kennedy). Scott Free Productions and Warner Horizon Television will helm this spaceship; whilst Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean, Collateral) will pen the series and serve as execu...

Chris: Yay! A crossover always brings out the best in each show! It certainly doesn't smack of desperation. The priorities are always creative and not driven by marketing... Stewie: Okay, that's enough. {youtube width="580" height="380"}4zRBKGuYFRw{/youtube} The first taste was doled out in an almost masochistically small dose, like a wildly-anticipated Beaujolais delivered via medicine-droppers used to feed baby squirrels. Magnanimously proffered to those willing to wait hour-over-hour at a Family Guy Q&A panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2014, The Simpsons-Family Guy crossover episode sneak-peek was released for semi-publi...

If summer calls for sans souci, seaside days of sun and sticky sand, then summer nights, especially Fridays, demand a touch of gold bling and a white linen blouse to accentuate that tan, plus just enough coconut rum to help lull you to sleep by the sound of lapping waves ... but watch your back, and your neck. Blackbeard's in town for the summer and not since Jaws has the beach looked more inviting, relaxing ... and deadly.   In a sea of fictionalized Blackbeards, the latest incarnation cavorts freely outside the traditional, Pyrate King design book. Clean-shaven (gone is his namesake beard tied with multiple bows of red and gun...

It’s ritual. Almost involuntary, like whatever it is my spleen does when I’m not looking. Wake up, turn on news, make espresso, read funnies. I’m still Old School enough to prefer my funnies in the dry, gritty, analog, format of newspaper. Of course, I am no Luddite either and, as is the most convenient today, and cleaner for manicured hands, I take my funnies online via GoComics.com. The ease and access is beautiful: funnies on my phone, funnies on my tablet, funnies on my laptop. It’s never been easier to chase friends and family around the room urging, “OMG! You have to read this one!”, almost always answered with a ...

No monkeys here. Too many monkeys here. Is that a monkey? Frozen monkey field. These are not the monkeys you're looking for. Look, we've been at this over an hour and still no monkeys. Helix, SyFy's newest original series, is an experiment in extremes: viral containment, climate, human isolation and monkeys. Set in a cutting-edge research facility in the Arctic, Helix could easily be a next-generation, X-Files spin-off, picking up after any one of the Black Oil Mythology episodes, or even Scully and Mulder's Alaskan exploits in "Ice" (S1e7). It is safe to say, should you be an X-Phile, you will once again enjoy the glacial-blue li...

Honours come in many a form and fancy. Some strive for awards and trophies, some shoot for honorary mentions and notice. Mine, like many a dyed-in-the-wool geek is to be a cartoon character ... and not via those cheesy, "Turn yourself into a superhero!" ads, the product being little more than a selfie morphed by mildly impressive Photoshopping. No, a truly organic, artistic character is what I crave and not necessarily a Marvel-style superheroine (Although, I do envision a metal bustier, Manson boots and coal-black locks, tipped with poisonous scorpions, à la Blackbeard's fuse-tipped curls, with which to sting villains, th...

  The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. - "The Call of Cthulhu", H.P. Lovecraft Dieticians might be shocked; fast-food might be far better for our health than previously thought. Krusty Burgers, to be specific, may very well save mankind, or at the very least, save us from a mass, alien enslavement of the human race. Yet, let's save that for later. Whilst each Halloween blissfully brings FOX's Animation Domination Treehouse of Horror, this spine-chilling time of the year also brings bliss in analog format: Bongo Entertainment's own Treehouse of Horror...

Like many a standard of American literature, Washington Irving's 1819 short-story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, has seen more facelifts and resurrections than Hillary Clinton's political career: varied adaptations on the usual theme, always entertaining and sketchy, nightmare fare for some. Irving's Sleepy Hollow is uniquely American, but its roots reach far under the lightning-charred, tulip trees of time back to Germany's Middle Ages and the wicked warnings of the folkloric Wild Huntsman, der Wilde Jäger: a headless ghoul who galloped through the forests of Northern Europe at preternatural speeds, seeking bad little childre...

  Literature nerds and history dorks have superheroes, too: Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Anne Rice, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ken Burns, The Brontë Sisters, Thomas Jefferson, David McCullough, Miss Savannah Squirrel (of course!) and a whole league of historians and novelists. The standout heroine for the geek girly-girl strain of this genre? Miss Jane Austen, indeed! As one of this strain, not to mention a long-time member in good standing of the comic genre, I can affirmatively state Miss Austen is our Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and Scully all wrapped beautifully under a tidy, feathered,...

The dark, dicey harbors and grand, Georgian suburbs which spiral outward from the nation's nexus of Washington, D.C. maintain a consistent ripple of clandestine rendezvous and the hiding-in-plain-sight, double-dealing that keeps the Capitol flowing. Amidst the briny, back alleys of Annapolis and Fell's Point, and the wainscoted, chintz-covered parlors of McLean and Georgetown, secret lives meet with secret identities in an effort to keep us safe from government conspiracy and monsters lurking in the shadows … maybe. Even D.C. has room for only so many two-faces; lucky for us, the X-Files have been reopened. Agents Dana Scul...

    If one film has recently pinged my annoyingly particular radar screen with a single sparkly note, it is The Great Gatsby. Thrilled at the prospect of a big-budget feature finally dedicated to the art of storytelling, eschewing the long-overdone, over-hyped, cheesy SFX genre, I instantly started swinging my vintage Whiting & Davis handbag round my wrist in anticipation. Just as my tootsies started to join in the fun, my Mary Janes ready to Charleston, I learned Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby of 2013 is in 3-D. Zowie! Be clear, yours truly is no Luddite. I adore and applaud progress, when necessary. If you've...

  {youtube width="580" height="380"}TsrxMrTQLJM{/youtube} Michael: It's just hard to accept that it's really come to begging. George: Sometimes, it's the only way to stay in the game. Narrator (Ron Howard): Please, tell your friends about this show! Ron Howard, we did. We looked the other way, for a just a second, and they snatched Arrested Development from our sticky, chocolate-covered banana hands with swift and heartless indifference. So, we told on the offenders. We told our parents, our teachers, our friends, our families, our congressmen and our pets. We wrote, emailed, blogged, Tweeted, Facebooked and clipped up YouTube ho...

The Holidays have come and gone. The gift cards have been defrayed with frightening speed and, for some of us, Comic-Con is still a staggering seven months away. What's a creative spirit to do in the grey bane of post-gifting, post-cocktail Winter? Prepare for Season 3 of Portlandia on IFC, of course. Get ready to get your Pacific Northwest-weird on, America! From weird to Wired frames-of-reference, Primetime Emmy Awards-nominated and Gracie Allen Awards-winning Portlandia proffers an Übermodern vaudeville steeped in a homey and comforting grey and rainy respite of Northwestern coffee culture and smells just sligh...

Happy Hallowe’en, all you eerie black cats! Every time I think Christmas is my fave time of year, October sallies into town and, bonkers I go! Travel, parties, costumes and ghostly film & TV marathons: my pally JennyPop has a fab viewing list! What’s better than a Hallowe’en viewing party? Watching with spookily stylized treats and drinkies! Sippy, sippy? Salem’s Hawthorne Hotel, where I shall be spending this Samhain soiree, is proffering the perfect pumpkin pie martini. Um, yes, please! Back here in Cali, up in wine country for the après-Salem festivities, Dr. Lucy and her deathly devoted Dr. Devorkian shall be servi...

Hey, kids! It's me, Miss Hannah Hart, your friendly ghostdame of The Del. Just skipping about the Roku this morning in my luxe Resort Suite at the Hotel del Coronado this gorgeous summer’s day ... and what did I find? Disney is giving up the goods: Classic Mickey & Friends cartoons! I watched each and every one of Walt’s mini-flickers when they originally came out in theaters as early as the 1920s. Even after my unfortunate demise in 1934, I hightailed my haunted self into theaters well up into the 1960s. (After that, theater-going became a little sketchy in the 1970s, especially in downtown San Diego, Boston and New York....

Ciao, kittens! Well, San Diego Comic-Con 2012 is about six months in the rear view mirror and I can tell you, my alter ego (Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the Hotel del Coronado) and my equally fantastic cohort Dr. Lucy, had a ridiculously swell time covering The Con last summer for GoodToBeAGeek.com! Aside from the media barrage, celebrity sightings, celebrity rumours and the over-the-top Con bags (Why so big, guys? Why?), the people-watching and cosplay stole the show. Dr. Lucy, being the mechanical tinkerer she is, took nicely to an EOS Canon Digital Rebel XT and gave us a veritable Egyptian tomb of snaps, a gallery of ...

Hey, kids! It's me, Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of The Del and ring-a-ding-ding it’s like Springtime for Hitler around here! The set-design faeries must have had a March 1st deadline and, boyzo did they ever make it! 85 degrees, postcard blue skies, a sparkling ocean view that just won’t quit and a rainbow of pastels and brights everywhere you look! Dames are in their sugar-pink dresses, guys are sportin’ their Peeps-yellow polos and the air smells like strawberry salt water taffy and lemonheads. San Diego’s ready for spring and so am I! Being a ghostie girl, I’m kippy enough to get to haunt the Hotel del Coronado, as many of ...

Cheers, JennyPop readers! You know I love my animation and I was thrilled to see nestled snuggly in my Hulu queue The Simpsons 500th episode: At Long Last Leave, (s23e14). Five-hundred episodes, in this flighty and fickle culture? What a feat! There’s a simple reason The Simpsons has surpassed just about every comedic expectation and mile marker unwittingly set during its twenty-three seasons. To date, it’s a triple threat as the longest-running cartoon, sitcom and scripted prime-time production in American television history. Creator Matt Groening clearly achieved his “vague idea of invading pop culture” when he set about i...

Ciao, dolls! Now that the holidays and the New Year hangovers have settled, Dr. Lucy and I have mellowed back into our very fine grooves, haunting our lovely Hotel Del. Although, some of the staff and their common manners are severely lacking as of late, odd for such a hallmark in the world of service: P.R. department in particular. I think we might have some fun with them in these quiet days of January. My pally in the elevator, Edward, may be able to help us offer up a scare or two even. Going down?What fun for winter boredom! In the meanwhile, babies, I’ve been making keen use of my Christmas Kindle and watching loads...

Why Change Your Wife? (1920) is a matrimony “comedy” by Cecil B. DeMille. There are two possible responses to a movie like Why Change Your Wife?: mockery and anger. I’ve never been much of a one for laughing at bad movies. - Helen Geib, Commentary Track So above goes the opinion of one gal. So here goes the beauty of the American condition: free to agree to disagree. I am thankful, however, that Ms. Geib chose the phrasing of possible responses, for many a critic will oft claim his view as gospel. Thank you, Helen, for leaving open this small crack in the patio door. Like a stray cat, or the Obama family, I shall take this wee op...

  Bob's Burgers is the newest animation offering from 20th Century Fox and as rare and unique in the broadcast biosphere as a vegetarian in an Outback Steakhouse. Sure, there may be a few others lurking about, dealing with bland Fettuccine Alfredo and the standard veggie platter everyone else has on the menu, but you have to stand up in your booth and look hard.   Having a serious animation addiction, I was thrust into a tailspin when King of the Hill was cancelled a few years ago after thirteen seasons (the final four episodes of Season 13 left unaired by Fox and left to the imagination like Gilbert Stuart's unfinished portrait ...

She's so evil and she's only in high school. -Jawbreaker {youtube width="580" height="380"}PZ19fV8BiKM{/youtube}   Spot-on. Shunned by many as "teen-oriented" or even, the horror, "chick-flicks" (which I basically loathe) the much misunderstood and wrongly maligned film genre, covered snuggly under the umbrella of Dark Comedy, is a chick-flick of some sort, but not the whiny, "when will I find a man I love as much as my Pradas" type of crap. No, this genre is the Evil High School Chicks. . .flicks. These flicks are far deeper and certainly more wicked than your average teenage, high school romp. These are not the likes of...