This logo really reminds me of the Farscape logo.

It’s not the same font, but it’s close enough to evoke the same feel.

Last night we carpooled down to Huntington Beach, arriving around 7:00. The fair runs Tuesday evenings from 5-9pm, and they block off several blocks of Main street near the pier for vendors, a farmer’s market, and performers. We didn’t see anyone else from the group where we were supposed to meet, but we did see someone carrying flaming torches (and someone else carrying what appeared to be a giant unicycle) on the opposite corner of the intersection.

Gigi started with a “warm-up” twirling a long pole with flames at either end, then Jamie came in juggling flaming torches. There was a tongue-in-cheek magic trick in which she made him “disappear.” Somewhere along the line he did some tricks on a normal-sized unicycle (including jumping over a kid’s legs with it) — while juggling. Then Gigi started swinging around chains with torches on the ends. The whole show concluded with Jamie juggling atop a twelve-foot-high unicycle.

After the show, Gigi recognized my dad’s Farscape hat, and came over to talk for a bit. (My parents have been to a lot of Farscape conventions, and my mom tends to go for the autograph signings and meet-the-actors events.) At this point we did run into two other people from the meetup group.

Afterward we (me & Katie, my parents, and the others from the fan group) went to dinner at Fred’s, which was…slow. We were in line by 8:00 at the latest, and didn’t get out until almost 10:30.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they might be able to land Claudia for a recurring guest spot as her “mother” (flashbacks maybe?), and thus call into question through visuals alone whether Danielle is even as right in the head as she seems to be.

Ironically, this is the first year since Season Four that plans were already in place, both creatively and in signed actor contracts, for another year. The show has lived on year-to-year since moving to SCI FI, with the writers forced to write a possible series finale every year — only to find the show renewed once again.

A space-based show on the Sci-Fi Channel, used to planning one year at a time, has finally decided to plan two years, only to find themselves cut off halfway through. Starring (among others) Ben Browder and Claudia Black. It sounds oddly familiar. Where could I possibly have heard something like this before?

We saw this by the side of the road in Old Town, and both of us immediately thought of cake topping. Not something you’d want to use this for.

There was just something inherently amusing about seeing Xena standing at Mrs. Field’s.

You know, ever since the new VW Bug came out, Katie’s said that the yellow ones looked like Pikachu. Well, the Pokémon people fixed one up and were raffling it off at the con.

This probably belongs in with the hall costumes, but the cardboard thought balloon was a nice Farscape reference.

One oddity we didn’t manage to catch on virtual film was mixed into the city’s graffiti. In two places (one visible from the Blue Line trolley, one on a freeway on-ramp), someone had spray-painted the word Enron on the wall.

The last two were actually in San Clemente, where we stopped for coffee on the way back. We picked an exit and got off, looking for a Diedrich’s, Starbucks, or other coffee shop. We found a Starbucks (with a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf across the street that we didn’t notice until we got back in the car), but we passed two odd signs on the way to and from the freeway. We couldn’t get decent pictures from the car, and neither of us was in the mood to find a parking space and take the photo on foot. But I did find photos on Flickr by Brian Mitchell, under a Creative Commons license that allows me to repost them here under the same license. The first: Taste of China…in the shape of a hot dog. And practically across the street was a place advertising the Pastrami Love Burger.

(Continued in Volume 3.)

A caption I always wanted to write. From “Crackers Don’t Matter,” one of Farscape’s more comedic episodes.

First, Farscape star Ben Browder (John Crichton) will join the cast of Stargate SG-1 for its ninth season. (No word yet about his character, though I suppose he could appear as Daniel Jackson’s long-lost brother.)

Now it turns out that Farscape star Claudia Black (Aeryn Sun) will reprise her Stargate SG-1 character Vala in a 5-episode arc next season. (The original episode in which she appears, “Prometheus Unbound”, airs in January.)

Another one for the “Holy frelling dren” file.

(Thanks to aeryncrichton for the news.)

Alternate review: “Boom. Boom boom boom. Boom boom. Boom! Have a nice day!”

At the point that TNT cancelled Crusade (13 episodes into filming, and months before it aired), Warner Bros. tried to sell it to the Sci Fi Channel. SciFi was interested in picking it up — and they actually did buy the rights to show reruns of B5 — but they had already committed their original-programming budget to several new shows. No mention of what shows they were, but…

Something jogged my memory. “What year was this?” I checked; it was 1999. “What year did Farscape start?” Sure enough, 1999.

• Farscape reruns October 1-15, Monday-Friday, 9am-4pm
• Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars premieres October 17

Let me just say that the upcoming Farscape miniseries looks incredible. They ran a trailer they had just finished — not the one that’s just started airing, but one they’ll start showing later on — and it looks like it may be the most intense four hours of Farscape ever. They’re very cagey about the actual plot, but the clips show a level of danger, action, and drama at least equal to Farscape at its best.

The stated goal is to “bring this chapter of Farscape to a close” — to tie up the major dangling storylines and leave things open for other miniseries, feature films, comics, spinoffs, etc. Who will be around by the end is unclear, but it’s clearly going to be a heck of a ride.

They opened the floor for questions from the audience, and let me just say, hilarity ensued. I’d never seen any of this group at a convention before, but when anything funny comes up, David Kemper, Claudia Black, and Ben Browder just run with it. (Edit: quotes are now available.)

Actually, there was a funny story Claudia told. Apparently security was very tight where the script was concerned, down to being printed on red paper with the recipient’s name on each copy. She was driving through Sydney, when someone opened her car door. She was moving, so she had all kinds of things in her car, and she went into self-defense mode, shouting in the lowest voice possible, “No! Get the [frell] out!” By this time the guy had grabbed her purse and just ran off. But what was in her purse? The script! At the point she was filing the police report, they asked her what was in the bag, and she explained there was a script, and they asked for clarification and she said she was an actor, working on Farscape, at which point the police dispatcher said something like “Oh, Ms. Black, we’ll have to catch him and make sure nobody posts spoilers all over the Internet!”

Panelists David Kemper, Rockne O’Bannon, Brian Henson, Claudia Black (standing), Ben Browder, and, uh, the Sci-Fi Channel guy

Oddly, a few of them remind me of the Peacekeeper insignia from Farscape. Maybe it’s just the red-and-black color scheme. Speaking of which, it turns out that logo was based directly on a 1919 painting called “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” by Russian Constructivist artist El Lissitzky. (originally linked to sebacea.com.)

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