Santa forgot your Trek? Quick, get the Costumes book!

Good on my old friends and colleagues Paula Block and Terry Erdmann for being such a holiday hit: Their new must-have coffeetable book Star Trek: Costumes, Five Decades of Fashion from the Final Frontier was smack front and center (right) in the foyer at my local Barnes & Noble this season!

So, if your Christmas haul didn't include enough of a Trek fix, and maybe somehow the "real" James T. Kirk story is not your cup of tea… maybe you need a heavy-duty dose of Star Trek's incredible costume history… in coffeetable book form (i.e., tons of big photos).

And that's just what you get in Star Trek: Costumes—the other early entry in the book bash for Trek's 50th anniversary.  A huge tome of reprinted, rare and exclusive all-new photos of Trek's finery for any cosplay need out there, this must-have is fresh from Paula & Terry via Insight Editions. Due to our distantly uncrossed paths I can't get you a vidchat here yet (as with David Goodman and other authors in recent months) but take it from me: This is amazing. Including a wonderful intro by TV and film Trek's longtime costume maestro Bob Blackman about his daily life for 16 years, four films and four TV series.

Star Trek: Costumes is 208 pages in 9 1/4 x 12 3/4-inch hardback format, over an inch thick, and covers it all— like the subtitle says, from "The Cage" through Into Darkness. Most of all, Paula and Terry have not only done a host of new interviewing but, for those giants of Trek tailoring and modeling who have passed—led by the great original series' costume designer and motif-maker, Bill Theiss of course—they have pulled together nuggets and insights from others as well from a zillion scattered sources to accompany these vivid, living images. 

The photos are incredible—including all the new imagery of mannequin-adorned iconic designs—but the text is every bit the insight icing on that costume cake. 

The best part is, as with any good Trek research effort, they have have come up with bits that were news to me, too. Anyone who can still give me a fanboy moment after all these years digging in Trekland myself is hardly a dunsel in my book! One was bellydancer/actress Tanya Lemani's revelation that her Kara outfit was a plastic skirt and her own bra, adorned with even more plastic to cover cleavage at studio insistence. Or that the original Motion PIcture Klingon uniforms had been out on loan and tour for five years and had to be rebuilt or recast from tatters for ST III. 

Most of all, I was tickled and very appreciative to Paula and Terry for a shout-out in the thank-yous, and for annotating some writing of mine from some hot-and-heavy details-talking time with Bob and the film costume designers. Thanks, guys! We'll do that vidchat AND I'll get mine signed then.

Yes, you'll want this one for your shelf for ages. It may even be up in after-holiday sales, now.

Here's some sample spreads, including memories from our lovely friends Mike Forrest and Barbara Luna: 

WonderCon look-back: A Bones-Sulu reunion AND a hit panel on video

What a difference a year makes.

A year ago we were drowning in a monsoon that ruined the mood at what I called "strip mall con"—the normally San-Fran-based Wondercon, San Diego's little brother relocated to Anaheim for a year or two and struggling then to share parking with two high school sports events at the convention center there. Meh. People were drenched waiting in open air for slow, overwhelmed and distant shuttle buses.

This year? Wow, and not just for the very welcome sun:

FIRST, I pull off a successful meet-up for "The Con of Wrath" (more on that soon)...

... AND enjoy the largesse of some table space at the hubbub of Enterprise-D chair photo opps thanks to Huston Huddleston (rear, left) and his booming non-profit restoration project and science center "New Starship"....

...WHERE we had a McCoy-Sulu reunion with Grant Imahara of Mythbusters (left and right), soon to be seen as the helmsman opposite my doctor in the new Star Trek Continues indie online series—the pilot episode to debut at PhoenixComicon May 24 (more on THAT later, too!) ...

...PLUS have a wealth of Treklanders drop by: longtime Trek illustrator-author (and Voyager designer ) Rick Sternbach and Voyager illustrator Tim Earls .,.. PLUS post-production producer Steve Welke, all of whom recorded vidchats with me for the blog for later: look for them soon.

Rick...

...Tim...

...and Steve!

PLUS a genre psychology panel I was asked to join that garnered a lot of news attention, recorded on homespun video for posterity (with a cool opening sequence)—and more on THAT later as well.

We even worked!—and got in an interview on the run with one of the dealers who was a pivotal key in the saving of "The Con of Wrath," our documentary on the 1982 Ultimate Fantasy show in Houston that was Stat Trek's most glorious failure. You "Wrath" supporters will hear more about that as well.

I also made it over to the CBS Blu-ray Remastering panel, for the great clips and reaction from another full house (at left) to the Okudas, producer Roger Lay, doc director Robert Burnett and even Brannon the Braga back on his outreach effort. I was sad to hear., though, the offhand news that longtime TV Trek set decorator Jimmy Mees had just passed away. (More on him soon, as well.)

All in all, from my admittedly narrow point-of-view on 2 of the 3 days the weekend, my two days at WonderCon WERE a wonder—a good mix of fans, coming from all across the genre spectrum of course, even as the Trek variety tended to find me—and in surprisingly and healthy numbers, judging by both the panels and the obvious cosplay. I really, really was amazed at the contrast between last year and this—both in numbers and in Trek repping. It was a good year for the show in deed, where I heard totals jumped up from around 40,000 last year to 50,000 this time. With the entire convention center uncontested by high school cheerleaders and girls volleyball championships—confusing the anime fans boys with cosplay photo meltdown—things overall seemed more settled, and folks having a more leisurely and settled time.

I still miss, however, the lack of anywhere to go NOT associated with the nearby hotels—as helpful as they are, overflow choices are still limited. With Anaheim set up to fuel Disney full-time or to host events whose members hit Disney for the night... there's just no mom-and-pop or local nightlife or pubs/eateries in walking distance. And heaven forbid you give up your hard-won, hard-paid parking spot in midday or early evening! Whether WonderCon returns wholly to San Fransisco's Moscone Center, or maintains split campuses now in both OC and the Bay, is among the choices the WC has said it will consider... based on venue vibes like this. Wherever it is held, WonderCon is enjoying the boom of popularity as many regional comic-cons enjoy these days as people shy away—or are forced away from ticket sales shutouts—from megamonstrosity CCSD and its 150,000 bodies in July.

Finally, though—just a big thanks to everyone who came and braved the sunshine this year, and offered up some fun chat or good cosplay, or both:

Ex-Brit Ben Paddon of L.A.'s own TShirt 

Especiale gracias to you guys-n-gals who made it to any or all three of the panels I was a part of, including our "traditional" Saturday evening Trekland "Between the Cracks" show—even if we did have to have it in the "classroom" room, you stuck by. And look for those psych-panel video and donor tribute posts before much more time gets by.

Oh—and you wanna say something about the Hawaiian shirt? Well, GO ahead. Disrespect the uniform.

Vegas Khaan 2012: Thoughts & thank-yous in review

I've been talking about this curve since 2009.

I was stupid enough to get separated from my Canon HD cam and didn't grab any vidchats this year—and I missed a few great ones.

And I don't care IF the "numbers" were down 10 % this year (blame it on the "last Nimoy con" spike of 2011), or that the Guinness Trek-costume-meetup world record didn't get broken (though "we" still hold it, by the way).

Fact is, this was still an incredible Vegas Khaaann we all just survived—and not just for the Hollywood2Vegas Tour I hosted before it (more on that soon).

You Trekland readers may recall I dubbed 2011 the "Comic-Conification" of Vegas Trek because of the explosion of really clever, obscure or elaborate, "out of the box" costumes—a huge jump last year.

Not only did that trend this year go off the scale, Captain, but my predicted "Comic-Conificiation Phase II" phenom came true as well: Vegas-goers simply had a slew of Secondary Theatre panels to choose from—from fun fan debates to hands-on updates from licensees, in non-stop schedules that kept that stage as busy as the main. A chunk of that was under the banner of the newly revitalized startrek.com, finally, and the rest was just licensees and our Trek names getting to their expanding audience.

Virginia Madsen: TruFan since TOS

Personally, I finally got to meet both writer-bloggers John Tenuto and Jordan Hoffman (though I missed meeting Trek professor Anthony Rotolo). And my theory of Virgina Madsen's appearance on Voyager was totally turned on its ear. Virginia was a table-mate of mine, and confided that she's been a Trek fan all her life, thanks to her mom: "I had to FIGHT my agent to get on Voyager," she told me, in between hopping up to take pics with every cool fan costume character who walked down our tween-table aisle.

Sorry, Paul R: it's not my book, it's yours—but I happened to have a Voyager Companion on me and presented it to her, with her "Unforgettable" right there in the sixth season where it belongs.

The above was an example of my Vegas Resolution 2012: to get out and see more peeps—pro and fan—than I did a year ago, when the scale of the new huge Rio environs just sneaked up and exhausted everyone who were used to the Hilton's smaller scale. I think everyone did a better job on that count, too.

Aside from success with my own projects, like our first Vegas fund-raiser meetup for The Con of Wrath—and my surprise CD, still yet to be fornally "launched"—I want to thank everyone who jumped into the RECORD-sized line at my annual Rapid-Fire Trivia on Thursday, and who seemed to enjoy and bravely speak out at our "state of the franchise" forum on Friday. I appreciate those of you came by to say you enjoyed that more than any other panel... at least, by Friday afternoon.

Kudos as always to CBS' Bill Burke and John Van Citters for our trivia prizes—the fans' smarts level was way up this year, and for the first time ever I had people pining for more trivia session later, on Saturday, before the stage pace got even more insane. I was thinking the Secondary Theater's turnout was smaller than last year, until stagemaster Doug Murray tipped me off that one wall had actually been opened up to make the room bigger this year for the Guinness record try (whew). But more on numbers and demos in a post to come, thanks to great points to ponder from my CBS buds. (That includes you too, Marian and Yasmine!).

I didn't get to see as many of our old actor peeps around stage as before, but did high-five a lot of them. That runs the gamut from Avery's really perception-challenging midnight concert Saturday, to Ira Behr's comical takeover of my table for pics (left). Most of all, I had not talked with Gates McFadden since 1995, so our chat was especially welcome (stay tuned).  It was also wonderful to see the last surviving brother of original Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies, Richard, tabling with his book on Matt's life again—after our chat in 2008; you really DO need one of these beautiful coffee table tomes if you are a fan at all. 

But most of all, those costumes! (I still avoid saying "cosplay," as that should refer to those who actually roleplay as well as don the duds—and there were still some of those. I'm looking at you, all-day-Pakled Ron Aponte (right). :-)  My regrets at not seeing the Vasquez Rocks live, nor any of the Crystalline Entities.

And those new fans! How many, one after another, came by the table and let me worm it out of them that this was not only their first Vegas Khaan!, but their first con anywhere, of any stripe. Some had been armchair fans for years, some came in with JJTrek—but all said it was just time to do it.

Trek teen geekgirls rule!

And that brings us to all the stereotype busters, god bless'em. Nervous Trek marketers worried about the under-30-fans dwindling, and that seemed to be true in the mid-Aughts—at least as far as the barometer of con attendance. Middle-age folks with hard-core jobs, more into actors than con-going, turned out on Saturday and/or Sunday on one-day tickets, especially for the TNG reunion or the "Four Captains." But the Vegas phenom has exploded since mid-decade for twentysomethings—thanks to JJ's movie, and thanks to the TNG-watching parents' kids now in their 20s and coming alone when their parents remained armchair fans (I heard that over and over, too: those '80s babies finally grew up).

Our other meme-buster remains women—and how. Not to be all sexist, but I've long fought to undo the meme that there were no women, much less attractive ladies, in Trek fandom. Of course that's silly: Spock's Vulcan sexual aloofness/seductiveness DROVE fandom in the first decade. But the con-going generation didn't replace that until recently, in big numbers, and now we have delightful young ladies all over the place--and smart, savvy, sassy ones sciencing and entrepreneuring up a storm, as part of the geekgal revolution. And thanks to 24/7, cross-platform media and online awareness.

Vegas Trek is also now so big that one can spend all their time in just one non-actor-focused angle—say, Star Trek Online's parties and events and developer-worship... much less the costumes... or the exploding podcaster community, led this year by a huge "Podcasters' Row": G&T Show, Priority One, Podcast UGC, Primetime UGC, Gates of Sto'Vo'Kor, and STOked Radio—all syndicated or live on Trek Radio, taking turns at their booth. (BTW: All you Cryptic and pod folks I finally met in the flesh are just a blur! Avatars and handles—not helpful!)

Ex-McFadden's: lost opp

Of course Vegas is still the place to see sights and hear news like no other: Mike and Denise Okuda inspecting the new Qmx Enterprise-A and Enterprise-D, or the unveiling of LaLaLand's amazing all-in-one TOS soundtrack  project. News that William Shatner's follow-up is a TNG doc with David Zappone and his Get a Life crew... and that David Gerrold is filming a doc on his works, too. Oh, and a personal mini-reunion with my old colleague Dan Madsen as he helps to ease Ashley Eckstein's Her Universe geekgirl fashion line into the Trek realm, with my buds Mary "Televixen" Czerwinski, Charity "Bye Bye Robot" Wood and Kayla Iacovino. Or see Rod introduce the slick and in-depth  Roddenberry episode-review podcast Mission Logs with host John Champion (and getting to meet co-host Ken Ray that night). Not near enough time with my buds Ian Spelling, Alec Peters and Anthony Pascale... or missing many, many others. (Ron and Brannon, my regrets.) 

Thanks also to all the early-birds who hit up our "Party Like a SpockStar" event at the Masquerade Bar, cosponsored with DVDGeeks review podcast; John and Mary's Bozo Buckets were a DVD-prize hit. Not so lucky was my voice, lost along with our space last year in the former McFadden's (above right) to rebranding/weeknight closure and the dull ambient roar of the Masquerade Village "stage" we were stuck with. So much for my karaoke.

Amid the mobs, there was a place for little moments: my Twitter bud and STO's Thomas Marrone fulfilling a lifelong dream of having Mike O. signing his TNG Tech Manual (left)... introducing "FX Ron" B. Moore, VFX supervisor from TNG's pilot through Enterprise's finale, to the radio guys (right) and getting him on live (and seeing his Memory-Alpha page for the first time!)  .... and catching a Nog-Jake reunion, as Cirroc Loftin and Aron Eisenberg found each other for a quick chat just at Sunday closing time in the vendor's room, right across from me:

Ferengi-Hewmon unscripted reunion

Touching history

Or even me, finding a rare fanboy moment and actually touching a piece of the original Galileo shuttlecraft plywood hull with the actual builder, car customizer Gene Winfield (right) in the original AMT Models deal that paid for the set piece.  But not to say, in all that, that I was crowdaphobic: I had to see the TNG reunion and most of Four Captains as well, myself.



But Vegas Khaan has gotten not just large but diverse—the 9-p.m.-bedtimers and the party peeps alike—and even spawned empowered fans who make their own events and spinoffs to fill the gaps that still remain, even after Creation's Adam and Gary keep expanding it ... proving that there's  plenty of small moments and personal bits that everyone can take away.

Thanks so much for all of you Khaaaners who shared little moments with me—either a question, or a trivia try, or a photo op (yours or mine).  My gratitude and thanks for all the support so many of you give Trekland, my new CD "On Speaker", and The Con of Wrath—both at the table and at the events.

And most of all—thanks to all of you who admitted, one way of another, that this was your FIRST Vegas Khaan... or first con, altogether. (Hey, don't forget to find and support your local sci-fi fandom, too!)  That's what keeps this event fresh, that's what keeps fandom fresh... that's what keeps STAR TREK and Gene's vision fresh and alive.

As if they need any help.



(Like so many others, I have these and more choice Vegas pics in an album at my Trekland Facebook page. "Like" the page, would you, if not already? There's plenty more albums of pics there, as well.)

STV— Fotos and Fan Faces: More Video Vegas Khhaaann 2011

Hey, it's Chicago Trek con weekend from Creation— and in honor of the occasion, and of Leonard Nimoy's final planned convention appearance, here's some sights and sounds from Vegas Khhaaan! that I've been holding back these past few weeks. (Video below the fold) I sounded off already on what we learned there ...

But here's a little more of the fun flavor: To start, some pics from what turned out to be Leonard's next-last con appearance, for one thing—the long-term highlight of that Vegas weekend, for me ... and what I know will be just as moving for the Chi-town fans now:

And a hoot of a panel that Anthony Pascale asked me to join, apart from my own ...  and one just as vociferously attended: the "Captain Smackdown" panel. Alec Peters and I played not so much a dominant role, but a set-up for audience debate and voting—which is how I liked it. Here's the results—with 1 point for 1st place, 5 for last place in each category, and all representing actual audience vote results. And, yep, the woman outdrew the Brit and lost the tiebreaker to the Original: Who knew the Kathryn Janeway Protection-Promotion League would show up en masse?

The most personal moment of all was the fan who caught me to sign a photo—nothing special there, but what a photo: a stunning 8x10 print of my "Civilian #2" among the guest cameos in the audience of the Enterprise finale. You can bet I especially did a double-take when I saw the ENTERPRISE branding like a licensed photo (of me?) ... but it was all a custom home job. Thanks Willie—that was a moment for the ages. And thanks Dawn, Charity & Chris for the camera work, and helping make it a "corridor moment" for even more passers-by curious at our little mini-party there for a couple minutes. It just really got to me.

I think that was even more of a hoot than having The Shat's Fan Addicts film crew (led by Bill "in cognito" in his stand-out white hat) crash not one but two of our events: The annual rapid-fire trivia (thanks once again for prizes, CBS Consumer Products!) and our game for the evening freebirds at McFadden's on the Casino "strip" (with DVDGeeks' John and Mary and Treknews.net's Brian)...

And finally, as promised in that first post-Vegas '11 TREKLAND post, I went in wearing some new hats this year—producer, for one—and did it (like everyone else) in a new "home." So, that translates as a bit thrown out of routine, and not a lot of video shot. But here's some fun stuff, nonetheless—and, as always, the kind of thing that stops me in my tracks and forces me to whip out the camera... even after all these years, and over such a crazy-busy weekend ....




A big shout-out of thanks to Gary and Adam, and Stephanie and Val and Michelle and Richard and all the Creation gang, once again ... And a reminder not to forget my video visit from our own @Televixen Mary during her MakeMeDehner.com "tour," already up as a Trekland post, too ...

Vegas in my aft viewer: A year like none before

Artwork courtesy CharityWood.com

Something happened this year ... still not exactly sure of all the reasons ... but the big annual Creation Trek bash in Vegas—Vegas Khhaaan! to the Facebookers and simply #STLV to the Twitterati—went to a whole new plane. A whole new critter.

And I should know—I've seen them all.

In a time when the Trek anniversaries are piling up right and left—the 45th for the franchise debut this year, the 30th for Star Trek II and the 25th for TNG both in '82—this was also the 10th year for a grand "Vegas Khhaaan" since they started in 2001... and Creation's had them all after that first one by Dave Scott's now-defunct Slanted Fedora shows. So, maybe it was about time for what happened.

Especially in a year when the overall U.S. economy remains poor-to-middling, these numbers and demographics are Just Amazing.

Now, you've read all the basic reporting elsewhere already; I'm going to save my stills and video for a separate post, and some more sentimental bits with it. So THIS missive will be  some general observations with big-picture touches. And brother I've got more than a few, but the overall bottom line?

Vegas Trek simply EXPLODED this year, pure and simple.

And on so many levels!

—Pure numbers? Reports say about 20,000 total sold seat-days—about 13,000 unique fans in all —and only the bigger space afforded by the Rio absorbed the uptick. Many complained of the longer walk in these post-Hilton digs, but at least there was no Sardine Factor at work anywhere. And Creation thankfully saw it coming: we got an email note a week earlier that doors and dealers would be open an hour earlier on the weekend—starting at 7 AM!

—Costumes? Oh my god—at one point I Tweeted that the overwhelm onrush felt like the "Comicconification of Vegas"... meaning, in reference to the huge cosplay rep of Comic-Con San Diego, that we had not the just the number but the ingenuity and obscurity—ie, the coolness factor—of so many outfits and concepts had just shot through the stratosphere. (See more later, soon!).

—The secondary room, after one or two years as I've been keeping tabs, is now clearly a monster to be reckoned with. Time was when the "side stage" was home to great but woefully under-attended scientists who'd attract maybe a dozen or so hard-core fans, the ones not aware they were supposed to be in a line somewhere. But, beginning with the new influx from JJ's movie we saw in '09, that room has reeked with newbies the first year, and then just simply big numbers—usually 150 or more. My events were there (trivia line, at right), as were Anthony "trekmovie.com" Pasquale's, and many more.

—Those two groups famously thought to be absent from Trek fandom by hand-wringing marketers only three years ago—a) anyone under 20, much less anyone under 30 ... and b) those of the female gender—were instead, in a word, EVERYWHERE. The Orion slave-girl explosion of 2010 has just evolved into so many guest-star homages—or totally creative getups with skin—that it was simply breathtaking. Of course, Uhura/Rand red miniskirts remain a staple, but there were so many more—in both Nichols and Saldana versions. And so many more adult incarnations were busting out, too, if you know what I mean. Congrats to Mary Czerwinski & Co. who hosted both a first-ever geekgirls panel for Vegas—again, heavily attended—as well as a crafting panels for anyone, especially the kids and parents. It was just the tip of the iceberg.

—A twenty-something crowd also translated into a party crowd, both at the Creation planned events as well as the Rio's nightclubs in general. For the "overflow" fans shut out of Creation's sellout events, we co-sponsored a Thursday night game night with DVD Geeks and treknews.net  at McFadden's, an early but noisy fan favorite—but the open-area'd iBar and Masquerade Bar also came in for a lot of biz. As they, and a special indie Trek party at Crown discovered, Trekfen like their volume low for talking... but, again, that's a growing pain.

Setting the record: LV Weekly/Sam Morris photo

—And all of it combined for smashing the ever-climbing Guinness World Record for The Most Real Star Trek Costumes In One Place—a total that in just the past couple years has become a big annual triangular rivalry between Vegas, Dragon*Con in Atlanta, and FedCon in Germany. Each one constantly raises the bar in turn, but this go-round all those factors above helped Vegas smash the record of 691 with an incredible 1,040—and it stopped there only because of the clock, and that the Guinness folk ran through all their "official counter cards." Reports of at least 60-100 more waiting in line would have boomed it bigger,  of course.

But why?

Maybe it was simply the new digs at the Rio, after the two-year farewell to an Experience-less Hilton finally gave out for Creation owners Adam Malin and Gary Berman and crew. Certainly in part it was the hubbub about being Leonard Nimoy's last Vegas appearance before his retirement from the con circuit this year (and what a farewell it was.) Maybe it's the ongoing earthquake caused by the JJ movie of 2009, where "new" fans continue to tumble into "old fandom," assimilating not just TOS but TNG and all the rest.

It's all of that, and perhaps one more factor: one I stumbled into just a few short weeks earlier.

In the words of social science, Trek big-con fans are finally "self-empowered" as never before—mostly thanks to social media, which finally hit con fandom in ways far beyond mere one-to-one contact. Groups like the "Unofficial Star Trek Las Vegas Convention 2011" on Facebook, whose 250+ members fast evolved into a fertile ground for hatching meetups, party ideas, newbie help, costume details—and simply introductions. In short, Creation provided the main program, but fans had a way to organize themselves, and early on, when they had the time and inclination.

Not to get too Vulcan about this, but what we did was just see a huge shift in the culture of fandom, yet again—the impact of online media. It was hardly an Arab Spring, but the effect is the same: self-powered organizing. And it's got nowhere to go but up. Already, plans are in the works: you can see the wheels spinning, plans evolving, and shields adapting...

All of this shows a few things, coupled with the "show of hands" polls I took in my audiences, or in just talking with peeps at my table or happenstance in the halls:

—Fans old and new, whether first-gen Trekkies or converts from the 2009 flick, have NOT forgotten any of the "700 Club" TOS or TNG, etc.,  series. If there was to be a mass migration to "modern" Star Trek alone, and a virtual "Forget" mind-meld of All That Went Before... well, it's not with this bunch. Even though a lot of them do owe their fandom entry to JJ-Trek.

—In fact, the image of young, partying, good lookin' and nay even imbibing Starfleeters was everywhere in media—not that that's not 180-degrees misleading in its own way, too. A lot of those folks ARE workin' it this weekend, in any of a zillion niche jobs. But the fact that media admitted to the possiblity the image EXISTS, 25 years after Shatner's "Get a Life" SNL skit forever sent stereotypes askew, is shocking enough. And long overdue. Creation's Vegas con logo (right), the play on the historic Vegas tourism logo, actually finally begins to make sense!

—Which in turn, finally, points to a trend I've noticed in the days since—this one in national media: maybe generational, maybe part of this post-2009 "mainstreaming" perception. And it may be the most shocking one of all: the Era of the Respectiful National Journalist Who Gets It. Maybe, finally, someone realized that the guys who paint their bellies topless in subzero endzone cheap seats for football are no more/no less crazy that the Trekfans who get their Orion green or Andorian blue on—with a lot more philosophy and a lot less alcohol involved in the latter. Somewhat less, anyway.

Yessir, we may finally have gone where no Vegas Khhaaan—and the ever-powerful national media meme—have ever gone before.

Beyond the new hotel thing, even.




On the fun side: More pics and video to come. Stay tuned ...

Now THIS is fandom all over, down under (NSFW)

From the Too Good To Pass Up Dept. ...

If you didn't catch these pics from the annual illegal-but-impossible-to-outlaw "body-painted nude cycling" section of the annual Seattle Solstice Parade .... you have now.

Now be honest—what did you notice first?

The fact that they're all "decked out" in TNG uniforms?

Or the fact that the geekgirl revolution is in full swing? Truly the most amazing phenomenon of our young century.

And who knew I'd ever get to do a (NSFW) headline?






(h/t Gizmodo)