Five Faves: SF/F/M Movies or Shows I Love Because of My Grandma
A little over a year ago, we lost my grandmother, Merle Crawford. She was a quirky and jovial lady. The kind of person who could meet anyone at a grocery store and turn a chance encounter into a meeting between old friends. You can read a bit more about her life in the obituary I wrote for her in the Mountain Democrat, the local newspaper for Placerville, California. One thing that I often mention about my grandmother is the impact she had on me as a geek. While I certainly watched a lot of genre programming as a kid,1 there are two things that led to my passion for SF/F (and related genres): My mother giving me VHS tapes of Star Wars. The ones with Leonard Maltin’s interviews with George Lucas at the front. My grandmother’s insistence that I watch certain programs. So to celebrate the massive influence my grandmother had on my life in a very specific way, here’s a list of 5 SF/F/M (for mystery) movies and TV shows I love because of my grandma: Let’s be real. A lot of programming for kids is genre TV by default. G.I. Joe and TMNT are both SF/F. Dinosaurs is fantasy. Winnie the Pooh is fantasy. Most Disney films are fantasy. DuckTales is SF/F. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and The Secret World of Alex Mac and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are SF/F. A lot of programming for kids also falls under the mystery umbrella. I just don’t think I ever thought about genre when I was a kid. Looking back? It almost seems inevitable that kids born in the 80s and 90s would turn out to be unintentional SF/F nerds in the 2010s. ↩
Five Faves: Snakes!
I’m a fan of snakes. Most of you already know this because I don’t exactly keep it secret. Snakes are just…cool. They don’t behave like other animals, come in a wide range of sizes and colors (and shapes, even if all snakes are tubular). And like a lot of snake people, I have my favorites. Some favorites are snakes I actually keep. Some favorites are snakes I will probably never keep. But they all have one thing in common: I think they are pretty darn awesome. With that in mind, here are my five favorite snake species!
Five Faves: 80s Action Movies
Action movies! Yeah! I love them, and if you’re reading this, you probably have some vague interest in them, too. To continue my Five Faves trend, I decided to turn my eye to the almighty 1980s action movie. In my mind of anachronisms, the 80s were the decade that defined the classic action movie. They also were full of some of the most ridiculous nonsense one could dream up. Who thought 9,000 slow motion shots of Jean-Claude Van Damme screaming “eeyah” like an orgasmic donkey would be a good idea? The director of Bloodsport, that’s who. For this list, I’m making an arbitrary separation between “action” and “adventure.” While both usually contain action, the latter is focused on the journey to discovery; action movies, by contrast, are more focused on the spectacle of the action itself and are somewhat more contained. An alternative argument might hold that action is the big umbrella term, with different forms of action — i.e., adventure — underneath. I’m fine with that definition, too, but I desperately needed a way to put Indiana Jones in its own category for a different list. Like I said: arbitrary. So here goes — my Five Faves list of 1980s action movies:
Five Faves: 80s Science Fiction Movies
The 80s were great. Great music. Great movies. Great books. Great fashion. Yeah, I said it. Fashion. I love 80s fashion, and I don’t care what you think about that! Anywho. For today’s Five Faves post, I thought I’d take a stab at listing 80s science fiction movies. I know that the second I click the publish button on this post, I’m going to change my mind about the movies selected below. Oh well… Here goes:
Five Faves: Rums (Guest Post by Noah Mueller) #MonthofJoy
I want to take a moment to talk about rum. Rum is a distilled spirit that is frequently associated with the Caribbean because a major ingredient is sugar or molasses and the Caribbean has long been known for its sugar plantations. As a result, rum became the drink of choice for many of its residents. Generally speaking, there are three types of rums: light, dark and spiced. Dark rums are dark because they have been aged or because manufacturers have added coloring. I discourage buying young rums with added color because they’re masquerading as being older than they are. If you want a young rum, buy a light rum. Spiced rums frequently are darker than light rums, but this is because of a variety of spices that have been added during the manufacturing process. My favorite type of rum is the aged variety. Like Scotch, well-aged rums have a different flavor profile than younger varieties, and good aged rum can be enjoyed neat. I’ve been told that the older a Scotch is, the better it is. I’m not a Scotch drinker, so I cannot verify this, but I can say with certainty that this is not true for rum. In my opinion, the aging process for rum follows a bell curve with the best rums being aged somewhere between 12 and 16 years. Some rum manufactures will blend rums of different ages, and this is acceptable to me as long the “average” falls somewhere in this range. Now for my top 5 favorite rums.
Five Faves: Fabulous Worlds of SF/F (Guest Post by Helen Lowe) #MonthofJoy
I believe worldbuilding is the characteristic that most distinguishes SF/F from other styles of literature. All other genres rely on the reader’s understanding of the world as it is or has been. In SF/F, the writer must first build the world—a process that includes environment, geography, history, politics, culture, and religion, as well as technological and/or magic systems—for both the story to exist and the reader to engage with it. And as an avid reader of SF/F, as well as an author, there is nothing that rocks my reading and SF/F-loving world quite like a truly fantastic bit of worldbuilding. So in the spirit of #monthofjoy here are five of my favorites – although there are, of course, many, many more. Note: I should add that I am deliberately excluding both Middle Earth and Narnia, simply because they are so well-canvassed in the zeitgeist, but you may take it as read that they’re definitely right up there for me.